Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49678812

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

It goes roughly like this: when you select a text in a window, the X client tells the X server "I have the selection now", when you paste in another window, the client behind the other window asks "who has the selection?" and requests the selection contents from the other client, the data is then forwarded through the server. The client that claimed ownership has to properly handle some associated requests/events for the whole thing to work.

The key point is, there is no central "clipboard" style repository like on Windows, the client that does the "copy" is responsible for the data, the client that wants to "paste" has to talk to it. If I try to copy/paste and quit the source program before the paste, the data is gone. That's why modern desktop environments usually come with a dedicated daemon that immediately reacts to selection ownership changes, grabs the data for itself and then claims the selection ownership to emulate the Windows style behavior.

If we play devils advocate, it's possible the Zoom client tries to do just that, not trusting whatever desktop environment. I don't use this software, so I'm going out on a limb here, but I'd guess that the "Zoom Desktop Client" is just another browser in disguise? It might be actually Chromium or whatever underneath that does this?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49603091

Points: 6

# Comments: 0

I'd say "wide variance in the level of kindness" is a rather British way to describe some of the opinions that have been voiced.

Up next: How many cloud services does it take to turn on the lights?

Here's a hint: https://imgur.com/a/light-bulb-moment-hIKUI48

But hey, it could be worse. For instance, you could be trying to send an e-mail: https://github.com/0x4447/0x4447_product_s3_email#what-will-...

[1] https://jemarch.net/poke

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34986042

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49429612

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49373932

Points: 139

# Comments: 142

Ah, that would be 8.10 with the coffee stain wallpaper :-P

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ubuntu_screenshot.png

If you weren't previously aware of "The Old New Thing" blog, Raymond Chen has been sharing stories about Windows 95 development for decades at this point. So many in fact, he published a book under the same name (the book is essentially a best-of collection from the blog in paper form).

The os2museum[1] blog is also a gold mine. Tim Paterson at one point tried to start blogging, sharing a few anecdotes about the early days of DOS[2]

Speaking of books, you might enjoy "Showstopper!" about the development of NT, even tough it is a bit shallow on the technical side. For the technical aspects, you might want to get it together with "Inside Windows NT" (first edition) by Helen Custer.

You might also enjoy: "Another Boring Topic" [3] YouTube channel, covering (among other things) early Windows development in excruciating detail and "Old Computers Sucked" [4], actually trying to run the software on era appropriate hardware. "Cathode Ray Dude" is all over the place but often also covers hardware and software of roughly that era[5].

A sibling comment already mentioned JWZs blog, if you have fond memories about Netscape, you might enjoy "Project Code Rush" [6].

Btw. Netscape Navigator 3.0 has just turned 30.

[1] https://www.os2museum.com/wp/

[2] https://dosmandrivel.blogspot.com/

[3] https://www.youtube.com/@AnotherBoringTopic/videos

[4] https://www.youtube.com/@old-computers-sucked/videos

[5] https://www.youtube.com/@CathodeRayDude/videos

[6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Q7FTjhvZ7Y

On compiler generated x86 code, the base pointer register will quickly follow when entering the target function.

They don't do this sort of thing... oh wait, they do.

But we are still wrong to judge their character by their own actions, because... evil French people made them do it?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3#Licensing,_ownership,_and_...

Besides that name clash, it apparently competes with another terminal emulator that was creatively named "vt100".

Scrolling over the page I did a double take when I saw the benchmark. No way a vt100 can do 221 MiB/s! Who even types that fast anyway?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49152085

Points: 4

# Comments: 4

Innovative new air cooling: instead of using lots of tiny fans to move air through the servers, we simply use 2 big fans to move the servers through the air!

And while we're at it, we'll completely disrupt the existing Zeppelin market that depends on expensive helium for some reason. We use daring, innovative hydrogen technology, enabling a massive cost reduction!

> Detecting primitive types is easy. String. Number. Boolean. Date.

... the rabbit said confidently, staring down the oncoming lawn mower.

> I honestly thought the viewer would take a weekend.

> Display rows.

> Add scrolling.

Burma Shave?

The Channel has similar video series on OS/2, VisiCalc, Microsoft Excel and early Windows (far from completion). The videos are generally very detailed and well researched, often contrasting accounts from different source or even reaching out to people involved.

The already slow pace of the channel has slowed down a lot. In an update video a while back, the author has announced that the background research for the IBM PC led down an unexpectedly deep rabbit hole and his script eventually spiraled into an unfinished book that will now probably turn into a two-parter itself.

Fedora with XFCE here, but last I checked on Windows, it worked exactly the same over there: With a Chinese IME installed, tap shift to switch input language, shift+hyphen produces a double em-dash: ——, likewise, shift+6 a double elipsis: ……

You encounter those a lot in simple, machine translated Chinese, along with literal translations of "not X but Y", "not just ... but also" and similar sentence constructs that are common in Chinese. I suspect that's how a disproportionate amount of that ended up in training material in the first place.