Hacker News: mech422

New comment by mech422 in "The foundations of a provably secure operating system (PSOS) (1979) [pdf]"

mech422 — Mon, 18 May 2026 19:09:12 +0000

Never heard of HarmonyOS before - looking at the website, it doesn't seem to mention being capability based, but it is 'distributed' ??

New comment by mech422 in "The foundations of a provably secure operating system (PSOS) (1979) [pdf]"

mech422 — Mon, 18 May 2026 14:39:20 +0000

I'll insert my standard plug for Genode/Sculpt OS here... Capability based, and used/maintained commercially:

https://genode.org/

New comment by mech422 in "Only one side will be the true successor to MS-DOS – Windows 2.x"

mech422 — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 00:47:06 +0000

I mostly remember it from BBS's - it was _the_ way to run a multi-line BBS for a while.

GEOS was pretty cool too - amazing what you can fit in 64K if use a big enough hammer :-D

New comment by mech422 in "Diatec, known for its mechanical keyboard brand FILCO, has ceased operations"

mech422 — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 03:14:44 +0000

You forgot the Stabs!

New comment by mech422 in "The Classic American Diner"

mech422 — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 01:44:17 +0000

yeah - growing up in Claremont NH, right across the connecticut river from Vermont, it was cool to see a few 'local' places in the article

New comment by mech422 in "Ask HN: Why are companies so distrustful of remote employees?"

mech422 — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 02:44:30 +0000

As a counterpoint, I've worked remotely since like 2000 ... It gets easier and more 'normal' every year. So I wouldn't worry about it too much.

New comment by mech422 in "Palantir employees are starting to wonder if they're the bad guys"

mech422 — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 19:51:43 +0000

Sounds like they're having a 'NSA Moment'. After the leaks, there was a Bunch of high profile stories about employees leaving after their neighbors/friends/normies found out the sorts of stuff NSA was up to....

New comment by mech422 in "Windows 9x Subsystem for Linux"

mech422 — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 03:55:44 +0000

I used to use LOADLIN.exe - worked pretty, IIRC

New comment by mech422 in "What killed the Florida orange?"

mech422 — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 19:42:39 +0000

I never had one, but apperently they tasted much better then the current variety (which IIRC, is in danger of suffering the same fate)

IIRC, there was actually a huge marketing push because people wouldn't each the current variety ?

PS - the old one didn't go 100% extinct, and you can get small numbers of them from specialty growers. Youtube has videos of people trying them (1)

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9ZtvpBoXzI

New comment by mech422 in "Tell HN: I'm sick of AI everything"

mech422 — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 07:33:28 +0000

LOL - True Dat !! Thanks!

New comment by mech422 in "Tell HN: I'm sick of AI everything"

mech422 — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 04:14:16 +0000

The sad part wasn't the bubble bursting...

It was watching all the potential being squandered and the internet basically being relegated to click farming and selling people crap they don't need.

All the really cool stuff seems to have died with the bubble...

New comment by mech422 in "Anthropic takes $5B from Amazon and pledges $100B in cloud spending in return"

mech422 — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 18:47:46 +0000

It has been done... We used to get our POP gear built out from Dell (?) in shipping containers - pre-racked, wired, and cooled - just add network/power feeds. We'd have them dropped places we needed more capacity but there wasn't space available in the DC.

New comment by mech422 in "Why Crystal, 10 Years Later: Performance and Joy"

mech422 — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 21:04:19 +0000

Thanks for the overview - I'd never heard of Kemal, nor the ARM support!

New comment by mech422 in "GitHub's Fake Star Economy"

mech422 — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 18:44:48 +0000

Sounds like 'advogato' for github... Social trust metrics

https://web.archive.org/web/20170715120119/http://advogato.o...

New comment by mech422 in "Apple TV's Upcoming Cyberpunk Series Will Be the Matrix Meets Blade Runner"

mech422 — Sun, 19 Apr 2026 04:25:08 +0000

Huh - I don't remember Atmosphere ... just VRML ?

Thanks for the link!

New comment by mech422 in "Crystal 1.20.0 Is Released"

mech422 — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 23:46:43 +0000

Oh .. Hopefully, they can get sorted out.

Thanks - I appreciate the update :-)

New comment by mech422 in "Crystal 1.20.0 Is Released"

mech422 — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 18:32:21 +0000

Nice to see Crystal is still going strong 10+ years later ! I was never a Ruby coder, but I'm surprised it didn't get more adoption. Is there a reason ? I figured it was supposed to be like 'Ruby++' and eventually most Ruby projects would migrate to it ?

New comment by mech422 in "Slop Cop"

mech422 — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 04:11:21 +0000

Yeah - writing styles have really changed over the years. Last time I ran a business document thru Grammarly, I was told it wasn't written at a 6(8?) grade level and was too complex :-P

When I first started out, I was taught you use passive voice in proposals (eg 'a program will be written..' not 'I will write a program...') since you didn't know who was actually going to write it. I can't imagine how that would go over now...

New comment by mech422 in "I built a 3D printing business and ran it for 8 months"

mech422 — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 01:00:14 +0000

yeah - that's like PCBWay, et al. You can make boards yourself (even etch your own if you want to). But a lot of people opt. for the convenience of out-sourcing it.

New comment by mech422 in "Show HN: Marky – A lightweight Markdown viewer for agentic coding"

mech422 — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 06:55:16 +0000

Yeah - I've tried a bunch of them, and nothing's really perfect but those seem to be good enough for lightweight use.