cancerhacker (u/cancerhacker)

cancerhacker commented on Why the Apple II Didn't Support Lowercase Letters (2020) vintagecomputing.com/inde... · Posted by u/colinbartlett

kristianp · 4 months ago

What's a good book to read about the early days of Apple? I enjoy these stories but this is necessarily skipping a lot of the story of the apple I and II. A search brings up "The Little Kingdom" by Moritz, but it was published in 1984 so it may include the Mac also released in '84 [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_128K

cancerhacker · 4 months ago

Woz gets some coverage in Steven Levy’s “Hackers: heroes of the computer revolution’from 1984, and he updated it in 2014. I try to reread it every year or so.

cancerhacker commented on Understanding effective type Aliasing in C [pdf] open-std.org/JTC1/SC22/WG... · Posted by u/quelsolaar

cancerhacker · 4 months ago

It’s fun to consider how C devolves into assembler. In my mind, C and its derivatives dissolve into 68K assembler as I’m writing or debugging. Thinking about code this way lets me get a feel for how all the bits all fit together.

It seems like a lost art to think that way. It’s disturbing to me how many candidates couldn’t write Hello World and compile it from the command line.

Everyone should spend some time with godbolt.org or better, the -save-temps compiler flag, to see how changes affect your generated code. Right now. I’ll wait. (Shakes cane at kids)

cancerhacker commented on The hospital where staff treat fear of death as well as physical pain theguardian.com/society/2... · Posted by u/NaOH

cancerhacker · 4 months ago

(Edited to add: Sorry, too long of a post here. I didn’t bother to renew my domain this year)

A timely piece I can relate to. currently starting my second week in a (US) hospital oncology ward after my 11th cycle of chemo. I was first diagnosed with stage iv colon cancer and after chemo, surgery, resections and stubbornness was NED from 2018 to 2025. The return is inoperable and I was given “six months to a year”.

I asked if I’d be in pain when death came, and he said that I wouldn’t likely be - it would just be feeling more and more tired. That’s basically what’s been happening.

The chemo itself hasn’t given me direct side effects like skin lesions or mouth sores, nor much nausea. The secondary effects on my kidneys (which were already doing poorly before this started) and liver (cirrhosis) plus the metastases in lymph nodes and lung leads to edema. Diuretics helped but flushed out my potassium, so there several months where they trying to balance those electrolytes.

Anyway, a lot of my swelling was reduced (and they took 4L from two rounds of draining my lungs) but for some ungodly reason my scrotal sack decided it wanted to play too, and became the size and consistency of one of those half size basketballs you can win at fairs. it’s so bad that I actually requested a catheter. The swelling makes walking or anything else really painful.

The oncology wing I’m in doesn’t seem soaked in the kind of depressing, institutional green malaise of slightly older hospitals but it isn’t a “nice place” to die (I don’t expect to do that this visit in any case). The older woman (70?) two doors down though - seems to be in constant pain and in and out of lucidity, shouting at everyone. Usually a phrase gets stuck on repeat for a few hours - the most heartbreaking was “mommy get my mommy I’m sorry mommy I’m a bad girl mommy stop it” yelled loudly for hours.

This is a generic hospital though. Memorial Sloan-Kettering in NYC has a patient day lounge and lots of projects for child patients and patients families. Still not even approaching the quality described

Sorry, rambling. Probably my way of compartmentalizing the anxiety.

The other thing I wanted to say is that I really liked Christopher Hitchens “Mortality” and that Terry Pratchett’s very relatable death character shows up in all of his books. My favorite quote is from “Small Gods” as Death comes for the protagonist at the very end:

> “Ah. There really is a desert. Does everyone get this?” said Brutha. WHO KNOWS? “And what is at the end of the desert?” JUDGMENT. Brutha considered this. “Which end?” Death grinned and stepped aside.

Maybe I’m not afraid of death because as a devout atheist - well yea, we all get to do that at some point.

cancerhacker commented on Discworld Rules contraptions.venkateshrao... · Posted by u/jger15

awinter-py · 6 months ago

hoping not to spoil the book for anyone who hasn't read it, but a line that has stayed with me:

'you don't know what they mean / they know what they mean'

cancerhacker · 6 months ago

“It takes a long time for a man like Vorbis to die” - is my favorite, but the book is chock full of brilliantly executed philosophy.

cancerhacker commented on Discworld Rules contraptions.venkateshrao... · Posted by u/jger15

zabzonk · 6 months ago

"Lords & Ladies", and then expand out in both/all directions.

Horrible elves, Granny at her best (and Nanny), Magrat the killer queen, Morris dancing, stupid wizzards and lots of other stuff - what's not to like?

Probably just because it's my fave. But you can read them and enjoy in any order.

cancerhacker · 6 months ago

The only reason I disagree is that L&L jumps in with some very well established characters that had been built up earlier. But I do love his (historically accurate by lore?) description of elves. He put a lot of research into re-establishing the myths and lore of his little corner of the world.

