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auroralimon

15 karma · joined March 25, 2022

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auroralimon··on Ask HN: SQLite in Production?
there are tens of thousands of apps that use it, for billions of instances; most all of the most popular apps use it in some fashion. it’s a beast.
auroralimon··on Am open to constructive criticism: My Halting Problem solution
then you have added nothing to the problem. of course if you run the program and it halts, even if runs until T+heatdeathofuniverse^googleplex (which is a finite time) without an infinite loop, you have not solved the conundrum implied by Turing’s work. Turing proved no algorithm exists that always correctly decides whether, for a given arbitrary program and input, the program halts when run with that input. The essence of Turing's proof is that any such algorithm can be made to produce contradictory output and therefore cannot be correct. He proved it - QED
auroralimon··on Vernor Vinge has died
damn. one of the best SF books - a fire upon the deep - ever. RIP Vernor
auroralimon··on Am open to constructive criticism: My Halting Problem solution
So what about a chaotic function like: (assume x is 64bit float)

x = 0.035876; while true { x = 3.5699456 * x * (1 - x); if x == rand() break; } does it halt?

auroralimon··on Am open to constructive criticism: My Halting Problem solution
Consider: are all programs that don’t halt infinite loops?

Perhaps one which experiences exponential growth in some variable.

auroralimon··on Do McKinsey and other consultants do anything useful?
always seemed to me like McKinsey just provided hired brains, ones more clever than any the client could attract on their own.
auroralimon··on The quest to decode the Mandelbrot set
i’ve often wondered if mandelbrot is what you get when you do a simple quadratic iterator in complex numbers, what are the comparable sets for quaternions and octonions??
auroralimon··on Ask HN: What boring and utterly reliable technologies would you recommend?
Kerosene lanterns. astoundingly solid.
auroralimon··on Why haven’t internet creators become superstars?
ol’ Vint Cerf has tried for years.
auroralimon··on Ask HN: Is one C Corp enough for multiple micro startups?
just use LLCs, much easier, one per startup. need almost no paperwork.
auroralimon··on Ask HN: Is MINIX still the go to for learning about operating systems?
Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces Book by Andrea Arpaci-Dusseau and Remzi Arpaci-Dusseau
auroralimon··on Ask HN: Is MINIX still the go to for learning about operating systems?
xv6 is a terrific project to grok the basics of Unix. very readable and gives you syscalls, context switching, and kernel/user space dichotomy. I also like 3EasyPieces from the couple at Madison (UWisc) - can’t remember their name just now.
auroralimon··on Ask HN: What is your oldest possession?
i have a desk, built about 1720, in PA i bought with quite a bit of filthy lucre from one of my IPOs. use it most days.
auroralimon··on Uniform eXchange Format (UXF) – plain text human readable typed storage format
no time zones on date/&times? they should be added.
auroralimon··on Ask HN: Whats the smallest code that you looked at and said wow that's so clever
there lots of examples, in many languages, of Dijkstra’s Two Stack calculator. this one is in ?javascript? https://switzerb.github.io/imposter/algorithms/2021/01/12/di... a very elegant piece of code
auroralimon··on Intel iAPX 432
i have it’s programmers guide around here somewhere.
auroralimon··on Intel iAPX 432
no. i seem to recall only intel had a board in an S100(?) chassis? i think that’s the one i had access to.
auroralimon··on Intel iAPX 432
i remember trying to use it with an Ada compiler at school. I was the only person on campus who had Ada exposure, and it was a remarkably slow machine. Could not get out of its own way. Very ambitious in architecture but too slow and too far ahead of software at the time. i do not recall actually -running- any programs on it. There might have been a monitor running (not a real OS, just BIOS like shell thing)
auroralimon··on Readings on History of Unix?
Kernighan’s history of unix, amazon has it, it might be print on demand “ UNIX: A History and a Memoir”
auroralimon··on Ask HN: Did Steve Jobs focus on design due to his lack of technical knowledge?
he was very clever; very smart - one of the smartest people I've ever met; he had pretty atrocious manners; and he didn't really "design" but rather reacted to a design, he had a very clear sense of what he thought was elegant, clean and clear; he never said "let's build this", he'd say that's crap, make it better; he'd say it's a beautiful birthday cake inside (the ideas within a product) but you've covered it in dog shit frosting (bad UI); his intuitive sense for clean design and clear usability was awesome. (and yes Woz is/was an enormous brain; able to "think in electronics" and express complex things with hardware) you will pry his company's products out of my dead, cold fingers; and he taught what it means to truly hate another human being.
auroralimon··on Show HN: Throw – The new space for asking and answering questions anonymously
The several times I have seen this tried, it usually devolves down to a bunch school students asking sex questions and other students posting outrageous (and often incorrect and harmful) answers. Best of luck, though.