pdw

11 ms·

121.
by pdw 3y ago
And as it happens, early versions of Excel used a bytecode running on a VM instead of native code. Though the motivation was not portability, but rather memory requirements: > In most cases, p-code can reduce the size of an executable fi
122.
by pdw 3y ago
`strace -f -eopen,openat` to see which files a programs opens. Very often useful, even if just to check which config file(s) a program reads.
123.
by pdw 3y ago
perhaps because high-dpi screens are getting common in the PC world?
124.
by pdw 3y ago
Don't hold your breath, these rumors have been going for well over a decade: 2018: "The current owner of Symbolics displayed interest in open-sourcing Genera a few years ago but nothing happened since then." https:/&#x2
125.
by pdw 3y ago
If I understand it correctly, The `<foo />` syntax is an XML invention. It was never added to HTML. Traditional HTML parsers see the slash as a malformed attribute and ignore it, and that behavior was codified in HTML5.
126.
by pdw 3y ago
Wow, I had no idea that `<div/>` wasn't interpreted as `<div></div>`.
127.
by pdw 3y ago
At the time, awk was the only scripting language (other than shell) generally available on Unix systems. Perl, Tcl, Python didn't exist yet. So awk was often used for general-purpose programming.
128.
by pdw 3y ago
That's the situation in the US. In most of the EU, you can expect either 2G or 3G to be available for at least five more years.
129.
by pdw 3y ago
It was never really clear to me if the "Hornet" was a custom design Intel did for HP or if "Hornet" was just the codename for the 80C186EA, a 186 with added powersaving support. Either way those palmtops were quite cool
130.
by pdw 3y ago
zlib/gzip did not choose DEFLATE because it was the best algorithm. Rather it was, at the time, the only decent algorithm that could be implemented in a manner not covered by patents. (See the tragedy of LZW for why that was important.
131.
by pdw 3y ago
It has it, but the syntax is different: SELECT t->'j'->'foo'->'bar'->2, ... FROM tbl t ... I think SQLite now also supports this syntax.
132.
by pdw 4y ago
As one of the comments points out, Google sells 30TB accounts. With a 5M file limit, you need an average file size of 6MB to fill your drive.
133.
by pdw 4y ago
I don't think so. Looks like Debian 12 will be released about 2 years after the previous release, which is about typical.
134.
by pdw 4y ago
I think you underestimate memory errors. In large C and C++ projects, ~70% of discovered security vulnerabilities have memory errors as their cause. Source: https://alexgaynor.net/2020/may/27/science-on-memory
135.
by pdw 4y ago
Nobody made a promise. The comment you're reacting to said "happens often to me".
136.
by pdw 4y ago
The more serious issue is that this library apparently does not enforce a length limit on escape sequences.
137.
by pdw 4y ago
Zero memory errors, not zero vulnerabilities. In high-quality C and C++ projects, about 70% of vulnerabilities are caused by memory errors. ( https://alexgaynor.net/2020/may/27/science-on-memory-unsafet... )
138.
by pdw 4y ago
Yes. It usually gets glossed over, but if you're building a Python application it's all you need.
139.
by pdw 4y ago
Not when creating tar files.
140.
by pdw 4y ago
Portability between different compilers was a problem. People complain about C's portability, but at least you can rely on `fopen` existing. The best that Modula-2 offered was a semi-standard InOut module that provided stdin/stdou
141.
by pdw 4y ago
I don't feel it's obvious at all. Is it not surprising that you can't reliably store chars to a file using fgetc/fputc? OTOH I'm not surprised at all that embedded compilers play fast and loose with the standard.
142.
by pdw 4y ago
In C23, `bool`, `true` and `false` are available without including `stdbool.h`.
143.
by pdw 4y ago
Why do you think that GNU Hurd isn't working? The Debian Hurd port is completely self-hosting and makes regular releases.
144.
by pdw 4y ago
Looks like payroll is going to be a problem. https://twitter.com/HaysKali/status/1593425305464541186
145.
by pdw 4y ago
If you do a google image search for "supermarket fridge", half of the results are doorless.
146.
by pdw 4y ago
If you have a stack of Adlib Gold cards, that might be true.
147.
by pdw 4y ago
Though COBOL infamously has the ALTER statement, which allows you to rewrite code at run time ;)
148.
by pdw 4y ago
If you have a BSD system, or if you have bsdgames installed, you can run "mille" to play Mille Bornes. This version was done by Ken Arnold, who also created the curses library. Even better, I seem to remember that Mille Bornes was
149.
by pdw 4y ago
For discussion on SQLite 3.39.0, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31876604 I'm not sure why a minor SQLite bugfix release needs to be posted here.
150.
by pdw 4y ago
That's the catchword, the first word of the next page. It helps with keeping the pages in the correct order when binding the book. It could also be an aid when reading aloud, to give the reader one word of "buffer" when turni

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