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ddingus

6,513 karma · joined September 5, 2014

If it's got bits, I'm up for it. I started computing in the 80's, in the 8bit era and just never quit!

Main focus: Embedded, small scale systems

I have done a lot with CAD, PLM, and enterprise level engineering software, and have more than a passing interest in UX.

Additive Manufacturing is cool, and what I do now. Polymer printing and soon DED metal!

doug.dingus@gmail.com

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ddingus··on A Necessary History of the Oddest Letter: W
A radio talk show host I really enjoyed came up with this:

.'triple double ya site dot gom."

You can say that fast and people get it.

ddingus··on LLMs are eroding my software engineering career and I don't know what to do
Seconded.

If there is any skill in consistent demand it is the ability to wrap your head around the new work, new processes, new people, whatever it all may be.

For me, understanding and development of this skill into a keen tool happened while I worked as a prototype mechamic. For those unfamiliar, a prototype mechanic does what it takes to make often demanding parts on consistently short timelines week after week.

Metals, plastics, you name it.

One gets good at ramping up on processes, machine tools, materials. And after doing that for a while, you end up able to very rapidly absorb new info and understand work far more quickly and accurately than many.

Anyone can start this.

Just get curious and build things. Then build more things.

Share your builds and build things other people want made!

ddingus··on Your hex editor should color-code bytes
THANK YOU.

This is another fine tool I can add to my collection.

And FUTO! Love it.

ddingus··on Your hex editor should color-code bytes
I thought it was intended and excellent!
ddingus··on Your hex editor should color-code bytes
Nope.

The greater point here being we definitely benefit when we all understand one another better.

Surely that point was not lost, yes?

ddingus··on Your hex editor should color-code bytes
A screen reader could use various aural means of emphasis that I bet would be as effective as this "color by pattern" idea is.

We have pitch, volume, enunciation speed, and for the voice itself the vocal formant frequency can change as can the harmonics. And that is a rich field we are good at differentiating in too.

One other screen reader idea I had upon seeing this is to use a brief sound either immediately before or after, maybe even slightly overlapping the vocalization.

30 [30 MS BEEP] CO [30 MS BEEP FOLLOWED BY A SHORT CHIRP THAT INDICATES A KNOWN ADDRESS]

Writing that out looks messy. All I can say is the sounds in my head right now make a lot more sense and would compliment the colors nicely.

ddingus··on Show HN: I built a frontpage for personal blogs
I love this. THANK YOU.
ddingus··on Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting
These are some of the best interactions we have here.

For sure a problem worth considering.

I can't think of anything easy...

Only even remotely sensible thought I have at present:

We add a check box to replies created by new accounts. Maybe created by all accounts?

The prompt reads something to the effect of: I am mentioned in the article. And then they get to say how.

-This is my project -I am mentioned by name -Etc...

Whatever it is they wrote, appears somehow, maybe as a required line or something.

Others can see that and either flag the account or vouch.

This at least some what distributes the required attention load.

That said, I don't like it. Have nothing better, so here it is!

Then others seeing that

ddingus··on Show HN: Respectify – A comment moderator that teaches people to argue better
Have you consulted any professionals?

There are grave and disturbing outcomes ahead for anyone implementing these ideas.

We can only control our own speech. Repeat that to your self in the mirror each morning until it sinks in.

We can empower others too.

Focus on that. Help make people better able to employ the many options they have when faced with speech they don't like.

The world will thank you. That cause is noble.

What you are attempting is dystopia in a can, just add people and mix.

Seriously. Think it all the way through. Imagine you, yourself hobbled and muzzled behind these ideas.

Good luck. And let us both hope you do not find yourself bound by your own ideas.

ddingus··on Show HN: Respectify – A comment moderator that teaches people to argue better
I basically hate this thing. Sorry team. I know you are trying and you believe in your effort.

I know your intent is in the right place too.

But, here's the thing:

I value real conversation. It is the only conversation worth having.

This is a step toward Disneyland type conversation. And we don't live in Disneyland!

Profanity is a part of speech. There are ugly things, ideas and people in this world and that is what the profane gets at.

As for offending others... hoo boy!

Let us start with a hard to process reality: we all are as offended as we think we are.

What prevents others from abusing that reality to push an agenda, gain position in the rhetoric, and more?

Not much.

Worse, we do not control others. Many attempts at doing that fail. This one is extremely likely to fail too.

What do we control?

How we respond to offensive speech!

And we have options, but a person wouldn't know that because the number one response is righteous indignation!

There are so many other choices!

We can just ignore speech we don't like.

