Hacker News: drfloyd51

New comment by drfloyd51 in "Mosquitoes Are a Choice"

drfloyd51 — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 17:30:44 +0000

God gave us a planet to steward. That only makes sense if he also gave us a world that could be stewarded. The idea that we can’t affect our world is ignoring the responsibility placed on us.

New comment by drfloyd51 in "An algorithmic failure beneath the secret ballot"

drfloyd51 — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 14:00:23 +0000

The last 3 US elections were very close and had very different candidates with very different ideas. The closeness of the election has nothing to do with the “similarity” of any candidates. And to imply a “coin flip” would be fine is ludicrous.

New comment by drfloyd51 in "Borland Turbo Basic"

drfloyd51 — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 16:53:03 +0000

I feel so incredibly fortunate that I grew up and had a hobby in what turned into a lucrative career, and that my parents supported me as best they could.

Tandy CoCo 2. Followed by a 386 20Mhz where I graduated from Basic to Turbo Pascal and Turbo C++

New comment by drfloyd51 in "Apple Pass Designer"

drfloyd51 — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 22:38:08 +0000

And… the would be the first to complain “my phone should auto adjust brightness for me whaaa”

New comment by drfloyd51 in "Several vulnerabilities have been discovered in the Linux kernel"

drfloyd51 — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 01:09:31 +0000

Is it possible that some of these bugs were already exploited by governments? And AI might help use close of that kind of thing? (And expose other kinds of things , in a kind of AI arms race?)

New comment by drfloyd51 in "Singapore govt dating app uses Gale-Shapley stable marriage algorithm"

drfloyd51 — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 23:40:48 +0000

I don’t think you are legally bound to marry. And if it stops working, divorce before resentment.

New comment by drfloyd51 in "I could've accessed 17T Microsoft records"

drfloyd51 — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 23:29:57 +0000

A good move is to negotiate in good faith. You show you can’t be pushed around and you are able to be civil. And most importantly, you know your worth.

New comment by drfloyd51 in "1 in 8 cancer cases worldwide are caused by infections, study finds"

drfloyd51 — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 20:23:27 +0000

Fortunately this is a false choice.

I think 78 and fine is better than 45 and 80 in pain.

But in this country we are so adverse to giving someone agency over how their life ends.

Because it’s not good Business.

New comment by drfloyd51 in "macOS Golden Gate Is a Buggy Mess"

drfloyd51 — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 17:29:51 +0000

If they can’t get stuff you think is easy right, it saps your trust that they got the things you think are harder right.

Centering is not easy. Apparently. It requires human eye to verify. I can prove my decryption algorithm works. I can’t prove centering works.

New comment by drfloyd51 in "Everybody’s home. No one’s coming over"

drfloyd51 — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 12:53:43 +0000

My hunch is they have an agenda and is willing to lie to spice up the story.

If they are not a clanker.

New comment by drfloyd51 in "Nvidia wants to put a watchdog chip next to every AI agent"

drfloyd51 — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 21:26:49 +0000

Right. As they said, you can’t do it 100% autonomously. A human needs to feed it.

You essentially said: you’re wrong, it is autonomous when it doesn’t need a human during one specific part of its overall usage.

New comment by drfloyd51 in "Nvidia wants to put a watchdog chip next to every AI agent"

drfloyd51 — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 21:22:53 +0000

I knew an old lady that swallowed a fly…

New comment by drfloyd51 in "Ten lines of code that changed my world"

drfloyd51 — Sun, 27 Sep 2026 19:11:17 +0000

Cute.

Back in the day, I looked down my nose at other young fledgling developers that would #define true 1. I knew only clarity and woe lived down that road.

    if(5-2 == true) ;

As verbose as it was stupid.

I felt superior because I knew that #define false 0 was the only Boolean keyword hack that would work.

    if (5-2 != false) ;

Still verbose, and stupid, but at least it was correct.

These days… I don’t feel as confident about anything as I did about those #defines.

New comment by drfloyd51 in "On caring for user data: NeoVim caused Vim undo files to be deleted"

drfloyd51 — Sun, 27 Sep 2026 18:14:33 +0000

Computer nerds are a rare breed. We like to be right. And we like to be arrogant. And if we have a solution to a harmful problem… it’s your fault for not being “smart enough” and you suffer your consequences.

Maybe we aren’t so rare. I can think of another group that values enduring hardship over progress making things easier for everyone.

New comment by drfloyd51 in "On caring for user data: NeoVim caused Vim undo files to be deleted"

drfloyd51 — Sun, 27 Sep 2026 16:53:55 +0000

Not using it as a backup strategy. But it doesn’t matter. Vim has a feature, persistent undo. People are using it for whatever reason. Under your blessing or not. A different app, neovim, broke vim’s feature.

They don't get a pass because you disagree with an imagined use case.

New comment by drfloyd51 in "On caring for user data: NeoVim caused Vim undo files to be deleted"

drfloyd51 — Sun, 27 Sep 2026 16:50:15 +0000

Type A. Type B. Save. Type C. Save. How do you get back to state “A” using git?

You do not have all your states available.

New comment by drfloyd51 in "On caring for user data: NeoVim caused Vim undo files to be deleted"

drfloyd51 — Sun, 27 Sep 2026 16:43:33 +0000

The article gave 2 examples.

I can give some as well. IDE crashes. Computer reboots at an undesired time. Even if my work is saved, I am not “finished”. I would like my undo history to extend before file / open time.

New comment by drfloyd51 in "Show HN: Reladraw – A diagram language where you decide where to place things"

drfloyd51 — Sat, 26 Sep 2026 20:04:41 +0000

>nothing silently wins.

Fantastic! Never change this.

People will complain. These people also prefer type unsafe languages. Hold fast.

New comment by drfloyd51 in "What even is an OS now?"

drfloyd51 — Sat, 26 Sep 2026 01:10:01 +0000

The author is missing fundamentals. Exactly what to expect from someone who thought the built is BASIC was lame.

New comment by drfloyd51 in "What even is an OS now?"

drfloyd51 — Sat, 26 Sep 2026 01:08:30 +0000

That was my origin story. I was 8. Tandy CoCo2. I didn’t have a cassette so I had to type all the programs from the books. Again and again.

I hope this makes you feel better: all industries are doomed. But few rise and fall in one lifetime.