Hacker News Reader

sluon If-then-else had to be invented (2020)

Else is a given name in Denmark (a variation of Elsa, I'm guessing). At university we had a professor with the surname True; so if he had a daughter, her name could've been Else True. We found that quite funny.

Else If would also be a possible name in Denmark.

But, according to Statistics Denmark[1], none of those combinations exists:

Women with the first name 'Else' 13,047 Men and women with the last name 'True' 166 No one has the name 'Else True'

Women with the first name 'Else' 13,047 Men and women with the last name 'If' 6 No one has the name 'Else If'

[1] https://www.dst.dk/en/Statistik/emner/borgere/navne/hvor-man...

sluon What it's like to live in the most liveable cities in 2026

The Economist Intelligence Unit's latest Global Liveability Index names the world's top cities. We asked residents to share the everyday experiences that make their hometowns such exceptional places to live.

sluon Show HN: A terminal spreadsheet editor with Vim keybindings

Nice. I've been using https://github.com/andmarti1424/sc-im for a while now. It would be great with a comparison.

sluon Perlsky Is a Perl 5 Implementation of an at Protocol Personal Data Server

Cool, I'm going to play with this. Looks like a well-written project, and I love this statement in the readme: "it started as a joke and then quickly got out of hand".

sluon Learn computer graphics from scratch and for free

This looks great, will have to check it out. I've always been interested in computer graphics, I even wrote a ray tracer when studying for my master. It was based on the, then, brand new book "An Introduction to Ray Tracing" by Andrew S. Glassner et al. The book is now free to download: https://www.realtimerendering.com/blog/an-introduction-to-ra...

sluon Overlooked No More: Inge Lehmann, Who Discovered the Earth's Inner Core

Google Street View link showing the murial: https://maps.app.goo.gl/nfSzrb3CFPKowZ4p9?g_st=ac

sluon Pikaday: A friendly guide to front-end date pickers

As a Dane, pikaday reads a little funny, because "pik" is a vulgar slang term for penis, equivalent to English words like dick or cock.

sluon How I am deeply integrating Emacs

The "Mastering Emacs" is great. But, you don't need it to get started, instead check https://www.masteringemacs.org/reading-guide

sluon LinkedIn will soon train AI models with data from European users

In Denmark there's 4 weeks for the mother (right after giving birth) and then 24 weeks for the mother and their partner each, i.e., a total of 52 weeks. It's also possible to transfer weeks between the parents.

sluon Data investigation: Childhood vaccination rates are backsliding across the U.S.

"Among the states collecting data for the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine, 68% of counties and jurisdictions now have immunization rates below 95% — the level of herd immunity doctors say is needed to protect against an outbreak."

sluon Fuck up my site – Turn any website into beautiful chaos

Somewhat similar to https://geocities.live/news.ycombinator.com

sluon Ask HN: Should you reply STOP to unwanted texts?

John Oliver explained it (Pig Butchering) very well: https://youtu.be/pLPpl2ISKTg?si=yHwqzMX0r2h4mKl-

sluon Show HN: Aldi Price Map

After about 25 years in Denmark without earning money, ALDI closed all shops here last year.

sluon How I built a date picker

"Monday is the first day of the week according to the international standard ISO 8601, but in the US, Canada, and Japan, it's counted as the second day of the week." - https://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/days/monday.html

I've always thought of Monday as the first day of the week. It's the day that starts the workweek (and school week) and Sunday is part of the weekend.

sluon Cool but obscure X11 tools

Tgif is one of my all-time favorite X11 programs. It's used to create vector drawings, and I could whip out nice infrastructure diagrams etc. so fast using it.

See http://bourbon.usc.edu/tgif/index.html

sluon HTML5 game written in 0 lines of JS

No, because comments are not code, thus they are stripped before counting LOC.

sluon The Girl Who Turned to Bone

I read the article using the Dolphin Browser on Android, and I did not see any popup...

sluon Poll: What is your age?

I think the "Please don't abuse this option..." has had the opposite effect than the OP wanted...

sluon Standups are Poisonous

Who's dictating 10 o'clock? Standups can be e.g. just before or after lunch, or in the afternoon. The team should be able to agree on a time that works for everyone. And if that really is impossible, then use Skype or similar to include people who are still at home.

A six person team should be able to be done in less than 10 minutes. If someone gets off topic or rants on about details, stop them, and perhaps suggest a meeting afterwords.

You solution totally ruins the dynamics of the standup.

sluon Show HN: What's Your Browser's Age?

Yeah, mine is too. Guess they shouldn't have showed HN...

sluon Bringing Bash's powerful command line editing to Microsoft Windows' cmd.exe

I've never had a single crash (of Console2) on my Win7.

sluon Bringing Bash's powerful command line editing to Microsoft Windows' cmd.exe

Looks sweet.

I currently have to use Windows at the customer I'm working for. I've installed Console which gives tabs and better copy-n-paste on Windows. See http://sourceforge.net/projects/console/

I'm not sure if clink and Console will work together, but I'll have to try it.

sluon A Brief History of Spreadsheets [2004]

No mention of sc http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/10699

sluon A Brief History of Spreadsheets [2004]

You can download the original VisiCalc executable here: http://www.bricklin.com/history/vcexecutable.htm

It runs nicely under dosemu - here in a terminal on my Ubuntu 12.04 pc: http://i.imgur.com/CjcYt.png