Hacker News Reader

mikequinlanon Brief History of PDP Computers

Same here. I still really like how symmetric the instruction set was.

mikequinlanon Ask HN: Who owns the copyright to code generated by an AI LLM?

Who owns the code Claude Code wrote?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47932937

mikequinlanon Athletes are taking GLP-1s. Anti-doping regulators are watching.

https://archive.ph/5JnaQ

mikequinlanon Ask HN: Apple Is Broken?

What does 'iOS developer platform' mean? Xcode? The emulator?

mikequinlanon Apple is skipping M6 Pro and Max to focus on M7 chips

Sez who?

mikequinlanon The Atari 800 – By Paul Lefebvre

It was owned by the University across the street (Colorado State University). The mother of one of my friends was a Systems Programmer. We had a blast learning all about the machines.

mikequinlanon The Atari 800 – By Paul Lefebvre

The Atari 800 was my first personal computer (i.e. one I had at home). I bought one when they first came out and learned 6502 assembler language and had a blast.

I had experience with assembler language on larger computers (DECSystem 20 and CDC 6400 in high school/, IBM System 360/44 in college then IBM System 370/145 at work) but having my own personal computer was incredible. Of course I moved on to the IBM PC when it first came out (and learned 8086 assembler language), and many PC compatible computers after that, until I retired and got my first iMAC (Intel x32 and x64), then now to my M1 Macbook Pro.

mikequinlanon Ask HN: What Is the "Lore" of HN?

https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented/blob/m...

mikequinlanon XOR'ing a register with itself is the idiom for zeroing it out. Why not sub?

As TFA says, on x86 `sub eax, eax` encodes to the same number of bytes and executes in the same number of cycles.

mikequinlanon Ask ChatGPT to pick a number from 1-10000, it generally selects from 7200-7500

The prompt doesn't say to pick a random number. I asked to pick a number from 1-1000 and it chose 7,381. Then I asked why it picked that number and it said

Nothing mystical, I’m afraid. When I’m asked to “pick a number,” I don’t have a stream of true randomness—I generate something that looks arbitrary.

In this case, I leaned toward:

• something comfortably away from the edges (not near 1 or 10,000),

• not a round or patterned number (so, not 7,000 or 7,777),

• and with a bit of internal irregularity (7-3-8-2 has no obvious rhythm).

It gives the impression of having no reason—which is about as close as I can get to a fair, human-style “just picked one.”

mikequinlanon ChatGPT's porn rollout raises concerns over safety and ethics

https://archive.ph/QLyKT

mikequinlanon The Genius Whose Simple Invention Saved Us from Shame at the Gas Station

The arrow that shows you which side of the car the gas cap is on.

mikequinlanon Why do AI images look right but fail in production?

Do you have a better link

mikequinlanon Why do AI images look right but fail in production?

I don't see anything related to your title at that site.

Maybe you meant this

https://archive.is/pIM27

But it is from 2018.

mikequinlanon Apple to focus on 'quality and underlying performance' with iOS 27 next year

I sure hope that is true.

mikequinlanon Ask HN: Talk to your users. What is your opinion on an Online Farmers Market?

How is this different from the local Reko markets?

mikequinlanon Solution to CIA’s Kryptos sculpture is found in Smithsonian vault

>Jim Sanborn planned to auction off the solution to Kryptos, the puzzle he sculpted for the intelligence agency’s headquarters. Two fans of the work then discovered the solution.

Gift link https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/16/science/kryptos-cia-solut...

mikequinlanon Ask HN: Is Fortran the first high-level language?

Plankalkül - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plankalk%C3%BCl was designed but as far as I know never implemented (until 2000).

ENIAC Short Code - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_Code_(computer_language) was implemented but very little used.

mikequinlanon Any thoughts about not accepting cards as payment to avoid chargebacks?

As a customer, if I can't do a chargeback in the case where you don't provide the advertised services, I simply won't do business with you and will go to one of your competitors.

mikequinlanon Ask HN: Should I upgrade to tahoe (macOS 26) or not?

Certainly wait until 26.0.1 or whatever the first bugfix update is named.

mikequinlanon Beyond Meat headed to Chapter 11 bankruptcy

Beyond Meat Denies Filing For Bankruptcy In New Statement

https://plantbasednews.org/news/economics/beyond-meat-denies...

mikequinlanon Why English doesn't use accents

Clearly the early scribes were looking forward to the 7-bit ASCII code and needed to reduce the number of characters that were represented.

mikequinlanon Ask HN: What product should the new Commodore release?

The original Commodore was known for a super cheap computer that made it practical for people to have one at home, as well as innovative graphics for the time.

I don't know how that might translate into modern times when everyone has a home computer (a telephone at least). Maybe a computer targeted to pre-teens?

mikequinlanon Tesla's Cybertruck flop is historic. The brand collapse is even worse

The hate is because Elon is literally a Nazi. And no, Nazi's are not part of my "tribe".

mikequinlanon [dead]

Updated July 1: Microsoft has since updated its blog post, correcting the number from 1 billion to 1.4 billion and confirming Windows hasn't lost millions of users.

mikequinlanon Reddit vows to stay human to emerge a winner from artificial intelligence

https://archive.ph/vjChE

mikequinlanon Live updates as Apple reports issues with web apps, Photos, and more

https://www.apple.com/support/systemstatus/

Apple is having issues with iCloud and other systems.

mikequinlanon 10 out of 12 people cured in Type 1 Diabetes Study

Yes, cured but…

>But patients in the trial had to stay on drugs to prevent the immune system from destroying the new cells. Suppressing the immune system, he said, increases the risk of infections and, over the long term, can increase the risk of cancer.

>“The argument is this immunosuppression is not as dangerous as what we typically use for kidneys, hearts and lungs, but we won’t know that definitely for many years,” Dr. Hirsch said.

>Patients may have to take the immunosuppressant drugs for the rest of their lives, the Vertex spokeswoman said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/20/health/diabetes-cure-insu...

mikequinlanon YouTube's new anti-adblock measures

Victim blaming much?

mikequinlanon Tim Cook Called Texas Governor to Stop Online Child-Safety Legislation

https://archive.ph/FgnYv