(Along those lines I would also recommend Susanna Clarke’s “Jonathan Strange & Mr Norell” which builds its own parallel history set in the early 1800s Britain, with Fairies taking the same role as elves in discworld.

cancerhacker commented on Discworld Rules contraptions.venkateshrao... · Posted by u/jger15

cancerhacker · 6 months ago

I love discworld and prosetyilize its virtues when and where I can, but two thoughts about this:

1 - why not both?

2 - via MST3K “If you're wondering how he eats & breathes, And other science facts...(la! la! la!) Then repeat to yourself its just a show, I should really just relax...”

cancerhacker commented on World-first experimental cancer treatment paves way for clinical trial wehi.edu.au/news/world-fi... · Posted by u/femto

lumost · 6 months ago

There is a bound on the degree to which terminal patients are willing to be human guinea pigs, and a bound on which the data is statistically useful to anyone.

I’ve read many reports of terminal patients who wish that they hadn’t wasted the last few months of their healthspan searching for Hail Mary treatment options. If you were to ask yourself what you would do with 1-3 months of healthy life left, would you spend it in a hospital on chemo?

cancerhacker · 6 months ago

I’m no longer NED from Stage IV colon cancer (first DX 2014), and now it’s returned and inoperable. I was given an option to add Cetuximab which I’d had previously- but the side effects from that were so bad for me that it absolutely isn’t worth it to me to add a few months, but live in misery.

cancerhacker commented on TypeScript types can run DOOM [video] youtube.com/watch?v=0mCsl... · Posted by u/franky47

devmor · 6 months ago

I think those challenges (especially leetcode) are heavily misused.

When my team conducts technical interviews, we are asking for a couple simple programming solutions - but we're asking because we want to hear the candidate talk through it and see what their problem solving process is like.

If you aren't evaluating based on conditions like those, I don't really see the value of coding questions.

cancerhacker · 6 months ago

This is absolutely the way. My interviews are conversations with someone that I want to work closely with, and while leet code might be an interesting lunch conversation it’s not going to be part of any of our day to day work (c/c++/swift/obj-c)

cancerhacker commented on Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone discuss.systems/@ricci/11... · Posted by u/luu

MyOutfitIsVague · 6 months ago

I generally agree with you, but I have worked with many balls of mud that actually can not be understood even with experts and research without an unreasonable amount of time. Things like a program that runs in a database that was bought from a vendor that has since gone out of business, and the program ostensibly formats some rows and puts them into another table, but we don't know and can't know if anything else is actually using it because observability is not a part of this product, and we can't reach anybody who actually was involved in making it or setting it up. In these cases, a scream test is easier, faster, and more effective than "proper" research. And nearly the entire system is built on these inscrutable processes that nobody understands.

Sometimes it involves people, too. I did consulting work at a company that maintained an entire department of dozens of people who did nothing but mechanically opened spreadsheets that were dropped into a share, copied a specific set of rows from them into another spreadsheet, and then copied that spreadsheet into another share. It turned out the entire process was redundant, because what it was built to temporarily fix had already been permanently fixed elsewhere, and they still kept growing this useless department for years. Happily, the majority of these people were reassigned rather than fired.

For a collection agency, breaking these things is temporary pain. For a government, it can be deadly for constituents.

> I can’t really speak to your hopefulness of good intentions - as a parent that relies on government agencies to help my special needs child with the tools she needs, I see no hope here.

I am really sorry to hear that. It's not a good position to be in. I have a trans child myself, and I am also worried about being able to care for them in an environment that is increasingly hostile. I've spent weeks of this past month depressed and panicked over the current "governance". I'm just trying to cope, and sometimes that involves a bit of denial.

> What does success look like?

Don't get me wrong here. No success is possible. If their intentions are good, they're still destroying things that will kill people and take decades to repair. There will likely be no remuneration. I'm just hoping for the outcome that is least bad. I have zero hope of anything good resulting.

cancerhacker · 6 months ago

Thank you for the thoughtful response- and best of luck to you and your child.

cancerhacker commented on Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone discuss.systems/@ricci/11... · Posted by u/luu

thrfedsci022425 · 6 months ago

Federal scientist here. The situation is dire, and this is only the beginning. We've lost all employees with < 1 year of service, which has halted the new projects they were hired to work on. Leaders of 100 employee offices were booted since they had less than 1 year of federal service--back to another interim director. Those of us left are hamstrung since all travel has been canceled, and our credit cards will have $1 limits starting tomorrow. Who cares if you had a recurring charge on it that was maintaining the cell service on an instrument monitoring a volcano. We waste time in hastily scheduled team meetings trying to figure out how respond to DOGE's latest demands, only to learn as more info comes down from above that, no, we're no longer required to address their ultimatum messages. Make no mistake—their objective is to dismantle and destroy government functionality.

cancerhacker · 6 months ago

  “Instead of monitoring volcanoes, what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington, D.C." - Governor Bobby Jindal, Feb 24 2009 in his party response to Obama first address to congress.  


  “Monitor my Beer” - Mount Redoubt in Alaska, March 22, 2009, erupted.

The Wikipedia page details some of the effects of the eruption (air travel, oil production, etc) and like any. such natural disaster multiple government agencies were involved in recovery.

I always end up thinking about this when republicans pick stupid examples of government waste. Best of luck to you.