Hacker News: pgh

New comment by pgh in "Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM"

pgh — Thu, 28 May 2026 14:45:19 +0000

The lack of any subject level standardised US high school certification to prove skill-level for matriculation still boggles my mind. I realise this is fundamentally a curriculum issue, as it’s set at a local level. There’s AP, but that’s not universally available.

New comment by pgh in "JavaScript Trademark Update"

pgh — Sun, 29 Jun 2025 19:09:25 +0000

Yep, and it now features as a supported language in their latest database version. That might be another reason they continue to protect the trademark.

New comment by pgh in "I found a backdoor into my bed"

pgh — Fri, 21 Feb 2025 23:36:03 +0000

If you don’t want IOT for the bed warmer/chiller then there’s this:

https://sleep.me/product/cube-sleep-system

It works rather well, I’m tempted to reverse-engineer the remote control protocol for home automation purposes.

New comment by pgh in "Walmart to buy TV maker Vizio for $2.3B"

pgh — Fri, 23 Feb 2024 15:08:13 +0000

Not any longer, they sold it off in 2020 and only retain a minority share.

New comment by pgh in "Ask HN: Why aren't SQL queries compiled?"

pgh — Tue, 28 Feb 2023 00:41:45 +0000

It’s a declarative language and it’s compiled into an execution "plan", and parameterised queries (bind variables, prepared statements, whatever you want to call them) are passed at runtime. When you dynamically build queries by concatenation you bypass this compilation phase (parse, compute plan, etc.), and spend unnecessary time on near identical queries.

If you want many more gory details, this is a good watch: https://youtu.be/eurwtUhY5fk

New comment by pgh in "Comment on the UK Gov Proposal to Ban “Bespoke” “Sophisticated” Encrypted Phones"

pgh — Mon, 27 Feb 2023 23:30:05 +0000

I hope they’re eventually prepared to legislate against one-time pads, as they’re bespoke and sophisticated and equally impossible to crack.

New comment by pgh in "Toshiba HD-DVD firmware archive"

pgh — Thu, 23 Feb 2023 17:46:28 +0000

I bought an XBox HD-DVD drive expressly for the purpose of, err, "preserving" my movies once the format died. It works well connected to a PC.

New comment by pgh in "Japanese have been producing wood for 700 years without cutting down trees"

pgh — Fri, 25 Nov 2022 02:40:53 +0000

Similar etymology, I would suppose “All mans” https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alamans

New comment by pgh in "Japanese have been producing wood for 700 years without cutting down trees"

pgh — Wed, 23 Nov 2022 12:17:19 +0000

It’s German meaning “commons" - communal lands.

New comment by pgh in "JEP proposed to target JDK 19: 425: Virtual Threads (Preview)"

pgh — Mon, 02 May 2022 18:43:17 +0000

This is very reminiscent of the m:n thread support of Java on Solaris. https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19620-01/805-4031/6j3qv1oej/inde...

New comment by pgh in "Texas Instruments’ Speak and Spell"

pgh — Fri, 01 Nov 2019 14:38:13 +0000

Yes, I gave one to my son when he was 5 years old. He's still playing with it even now he's 10. I bought it used from an eBay seller. They're remarkably physically robust, even after all these years, it's taken plenty of knocks and tumbles. Unlike a tablet or computer, it's also very much offline so we felt completely comfortable letting him use it unattended.

New comment by pgh in "Thoughts on Microsoft's Time-Travel Debugger"

pgh — Sun, 08 Oct 2017 23:07:56 +0000

For Java there’s the Omniscient debugger ... http://omniscientdebugger.github.io/

New comment by pgh in "Why Companies Write Terrible Job Posts"

pgh — Tue, 23 Sep 2014 18:53:11 +0000

From my experience, large corporations have standardized job roles (e.g. SE5) and these have descriptions attached to them, describing the role in the numbing HR verbage shown in the post. This text is used everywhere from hiring, all the way to assessing your performance. Much like legal texts, the meaning is precise in the hands of HR but for anyone else appears stuffy and verbose.

Unfortunately, the hiring manager often has to use this prescribed text and if they are lucky they may have a paragraph added on to describe what the real role entails.

A trip down memory lane with Microsoft Word 1.1

pgh — Tue, 01 Apr 2014 12:53:16 +0000

Article URL: http://shape-of-code.coding-guidelines.com/2014/03/31/a-trip-down-memory-lane-with-microsoft-word-1-1/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7507661

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by pgh in "Many don't have $2,000 for a rainy day"

pgh — Tue, 24 May 2011 20:27:44 +0000

Yes, the UK does have something like FDIC. It's called FSCS http://www.fscs.org.uk. Moreover quite a few EU countries have something similar too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deposit_insurance