Hacker News: jasperry

New comment by jasperry in "Commodore 64 released September 1, 1982"

jasperry — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 18:11:44 +0000

In praise of "obsolete" technology: I got my C64 for Christmas 1987, when there were already much more powerful machines available, but the C64 was the only one my parents could afford. Unexpectedly to me, they stretched their budget to get me the disk drive as well.

I used it up into the 90's. There was enough to do and learn with this machine to satisfy a young mind forever, but there was still that nagging inferiority complex that came from not having the latest and greatest.

Despite the fact that genuine hardware improvements have slowed down and software is stuck in the mud, it's easier than ever to get infected by the FOMO that drives the endless churn. But now, a little older and hopefully wiser, I perceive how pointless all that is. When it comes to how I use technology on my own time, I try to mindfully use only what sparks my own joy of learning and creating, and disregard everything else.

New comment by jasperry in "Quest for eternal dock on Wayland – lambdock (C and GTK4 and Lisp Guile Scheme)"

jasperry — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 13:57:31 +0000

Apart from caring that much about docks, this is an inspiring example of how searching for the right language+libraries for a passion project can finally lead to a "just right" solution. It's also very gratifying to see how Guile was able to provide the desired level of performance.

New comment by jasperry in "What's new in Emacs 31.1"

jasperry — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 13:01:26 +0000

That's funny, because our professor didn't tell us that and I remember doing my projects with four terminal windows logged into the server and three of them running separate instances of emacs :D. I wonder how much I bogged down that mid-90s HP-UX machine.

New comment by jasperry in "typ.ing"

jasperry — Sun, 23 Aug 2026 14:34:16 +0000

It's true that the space between sentences should be larger than the space between words, as it is in properly typeset text, though not twice as large. Using two spaces is a way to approximate that when you only have monospaced fonts. It's no longer encouraged in electronic text when using proportional fonts because the rendering software _should_ adjust the spacing itself.

edit: monospaced, not proportional.

New comment by jasperry in "Being ambitious and being a dad"

jasperry — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 00:32:23 +0000

If your ambition is to have lots of free time and not too much responsibility...that's also difficult to balance with having kids.

New comment by jasperry in "Monitors for Work"

jasperry — Sat, 08 Aug 2026 23:05:36 +0000

I guess they meant "blurry" in the sense of "jagged", from using fonts that are 6 pixels wide at a reasonable point size on a 27-inch monitor.

New comment by jasperry in "Monitors for Work"

jasperry — Sat, 08 Aug 2026 20:43:22 +0000

I also was looking for 24-inch 1440p's and was surprised they didn't exist. The closest is probably the 24-inch 1920x1200, which I do like for the 16:10 aspect ratio.

Does anybody else feel that 27-inch monitors are uncomfortably big? It feels less like something to look at work on and more like a movie screen right in front of your face. edit: I see xmodem expresses a similar feeling in a cousin comment.

New comment by jasperry in "Universities would prefer no AI"

jasperry — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 14:48:38 +0000

The analogies to prior technologies aren't insightful. The advent of LLMs has some similarities to the appearance of the internet, and very significant differences. Calling it a "tool" is also far too reductive. What kind of tool that existed before just writes everything for you? Is that the same kind of tool as a nailgun or a text editor? The "proper usage" that has to be learned is to learn to think for yourself before you get used to the word-bot doing all the thinking for you.

New comment by jasperry in "All Logic, No Bite"

jasperry — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 14:26:35 +0000

By the traditional translation of if/then sentences to classical logic, it is. If you want to go further down the rabbit hole, several things are debatable here: When people use if/then sentences, do they really mean material implication, where (A -> B) is equivalent to (~A OR B)? Also, people often use the word "or" in a sense that's closer to exclusive OR, as opposed to the inclusive OR that the logical operator indicates. Overall, can the meaning of a sentence with imperative intent be fully captured by a proposition that is just meant to indicate a state of affairs?

New comment by jasperry in "The AI backlash is only getting started"

jasperry — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 14:53:08 +0000

The proper backlash should be not about its capability level but how it's being used. AI is being adopted to deploy mass surveillance on an unprecedented scale, and to make decisions that affect people's lives without being evaluated by a human first. Those seem worthy of lashing back against.

New comment by jasperry in "Aging and Eye Problems"

jasperry — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 23:28:36 +0000

Retinal detachment is one thing that can cause vision loss as we age. My optometrist says that people like me with a strong nearsighted prescription are especially susceptible to it.

Another is high pressure inside the eye, which can lead to glaucoma. Get your eye exams regularly, folks.

New comment by jasperry in "Nobody understands the point of hybrid cars [video]"

jasperry — Wed, 20 May 2026 13:01:59 +0000

Oh, it's a hybrid Sienna minivian! Now I'm bitter, because I was looking at those for the family a couple years back, but stock was low and they were priced $15k higher than a 3-row gas-guzzling SUV.

Actually, another thing was that the visibility out of the Sienna seemed quite bad.

New comment by jasperry in "Blaise – A modern self-hosting zero-legacy Object Pascal compiler targeting QBE"

jasperry — Sat, 09 May 2026 14:11:09 +0000

That's good to know. Can you point to an example?

New comment by jasperry in "Blaise – A modern self-hosting zero-legacy Object Pascal compiler targeting QBE"

jasperry — Fri, 08 May 2026 13:14:54 +0000

Excited to see another project targeting the QBE back end, from what I can tell it's a great lightweight alternative to LLVM.

New comment by jasperry in "The Secret Life of NaN (2018)"

jasperry — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 23:50:52 +0000

This is super useful, thanks. So if I were implementing a programming language, and wanted to have symbols to specify NaN in source code, I'd really only need quiet NaN, right? Because signaling NaN is supposed to always to raise an exception anyway?

New comment by jasperry in "Acetaminophen vs. ibuprofen"

jasperry — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 03:21:45 +0000

Looking at the Wikipedia article, it seems naproxen is a NSAID like ibuprofen and can cause all the same gastrointestinal issues.

New comment by jasperry in "Acetaminophen vs. ibuprofen"

jasperry — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 03:00:40 +0000

This is some of the most useful information I've received in a while. Like the author, the low overdose threshold of acetaminophen made me avoid it, even though I always take low doses anyway and ibuprofen gives me acid reflux almost every time.

New comment by jasperry in "The seven programming ur-languages (2022)"

jasperry — Sun, 19 Apr 2026 15:11:07 +0000

Does anybody know whether Fortran is older or younger than Algol? From Wikipedia, it looks like they were both developed around 1957. Was there any overlap in the design?

New comment by jasperry in "Solitaire simulator for finding the best strategy: Current record is 8.590%"

jasperry — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 18:43:25 +0000

I don't know of any algorithm to cull non-winnable Klondike games. Playing deal-1 instead of deal-3, and with unlimited flipping of the stock, the win chance is probably close to 50%, but that still makes 2000 in a row statistically impossible.

My guess is that the poster's mom was actually playing FreeCell, in which nearly every game is winnable and people do get streaks like that.

New comment by jasperry in "John Bradley, author of xv, has died"

jasperry — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 20:50:22 +0000

Even though I hadn't thought about xv in decades, as soon as I read the headline, the image of those 3d buttons with the crisp outlines resurfaced from my memory.