Hacker News: flonkyflonk

New comment by flonkyflonk in "Show HN: Resurrecting Infocom's Unix Z-Machine with Cosmopolitan"

flonkyflonk — Mon, 14 Apr 2025 10:29:09 +0000

Blank and Berez were definitely thinking about p-machines when they designed the Z machine, and there is a hat tip in the 1980 Creative Computing article describing its inner workings.

[1]: https://mud.co.uk/richard/htflpism.htm

New comment by flonkyflonk in "What Happens When You Kill Your King"

flonkyflonk — Fri, 21 Apr 2023 22:02:30 +0000

It's a review of three books, not a beginners guide to that period. I enjoyed and it made me want to read the books, so I guess it did its job.

It also contains a philosopher related pun which is either one of the best or worst I've ever heard. As great puns should be like that, it's probably the latter.

New comment by flonkyflonk in "Alien Artefacts"

flonkyflonk — Mon, 17 Apr 2023 10:04:14 +0000

I had presumed that, in combination with the footnote ("It asked me to include this..."), it was a joke, albeit one that will date rapidly.

New comment by flonkyflonk in "Books recommended by profitable founders"

flonkyflonk — Fri, 11 Nov 2022 14:25:43 +0000

My immediate thought was a more useful list would be “Books recommended by repeatedly profitable founders”.

New comment by flonkyflonk in "BBC censors its own archives"

flonkyflonk — Tue, 01 Feb 2022 00:17:20 +0000

You can blame James I for that, not the BBC. Blasphemy was banned on the English stage in 1606 (the "Restraint of Players" act) and so later publications are usually expunged.

The BBC production could have been using a later edition (possibly based on the First Folio from 1623) which censors all the references to God and other blasphemy like "zounds", which is short for "God's wounds". You where almost certainly following along with an edition where the editor had restored the original published text from before the act was created.