Hacker News: loph

New comment by loph in "Screenshots of Old Desktop OSes"

loph — Tue, 12 May 2026 16:38:24 +0000

That page does not include VMS DECwindows Motif, so here is a link:

https://www.xanthos.se/~joachim/OpenVMS.html

VMS DECwindows Motif 1.0 was released in August 1991; it is difficult for me to comprehend that was 35(!) years ago. I still have a mouse pad from the release party.

New comment by loph in "NIST was 5 μs off UTC after last week's power cut"

loph — Mon, 22 Dec 2025 22:02:26 +0000

Only Boulder servers lost sync.

To say NIST was off is clickbait hyperbole.

This page: https://tf.nist.gov/tf-cgi/servers.cgi shows that NIST has > 16 NTP servers on IPv4, of those, 5 are in Boulder and were affected by the power failure. The rest were fine.

However, most entities should not be using these top-level servers anyway, so this should have been a problem for exactly nobody.

IMHO, most applications should use pool.ntp.org

New comment by loph in "Ask HN: Is it just me or techno-optimism died in the past few years?"

loph — Sun, 07 Dec 2025 16:19:09 +0000

IMHO, "tech optimism" reached its peak in 1969 when Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the Moon.

We watched them walk on the Moon on live TV.

After seeing them perform that impossible feat, it seemed like we could use technology to do anything.

As far as the Digital and/or Internet revolutions, the changes have been so fast and widespread that people have not come to terms with them, at least I haven't, and I've been pretty deep into both.

My particular concerns are around atrophy of basic skills (reading, research, writing, etc.,) the authenticity/trustworthiness of "knowledge" obtained from various Internet sources (misinformation, fake news, deep fakes,) and lack of personal contact and interaction in a world where peoples' only connection to others is through a screen (fakebook, instagram, tiktok, etc..)

AI is not going to make any of those any better.

I would not describe my feelings as "dismay" or "fear" but rather of "extreme caution" -- if that makes any sense.

With that said, I'm going to step away from this computer and go play with my dog.

New comment by loph in "OMSCS Open Courseware"

loph — Sat, 06 Dec 2025 20:02:01 +0000

I have taken three of those classes as part of the Online Master of Cybersecurity program. They were all excellent. I can say that the assignments were an important part of the learning experience, for instance the practical experience of attacking weak RSA keys.

I would not let the lack of assignments, tests, and quizzes stop you from trying these if you are interested. At a minimum, they would give you a feeling for what the program/s are like, and possibly encourage you to enroll into the online degree program, which is an exceptional value.

New comment by loph in "Why I stopped using JSON for my APIs"

loph — Mon, 01 Dec 2025 23:58:08 +0000

How many times has this problem been "solved"?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DCE/RPC

DCE/RPC worked in 1993, and still does today.

Protocol buffers is just another IDL.

New comment by loph in "TPUs vs. GPUs and why Google is positioned to win AI race in the long term"

loph — Thu, 27 Nov 2025 16:08:34 +0000

This is highly relevant:

"Meta in talks to spend billions on Google's chips, The Information reports"

https://www.reuters.com/business/meta-talks-spend-billions-g...

New comment by loph in "1973 implementation of Wordle was published by DEC (2022)"

loph — Fri, 07 Nov 2025 17:24:27 +0000

I still have a PDP-11 Programming Card I bought at that Digital retail store. That was an interesting place. As I recall, there also was a AT&T store in that mall where you could buy... telephones.

New comment by loph in "1973 implementation of Wordle was published by DEC (2022)"

loph — Fri, 07 Nov 2025 15:39:06 +0000

This book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASIC_Computer_Games

I was exposed to this book in about 1975 when I was in detention in the math teacher's room. It set me on a path to programming.

New comment by loph in "State of Terminal Emulators in 2025: The Errant Champions"

loph — Mon, 03 Nov 2025 22:20:13 +0000

The list does not include DECterm.

https://stuff.mit.edu/afs/net/dev/system/pmax_ul3/srvd.74/us...

Maybe it's hard to find these days. However it had the best VT220 emulation I have seen running on X Window System.

