Hacker News: rzzzwilson

New comment by rzzzwilson in "IT mistake erases 11 years of viewing history for hospitals' maternity records"

rzzzwilson — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 07:10:40 +0000

Backups? There are backups, right?

New comment by rzzzwilson in "Web-based IBM 1620 emulator and IPL-V from 1963"

rzzzwilson — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 01:58:30 +0000

A blast from the past! An IBM 1620 was the very first computer I programmed, way back in 1969, likely a model 2. As part of a second year Applied Mathematics semester we were given a block of coding forms, a McCracken book on FORTRAN II and a list of problems to solve. There was no instruction on how to do this beyond reading the book, as far as I can remember. Someone punched cards from our coding forms and put them into the machine. We never actually got to touch the hardware, but we could look at it through glass windows.

That was a life-changing experience as it led to me dropping out of my Physics degree and eventually going into a computing career.

New comment by rzzzwilson in "Trump promises $5k payout to U.S. adults if Republicans win election"

rzzzwilson — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 04:50:21 +0000

The sooner this guy is impeached the better. That's better than letting his term just run out as it offers more of a warning to other fruitcakes out there: the system _eventually_ works.

New comment by rzzzwilson in "Why do Canadians call the last letter of the alphabet Zed?"

rzzzwilson — Sun, 23 Aug 2026 11:24:50 +0000

Not just Canadians. Commonwealth English generally uses "Zed".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_in_the_Commonwealth_of...

New comment by rzzzwilson in "Softlanding Linux System – ArchiveOS"

rzzzwilson — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 11:44:18 +0000

A blast from the past! Back last century I had tried multiple "pile of floppies" installs of early Linux, but they always failed. SLS was the first linux install that worked, possibly because it installed from a CD. Since then I've always been a primarily Linux user, moving from SLS to Slackware, Ubuntu and now Linux Mint.

New comment by rzzzwilson in "Ask HN: How do you call the "-" on a keyboard?"

rzzzwilson — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 10:45:46 +0000

The "ASCII" page in the Jargon File gives a few names for "-". It even says that the official ANSI/CCITT names are "hyphen" and "minus".

https://www.catb.org/jargon/html/A/ASCII.html

New comment by rzzzwilson in "Hot take: Success in life is mostly due to luck (2023)"

rzzzwilson — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 05:33:07 +0000

Getting the lucky break is only half of it. Recognizing a change as a lucky break and being able to take advantage of it is also important.

New comment by rzzzwilson in "Lisp as the Maxwell's Equations of Software (2012)"

rzzzwilson — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 03:56:52 +0000

I don't see how my comment about using python 3 rather than the obsolete python 2 has anything to do with Lisp.

New comment by rzzzwilson in "Lisp as the Maxwell's Equations of Software (2012)"

rzzzwilson — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 05:41:32 +0000

Python 3 is not ... what?

New comment by rzzzwilson in "Ask HN: What hardware hobby would you recommend to a software engineer?"

rzzzwilson — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 03:21:34 +0000

Another vote for getting into the Arduino world, which includes the ESP32.

To learn the basics there's still no better route than getting an Arduino Uno (or clone) starter kit and learning about digital electronics. The boards are programmed in C++ through the Arduino IDE. As you progress you could program larger-memory boards with python. Some people use other languages like Rust. You aren't limited to small AVR microcontrollers, you can program other microcontrollers such as ESP32, STM32, Raspberry Pi, etc. If you get to the point of having PCBs made you can use KiCad to design the boards.

There is a huge amount of online information and help available. Companies like Arduino, Sparkfun and Adafruit also have online material, some specific to their products, some general.

Apart from the actual hardware all the software used is free. Microcontroller boards, while not free, are cheap but powerful.

I'm a retired software engineer with an out-of-control microcontroller hobby.

https://docs.arduino.cc/

https://learn.adafruit.com/

https://www.sparkfun.com/documentation

https://www.raspberrypi.com/documentation/microcontrollers/

https://www.kicad.org/

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=esp32-c3+board

New comment by rzzzwilson in "Lisp as the Maxwell's Equations of Software"

rzzzwilson — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 05:58:11 +0000

A note from the article says:

    I suggest Python 2.7 for this code

No, just no. Use a later version of python 3. The article is 24 years old.

New comment by rzzzwilson in "Trump's plan to redesign every .gov website leads to AI-designed horrors"

rzzzwilson — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 04:22:37 +0000

Don't know about .gov websites, but the ArsTechnica link is a horror in Brave and FireFox mobile browsers.

New comment by rzzzwilson in "Show HN: O(1) Recursive Moving Linear Regression"

rzzzwilson — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 01:21:10 +0000

My comment was about the lack of any sort of link showing what you claim.

New comment by rzzzwilson in "Ask HN: Any VPS / VPN with Dedicated IP Address in Cayman Islands?"

rzzzwilson — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 01:18:44 +0000

Surely a simple search on "vpn server cayman" finds some (or a lot) of possibilities. You'll have to dig a little to see if you want to try any of those hits.

New comment by rzzzwilson in "Show HN: O(1) Recursive Moving Linear Regression"

rzzzwilson — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 10:04:33 +0000

Interesting. A "zero code" implementation?

New comment by rzzzwilson in "Ask HN: Why is the HN crowd so anti-AI?"

rzzzwilson — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 02:37:36 +0000

> They care that the product works.

And that's the problem.

New comment by rzzzwilson in "Dating apps were never built to deliver you to anyone"

rzzzwilson — Sun, 31 May 2026 04:24:35 +0000

No, they were built to deliver some of your money to the app author. That's all.

New comment by rzzzwilson in "Whitehouse.gov/Aliens"

rzzzwilson — Fri, 29 May 2026 08:04:15 +0000

I understand what the page is actually talking about. If I thought it was about extraterrestials I would be less worried.

New comment by rzzzwilson in "Whitehouse.gov/Aliens"

rzzzwilson — Fri, 29 May 2026 07:53:54 +0000

If whitehouse.gov hasn't been hacked, if this is a serious statement, then it's past time to get very worried about the current US government. We have seen madness like this before.

New comment by rzzzwilson in "I built an online leather goods store focused on making gift buying less painful"

rzzzwilson — Fri, 29 May 2026 07:50:01 +0000

Copy/pasted from the page right now, after refreshing:

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