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fredsmith219

216 karma · joined August 6, 2010

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fredsmith219··on Meta reuses old RAM in new servers with custom bridge chip
That is a pretty nitpicking reason to say it has not aged well. Hamlet doesn’t have cell phones yet I think it’s an excellent play. Even though a quick FaceTime would’ve averted a tragedy.
fredsmith219··on Rocketlab acquires Iridium
Isn't iridium already in orbit? So there would be no need for new launches due to this aquisition.
fredsmith219··on Amazon CEO's talks with U.S. officials triggered crackdown on Anthropic models
Did anthropic threaten to go to a different cloud provider?
fredsmith219··on The Rise of SQL:the second programming language everyone needs to know
I agree and have taken the same path.
fredsmith219··on Perl's decline was cultural
My client uses IBM servers with it’s hobbled version of Unix (AIX). Perl and access to copilot have really helped me out. I don’t love Perl but I’m damn glad I have acres to it.
fredsmith219··on Fire destroys S. Korean government's cloud storage system, no backups available
Wow. Maybe backups would have been a good idea.
fredsmith219··on Nuclear: Desktop music player focused on streaming from free sources
If a musician doesn’t want them to do this, why do they upload their music to the free site?
fredsmith219··on An end to all this prostate trouble?
It does. I suffer for almost 20 hours of I miss a dose. I’m very sure that doesn’t happen.
fredsmith219··on Show HN: Resurrecting Infocom's Unix Z-Machine with Cosmopolitan
Absolutely amazing. Good work. It downloaded and ran on Arch with no problem.
fredsmith219··on The polar vortex is hitting the brakes
I’m amazed that climate.gov hasn’t been taken down yet.
fredsmith219··on Rivian is opening its charging network to other EVs
The have a charger very near to where I go in Michigan, and 30 miles from the nearest supercharger. They announced earlier this year that they would open up the RAN “near the end of the year” so I’ve been waiting for this announcement. The fact that they will only gradually modify existing chargers to work with other vehicles is a disappointment. It’s all CCS so it should just be a software update. I am really looking forward to charging my model Y at the Rivian charger. I’m guessing that that will be a long time coming now. Oh well, I guess the Red E charger gets my business for the foreseeable future. They have excellent customer service and they just upgraded the charger to be much faster.
fredsmith219··on My son (9 yrs old) used plain JavaScript to make a game, and wants your feedback
This is very cool. I’ll have to read his blog. My 9yo just picked up a book on coding from the library, I hope he gets interested as well.
fredsmith219··on Stephen King to shut down his 3 radio stations in Maine
The song needs to be updated to reflect our current reality.
fredsmith219··on Evidence of the use of silk by Bronze Age civilization
Great for assassins, but not terribly useful in a large battle.
fredsmith219··on AI progress stalls as OpenAI, Google and Anthropic hit roadblocks
Apparently OpenAI can’t ask the AI to design a better AI. Perhaps the singularity isn’t as close as people thought.
fredsmith219··on Quincy Jones has died
An amazingly talented person.
fredsmith219··on Pragtical: Practical and pragmatic code editor
Yup, it is your works crazy policy of making sure everyone gets a one size fit all VS code Configuration. I’ve loaded VS code on a 10 year-old Lenovo and it runs just fine with only basic Python plug-ins. Five minute startup time is crazy.
fredsmith219··on People Behind “The Print Shop” (1985)
My mom’s hard and fast rule when buying a new computer: It had better run Print Shop. She was barely computer literate but that program was soooo useful to her. You guys did a great thing.
fredsmith219··on More Than Half of Teslas Are Being Traded in for Gas Cars
FSD is revolutionary. There isn’t anything as good on the market yet. Other than that I agree, their competitors have caught up.
fredsmith219··on Floppy8 – A Tiny Computer, in a Floppy Drive (2023)
I am reminded of Rana systems, who used to make disc drives for Apple II Systems. They announced the new product that was basically an IBM PC built into a disk drive so you could run IBM PC applications on your Apple. They sank the company trying to make it work. At least that’s how I remember it through the fog of memory. The 80s were a while ago.
fredsmith219··on Majority of sites and apps use dark patterns in the marketing of subscriptions
I use virtual card and lock the card as soon as I’m done. The company will send a few nag notices then cancel for me.
fredsmith219··on Gordon Bell has died
The same day he dies, Microsoft announces version control in Windows Explorer, which he originally bought to the file system in VMS. I know he worked on NT, I wonder why they didn’t introduce version control before now.
fredsmith219··on Grace Version Control System
Does anybody else see the irony of storing a new version control system on GitHub?
fredsmith219··on Swatch Internet Time
I remember flying from Sydney to London and seeing big clocks with Swatch Internet Time in both cities. It seemed both silly and kind of cool at the same time.
fredsmith219··on Mario meets Pareto
My 9 yo is better than me at Mario Kart but not by much. This knowledge may make the difference for me. Thank you!
fredsmith219··on App scans your pile of Lego and uses ML to suggest projects
I was turned off by the subscription model. No way I would use this frequently enough to pay for a subscription. And I have a 9 yo who plays with legos every day.
fredsmith219··on Doubts grow about the biosignature approach to alien-hunting
Even in this scenario I would still expect to see Von Neumann machines at some point.
fredsmith219··on Frederick Reines – The singing UCI Nobel Laureate who nearly bombed Nevada
I love the fact that the details of the photo were provided by a Russian. Are their archives of our nuclear tests better than ours?
fredsmith219··on Show HN: Not sure you're talking to a human? Create a human check
“You’re in a desert. You’re walking along in the sand when all of a sudden…you look down and see a tortoise. You see a tortoise, Leon. It’s crawling toward you…You reach down and flip the tortoise on its back, Leon. The tortoise lays on his back, his belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can’t, Leon, not without your help. But you’re not helping…. Why is that, Leon?”
fredsmith219··on 20 Years in the Making, GnuCOBOL Is Ready for Industry
The vast majority of COBOL in production runs on IBM mainframes in conjunction with JCL (Job Control Language). If you are looking to offload COBOL from a mainframe to a cheaper platform JCL is a must. I love that this project exists but it’s only one half of a solution to migration off of a mainframe.
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