Hacker News: colonwqbang

New comment by colonwqbang in "Verification Is Not Knowledge: Science needs more than answers"

colonwqbang — Wed, 04 Nov 2026 21:59:30 +0000

On this topic: Feynman "Why do magnets repel?"

New comment by colonwqbang in "Booted up in 1993, this server still runs – but not for much longer (2017)"

colonwqbang — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 10:37:24 +0000

When you think about it, 24 years is not such a long time for a machine to keep doing what it's supposed to be doing. It says something about our profession that we find a 24-year service life surprising.

There are airliners that have been in service for over 50 years.

New comment by colonwqbang in "Apple has added persistent 'ads' to iOS, and it's driving users crazy"

colonwqbang — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 15:04:00 +0000

The article then ends by displaying an ad for Apple products.

New comment by colonwqbang in "Why do we need human mathematicians anymore?"

colonwqbang — Sun, 20 Sep 2026 13:08:48 +0000

Could you clue us in? What is mathematics actually about?

New comment by colonwqbang in "Music Theory for the 21st-Century Classroom"

colonwqbang — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 20:43:54 +0000

If you subtract the "meaningless phrase", the title of the book is just "Music Theory". Do this for every book written about music, art, mathematics and you'll just have a lot of books with identical and quite dull titles.

New comment by colonwqbang in "FBI Arrests CIA Official with $40M in Gold Bars in His Home"

colonwqbang — Thu, 28 May 2026 09:30:52 +0000

It's funny, some people commenting here seem to be a bit lost.

It's also obvious from the article that his home was indeed searched.

The idea that the government would not obtain a warrant if they suspect you of stealing millions...

New comment by colonwqbang in "FBI Arrests CIA Official with $40M in Gold Bars in His Home"

colonwqbang — Thu, 28 May 2026 09:22:50 +0000

I don't think you know what you are talking about.

New comment by colonwqbang in "Microsoft offers buyouts up to 7% of US employees"

colonwqbang — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 21:21:44 +0000

Another way to look at it: Microsoft APIs have fallen from grace. Even their own devs don't dogfood anymore. They download something that Facebook made instead and reimplement the Holy Start Menu using that.

New comment by colonwqbang in "XML is a cheap DSL"

colonwqbang — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 11:10:44 +0000

I didn't say that json can represent all rational numbers. I said that all json numbers have an obvious interpretation as a rational number.

So far you haven't really shown an example of a json number which has an ambiguous or ill defined interpretation.

Maybe you mean that json numbers may not fit into 32 bit integers or double floats. That's certainly true but I don't see it as a deficiency in the standard. There is no limit on the size of strings in json, so why have a limit on numbers?

New comment by colonwqbang in "XML is a cheap DSL"

colonwqbang — Sat, 14 Mar 2026 22:35:15 +0000

How do you feel numbers are ill defined in json? The syntactical definition is clear and seems to yield a unique and obvious interpretation of json numbers as mathematical rational numbers.

A given programming language may not have a built in representation for rational numbers in general. That isn't the fault of json.

New comment by colonwqbang in "OpenCiv3: Open-source, cross-platform reimagining of Civilization III"

colonwqbang — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 11:38:34 +0000

...The code signing requirement?

New comment by colonwqbang in "Go is portable, until it isn't"

colonwqbang — Sat, 13 Dec 2025 14:41:46 +0000

Has nothing to do with go. You added a dependency which is not portable. It is well known that systemd project only targets Linux.

Vendorise systemd and compile only the journal parts, if they are portable and can be isolated from the rest. Otherwise just shell out to journalctl.

New comment by colonwqbang in "Is C++26 getting destructive move semantics?"

colonwqbang — Fri, 21 Nov 2025 18:00:08 +0000

Your post could be (uncharitably) paraphrased as: "once you have written correct C++ code, the drawbacks of C++ are not relevant". That is true, and the same is true of C. But it's not really a counterargument to Rust. It doesn't much help those us who have to deliver that correct code in the first place.

New comment by colonwqbang in "Giving C a superpower: custom header file (safe_c.h)"

colonwqbang — Wed, 19 Nov 2025 12:29:19 +0000

True, but locks are not only needed inside IRQ handler routines.

New comment by colonwqbang in "Giving C a superpower: custom header file (safe_c.h)"

colonwqbang — Mon, 17 Nov 2025 17:13:00 +0000

I wrote "multithreaded" but I really meant "multicore". If two cores are contending for a lock I don't see how irq protection help. As long as there is only one core, I agree.

New comment by colonwqbang in "Giving C a superpower: custom header file (safe_c.h)"

colonwqbang — Mon, 17 Nov 2025 15:59:37 +0000

Does there exist any platform which has multithreading but not atomics? Such a platform would be quite impractical as you can't really implement locks or any other threading primitive without atomics.

New comment by colonwqbang in "Guests ejected mid-stay from bankrupt hotel chain Sonder"

colonwqbang — Thu, 13 Nov 2025 23:12:34 +0000

The company is bankrupt. It means they can't/won't/didn't honour their promises.

New comment by colonwqbang in "Launch HN: Tweeks (YC W25) – Browser extension to deshittify the web"

colonwqbang — Thu, 13 Nov 2025 22:29:02 +0000

Convenience? Websites are moving targets. I don't love having to update my tampermonkey scripts when they break.

New comment by colonwqbang in "Launch HN: Tweeks (YC W25) – Browser extension to deshittify the web"

colonwqbang — Thu, 13 Nov 2025 22:20:31 +0000

"Ban" and "sue" are very different things...

New comment by colonwqbang in "Launch HN: Tweeks (YC W25) – Browser extension to deshittify the web"

colonwqbang — Thu, 13 Nov 2025 22:09:52 +0000

What a positive application of AI. Refreshing to see a product which wants to reduce the amount of slop and noise in my life, instead of the opposite.

A bit disappointed that it doesn't work on Firefox. Since Google banned ublock origin I would think much of your core audience is on FF.