Hacker News: howerj

New comment by howerj in "Executable Is a SQLite Database"

howerj — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 14:34:39 +0000

I've wanted to do something like this for quite a while! Of course I wanted to make my own OS, language and DB from scratch in order to do it, so naturally I've never gotten around to it. It goes to show that there is nothing new under the sun.

New comment by howerj in "NHS staff refusing to use FDP over Palantir ethical concerns"

howerj — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 17:00:33 +0000

Yes, the foundations of the constitutions are not the same, one of them has a mostly codified constitution, the other has a mostly uncodified (uncodified but mostly written down, that is not a contradiction!) constitution. They both have constitutions however, so the phase "Britain has no constitution" is wrong. To be clear, I am not saying that is good or bad that Britain has an uncodified constitution, just that from my definition (and most political and legal definitions) of what a constitution is the phrase "Britain has no constitution" is wrong. Britain of course has laws, and laws about how new laws are made, etcetera. This forms a constitution.

New comment by howerj in "NHS staff refusing to use FDP over Palantir ethical concerns"

howerj — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 16:25:55 +0000

I think you have diverged too much...well from reality, in order to try to prove a point. Do you think most people, or lawyers, or judges in the UK spend their time trying to enumerate all the laws of the land before they proceed in their court cases? Do you think that people think that the UK system of government is illegitimate? What point are you trying to make? Because it is not grounded in reality. You can debate the merits of a codified constitution versus an uncodified one, but the UK does have a constitution, the vast majority of which is codified into many documents. The following two links might help you:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncodified_constitution

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_(political_norm)#Un...

Note the second one applies to the US - a country with a mostly but not completely codified constitution.

New comment by howerj in "NHS staff refusing to use FDP over Palantir ethical concerns"

howerj — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 15:55:49 +0000

I believe interpretation is a part of the definition of a constitution, you do not, we have different definitions, oh well. I also believe the uncodified/codified distinction is not binary, it is obvious that the US constitution is far more codified than the UK constitution, the two are at opposite extremes.

New comment by howerj in "NHS staff refusing to use FDP over Palantir ethical concerns"

howerj — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 13:03:15 +0000

I find it weird that people would downvote this, I know you should not complain about it, but this comment is correct. The UK does have a (uncodified) constitution. Also of note; even countries with a codified constitution have parts that are uncodified.

64-bit release of CDB by DJB

howerj — Tue, 21 Oct 2025 16:46:09 +0000

Article URL: https://cdb.cr.yp.to/index.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45658003

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by howerj in "No science, no startups: The innovation engine we're switching off"

howerj — Tue, 14 Oct 2025 10:36:38 +0000

The UK has an extremely entrepreneurial culture as well, which is shown in the data (number of businesses registered, number of startups, both per capita), it ranks very highly, along with other indicators of innovation, it might not be as entrepreneurial as the USA, but globally it ranks very highly. The fact that you mention the Soviet Union and its central planned economy and the (outdated and stereotyped view of the) British class system almost like they are equivalent really undermines your point as well.

New comment by howerj in "Forty-Four Esolangs: The Art of Esoteric Code"

howerj — Mon, 08 Sep 2025 14:53:45 +0000

Other's have mentioned that Forth isn't an esoteric language, however if you want a Forth written for an esoteric language I have written one for SUBLEQ (see https://esolangs.org/wiki/Subleq). Although SUBLEQ is more of an esoteric machine than a language, it also sort of qualifies as one (and has an entry on the esolangs Wiki).

It's available at https://howerj.github.io/subleq.htm if you want to try it online.

New comment by howerj in "What Microchip doesn't (officially) tell you about the VSC8512"

howerj — Tue, 08 Jul 2025 16:43:33 +0000

I have heard that this is how it is done before. I wonder how that works with a third party? If they happened to come across the binaries some how they could demand the source. I also wonder if that clause is enforceable.

