Hacker News: DrTung

New comment by DrTung in "Ghostty is leaving GitHub"

DrTung — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 23:04:57 +0000

A remnant of the old GitHub still remains, try surfing to a non-existing repositor like https://github.com/NowIsTheTimeForAllGoodMenToComeToTheAidOf...

(however the parallax scrolling of the background is gone, maybe when Microsoft arrived)

New comment by DrTung in "Claude Code is suddenly everywhere inside Microsoft"

DrTung — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 17:29:12 +0000

I've heard the next version will be called "Visual Active NET Copilot".

New comment by DrTung in "More on Apple's Trust-Eroding 'F1 the Movie' Wallet Ad"

DrTung — Sun, 29 Jun 2025 22:01:48 +0000

Reminds me of the push of U2's 'Songs Of Innocence" into everyone's iPhones maybe 10 years ago.

New comment by DrTung in "Lego says it wants to start to bring video game development in-house"

DrTung — Sun, 16 Mar 2025 15:35:53 +0000

I still have my copy of Lego Universe, hope this new initiative will fare better.

New comment by DrTung in "Potoooooooo"

DrTung — Thu, 16 Jan 2025 21:45:07 +0000

Sometime in the late 80's I was working in MSDOS and needed more working RAM for an app, so we bought the Phar Lap DOS extender.

Got the box and started reading the manual when someone stopped and asked "Why are you reading about horses?" What horse? "The mighty Phar Lap of course."

I had no idea it was the name of a horse, but I guess since their logo had a black horse I should have known :-)

New comment by DrTung in "The quiet art of attention"

DrTung — Sun, 13 Oct 2024 23:50:38 +0000

In one of the stories of Sherlock Holmes he asks Dr. Watson how many steps there are in the stairs leading up to their door. Watson replies he doesn't know and Sherlock gives the exact number and says "You see but you do not observe".

Sherlock Holmes seems to have read this article as well :-)

New comment by DrTung in "Jeffrey Snover and the Making of PowerShell"

DrTung — Thu, 04 Jul 2024 15:01:40 +0000

I think PowerShell is a bit scary, for example I could never get curl to work in it, say a simple POST command: curl -X "POST" google.com should return Error 411 (Length required) from google (as it does in CMD.EXE)

When I try it in PowerShell I get: Invoke-WebRequest : A parameter cannot be found that matches parameter name 'X'. and some more error messages

even curl -X "GET" doesn't work :-(

New comment by DrTung in "XZ Backdoor: Times, damned times, and scams"

DrTung — Mon, 01 Apr 2024 04:20:47 +0000

Since they would have "their pick of the litter" why did they then include kill switches? A scary scenario is a rerun of the Viasat hack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viasat_hack I.e. wipe all servers worldwide at the morning of an attack, but before that you install the kill switches on your servers and those of your allies.

New comment by DrTung in "XZ backdoor: "It's RCE, not auth bypass, and gated/unreplayable.""

DrTung — Sun, 31 Mar 2024 01:17:34 +0000

If the RCE is Russian, it could be used a communication kill-switch on the morning of an attack outside Ukraine, similar to the Viasat hack https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viasat_hack

New comment by DrTung in "Rereading: The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder (2017)"

DrTung — Wed, 30 Nov 2022 04:07:17 +0000

Also read that book when it came out, among other things it taught me about "mushroom management" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mushroom_management

New comment by DrTung in "Switcher (2004)"

DrTung — Fri, 12 Aug 2022 09:31:35 +0000

The sidesweep you do on your iPhone to change the page of app icons or when you switch fullscreens on your Mac I am sure is inspired by the Switcher.

New comment by DrTung in "Detroit’s new personalized flight information board is straight out of sci-fi"

DrTung — Sat, 16 Jul 2022 20:24:32 +0000

I remember as a kid reading Foundation by Asimov, when you arrived in Trantor, you had a boarding pass with a glowing arrow pointing which way to go. Almost there now.

New comment by DrTung in "Flowers for Algernon (1965) [pdf]"

DrTung — Sat, 25 Jun 2022 22:42:06 +0000

Long time ago I read a novel called Brain Wave by Paul Anderson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_Wave (it predates Flowers for Algernon by about 10 years).

It has a similar theme of suddenly acquired intelligence but for the whole planet. I you like Flowers for Algernon you'll like Brain Wave.

New comment by DrTung in "Killed by Microsoft"

DrTung — Mon, 28 Mar 2022 02:28:02 +0000

Also forgotten: Microsoft Popfly https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Popfly

New comment by DrTung in "ICANN 1174 TLDs Registry Listings"

DrTung — Fri, 18 Feb 2022 14:51:27 +0000

It seems incomplete, I don't see .io

New comment by DrTung in "The Color of Infinite Temperature"

DrTung — Mon, 17 Jan 2022 06:45:45 +0000

Microsoft should change their BSOD screen background color to this.

New comment by DrTung in "Windows 11 Officially Shuts Down Firefox’s Default Browser Workaround"

DrTung — Thu, 16 Dec 2021 22:26:17 +0000

My escape plan is to use Wine for the apps that exist on Windows only. Wine can be a bit lacking though :-(

But there's hope on the horizon: Valve's SteamDeck is aiming to make available all Valve's games, even the Windows-only ones, on their custom Arch Linux. using Proton (which is a fork of Wine). As far as I know, this might be the first commercial product that's based on (a fork of) Wine.

If they can make all tripleA Windows games with DRM work on their SteamDeck, this will make a serious dent in Windows' monopoly on gaming. And in the process hopefully Wine will get a boost as well...

New comment by DrTung in "PDP-11 Booting"

DrTung — Sat, 11 Dec 2021 21:50:36 +0000

Yes the data bits were 2-way toggles, but one important switch was a 3-way toggle: the Examine (press down) and Deposit (press up) switch.

New comment by DrTung in "PDP-11 Booting"

DrTung — Sat, 11 Dec 2021 15:51:04 +0000

PDP 11/34 had a bootrom and an octal keyboard, which is kind of cheating.

I grew up using the older PDP 11/45 where you had to key in (using binary toggles) a boot program. Or, the way I did it, manually enter write address and byte count to the RK05 disk controller (memory mapped I/O) then writing a "01" Go command to RK05's command register and watch the RK05 disk activity light flicker briefly. Voila, RT11 was loaded. (This worked because on the PDP 11/45 DMA transfers from disk to memory worked also in CPU Halt mode.)

New comment by DrTung in "Finland Divided: The Finnish Civil War 1918"

DrTung — Fri, 12 Nov 2021 22:28:32 +0000

Born i Stockholm, I remember taking the ferry to Finland as a young boy for some cheap vodka (and you only had to be 18 years old, not 20).

This was in the late 70's and my first visit to Helsinki, I tried to order a drink in a bar. But no service until I discovered my mistake: I had spoken in Swedish.

Switching to English got me a nice Finnish beer. That was my first glimpse of Finland's "complicated" history.