We can employ humor! When an ass gets called one by a clown, I laugh! It is laughable.

Same for the people blowing pages discussing who is the bigger asshole. I say they all deserve that conversation.

We can redirect by asking a direct question, or by making the subject of our response more germane to the topic at hand too.

There are many more options that make a hell of a lot more sense than blathering on with righteous indignation fueling it full on.

Now, here is another dynamic in the same vein:

Say I declare someone is a racist! Just full on judge them on the spot hard.

They are not gonna like that too much are they? Nope. And what is worse, if we are in a position to do some advocacy, the person so harshly judged won't hear any of it.

And being judged like that sticks. Say they stop being racist. They still gotta live with that crap for a long time.

Now, we could say, "are you sure you want to say that? It comes off racist to me."

The idea being you offer help or a way for them to see the harm, while also giving them an out so they are not judged harshly.

They could reconsider next time, or just stop and that is great! They won't have to fight down ugly exchanges.

I could go on for pages. I believe I said enough to make my point.

We can only control how we respond to speech we don't like.

Attempting to control others to the point where they simply cannot offend or cause grief means we also have sanitized our discourse to the point of being worthless.

No thanks.

I have a very thick skin. Others do too.

More of us can manage how we respond and if we put half the energy we put into trying to control others it would be much better.

ddingus··on Booting from a vinyl record (2020)
Cool! My school used a variation of these for a while.

scantron... a name rising from the mists of time, lol

ddingus··on Microsoft is working to rebuild trust in Windows
That is a hedge for people like us.

Power of the default says that button will needlessly over exploit a ton of users.

ddingus··on Microsoft is working to rebuild trust in Windows
Trust was very slow to come for me. It happened with Windows 10.

I really like 10.

My computing experiences began on Apple ][ 6502 systems. Then a mix of early Windows for workgroup and SGI IRIX.

I was online proper at 9600 baud in early 1990 at work and had my own WfW + Winsock running 14.4 early '91.

I got a DSL the moment Qwest announced it, and was rocking 100kb up 600kb down per second. A damn rocket ship straight to the WWW baby! Truth is hosting Q3A and mooching files were the real fun. I setup SGI Irix at home.

Linux soon followed. I have ran most everything. Solaris, AIX, MacOS, Be, HP/UX, even XENIX, CP/M and others...

I am at the core a UNIX head. And to all the naysayers back then: I was right! UNIX won!

Anyhow, I liked Win 10. Still do, if they would just continue with it. 10, with the WSL system is a pretty damn good OS, and it can run almost anything ever made for Win OS. 10, pre all the 11 vomit being back ported, is just great.

More of that please.

11 is a major league botch! I hate it. Not only are the UI simplifications a major league regression, but the intrusive data collection features and AI penetrating everything is nauseating. I hate it viscerally.

I am not going to use 11 as a primary OS. Nor anything built on it.

Ever.

The best M$ can expect is it running in a VM where it can be managed properly, and even then, only if some damn software costs too much to live without.

Nope. Not. Ever.

The dollar sign was deliberate. Win 11 trashed any good will Microsoft had garnered with me.

Did I mention visceral hate? Yeah. I use my Mac M1 a lot more now.

The amazing thing is my younger peers have come to me for opinions after they too began to hate 11 just as I have.

It is hard to botch it this completely.

Congrats MS leadership. You have accomplished something remarkable!

ddingus··on Booting from a vinyl record (2020)
I have made the mistake of calling the early PC 8-bit, lolol...

Yes, it reminds me of an Apple ][ computer, with the major difference being the Apple had the video sub-system on board, and the PC locating that on a card.

I often wonder how things might have played out had the Apple ][ computers used one slot for video... or, had IBM chose to do it the Apple way.

Apple computers all sort of gravitated to the onvoard video despite a few cards being made. It was just enough, especially when the later models included 80 column text.

I ran my first PC on a TV. Same as the Apple and Atari machines.

Fun times.

ddingus··on Booting from a vinyl record (2020)
Use some finer pitch graph paper and people could author "boot sector code" by literally coloring in the little squares with the necessary bits!

Would be sort of like paper tape.

ddingus··on Booting from a vinyl record (2020)
Someone needs to give this a go!

Fantastic IDEA seconded!

ddingus··on Booting from a vinyl record (2020)
Nice! Hi-fi VHS audio, or using one of those encoders that would pack the data into pixels?
ddingus··on Booting from a vinyl record (2020)
For sure. And early specimens are worth a close look if you ever get an opportunity!

