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  • Hacker News 22

  • Hacker News: Best Comments 8

    • New comment by apricot in "Spending 3 months coding by hand"
      I am this very term teaching 18-year-old students 6502 assembly programming using an emulated Apple II Plus. They've had intro to Python, data structures, and OO programming courses using a modern programming environment. Now, they are programming a chip from the seventies using an editor/assembler that was written in 1983 and has a line editor, not a full-screen one. We had a total of 10 hours of class + lab where I taught them about assembly language and told them about the registers, instructions, and addressing modes of the chip, memory map and monitor routines of the Apple, and after that we went and wrote a few programs together, mostly using the low-resolution graphics mode (40x40): a drawing program, a bouncing ball, culminating in hand-rolled sprites with simple collision detection. Their assignment is to write a simple program (I suggested a low-res game like Snake or Tetris but they can do whatever they want provided they tell me about it and I okay it), demo their program, and then explain to the class how it works. At first they hated the line editor. But then a very interesting thing happened. They started thinking about their code before writing it. Planning. Discussing things in advance. Everything we told them they should do before coding in previous classes, but they didn't do because a powerful editor was right there so why not use it?... And then they started to get used to the line editor. They told me they didn't need to really see the code on the screen, it was in their head. They will of course go back to modern tools after class is finished, but I think it's good for them to have this kind of experience.
    • New comment by corysama in "All 12 moonwalkers had "lunar hay fever" from dust smelling like gunpowder (2018)"
      I recall an article from a long time ago that basically said “astronauts report” the moon smells like spent gunpowder and outer space smell like… I think it was ozone. What they were actually reporting was the smell of the airlocks after they returned from their excursions. The moon has no atmosphere, so it has been accumulating dust from billions of years of asteroid impacts that have never come in contact with oxygen. Many of the chemicals in the dust are oxidative and so when it is exposed to air for the first time it rapidly oxidizes just like gunpowder! And I think the outer space report was from space walks, and the explanation was that the first time the airlock itself was exposed to hard vacuum, the surfaces of the airlock would have a reaction that left a scent of ozone.
    • New comment by timmg in "Hyperscalers have already outspent most famous US megaprojects"
      This tweet shows it as a percentage of US GDP: https://x.com/paulg/status/2045120274551423142 Makes it a little less dramatic. But also shows what a big **'n deal the railroads were!
    • New comment by scrumper in "NASA Force"
      Two things: - I like the rolling Moon animation very much. - This seems like a clever way of getting talent involved during a budget squeeze, presumably with the hope that some of those they attract will still be around after this congress and the agency can stabilize once again. I guess it's also a neat kind of try-before-you-buy for both sides. NASA is prestigious and one of the very few places one could do purely science-focused aerospace engineering, but it's still a government job under all the gold leaf and atomic robots. EDIT: Good Lord, I get the cynicism but at least someone at NASA HR is trying new things to keep the lights on.
    • New comment by mjr00 in "Claude Design"
      There's no shame in being homogenous and obvious, though. If I'm building out an internal tool for, say, a hospital lawyer to search through malpractice lawsuits, I want my tool to be the most familiar, obvious, least-surprising UI/UX possible. Just stay out of the way and do what it's supposed to do. The trick is, of course, that the human is still responsible for knowing when homogenous is fine, or when there's real value in the presentation. If you're making a website for, say, a VST plugin for musicians, your site may need to have a little more "pizzazz" to make your product more attractive to the target audience.
    • New comment by rockskon in "Ban the sale of precise geolocation"
      There is no such thing as anonymized location data when you have the location of something where and when they sleep and work. It's a rhetorical fiction the ad industry tells itself.
    • New comment by ljm in "Claude Design"
      I reckon something like this has only been possible to develop because of how homogenous the internet has become in terms of design ever since the glass effect and drop-shadows took over in Web 2.0 and Twitter Bootstrap entered the scene. You'll get a competent UI with little effort but nothing truly unique or mind-blowing. Impressive technology, but that old skool artisanal weirdness of yore only becomes more valuable and nostalgic.
    • New comment by CGMthrowaway in "Isaac Asimov: The Last Question (1956)"
      >INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR MEANINGFUL ANSWER Boy, it sure would be nice if real LLMs were capable of giving an answer like that.

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  • Wetterochs Feed 1

    • Wetter - Samstag schön und warm, Sonntag Regen und Kaltfront
      Hallo! Heute am Freitag haben sich vormittags wegen der Sonneneinstrahlung wieder Quellwolken gebildet, aber anders als am Vortag entwickelten sich daraus überraschenderweise keine Schauer. Die Radiosonden-Aufstiege zeigen, dass die Inversion in 3200 m Höhe etwas stärker ausgeprägt war als am Vortag. Das wird es wohl gewesen sein. Am Samstag wird es 22 Grad warm und häufig scheint die Sonne. Schwierig ist die Frage nach möglichen Schauern und Gewittern. Groß ist die Wahrscheinlichkeit nicht, am ehesten tut sich da was in der Fränkischen Schweiz. Der schwache Wind weht aus wechselnden Richtungen. Am Sonntag überquert uns in der ersten Tageshälfte eine Kaltfront mit Regenfällen und einzelnen Gewittern. Nachmittags lockern die Wolken auf und es bilden sich nur noch vereinzelt Schauer. Es kommt ein in Böen starker Nordwestwind auf. Die Höchsttemperatur beträgt 16 Grad. Am Montag und Dienstag strömt mit in Böen frischen Nordwest- bzw. Nordostwinden kühle Luft zu uns mit Tageshöchsttemperaturen von 13-14 Grad. Es ist wechselnd bewölkt mit Zwischenaufheiterungen. Einzelne Regenschauer sind wenig ergiebig. Am Mittwoch und Donnerstag herrscht sonniges und trockenes Hochdruckwetter. Maximal wird es 16 bzw. 18 Grad warm. Die nördlichen Winde sind tagsüber in Böen frisch. In den Nächten zum Mittwoch und zum Donnerstag muss mit leichten Nachtfrösten gerechnet werden. Besonders stark sinken die Temperaturen aber nicht. In den Städten muss man (nach heutigem Stand) frostempfindliche Pflanzen nicht unbedingt wieder hereinholen, da sollten nur minimale Minusgrade auftreten. Die weitere Entwicklung ab nächstem Freitag ist völlig offen. Die Wettermodell-Ergebnisse laufen in alle denkbaren Richtungen auseinander. Wetterochs Bitte unterstützen Sie die Wetterochs-Wettermail durch eine Spende!

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