Hacker News Reader

bregmaon Everything in C is undefined behavior

A segfault is considered safe if you're talking about functional safety because it results in a return to a defined safe state (RTDSS).

If a segfault leads to some other state you do not deem "safe", such as a single program gating access to a valuable asset with a default fail state of "allow", you just have a fundamental design flaw in your system. The safety problem is you or your AI agent, not the segfault.

bregmaon A message from President Kornbluth about funding and the talent pipeline

I dunno. The single major qualification of being from money has not always made for the best research results.

bregmaon The Surprisingly Long Life of the Vacuum Tube

I disagree. There is nothing in the digitally sampled and modelled world comparable to plugging your guitar into a hot over-driven tube amp and showing the feedback who's the boss. Pure analog transistors don't give that luscious even harmonic distortion and usually just clip like a meth-addled dog stylist in a poodle-grooming station.

bregmaon Poland is now among the 20 largest economies. How it happened

People need something to resent or hold in disregard. Government and taxes are a good target. The problem only really begin when someone actually tries to reduce or eliminate that target. It's the old "be careful what you ask for, you might just get it".

bregmaon Canadian fiddler sues Google after AI Overview claimed he was a sex offender

It wasn't just because he was in the 10%. He was proudly a member of a small minority within a minority when it came to certain predilections.

But those predilections did not include minors. One might be not able to say he has gone without sin, but not that sin.

bregmaon Write some software, give it away for free

Yes, I understand most artists would be glad if their landlords accepted "exposure" as rent.

Similarly most salespeople would gladly work commission-free if it meant more sales.

bregmaon Does Employment Slow Cognitive Decline? Evidence from Labor Market Shocks

> Did I just described rich kids?

You just described Lord Of The Flies.

Be mindful of fundamental human nature and how it shapes everything we do, including all our social constructs. Few people are, which make mindlessness the dominant modus operandi.

bregmaon The smelly baby problem

> Baby stage has sleep interruptions but is otherwise super easy.

Your assertion does not correlate with my lived experience. But dirty diapers was definitely not the biggest issue.

bregmaon The smelly baby problem

Relax: it only lasts a few months. Rarely more than 60 or 70.

bregmaon "Parse, don't validate" through the years with C++

> What Java code?

A class with a passel of static member functions is Java code. It is not in any way idiomatic C++ code which has had namespace-level ("free") functions since it was invented as C-with-classes many decades ago. Using classes holding a whole lot of static member functions is strongly frowned on in the professional C++ community.

bregmaon New copy of earliest poem in English, written 1,3k years ago, discovered in Rome

"Thaer whunce waes e mann fromm Nantucket...."

bregmaon "Parse, don't validate" through the years with C++

Author has used LLMs to generate Java code in C++. It detracts from his point.

bregmaon Alberta startup sells no-tech tractors for half price

I fail to see the sexism aspect to that comment. Can you elaborate?

bregmaon How Long Poop Stays in Your Body May Impact Your Health, Study Finds

I find I can't keep it down for more than a few minutes. I guess I can eat all the poop I want and stay healthy then?

bregmaon College instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work

The part you're missing is that the evaluator already knows the answer. They're not looking that you can arrive at the correct answer, but that you know how to arrive at the correct answer. If "arriving at the correct answer" just means retrieving data from a Baysian database using a Markov chain you have only demonstrated you provide no value in the chain and should indeed get a mark of zero or get recycled.

bregmaon Why Japan has such good railways

Not to mention that every few years either a typhoon or a 9.0 earthquake defeats any effort to build exceptional value in your property.

It seems the only thing that is permanent in Japan is impermanence.

bregmaon Game devs explain the tricks involved with letting you pause a game

I think you mean timestep. The video frames get updated on one timestep (the so-called "frame rate" because it is the rate at which video frames get redrawn, the inverse of its timestep), physics gets updated on a separate timestep, and gameplay or input or network polling can be updated on its own timestep.

bregmaon God sleeps in the minerals

We used to have asbestos rocks sitting around in our house when I was growing up (my mother was born a raised in the town formerly called Asbestos, QC). You could just peel the fibers off the rock. In that form the asbestos is harmless: it's only when it's chopped into shorter fibers and inhaled that it's seriously unhealthy. Industrial uses almost always chopped the fibers so almost no commercial products using asbestos are safe, but the rocks just sitting there are harmless.

bregmaon Costasiella kuroshimae – Solar Powered animals, that do indirect photosynthesis

Is the coffee actually in the mug or only on top of it?

bregmaon AI Will Be Met with Violence, and Nothing Good Will Come of It

So did compassion, probably in a greater amount. And yet the greater amount of resources goes into war at the expense of compassion.

Humanity has taken control of its own evolution and no longer relyies on natural selection to be the driving force for change. Using evolution as an excuse to make bad and immoral choices is a poor argument and should be left back in the stone age.

bregmaon White House staff told not to place bets on prediction markets

They didn't go without saying: there are laws on the books explicitly making them illegal. But a law that is not enforced is not justice, and a law that is unevenly enforced is an injustice.

bregmaon White House staff told not to place bets on prediction markets

    Step 1: Gut the SEC
    Step 2: Buy $100,000,000 in oil futures 15 minutes before bombing starts
    Step 3: ???
    Step 4: PROFIT!!!

bregmaon White House staff told not to place bets on prediction markets

> So who are the suckers who are losing all this money?

Gambling is just a tax on the stupid. Is it surprising it's rampant in certain institutions?

bregmaon The Pentagon Threatened Pope Leo XIV's Ambassador with the Avignon Papacy

Trump for pope! I hear he's going to be looking to do something new in a few years.

bregmaon The Pentagon Threatened Pope Leo XIV's Ambassador with the Avignon Papacy

That would be following established rules. Such a thing is not the habit of the current administration.

bregmaon The Importance of Being Idle

Slackers! You're all slackers! [0]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEsNiV8e4ko

bregmaon The Importance of Being Idle

Ah, the good old "trickle down" theory of Thatcher and Reagan. Remember how much better off we became when we gave more to the wealthy?

bregmaon Show HN: A (marginally) useful x86-64 ELF executable in 301 bytes

As always with these admirable hacks, I feel compelled to point out these are not really ELF executables but just small files you can trick the x86_64 Linux kernel into loading.

I mean they're very clever and legit and kudos to the people who develop these exploits, but they're not ELF.

bregmaon Lunar Flyby

How would they get it up to the required reentry speed for it to be a valid test? They already know the heat shield works for reentry at LEO speeds. That's not where the problems occur.

bregmaon Lunar Flyby

> backside of the moon

I think perhaps you mean the far side of the moon. The "backside" of the moon implies a large graben stretching almost from pole to pole, and I have seen no evidence of such a geological formation in any photos.