Humans can do amazing things! One of those things happens to be really precise, tiny parts literally willed into existing.

ddingus··on Booting from a vinyl record (2020)
Brzzzzt, tuk tuk tuk tuk brzzzt brzzzt tuk brzzzzt brzzzt

I/O Error :(

You listen to the initial slamming of the head to zero align it, then those happy little tuk, tuk sounds.

It all good, until it isn't!

ddingus··on Booting from a vinyl record (2020)
Same feels here too. Cassette was kindnof magical and kind of crappy. Well, depending on your machine, potentially very crappy.

One of the better cassette loaders can be found in the 6809 based Tandy CoCo machines. When in the cassette times, I would stress test various machines.

My Atari was bog slow, reading a block at a time, with a pause between... And it was picky and really wanted the dedicated cassette drive. Not recommended at all..

Apples were pretty OK, along with the Tandy machines. The Tandy reader software, whoever wrote it, took full advantage of the nice CPU and 6 bit DAC. I could rest a finger on the tape, slowing it down, then listening to the wow, flutter and speed changes all over the place while the machine recovered. Almost always loaded correctly.

The Apples were not that robust, but worked well enough to not be a big bother.

Both Apple and Tandy machines had good commands for loading and saving right to regions of RAM.

On the Apple, with the spiffy Mini-assembler, it was possible to develop big programs a piece at a time, saving off stuff that worked.

Every so often, it made sense to read a bunch in and save off a nice chunk! Always felt good doing that.

Eventually, you load it all, patch it up, linker style, maybe moving bits around some, and then save it as a completed assembly program.

No source, just the data on the tape and what the mini-assembler would show you when you list memory.

Good times!

ddingus··on Anna's Archive loses .org domain after surprise suspension
I love that show! Jack has an infectious take on all the criminal antics! He is able to, for the most part, interview them in a non judgemental way. I fine his style clear and well produced!

Very highly recommended!

ddingus··on Anna's Archive loses .org domain after surprise suspension
Such great moves!

On their way down, the original creators made sure The Pirate Bay would continue to be that gift that keeps on giving.

ddingus··on Anna's Archive loses .org domain after surprise suspension
"Not an outlier"

A quick look at the last few administrations is all anyone needs to see how this one interprets the powers and duties that come with the office.

One of my favorite phrases coined during the last Trump administration was something like, "not just wrong, but wrong beyond normal parameters." It basically meant exactly what we are discussing here; namely, being an outlier of some sort.

ddingus··on Anna's Archive loses .org domain after surprise suspension
That line will haunt Musk to the end of his days. That was a very sexy thing to say, but quite a different beast when it is time to walk the talk.

Musk has buckled, talking the walk instead.

ddingus··on Anna's Archive loses .org domain after surprise suspension
Establishing a position Anna's opponents may consider an advantage.

And there is a site idea!

Annasopponents.news --> Can inform passersby on anything related to Anna's Archive along with activism related material, how to's and the like.

ddingus··on Anna's Archive loses .org domain after surprise suspension
Came here to say that.

An while back, another site started with a pile of pirated music, and that was allofmp3.com Remember those peeps?

Their business model was to sell music by selling bandwidth. Basically is was all the music you want charged by the megabit download.

Pop titles were $0.10 to $0.25. A whole album at 256mbps was roughly $3 give or take.

What got me really thinking was how great the UX experience was. At the time, few came close.

The end of that site was packaged up with Russia's entry into the WTO.

I seem to remember hearing about huge torrents out there too. The right infohash can point a person to huge archives of various kinds, books, video, academic papers, music, the WikiLeak insurance files, which is password protected, as perhaps all of these are.

ddingus··on Experts explore new mushroom which causes fairytale-like hallucinations
I laughed!

"What do mushrooms want?" Is hilarious given your evolution context!

Sometimes, it can make sense to step back and laugh.

The number one response to words we do not like is righteous indignation.

It is almost always a bad idea too. Funny that!

Humor can be powerful as can giving benefit of doubt followed by one or more probing questions.

Amazing conversations often follow.

ddingus··on How the RESISTORS put computing into 1960s counter-culture
Often, one could dial out by pulsing the on hook switch on any phone. Ask me how I know. That was such a fun discovery! I did it frequently from many different phones.
ddingus··on Transparent leadership beats servant leadership
>solving all the other problems

I(we) call that running interference, and it has always been an extremely high value activity. The people who see the benefit rarely complain. I myself have always recognized it as valuable.

ddingus··on LLVM-MOS – Clang LLVM fork targeting the 6502
A very simple BASIC compiled pretty well! It did feature online assembly, and I agree with you on this necessary point especially concerning the 2600!

See Batari Basic

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