Top all-time · #1628
Dan Nelson
Personal blog · futureboy.usprogrammingsecurityother
Dan Nelson's personal blog at futureboy.us covers programming and security. Since 2009, 47 different Hacker News readers have linked it 70 times, most often “The Frink programming language”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Most-linked posts?
- The Frink programming language12 people · 12 mentions · first linked 2010-07-23
- Frink7 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2015-07-06
- Unit Definitions5 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2015-03-28
- Engineer eats efficiently for $2.50 a day (2016)4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2015-04-03
- A thorough PGP tutorial3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2013-07-07
- Frink, a programming language for calculating with units. All of them.3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2011-09-13
- GPG Tutorial3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2015-02-14
- Exhaustive, commented, list of units2 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2010-08-18
- Frink: practical calculating tool and programming language2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2014-06-01
- /frinkdocs/index.html2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-05-19
What Hacker News says?
Frink's units definition file is a great read: https://futureboy.us/frinkdata/units.txt I use Frink very regularly as a calculator. I've got a keybinding in emacs to bring it up in comint-mode, which works very well. It's also a general-purpose programming language, at least in theory. I actually tried using it for that purpose once, with I think a few thousand lines of Frink code in total. It was not a pleasant exp…
Comment linking /frinkdata/units.txt
on “Please put units in names”Submitted Engineer eats efficiently for $2.50 a day (2016) as a story · 247 points
HN discussionGoogle has units, but not detailed commentary on unit definitions. See https://futureboy.us/frinkdata/units.txt for that.
Comment linking /frinkdata/units.txt
on “The 500-mile email (2002)”Submitted A thorough PGP tutorial as a story · 183 points
HN discussion> Speaking of circles, SI hasn't fixed Hz vs rad, have they? I don't think so. Anyone who hasn't heard of the Hz/radian issue should see the "Hz" definition in the units definition file shipped along with Frink - if you like finding interesting rants in unexpected places, it's delightful: https://futureboy.us/frinkdata/units.txt
Comment linking /frinkdata/units.txt
on “International System of Units overhauled in historic vote”Submitted Frink as a story · 114 points
HN discussionFrink fills in some of those holes: http://futureboy.us/frinkdocs/ (but not RPN and trig functions are floating point)
Comment linking /frinkdocs/
on “Tydlig – Calculator Reimagined for iPad and iPhone”Submitted Frink as a story · 84 points
HN discussionNot my website, nor do I know the website owner, but I often use http://futureboy.us/pgp.html . Provides a good overview of PGP/GPG, and more or less gives enough instruction that someone could set it up on their own provided they were more technically inclined. Either way, if they were interested, this would be a good enough starting point I think.
Comment linking /pgp.html
on “Securing Email Communications from Facebook”Submitted Exhaustive, commented, list of units as a story · 45 points
HN discussionI loved the unit conversions on my '89. You might enjoy checking out the units command line tool, or the frink programming language. http://linux.die.net/man/1/units http://futureboy.us/frinkdocs/
Comment linking /frinkdocs/
on “Rise of the Scientific Programmer”Submitted Unit Definitions as a story · 38 points
HN discussionTo automate this process, check out Frink[0], which takes unit calculations to the obsessive limit. [0] https://futureboy.us/frinkdocs/
Comment linking /frinkdocs/
on “Street-Fighting Mathematics”Submitted The Frink programming language as a story · 27 points
HN discussionThere was an excellent tutorial posted on that the other day: http://futureboy.us/pgp.html
Comment linking /pgp.html
on “Set up an email server in two hours”Submitted Frink - programming language designed to make physical calculations simple as a story · 8 points
HN discussionSome talk on the racket mailing list was had for "numbers with dimensions[1]" in which contracts were being bent to do calculations which respected units [2]. The Frink language was also mentioned [3]. [1] https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/racket-users/mnId0ux... [2] https://github.com/Metaxal/measures#4-dimensions-and-contrac... [3] http://futureboy.us/frinkdocs/#SampleCalculations
Comment linking /frinkdocs/
on “Make the Type System Do the Work”Submitted GPG Tutorial as a story · 4 points
HN discussionFrink is a programming language that is all about keeping track of units: http://www.futureboy.us/frinkdocs/
Comment linking /frinkdocs/
on “Revenge of the Types”Submitted Engineer Eats Efficiently (For $2.50 a Day) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionYes, frink is one: https://futureboy.us/frinkdocs/
Comment linking /frinkdocs/
on “Pint – A Python package to define, operate and manipulate physical quantities”Submitted Engineer Eats Efficiently (for $2.50 a Day) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionFor anyone else wondering, I'm guessing coldtea is referring to this: http://www.finkproject.org/ . At first I was confused and thought they were talking about Frink, another very interesting but entirely unrelated tool: https://futureboy.us/frinkdocs/
Comment linking /frinkdocs/
on “My God, it's full of yaks”Submitted GPG Tutorial by Alan Eliasen as a story · 3 points
HN discussionAlso good: http://futureboy.us/frinkdocs/
Comment linking /frinkdocs/
on “TCP is harder than it looks”Submitted Frink - a language for physical calculation as a story · 3 points
HN discussionFun topic which inspires me to mention two goodies that help fuel in-depth conversations about measurement and conversion: 1) The Measure of All Things - http://www.kenalder.com/measure/ (science history goodness) 2) Frink - http://futureboy.us/frinkdocs/ (one of my first discoveries on HN and still one of the most fun to return to)
Comment linking /frinkdocs/
on “Why is a minute divided into 60 seconds, an hour into 60 minutes?”Submitted Engineer Eats Efficiently (For $2.50 a Day) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionIf you like the program, read through the data file: http://futureboy.us/frinkdata/units.txt Some pure gold buried in there. For instance search for candela .
Comment linking /frinkdata/units.txt
on “The case of the 500-mile email”Submitted Why Public-Key Encryption Is Cool as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
