mark-r

14 ms·

211.
by mark-r 2y ago
20 years old, but still true.
212.
by mark-r 2y ago
Rotating raster graphics is easy and the technique was well known at the time, see for example https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~fricke/projects/israel/paeth/r... . A PC was easily capable of it. Maybe not
213.
by mark-r 3y ago
My first exposure to assembly language was one of those computers that used self-modifying code for subroutine calls, the Control Data Cyber 6400. It had a special instruction (I think it was called RJ) that replaced the first word of the
214.
by mark-r 3y ago
My first personal computer was a Z80 with a 2716. Into that 2K I fit basic monitor commands (dump/store memory), a terminal emulator with VT52 escape sequences, and a floppy boot loader. Got very good at squeezing out every last byte
215.
by mark-r 3y ago
Was there a special reason this was posted today? Irfanview has been around forever.
216.
by mark-r 3y ago
It took me a minute to realize that I even had a clock in the house with Roman numerals! Yes, it uses IIII. You'd think it would be easier to remember given that I had to change it less than a week ago.
217.
by mark-r 3y ago
None of us will live long enough to see the 4000-year rule become a problem. I don't even expect to be around for the next 100-year rule.
218.
by mark-r 3y ago
> Birthdays aren't celebrated every X million seconds after the moment of birth. As a surprise for a friend of mine, I threw him a gigasecond party on the day he turned 1000 million seconds old. Yes he was surprised, and a good tim
219.
by mark-r 3y ago
I remember magnetic tape being a lot more common than paper tape for the uses you suggest.
220.
by mark-r 3y ago
Yes, in the early days of microcomputers teletypes were common, and paper tape was a part of that. I'm talking about the computers of the 1960's for example where interactive use was unheard of.
221.
by mark-r 3y ago
You could turn on the paper tape punch at any time, and it would record every character sent to the printer. Then you could load the tape into the reader and turn it on and it would act as if you were typing at maximum speed (a whole 10 ch
222.
by mark-r 3y ago
It's a little off-putting that he says punched paper tape was used in the early days of computing. Mostly it was punched paper cards, a different thing entirely.
223.
by mark-r 3y ago
I was wondering that myself, 25% doesn't seem like a "significant increase" over 24%. I'm wondering if it's just sloppy reporting. At the end they claim their record breaker was 28.6%.
224.
by mark-r 3y ago
Compare with the smallest GIF and other formats: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38878480
225.
by mark-r 3y ago
Yes, but 0x0 isn't terribly useful. I think a 1x1 black (or transparent?) image would be better.
226.
by mark-r 3y ago
Contented cows were a very common dairy meme.
227.
by mark-r 3y ago
Same here. There's that long string of 9's in a row, but that's well beyond 130 digits. I can recite pi faster than a person can make up random digits. Try it some time and see how fast you start to totally run out of rando
228.
by mark-r 3y ago
Now where will we get aged copper panels next time the Statue of Liberty needs repairs? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35443585
229.
by mark-r 3y ago
Replying to myself. I did some digging and figured it out - the shell itself truncates the return value to an 8 bit unsigned number. If you have a simple program that consists of only "return -96;" the shell will still report a
230.
by mark-r 3y ago
Serious question, is there a C compiler that uses EBCDIC?
231.
by mark-r 3y ago
A very long time ago, the Microsoft C/C++ compiler used 16 bit ints. I had a boss that insisted we use long instead of int because he had been burned by this. Hadn't been a problem for at least 20 years, but that didn't mat
232.
by mark-r 3y ago
Sizeof without parentheses looks weird to me. Sometimes you need them, sometimes you don't, so I just have a habit of using them every time. Redundant parentheses don't hurt anything.
233.
by mark-r 3y ago
I decided to try #3 for myself. The results are interestingly inconsistent. If you cast a to int and print it, it comes out -96. But the shell reports it as 160. Godbolt compiler clearly shows it returning -96 (movsx should sign extend
234.
by mark-r 3y ago
I don't know if wrapping rules are defined by the standard or implementation defined. But the easiest thing for a compiler to implement is simple truncation. A space is 0x20 (32 decimal) in most C compilers, so multiplying it by 13 i
235.
by mark-r 3y ago
I can't believe I missed the news of his death. Pascal was my language of choice for many years. RIP, Niklaus.
236.
by mark-r 3y ago
I've had recruiters ask for editable resumes because they don't want to reveal your name until you've gone far along enough in the hiring pipeline.
237.
by mark-r 3y ago
Were those the first byte-addressable architectures? If they were you think they'd have had a bigger influence.
238.
by mark-r 3y ago
I updated all the accounts I could remember, but to this day I don't know if there were any I forgot. I figure if I forgot one, it must not have been important. P.S. not a gripe, just adding an anecdata.
239.
by mark-r 3y ago
Interesting that "Yes! We Have No Bananas" will be public domain just in time to be relevant again. I don't know the current status of the fungus attacking Cavendish bananas, but it's been discussed here on HN at least
240.
by mark-r 3y ago
I once had my email change because my ISP was bought out. Absolutely nothing I could do about it. The old email was forwarded for 12 months, then cut off completely.

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