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nivethanon Zig Creator Calls Spade a Spade, Anthropic Blows Smoke

thanks for that link, I've thought that friction was helpful but this gives me a word and a concept to look at.

nivethanon Having your insulin pump die while you're on vacation

This is a terrifying and illuminating read.

Interestingly each of those sentences also tripped me up but I let it go as it read good enough.

This comment is pushing me to think critically about those weird sentences rather than just accepting it. Thanks for this comment.

This is like that short story with the various llm troubleshooting jobs in some solarpunky future. I loved it but the fact it was AI gives me a form of sadness. This is likely the same now.

nivethanon Flipper One – we need your help

I love this, ordered one now. I've been looking for something lightweight to use to ssh into various machines. Though tbh it might go into my junk drawer anyway. Maybe I like the idea of on the go ssh more than actually doing it.

nivethanon QBE – Compiler Back End

I'm starting to think I should post my prompts if the model one shots it as I don't think the code itself is worth putting out.

nivethanon Malus – Clean Room as a Service

I've done a little bit of this and Claude is pretty great. Take the app and let Claude run wild with it. It does require you to be relatively familiar with the app as you may need to guide it in the right direction.

I was able to get it to rebuild and hack together a .NET application that we don't have source for. This was done in a Linux VM and it gave me a version that I could build and run on Windows.

We're past the point of legacy blackbox apps being a mystery. Happy to talk more, my e-mail is available on my profile.

nivethanon New York's Best Espresso? (2002)

Archive link: https://archive.is/YxVWt

nivethanon 10 years of writing a blog nobody reads

Picked it up :) The look inside was great, it reminds me of an old astronomy book that I was obsessed with a long time ago.

nivethanon Ask HN: My family business runs on a 1993-era text-based-UI (TUI). Anybody else?

So many of these systems were one man shops. It really speaks to how easy to develop pick systems was. It still very much is.

nivethanon Ask HN: My family business runs on a 1993-era text-based-UI (TUI). Anybody else?

I work on a bunch of Pick systems :) Love it all and we're still doing active development. (Feel free to send me an e-mail, we pick up orphaned systems)

If anyone wants to take a look, here are some links:

Open source version: https://github.com/geneb/ScarletDME

The last version of true pick: https://github.com/Krowemoh/R83

nivethanon Show HN: Dagger.js – A buildless, runtime-only JavaScript micro-framework

Is this aimed at being in the same role as petite-vue and alpinejs? They also don't have a build step.

I've started to think something like petite-vue and twind would let you build small internal tools quickly, there are some major downsides to it which is why I haven't committed yet.

nivethanon Trying to find meaning in owning an old Mac

Wow! Frogfind looks great, I've been thinking of writing my own proxy but it makes me happy to see someone has beat me to it.

nivethanon Enrichment Increases Brain Volume in Snakes [video]

The paper can be found here:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40116129/

nivethanon Show HN: I built a(nother) house optimized for LAN parties

> I wouldn’t feel right with myself if I didn’t say something.

Many people live with not feeling right with themselves.

nivethanon Steve Jobs "never had any designs. He has not designed a single project" (2010)

Some additional context from Paul Lutus can be found at:

https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/daabf/steve_jo...

and I'll leave this quoted post here:

The reason programming is fun is because it represents a counterpoint to reality. If you have a bad relationship and you invest energy in it, focus your attention on debugging it, it's likely to get worse, not better. But a computer program (once you have enough experience and skill) gradually get better, in direct proportion to your efforts.

This makes programming a make-believe replacement for reality, one that represents many people's fantasy about how reality should work. It's like a drug, except that you can hide your addiction more easily -- maybe even get paid to be a programming addict.

nivethanon What Is Generative Art? (2022)

This is magical!

nivethanon The GUI should be better. A lot better

The Reddit thread from then as well:

https://www.reddit.com/r/accursedfarms/comments/h0cumc/delet...

nivethanon Archaeologists are now finding microplastics in ancient remains

Thanks for that bit of color. That is extremely interesting.

nivethanon Memex Revisited [pdf]

While reading about memexs, there is a side trail into the stuff of AI dreams. Bush describes a system (page 9) that can continue to work and investigate and set up links that the master can then come back to and join into the main trail of thought.

I imagine this is already an area of research but the more I look back the more it looks like we're creating stuff that was already thought of.

I would love to know what Vannevar Bush would have written about the memex now in the age of llms.

"Man can face an increasingly complex existence with hope, even with confidence."

nivethanon Drawing.garden

The source is http://benmoren.com/ :)

nivethanon R83 – The Pick Operating System and Database

Pick was a multivalue database and operating system that was built to track helicopter parts for the military. If history went differently we might all be using multivalue instead of sql to store things.

The idea of a multivalue string is similar to comma delimited data but instead of commas, you use special characters called attribute marks, value marks and subvalue marks. You can think of multivalue as a nosql style database. You dump data in whatever form you want into the database and then you can easily query against it.

Some links to read more about what Pick is and the history behind it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pick_operating_system

https://seeinggreen.typepad.com/my_weblog/2020/10/the-poet-t...

nivethanon Sam Bankman-Fried doesn't recall

Really is the nerd superbowl out there.

nivethanon How to compete with Patreon

One note, I don’t think the author is saying that the person should be anonymous but rather the way they talk to their audience should be. In the backend they will be known but for the audience they have a specific name that doesn’t have to be their full government name.

nivethanon A Dead Simple File Upload System

I was looking for something to get a file out of a qemu image and this was faster than trying to get ssh set up inside tiny core linux.

nivethanon The day I locked everyone out of the company intranet

I deal with D3 pick and the fear I have of doing select bp and catalog bp is insane. The entire system is a mess so wiping the md would be catastrophic. :)

nivethanon Reddit: Let's rewrite a better one in Common Lisp (2005)

Found this from Aaron Swartz's post on rewriting Reddit originally from Lisp to Python.

http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/rewritingreddit

nivethanon Ask HN: Could you share your personal blog here?

https://nivethan.dev/

More of a dumping ground for anything I find useful.

nivethanon We don’t trade with ants

Great little story! It ends at a good spot where the story could go anywhere. Do you have any plans for a sequel or is sparking people's imagination the way to go?

nivethanon We don’t trade with ants

Great article, I would certainly pay ants plenty of sugar to get away from my garage.

nivethanon Twenty years of blogging

This is pretty cool :)