Hacker News: Slow_Dog

New comment by Slow_Dog in "Stephen's Sausage Roll remains one of the most influential puzzle games"

Slow_Dog — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 08:52:33 +0000

A Good Snowman Is Hard To Build and A Monster's Expedition are games in the same genre with much better presentation than Sausage Roll.

New comment by Slow_Dog in "I went to America's worst national parks so you don't have to"

Slow_Dog — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 14:10:15 +0000

It's 30 years since I visited Zion. So beautiful. The best part of a trip that included Lake Powell, Yosemite and the Grand Cannyon, though those were all great. Being British, basically no-one here has ever heard of it, so I'm always keen to tell people about it. The Park Rangers were great, too.

Mind you, your President seems keen on deterring foreign visitors of all sorts, so those visitor numbers are sure to decline. So that's a win, I guess.

New comment by Slow_Dog in "Terry Pratchett and the Maggi Soup Adverts (2011)"

Slow_Dog — Mon, 13 Nov 2023 12:17:23 +0000

This explains the naff "Captain Crunch" section of Neal Stephenson's "Cryptonomicon". Not that you can get it where I live; it would have made sense to do a "Weetabix" section with the same theme.

New comment by Slow_Dog in "Proofs based on diagonalization help reveal the limits of algorithms"

Slow_Dog — Thu, 07 Sep 2023 09:40:08 +0000

The document's initial example of diagonalization doesn't explain it properly. It shows how you can find a binary string that's not in the list; fine. But it's conveniently a list of 5 strings of length 5. It doesn't show how you'd find a new string of length 5 that's not in a list of 6 such strings, or 31 such strings.

I suspect the "conveniently" may drop out of some conversion of a real problem to an abstraction, but that's not explained.

New comment by Slow_Dog in "Play the Nimatron, the World’s First Video Game Invented in 1930s New York"

Slow_Dog — Tue, 25 Jul 2023 13:47:12 +0000

It's got several 4x7 pixel displays.

New comment by Slow_Dog in "The Swivel-Eyed Loons Have a Point"

Slow_Dog — Wed, 31 May 2023 16:07:29 +0000

It's not even that. Plenty of everyday people "swanned around having a lovely time" too; or at least, didn't think the restrictions should apply to them. Sure, in some of the cases he cites there's rank hypocrisy involved that should be called out, and the burden of the restrictions impacted the poor and underpivilged relatively more harshly and some leeway can be given there. But to imply it was just the former is bollocks.

New comment by Slow_Dog in "Venus is not Earth’s closest neighbor (2019) [pdf]"

Slow_Dog — Wed, 24 May 2023 13:25:20 +0000

Venus has the smallest average distance from each point of the Earth's orbit to the nearest point on the other planet's orbit. I.e. whenever we're shown a diagram of the solar system, the "circle" that is Venus's orbit is closest (has the most similar size) to that of Earth's. I don't know the correct term for this measure.

New comment by Slow_Dog in "EyesCream – Eye Test Program as Computer Game"

Slow_Dog — Fri, 17 Mar 2023 11:50:06 +0000

I have Glaucoma.

The software seems on a par with the other automated fields tests I have regularly at hospital, and the output looks similar, showing approximately the same areas of degredation. Those automated tests are also approximate, so that's fine.

I do think there should be something to help you interpret what the results are. There's no indication what a "good" result should look like - that would be even response time across the field, and a even senstivity. Nor is there anything to say "you should go and see an eye specialist". If you get a result that looks like the patchwork I get, there should be something to let you know there could be something wrong with your eyes.

New comment by Slow_Dog in "I tried an alternative way to date – and it worked"

Slow_Dog — Mon, 27 Feb 2023 11:04:56 +0000

It's made clear from the context that "good" is "a good match". There's nothing wrong with most of those other men, but they're not going to be people that she will want to spend the rest of her life with.

New comment by Slow_Dog in "An intutive counterexample to the axiom of choice"

Slow_Dog — Mon, 23 Jan 2023 13:23:39 +0000

"the member whose value is closest to zero" is described by those 14 symbols within the speech marks. As you say, the definition is contradictory.

New comment by Slow_Dog in "How to Write English Prose"

Slow_Dog — Fri, 13 Jan 2023 12:32:43 +0000

One seeks to find a clear and beautiful double-negative-free rendition of the same sentence, written by thy own fair hand. Alas, one seeks in vain, as the critic fails this test of courage.

New comment by Slow_Dog in "Ask HN: Is programming a “young person's game”?"

Slow_Dog — Wed, 09 Nov 2022 10:47:24 +0000

I'm in my mid 50's. The software group I'm part of has a spread of ages with people older than me all the way down to new graduates. I was new graduate once.

For the vast majority of programmers, programming just a regular job in companies that most people won't ever have heard of, in just the same way the majority of other jobs are.