HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

uticus

2,147 karma · joined June 25, 2020

submissionscomments
uticus··on Temporary Flight Restriction over SpaceX's McGregor, Texas, Test Facility
Potentially https://x.com/Tesla/status/2098843535730725124 ?
uticus··on Delphi 13 Community Edition Is Now Available
I'm an outsider, although I've heard cool things about Delphi. So, trying to find examples of what this looks like, I was naturally interested in the "Cool Apps" section. But my biggest surprise was that Beyond Compare was listed in there. I see that thing in a lot of Windows .NET shops, I always figured it was .NET-based (I guess I confused association with dependency?)

https://blogs.embarcadero.com/beyond-compare/

uticus··on Arch Linux disables AUR package adoption
WRT package vulns, I'm surprised there's not more technical theory out there. We have plenty of theory around algorithm design, but so far I haven't heard much about inspecting and improving control of dependencies in source - apart from conflict and version management.

Seems like instead of big-O notation, we could have a "reach index" - how far does the top-level code need to reach, to be effective? Top-level -> Userland lib 1 -> Userland lib 2 -> Kernel, would be a reach level "4" - not the simplest, but much simpler to inspect and securely build than reach level "20".

uticus··on Arch Linux disables AUR package adoption
From the actual announcement:

> ...package adoption is currently disabled while we are handling the situation.

Sounds much more like the temporary pause, than the much less temporary-sounding "has been disabled" from the OP.

uticus··on Ukraine Lands Armed Robot Ashore in Russian-Held Territory via Drone Boat
"Described as a first of its kind, the mission could be a glimpse of what’s to come for amphibious operations."
uticus··on OpenBSD has a use-after-free allowing local privilege escalation to root
> Only two remote holes in the default install, in a heck of a long time!

https://www.openbsd.org/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenBSD#Security_record

uticus··on Red Programming Language: Static linking support
https://re-bol.com/short_rebol_examples.r for some examples of the language (from https://redprogramming.com/Home.html)
uticus··on MacBook Neo is so popular that Apple doubled production
sometimes the wizards know best when to fear magic
uticus··on OpenBSD/zaurus: pocket-sized BSD
See also the prequel at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48040465
uticus··on OpenBSD Stories: The closest thing to cute kittens (OpenBSD/zaurus)
Whaddya know...

http://miod.online.fr/software/openbsd/stories/zaurus2.html

uticus··on OpenBSD Stories: The closest thing to cute kittens (OpenBSD/zaurus)
> Don't be startled by this odd-looking name, it will make sense when you reach the end of the story.

> This is the story of OpenBSD on the Sharp Zaurus systems. Because of its length, I have decided to split it in two parts.

> OpenBSD/cats: the enabler

> OpenBSD/zaurus (to be published 20260513)

...I will be visiting again in 5 days. Then, I will be searching eBay for a Zaurus...

http://miod.online.fr/software/openbsd/stories/zaurus.html

uticus··on Boris Cherny: TI-83 Plus Basic Programming Tutorial (2004)
https://www.hpcalc.org/
uticus··on Comparing the Z80 and 6502 to Their Relatives
> Less immediately visible to someone working at the assembly language level instead of the machine code one is that relative addressing is much more common on the 6809, meaning that it’s significantly more viable to write position-independent code on it than any of the other chips we’ve looked at here. Only the 8086 comes close, and it achieves it by using its segment registers as a de facto relocation base.

I would love to learn more about this. Does more "position-independent code" mean the linker has much less to do [0], or is there an actual difference in the code base for similar tasks?

[0] https://sourceware.org/binutils/docs/ld/Overview.html

uticus··on Alberta voter list leak is a potential public safety disaster
In terms of "safety" this leak is a drop in the bucket. The greater concern would be that election systems are involved. If election information is unintentionally readable, it is also therefore potentially alterable.
uticus··on CJIT: C, Just in Time
> Definitely was not expecting this reference.

Agreed, how HolyC serves as an inspiration could be clarified. Was it an aspect of HolyC? The background/context of the author's life, meaning Terry Davis was inspirational? Impossible to tell. Other resources [0] [1] don't mention this aspect.

[0] https://www.theregister.com/2024/11/16/rusthaters_unite_filc...

[1] https://github.com/pizlonator/fil-c/blob/deluge/README.md

uticus··on CJIT: C, Just in Time
https://dyne.org/cjit/graphics.html#cjit-for-graphical-appli...

