Hacker News Reader

hybridson Every classic Half-Life game is now free on Steam

As Half-Life 2 itself did not have a developer commentary, I personally recommend checking the book "Half-Life 2: Raising the Bar," and, if you really want to do a deep and lengthy dive into the particulars of HL2's level design, check out Robert Yang's commentary-driven playthrough of HL2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VheYcG2T5qw

hybridson The Silicon Valley Economy Is Here. and It’s a Nightmare

Where does the article mention SoftBank specifically?

hybridson The new Microsoft Edge is out of preview

I get why Microsoft did what they did.

I just still wish they would have at least OSS'd EdgeHTML instead of just shoving it in a closet somewhere.

hybridson The Unison language

https://forum.nim-lang.org/t/2811

The Nim language in 2008 (when it was known as Nimrod) had originally been planned a similar approach of considering a unified AST with multiple "syntax skins," and as far as I understand there used to be a limited implementation of this. This would theoretically have been a boon for Nim, because an often complaint about Nim from emigrating programmers from languages with a C-style syntax was the (rather superficial) complaint - "no braces? Pythonic syntax? Yuck!"

https://forum.dlang.org/thread/mailman.1427.1428691340.3111....

The problem with this - and why Nim never really committed to the "syntax skin" concept - is that it would have led to far much fragmentation within Nim's own community as some users would prefer one "sub-language" over another. Given as it is the opinion of new languages (Nim included) towards a tool-based unified syntax formatting (e.g. certain naming conventions for identifiers, number of spaces for indent), "syntax skins" have become harder of a sell in favor of lingual consistency.

The original idea was that the same program could be rendered in a variety of different syntaxes in the author's IDE - but the implied maintenance cost of such skins plus that previously mentioned potential for fragmentation led to this idea falling to the wayside. Nim, as a language, grew to be quite flexible within its prime syntax over the years - e.g. the macro system (which modifies the AST directly) made way for a variety of DSLs (e.g. https://github.com/khchen/wNim#code-examples) that remain valid Nim code.

hybridson C-for-all: Extending C with modern safety and productivity features

musl is just another implementation of the true stdlib. I think what they want is an alternative to standard-conforming stdlibs that fills a similar niche - in other words, a "non-standard" standard library.

hybridson Microsoft is creating a new Rust-based programming language for secure coding

Found the article to be somewhat vague and found this slideshare presentation which was...a little less vauge.

https://www.slideshare.net/KTNUK/digital-security-by-design-...

It seems like they want to do something like Rust, but with a new focus on regionalized memory management.

hybridson Java's Cover

2001 was a silly time. Obviously, in any domain, there are times when we must judge a book by its cover for sake of there being only so little time in the world; but it seems so bizarre - well, maybe not bizarre for Paul Graham, but whatever - for someone to write this long-winded article talking about why "XYZ technology I've never used sucks." (Of course, Java sucks IMO, but this is a very poor critique)

I find it amusing Paul regards C's origins as being "hacker" and Java being apparently not. How exactly was Java's original design (as Oak) by James Gosling that much different under the circumstances by which C was developed by Dennis Ritchie when Bell had been reworking PDP-11 UNIX?

hybridson Nine-year-old child to graduate university

It has been well-documented that kids generally pick up languages much faster than adults.

hybridson Falsehoods CS Students (Still) Believe Upon Graduating

> Command-line tools should print colorized output.

Just add a "colorless" command line argument if you need to parse things without ASCII color codes. Better yet, detect when the program is outputting to a pipe and disable colorized output, e.g. like Git https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/19320

> They will use lots of math in their career.

The validity of this is highly domain-specific.

> 'git' and 'GitHub' are synonymous.

Aside from GitHub-a-likes (e.g. GitLab, BitBucket), what does this mean? I'm assuming that it's that you can use Git by its original use pattern (i.e. without a "single-source-of-truth-plus-issue-tracker-as-a-service" system and more as a "true" DVCS) but very few projects seem to really use it this way. They're important projects, sure (e.g. Linux) but they are few in number.

> Sprinkling printf statements is an efficient debugging technique.

This is...opinionated. As useful as GDB can be in a pinch I have often preferred to just output things to console. `printf` specifically is a bad example, as C doesn't have reflective abilities (out of the box, anyway), making debug-by-manual-print harder.

> Compiler warnings can be ignored, as they'd be errors otherwise.

I smell a Golang programmer...

> Using lambda in Python is a good idea because it shows others you have a CS degree and understand the "Lambda Calculus".

