News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

mjcohen

Re:The first wired XR glasses powered by Android XR on Thursday October 29, 2026 @04:12PM (#50295133)
What if you use prescription lenses?
Re:Edit an SQLite database in your browser on Thursday October 29, 2026 @03:23PM (#50294451)
I use "Note Everything" on my Android phone. I found is uses a SQLite db for storing its info. Might try this for extracting the contents if I ever want to move to Apple phone.

Just tried it. I have Note Everything save to Google Drive. Extracted that zip file, read it here, saved the text notes as csv, looked at it in txtedit. Great!!!!

Could write a gawk program to recreate the notes in directories.

Re:MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display and Touch on Wednesday October 28, 2026 @04:55PM (#50280774)
I have an M1 Max MBP (16", 64GB, 4TB) and I see no need to upgrade. I got it when the M3 came out so I saved about $2,000.
Re:The American Worker vs. the Most Qualified on Wednesday September 02, 2026 @04:12PM (#49541810)
And then you have the Trump administration's war on competence.
The Reason Foundation has a series of Youtube videos about things that were done with good intentions but ended up making things worse.
Re:New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra on Tuesday August 25, 2026 @03:49PM (#49439627)
Or you are always at work.
Re:Why is Everyone in Tech so sad? on Friday August 07, 2026 @03:43PM (#49215352)
So glad I am retired.
Re:Making Referential Stability a Type on Friday July 31, 2026 @06:57PM (#49129451)
For some reason I read this as

Making Referential Stupidity a Type

For math.stackexchange.com which uses MathJax, I use MacDown, a markdown editor with parallel windows, one showing the MathJax and the other (in real time) the rendered math. I find it essential.

I enter my math directly into the editor without writing anything on paper. Works for me. The ability to copy and paste is invaluable.

Re:LuaJIT 3.0 proposed syntax extensions on Wednesday June 24, 2026 @09:58PM (#48667907)
The ternary operator is easy to nest if you put each clause on a separate line. Then it looks just like nested if-then-else.
Re:Computer use in Gemini 3.5 Flash on Wednesday June 24, 2026 @08:01PM (#48667058)
Years ago, I used Acrobat to extract tables from a PDF. Had to do it manually, but it pasted nicely into Excel.
As usual, anything Trump and his minions touch turns to garbage.
Re:First Commodore PET sold, June 5, 1977 on Saturday June 06, 2026 @05:32PM (#48429202)
I believe that I got the first external cassette drive for the PET on the west coast. Only used it a very few times. The big boost was when I got the floppy disk drive. I could do anything!
For a nice introduction to relativity, look at The Einstein Theory of Relativity: A Trip to the Fourth Dimension by Lillian R. Lieber. $15 on Amazon. Written in 1945 and still quite good.
Re:The Pack That Killed the Pack Mule on Thursday May 28, 2026 @11:24PM (#48318643)
I enjoyed this article. I always find it interesting how things came to be and how individual contributions made things happen.
If you believe them.
As Victor said, his parents were very upset when they came home and found him in front of a roaring fire, because they did not have a fireplace.
Re:Approximating Hyperbolic Tangent on Wednesday April 22, 2026 @08:31PM (#47871003)
Looks interesting. Should start with a definition of the Hyperbolic Tangent. It is only about 2/3 of the way that the definition occurs in a discussion of computing exp(x).
Re:Make macOS consistently bad (unironically) on Friday March 27, 2026 @06:28PM (#47549214)
Damn. Never knew that. TIL
Re:First Website on Wednesday February 25, 2026 @09:12PM (#47160923)
In the mid 70's, I was a graduate CS student at USC's Information Sciences Institute. I remember my feeling of awe when I used Arpanet (or was it Darpanet) to log into London and do stuff there. Wow!
Trump is clearly winning his war on America.
Re:Faster Than Dijkstra? on Friday February 13, 2026 @06:32PM (#47009313)
Not if the ratio between the largest and smallest floats is very large (2^(2^n)) where n is the number of bits in the exponent.
Re:Secondary school maths showing that AI systems don't think on Friday December 12, 2025 @06:07PM (#46250146)
Like the old saying:

Military justice is to justice as military music is to music

(I saw this on a math department bulletin board about 1960)

A theorem both deep and profound States that every circle is round But in a paper by Erdos Written in Kurdish A counterexample is found

Re:Project Euler on Wednesday November 12, 2025 @09:14PM (#45909648)
Did you use the regular version or the one with multiple-precision values?
Re:Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes on Sunday September 14, 2025 @09:00PM (#45244970)
Clif bars recently went from 6 bars per box to 5. They write the 5 on the box as if it is something improved, not reduced.
The government is in the hands of D&F players.
Re:What Is It Like to Be a Bat? on Wednesday September 03, 2025 @10:31PM (#45122853)
As Disney almost wrote:

Everybody wants to be a bat Cause noone but a bat really knows where it's at

They will never own their mistakes. That's the point of lack of democracy.
Make sure that is legal where you are and, if needed, you have their permission.

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