Hacker News Reader

athomon Introduction to Computer Organization with X86-64 Assembly Language and Linux

Apropos of nothing, I'd like to add my own rec for CherryTree. I started using it about a month or two into my new job, and in the year since, it's been a fantastic resource, allowing me to recall and review take and projects I'd all but forgotten just a few weeks later. Especially good for programmers with the rich support for language syntax highlighting. You can't mix languages in a single node, and the info feature is a minefield of surprise behavior, but overall, an excellent utility!

athomon Cryptocurrency influencers hype up ICOs, sometimes making $105,000 a tweet

Man, I thought you'd just misidentified PCP, and had to go look it up. Best link I found on the subject: http://www.dadhacker.com/blog/?p=1914 on PCP vs PHP

athomon The Multiworse Is Coming

Apropos of nothing, I don't believe they filled in ALL the holes down there. When I briefly worked for Dart Container, purveyors of the classic styrene foam J Cup, I learned they had just opened a MASSIVE new warehouse down in Texas, built in part of the tunnel system meant to become the home of the SSC.

I got to see part of their warehousing up near Lansing, MI. Imagine a building the size of a jumbo jet hangar, packed to the rafters with NOTHING but boxes on boxes of J Cups. Now imagine another. I'm pretty sure the Lansing facility had at least two, and that still wasn't enough for the millions of cups they move each year.

We use a lot of cups.

athomon Schrödinger’s Tcl – Values that differ if you look at them

Actually, once I read what he REALLY seemed to be shooting for, I think it might actually be a GREAT idea!

Let's say you want to process a list of numbers, a set of data records, or something fairly complex. Internally, you can pass it between functions in a fairly compact, but almost illegible form. If a human user wants to see what's getting passed around, though, it could be handy if the system could automatically transform it to smoothing more human readable: tabulated, indented, pretty-printed, what-have-you.

I could definitely see a use for this, strange as it might seem.

athomon Shedding Light on Dark Bandwidth

As ARM Research architect, Jonathan Beard describes it, the way systems work now is a lot like ordering a tiny watch battery online and having it delivered in a box that could fit something an order of magnitude larger and with a lot of unnecessary packaging around it to account for the extra space

Seems that's how most stuff we order online IS delivered. I can see the point, but maybe "unnecessary" is more a matter of perspective?

athomon Release of GnuCOBOL 2.2

Tractor feed, 11x17 fanfold greenbar FTW!

athomon A single-molecule room-temperature transistor made from 14 atoms

But what about the 7 bridges road?

athomon Alphabet Finishes Reorganization with New XXVI Company

Known that going back at least ten years. My "solution" is a simple letter digit naming scheme that lets me get a bunch of tiny functions ready and working, then come back and name them by what they actually do. Works out well for me, productively, but...

You don't want to read my code.

athomon If the Waffle House is closed, it's Time to Panic (2016)

This actually reminds me of one year I was heading home from my folks' on New Year's. As usual, I found myself driving past Michigan City, IN, around or after midnight, with the usual lake-effect snow going full blast. As not-so-usual, I decided I was going to have to pull off for the night, so after checking into the local Super 8, I set out to see what late-night eating establishments might actually be open. Almost nothing. I swear, this was the first and only night I ever found a darkened Denny's. (Oh, my God! They closed Denny's! You bastards!)

I finally found one source of sustenance actually braving the weather that night: a White Castle, probably only because it was attached to a 24-hour gas station. At least I didn't have to go to bed hungry.

I have no idea whether there was a Waffle House in MI City, or where I might have found it if there were, but if all else fails... I guess there's always White Castle.

athomon Commodore 16 and Plus 4 8501 to 6510 CPU conversion

Now, that's interesting. Haven't looked at the article yet, but would like to note the C-128 actually used an 8502 processor, which I'd bet was a sibling/successor to the 8501. I never realized the +4/16 processor was a different one, too. I would have expected it to be just the same as the 6510 the C-64 used. Very interesting!

athomon Study That Embarrassed Wine Experts Across the Globe (2014)

I remember, here in the United States, we used to have "wine coolers" back in the mid to late '80s. Was never much of a drinker myself, and underage back then anyway, so can't say much about the quality, but your "wine drink" remark brought that back to mind. Thanks!

athomon A Language That Linguists Thought Couldn’t Exist

I was just thinking that "...a new sign language emerging..." would more likely consist of whole concepts embodied in independent expressions, which later get broken down into some parts that are more easily recombined into new words/concepts. Thanks for casting sharing this perspective!

athomon [dead]

A co-worker worker and good friend of mine was caught and drowned in fast currents on a tubing outing 9-10 years ago. I wasn't there myself, but heard he'd just stepped out of his tube at the end of the trip when he slipped and fell back in, getting swept up in the deeper, faster currents just past the island. We lost a good engineer, artist, and great friend that day.

You can never be too careful.

athomon Ask HN: Why isn't Prolog more popular?

Oddly enough, I was just recently trying to play around with the PortableApps package of SWI Prolog, available here:

https://portableapps.com/apps/development/swi-prolog_portabl...

It's about the ONLY PortableApp that offers any kind of program development capability beyond text editing, that I could tell. No compilers, no interpreters outside of this and a couple of SQLite packages. Anyway, I pulled this one down, fired it up, and... no worky. I got a console, theoretically I could execute commands, but try and access the help or docs, and it bails out with an error, telling me xpce can't be loaded, because load_foreign_library/1 is not defined? At least half the menu commands failed with the same error, closing out the app in the process. Basically, the app is impossible to use.

