Hacker News: billforsternz

New comment by billforsternz in "FDA approves first in class targeted therapy for metastatic pancreatic cancer"

billforsternz — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 12:16:00 +0000

Understood. No doubt I would be similarly inclined if I'd gone down that path in life. My beef is that I feel this is a trope that gets rolled out without question, and it doesn't even bother paying lip service to the diversity of human experience.

I feel similarly whenever I hear about someone expressing empathy with someone, but apparently only after realizing they are someone's daughter/brother/sister/mother whatever type of relative. What's that about? I feel empathy for any innocent victim, they're human, they're living a life, maybe a very enjoyable life even if they don't have a single relative.

New comment by billforsternz in "FDA approves first in class targeted therapy for metastatic pancreatic cancer"

billforsternz — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 01:18:47 +0000

Good post but the whole "buy time to see your child graduate, get married or give birth" trope is quite frankly very annoying.

Older people have more going on, and more reasons to live, than whatever the next generations are up to. Even if we have children.

I had curative (hopefully, presumably) kidney cancer surgery 11 years ago. So far I've enjoyed travelling, socializing, working, coding, chess and other hobbies in the extra time I've been granted and I hope for decades more time to enjoy life. I don't have children. never aspired to it.

Sorry for the rant!

New comment by billforsternz in "The case against a C alternative (2022)"

billforsternz — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 09:53:56 +0000

I like to program in a C++ subset that's basically C plus a sprinkling of ergonomic quality of life C++ features eg references and generic containers. I think of it as C+.

(Edit: No disrespect meant. I just thought such completely different language concepts potentially sharing the same name was kind of amusing)

New comment by billforsternz in "New Zealand lost its music media, and what we're building to replace it"

billforsternz — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 05:46:33 +0000

What is it about a country that makes it "irrelevant" in your opinion?

New comment by billforsternz in "UEFA and its national associations will not participate in FIFA competitions"

billforsternz — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 03:42:18 +0000

Lots of people call it that. The Australian national team are called the Socceroos. The best, most authoritative magazine about the sport is called "World Soccer", published in the UK, where the name soccer originated. Even if the name soccer was used only in the USA, it would be a legitimate name. Different cultures use different names for things.

New comment by billforsternz in "UEFA and its national associations will not participate in FIFA competitions"

billforsternz — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 23:48:24 +0000

Soccer is a legitimate name for the sport. Football is properly the name of a whole group of sports OR in a local context the locally most popular type of football.

It's very weird for one type of football to try to claim the name all for itself globally.

BTW I am not American.

New comment by billforsternz in "Latest Airbus single aisle aircraft innovations"

billforsternz — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 00:36:47 +0000

My problem is I don't want to be first to recline, if the person behind me reclines, fine.

New comment by billforsternz in "Latest Airbus single aisle aircraft innovations"

billforsternz — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 20:21:40 +0000

(Not the person you're asking, but...) I don't want to adversely affect the person behind me, but I also accept the right of the person in front of me to recline if they want to. It's not easy being me.

New comment by billforsternz in "How many of the 170k English words do you know?"

billforsternz — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 22:20:34 +0000

Stuck it out to the end against my better judgement. Got 89/100 due to difficulties at the "Grandmaster" stage (12/20).

I thought it was going to be tougher because the very first word on my run was "Yield" and none of the options seemed convincing to me. I went with something that was at least fairly adjacent to the "something produced by" (as opposed to "submit to") meaning and this did successfully yield (he he) my first point.

New comment by billforsternz in "I designed a nibble-oriented CPU in Verilog to build a scientific calculator"

billforsternz — Sat, 16 May 2026 01:51:37 +0000

The Z80 does have a DAA (decimal adjust arithmetic) instruction to facilitate BCD arithmetic. I don't think I ever used it in my Z80 years and I'm not familiar with the details. Sadly I have much less experience with the 6502, I didn't even know it had a BCD mode.

New comment by billforsternz in "Chess puzzle I found in my dad's old book"

billforsternz — Thu, 14 May 2026 04:01:47 +0000

The wording is very unambiguous, it means something very specific in chess. In every legal chess position either White is checkmated or Black is checkmated or (by far the most common except in film and TV!) neither side is checkmated. So the wording is crystal clear, you should be able to freely place the White king on any of the unoccupied 59 squares and the position will be one of those in which White is checkmated.

