neversaydie

There's also this, from long before the gen AI era: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolved_antenna

If you're not already familiar with it, dang keeps a nice list of HN gems here: https://news.ycombinator.com/highlights

Apologies, missed a slightly earlier [dupe] from the .com version of the BBC: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41318736

From the BBC:

"The problems have emerged across the world, but was first noticed in Australia, and possibly felt most severely in the air travel industry.

There are delays at UK airports, with long queues reported at London's Stansted and Gatwick.

Ryanair said it had been "forced to cancel a small number of flights today (19 July)" and advised passengers to log-on to their Ryanair account, once it was back online, to see what their options are.

British Airways also cancelled several flights.

Several US airlines, notably United, Delta and American Airlines, grounded their flights around the globe. Australian carriers Virgin Australia and Jetstar also had to delay or cancel flights as departure screens went blank at Sydney airport.

Airports in Tokyo, Amsterdam and Delhi also said services had been affected.

Meanwhile, the problems have also hit trains, payment systems and healthcare providers.

UK railway companies reported delays and said they were experiencing "widespread IT issues".

Payment systems - many shops could only take cash. In the UK, supermarkets including Morrisons and Waitrose spent the morning unable to accept contactless payments. It was the same in Australian supermarkets including Woolworths and Coles, while financial institutions such as the National Australia Bank were also affected.

Healthcare - Israel said 15 hospitals had switched to manual processes, although this did not affect medical treatment. Ambulances were told to take new cases to other hospitals. In the UK, some doctors' surgeries in England reported issues with booking appointments.

As the full extent of the disruption became clear, more firms and institutions started reporting problems.

The US state of Alaska warned that its emergency services were affected.

Broadcasters were also caught up in the chaos, including Sky News in the UK, which spent several hours off air.

The London Stock Exchange said it was working as normal, but there were issues with its news service, used by companies to report market-sensitive information in a timely way.

And Poland’s largest container terminal, the Baltic Hub in the northern city of Gdansk, said the outage was "hampering terminal operations" and asked companies not to send containers to the port."

This one is good for a poke in the critical thinking, with a side of random facts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions

In software:

Could plausibly have read, but also likely to blindly recommend without having read them (I've done that myself, only ever skimmed either): The Mythical Man Month, Code Complete.

Very unlikely to have read: Knuth's Art of Computer Programming. (I'm moderately sure Donald Knuth has read these, but beyond that, dubious. Personally I've read their titles on a shelf three times now.)

Yeah, just finished that one (Dream Machine) myself, excellent book. The other main one I know of is Dealers of Lightning, which centres on PARC specifically. Also quite a good book.

Another is Fumbling the Future, which discuss the apparent failure of Xerox to capitalise on their computing research (as you'll know from having read the Dream Machine, the reality is a bit more nuanced than that). Haven't read this one myself, not sure how good it is, seems well-received though.

Finally, Alan Kay is quite active on Quora these days, and often talks about PARC-related material: https://www.quora.com/profile/Alan-Kay-11 (At some point I recall him mentioning the Dream Machine being one of the best accounts of PARC's history, btw.)

Seeing problems with Azure DevOps in Western Europe here, can't open most pages/log in. Teams and Office appear to be working fine.

Yes - Twine is for what's called "CYOA" (after the old Choose Your Own Adventure book series) or "choice based" interactive fiction. That type of IF has its origin in gamebooks, and generally consists of sections of text that you move between by picking from a list of choices ("to open the door turn to section 223, to run away turn to section 543", that sort of thing). Digital tools can add more dynamic elements, but generally it's rooted in the experience of reading/playing a Fighting Fantasy or Choose Your Own Adventure type gamebook.

The other main type of IF is the "parser" kind - that's the Infocom style where the UI is a bit like a command line, you type arbitrary commands, and get dynamic feedback. The main tool used nowadays for making that type of IF is Inform 7, though there are others.

I use a Fnatic MiniStreak mechanical keyboard. Somewhat cheaper than the top end brands, but still very good. There is software if you want to configure LEDs and macros and such (it's gamer gear, so it's bedecked in coloured lights), but you don't have to install it.

Mind you, that's true of most Logitech gear too - it'll work fine with basic Windows drivers, you don't have to install that G Hub Pro whatever-it-is stuff.

Some of their mice also have on-board memory for settings - you can configure them once using the software, write the config to the mouse, then not bother with the software again.

- Notepad++ (as a general text editor/manipulator, I have a separate IDE).

- Google Maps (don't know if that really qualifies as a "tool", but it's one of the highest-utility things I know, either way).

