Hacker News Reader

zeron dBase: 1979-2026

One of my first jobs had a legacy application that was based on Clipper. I never had to work with it directly (since I worked on the SQL successor) but reading the source code was still fascinating.

Semi off-topic: The wikipedia article on Ed Esber is in dire need of a clean up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Esber

zeron Helix: A post-modern text editor

These are great. I really have come to love this little plugin that extends and creates a/i textobjects:

https://github.com/nvim-mini/mini.ai

zeron Portmaster – Open-source network monitor and firewall

Nowadays I use TinyWall[1] on Windows. A simple firewall with a whitelist and some convenience functions.

[1] https://tinywall.pados.hu/

zeron s/bash/zsh/g

Fish is really great for an interactive shell, I love using it. Not so great when it comes to scripting though. For example I think there's still no way to easily exit a script on error except to manually check exit codes.

However I haven't tried writing scripts in zsh yet, just sh/bash.

zeron Safari 15 on Mac OS, a user interface mess

I wouldn't attribute it to malice. The author has got that probably right: the people in charge think in iOS terms.

zeron Rust explained using easy English

I like the general idea. I haven’t got the time to do more than skimming right now but I already feel that a single markdown file (especially without a table of contents) isn’t the right medium for this.

zeron Megadesk

The Idasen does look a lot better. Do you think it would handle a move (or two) well?

zeron Oracle vs. PostgreSQL – A Comment

My clients — oncological institutions — license Oracle and so they prefer my solutions to use it as well. Really simple, and sad.

As for why they use it... as far as I know it‘s the old tale: historical reasons. Classical lock-in.

zeron Eloquent JavaScript 3rd Edition (2018)

Regarding your second point: This sounds similar to .NET‘s CancellationToken. It works very well there.

What are those nuances in JavaScript which aren’t handled by it?

zeron Configs suck? Try a real programming language

I use schemy [0] for non trivial config tasks in .NET projects. LISPs in general are well suited for this. Very small implementations are easily done and data is code, it’s pretty great.

Of course, if one has already access to a Python runtime that is probably fine as well.

[0] https://github.com/microsoft/schemy

zeron New ‘past’ link on HN front page

I use http://hn.premii.com/

I believed it to be more popular but it seems no one has mentioned that site so far...

zeron Microsoft’s problem isn’t how often it updates Windows, it’s how it develops it

Yeah I did the same.

It's infuriating to put the machine to sleep only to see in the morning (or days later...) that Windows woke it up at 3am.

Is it supposed to go back to sleep or is this honestly how someone at Microsoft wants it to work?

zeron Rust 1.26 released

You're right, I totally missed that link. Thank you!

It shows off Chapter 3, and yes, it really looks great.

zeron Rust 1.26 released

impl Trait and the second edition of the book; very nice! Congrats on the release!

Question: Is there any way to preview what the book's typesetting looks like, since there's praise in the release note?

zeron Google is about to launch a Gmail Web Redesign

In that case you can still use custom CSS / user styles.

zeron Advanced SQL window function quiz

Q6: Ranking has an error, or I misunderstood. It says "Order by: ranking, name" but in truth one should not order by name!

Anyway, overall very nice!

zeron Setting Up .NET Core on RHEL

I'm curious, what exactly is it that makes you recommend Ubuntu Studio for the desktop?

zeron Ask HN: Blacklist Forbes?

You could also disable JavaScript for socketloop. Works fine for me.

zeron How much is time wrong around the world?

Interesting fact just for fun: Afghanistan shares a 76 km long border with China; this is where the biggest time zone jump occurs, an impressive 3.5 hours.

zeron Domain-Specific VPN Router

Is there anything equivalent for Windows? I heard of ProxyCap and Tunnelier, but I don't know the technical details of how those work - i.e. if they avoid TCP over TCP tunneling.

zeron English has been my pain for 15 years

I agree with your post. TV shows and movies helped a lot, and many wrong things just sound wrong. Pure grammar exercises can only teach so much.

However a solid understanding of grammar helps. For example in your post you wrote "like if doing". Correct would be "as if doing" since "as if" is a conjunction and "like" is a preposition. It was probably just a typo, and you would have caught it during a proof-read since it sounds "wrong" but actual grammar knowledge will confirm any suspicions.

zeron 15 GB now shared between Drive, Gmail, and Google+ Photos

Sounds like a good offer.

Have they added an option to limit the download/upload bandwidth yet?

zeron Vim After 11 Years

> IntelliJ (which I do use for C++ ;))

If I may ask, how do you use it? The C/C++ plugin was unusable, last time I tried it.

zeron YouCompleteMe, a Fast, As-You-Type, Fuzzy-Search Code Completion Engine for Vim

I haven't used it but is PhpStorm no 'real' IDE for PHP? There's a vim plugin for various JetBrains products too (including PhpStorm) and it works well with IDEA.

zeron Webshell.io

Try it with alt-up/down, works for me in Chrome.

zeron International Obfuscated C Code Contest Winners

https://gist.github.com/3910435

zeron Red Bull Stratos Skydive Rescheduled for today

There's this page on their website that should help you answer your question: http://www.redbullstratos.com/science/scientific-values/

zeron Typing Practice for Programmers

http://nic.io

And yes, those domains are pretty expensive.

zeron Best Desktop Keyboards

I ordered my last keyboard over there: http://www.keyboardco.com/

I can only recommend them.

zeron Best Desktop Keyboards

Filco Majestouch 2 Tenkeyless with MX Brown switches for me.

Besides the advantages of the mechanical switches (the Browns are also not that loud as others) I really dig the compact size. The only time I ever used the numpad was when I had to work on spreadsheets. Thankfully I was able to graduate from that.