Kinda rolling my eyes at this one. Yes one can "be annoying" with FP-like concepts but lambdas can be very useful in a pinch.

>Object-oriented programming is the best and most common programming paradigm.

>Using a custom written Vector class makes your program object-oriented.

I feel I should add my personal falsehood: "State objects with methods means your program is object-oriented."

hybridson The Windows Update Marathon in a VM: From Windows 1.01 to XP

Interesting! Didn't know about this.

hybridson The Windows Update Marathon in a VM: From Windows 1.01 to XP

>The ability for an application (eg, Office) to install side-by-side with other versions of itself is entirely different than its Backwards Compatibility (eg: ability for current versions to open and/or save Office 2007 format). In fact, because of the latter, provided they did a good job at it, the former is arguably irrelevant.

I am still somewhat surprised that Windows doesn't have a Docker-esque sandboxing system to solve this problem (I mean, it has Docker, but it's based on a full VM). I suppose in the third-party realm at the very least you have Sandboxie, but meh...

hybridson Apple responded to the release of Windows 95

A lot of people view the era from when Steve Jobs up to when he came back as this kind of "malaise era" for Apple, which, granted, was not unearned; nevertheless, there is something very charming about a lot of Apple's products from that era - and this is coming from someone with more personal nostalgia for the Win9x era than anything.

Something about pre-10 Mac OS is "cute." I can't put my finger on one single thing, so I suppose its more of an aggregate property.

hybridson Quiet.js – Transmit and receive data in the browser at 44.1kHz

Missed opporunity to call this "LCD Soundsystem"

hybridson In Defense of Comic Sans

They're referring to the font, yes. Lots of people used it in the post-Web 2.0 era because it has a "distinctive" look, which naturally lent itself to fatigue.

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/lobster-font

https://web.archive.org/web/20180213181648/http://5in5nyc.co...

hybridson The American Dream Is Alive in China

I am no apologist for China, but the course of the American Dream itself was similarly colored by a "rose-tinted" view juxtaposed with less-than-ideal circumstances. One could look at for instance its original emergence in the 19th century after being primarily brought on by the 1848 revolutions in Europe, legalized chattel slavery still existed and manifest destiny would turn out spill a lot of blood in its wake, both that of natives, settlers, and soldiers. This, of course, ignores the emancipatory possibility of the American Dream then - for instance, the massive emigration to America and throughout its frontier that occurred in the 19th century provided much of the pretext for the actual dismantling of chattel slavery.

The more modern, post-WWII imago of the American Dream of a booming economy and cute little suburbs was overlaid over antiquated Jim Crow laws and early Cold War saber-rattling that would accelerate into the greater turmoil of the '60s, which would turn out a tragedy more than anything. Many of the criticisms you put on China now have mirrors in a historical America.

China and America are really both flip sides of the same coin. It is true that looking at China as a safe haven when America's economy and culture has become so anxiety-riden is silly and ignorant. China is able to rationalize itself with a liquefied idea "socialism" it never truly was able to understand in the first place, and has grown to content to treat the task of governing its people in similar kind to herding animals.

I would not pin China's blame singularly on the CCP or Xi for that matter, but I would rather describe the CCP a symptom of modern capitalism. If one were to hypothetically "clean the CCP's house" with a new stock of younger legislators that weren't "beneficiaries of the Mao era" as you claim, than you would likely find them repeating the same regressions as their predecessors; never mind that Xi himself was a victim of the Cultural Revolution, considering that his sister was killed by student protesters and his father was jailed for 10 years. China's problems (more problems of contemporary society in general) extend beyond the Mao legacy, similar to how Leon Trotsky did not regard Stalinism in the Soviet Union as purely beginning and ending with the one man.

hybridson Pascal Compiler for the C64: Introducing Turbo Rascal SE

“Turbo Rascal Syntax error, “;” expected but “BEGIN” is a considerably strange name...

hybridson The V language now compiles itself in 0.09 seconds

Are you advocating for implementing langauges in an AST-less way or are you working towards maturing your language? You don't sound diametrically opposed to ASTs (which are evident in essentially any modern language), so I have to ask why V was not originally implemented with one and why you don't consider it a more important problem.

