Hacker News: cartoonfoxes

New comment by cartoonfoxes in "C array types are weird"

cartoonfoxes — Tue, 26 May 2026 23:33:37 +0000

https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/

New comment by cartoonfoxes in "Microsoft: Copilot is for entertainment purposes only"

cartoonfoxes — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 20:22:26 +0000

And yet my licensed Visual Studio 2026 that's supposed to be for serious-face commercial development is rife with Copilot.

> You may stop using Copilot at any time.

But how? Microsoft has shoved it into so many products that I don't see how it's possible, without dropping them alltogether.

New comment by cartoonfoxes in "AI is ushering in a “tiny team” era"

cartoonfoxes — Sat, 21 Jun 2025 23:03:59 +0000

Some of what I learned from a decade of keeping up with the perfusion of JS libraries and frameworks seems relevant to AI:

- anything with good enough adoption is good enough (unless I'm an SME to judge directly)

- build something with it before considering a switch

- they're similar enough that what I learn in one will transfer to others

- everything sucks compared with 2-3 years from now; switching between "sucks" and "sucks+" will look silly in retrospect

New comment by cartoonfoxes in "'I grew up with it': readers on the enduring appeal of Microsoft Excel"

cartoonfoxes — Sat, 02 Nov 2024 22:41:32 +0000

Try the "Paste as plain text" tool in PowerToys - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/advanced....

New comment by cartoonfoxes in "How 'Factorio' seduced Silicon Valley and me"

cartoonfoxes — Sun, 27 Oct 2024 20:57:50 +0000

Every time I start playing Factorio it's always a matter of time before I'm trying to figure out how to solve factories with VHDL and how to interface Magic VLSI with the game's blueprints. From there it's another day or so before I'm reviewing EE graduate programs and working out how much math I would need to grind.

I had this experience with Eve Online back in the day. The optimization limit horseshoes back into the real world.

Case in point: just reading this thread started me learning about discrete event simulation. Damn you Factorio.

New comment by cartoonfoxes in "People who won't give up floppy disks"

cartoonfoxes — Sun, 12 May 2024 02:00:02 +0000

The industrial hubs I'm familar with use optoisolators to separate the host and attached devices, I think. Advantech has a USB-3 version (P/N USB-4630), but I can't speak to these personally.

New comment by cartoonfoxes in "People who won't give up floppy disks"

cartoonfoxes — Sun, 12 May 2024 01:57:27 +0000

Absolutley. In a hardware-development context, we use them to stop frying computers with broken devices. I've had good experience with the BB-UHR304 from Advantech. They're expensive and occasionally sacrificial, but cheaper than replacing an average pc / laptop. https://www.advantech.com/en/products/c9300564-0829-46eb-955...

New comment by cartoonfoxes in "Hard-to-swallow truths they won't tell you about software engineer job"

cartoonfoxes — Wed, 08 Nov 2023 17:38:46 +0000

HN has a high concentration of above-average salaries, even within the US. It's tough constantly hearing how many multiples more my southern equivalent at FAANG is earning without it affecting my sense of self worth.

New comment by cartoonfoxes in "916 Days of Emacs"

cartoonfoxes — Thu, 13 Apr 2023 19:17:02 +0000

I've always just used the palm of my hand. You can work a keyboard with more surfaces than just your fingertips.

New comment by cartoonfoxes in "What I've Learned About Formal Methods in Half a Year"

cartoonfoxes — Mon, 10 Apr 2023 14:51:38 +0000

Most definitely. I've been playing with using ChatGPT to generate proof texts in Isabelle/HOL, since it lets me verify the correctness of the output before code generation.

New comment by cartoonfoxes in "Ask HN: Are people still using Pascal?"

cartoonfoxes — Mon, 27 Feb 2023 02:20:59 +0000

After receiving an aggressive call from Embarcadro's license compliance team for installing Delphi "Community Edition" registered with a personal email address, on a personal laptop, to the effect that I could not use it because they somehow managed to connect me with [Employer] which also has Embarcadero commercial licenses killed that experiment really quick. This was in mid-2022.

