Hacker News Reader

This was an oooold SunOS compiler that didn't warn about much other than you owe Sun more cash.

Also when you're drunk, the warnings result in "ahh who cares" :)

csmukon Building a tiny ARM-based server

I think you're close.

The only PC of the future I can see is what would be considered an embedded system of some description at the moment; not a re-purposed one but one that is designed to be used for something else.

I don't see ARM or Intel getting a look in here as they are not open architectures. ARM is almost always in a notoriously unknown licensing status from experience.

I reckon that the market will divide into consumption, some open architecture that doesn't exist yet (for power users, enthusiasts running Linux) and this sector which is hacking devices.

The PC of the future doesn't exist. Yet.

csmukon Don't commit when you're drunk

I've written and committed my best bugs when drunk. Undoing them was a valuable learning exercie. The finest being, in C:

   if (nr = 0x56) ...

That took and entire day to find and made me religiously avoid lvalue assigments in expressions by doing:

   if (0x56 == nr) ...

csmukon Tydlig – Calculator Reimagined for iPad and iPhone

The 50g already does that as it has a built in CAS so symbolic is default. This are represented in their rational form or with respect to pi.

50g is basically a 48GX emulator with 400MHz ARM core that emulates Saturn, MetaKernel and a CAS. Goes like lightning. Oh and a bigger screen so you get 7-9 stack lines. Also you can use SD cards as ports. Mine has 256Mb of Flash. Eats a set of batteries once a month but it's worth it for the power.

I can create a symbolic list with 50,000 entries in quite happily on the device then do all standard two-variable stats on it in 1-2 seconds.

csmukon Tydlig – Calculator Reimagined for iPad and iPhone

To be fair both HP and TI have tried their best to do something better than their older lines but it's resulted in the following:

http://www8.hp.com/us/en/products/calculators/product-detail...

I've used the emulator, but it's less productive than the 50g. Also TI's nSpire offering is just horrid.

I don't use my calculator in education which means I'm completely forgotten.

csmukon Why Emacs is a better editor – case study for JavaScript developer

Well played :)

csmukon Why Emacs is a better editor – case study for JavaScript developer

Kevin Flynn uses vi - 'nuff said:

http://i.imgur.com/rMdKYde.jpg

(this is in jest but no doubt I'll be downvoted...)

csmukon Tydlig – Calculator Reimagined for iPad and iPhone

Ha I had a TI92 (not plus) a number of years ago. Weighed a ton - you could kill someone with it. Sold it and got an HP48GX after I discovered that you couldn't get the plus module for it in the UK for a reasonable price. Never looked back.

csmukon Tydlig – Calculator Reimagined for iPad and iPhone

Spot on. This is one reason I still use my 50g - it uses decimal internal representation with known precision on every operation.

Casios are a mess. They are actually made my Kinpo which do a shitty job of pretty much everything. The notable exceptions being the FX991MS and Fx5800P which are very very close to my 50g (which was laboriously tested on paper before I trusted it)

csmukon Tydlig – Calculator Reimagined for iPad and iPhone

Nailed it. Nice to see someone who understands the situation properly.

csmukon Flat UI Design - A showcase of the best examples of the flat UI design aesthetic

Yuck. Horrid examples. Not that I've seen a flat design that is usable yet. Microsoft did a pretty good job with WP8 but it still stinks.

csmukon TCP HTTP Server written in Assembly

Bet that handles TCP fragmentation well :)

Nice work though to whoever crammed that in a PIC.

csmukon RJ45-sized Linux networking server goes IPv6

We used dedicated terminal servers for this function years ago. No PC required. DEC and Allied Telesis made them. Now I feel old.

csmukon Tydlig – Calculator Reimagined for iPad and iPhone

No RPN. Neckbeard status confirmed.

Calculators are still an unsolved problem for me on glass devices to the point I still religiously carry around an HP50G even though its 6x the size of my phone. Also from some bad experiences, it appears that some "app" calculators are also seriously badly implemented. Even basic trig ops can return stupid values at extremes which makes them untrustworthy. Plus none are reasonably programmable.

