billpg

Joined 17 years ago

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5,638
Submissions
1,544
Member since
Apr 24
http://billpg.com/
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Recent submissions

Comment · 16 days ago
Shameless plug: https://billpg.com/sixgate/

(Short version: IPv6-only networks can provide a gateway for IPv4-only clients and advertise it via reverse DNS.)

SixGate has an interesting contrast with this RFC. RFC8950 removes IPv4 from the network core while preserving IPv4 reachability, whereas SixGate removes IPv4 from the service side while preserving reachability for IPv4-only clients.

In both cases, IPv4 survives as a compatibility layer rather than a fundamental requirement. The difference is that RFC8950 is aimed at network operators, while SixGate is aimed at the last remaining IPv4-only users.

In both cases, the goal is the same. Turn IPv4 from a requirement into an optional compatibility feature.

Comment · 27 days ago
Thank you. Always nice to hear comments like that.
Comment · 1 month ago

  Location: Daventry, UK
  Remote: Preferred.
  Willing to relocate: Yes
  Technologies: C#, ,NET 10, Python, SQL, Distributed Systems
  CV: See https://cv.billpg.com/ and contact form.
I'm a Senior Software Engineer who takes fragile, tangled systems and turns them into ones that are simple and built to last, mainly in C# and .NET, with a particular interest in distributed systems and protocol design. Outside of client work, I write and tinker on independent projects like HashBack and SixGate.

You may know from my popular HN submissions...

  8086 Segmented Memory was a good idea. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48619125
  The Road Not Taken: A World Where IPv4 Evolved. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47352236
  Data-Mining Wikipedia for Fun and Profit. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28234122
Comment · 4 months ago
I once developed for PC-GEOS, which wanted all memory in exactly 8K sized blocks. I wrote a set of C macros that presented an array-of-arrays as a single collection by using mod/divide operations on the index.
Comment · 4 months ago
shrug

I've reviewed what I originally wrote and I prefer the text I published. Sure, I could review it all myself (indeed I used to) but that takes time and it was becoming a barrier to actually publishing stuff. Maybe I'd have got around to finishing it in a few months.

I don't use AI to write for me. I hate people who do that.

Comment · 4 months ago
I kinda wish they had. 64k windows with no overlap would make segment registers a slightly inconvenient 32-bit address register.

I get why hey didn't. Someone might want to run two processes each with its own segment, but the whole machine might only have 64k in total.

Comment · 4 months ago
Hi. I wrote it, and I'm a human. (Or at least I think I am.)

I did use an AI for spell-checking, punctuation, generally making it flow, but its all my text.

You think a machine is going to come up with "near pointers, far pointers, wherever-you-are pointers"?

Comment · 4 months ago
1992-author (me) is wondering if he'll ever get a girlfriend.

(And I completely agree.)

Comment · 4 months ago
Why would you ever want a single 64k object? That's like an entire machine's worth of memory!

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