Using codegen to handle the JSON stuff is clever, sure, but it certainly makes me uneasy! It gives a very Jenga Tower impression of the state of the project...

hybridson The V language now compiles itself in 0.09 seconds

Claims to "being able to now compile itself in 0.09 seconds" whilst pushing the need for an AST to the side represents a serious problem in the language's general direction (and I mean general in an aggregated way). Of course shelling-out to curl for your download function is a bodge to be fixed, but the language's issues are not merely one specific problem. The author's misrepresentation of the language, of course, hangs overhead upon all of this.

https://github.com/vlang/v/issues/35

I don't want to discount all of the work people have put into V. It is clear that they have made considerable progress since earlier this year and I commend them for pushing the language into a more usable state. Nevertheless, I still retain a considerable degree of skepticism.

hybridson The V language now compiles itself in 0.09 seconds

I don't really get what point you're trying to make here. Yes, people should not be mean-spirited, but the opposite (i.e. the internet should be a hugbox) is just contrarian; and, for the record, I don't think the article is very mean-spirited at all when you take in consideration what percisely it was responding to.

A lot of the criticism of V takes aim at how the language was advertised which strikes a lot of people as rightfully annoying in the "C++ killer" space, something that a lot of people have put a lot of hard work already into which should not be entirely out of hand (this space is becoming very crowded for attention). If V's code remained the same at launch with its author choosing to be a little more conservative and thoughtful with its announcement, this type of response would not have happened. Its author did not make the status of the language entirely clear. When Odin came out a year ago, Lobster half a year ago, Zig three years ago, or Mun a month ago (of whom its authors were considerably modest: see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21173822), sure, they were critiqued, but they were not met with the specific kind of response V had for a reason.

Keep in mind languages (that don't aim to be toys) should rightfully be subject to a greater degree of criticism as their goals are primarily to upend a domain in such a way that if they fail, it renders the efforts of a lot of other people writing code in that language as something for naught. People take gambles when they adopt new technologies in general, but languages (maybe operating systems by extension) are of a significantly different scope.

hybridson Russia’s Retro Lenin Museum Still Runs on Decades-Old Apple II Computers

Is there an English translation of this somewhere? I googled around and couldn't seem to find it.

hybridson Capitalism Made This Mess, and This Mess Will Ruin Capitalism

>As Marx said, the human would become interestless to the point it will never think for itself.

Could you cite this quote?

> They've concluded that Phase 1 is needed, without questioning, and using force by all means, even killing people, lying or forcing into slavery.

Capitalism also historically used force to support itself. Lenin supported armed revolutions, yes, but this became a necessary evil to him and he did not advocate for wanton violence. The thing is, suppose if the Bolsheviks were right about communism and everything - that means responsibility lies on the Bolsheviks to totally transform society, thus, they needed to secure these means: they needed to A) acquire state power make and B) prevent themselves from being undermined by a capitalist order. I point to Rosa Luxemburg's critique of Eduard Bernstein as evidence why moving beyond capitalism requires force.

You will find that, historically, Thomas Jefferson said similar things about the French Revolution:

"In France the 1st effort was defeated by Robespierre, the 2nd by Bonaparte, the 3rd by Louis XVIII and his holy allies; another is yet to come, and all Europe, Russia excepted, has caught the spirit; and all will attain representative government, more or less perfect. This is now well understood to be a necessary check on kings, whom they will probably think it more prudent to chain and tame, than to exterminate. To attain all this however rivers of blood must yet flow, & years of desolation pass over, yet the object is worth rivers of blood, and years of desolation. For what inheritance, so valuable, can man leave to his posterity?"

Lenin was in favor of armed revolution - but not wanton violence. This is why no one died during the October revolution, but millions did during the counterrevolution when the Bolsheviks had to assert themselves lest they would fall (i.e. the Russian Civil War).

>Once people is molded into one single line of thoughts, objectives and all property will be abolished

Marxism is not about turning people into the Borg and abolishing all property! Marx's critique of Capitalism actually went to say that Capitalism tended towards the degradation of property:

"We Communists have been reproached with the desire of abolishing the right of personally acquiring property as the fruit of a man’s own labour, which property is alleged to be the groundwork of all personal freedom, activity and independence. From the Manifesto:

Hard-won, self-acquired, self-earned property! Do you mean the property of petty artisan and of the small peasant, a form of property that preceded the bourgeois form? There is no need to abolish that; the development of industry has to a great extent already destroyed it, and is still destroying it daily."

hybridson Capitalism Made This Mess, and This Mess Will Ruin Capitalism

Socialism is not "the state doing things" or "state intervention" or "state ownership." Of course these can be aspects of an implementation of socialism, but they are not socialism in itself - the "how" and "why" actually matters. This is a conflation that historically came to prominence during the Cold War to make the difference between capitalism and socialism "digestible." Even young modern socialists believe this now, no longer understanding socialism as a historical tendency towards emancipation, which attests to the current pitiful state of the Left.

