Hacker News Reader

ducksonon I have 2000 old VHS tapes in my garage and don't know what to do with them

Right? Here in the Netherlands, Teletext is still very much alive and has several millions of users per week. [1]

In fact, at the end of 2023 our public broadcaster rewrote the Teletext backend system using modern programming practices to keep it running into the future. [2] Before that it was running on software from the 80's.

[1] https://over.nos.nl/nieuws/teletekst-kan-weer-jaren-vooruit-... [2] https://tweakers.net/reviews/11700/hoe-werkt-het-vernieuwde-...

ducksonon Rhythm 0

This performance art sure sounds like some sort of kink!

ducksonon Bird Is Laying Off 23% of Its Staff

Talk about flipping the Bird to your staff.

ducksonon How I, as someone who is visually impaired, use my iPhone (2020)

> Different responses to different touch and gestures, oriented towards the blind

That's VoiceOver on iOS. It's a screen reader that's also available on the Mac, iPad, and Apple Watch. Android has a similar screenreader called TalkBack.

I work with visually impaired people on accessible apps, and the large majority of them prefer Apple's devices because they have more advanced accessibility features.

ducksonon The Nintendo Switch uses my open source code

Reminds me of something Jim Weirich (author of Ruby's `rake`) used to say:

> Fun game at apple store: on any mac, in terminal type: "grep Copyright `gem which rake`"

... which would print his name, because Ruby and rake are bundled with macOS. :)

ducksonon Source for theguardian.com

The docs include a recipe for Breton crêpes. :)

[1] https://github.com/guardian/frontend/blob/master/docs/99-arc...

ducksonon GNUstep LiveCD 2017

Is there a Swift environment running on this yet? /s

ducksonon WhatsApp doesn't understand the web

Their site seems to be down, here's a Google cache link: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:2VSoNL8...

ducksonon Our lander’s asleep

I don't know about Philae/Rosetta's hardware in particular, but there are very specific requirements to hardware that's sent into space.

I'm using the Mars Science Laboratory as an example here:

The MSL uses twin PowerPC RAD750 boards. If one of them fails, the rover could use the other as a backup. After all, you can't go out to Mars to fix a firmware update gone wrong. :) The RAD750's are hardened against radiation in space, and can withstand extreme temperatures. They run at about 200Mhz, and cost around $200.000 a piece. [1] [2]

It runs the realtime operating system VxWorks, which also happens to be what Apple uses for their Airport routers. :) [3]

NASA uses C as their main language, with specific coding standards. [4]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Science_Laboratory#Rover [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAD750 [3] http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/134041-inside-nasas-curio... [4] http://lars-lab.jpl.nasa.gov/JPL_Coding_Standard_C.pdf