Hacker News: glum64

New comment by glum64 in "British Library Legal deposit and web archiving"

glum64 — Sat, 07 Nov 2026 19:13:32 +0000

The BL is not after my site specifically. It is after all sites it "sees" as "UK sites". All I am asking is a definition of what is a UK site.

I am asking for such a definition not because I object to archiving but because placement of my site into a collection of "UK sites" is an obvious mis-classification.

New comment by glum64 in "British Library Legal deposit and web archiving"

glum64 — Sat, 07 Nov 2026 15:46:52 +0000

I think that to identify something one should define it first. That article fails to make a difference.

New comment by glum64 in "British Library Legal deposit and web archiving"

glum64 — Sat, 07 Nov 2026 15:24:38 +0000

Well, that "How we identify UK sites" should be "How we define a UK site".

I have a server hosted in UK by a US company, being a resident and a citizen of neither...

New comment by glum64 in "Iterating Backwards in C"

glum64 — Sat, 31 Oct 2026 07:23:26 +0000

Those situations, albeit rare, are /highly instructive/; they shove the programmer's nose right into a misplaced artistry.

New comment by glum64 in "Iterating Backwards in C"

glum64 — Fri, 30 Oct 2026 08:37:24 +0000

There is no right or wrong, only what works and what does not.

Obviously the author never fixed 10 y.o. bugs at 0430 hrs in a room full of people watching his every finger. In moments like that, the programmer wants to work with the most boring, straightforward code.

Artistry contests is sometging else. I like doing this (iteration [0..9] backwards):

size_t i = 9;

for ( ; i < 10; i -- ) ...

New comment by glum64 in ""I'm on a war footing": Terry Tao and the crisis in math"

glum64 — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 05:50:10 +0000

It is easy. We heard many angry programmers going ballistic about (un)maintainability of slop. That's the same, but very much more complex: imagine a large proof that maybe looks correct but it was written by a mentally unstable person that just committed suicide. What is its value?

New comment by glum64 in "C for Rust programmers"

glum64 — Sun, 11 Oct 2026 07:26:01 +0000

The first language is formative. It gets the programmer to think at a particular level of abstraction. If that level is wrong for the problem at hand, the programmer needs another language.

Write, say, a boot loader, for enlightement.

New comment by glum64 in "Learning another language may be one of the best ways to keep your brain healthy"

glum64 — Sat, 19 Sep 2026 15:46:24 +0000

I am trilingual. All of my languages belong to different language groups; I regularly read and write in both directions. I use all of the three languages every day. I can also bulldoze my way through a text in a fourth language given a dictionary and a reference for its grammar. I can read the alphabet of a fifth language (mostly w/o understanding the sounds that I make, but I am told that I get it right).

I got there 15 years ago. I seem to be unable to learn anything new since.

New comment by glum64 in "C++26: Trivial infinite loops are no longer undefined behaviour"

glum64 — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 17:17:49 +0000

label: goto label;

New comment by glum64 in "US refuses payout for soldiers who died in Iran 'because it isn't a war'"

glum64 — Mon, 07 Sep 2026 11:41:41 +0000

Did anyone else recall Libbie's Song by Patty Smith? How sad.

New comment by glum64 in "JIT Compiling Code in 5μs"

glum64 — Sun, 23 Aug 2026 13:51:14 +0000

I am told there is http://www.ulisp.com/show?2AJI Never used it myself; I cannot attest to the completeness of the implementation.

New comment by glum64 in "JIT Compiling Code in 5μs"

glum64 — Sun, 23 Aug 2026 13:47:48 +0000

It depends on the implementation. CLISP compiles when it is told to.

New comment by glum64 in "JIT Compiling Code in 5μs"

glum64 — Sun, 23 Aug 2026 08:06:49 +0000

Uhm, Common Lisp, where JIT is not only available but is also manageable: the programmer can decide what deserves to be compiled and what does not.

Besides run time, JIT is available also when the code is compiled or loaded for execution (i.e., do you have a compilation or loading speed-up in mind? no problem, you can also compile that speed-up into native machine code, and so ad infinitum...).

New comment by glum64 in "Self hosted email continues to steeply decline"

glum64 — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 11:48:19 +0000

Stopped reading at "The MX record says where the mailbox lives."