So, there's my answer, one that can be applied to many otherwise promising languages. Any system looking to gain traction really needs to go out of its way to Just Work; to make itself readily available, easily installable, immediately functional, and with clear documentation right at hand. You can carry on 'til you're blue in the face about lazy programmers unwilling to learn a simple build-and-install process, but with the ready availability of other environments that generally Just Work, there's really no excuse. At least, that's how I feel about it.

athomon The de Havilland Comet changed aviation for good

In the past couple of years I've been updating my CAD skills, one of the most fascinating discoveries for me was how fillets and rounds distribute the stresses that affect sharp corners. First-year engineering stuff, sure, but pretty amazing to learn what a difference even the smallest details can make.

athomon Sharp 80: TRS-80 Model III Emulator for Windows

Oh, this could be really good! I've played with a couple emulators that had some proprietary restrictions, but still worked well for my needs. A good one free and clear would be really nice!

athomon Astronomers Have Found a Star Orbiting a Black Hole at 1% the Speed of Light

Finite element analysis on the spacetime continuum? Yikes!

athomon Raymond Smullyan has died

Myself, as well. It's been some time since I last read his books, but his name crossed my mind a few times in the last few years, and I'd wondered if he could actually still be around.

Wish I've looked into that sooner.

athomon What This Here Compound Needs Is Some Hydrogen Peroxide

I loved that whole paragraph. I could just hear John de Lancie reciting it in the voice of Discord

athomon Missing Person - Tracy Williams, Technorati Employee

You can't just go calling hospitals asking if a certain person has been admitted. That's actually confidential information, and they won't just give that out.

athomon Creditor moves to dismantle copyright troll Righthaven

Quoting:

A filing in the case shows that Randazza wants the court to “authorize the U.S. Marshalls to execute Hoehn’s judgment through seizure of Righthaven’s bank accounts, real and personal property, and intangible intellectual property rights [my emphasis] for levy, lien, auction or other treatment appropriate for satisfaction of Hoehn’s judgment.”

I hope this isn't a spurious question, but could this end with Hoehn owning copyrights entrusted to Righthaven?

athomon Weird World War II Security Puzzle

I have to tell this one:

Early on in urinalysis, we discussed the physical examination of urine, which of course included odors. One of the odors mentioned was "mousy," which prompted one of my fellow students to ask if we were talking about a live or dead mouse.

It's been an interesting year.

athomon Photojojo, Jelly founder needs bone marrow match to save his life

Talk about timing! Our class just got a presentation and tour of Michigan Blood in Grand Rapids Thursday, including a presentation on the Marrow Registry. One thing y'all might be interested to know: most requested donations now are not marrow donations, but peripheral blood stem cell (PBSC) donations. If I recall correctly, marrow donations account for only one in five requests, these days.

PBSC donation is through a non-surgical procedure known as apheresis. It's essentially a blood donation, except that blood components not required for a procedure are actually returned to the patient.

In this case, the desired component is blood stem cells. These aren't normally found in peripheral blood (which is any blood outside the bone marrow), so a series of injections are required for five days prior to donation to coax more out. Then, the donor's blood is removed and passed through a machine that extracts the stem cells and returns the rest of the blood to the donor, typically through a second needle in the other arm.

It's a time-consuming process; about four hours, according to our guide. Donors may also experience headaches, or bone or muscle aches for several days prior to donations, side effects related to the movement of more stem cells from the marrow to the peripheral blood. On the up side, it doesn't require penetration of the pelvic bone, as a marrow transplant does. It is a bit more complicated than a regular blood donation, and the need for a needle in each arm is certainly inconvenient. Some apheresis machines are now able to perform the withdrawl and return process through a single needle, but I'm not sure if this method has been adapted for PBSC donation yet.

Anyone interested in learning more might like to check out the National Marrow Donor Program at http://www.marrow.org/Home.aspx. The donations FAQ is especially informative: http://www.marrow.org/Registry_Members/Donation/Donation_FAQ...

athomon How to Create a Million-Dollar Business This Weekend

I read this, and thought, it's GOT to be Timothy Ferriss. Sure enough, I see the site is fourhourworkweek.com, just after I've clicked the link.

My favorite line is in the photo caption: "He also looks great in orange." That may come in handy for him in the near future, if he's not careful.

athomon Data on Swearing in Programming Languages

From an old bumper sticker:

C code.

C code run.

Run, code, run.

Run, dammit, run!

athomon Paypal Founder Peter Thiel Invests to Create Floating Micro-Countries

Don't forget retreat from the Zombie Apocalypse:

http://zombiesafehouse.wordpress.com/2010-zshc-winner/

athomon Paypal Founder Peter Thiel Invests to Create Floating Micro-Countries

From BioShock, for the one or two other idiots who (like myself) never bought or played the game.

athomon Why Arabic is Terrific

That's interesting. I found my German lessons did help me better understand the underpinnings of English. Of course, that may owe more to the teacher, and English being a Germanic language probably helped, but knowing a second natural language does give you a new perspective on your first, and additional languages broaden that even further. If you don't feel knowing a second language is helping you use your first, maybe you need to look more closely at how you use both.

athomon The Dollar-Store Economy: How the lowest end of American retail does business

I remember when you'd still hear people refer to dime stores, though I'm pretty sure the term was obsolete well before my time.

athomon Federal Circuit Slams Patent Troll

Wait a minute. You said the defendant had to put up half a million dollars? And the district court awarded the defendant $489,150.48? Half a million is $500,000. Unless I've picked out the wrong numbers, the award looks pretty close to the costs.

Can you clarify?