My use cases are base conversions, simple CAS stuff, basic engineering calculations, unit conversions, financial (TVM etc) and generic math. I also canned a lot of knowledge in RPL programs over the years from fuel calculations to diagnostic tools and dice rollers etc.

Please can someone solve all these problems (without doing half arsed HP calc emulation).

csmukon Universe May Have Been Around Forever, According to Rainbow Gravity

Exactly. The universe is a pretty big place.

Time dilation is another one. It's locally insignificant enough to be considered noise/error.

csmukon Linux laptops: should you avoid buying Windows?

Agreed with this. It's why I still run Windows as a host and Linux in VirtualBox instance.

If you run it the other way round, the battery life is half.

(that is with powertop optimisations and a fair chunk of other optimisations as well)

csmukon Linux laptops: should you avoid buying Windows?

Well it is until you want reliable WiFi and hibernate/suspend that actually works...

csmukon Universe May Have Been Around Forever, According to Rainbow Gravity

Perhaps the second law is only locally true.

csmukon WinFS, Integrated/Unified Storage, and Microsoft

I use a DSLR, shoot raw and use Lightroom as well. In fact I just filled up 12Gb of Harry Potter studio tour today...

However we're a pretty niche "prosumer" market. The really big sector is "cheapy digital compact" and use windows' tools because it's what they have and it's the least effort. The tooling is shit but it's good enough for most things.

I mentioned the studio tour becuase there is a good distribution of "normal" camera owners there. The breakdown was pretty much 10% DSLR, 70% compact digital, 20% smartphone.

csmukon WinFS, Integrated/Unified Storage, and Microsoft

Actually they did the same on Windows Vista and above.

csmukon WinFS, Integrated/Unified Storage, and Microsoft

Note: I own a windows phone. It syncs photos with SkyDrive, allows you to post to facebook etc.

It allows choice. Suprisingly, Windows has always allowed choice.

Web mail won for consumers for a bit. Now it's heading towards apps and sync which are omnipresent on all platforms now.

WinFS was replaced with metadata indexing which didn't incur the system-level performance hit. Metadata indexing is there on iOS, Windows at least.

Edit: I don't actually take photos with my phone unless it's a quick shot of my car parked to make sure I don't get a dodgy ticket.

csmukon WinFS, Integrated/Unified Storage, and Microsoft

>The vast majority of photo management these days happens on the web and in HTTP-using client applications, where sharing, not editing, is the killer feature.

You'd be surprised. There are many of us who don't do social photography and use desktop photographic software and Windows' built in image management stuff.

And Microsoft make more money out of us with Windows licenses than Facebook do with social photography.

The right client bet was the choice of doing it where you please, which they offer(ed).

However, they're pushing everything onto SkyDrive now in an "everything everywhere" approach which is a bad move.

Surprisingly Apple and DIY (Linux or own software) are the only people offering choice still, or at least not nagging you about moving to the cloud.

csmukon The Database Administrator is dead

No they just know how not to fuck up their queries to start with so we don't need a DBA to optimise 300 join statements...

csmukon The Database Administrator is dead

Not for us. Our developers built an API and tool chain to self service.

csmukon The Database Administrator is dead

This is all trivial knowledge under the "application performance" banner. All of our development staff are capable of diagnosing these issues and providing suggestions.

csmukon The Database Administrator is dead

I disagree. dedicated DBAs are on their way out.

Databases are becoming pretty good at managing themselves and the marginal performance gains from tuning usually are easily offset by throwing bigger kit at the problem or throwing more cash at the plan you are on.

csmukon How I introduced a 27-year-old computer to the web

It's broken now :)

csmukon Vim.js - JavaScript port of Vim

Genuinely much more impressive than I was expecting! Well done!

csmukon CertiVox confirms it withdrew PrivateSky after GCHQ issued warrant

Protection of Freedom Act doesn't work because it's additive. Repealing other acts would be a better solution.