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fleeno

171 karma · joined April 23, 2012

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fleeno··on Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail
They even had the "WebFORCE" branding with the "to author and serve" tagline! I also did a lot of early web work on an Indy, and we hosted on a Challenge!

I have a Challenge S right now, and when I got it the drive had web hosting setup for a car dealer.

fleeno··on OS9Map
I believe from Apple officially it would be the dual 1.25ghz MDD G4. I had one new, and still have it running today!
fleeno··on Telescope Ranchers
I have a small scope down there, and it's great! I get a lot more use out of it being permanently setup in a dark sky site, rather than use it at my suburban house.

I'm currently doing observations of variable stars just for fun. Going to load up an observing plan for tonight shortly!

fleeno··on SDF Public Access Unix System
I know I just made it up! I have an 11/23+ and I'm guessing I was thinking of that 3!
fleeno··on SDF Public Access Unix System
I had access to a VMS system in my BBS days, and I had no idea it wasn't just some hard to use BBS software. When it clicked that it was a real operating system on a giant machine (I believe 11/380) it changed everything for me!
fleeno··on Show HN: boringBar – a taskbar-style dock replacement for macOS
Why does it need to talk to facebook.com, ntp.org, aws.com, cloudflare.com, google.com, and windows.com?
fleeno··on OpenBSD on SGI: A Rollercoaster Story
Thanks, that looks promising!
fleeno··on OpenBSD on SGI: A Rollercoaster Story
I wish it was still supported, but I'm sure I was one of very few that was actually using it! Even then it was just for fun.
fleeno··on The QNX Operating System
That looks great even now! Do you still have your dotfiles somewhere?
fleeno··on Show HN: An open source Launchpad for macOS 26
One easy thing I've been doing for years is just dropping the Applications directory onto my dock. Instant launcher. Otherwise I just use spotlight if I want to launch by typing.
fleeno··on Advent of Code 2024
I usually get stuck about halfway through and give up.

Doing it in a Lisp I’ve been writing in Ruby will have me giving up even sooner, but it will be fun!

fleeno··on My fake job in Y2K preparedness
I spent so much time updating IRIX and Ultrix systems for Y2K... And it was not fun, but now I play with those systems for fun. So I guess I'm weird!
fleeno··on Ask HN: Are we at the start or the peak of a boom cycle in tech?
I've found it to be very good and accurate at these sort of tasks. I use it all the time to turn some weirdly formatted data into CSV or something else with structure.
fleeno··on MacRelix – Unix-like features for classic Mac OS
This! I've probably said it here before, but Apple won the Unix workstation wars in the most awesome way possible. You can now buy an insanely powerful RISC Unix workstation at the mall! How awesome is that?
fleeno··on Slimming Down Windows 3.1/3.11 (2002)
I recently slimmed down Windows 3.0 to run it from a 1MB SRAM card on a MS-DOS 5.0 palmtop. I just did it by trial and error, and I think I can slim it down further from this guide, though they're using Double Space, which I won't have.

I'm always sort of amazed how well Windows 3.x runs on hardware that would have been a bit old even when 3.0 was released.

fleeno··on Usborne 1980s Computer Books
I had one of their electronics books too, and it was great! That book got me going on a lot of what I still work on today!
fleeno··on Electric Car Owners Confront a Harsh Foe: Cold Weather
I just did a long mile road trip in my 2023 Model Y LR, and it wasn't a lot of fun. Even in the 30Fs I would get around 200 miles of range. I tried to get to the next charger with at least 15-20% just in case.

One example leg was 156mi using 84% of battery in 30F weather. The stats said I lost 13.1% due to a 9.5mph wind, and 1.3% for low tire pressure. I topped the tires up after that one. When it was well below 0 I was doing less. I still got where I was going, but I spent so much time charging, and it's not cheap enough that the time cost made any sense.

Some of my legs really did need close to 100% to get to the next charger with any margin for error. That means sitting at a charger for 30-60 minutes at times. Several of the chargers were in locations that didn't feel safe, so I actually took a longer route back to hit different chargers.

Keep in mind that probably like most people, long road trips are infrequent. In daily use it's charged every morning (at cheap rates) and ready to go, no matter the temperature. Plus I warm it up without needing to open the garage! I will take another car for a long trip now, but I still like having an EV for daily driving.

fleeno··on How Lego builds a new Lego set
Lego has got to be the lowest on the list for me as far as concern about plastic use. Who throws away Lego? Post a couple pounds of Lego on FB marketplace and see how fast it sells.

Some of our Lego is from the 1950s, and my daughter is the third generation playing with it. Surely 60+ years of use is a pretty good run for something made of plastic.

fleeno··on Tesla Recalls 2M Vehicles over Autopilot Software Issue
From my Model Y manual:

"Autosteer is intended for use on controlled-access highways with a fully attentive driver. Do not use Autosteer in construction zones, or in areas where bicyclists or pedestrians may be present."

GM and Ford both restrict their systems to controlled access highways, and are hands free when doing so. I wish Tesla would do something similar.

fleeno··on Tesla Recalls 2M Vehicles over Autopilot Software Issue
That wasn't my comment, but I happened to have the source already open: https://twitter.com/Tesla/status/1734374558105293081?s=20
fleeno··on An aborted experiment with server Swift
I have like messing with server-side Swift, and I asked it at the WWDC Swift table. I was pretty much met with blank stares. Either they just have no interest in it, or I ran into the wrong engineers.
fleeno··on Windows CE's final day
Windows CE in the late-palmtop days was pretty neat. I did a lot with my HP Joranda!
fleeno··on I paid for Sublime Text
Nova is worth a try if you're a Mac user!

On Sublime, it's a great editor, and being cross platform is really nice. They really do need to update the web site to reflect that it's not dead. The "see what's new" link is dated 2021.

fleeno··on Show HN: I rewrote the 1990's LambdaMOO server
Is there anything else new or interesting going on in the Moo/Mu* space right now?

A while back I wrote a MU*-style system in Ruby, using js as the scripting language. It has a web based tool that gives object owners a URL for each object, which lets them edit the attributes and code in a better way than just line oriented editing. It also lets external services call back to that object to trigger actions.

I never did anything much with it though.

fleeno··on I paid for Sublime Text
I've also paid for Sublime, TextMate, and now, Nova!

Nova is wonderful.

fleeno··on Atari Launches Atari 2600+
If it's really compatible with 2600 carts, SD card carts already exist and work great!

Personally I've found 2600 carts to be pretty durable. Almost all of the carts I bought new still work, and I still use them frequently!

fleeno··on Atari Launches Atari 2600+
I wonder if that "10 in 1" cart will run on a real 2600?
fleeno··on TimeGuessr: Guess what year a photograph was taken
This reminds me to get back to a project... I've been trying to train models to tell what decade a photograph was taken, but haven't had much luck. Maybe someone else has tried that too!
fleeno··on Ask HN: Burnout because of ChatGPT?
Those are good examples. I'm constantly doing weird one-off things in Ruby or Bash, and maybe I'll ask ChatGPT about more of them.

I really wanted to know what vague things OP's humans were doing, but they haven't responded to anything.

I've been reading your blog since the dark ages. Thanks for the great content over the years!

fleeno··on Ask HN: Burnout because of ChatGPT?
Can you elaborate on how you're actually using ChatGPT? I'm a developer and I haven't felt any need to use ChatGPT constantly.

What tasks are you delegating to ChatGPT that were previously done by humans? Most of my input from others is regarding current information specific to the task at hand. I don't see how ChatGPT would have any idea what I'm talking about.

Do you have some specific examples you could share?

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