HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

dcminter

9,912 karma · joined February 2, 2008

Stockholm based human - https://paperstack.com
submissionscomments
dcminter··on Digital Audio on the ZX Spectrum's 1-Bit Beeper
For some reason "5", even if constructed as phonemes came out as "frame" - I always wondered why. I've never seen it mentioned in the various short pieces about it online including its contemporary reviews. I wonder now if it was a bug in the particular rom I had and it was fixed early enough to not get much visibility.
dcminter··on No Easy Fix for Bogus Respondents in Online Opt-In Polls
In fairness I think a lot of people (me included) genuinely thought that would be an entertaining name for the ship, so the polling result wasn't necessarily wrong per se.
dcminter··on There's a high chance of devices being sold with GrapheneOS preinstalled in 2027
Also using Moto G-series phones for a decade or so now. Seems I have more junk (gambling apps, linked in, etc.) to scrub off them each time though.

I could see myself splashing out on a more expensive phone if it were less locked down - so probably never. However I don't play games and as a Gen-Xer my laptop is where the rest of my digital life lives; it makes sense that those for whom the phone is their primary device would prioritise it more (especially with somewhat predatory financing).

dcminter··on A restored PDP-11/83 serving this page on 211BSD Unix
Given the AI-heavy page, I don't think your skepticism was unreasonable.
dcminter··on A restored PDP-11/83 serving this page on 211BSD Unix
Dave Plummer's a well known YouTuber. He pops up in a couple of DEC groups that I'm in on Facebook. However I'm not a fan. He seems to take a lot and contribute only self-promotional videos.

The photo on this page looks very AI heavy. I'm not an expert but I really don't think those light panels are real (if they're real they're not contemporary to the machines they're in).

(Edit: I should qualify that I don't mean the panel with the octet switches, that looks roughly right - I mean the one under the 8" disks and the one on the vaguely Vax-pedestal looking thing)

dcminter··on What Sun got wrong
While we're reminiscing, I never did understand why Sun paid a billion dollars for MySQL in 2008.

So far the best theory I've heard was that it was bait to make them tastier to IBM and Oracle - but even that seems kind of weak; had they really given up at that point? Does anyone have a better theory?

dcminter··on Ask HN: ICLR went from 143 submissions to 62,301 submission IDs – what happened?
To save those browsing the google: "International Conference on Learning Representation" so an AI conference.

> ... what happened?

Seriously?

dcminter··on Ask HN: My recent show HN post got flagged need guidance
I have no special insight, but I think this commenter cut to the core of the problem:

> "I came to the comments because the web page for Enzo explains everything except what the hell it does. Then I couldn't understand the [submission] comment either."

I think you need to practice your "elevator pitch" technique before you submit here again.

dcminter··on Anecdotally, programmers dislike "reduce"
This is painfully relatable.
dcminter··on Anecdotally, programmers dislike "reduce"
A colander would allow the tea leaves through to no purpose. A colander is a type of sieve but a sieve is not necessarily a colander.
dcminter··on Anecdotally, programmers dislike "reduce"
If you're making tea with a colander something is very wrong ;)
dcminter··on EU Floats Canada Becoming the Bloc's First 'Associate Member'
The Eurovision song contest includes Australia in its member nations. Mindblowing I know, but it's possible for a thing to transcend its name.
dcminter··on Java 27
I remember Dolphin being a particularly painful one, and as I recall it ended up with some weird compromises (wasn't erasure supposed to avoid needing to update the bytecode format, but then annotations required it anyway? Something along those lines)
dcminter··on Java 27
Java releases used to be glacial multi-year affairs. Lots of discussion of features that then missed the release train and you knew they'd not be with you for another multi-year period.

They made a conscious decision to switch to a regular six-month cadence and it's been all the better for it. The preview-mechanism has been terrific there too, allowing half-baked features to be aired without absolutely committing to something that turns out to be flawed.

Edit: Ninja-ed by Romario77's sibling comment :)

dcminter··on Android NAT-T keepalive offload bypasses VPN lockdown
Perhaps this is a stupid question, but have you emailed the moderators (rather than assuming they're aware of the issue) ?
dcminter··on Lotus Notes and the dangers of starting from scratch
I think it's usually my IDE. I haven't seen it recently; not sure if I disabled it in a fit of pique, or if it just doesn't do that any more? (/me goes and tentatively pokes F1 on purpose for the first time in decades... yeah, it's the latter).
dcminter··on Lotus Notes and the dangers of starting from scratch
F1 still launches Help in some apps. I don't think I've ever done it on purpose...
dcminter··on Ask HN: Are others seeing Google's reCAPTCHA rejecting Firefox users?
I don't think it's very interesting even if true. I'm not that fussed about copyright infringement myself and I don't consider using archive.is (infrequently) to be condoning their DDOS.

Presumably you are and do. We differ.

dcminter··on Ask HN: Are others seeing Google's reCAPTCHA rejecting Firefox users?
They also choose to do nothing about uncharitable interpretations of their inactions. Should they act there too? Or do you prefer the hands-off approach when it suits you?
dcminter··on Ask HN: Are others seeing Google's reCAPTCHA rejecting Firefox users?
Rather than telling us that it is telling, perhaps you should tell us what it tells you and why?
dcminter··on We built our house for LAN parties (2024)
> it is perfect to have two brothers and a brother-in-law

This is difficult to arrange at short notice :)

dcminter··on The Real Luxuries In Life
"Cats. Cats are nice."
dcminter··on The Highest Point in the Netherlands
> Bit of an odd comment overall.

It is, isn't it? Maybe there was a reason? :)

To make up for my tone (which wasn't intended to be snarky but without the missing fact probably came across as such), did you know Douglas once described the experience of trying to get Hitch-hikers made into a film as "like trying to cook a steak by having a succession of people come into the room and breathe on it" which is a description I treasure!

dcminter··on The Highest Point in the Netherlands
I know. Guess which country had "fuck" and which country had "Belgium" in the Rory's description.
dcminter··on The Highest Point in the Netherlands
Tell me you're from the US without etc.
dcminter··on How accurate have Ed Zitron's AI skeptic predictions been?
I used to read his posts about Django years ago (a little strange in itself as I'm not a Python guy) and it took me a while to realise he was the same person!
dcminter··on Bug Blindness
As a contra-anecdote, my wife is not very interested in tech and has a Linux laptop for home use and a Windows laptop for work use. For both of them any attempt to use the printer is cursed. I think that's just printers for you :)
dcminter··on Bug Blindness
Maybe? I think you may be underestimating how many papercuts of the same kind are there on Windows and on Macs. They're just harder to see when you're used to them.
dcminter··on More than half of adults in U.S. say they lack basic statistical understanding
Well, if we're telling stats jokes...

A statistician is a man who with his head in the freezer and his feet in the oven can say "On the whole I feel perfectly normal."

Recommended reading: 'How to lie with statistics' - Huff, 1954

:)

dcminter··on iCloud+ Hide My Email addresses will remain on icloud.com
It was probably some time in the early 2000s that I tried it. I'm actually pretty surprised others didn't/don't have the same issue.
← PreviousPage 2 of 34Next →