Hacker News: alexisread

A Perfect SimCity

alexisread — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 09:09:34 +0000

Article URL: https://www.jeffquast.com/post/a-perfect-simcity/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49476193

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by alexisread in "NHS apologises and admits Palantir have access to identifiable patient data"

alexisread — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 09:44:02 +0000

And this comment is being downvoted as well to hide the fact.

New comment by alexisread in "NHS apologises and admits Palantir have access to identifiable patient data"

alexisread — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 09:22:27 +0000

Wow this was moved fast off the frontpage! Now on page 3 after 50min. Just FYI.

New comment by alexisread in "Convergence is not enough"

alexisread — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 06:55:46 +0000

Relevant paper on lattice types (BloomL): https://dsf.berkeley.edu/papers/UCB-lattice-tr.pdf

In addition to this, you’ll need a causal register (per-key merkle clock) to order concurrent edits, rather than drop one.

Lastly, you’re likely to need a Pijul style VCS to handle semantic merges.

New comment by alexisread in "Amiga 1000: Ten years ahead of its time"

alexisread — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 19:49:24 +0000

The ST got preemptive multitasking in 92 AFAIK with MINT/Multitos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_TOS

New comment by alexisread in "If you want to create a button from scratch, you must first create the universe"

alexisread — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 13:24:15 +0000

Thought this was a reference to this parody

https://youtu.be/xE9W9Ghe4Jk?is=wmaIJ6LXNW-mZ49Q

New comment by alexisread in "Linux on the Atari Jaguar"

alexisread — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 15:02:13 +0000

Completely different. The ST and TT used bitplanes whereas the Jag is chunky, and can support both YUV and RGB colourspaces. 640x200 is possible at least https://youtu.be/XI3Pvx5Yh1U?si=2bp93CeNYPTGZZic

New comment by alexisread in "Ante: A new way to blend borrow checking and reference counting"

alexisread — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 07:26:22 +0000

OOI why did you go with RC at the lattice bottom rather than generational refs? Not sure how in touch you are with the author of Vale?

What would be good is if effects are used to discharge the ownership obligations, that should dovetail well in Ante. BTW I appreciate the clear effects handling in Ante, very nice!

New comment by alexisread in "Bringing Swift to the Apple ]["

alexisread — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 15:27:16 +0000

Yes that’s pretty much how I’ve used AI, though phase zero and one had to be hand-coded until there was enough code for the AI to iterate off. Hand debugging and then showing the AI helps to narrow the number of errors, and how to triage for the next run.

New comment by alexisread in "Cyberdecks, going analog, and convivial technology"

alexisread — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 07:43:46 +0000

Depends what you define as a cyberdeck. If you look low power/ non-linux there are many innovative decks: https://hackaday.com/2023/03/06/low-power-challenge-the-pota...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HK0uAKkt0AE colorforth deck

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kn0MxHlima0 discrete deck built like the tandy 1000

If Cyberdeck builds get people building, then it's all good. Farming does encourage others to build so it's all heading in the right direction :)

New comment by alexisread in "ESP32-S31"

alexisread — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 22:59:34 +0000

New comment by alexisread in "Chuwi Minibook X"

alexisread — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 08:40:45 +0000

Not quite the same thing, but you can build a similar thing to run linux relatively easily, and the keyboards can be really good that way. You can swap out the SBC for one of your choice eg. https://www.lattepanda.com/lattepanda-iota (why don't AMD do small SBCs?) and cut a space on the left/right hand side for a trackpoint/optical trackpad (operate from the side)

https://github.com/penk/penkesu

New comment by alexisread in "Mini Micro Fantasy Computer"

alexisread — Wed, 27 May 2026 18:10:06 +0000

There’s a wealth of retro machines out there that cater to this. A sample: https://www.olimex.com/Products/Retro-Computers/Neo6502/open...

https://www.olimex.com/Products/Retro-Computers/AgonLight2/o...

Or with keyboards: https://wildbitscomputing.com/

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/spectrumnext/zx-spectru...

Or you can go mobile: https://www.clockworkpi.com/product-page/picocalc

https://andywarburton.co.uk/post/gr3ml1n-a-compact-handheld-...

And if you want a real challenge, the one euro computer:

https://www.olimex.com/Products/Retro-Computers/RVPC/open-so...

New comment by alexisread in "Flipper One Tech Specs"

alexisread — Wed, 20 May 2026 21:06:53 +0000

There’s a definite overlap between this and the Cardputer Zero: https://youtu.be/lhS0trmBAAU?si=lLmCKdK3eHyMMAR0

M2 slot or a clipon addon? Nice to see more Swiss Army knives in this space

New comment by alexisread in "Consider the Sister"

alexisread — Tue, 19 May 2026 09:26:21 +0000

Consider the bulldog…

New comment by alexisread in "Modern Rendering Culling Techniques"

alexisread — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 11:45:40 +0000

Douglas little has a neat trick for dynamic voxels, see the ‘sparse voxel octree’ demo:

https://youtu.be/nHsgdZFk22M?si=Yt_m0W6OozSm4TkW

Allows Minecraft on a 16mhz Falcon

New comment by alexisread in "Do you even need a database?"

alexisread — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 07:03:06 +0000

I think that’s the beauty of PG here, you can find solutions to most of this:

Index creation https://stackoverflow.com/questions/23876479/will-postgresql...

JSON->DB schema https://jsonschema2db.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html

Pg shared disk failover is similar but RAC is quite unique, you’re not going to use though with a rented cluster?

https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/different-replicatio...

Personally for me any technical advantages don’t outweigh the business side, YMMV :)

New comment by alexisread in "Do you even need a database?"

alexisread — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 16:38:55 +0000

Good points, but Postgres has all those, along with much better local testing story, easier and more reliable CDC, better UDFs (in Python, Go etc.), a huge ecosystem of extensions for eg. GIS data, no licencing issues ever, API compatability with DuckDB, Doris and other DBs, and (this is the big one) is not Oracle.

New comment by alexisread in "Palestinian boy, 12, describes how Israeli forces killed his family in car"

alexisread — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 21:38:22 +0000

This is the same Israel that has attacked Iran, Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Quatar and Sudan (https://youtu.be/pRxKltphg6c?si=bDSB_jA-KPM4Efzu) and globally trafficked children?

(https://youtu.be/RJhqGDZbqBI?si=MQFuah6er7TvHcaD)

Or is it the Israel that deliberately destroys crops (https://youtu.be/Lyp9Xfess3Q?si=1_4usvB1yjgYhKSb)?

Maybe it’s the Israel that ignores ceasefires (http://youtube.com/post/Ugkxn4SkyNfKESV6nPO_ZzgOhdaH8lb_FAkx...) or fills in wells (http://youtube.com/post/UgkxaPo3ERDtr5fQKPAHnFgxwYkMaEeMgdlo...)

Or it could be the Israel that shoots and kills 234 peaceful protestors (https://www.972mag.com/gaza-return-march-idf/)

Restraint is not really in Israeli vocabulary, and the story being sold is a lie.

New comment by alexisread in "Baochip-1x: What it is, why I'm doing it now and how it came about"

alexisread — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 14:13:58 +0000

Thanks! One last question is whether it can boot from external EEPROM? This is mainly with reference to Ken Thompson’s Reflections on Trusting Trust paper (https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/teaching/2324/R209/Reflections-Trus...).

What would be good is to be able to program the eeprom with hardware, boot the bao with the eeprom and then bootstrap the rest of the OS.

Lastly I was thinking on the inclusion of 4 bidirectional (transputer) links so to speak. I’m guessing you’ve thought about clusters of these chips?

Thanks