billforsternz

5 ms·

31.
by billforsternz 7mo ago
It's very interesting how the "you know the city, the state, the country" mantra here is really "you know the city, the state and obviously the country is the USA no other possibilities are considered or worth considerin
32.
by billforsternz 8mo ago
Not the person you're replying too, but ... because it would be weird if they didn't.
33.
by billforsternz 8mo ago
One of my best rescue jobs involved doing this in 1999, yes that 1999. The client had shuttered their development department years before but was expecting to continue happily supporting and selling their simple enough alarm system products
34.
by billforsternz 8mo ago
He meant once every 4 years not once every quarter.
35.
by billforsternz 8mo ago
I enjoy coding something new up in Notepad++, without any annoying autocomplete and jank. I call it unplugged (acoustic?) mode. Jeepers Visual Studio these days starts autocompleting if and while for example and sometimes doesn't respe
36.
by billforsternz 9mo ago
Maybe there are asymmetrical combinations that actually give Black the advantage? Because Black's setup is nicely harmonious and White's is clumsy. Or maybe not I'm entirely unsure.
37.
by billforsternz 9mo ago
There is some irony in someone replying to the author of the D language suggesting that maybe the D language is the real solution he's looking for.
38.
by billforsternz 9mo ago
Maybe we should just freeze development in lots of designated areas and declare victory (I know this isn't a practical suggestion, but still...). Eg in desktop OS's. Apple for example makes everyone miserable by re-breaking macOS
39.
by billforsternz 9mo ago
Bonjour monsieur, je voudrais une eclair chocolate s'il vous plait is my number one French phrase. I can usually sell it. Maybe you needed the prefixes?
40.
by billforsternz 9mo ago
I love the Z80, I started my career writing Z80 assembly for various embedded projects on a Z80 host system 45 years ago. But you don't need a physical Z80 to enjoy that classic instruction set. For example see this source file from on
41.
by billforsternz 9mo ago
Thanks for the clarification.
42.
by billforsternz 9mo ago
I know I'm getting old when I read comments like this. It wouldn't have occurred to me in a million years that it might pair me with passengers on another flight. I'm conditioned by having first experienced this feature proba
43.
by billforsternz 9mo ago
I don't understand. On average, for every 4 input bits we will get it right 3 times writing 0.5 bits each time and get it wrong once writing 2.4 bits once. So we write a total of 3 * 0.5 + 2.4 bits = 3.9 bits. The compressed output is
44.
by billforsternz 9mo ago
No one serious ever talks about "upgrading" to Tahoe without the quotes. I hope Apple are seriously embarrassed about this and determined to mend their ways.
45.
by billforsternz 9mo ago
The only reason people get confused about the Monty Hall problem is that the problem description rarely if ever makes it clear that the host knows where the car is and deliberately chooses a different door. It's inconceivable (for exam
46.
by billforsternz 9mo ago
I know of two distinct methods of encoding any legal chess position into 24 bytes worst case. In both cases, you get the full position, plus who to move, plus full information on future castling and en-passant possibilities. This is the FEN
47.
by billforsternz 10mo ago
I was troubled by my own comment. How exactly did Bosch handle this? I went back and checked and in fact the rejection email came from their email server, it was an "access denied" type email that I originally misinterpreted as a
48.
by billforsternz 10mo ago
I recall idly looking through the manual of our Bosch dishwasher when it was delivered and seeing that they offered to share GPL'ed source code from the machine's embedded guts. I thought to myself, "that's kind of inter
49.
by billforsternz 10mo ago
This is very interesting, very refreshing, very simple and clever, very well done, very everything good. Bravo and thank you.
50.
by billforsternz 10mo ago
A few too many 9s there I think. You're estimating that only 1 person in every 10 million could care less. So less than 50 such people in the USA for example
51.
by billforsternz 10mo ago
For a fun project; rejuvenating a 1978 Chess Engine https://github.com/billforsternz/zargon . It's the second time I've worked on the same engine. The first time I got it working nicely on modern machines, run
52.
by billforsternz 10mo ago
Marvellous, love it. Thank you.
53.
by billforsternz 10mo ago
It certainly would be normal to use else if (or switch) if you wanted to be picky but really such changes are inconsequential here. And I was trying to change just one line. Sadly I also had to quietly change stdlib.h to string.h as well.
54.
by billforsternz 10mo ago
I know it's silly, but I just want to fix his first version with the minimum possible changes; /* Copyright 2023. All unauthorized distribution of this source code will be persecuted to the fullest extent of the law*&#x2F
55.
by billforsternz 10mo ago
Semi serious idea: A lot of people (including me) write C++ but it's basically C plus a small set of really ergonomic and useful C++ features (eg references). This should be standardised as a new language called C+
56.
by billforsternz 11mo ago
I agree, I had the same problem.
57.
by billforsternz 1y ago
I disagree. I'm not American but I've travelled extensively around the world and in America. Niceness is widespread, it's not a particularly American thing. And it's always appreciated and positive, the alternative is mi
58.
by billforsternz 1y ago
My surgeon told me my previous kidney cancer surgery (partial nephrectomy) meant my 7/8 size kidney wouldn't handle ultrasound treatment for the big kidney stone I'd developed 10 years after the cancer. So laser instead! Work
59.
by billforsternz 1y ago
Do you still like it now that the author has fixed it?
60.
by billforsternz 1y ago
Thanks for fixing the issue, appreciated.

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