Hacker News: greenbit

New comment by greenbit in "Simulating Airband AM Radios"

greenbit — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 09:48:12 +0000

Absolutely smashing article! This kind of quality item is what makes HN worthwhile.

New comment by greenbit in "Show HN: Bodily Oddities"

greenbit — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 22:56:07 +0000

There was a popular (then, anyway) notion that drinking a large glass of water would kill hiccups, and it sometimes seemed to work, but other times it didn't. Long story short, it works when you swallow at just the right time relative to the hiccup cycle. An ordinary swallow starts as a voluntary action but switches over to an automatic involuntary completion. Try to get that start of the involuntary part to happen in the last quarter of the hiccup cycle, a bit before the hiccup arrives. You don't even need to use water, just time a swallow just right and it cancels out the hiccup cycle from retriggering.

New comment by greenbit in "Programing Boulder Dash in forth -serie [video]"

greenbit — Sun, 13 Sep 2026 14:48:08 +0000

Over an hour of over the shoulder view of someone running their development environment, with mild jazz for audio. Screen is too small and changing to fast to really inform.

Maybe stay for the jazz.

New comment by greenbit in "A succession crisis that tore England apart (2023)"

greenbit — Sun, 13 Sep 2026 14:25:37 +0000

The two Matildas in particular!

New comment by greenbit in "A Mathematical Framework for Transformer Circuits (2021)"

greenbit — Sat, 12 Sep 2026 20:41:32 +0000

It's just that HN is currently saturated with this kind of thing

New comment by greenbit in "Show HN: Bodily Oddities"

greenbit — Sat, 12 Sep 2026 19:00:27 +0000

I used to get hiccups often, but acquired the ability to will them to stop in my teen years. Since then it's become an automatic reflex that when something triggers that first hiccup, I "do the thing", and there's never even hiccup #2 ever since.

New comment by greenbit in "Show HN: Bodily Oddities"

greenbit — Sat, 12 Sep 2026 18:51:34 +0000

I scrolled the whole list looking to see if there was anything about being able to stop hiccups by conscious effort alone. Suspect that there would be some overlap between voluntary tube openers and hiccup stoppers, as the internal sensations are kind of similar.

New comment by greenbit in "A Mathematical Framework for Transformer Circuits (2021)"

greenbit — Sat, 12 Sep 2026 17:52:24 +0000

Someone should step up and rectify that, there's a lot of potential for confusion.

New comment by greenbit in "Programming is Art"

greenbit — Mon, 07 Sep 2026 10:46:20 +0000

Just as it's not immediately obvious when looking at a mile of assembly code what particular algorithm is represented, it's similarly difficult to figure out "what's going on" when presented with a pile of C++

For anything much more complicated than undergraduate level academic exercises, the right design media isn't the code itself, it's the modules and their interfaces and how they are interconnected. This sort of thing is much more effectively captured in diagrams than in linear constructs like code.

To put a finer point on it, the design of any non-trivial system is much more effectively communicated as diagrams. You wouldn't try to convey how such a system works to the new hire, by wading through hex dumps of the executables, or even assembly listings. I've been on projects and had 300K (bytes not sloc!) of C++ source dumped on me, though, and something like that is immune to all but the simplest tweaks until you suffer the pain of distilling a set of accurate diagrams of what's going on.

New comment by greenbit in "Programming is Art"

greenbit — Mon, 07 Sep 2026 10:24:43 +0000

Or .. art.

https://www.the-independent.com/arts-entertainment/art/featu...

New comment by greenbit in "Programming is Art"

greenbit — Mon, 07 Sep 2026 10:20:50 +0000

Exactly this. You always have to choose what to leave in, what to take out. "Ways to do it" suggest themselves, and you weigh them, "is it the best fit for this project". A lot of what's left out evaporates into the void, but often enough you stumble onto one of these doesn't-fits that's nonetheless a keeper. You know it'll be useful somewhere else, or as the heart of something new. Sure, you create the product, but it's these other by-the-way ideas that keep one coming back.

New comment by greenbit in "A bizarre Commodore 64 peripheral, a mime, and some pretty bad ads"

greenbit — Sat, 05 Sep 2026 22:45:16 +0000

3/4 of the way into that, they casually let drop that the lead developer was a teenager?

Seems like that might be the most interesting aspect of this

New comment by greenbit in "'Spectacular' Solar Halo Spotted over Devils Tower"

greenbit — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 21:58:59 +0000

That means something, that is important.

New comment by greenbit in "Semiclassical Gravity Efficiently Solves NP-Complete Problems"

greenbit — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 10:14:13 +0000

Shocking..

New comment by greenbit in "Fox to buy Roku"

greenbit — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 10:27:07 +0000

Pretty sure the big A had a problem with older versions of the OS. I'll climb way out on a limb and guess that the API for the apps didn't support embedding control codes in the stream to disable various user controls at points of the content owner's choosing. So yes, the APV app is driving whether to try to force ads on you, buy they couldn't write the app to do that prior to some version of the roku os.

To be completely cynical about it, if APV hadn't demanded the os support, I think some other party probably would have.

New comment by greenbit in "Fox to buy Roku"

greenbit — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 20:58:30 +0000

Apparently leading up to Amazon prime video inflicting ads where no ads had gone before, they put out a requirement to streaming device manufacturers that said devices needed to support the ability of the source to disable certain buttons. Couldn't have people fast-forwarding through the precious ads, now could they?

So when they just stop your show to try to sell insurance or whatever, and you try to ffwd through that noise, you get a little caption that informs you that "fast forward is not available during ads".

New comment by greenbit in "Fox to buy Roku"

greenbit — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 20:02:40 +0000

When roku decided that Amazon was the rightful owner of my fastforward button about a year and a half ago, that nearly got it tossed, but since Netflix was still behaving, I still have my roku. But if (as I suspect) we're about to behold the power of this fully functional ad-server, it WILL go directly into the e-waste.

New comment by greenbit in "Firewood Splitting Simulator"

greenbit — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 00:42:44 +0000

Right? My inner 17 year old wonders where that magic was, back in the day.

New comment by greenbit in "Firewood Splitting Simulator"

greenbit — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 00:36:06 +0000

After the first cord or two, the ground around the block should be covered in chips and splinters. That might be easy to add to the sim. Otoh, it's a fun little sim as is.

New comment by greenbit in "Firewood Splitting Simulator"

greenbit — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 00:29:27 +0000

Not to mention a cooler stack temperature and the increased creosote condensation that brings.

Or that it's just pain heavier to lug into the house.