Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Os8088: A powerful Mac-like OS for the IBM XT, 286, 386

os8088.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 174 posts

Re: Os8088: A powerful Mac-like OS for the IBM XT, 286, 386

#151

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

lelanthran wrote: post #101
userbinator wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is something that hasn't been done before, and now exists. Yes someone could spend immense amounts of time and effort, but clearly no one bothered to until AI made it easier. yet the complainers will always complain because they don't have anything better to do with their own time... "bugger off!" as they say.

None of what you say answers any of my questions. It's hard to be impressed when someone purchases a new toaster, even if it's a bespoke toaster. I want to know what the author thinks he got out of this.

A toaster.

Re: Os8088: A powerful Mac-like OS for the IBM XT, 286, 386

#152

Post by cmrdporcupine »

prmoustache wrote: post #96
jggonz wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Author" of os8088 here. That's unfortunate. This is a hobby, and yes, it's all written with Claude. I have a bunch of videos up showing the process. I'm updating the copy of the page to make it extremely clear that it's built using AI so that we can move past that point.

"I want this. I want that. No, not like this, like that. Add this to it." Sounds like a weird hobby.

Don't kink-shame

Re: Os8088: A powerful Mac-like OS for the IBM XT, 286, 386

#153

Post by [deleted] »

jodrellblank wrote: post #82
incanus77 wrote: post #51

This looked great, I started reading things, and then I just kept reading and reading the voluminous description details, and it was an immediate indication to me that the whole thing was built up by Claude. Confirmed in the repo. I closed the tab. I appreciate the topic, interest, and ambition, but if a human couldn’t be bothered to create and document it, I can’t be bothered to spend my time reading about it.

But why do you all think we should spend our time reading your empty whining about it? This is like clicking Google reviews on an eatery and reading “1 star we went there and it was closed!!!” “1 star they don’t let dogs in so we’re never giving them our money!”

[deleted]

Re: Os8088: A powerful Mac-like OS for the IBM XT, 286, 386

#154

Post by graemep »

ButlerianJihad wrote: post #125
graemep wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. The copyright claim is valid in places where LLM output is always covered by copyright. 2. It may be valid in places where sufficient human contribution makes AI code covered by copyright. Even if it is not covered by copyright everywhere, it has a significant effect. If something is covered by copyright in some countries but not others its cannot be globally distributed without a license.

> 1. The copyright claim is valid in places where LLM output is always covered by copyright. Actually not: the copyright claim would be particularly egregious in, e.g. the UK, because if the publisher has not even acknowledged or attributed contributions to Claude, then Claude's copyright is infringed, and the publisher could be liable for fraud on top of that. And to address your second point: if the publisher claim…

> Actually not: the copyright claim would be particularly egregious in, e.g. the UK, because if the publisher has not even acknowledged or attributed contributions to Claude, then Claude's copyright is infringed

I think you are wrong there. Claude cannot hold a copyright. Anthropic might but I think that is a misinterpretation of the law. The government thinks the person who prompted holds the copyright: "In the case of a general purpose AI which generates output in response to a user prompt, the “author” will usually be the person who inputted the prompt." :

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/report-and-impact...

Are you saying that this is wrong and the developer of the LLM holds the copyright on all its output?

> And to address your second point: if the publisher claims 100% ownership, authorship and copyright, then who can even determine the amount of LLM-authored code?

Does it matter? Either the human author/prompter holds the copyright, or no one does. They just need to show that they have made a sufficient contribution to hold the copyright. Commits and prompt history would be a good start.

Re: Os8088: A powerful Mac-like OS for the IBM XT, 286, 386

#155

Post by reaperducer »

jggonz wrote: post #72
skissane wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve got nothing against AI-written code But if people are going to post it on HN, they should consider at least writing the README / main page of their website by hand It is nice to hear the human authorial voice, at least sometimes

I agree. We've just been spending more time on the operating system than the homepage. I'm making some updates, but it's still all going to be written "through" AI for now.

but it's still all going to be written "through" AI for now.

Why the hedge? Why not just be honest say it was written "by" AI, since it was?

You sound like when a company pays to sponsor another company's work, and they get a "powered by" tagline, even though they contributed no actual power/effort. "The Flatulence 100 Bicycle Race powered by Zyzzyz Bank."

Re: Os8088: A powerful Mac-like OS for the IBM XT, 286, 386

#156

Post by reaperducer »

jggonz wrote: post #90
pelasaco wrote: post #89

Sorry the question, i watched shortly your videos, i see you vibe-coding it in an emulator.. but did you try it in a real hardware? With real floppy disks?

Yes, you can see the hardware we tested here: https://www.os8088.com/hardware

Yes, you can see the hardware we tested here: https://www.os8088.com/hardware

How are we supposed to trust that photo, when you've already demonstrated that you're happy to use AI and call it "hand-written."

Re: Os8088: A powerful Mac-like OS for the IBM XT, 286, 386

#157

Post by smelendez »

conradev wrote: post #116
lelanthran wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Author of the AI written os8088 OS here... I'm curious about your goal in purchasing this project. You don't get any peer recognition. You don't gain any special skill. You can't copyright it. You can't sell it. You can't use it for anything useful. You can't use it as a learning exercise. It can't really be built on. It can't serve as a tutorial for others to learn. You don't get the satisfaction of a job well don…

I went to Amazon the other day and ordered a fully custom piece of software. I chatted with the seller about exactly what I wanted, what areas to focus on, and they ended up teaching me a thing or two about the domain. Very similar emotional experience to using a language model, which I’ve totally done before.

How do you use Amazon to commission custom software? Was this through the retail site or AWS?

Re: Os8088: A powerful Mac-like OS for the IBM XT, 286, 386

#158

Post by Lio »

This is great. I had a little Flytech Carry-I 8088 back in the day that could just about run Windows 2 with dual floppies, 640K RAM, Hercules graphics and a Microsoft serial mouse.

Although it was admittedly a bit rubbish compared to Amigas, STs and Acorns of the time I still really enjoyed using.

If I'd had the chance this is exactly what I would have run.

Premptive multitasking without memory protection was still useful on the original Amigas so I think it would have been a boon for 8088 too.

Re: Os8088: A powerful Mac-like OS for the IBM XT, 286, 386

#159

Post by jggonz »

anthk wrote: post #104
jggonz wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I might even port over povray... :)

Por a ZMachine interpreter; there are ones for CP/M and DOS (Frotz).

Thank you for the idea! I was going to add a basic interpreter I've been working on in another project, but I think a port of Frotz is coming first now given how many resources are already available.

Re: Os8088: A powerful Mac-like OS for the IBM XT, 286, 386

#160

Post by winocm »

userbinator wrote: post #98
winocm wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The assembly really, really hurts to read.

In what way? It looks much closer to real human-written Asm than compiler output, which is itself a big win. No stupid calling conventions or obvious bloat. The unmistakably bloated inefficiency of "compiler slop" (that term wasn't used at the time, but those who lived through that Asm vs HLL era on the PC will know exactly what I'm talking about) is not present. I can always spot immediate optimisation opportunities…

Random inconsistencies such as using push/pop for individual registers instead of pusha/popa for space constrained bits or setting the same register to the same value twice in a row.

Not to even mention that random WORDS are capitalized for some REASON as well.

Post reply on HN