Hacker News: mayoff

New comment by mayoff in "How old is Ann?"

mayoff — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 22:32:21 +0000

> (Mary, at 16, was twice her age)

The problem states “She _is_ twice as old as Ann was”, not “She _was_ twice as old as Ann was”.

New comment by mayoff in "More Bounce to the Ounce"

mayoff — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 19:15:29 +0000

This idea is a significant part of Anathem by Neal Stephenson.

New comment by mayoff in "Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software"

mayoff — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 21:27:02 +0000

Here’s what Tim Schafer said about selling Double Fine to Microsoft at the time:

> "I think it's perfect for us, because we can just focus on doing our inspired weird games, and not worry about how we're going to get our next deal. We aren't chasing down our next funding and thinking about how many more months of funding we have all the time."

https://gameinformer.com/2019/06/23/tim-schafer-on-microsoft...

New comment by mayoff in "CarPlay Is Additive"

mayoff — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 01:30:08 +0000

I’m with Casey on this: I will not buy a car without CarPlay. Of course, I haven’t bought a car since 2013. That one is a Tesla Model S and I think its UI is pretty decent for maps and playing audio, but I have rented enough cars since then to know that I would much prefer CarPlay support. If I had to replace my car today, I’d probably buy a Volvo EX90, which is the electric version of the XC90 Casey talks about.

New comment by mayoff in "In memory of the man who put red and green squiggles under words"

mayoff — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 00:42:14 +0000

At my office we refer to these (in IntelliJ) as ketchup, mustard, and relish (depending on the color).

New comment by mayoff in "Stateless Actors"

mayoff — Sat, 30 May 2026 20:14:38 +0000

This article is about actors in the Swift programming language, and I’d answer the question (“is a stateless actor pointless?”) differently: there is no such thing as a stateless actor in Swift.

Every actor in Swift conforms to the Actor protocol, which has one requirement: an instance property named `unownedExecutor`. Swift uses this property implicitly when, for example, the program calls a method on the actor from outside the actor.

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/swift/actor/unowne...

(One could also argue that, because every actor type is a reference type, every actor also has its identity as part of its state.)

New comment by mayoff in "Integer Overflow Checking Cost"

mayoff — Sat, 02 May 2026 08:04:23 +0000

In Swift (Apple’s C++ successor), the normal operators (`+`, `-`, `*`) trap on overflow for integer types. If you want twos complement wrapping, you can use `&+`, `&-`, and `&*`.

Given that Apple has been making its own CPU cores for years now, I suspect overflowing checking on Apple CPUs is virtually free (aside from code size).

New comment by mayoff in ""Parse, don't validate" through the years with C++"

mayoff — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 15:50:47 +0000

The second sentence of your summary is fine, but I don’t like the first sentence:

> Use your language’s type system to parse unstructured inputs.

We don’t use the type system to parse. We use the type system to provide evidence (also called a proof or a witness) that parsing was successful, and we rely on the language’s access control facilities (public/private) and the soundness of its type system to prevent fabrication of false evidence.

New comment by mayoff in "You can beat the binary search"

mayoff — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 15:30:11 +0000

In the Intel CPU + cold cache case, the quad search matters. In the other three cases, only the SIMD matters.

New comment by mayoff in "You can beat the binary search"

mayoff — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 15:28:32 +0000

Quaternary search effectively performs both of the next loop iteration’s possible comparisons simultaneously with the current iteration’s comparison. This is a little more complex than simple loop unrolling.

Regardless, both kinds of search are O(log N) with different constants. The constants don’t matter so much in algorithms class but in the real world they can matter a lot.

New comment by mayoff in "MacBook Neo and how the iPad should be"

mayoff — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 08:17:31 +0000

While plenty about the iPad situation sucks, my biggest gripe is the discontinuation of the Smart Keyboard Folio. This was the one that only had a keyboard, no trackpad, but could fold all the way back, which the Magic Keyboard (with trackpad) cannot. The Smart Keyboard Folio was just the perfect form factor: there when you need it, discretely out of the way when you didn’t. And when you were using it, the iPad was perfectly balanced to sit on your lap even in cramped circumstances, which the Magic Keyboard is most definitely not.

Sure, get rid of the Magic Keyboard with its unnecessary trackpad. But bring back the Smart Keyboard Folio. It was a delight.

New comment by mayoff in "Gone (Almost) Phishin'"

mayoff — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 01:53:36 +0000

It's kind of crazy that the IRS (among other United States government agencies) uses ID.me for account management. The .me domain belongs to Montenegro.

New comment by mayoff in "Windows native app development is a mess"

mayoff — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 19:03:22 +0000

How to add a button in SwiftUI:

    Button(“Click Me”) { buttonWasClicked() }

New comment by mayoff in "Zero ZGC4: A Better Graphing Calculator for School and Beyond"

mayoff — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 18:02:14 +0000

When my daughter finally needed one of those godawful monopoly-priced calculators for school, we went to the nearest pawn shop and found a TI 84 Plus, opened, for $40, and a TI 84 Plus CE in its unopened (but roughed up) original packaging for $65.

Live from GDC 1989: 21 Hours of Vintage Talks from Early Gaming Luminaries

mayoff — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 06:59:25 +0000

Article URL: https://gamehistory.org/cgdc-1989-tapes/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47475111

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by mayoff in "New iPad Air, powered by M4"

mayoff — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 18:20:24 +0000

Somehow Woot still has a supply of the Smart Keyboard Folio for certain 11" iPads Pro/Air.

My wife is still using an older gen 11" iPad Pro and her keyboard folio stopped working (they fall apart after a few years ), so I took a gamble and ordered one. It arrived in the original, sealed packaging. As far as I can tell, it had never been opened, and it is perfect condition and works great. My wife is very happy. I bought a second one for when this one falls apart.

https://www.amazon.com/Apple-Smart-Keyboard-11-inch-iPad-Pro...

New comment by mayoff in "This time is different"

mayoff — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 16:46:21 +0000

Most of the “delivery” (getting it from the factory to its final installed location) was done by machine: forklifts, cranes, ships, trucks, and (I'm guessing) a motorized lift on the back of the delivery truck.

New comment by mayoff in "What if writing tests was a joyful experience? (2023)"

mayoff — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 01:36:29 +0000

If you’re a Swift programmer, the swift-snapshot-testing package is a great implementation of these ideas.

https://github.com/pointfreeco/swift-snapshot-testing

New comment by mayoff in "Data centers in space makes no sense"

mayoff — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 05:40:00 +0000

For an electrification company.

New comment by mayoff in "Teaching my neighbor to keep the volume down"

mayoff — Sun, 01 Feb 2026 21:27:13 +0000

I'm pretty sure you meant something other than "buildings under about 6 feet".