- Discord (have never used the public side of it, but for private comms for a small group of friends keeping in touch and gaming, it's proven an incredibly effective solution).

- Paint.NET (I don't stretch it, but as a "better Paint" for very basic image manipulation, it just works).

Those are the ones I'm particularly fond of. I do use other tools heavily that I like but don't evoke as much appreciation - Visual Studio, VS Code, Chrome, Excel, Google Docs, Outlook, Teams - I'm not sure if those are good-but-not-great or I just take them for granted too much.

I use a Fnatic MiniStreak TKL (no numpad). I never used numpads much, and I like to be able to keep my mouse hand in closer. Switches are Cherry MX Browns. Custom keycaps, though that's only for appearance (pudding caps to diffuse the RGB), doesn't alter performance. A gamer keyboard very much leaning into the "esports" theme, but excellent for typing on too. Price was reasonable as mechanical keyboards go. Had it for quite a while now, very happy with it.

Don't think they sell this particular keyboard anymore, this is probably the nearest to it in their current range: https://fnatic.com/products/mini-streak-rgb-tenkeyless-silen...

Another while to go - 2 weeks left to its destination, but several months (~5?) of setup and calibration once it gets there.

Use-case wise, I'm a developer by trade and a gamer/PC enthusiast (is that still a thing?) off hours. I.e. I spend a lot of time in front of this thing. I also have something of a fascination with physical workspaces and desktop environments (from a HCI point of view), though I've never managed to move the needle much in that respect.

> What room do you use in the house?

In a house with a few (unneeded) bedrooms, so one of those makes for a decent-sized office.

> Do you have a special desk?

Not really - Ikea Alex/Karlby worktop job, same as all the YouTubers use. This whole setup is basically your stereotypical YouTuber/streamer rig (though I do neither of those myself). In fairness to those folks, the Karlby-Alex combo does make for a very simple and effective desk. Good size, very stable (this 180cm worktop weighs a good 30kg by itself). Never had much interest in standing desks.

I do have a second desk set to the right-hand side of the main one; simple Ikea table with a large roll of paper on a reel pulled across it, padded underneath, lamps overhead. The idea is to use that as a scratchpad/brainstorming space to swivel back and forth from, though frankly it hasn't seen much action yet.

> What monitors do you have?

Triple monitor setup for work, just about. Main monitor is an Acer 27" 1440p 144hz IPS, very nice. Also have the 15" laptop screen to one side, sitting on a simple metal stand to raise it to usable height.

And in the only moderately original aspect of this whole setup, a 10" touchscreen propped up at an angle in front of the keyboard, below the main monitor (that gap the BendDesk folks were targeting with their curve). That's very useful for breaking out extra IDE windows for search results, debug output, etc, and/or keeping IM tools handy. Haven't been using the touchscreen aspect much yet tbh, though there's definitely potential with that positioning.

Ultimately I'm looking towards a 32" main monitor, but my desired specs (4k, IPS, 144Hz) are only barely available at that size yet, plus gaming on one would need serious PC upgrades.

In the short term, a 16" monitor in a vertical orientation is the next experimental addition.

> Keyboard? Mouse?

Gamer gear again, hooked to a KVM between my work laptop and my LED-laden-fishtank of a desktop. In fairness, better brand gamer peripherals tend to be very good for general use as well, as long as you can live with tasting the LED rainbow.

Specifically my mouse is a Logitech G903 - excellent wireless mouse, easily the best I've ever owned.

My keyboard is a Fnatic Ministreak (more obscure brand tied into esports, but a very nice keyboard). It's a TKL ("tenkeyless"/65%, i.e. no number pad) - I never used the numpad much, and I like the reduced width to keep my mouse hand in closer. Mechanical keyboard with MX Brown keys - great to type on, not very loud as those go, but still too noisy to ever use back in the office, more's the pity.

> Do you work from a laptop?

Work-supplied laptop, yeah, though I only ever use it docked with proper peripherals - apparently unlike the entire rest of the world, I've never been a fan of laptops.

> Do you move around the house?

No, never got in the habit of that for work. I do have a "sitting room PC" downstairs; rigged up a monitor arm to hold a 24" monitor out in front of an armchair, running off a nice little Intel NUC that's barely bigger than my fist, wireless mouse and keyboard on a lapboard. Quite proud of that setup, clean and efficient.

> What other equipment? Microphone? Webcam?

One of those giant Corsair mousepads that extends across the desk, in keeping with the YouTuber stereotype. Actually pretty good - makes for decent mousing, plus it pads the keyboard impacts somewhat.

