Hacker News: rlkf

New comment by rlkf in "OS/2 Warp, PowerPC Edition (2011)"

rlkf — Thu, 30 Oct 2025 09:25:39 +0000

> To the nostalgics among us: what made OS/2 special?

I started out with OS/2 v1.1. It had threads, DLLs, multi-tasking, much larger memory space, and from v1.2 a somewhat decent filesystem. Coming from DOS 3.2/Win 2.0 this was an incredible leap, in particular the SDK was amazing compared to the ragtag assembly of info I was used to. The _delta_ between two systems haven't been this large ever since, and I think that is what contributes to the "magic" feeling.

New comment by rlkf in "Ask HN: How does one build large front end apps without a framework like React?"

rlkf — Sat, 18 Oct 2025 18:04:25 +0000

> What about this: https://github.com/jgraph/drawio

That repository only contains the minified code, not the original source.

New comment by rlkf in "Ask HN: How does one build large front end apps without a framework like React?"

rlkf — Sat, 18 Oct 2025 12:43:56 +0000

Draw.io is quite good, and it is made without using any frameworks. Alas, the source code is not open to learn from.

<https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-tools-and-languages-used-i...>

New comment by rlkf in "Untangling the myths and mysteries of Dvorak and QWERTY (2023)"

rlkf — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 07:23:51 +0000

The original Dvorak layout had 0 positioned on the right index finger (where 7 is on Qwerty keyboards). The layout of the numeric keys on what passes as a "Dvorak" layout today was apparently determined by the ANSI committee for... reasons.

New comment by rlkf in "Power Failure: The downfall of General Electric"

rlkf — Tue, 27 May 2025 06:36:53 +0000

In Norway, the companies are required by law to pay the pensions into a special type of investment account where withdrawal are not allowed until you are retired, but you can choose your own investment profile: A mandatory 401k.

The arrangement where the _company_ controls the account seems to me to be more of a allowed delay in salary payout, to the benefit of the company, than a retirement account for the employee.

New comment by rlkf in "I built a native Windows Todo app in pure C (278 KB, no frameworks)"

rlkf — Mon, 12 May 2025 06:10:59 +0000

I second this, and just want to add that strsafe.h contains replacements for the runtime string routines.

New comment by rlkf in "Modern LaTeX"

rlkf — Mon, 05 May 2025 12:17:11 +0000

> The real problem is acceptance of non-word/latex papers

Some scientific journals, which only provides a Word template, require you to print to PDF to submit, then ships this PDF to India, where a team recreates the look of the submission in LaTeX, which is then used to compose the actual journal. I wish this was hyperbole. For these journals, you can safely create a LaTeX-template looking _almost_ the same, and get away with it.

New comment by rlkf in "Why do people keep buying printers they hate?"

rlkf — Wed, 19 Mar 2025 10:31:21 +0000

I have a Brother DCP-9020CDW which I've owned for over a decade and which still keeps humming. A bit expensive with four toners and a drum, but that's color laser for you. I'm very happy with it, and I guess I'd be equally happy with any Brother MFC-LxxxxCDW that's one market now.

If one wants an inkjet, I'd go for an Epson EcoTank.

New comment by rlkf in "Asteroid fragments upend theory of how life on Earth bloomed"

rlkf — Thu, 30 Jan 2025 08:26:52 +0000

This makes the Fermi paradox even weirder: If there is a bunch of these asteroids floating around in space, ready to seed life on numerous Earth-like planets, there should be an even bigger chance of seeing someone else, than if life have to originate on the planets themselves.

New comment by rlkf in "Webtop – Alpine,Ubuntu,Fedora,and Arch containers containing full desktop envs"

rlkf — Tue, 14 Jan 2025 11:56:13 +0000

Firefox can be configured to use Kerberos for authentication (search for "Configuring Firefox to use Kerberos for SSO"); on Windows, Chrome is supposed to do so too by adding the domain as an intranet zone.

New comment by rlkf in "Debugging: Indispensable rules for finding even the most elusive problems (2004)"

rlkf — Mon, 13 Jan 2025 22:27:09 +0000

Could you not use --first-parent option to test only at the merge-points?

New comment by rlkf in "Debugging: Indispensable rules for finding even the most elusive problems (2004)"

rlkf — Mon, 13 Jan 2025 22:23:09 +0000

I use git-format-patch to create a list of diffs for the individual commits before the branch gets squashed, and tuck them away in a private directory. Several times have I gone back to peek at those lists to understand my own thoughts later.

New comment by rlkf in "The Ultimate Conditional Syntax"

rlkf — Mon, 21 Oct 2024 10:49:51 +0000

    (x === 1) && console.log("it's 1")

Note that you've saved exactly no keystrokes, although this is composable into expressions (if you are using some Javascript-derivative; in ML it would typically already be using the if-form).

New comment by rlkf in "Windows dynamic linking depends on the active code page"

rlkf — Sat, 12 Oct 2024 05:45:45 +0000

"English (Ireland)" seems to be the closest thing to a sane locale out of the box (could have wished for ISO-8601 dates, but I guess you can't have everything).

New comment by rlkf in "Clojure Desktop UI Framework"

rlkf — Tue, 27 Aug 2024 08:10:15 +0000

I found this dimension of the analysis:

> People prefer native apps to web apps

> Java has “UI curse”: Looked bad

to be at odds with this aspect of the design:

> No goal to look native

> Leverage Skia

New comment by rlkf in "X debut 40 years ago (1984)"

rlkf — Thu, 20 Jun 2024 17:38:46 +0000

SCCS was available from 1977.

New comment by rlkf in "Within 2 years, 90% of organizations will suffer a critical tech skills shortage"

rlkf — Tue, 04 Jun 2024 18:22:19 +0000

Within 2 years, 90% of organizations will suffer a shortage in supply of people willing to to be micro-managed for the price they are willing to pay, in the open office locations they are willing to put forward.

New comment by rlkf in "Coding and Keyboards (2023)"

rlkf — Tue, 04 Jun 2024 12:48:04 +0000

I took a note from the French keyboard layout and placed all the common programming symbols on the numbers row, and the numbers themselves on shift, since the amount of symbols usually dwarfs the amount of hard-coded number in source code. (If I enter numbers in a spreadsheet, I use the keypad on the right side). Combining this with a regular Dvorak layout for the letters, I get a Programmer Dvorak layout that lets me touch-type code as easily as regular text! (And yes, I can also use Neovim with Dvorak)

New comment by rlkf in "LineageOS is the perfect minimal smartphone for non-tech savvy folk"

rlkf — Tue, 14 May 2024 10:42:23 +0000

This is a very good initiative! There is also https://divestos.org/pages/devices?golden=true

New comment by rlkf in "Object Linking and Embedding"

rlkf — Wed, 08 May 2024 11:52:43 +0000

I think this book may be recommended reading: https://amazon.com/dp/1565893182