Hacker News Reader

zgluckon Russia's Luna-25 spacecraft suffers technical glitch, space agency says

Wouldn't want to be a Roscosmos higher-up right now. I hope they manage to stay away from windows on higher floors.

This was supposed to be Putin's triumph over the 'degenerate west'.

zgluckon Dart 3.1 and a retrospective on functional style programming in Dart

Wonderous:

A showcase app for the Flutter SDK.

Built by gskinner in partnership with the Flutter team, Wonderous deliberately pushes visual fidelity, effects and transitions to showcase what Flutter is truly capable of on modern mobile hardware.

https://github.com/gskinnerTeam/flutter-wonderous-app

zgluckon The Prototype TOUCHSCREEN iMac From 1999 [video]

A little clickbaity...

It's a commercial third party modification made for use as a kiosk.

zgluckon Google marked https://old.reddit.com/r/programming/ as unsafe

https://old.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/15pxt76/why_ha...

zgluckon Outcry over loss of features on Bangkok’s landmark ‘robot building’

It's a surprisingly cute building:

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

zgluckon The US government is taking a step toward space-based nuclear propulsion

Clarified this. Thanks.

zgluckon The US government is taking a step toward space-based nuclear propulsion

The reason communications with the Voyager 1/2 twin probes have lasted for like 45 years:

Voyager 2 is equipped with three Multihundred-Watt radioisotope thermoelectric generators (MHW RTG). Each RTG includes 24 pressed plutonium oxide spheres, and provided enough heat to generate approximately 157 W of electrical power at launch.

zgluckon Vim Boss

So the result of me writing this was that John Gruber was added as the BDFL of Markdown. Creator, sure, BDFL, that's a stretch.

zgluckon Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer – Windows 95 Launch Dance [video]

He forgot he wasn't 18 and not somewhat overweight. Jock things.

zgluckon Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer – Windows 95 Launch Dance [video]

Also see - what happens when you leave a jock in charge of Microsoft:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxbJw8PrIkc (Ballmer: Developers, Developers, Developers! Extra Super Sweaty Edition)

zgluckon The web we lost (2012)

Moneymaking has a way of ruining things, generally speaking.

zgluckon NASA's Software Catalog offers hundreds of new software programs for free

Found this one while browsing the catalog. Cool.

https://github.com/nasa/astrobee

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hk-1j3sXTqA

Three NASA Astrobee free-flying robots have been operating inside the International Space Station (ISS) since 2019. This astrobee repository contains source code for the Astrobee Robot Software, consisting of the flight software that runs onboard the Astrobee robots, a software simulator, and supporting tools, primarily written in C++.

zgluckon Aurora I/O optimized config saved 90% DB cost

Does anyone have any experiences to share about the performance differences between regular RDS/MySQL and Aurora for MySQL (I/O optimized config)?

(The article is about the PostgreSQL variant.)

zgluckon White House RFI on Open-Source Software Security and Memory Safe Languages

Like Ada? /½ s

zgluckon Vim Boss

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benevolent_dictator_for_life has a list of BDFLs. Bram is the first BDFL in that list who has passed away. We're in for a generational shift the coming decade(s). It makes sense to prepare - that is how you preserve a legacy, and the community.

I've been impressed with how Bram's passing has been handled by his family and friends with respect to his legacy and the future of vim.

zgluckon Texas woman injured after hawk drops snake on her

Texan drop snakes - kind of makes you think of those supposedly mythological creatures in Australia.

zgluckon Will AI wipe out architects?

Sounds hopeful to me - in contexts where the architects somehow only want to design buildings people don't really like, for reasons.

zgluckon Downfall Attacks

Corresponding AWS notice:

https://aws.amazon.com/security/security-bulletins/AWS-2023-...

AWS customers’ data and instances are not affected by this issue, and no customer action is required. AWS has designed and implemented its infrastructure with protections against this class of issues. Amazon EC2 instances, including Lambda, Fargate, and other AWS-managed compute and container services protect customer data against GDS through microcode and software based mitigations.

zgluckon Tesla, Inc. 8-k filing – CFO leaves Tesla

That was 4 days ago and this is the first we hear of it?

This - 9 hours ago:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/tesla-cfo-kirkhorn-steps-down...

Tesla CFO Kirkhorn steps down, replaced by chief accounting officer Vaibhav Taneja

Kirkhorn stepped down after a 13-year run at Tesla.

(HN is slow.)

zgluckon Tesla, Inc. 8-k filing – CFO leaves Tesla

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1688662299857321984

I would like to thank Zach Kirkhorn for his many contributions to Tesla over the course of 13 often difficult years.

Much appreciated and best wishes for the next stage of his career.

zgluckon Aeroflot deactivates brakes on nine aircraft, relies solely on reverse thrust

It most likely is and that's also Russia's responsibility.

Remember: This is a country that projects itself as a technological soon-to-be-world-leader while it's actually a glorified gas stop with nukes that USSR era scientists/technologists built using stolen US tech well before the brain drain of the 90s and onwards.

zgluckon Aeroflot deactivates brakes on nine aircraft, relies solely on reverse thrust

(Replying to a comment saying that western sanctions will cause deaths of Russian civilians.)

No, the blame will lie with Russian regulators and airlines.

Russian civilians can take the bus.

zgluckon Apple Vision Pro: Why Monitor Replacement Is Ridiculous

<title>Apple Vision Pro (Part 5A) – Why Monitor Replacement is Ridiculous - KGOnTech</title>

I guess the poster did that mistake.

zgluckon nic.funet.fi: Serving freely distributable files with FTP since 1990

I think the CD-ROMs at archive.org are your best bet. (Spent some time looking for a functioning ftp mirror a while back and failed.)

zgluckon Sandy Bridge: Setting Intel’s modern foundation

I mostly remember that generation for the corresponding chipset's failing SATA ports :(.

zgluckon Nvidia's CUDA Monopoly

Hardware companies often find it very hard to competently build software.

They tend to lack appreciation/understanding of software in the first place (hardware-first thinking) leading to underinvestments.

It's also hard for them to identify great software people - at all levels, starting from the CEO/board.

zgluckon nic.funet.fi: Serving freely distributable files with FTP since 1990

There's a mirror available at ftp://foto.lu.lv/pub/mirror/x2ftp/msdos/programming. Only via FTP, as far as I can tell. It works well with e.g. Filezilla. Log in as anonymous...

zgluckon New acoustic attack steals data from keystrokes with 95% accuracy

Tactical noise!

zgluckon nic.funet.fi: Serving freely distributable files with FTP since 1990

I think... both for Finland and Sweden: We wanted to stand out internationally. And there were lots of clever people in the right places early on. And there was money to spend on that exciting new stuff, after the first few early press rounds.

But since this on top of HN I hope someone who actually knows will show up soon. :)

zgluckon nic.funet.fi: Serving freely distributable files with FTP since 1990

As someone just getting access to the net in '94/'95 and also learning programming via Turbo Pascal around that time, ftp://x2ftp.oulu.fi was a lot more important! Now sadly gone.

(https://groups.google.com/g/comp.os.msdos.programmer/c/Kcoc7...)