samf
Re:The happiest I've ever been
on Saturday February 28, 2026 @03:58PM (#47200157)
Right, and a nice thing about software is that retirement doesn’t mean you have to stop doing what you used to do.
I’m retired (I know, I’m very lucky), and I’ve done as much or more coding since retirement than I did in my job. But to be fair, AI has really changed how I’m going about things, and I’m not sure what the future is going to bring. I really worry about my adult children and their careers.
Re:Ask HN: Could you share your personal website here?
on Wednesday January 14, 2026 @06:05PM (#46625257)
https://samf.work/
This is pretty new, and I'm still trying to figure out what it will be. For the moment it's a blog, and it's mostly my astrophotography work, with some random code and nostalgia thrown in.
Re:Using the Apple ][+ with the RetroTink-5X
on Sunday May 25, 2025 @11:21AM (#44088464)
In my case I stick with ][ for the sake of nostalgia.
Re:Show HN: Empty Enter Expander – Type less in the terminal with this...
on Saturday April 26, 2025 @07:53AM (#43802791)
I'm the same way, and "clear" or ^L isn't what I'm after. I want the history to still be on my screen, but I want the vertical separation too.
Re:Is 1 Prime, and Does It Matter?
on Monday April 21, 2025 @09:12PM (#43758205)
Ha, yes, I was thinking of the theorems that refer to "odd prime" to exclude 2. :-)
Re:Is 1 Prime, and Does It Matter?
on Monday April 21, 2025 @06:08PM (#43757038)
This is the best answer.
We could declare 4 to be a prime number, and keep the rest of the definition the same. Instead of just saying "no", you could ask, "okay, what would that do for us?" If there isn't a good answer, then what's the point? And usually, you're not in the 1% of 1% of 1%.
Re:Is 1 Prime, and Does It Matter?
on Monday April 21, 2025 @06:03PM (#43756997)
Some examples are in these comments, e.g. the Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic. The Sieve of Eratosthenes is an amusing outcome, where 1 is the only prime if you take it literally.
But also mentioned elsewhere in the thread: if we declared 1 to be a prime, then many (I daresay "most") of our theorems would have to change "prime number" to "prime number greater than one".
Re:Baltic countries disconnect from the Russian power grid
on Friday February 07, 2025 @11:00AM (#42974173)
Very cool! I couldn't tell from the article if Kaliningrad will remain on a grid with the Baltics or become its own island.
Re:The Story of Rogue
on Thursday December 05, 2024 @06:29PM (#42334045)
Rogue Basin or Rogue Temple?
Re:Why Bridges Don't Sink
on Wednesday July 03, 2024 @11:04AM (#40866654)
The WWE didn't invent it, they perfected it.
Re:Apple II graphics: More than you wanted to know
on Friday June 28, 2024 @02:21PM (#40823437)
One thing I used shape tables for was for a fade-in effect. I would draw my spaceship one pixel at a time, choosing the next pixel at random. (I made a tool to help with this, or else it would have been too tedious!) The shape tables were rendered so slowly that it make the ship "materialize" in a cool effect. After this initial fade-in, I would render the ship more sensibly.
Other than this, I never found much use for shape tables.
Re:AI can catalogue a forest's inhabitants simply by listening
on Sunday October 29, 2023 @01:14PM (#38060608)
I've often thought about how this sort of thing could be used for site security, much like cameras are used. E.g. it could hear a person's footsteps, and hear a person breathing, and it could distinguish between a person and an animal. With multiple microphones, it could determine a location.
I wonder if this is being done already.
Re:Ask HN: How do you create a cross-platform GUI without using Electron?
on Friday September 10, 2021 @02:15PM (#28485228)
I haven't used this, but it should be mentioned:
Re:Ghosts of Unix past, part 3: Unfixable designs (2010)
on Monday May 17, 2021 @12:56PM (#27185584)
Yes, this is a major problem when you introduce ACLs into unix-like systems. A comment in the article mentions the "Richacl" work. A key problem with this work was that even "chmod 777" might not get you out of a situation where an ACL was denying access. It's been over ten years since I've been involved in this; it might have changed.