I will note that I have not seen a terminal emulator that supports the "double wide" and "double high, double wide" character modes of the VT100. Those giant letters were kinda fun. (#3, #4, and #6 if my memory serves me right.)

New comment by loph in "Why do some radio towers blink?"

loph — Tue, 28 Oct 2025 21:56:23 +0000

It's not just radio towers. I've seen aircraft warning lights on tall buildings, particularly those near airports.

see https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-14/chapter-I/subchapter-E...

New comment by loph in "Ban me at the IP level if you don't like me"

loph — Tue, 26 Aug 2025 14:53:09 +0000

The TL;DR is that there are malicious browser plugins that make the browser into a web scraping bot.

I see this all the time in web server logs; it is recognizable as a GET on a deep link coming from some random IP, usually residential.

New comment by loph in "People stuck using ancient Windows computers"

loph — Sun, 24 Aug 2025 19:35:28 +0000

Some businesses are still using DEC PDP-11s, first released in the 1970s. Those are even more "ancient." Many of these are used for industrial controls, among other applications.

see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30505421

The article does not mention what OS is being used, but RT-11 was designed for "real-time" applications. That was released in 1973, so over 50 years ago.

New comment by loph in "Walkie-Textie Wireless Communicator"

loph — Mon, 18 Aug 2025 17:47:51 +0000

Thanks. I'll stick to a walkie-talkie. FRS radios are cheap, easily obtainable, and will work as far or farther than this 915 MHz stuff.

If you get into deep shit, some amateur FM handy-talkies are IMHO more likely to be able to get you help. Or perhaps T-Mobile's T-Satellite service if you are headed somewhere really remote.

Unpopular opinion: Meshtastic is a solution in search of a problem.

New comment by loph in "The X Window System didn't immediately have X terminals"

loph — Mon, 23 Jun 2025 18:53:48 +0000

They were inexpensive when compared with a VAXstation II/GPX!

New comment by loph in "The X Window System didn't immediately have X terminals"

loph — Mon, 23 Jun 2025 15:12:49 +0000

It was the interoperability of X Window System devices that enabled this.

Your X server (e.g. a X terminal) could display applications running on a variety of other vendors' hardware and operating systems. The specification enabled this interoperability. Apps running on SunOS could display on VAX workstations, and vice versa (as long as you had TCP/IP installed!)

The advantage X terminals had was that they were relatively inexpensive to buy and operate. Most did not require management, however the CPU cost moved into a computer room and you needed a pretty fast network to get reasonable performance.

New comment by loph in "PWM flicker: Invisible light that's harming our health?"

loph — Wed, 18 Jun 2025 18:31:19 +0000

I can tell you that lights strobing exacerbate my migraines. Even 120 hertz from fluorescent lights will affect me. I have mitigated this in the past by adding incandescent lights in my office, or demanding to work near a window. LED lamps are no good, as another commenter posted, even the simplest ones strobe. Incandescent bulbs grow harder to find as time goes on. Progress?

New comment by loph in "The Atomic Airplane"

loph — Mon, 02 Jun 2025 17:17:58 +0000

This is related.

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

my understanding is that the area is still a bit "hot" with radiation.

New comment by loph in "Exploring Polymorphism in C: Lessons from Linux and FFmpeg's Code Design (2019)"

loph — Mon, 10 Mar 2025 14:23:23 +0000

My recollection (which could be rusty, it has been >30 years) is that the Motif API, coded in C, implemented a kind of polymorphism.

New comment by loph in "Public Access OpenVMS System"

loph — Tue, 28 Jan 2025 16:12:13 +0000

VAX Notes. Perhaps the original groupware. Not really useful without collaborators any more, since DEC is dead and took that cultural fork with it.

See https://thoughtsofanidlemind.com/2012/12/14/vax-notes/

and the referenced paper

https://thoughtsofanidlemind.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/...

New comment by loph in "Most Influential Papers in Computer Science History"

loph — Thu, 23 Jan 2025 14:15:15 +0000

Ken Thompson's talk (later a paper) "reflections on trusting trust."

https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/358198.358210