Hacker News: chasil

New comment by chasil in "Franklin's bad ads for Apple II clones and the beloved impersonator they depict"

chasil — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 17:28:32 +0000

Compaq notably did this correctly.

https://wiki.softhistory.org/wiki/Compaq_BIOS

New comment by chasil in "Franklin's bad ads for Apple II clones and the beloved impersonator they depict"

chasil — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 17:15:36 +0000

Bearing in mind that Jobs famously intended to "knife the baby," referring to the cash flow from the 6502 machines, it is ironic that he fought to stop this clone.

I remember this phrase from a stage play, The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, but Google shows this source:

https://www.theregister.com/1998/11/06/were_talking_about_kn...

The play doesn't even have its own wiki.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Daisey#The_Agony_and_the_...

He also put a stop to the clone PowerMacs when he returned to Apple in the 90s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_clone

New comment by chasil in "FBI used iPhone notification data to retrieve deleted Signal messages"

chasil — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 13:00:24 +0000

On Lineage Android, i see: Settings / Notifications / Notification History.

If you drop a settings widget on your home screen, it will let you choose a specific area, including notifications.

I don't know if the output is the complete database.

New comment by chasil in "FBI used iPhone notification data to retrieve deleted Signal messages"

chasil — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 12:00:07 +0000

First, a critical setting for Signal users:

"Signal’s settings include an option that prevents the actual message content from being previewed in notifications. However, it appears the defendant did not have that setting enabled, which, in turn, seemingly allowed the system to store the content in the database."

Second, how can I see this notification history?

New comment by chasil in "John Deere to pay $99M in right-to-repair settlement"

chasil — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 21:43:51 +0000

The complete crack of Deere's firmware in 2022 must have had some impact on this.

https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/16/john_deere_doom/

Edit: 'Sick Codes confirmed that he believes John Deere failed to comply with its GPL obligations. "I'd love for them to come forward and explain how they are in compliance," he said.'

New comment by chasil in "'This Is Just Not How the Human Race Should Operate,' Says US Senator"

chasil — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 03:12:49 +0000

https://archive.ph/JBthm

New comment by chasil in "SQLite in Production: Lessons from Running a Store on a Single File"

chasil — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 20:55:17 +0000

Alas, I never had access to any of the Next environments, until PPC MacOS.

I did hold a copy in my hands for 486-class machines in the college bookstore.

New comment by chasil in "SQLite in Production: Lessons from Running a Store on a Single File"

chasil — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 19:17:14 +0000

AIX is still supported and sold, so quite current?

Some that I used that are gone... Ultrix (MIPS), Clix, Irix, SunOS 4, SCO OpenServer, TI System V.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultrix

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intergraph

New comment by chasil in "SQLite in Production: Lessons from Running a Store on a Single File"

chasil — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 15:32:17 +0000

You might consider taking the database(s) out of WAL mode during a migration.

That would eliminate the need for shared memory.

New comment by chasil in "SQLite in Production: Lessons from Running a Store on a Single File"

chasil — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 15:05:07 +0000

This is the actual problem:

"Kamal runs blue-green deploys — it starts a new container, health-checks it, then stops the old one. During the switchover, both containers are running. Both mount ultrathink_storage. Both have the SQLite files open."

WAL mode requires shared access to System V IPC mapped memory. This is unlikely to work across containers.

In case anybody needs a refresher:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shared_memory

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CB_UNIX

https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/aix/7.1.0?topic=operations-syste...

New comment by chasil in "SQLite in Production: Lessons from Running a Store on a Single File"

chasil — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 14:39:56 +0000

It's fine if you run the equivalent of "init 1" first.

Does your OS have a single-user mode?

New comment by chasil in "Number in man page titles e.g. sleep(3)"

chasil — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 12:09:58 +0000

The POSIX standard manual pages for the utilities can be found here:

https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9799919799/idx/xcu.htm...

These would all be in section 1, if I am correct.

New comment by chasil in "The Windows equivalents of the most used Linux commands"

chasil — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 07:38:42 +0000

It is possible to install a handler for most signals, and that handler can be configured to ignore the signal.

Signal 9 cannot be ignored.

New comment by chasil in "The Windows equivalents of the most used Linux commands"

chasil — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 07:36:04 +0000

HUP is usually sent to daemons to instruct them to reinitialize and reread their configuration files.

Is it still passed when a terminal is disconnected? I understand a dial-up modem was involved in the original intended use.

New comment by chasil in "The Windows equivalents of the most used Linux commands"

chasil — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 07:24:27 +0000

VMS also uses type to dump a file to stdout.

I understand that DEC TOPS 20 influenced CP/M and MS-DOS, so that could be the source for type.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOPS-20

Edit: type has its own wiki, and TOPS-20 implemented it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TYPE_(DOS_command)

New comment by chasil in "Scientists crack a 20-year nuclear mystery behind the creation of gold"

chasil — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 22:37:53 +0000

I am surprised that the s-process plays no role in the formation of gold.

New comment by chasil in "Ukrainian drone holds position for 6 weeks"

chasil — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 20:33:09 +0000

Can we name them The Dinochrome Brigade?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolo:_Annals_of_the_Dinochrome...

New comment by chasil in "Nematophagous Fungus"

chasil — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 20:27:21 +0000

Oyster mushrooms are known predators of nematodes. They are not mentioned in the above wiki, but their own confirms that they exploit toxins to capture and feed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleurotus

New comment by chasil in "Oracle slashes 30k jobs"

chasil — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 17:03:44 +0000

This is a very short comment on SQL Server's code improvements (post-Sybase).

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18464429

The top comment in the post is a long complaint about the code quality of the Oracle database (worth a read).

New comment by chasil in "Oracle slashes 30k jobs"

chasil — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 16:39:58 +0000

There are three different Db2 databases.

I believe the mainframe version was first.

There is a version baked into the os/400 operating system (i series).

Then unix/windows Db2 came last, if memory serves.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Db2