akoster
Joined 12 years ago
Karma
836
Submissions
268
Member since
Aug 3
[ my public key: https://keybase.io/akoster; my proof: https://keybase.io/akoster/sigs/TtMkM5FstvZhWQqr08mMrjwkiXP_aykR-SU5OolWMk8 ]
View on Hacker NewsRecent submissions
Comment · 2 months ago
Quote from the bottom:
“To keep up with decreasing computer memory capacity and disk space, many other functions and files have been eliminated in Emacs 30.2.”
Honesty, not such a wild proposition in 2026 with new hardware generations offering the same or less RAM and storage!
Comment · 1 year ago
Nice Eternal September reference:
http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/S/September-that-never-ended...
Comment · 1 year ago
Sometimes I’ll search .edu or .ac.* domains for tutorials, code, old physics and math graphics and Java applets. Often these sites are narrow in scope, but every once in a while, you come across a gem like this! I wonder if there’s a directory of high-quality college and university professor websites , though a web search for now does the trick (at least while it’s still public and not restricted to current students or faculty).
Comment · 1 year ago
Thankfully their forums are quite active with folks sharing lots of sample code [0]. I was able to get some assistance with getting their SQLite library to work. Also the wiki has quite a few tutorials - when I get some more time I hope to check out this pas2js Electron tutorial. That would be something quite useful to go from a WYSIWYG RAD IDE design to a working JavaScript web app running in a browser.
[0] https://forum.lazarus.freepascal.org/index.php [1] https://wiki.freepascal.org/lazarus_pas2js_integration
Comment · 1 year ago
Thanks for sharing! I'm glad Microsoft is still providing active development for WinForms and on recent .NET Core versions and not just .NET Framework, although the later seems to still be supported indefinitely (for now?). [0]
[0] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/products/microso...
Comment · 1 year ago
I agree! I still sometimes use LibreOffice Base for quick prototyping [0] or Microsoft Access if I am on Windows. It uses HSQLDB by default but you can connect to several external JDBC, ODBC and ADO compatible databases, though I often use DBeaver for that purpose. [1]
Comment · 1 year ago
Interesting given NYC's population still hasn't recovered from its early 2020 high [0], rent and home prices keep rising (and fast). There are many reasons discussed here: pied-a-terre's, foreign investors, lack of new construction and inventory at affordable levels contributing to low vacancy [1] but still hard to fathom at a naive supply and demand level, shouldn't ~300k less people and several new residential buildings finishing construction in the past few years contribute to lower not higher prices? [2]
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/13/nyregion/nyc-population-2...
[1] https://www.nyc.gov/site/hpd/news/007-24/new-york-city-s-vac...
[2] https://s-media.nyc.gov/agencies/dcp/assets/files/pdf/data-t... (page 3)
Comment · 1 year ago
Housing is also pricey in NJ adjacent to NYC in cities like Jersey City and Hoboken, but its a ferry / PATH train away from Manhattan.
Comment · 1 year ago
I think I found MYOB but not Best Books here: https://www.macintoshrepository.org/2021-m-y-o-b-v5-0-1 Is the interface similar for Best Books? and also in color?
Comment · 1 year ago
They are part of the "smolnet" if I am using that terminology correctly (including the Gemini protocol https://geminiprotocol.net/). Other sites I will browse or lurk include, Lemmy (join-lemmy.org) Reddit alternative, Mastodon, BlueSky, SDF.org 's IRC, Matrix, some Telegram communities, lobste.rs, HN and ideally IRL at 2600 meetings https://www.2600.com/meetings, conferences, Linux User Groups (LUGs) etc. I still browse Reddit, LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram occasionally. For 1:1 communication I most often use SMS texting/iMessage, regular phone calls, FaceTime video, and Facebook Messenger to talk to other American friends, family, etc. To talk with technical people and folks abroad, I'll use email, Telegram, Viber, Skype, Signal, WhatsApp, and rarely Instagram Messenger, all of which I need to get better at staying on top of.
Comment · 2 years ago
I still put DVD and/or Blu-ray drives in all PCs I personally build for myself and my family. This is due to the fact that we transferred dozens of old captured 16 mm and 8 mm film reels, scanned photo prints, negatives and slides as well as Video8, Hi8, Digital8 and VHS videocassettes to M-DISC DVD and some to Blu-ray. While I uploaded most of this content to Flickr and Google Photos while they were offering 1TB and unlimited storage (at reduced quality) respectfully, after both services curtailed their offerings, I realize the value in having a local, offline, physical copy of these precious memories. Thankfully my local computer store Micro Center still sells a few PC cases with 5.25 inch bays as well as optical media and disk drives.
Additionally, I find it useful for live booting GNU/Linux distributions such as MX Linux Workbench [0] or WinPE environments such as Hiren's Boot CD [1] without dedicating a flash drive for the purpose, which I may accidentally overwrite. And at the office, I have encountered several broken USB ports and while optical disk drive bays are often quite fragile, they tend to be in working order since they are often underutilized.
[0] https://mxlinux.org/blog/mx-21-1-respin-workbench-released/
Comment · 2 years ago
I used to use M-DISCs [0] since they advertise using a more robust recording technology, but they have been harder to find at Micro Center [1] and the manufacturing process may have changed with a certain manufacturer [3].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC
[1] https://www.microcenter.com/search/search_results.aspx?N=429...
[2] https://old.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/yu4j1u/psa_ver...
Comment · 2 years ago
From the release notes, it appears this may be the last release with i386 / 32-bit Intel x86 (as well as 32-bit armv6 and PowerPC) support.
“FreeBSD 15.0 is not expected to include support for 32-bit platforms other than armv7. The armv6, i386, and powerpc platforms are deprecated and will be removed. 64-bit systems will still be able to run older 32-bit binaries.“