jcarrano

I didn't know about the lock. What happens when you delete an open file in NTFS? Is the data still accessible for programs that have the file open? If yes, then why the lock. If not, then that's a problem.

Well, a big part of my job is trying not to move other people's cheeses. In other words, keeping the major version of the software I maintain at "1".

Yes, quite different but roughly the same paradigms. I recently used an old HP-UX workstation with HP VUE and it felt very familiar and intuitive, not to mention the aesthetics were awesome.

To me, even more impressive than displaying the website in a 1993 browser is the fact that you can even compile xmosaic for a modern linux OS with only minor tweaks. Reminds me of a couple recent HN thread about Wayland and X11, and GTK4. Will we be able to compile today's applications 30 years into the future. Probably not even in five.

I have excellent fine motor control in both hands. I can use knives, a mouse, scissors or solder with either hand, yet I have struggled- suffered!- with handwriting since forever.

By far the best thing with XFCE is that it does not change, it merely improves. Other DEs and applications radically change the UI between releases.

I have my XFCE desktop working as I want now and I don't want to change it or having to learn where buttons are located after an update. With Gnome and Windows I feel like a lab rat for their UI experiments.

The future where every little thing is up to a direct vote through an app sounds dystopic to me.

Setting aside the author's very clear ideological inclinations, the fact is the more things people have to agree on, the more conflicts will arise. We could lower the operational cost for taking a decision, but the human and social exertion remains. Actually, by making it easier to put up anything for debate, the effect will be to take more decisions into the sphere of the state.

But the worst of this is that it assumes that Government's role is to fulfill the wishes of citizens and in this framework, AI and software are the tools to learn what those wishes are.

I remember implementing a sliding overlapping 2d windowing by playing with the strides. I don't know how common is that trick but at the time it felt like magic.

The guys at MS are smart enough to decompile assembly but still not enough to have a proper inode-based filesystem where you can delete files that are in use.

I see people losing files in Windows all the time.

I agree 150%. I often find myself, after finishing a "big" application, thinking "well, this must have been thousands of lines". Then I run sloccount or wc and I'm always surprised with how few lines of code I have. The thing is, as you say, I spend more time thinking than writing.

Better than being dependent on a soulless employer, while still having to take care of the family.

Actually, being able to depend on someone you trust is the real liberation.

Turns out that "women can work" quickly devolved into "women must work". The curious part is that if you go further back in history, to when most of the population were peasant farmers, it was more the case of "everyone must work" (children too), and house work was nothing like today's. The average 1950's housewife did not have to kill chickens to make soup.

Couple this with the fact that nowadays couples have less children in average and you start to get the picture. If now two people work (vs 1) to have one child (vs 5) that will get the same (vs better) quality of life than their parents then you have on average become poorer.

I can't help but feel we have been duped.

I used and avow that method. One thing I would like to know, though, is if it's essentially the same method as the "cupric chloride" one. I'm guessing if you reuse the previous etching solution and add fresh HCl and H2O2 (which I did) one should get both etching reactions.

In any case it works very well, and it is safe, something which commenters in another hackaday article some time ago were doubting.

For a more practical approach (though limited to C) you can try the Frama-C suite. It works by annotating C code, instead of having to manually rewrite the code in Coq.

One thing that the post does not mention is that things get nasty real quick if you use actual machine integers (or number generally) instead of ideal ones in Coq- though that can also be due to my own ignorance as an amateur.

Generalizing: the technical merits of <whatever> are mostly irrelevant. People use software- or any other tool- to solve actual problems that they have, not because they are prettier technically.

For example, I have been using Pipewire for a while now, because I have to use a USB sound card intermittently. I don't think it is bad, but I wish I did not have to switch card so I could use ALSA directly. I don't care if PW is technically "superior", for me ALSA worked and I could get perfect audio even if the computer mostly hanged.

I use XCFE because I need to get stuff done and XFCE does not change the UI or move buttons around. It does not support wayland. I don't have time to fiddle with config files or to use a DE that churns the UI on each release.

The articles arguing for the technical superiority of <whatever> always sound like they are scorning the user for not recognizing the obvious superiority of the new thing. Almost like they considered anyone who does not adopt the new system stupid.

You are proposing a mechanism for determining the price but not the quantity. And, since the quantity can be arbitrary, then, thought bidding, so can the price (within limits).

Furthermore, if the H1B is causing a cost/loss to someone, then the money should go to these people. You can argue that the H1B is harming local workers, but it cannot possibly be harming future/potential workers to which you propose to give the scholarship.

It makes no difference who pays, save for what you propose about free movement between companies.

If it is paid by the employee, then companies would probably reimburse at least part of it. If it is paid by the company, it is already factored in the .salary amount. In the end, both employer and employee only care about the net amount the pay or get.

I still can't understand why MS is forced to break up product bundles but Google can make Android with a bunch of Google apps, some of which are very difficult to turn off.

Carbon tax will make it more expensive to do anything that consumes energy, which is every human activity.

Land value tax: you move to a cheap place, some time later its value increases and now you have to pay more tax, why?

Tax on personal vehicles: it was EPA mandates that led to the current huge truck situation in the US, so maybe remove those instead of forcing people to pay even more for worse vehicles.

Other people, in the same situation as you, channel that frustration re-doing stuff, reinventing wheels and creating busywork for poor souls like you and me.

It is a statement of how hugely productive their society is, where people can afford to waste time on such stupidities.

The monorepo is where you end up when you have failed to enforce encapsulation and your "modules" do not have stable APIs (or are actually modular). Then, with sub-modules each change will often involve multiple commits to different modules, plus commits to update references, so O(N) commit multiplication.

Exactly what you imagine, and then a bit more.

It still makes sense to have a well because it is a waste to water the lawn with drinking water.

I came here to say the same. I was bitten by faulty breadboards, now no more. Perfboard is not much more work to assemble and way more reliable.

While I empathize with him and think it's ridiculous that he has to jump though so many hoops just to get a 3-dat visa, his complains should be addressed towards his own government and the EU who are the ones that should negotiate this sort of things.

We are almost there with phones, except the approval is proxied through Apple and Google. The PC holds on but who knows for how longer.

Is it a law of history that those who seemed crazy ended up being right? I remember reading a couple writings by Stallman and it sounded quite outlandish and exaggerate then. Not anymore.

See, e.g. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html

Oddly enough, the French government has contributed quite substantially to free software.

The key is to know, acknowledge and accept where you are going, and to go boldly and deliberately- or not go at all. Say "this problem looks like making a small program so I'm making a mini-language". However, if you find yourself saying ""this looks like a database..." then stop there and please do not build a db.