You want actual evidence of what actual major socialist thinkers thought of the state during the time when socialism was most relevant, read Marx's 18th Brumaire or read Lenin's State and Revolution and come to your own conclusions.

hybridson Capitalism Made This Mess, and This Mess Will Ruin Capitalism

The selling of labor applies more to the greater bourgeois revolution (or humanity in general aspiring to it) than capitalism specifically (which is what the bourgeois revolution evolved to). This is why "people selling their labor" appears true for Adam Smith prior the state (and capitalism in general, in spite of what so many people think about Smith's time) being really formed; for Marx and Engels, capitalism truly was there into existence with the rise of the state - (Lenin identifies it thus as "special bodies of armed men"), and this is why the repurposement and eventual "withering away" of the state becomes so important to Marxist theory. LTV leads to capital, but then it became distorted by capital. Capitalism became "locked in" once you had a new public entity to arise and preside over the growing clash between the classes (which were newly formed).

Lenin gives a detailed analysis of Marx & Engels on this point in the first chapter of State & Revolution.

hybridson Collapse OS

By accessibility I didn't really mean "commonality in terms of numbers," I mean that they are generally more easier to configure and work with (on top of being readily available). x86 PCs and ARM-powered mobile devices are very plentiful, are fairly modular without requiring more sophisticated tools, and avoid a high barrier of entry (i.e. deeper EE experience).

The author thinks that when their imagined Mad Max society comes to be, they're going to be picking up a soldering iron against old Segas and TI-84s. If for some reason that you need to use computers in a developmental capacity (since the author's OS has an assembler and an `ed` clone) in a "post-collapse society," I don't think it would be that hard to find some discarded HP desktop or laptop to work on.

hybridson Capitalism Made This Mess, and This Mess Will Ruin Capitalism

Adam Smith observed rent-seeking in his own time, and had some harsh words to say about it (first volume of Wealth of Nations)

"The ability to buy and sell labor" is not really part of Marx's definition of capitalism - while LTV is important to Marxism, Marx's critique was that LTV is no longer clear because of Capital. Anti-marxists like to try and disprove LTV because it's the first thing in Das Kapital but they miss the point completely (Marx got it from Smith anyway).

hybridson Collapse OS

Why z80 and not x86 or AArch, which are both more readily accessible today? This whole idea reeks of someone trying to reconcile their love of old computers with their poorly considered death-cult Malthusianism.

hybridson Capitalism Made This Mess, and This Mess Will Ruin Capitalism

"Corporatism," "corporatocracy," "crony capitalism," etc. are right-wing buzzwords intended to piggyback on the contemporary resurgence in capital-critical thought, esp. after Occupy and more recently with Trump. The issue is that "corporatism" is less of a theory and more just an echo of the same things libertarians have been saying for many years: to libertarians, the state and its relationship to capital looks "accidental" and seeks to return to an Adam Smith-era of development that you can't actually turn back to. To Marxists the construction of the state (the 1848 moment) was unconscious but happened for a reason - new contradictions in society emerged, creating a bourgeois necessity for a state to "keep order" as it were, to "destroy capitalism" in the name of preserving capitalism. As capitalism's contradiction translates from one position to the other, the apparent relationship of the state to capital seems to ebb and flow in ways without getting to the actual root of the manner - both market liberalization and Keynesian state intervention can appear valid in capitalism.

What you call "corporatism" - the apparent abject deterioration of capitalism - Lenin called "imperialism" or "the monopoly stage of capitalism" a century prior, and he correctly pointed out that it was an an actual inevitability of capitalism due to the heightened concentration of capital.

hybridson Mun Programming Language

To me the most ideal form of hot-reloading and runtime compilation is probably the approach found in Scopes. While it leverages the LLVM MCJIT, it takes the approach of having compilation done when the programmer specifically wants it to be done, making it less of a "JIT" and more of a "runtime AOT"

hybridson The IBM Pentium 4 64-Bit CPU

It begs the question whether or not any current compiler optimizations for a new theoretical VLIW-ish machine (Mill?) would prove to be an effective leg-up on the Itanium.

hybridson Hacking the Brain

Somehow I feel like the Age of Enlightenment occurring at around the same time as when coffee drinking was becoming increasingly widespread in Europe can't have been a coincidence