New comment by howerj in "APL Interpreter – An implementation of APL, written in Haskell (2024)"

howerj — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 23:13:56 +0000

Is there an implementation of an APL language (or other any other array language) written in *readable* C that is around 1000 LoC? There are for LISP, FORTH, Prolog, TCL and the like.

New comment by howerj in "LFSR CPU Running Forth"

howerj — Mon, 02 Jun 2025 12:03:27 +0000

Ah yeah, I'm not looking for Forth work, it would be nice, but not likely. Just C/C#/.Net/Linux and Embedded work.

New comment by howerj in "LFSR CPU Running Forth"

howerj — Mon, 02 Jun 2025 10:00:11 +0000

I had a lot of fun writing this and it is great to see this submitted here, I just did it to see what was possible. It is an incredibly niche processor with little practical use. If you have any questions let me know.

I have also started contracting in the UK and I'm looking for work, details are in my profile.

New comment by howerj in "BS 1363 British Plugs and Sockets"

howerj — Thu, 10 Apr 2025 08:08:02 +0000

I find those Schuko / Europlugs terrible, they never fit correctly (wildly different manufacturing tolerances between countries) and break easily.

New comment by howerj in "MilliForth-6502: The smallest Forth real programming language for 6502"

howerj — Fri, 28 Mar 2025 17:57:43 +0000

I know that's what I do! It's a fun exercise, and Forth is uniquely suited to writing Forth interpreters. Forth really only has a few areas where it excels and they are incredibly niche ones at that.

New comment by howerj in "Washington BANS Britain from sharing any US Military intelligence with Ukraine"

howerj — Wed, 05 Mar 2025 09:31:09 +0000

I do not know how this can be justified at all. It does not make any sense.

New comment by howerj in "Let’s code a TCP/IP stack, 1: Ethernet and ARP (2016)"

howerj — Tue, 04 Mar 2025 15:24:02 +0000

The full quote would be "The dmac and smac are pretty self-explanatory fields. They contain the MAC addresses of the communicating parties (destination and source, respectively).", it does explain them. However, this is an article about how to make a network stack, it is safe to assume the reader should know something about networking before hand.

New comment by howerj in "How the U.K. broke its own economy"

howerj — Tue, 04 Mar 2025 08:49:21 +0000

As far as I am aware, this is just straight up is not true. Do you have a source for this? Because if the financial sector in the UK halved and moved into the Netherlands and Germany the UK would be doing much, much worse, and Germany much better economically.

See:

https://www.euronews.com/business/2024/01/31/brexit-four-yea...

which is a source that is not going to be biased towards Brexit success, and instead against it (not that there was any success in it, but still).

New comment by howerj in "SVC16: Simplest Virtual Computer"

howerj — Mon, 16 Dec 2024 00:34:40 +0000

Here's a Forth that runs on SUBLEQ https://github.com/howerj/subleq, there's also a file system for it https://github.com/howerj/ffs.

New comment by howerj in "The guidance system and computer of the Minuteman III nuclear missile"

howerj — Tue, 20 Aug 2024 09:35:10 +0000

Here's a 16-bit bit-serial computer I made and tested on an FGPA https://github.com/howerj/bit-serial. If you look at `bit.c` it looks like an ordinary 16-bit Accumulator based Virtual Machine with a few odd instructions that make more sense when you know how a bit serial CPU works, nothing special about it. However the VHDL in `bit.vhd` shows how all those instructions are processed in a bit serial fashion, how data is fetched and stored in shift registers, etcetera.

The bit serial CPU in `bit.vhd` is actually customizable, you can make a 32-bit, a 14-bit, or a 27-bit CPU if you want from that VHDL quite easily.

New comment by howerj in "Second factor SMS: Worse than its reputation"

howerj — Thu, 11 Jul 2024 15:47:55 +0000

Same with Natwest / Virgin. I do not think I have ever verified anything with SMS banking wise, sometimes you get alerts via SMS though.