Delphi is a neat product, but fuck Embarcadero - their business model is to extract revenue from the long tail of old Borland customers who are locked in for one reason or another, not grow the product.

New comment by cartoonfoxes in "Ask HN: What career would you switch into if AI ate your profession?"

cartoonfoxes — Fri, 27 Jan 2023 16:32:38 +0000

If its furniture you're thinking of - people want custom hand-made things now, they just can't afford them. That trend isn't going to change with increased automation.

New comment by cartoonfoxes in "Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab"

cartoonfoxes — Mon, 12 Dec 2022 15:54:05 +0000

NIF is still doing fusion research? I thought they pivoted to materials research in support of stockpile stewardship years ago.

New comment by cartoonfoxes in "Const vs. constexpr vs. consteval vs. constinit in C++20"

cartoonfoxes — Mon, 05 Dec 2022 18:27:27 +0000

I'm aware of it, and I'm not aware of anyone using it for proprietary software in the kinds of projects where Ada would come up in discussion. FSF GNAT + Alire are fine as a hobbyist toy and for open source, but they're not in contention for [workjob]. FSF GNAT isn't just unsupported, but also very thinly documented. And that's if you're only targeting Linux or Windows on x86, and not embedded devices with a cross-compiler you need to build yourself.

The basic Windows / Linux versions of the cheapest commercial Ada package only recently dropped to high 4-figures / seat. The equivalent cross-compilers are still $$,$$$.

New comment by cartoonfoxes in "Const vs. constexpr vs. consteval vs. constinit in C++20"

cartoonfoxes — Mon, 28 Nov 2022 18:04:22 +0000

Same here. I keep eyeing Ada and waiting for the compiler prices to drop.

New comment by cartoonfoxes in "Writing by hand is still the best way to retain information"

cartoonfoxes — Wed, 23 Nov 2022 19:43:26 +0000

I recently learned of Dysgraphia from an interview with Eric Weinstein. For some, writing notes on paper actively destroys recall. Western education pretty much forces students to take notes by hand, which is understandably a nightmare for those afflicted. I wish I could find the specific clip I'm thinking of. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dysgraphia.

New comment by cartoonfoxes in "Microsoft is turning Windows 11's Start Menu into an ad delivery system"

cartoonfoxes — Mon, 21 Nov 2022 19:24:43 +0000

>As a developer, the only reason to use Windows today is if you need Visual Studio for .NET development.

What do you mean by developer?

Lots of embedded systems and industrial automation development is Windows-only, as a random example. Not everything is webdev or mobile. Lots of vertical markets have development environments which are essentially Windows-only.

New comment by cartoonfoxes in "Ask HN: What story from the PDP-8 era would make a good script?"

cartoonfoxes — Mon, 21 Nov 2022 18:55:38 +0000

Early history of artificial intelligence research, maybe MIT CSAIL specifically? https://projects.csail.mit.edu/films/aifilms/AIFilms.html

There were a few decades of research into symbolic AI and expert systems - "Good Old-Fashioned Artificial Intelligence" before the modern deep-learning revolution. Lots of promise, interesting research, and very cool (and esoteric) hardware came out of it, which never found wide application outside the lab. You could pitch it as a sort of analogue to Who Killed the Electric Car? (2006).

New comment by cartoonfoxes in "On CAD"

cartoonfoxes — Sat, 12 Nov 2022 20:59:29 +0000

BRL-CAD is CSG instead of B-rep geometry. Different use-case.

New comment by cartoonfoxes in "The first rule of Microsoft Excel: Don’t tell anyone you’re good at it"

cartoonfoxes — Mon, 24 Oct 2022 15:47:51 +0000

>Every new hire

In what industry?