The POSIX draft ACLs had the same problem, where a chmod might not grant you the permission that you're asking for. Back when Solaris implemented POSIX draft ACLs, they needed to change many user-level interfaces (e.g., the chmod command and the ftp daemon) to have a chmod request work the way end users expected.
Re:Postgres scaling advice
on Tuesday January 26, 2021 @10:47AM (#25917127)
Good info; I came here looking for experience with managed databases. Does anyone have experience with managed instances on other platforms?
Re:Every bookmark manager ever made
on Monday December 09, 2019 @01:30PM (#21745028)
Surprised not to see del.icio.us there.
Re:iTerm2 3.3
on Thursday August 01, 2019 @06:13PM (#20588869)
Is anyone else having problems with vim? Specifically, I can't see my cursor since upgrading.
I don't really remember what my cursor looked like before the upgrade; maybe it was a red block? But now you can't see it.
My cursor outside of vim is fine.
Re:Projecting Unicode to ASCII
on Thursday January 10, 2019 @02:58PM (#18877463)
I use pastebot on the mac. It should be easy to add this as a "shell script filter", but sandboxing prevents me from getting unidecode. Has anyone else accomplished this?
Re:I call my OCD ‘Olivia’
on Monday November 12, 2018 @08:55AM (#18432584)
I worked out that sequence while ignoring my assignments in elementary school, and I've been mildly obsessed with it since.
I don't think I'm OCD, but this thread is kind of freaking me out.
[edit] I also use my fingers to count binary on each hand independently, starting from different numbers and moving them forward in lock step.
Re:Build a burner phone with Twilio and Kotlin
on Tuesday July 18, 2017 @01:00PM (#14798115)
Do the numbers being held register as disconnected to anyone calling them? It seems like that might cut down on some of the junk calls by the time they're released.
Re:The Other Half
on Wednesday March 01, 2017 @02:18PM (#13767211)
I've been seeing the same doctor for nearly two decades. She does the same routine every time she takes my blood pressure: "So, (puts on cuff), do you have any trips planned? Anything fun coming up? (pump pump pump)".
I laugh inside at how consistent she is, so I guess it still works on me.
Re:Weaponizing PostScript
on Wednesday February 22, 2017 @12:47PM (#13707400)
I've always wanted to trick someone into sending this to the printer:
%!
initgraphics clippath fill
{ copypage } loop
I'm just surprised I haven't seen more things like this, especially back in the days when postscript was popular.
Re:A Visa for founders, engineers and investors willing to join France
on Monday January 16, 2017 @11:46AM (#13411039)
It might help if you were immersed in it, as opposed to a small amount of time in school. But would you be able to function those first few months, that's the question.
At least the author should have someone proofread it. There are grammar and spelling problems throughout.
Re:Dropbox Project Infinite
on Tuesday April 26, 2016 @07:39PM (#11576668)
Thanks!
Re:Dropbox Project Infinite
on Tuesday April 26, 2016 @07:39PM (#11576666)
Thanks, I just turned that on!
Re:Dropbox Project Infinite
on Tuesday April 26, 2016 @01:29PM (#11573847)
Not disagreeing, but I'm not seeing that on my wife's iphone. She got a 16 gig phone (big mistake), but we were thinking that getting everything on iCloud would make up for this. We pay every month for iCloud storage.
That's not what we're seeing. Her phone gets to be 100% full, and deleting a photo frees up space. When we delete a photo, we get dire warnings that "this will delete the photo on all of your devices, and in the cloud too." I download them to my computer before doing this, so nothing is really lost. But it's annoying.
Re:Bash Academy
on Tuesday December 15, 2015 @02:59PM (#10740054)
I love this option. I type "/tmp" when I'm about to create some short-lived scratch files. Those saying "you can just alias that" are missing the point. Where do you stop with the aliases?
Re:Amazon Snowball
on Wednesday October 07, 2015 @01:05PM (#10347261)
I found an image here: http://techcrunch.com/2015/10/07/amazon-launches-snowball-a-...