Chair is a Secretlab Titan Evo, because of course it is (served me well, good mid-priced chairs in fairness).

Corsair wireless headset, serves me well for mobile sound. Microphone is entirely adequate for calls, but as always with wireless gaming headsets, it's definitely not something you'd use to make proper recordings.

Webcam is just the dodgy built-in one on the laptop for now, Logitech C920 would be the weapon of choice if I ever get around to replacing that.

For the Space Shuttle part of the space program specifically, Rowland White's Into the Black is a great recounting of how that program got started and came to fruition with the first flight: https://www.amazon.com/Into-Black-Extraordinary-Columbia-Ast...

Haven't read my copy yet, but for the origins of the (extremely important) container shipping industry, Marc Levinson's The Box comes highly recommended: https://www.amazon.com/Box-Shipping-Container-Smaller-Econom...

Another one high on my to-read list; the story of the 19th century telegraph system and its impact (figure this is early enough to fall outside the traditional tech category): https://www.amazon.com/Victorian-Internet-Remarkable-Ninetee...

Yep. Never had much hope for Star Citizen and only moderate interest as a consequence, but my particular remembrance is some random line in one of the dev updates a while back. It mentioned how environment humidity would affect character endurance. Coming on top of many, many similar lines, that was pretty much the "yeah, this isn't going to work out" moment for me. It's stuck in my mind as a one-liner memento mori of sorts ever since.

Just in case you're not already familiar with it - there's a niche sub-genre of games called "bridge simulators" that involve co-operative team play on a simulated starship bridge. Each player taking a different crew station (sensors, navigation, weapons, that sort of thing), plus a commander running the show - they all have to work together to complete "missions".

It's basically a game version of the bridge scenes you see on sci-fi shows like Star Trek or Battlestar Galactica.

Artemis Bridge Simulator is probably the best known one (though quite long in the tooth at this stage), there are a few others like Starship Horizons or Empty Epsilon.

This community should be a good source of info on the topic: https://bridgesim.net/

They're sometimes used for educational and team-building purposes too - e.g. those "space camps" popular in the US that other users have mentioned here.

This one in particular seems geared towards that use case: https://thoriumsim.com/docs/overview

Yep, C# and Windows Forms recommendation from me too. Excellent tooling, fine language, mature and straightforward tech, very popular over very many years so wide resources online.

WPF seems like a nice idea, but it's tricky to get into, has limited penetration/support, and it's never been very clear whether Microsoft have abandoned it or not (including to Microsoft, I sometimes suspect).

If it's a basic app, basic WinForms should do just fine.

Created this account around 9 years ago (I've been in tech for 20 years or so). Never really used the site up until the past couple of years though, when I got in the habit of browsing it regularly (along with Reddit and a few other venues I'd ignored - went on a mini-binge of expanding my tech/social news sources).

Don't know that I've gained a lot of hard/useful knowledge necessarily, it's more an occasional source of interesting news and informed commentary, within the subset of interests HN revolves around. Have gathered some background material on specific topics of interest to me (HCI, workspaces, personal knowledge management).

I don't submit much or engage in discussion very often (this post being an exception, trying to move the consumption/creation needle a bit), but HN is an excellent resource. The simplicity of its UI and general model is refreshing, and the signal-to-noise ratio and quality of both contributors and moderation is very high.

There's also a zeitgeist aspect; I know if anything of significance happens within a range of interests, I'll likely hear about it here.

Overall though, HN is more a source of news and intellectual stimulation for me than a learning resource. It's an excellent and pretty unique one though, would miss it if it was gone.

Scientific and peer-reviewed.

Some random civil servant from some random country slinging random stories? Zero interest in hearing them. Life's too short to click links for that sort of stuff, let alone engage with it.

Winamp visualisations. Spent a lot of hours in front of that app a couple of decades back.

I'm sure there's better stuff somewhere out there nowadays, but my music consumption has simply moved away anyway - period on iTunes/Google Music, now only ever streaming random stuff on-demand from Spotify.

Might have been, sorry - came across this via a fresh story on Gamasutra this evening, just realised the original blog post is from last week.

Yep, pretty cool - it's a very popular tool in the "interactive fiction" genre of game development/writing. It's widely used for "choice-based IF" (also called "CYOA" after the Choose Your Own Adventure books), with the other main side of the genre being parser-based IF (like Colossal Cave and other PC text adventures from back in the day). Parser IF is often built with a tool called Inform, might also pique your interest.

Emily Short's blog is a good resource for that field in general: https://emshort.blog/ Or re tooling specifically: https://emshort.blog/how-to-play/writing-if/