> Be welcome to the exciting world of graphical C applications using SDL (Simple DirectMedia Layer). SDL, originally developed by Sam Lantinga in 1998...

That's batteries included.

uticus··on Spinel: Ruby AOT Native Compiler
> It's a similar subset to mruby...

This is what I've been wondering after only a cursory glance ("It...generates optimized C code" from the OP). Interesting that mruby itself got a major version update around the same time (in just the past few days) https://github.com/mruby/mruby/blob/master/doc/mruby4.0.md

uticus··on Alberta startup sells no-tech tractors for half price
> instead of believing in magic of "free market"

It looks like magic because it works like magic. Surprisingly it is also possible to believe in the magic of "government intervention" though it looks less like magic and more like unintended consequences.

uticus··on Alberta startup sells no-tech tractors for half price
> The farm equipment industry spent 20 years adding complexity and cost. Ursa Ag is wagering that a significant number of farmers never wanted any of it.

Nice tag line but not a complete picture. The "significant number of farmers" in terms of actual market spend driving the equipment industry is not mom-and-pop outfits but rather agri-industrial complexes with machines to match. What they want is (1) availability and (2) ROI. For (1), that is first and foremost subject to legal stipulations like EPA etc, then secondly subject to production availability. For (2), electronics are the name of the game if you are looking to turn a profit with farming because counting every seed, measuring every drop of chem, and tracking every inch of plotted ground leads to better ROI.

uticus··on Alberta startup sells no-tech tractors for half price
> The air filter was basically a shisha-pipe that bubbled the incoming air through wire wool and engine oil.

What is a shisha-pipe?

uticus··on ChatGPT for Excel
> Excel has this legacy (but extremely powerful) core with very few people left that knows all of it.

Would love to hear more about this. Especially history and comparison to Lotus etc.

uticus··on Long Instruction Word architectures and the ELI-512
> Trace scheduling replaces block-by-block compaction of code with the compaction of long streams of code, possibly thousands of instructions long...

"Enormously Longinstruction Words" is very interesting, but for me the spotlight here is on "trace scheduling".

uticus··on Where did my taxes go?
> Interest per Second - General - The U.S. pays $31,688/second in debt interest — $1,901,285 every minute. Your share of that: $3893.33 [plugged in "normal" amount], gone before it bought anything.

...I thought I was already sufficiently terrified by the debt numbers...

uticus··on Where did my taxes go?
Love it - great application of publicly-available data. Also ref https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47420307 US govt provided public debt resources.

By the way, the 1040 instructions have a pie chart like this (ref https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i1040gi.pdf, page 122). Not that most people do taxes themselves, or have a reason to read to page 122 of instructions for a single form. But still it's there and perhaps a nice gesture by the IRS.

Breaking it out into pie charts etc like this can be really helpful. In my view the real kicker with taxes is the opaqueness. Kinda like a meal card versus paying for every meal, or like using a credit card versus paying with cash, it's hard for humans to really grasp what's going on unless they're involved.

Of course it would be impractical to pay taxes separately to every waiting hand in government bureaucracy. But on the other hand maybe the number one goal shouldn't be ease of use, either. Maybe a little friction when paying for public services could be a good thing for citizens who are interested in a healthy country - my opinion.

uticus··on Jennifer Aniston and Friends Cost Us 377GB and Broke Ext4 Hardlinks
And I thought this was a reference to a Win95 problem https://www.slashgear.com/1414245/jennifer-aniston-matthew-p...
uticus··on Ask HN: Why Databases Instead of Filesystem?
> You could always write code to help doing those things direct from disk, but you know what you have just written if you do so? A database!

Yes, but that's my point. Why is this not a part of the standard library / typical package with very little friction with the rest of the code, instead of a separate program that the standard library / typical packages provide in an attempt to reduce the friction?

Or are you making the general point that databases already existed prior to the standard libraries etc, and this is just a case of interfacing with an existing technology instead of rebuilding from scratch?

uticus··on The effects of caffeine consumption do not decay with a ~5 hour half-life
> Importantly, the primary metabolites also block adenosine receptors.

Biochemistry is rarely a one-and-done event it would seem.

uticus··on PicoZ80 – Drop-In Z80 Replacement
and elsewhere on the page, ZPU (FPGA-based microprocessor) sounds a lot like "ZipCPU" FPGA-based microprocessor https://zipcpu.com/
uticus··on PicoZ80 – Drop-In Z80 Replacement
how is "tranZPuter" not "transputer" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transputer)
uticus··on Duff's Device
previously at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23303583
Page 1 of 21Next →