Hacker News: ptek

New comment by ptek in "Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore"

ptek — Tue, 26 May 2026 03:29:32 +0000

If only Amiga assembler books hit those type of numbers.

New comment by ptek in "Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore"

ptek — Tue, 26 May 2026 03:28:15 +0000

Are you thinking of getting in to NeXTSTEP 3.3/OpenStep 4.2?

New comment by ptek in "Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore"

ptek — Tue, 26 May 2026 03:27:33 +0000

Yes I have both copies, prefer the ANSI C second edition my self. I brought another second hand C programming book and when I was working through the exercises in the mid 2000s the GNU C compiler kept issuing warnings as the code used gets() to read strings. :D

New comment by ptek in "Meta and TikTok let harmful content rise to drove engagement, say whistleblowers"

ptek — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 06:24:28 +0000

If you make 20 billion and the fine is 0.2 billion…. I don’t think they care about their users mental health.

New comment by ptek in "Have a Fucking Website"

ptek — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 06:21:49 +0000

Try switching to desktop mode

New comment by ptek in "Have a fucking website"

ptek — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 06:20:52 +0000

Www.neocities.org is waiting. It’s a small fun site to practice with :)

New comment by ptek in "10% of Firefox crashes are caused by bitflips"

ptek — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 02:29:08 +0000

So does this mean bool true = 3 or should bool true = 5?

This will bloat the code a bit.

New comment by ptek in "Amiga Pointer Archive"

ptek — Fri, 09 Jan 2026 20:32:05 +0000

Ahhh Devs:system-configuration or SYS:system-configuration at 232 bytes. I remember being 11 and trying to make my own compilation disks and trying to figure out what file kept the system prefs on my A500. Don’t forget to copy the RAM: handler from L: if you wanted to use RAM:

  I used Kindwords to make my first compilation disks until I discovered Diskmaster 1.3 and then later on Diskmaster 1.3 and shell commands. 

  This is a nice pointer collection, I used to enjoy putting in compilation disks and seeing the 4 system colours and the 4 mouse sprite colours. I also remember the compilation disks that used “rainbow” or “stripes” which changed the background or text colour on each scanline.


  Bonus points for the kiwi pointer (personal NZ bias).

New comment by ptek in "Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban"

ptek — Thu, 11 Dec 2025 06:29:09 +0000

I thought you had to use your real name when posting on USENET back in the day before spoofing.

New comment by ptek in "AdBlock and Signal are for terrorists, according to French govt (2023) [video]"

ptek — Thu, 27 Nov 2025 02:59:12 +0000

Was contracted to a New Zealand government department and all the Edge browsers had AdBlock installed by default. I guess the New Zealand government that I worked for is a terrorist organisation. The department that I worked for did take other peoples money though. (Won't give any more information than that).

New comment by ptek in "Dosbian: Boot to DOSBox on Raspberry Pi"

ptek — Tue, 21 Oct 2025 03:00:37 +0000

AutoCAD R12 here I come

New comment by ptek in "The Forklift Certified License"

ptek — Fri, 26 Sep 2025 06:31:46 +0000

Would have been good if the license doesn't allow training in commercial LLMs :/

New comment by ptek in "Homeowner baffled after washing machine uses 3.6GB of internet data a day (2024)"

ptek — Thu, 25 Sep 2025 04:35:54 +0000

I wonder if Retro washing machines and refrigerators (non-IOT) will go up in price because of this?

New comment by ptek in "Interview with Japanese Demoscener 0b5vr"

ptek — Sat, 06 Sep 2025 09:27:20 +0000

There were a lot of global crews during c64 days and a few crews on the Amiga. In New Zealand on the Amiga a lot of the warez and compilations had importros on them. So was a small coding scene here but not as big as Europe or during C64 days.

New comment by ptek in "A gentle introduction to CP/M"

ptek — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 01:19:27 +0000

You are correct with fast followers: Google to Alta vista, Apple to Nokia.

New comment by ptek in "A gentle introduction to CP/M"

ptek — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 01:14:36 +0000

I’m still waiting for Patrick Rothfuss to finish his third book as well in the kingkiller chronicles.

New comment by ptek in "16colo.rs: ANSI/ASCII art archive"

ptek — Sun, 27 Jul 2025 15:20:13 +0000

When you couldn’t afford a ps1 or your DOS pc was shit. https://16colo.rs/pack/fire-43/AVG-LARA.ANS

New comment by ptek in "Australians to face age checks from search engines"

ptek — Wed, 02 Jul 2025 10:14:46 +0000

Hmm people will go back to using lingerie catalogs or start using LLM prompts?

New comment by ptek in "Australians to face age checks from search engines"

ptek — Wed, 02 Jul 2025 07:44:21 +0000

Are you 18 or older?

You don’t get that notification show up when you buy alcohol or cigarettes at a shop, would have been easier being a minor buying beer. The porn companies know what they are doing or they would create a adults robots.txt and published a RFC. Hope they won’t ask for age verification for the shroomery

New comment by ptek in "Australians to face age checks from search engines"

ptek — Wed, 02 Jul 2025 07:33:46 +0000

Yeah. Can’t watch king of the streets or some video game trailers.