Hacker News: ralphc

New comment by ralphc in "Copy That Floppy – Cambridge guide for preserving data from fragile floppy disks"

ralphc — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 22:39:23 +0000

The stickers that wrapped around the edge of the floppy and would never stay stuck...

New comment by ralphc in "Apple is going to raise device prices, but when?"

ralphc — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 18:13:20 +0000

Never mind, I saw the story on the front page. wah-wah sad trombone for me.

New comment by ralphc in "Apple is going to raise device prices, but when?"

ralphc — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 17:50:19 +0000

Um did something happen? I'm pondering an M5 make to replace my perfectly-working-but-won't-be-able-to-get-software-for i9 MBP.

New comment by ralphc in "Emacs 31 is around the corner: The changes I'm daily driving"

ralphc — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 21:02:53 +0000

One advantage of vi is that even though emacs is available on all those systems, vi is actually installed on all of those, setting aside windows. If you know rudimentary vi you can walk up to any of those machines and edit a configuration file well enough to work.

New comment by ralphc in "All about the IBM 1130 Computing System"

ralphc — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 19:14:04 +0000

How do you have non-IBM clones of something like this? It sounds like it would break every law ever made about copying hardware, BIOS, everything. And IBM would come after you with an army of lawyers.

New comment by ralphc in "Lisp's Influence on Ruby"

ralphc — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 18:05:49 +0000

Common Lisp, and even more so Racket, has reader macros. With a little help from LLMs you might be able to get a Ruby-like language that translates into Lisp.

As a last resort look at Racket's "Rhombus" language, it's basically an infix, Python-like syntax on top of Racket. You can use that or see how they pull it off and add Ruby constructs to it.

New comment by ralphc in "Warm up your MacBook (2019)"

ralphc — Thu, 28 May 2026 04:36:12 +0000

I still use a 2019 MacBook Pro, in 2026 I found the best way to warm it up was to use it daily and not blow the dust out of it for 7 years. After I opened it up and did that it's running a lot cooler.

New comment by ralphc in "macOS 27 won’t be supporting Intel anymore"

ralphc — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 19:55:43 +0000

If Intel virtualization works for Docker, why doesn't it work for things like VMWare or VirtualBox for Intel VM's?

New comment by ralphc in "Category Theory Illustrated – Orders"

ralphc — Sun, 19 Apr 2026 00:22:40 +0000

I've barely read about Category Theory, but isn't it a just a slightly more mathy version of what programmers have been doing all along? Going up and down levels of abstraction, graphs, functions that transform one type of "object" into another?

New comment by ralphc in "Dr. Dobb's Developer Library DVD 6 (2010)"

ralphc — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 21:44:04 +0000

Other magazines mentioned but no love for Computer Language Magazine? It held its own with DDJ when it came to software and theoretical topics.

New comment by ralphc in "Native Instant Space Switching on macOS"

ralphc — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 21:05:46 +0000

Works on my Intel mac running Sonoma 14.8.2. I use Omakub on my Linux machine and missed this when on my mac.

New comment by ralphc in "Oracle slashes 30k jobs"

ralphc — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 17:03:57 +0000

I didn't save the tweet I saw it in but I saved the joke - "I wish I had enough money to run Oracle instead of Postgres." "Why do you want to do that?" "I don't, I just wish I had enough money to."

New comment by ralphc in "Windows 11's Start menu was built using React – now switching to native WinUI"

ralphc — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 14:28:03 +0000

The big headline for our household will be to pause updates as long as needed. My wife is a CPA and having to manually delay and delay updates during the end of tax season(s) (March for corporates, April for personal, then again six months later) is an extra, unnecessary stress during those times for her.

New comment by ralphc in "Show HN: Jido 2.0, Elixir Agent Framework"

ralphc — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 00:15:45 +0000

I'm in the same boat as waynesonfire and I'm afraid this doesn't answer the question sufficiently. What do you do with an agent? What's a concrete example vs. typing in a chat box.

New comment by ralphc in "Ask HN: Chromebook leads for K-8 school in need?"

ralphc — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 15:01:35 +0000

I don't know your autonomy with regards to IT within the confines of your classroom but if you can't install ad blockers on the Chromebooks can you set up something like PiHole and direct DNS traffic through it? It won't solve the overall slowness of the Chromebooks but it will help with some web sites.

New comment by ralphc in "Descent, ported to the web"

ralphc — Sun, 15 Feb 2026 22:53:59 +0000

I had a Spaceball Avenger which made it so intuitive to play.

From my old reddit post about it, "The Spaceball Avenger is a gaming peripheral. It has the usual buttons, but the big ball is used for six degrees of freedom movement. With pressure sensors the ball is pushed up/down, left/right, and in/out for X, Y and Z axes. The ball can also be rotated for pitch, yaw and roll.

Plugged into the computer's serial port it came with drivers for games such as Doom, for which it was a good controller, but the Spaceball really shined for the Descent family of games. Descent is a FPS with no gravity, where your ship moves in ALL directions, and controlling with with the Spaceball feels like you're holding the spaceship in your hand and you're just moving it to where you want it to go."

You can see it here https://www.reddit.com/r/retrobattlestations/comments/gmusxs...

New comment by ralphc in "Asahi Linux with Sway on the MacBook Air M2 (2024)"

ralphc — Fri, 26 Dec 2025 03:43:24 +0000

Rarely mentioned is the audio, the Mac's bass and overall sound is much better than any other laptop its size.

New comment by ralphc in "86Box v5.3"

ralphc — Mon, 22 Dec 2025 15:07:37 +0000

How does 86Box and PCem compare with DOSBox in terms of accuracy?

New comment by ralphc in "The Bob Dylan concert for just one person"

ralphc — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 15:13:54 +0000

Due to the nature of the sport (one person in a metal box, pit crews distanced from each other), after an adjustment period NASCAR races happened during the pandemic. To empty stands. The winner would get out of the car and instead of thunderous applause, or boos depending on the driver, there would be absolute silence. The word surreal is overused but it was that kind of experience for the driver and people watching at home.

New comment by ralphc in "Framework Raises DDR5 Memory Prices by 50% for DIY Laptops"

ralphc — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 01:08:28 +0000

The reason my 2018 Chevrolet has HDR radio and my wife's 2024 doesn't.