A real shame, this totally ruined the puzzle for me as it seemed so unlikely that all five Black pieces would be mutually protected. I should have forced myself to ignore the faulty clause and try to solve without it. The bad clause is also completely unnecessary - one of those cases where deleting text (or code!) is an improvement with no downside!

New comment by billforsternz in "Why TUIs are back"

billforsternz — Mon, 04 May 2026 05:05:24 +0000

I is tab ('\x09' or '\t') and J is new line ('\x0a' or '\n'). These Ctrl combinations follow a predictable linear mapping to the control character section of the ASCII table. Basically Ctrl subtracts 0x40, so I is 0x49, Ctrl I is 0x09.

New comment by billforsternz in "Ti-84 Evo"

billforsternz — Fri, 01 May 2026 22:26:24 +0000

Thanks for clarifying. I think this is an ARM and a break from a history of Z80 and Z80 adjacent CPUs. I do get the impression TI have done a good (financial) job milking these products whilst under investing in real product innovation.

New comment by billforsternz in "Ti-84 Evo"

billforsternz — Fri, 01 May 2026 21:48:45 +0000

Surprisingly high or surprisingly low?

New comment by billforsternz in "Consequences of passing too few register parameters to a C function"

billforsternz — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 03:46:11 +0000

Yes. And in the second one he has return c; when he meant return b;

Homer nods.

New comment by billforsternz in "The Secret Life of NaN (2018)"

billforsternz — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 21:42:10 +0000

We're both seeing rudeness. We both dislike rudeness. I think it's rude to rain on someone's parade. You think it's rude to assume someone hadn't thought through their comment (I basically agree) and to address the person rather than the points (I also basically agree).

You might note my original comment included softening elements ("perhaps", "not saying you're wrong"). In general if you look at all my comments you'll see I'm not a rude person, I'm pretty agreeable in general.

I was (trying to) make a meta point rather than a point about the specific technical issue. I agree (again!) that the last word has not been said on this issue or on any other issue where tradeoffs need to be weighed.

I read Walter's comment and thought "Wow, that's a surprising, clever and innovative idea, I'm impressed". And I just didn't enjoy someone bluntly saying, in effect. "No you're wrong, you shouldn't do it like that". It's as simple as that really. I know blunt exchanges of views are normal for programmers and engineers, I don't have to like it every time.

Finally, I know Walter Bright is no shrinking violet and he definitely doesn't need me to defend him!

New comment by billforsternz in "The Secret Life of NaN (2018)"

billforsternz — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 02:29:12 +0000

I wasn't really appealing to authority. I was just suspecting a familiar pattern that I always find a little distasteful. Person A describes a brilliant idea they're obviously proud of. Person B casually dismisses it and just claims without evidence that the obvious way of doing it is better. I find that pattern to be not only rude, but to suck some of the joy out of life. The fact that person A on this occasion is widely acknowledged as a brilliant practitioner I thought added weight to me pushing back. But I'd be inclined to feel the same way if person A was an enthusiastic wide eyed student (say) with a fresh perspective.

New comment by billforsternz in "The Secret Life of NaN (2018)"

billforsternz — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 03:22:46 +0000

How long did you think about this before making this declaration? How long did Walter Bright think about this before making his decision when designing his language? Not saying you're wrong, just something to think about perhaps.

New comment by billforsternz in "Alberta startup sells no-tech tractors for half price"

billforsternz — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 02:22:09 +0000

Sir Edmund Hillary and his team drove early Massey-Fergussons to the South Pole in 1958 (much to the annoyance of Sir Vivian Fuchs who Hillary beat to the pole even though Hillary was supposed to be a support player only :). The tractors weren't really suited to the job but they were tough enough to make it anyway.

New comment by billforsternz in "XOR'ing a register with itself is the idiom for zeroing it out. Why not sub?"

billforsternz — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 19:41:59 +0000

Back in the early 1980s I leveled up my self taught Z80 assembly skills by reading a book that attempted to disassemble and explain the Sinclair Spectrum ROM.

I remember the very first ROM instruction was XOR A and this was already a revelation to me as I'd never considered doing anything other than LD A,0 to clear the accumulator.