Live data from Hacker News

Open-Sourcing Windows Calculator

blogs.windows.com

91–100 of 184 posts

Re: Open-Sourcing Windows Calculator

#91
post #67

Nice to hear that. I like to calculate stuff from time to time, so I use the default OS calculator app a lot. The Windows one is actually pretty decent, except maybe for the shortcuts - e.g. raising to the power is under "y" for some reason. Ubuntu/Linux(es) has by far the best one. The shortcuts are obvious and the whole expression is visible at all times. The one for macOS is surprisingly lacking.

I think that function has been bound to y for decades by now. No reason to change muscle memory, even when rewriting the UI.

Re: Open-Sourcing Windows Calculator

#93
post #7

https://github.com/Microsoft/calculator#data--telemetry "This project collects usage data and sends it to Microsoft to help improve our products and services. Read our privacy statement to learn more. Telemetry is disabled in development builds by default, and can be enabled with the SEND_TELEMETRY build flag." Even on a simple calculator.

I'm just surprised it's opt-in for dev builds.

Re: Open-Sourcing Windows Calculator

#94
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So nothing really nefarious then.

Because it is a simple calculator. Now think about what they might be collecting from the rest of the system. All the concerning privacy issues with Facebook or any other company should be seen rigorously by its users. Telemetry at OS Level is one of the worst offending practices IMO.

So microsoft should just ignore all the lessons that we've learned over and over about being data driven?

Re: Open-Sourcing Windows Calculator

#95
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not windows, but `true` has to take the cake for the most trivial program, the portion of my comment after the second : is a valid implementation:

Is true a program? I thought it was a command built into the shell.

It’s /usr/bin/true on Mac, and the OpenBSD source for it is at https://github.com/openbsd/src/blob/master/usr.bin/true/true... .

Re: Open-Sourcing Windows Calculator

#96
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not windows, but `true` has to take the cake for the most trivial program, the portion of my comment after the second : is a valid implementation:

Is true a program? I thought it was a command built into the shell.

Most shells optimize it to avoid the overhead of spawning a process for something as trivial as that. But yes, it's an actual binary even so, just in case - try `which true`.

https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/true...

Re: Open-Sourcing Windows Calculator

#98

Awesome seeing another component of Windows (albeit a small one) shifting to open source. My hope is that over time, more and more components will end up open source as they get updated and rewritten.

This is their whole plan. They are testing the waters with this. Soon all of Windows will be open source.

And we still have to pay for it

Re: Open-Sourcing Windows Calculator

#99
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it is a simple calculator. Now think about what they might be collecting from the rest of the system. All the concerning privacy issues with Facebook or any other company should be seen rigorously by its users. Telemetry at OS Level is one of the worst offending practices IMO.

You don't have to imagine, you can view the data for yourself: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/privacy/diagnostic-...

If we're expected to trust the party spying on us to reveal exactly the extent to which they spy on us via their proprietary, closed-source spying data viewer tool, then we deserve exactly whatever the fuck it is we end up getting.

Re: Open-Sourcing Windows Calculator

#100
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is actually pretty relevant because TI has been goofing up the cube root function in its calculators for decades.

Is there a bug in there?

TI will tell you, “It’s a feature.” Play around with the cube root of negative real fractions ( with even and odd denominators) and integers (starting with -1) and see what you find.
Post reply on HN