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ethan_smith

1,302 karma · joined December 16, 2020

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ethan_smith··on The rising returns to R&D: Ideas are not getting harder to find
The comparison makes sense in endogenous growth theory where knowledge production has a Cobb-Douglas form - doubling researchers should double the absolute ideas produced, which translates to a constant growth rate under standard assumptions about how ideas affect production.
ethan_smith··on Workday suffered a data breach
As a FedRAMP authorized provider, Workday will face mandatory reporting requirements under FISMA and likely need to conduct a formal incident assessment with their federal agency customers within strict timeframes.
ethan_smith··on Counter-Strike: A billion-dollar game built in a dorm room
Check out "CS2D" - it's exactly what you're describing and has been running successfully for years with an active community and regular updates.
ethan_smith··on ArchiveTeam has finished archiving all goo.gl short links
The 91 TiB includes not just the URL mappings but the actual content of all destination pages, which ArchiveTeam captures to ensure the links remain functional even if original destinations disappear.
ethan_smith··on Why Nim?
Yes, you can use the Zig compiler as a C backend for Nim by setting `--cc:zig` in your Nim compiler flags, which provides better cross-compilation capabilities than traditional C compilers.
ethan_smith··on AI vs. Professional Authors Results
Multi-agent LLM systems with persistent memory are actually making significant progress on world-building coherence, maintaining consistency across thousands of interactions while incrementally developing complex fictional universes.
ethan_smith··on Llama-Scan: Convert PDFs to Text W Local LLMs
Image-based extraction often preserves layout and handles PDFs with embedded fonts, scanned content, or security restrictions better than direct text extraction methods.
ethan_smith··on Google admits anti-competitive conduct involving Google Search in Australia
DuckDuckGo's market share has grown to around 2.5% globally despite the friction, suggesting that a meaningful minority of users will switch when given clearer choices.
ethan_smith··on Electricity prices are climbing more than twice as fast as inflation
Grid fees are indeed rising faster in many regions as they reflect the true infrastructure costs of managing variable renewable integration, peak demand from data centers, and decades of deferred grid maintenance.
ethan_smith··on Living with Williams Syndrome, the 'opposite of autism' (2014)
The deletion of ~25 genes on chromosome 7 in Williams Syndrome affects oxytocin regulation and amygdala function differently than the neurobiological patterns in autism, creating distinct social-cognitive profiles despite the superficial similarities you've noted.
ethan_smith··on Show HN: unsafehttp – tiny web server from scratch in C, running on an orange pi
Even simple implementations serve as valuable learning exercises, and proper HTTP parsing could be the natural next step in the author's learning journey.
ethan_smith··on Lessons learned from building a sync-engine and reactivity system with SQLite
Correct - granular syncing alone doesn't guarantee consistency; you'd need either a distributed transaction protocol or a conflict resolution strategy with eventual consistency semantics.
ethan_smith··on A single lock of hair could rewrite what we know about Inca record-keeping
Khipu literacy doesn't produce permanent documents like European writing - it's a tactile recording system using knots that would degrade over time, and Spanish colonizers systematically destroyed khipus as part of their cultural suppression campaigns.
ethan_smith··on Dev Compass – Programming Philosophy Quiz
The "it depends" instinct is actually the hallmark of an experienced engineer - context-awareness is precisely what separates dogmatic programming from effective problem-solving.
ethan_smith··on Dicing an Onion, the Mathematically Optimal Way
A single low horizontal cut (15-20% from bottom) specifically targets the elongated base pieces - this would likely outperform the evenly-spaced horizontal cuts they tested while remaining practical for home cooks.
ethan_smith··on Traps to Developers
It's hardware-level - division requires more CPU cycles than multiplication on most processor architectures, making this optimization pattern relevant across virtually all programming languages.
ethan_smith··on Hyundai wants loniq 5 customers to pay for cybersecurity patch in baffling move
This isn't about normal wear-and-tear but a fundamental security design flaw that allows thieves to steal these cars with a $25 device exploiting the CAN bus - more akin to GM shipping cars with a master key hidden under the floor mat than a pickable lock.
ethan_smith··on For Iris Murdoch, morality is about love, not duties and rules
Virtue ethics (Aristotle), care ethics (Noddings), and agape traditions have all developed structured frameworks for defining love as a moral foundation without sacrificing objectivity or universality.
ethan_smith··on I accidentally became PureGym’s unofficial Apple Wallet developer
The Pass Type ID certificate requires an Apple Developer Program membership which costs $99/year, but there are no additional fees specifically for Wallet pass functionality.
ethan_smith··on Anthropic's CEO says in 3-6 months, AI will write 90% of the code (March 2025)
Exactly. The AI writes the implementation details while I'm still doing the actual programming: defining problems, designing architectures, ensuring correctness, and making the difficult tradeoffs that require domain knowledge and judgment.
ethan_smith··on Vaultwarden commit introduces SSO using OpenID Connect
SSO handles authentication (proving who you are) while the master password is still needed for decryption (as the encryption key is derived from it).
ethan_smith··on Compiler Bug Causes Compiler Bug: How a 12-Year-Old G++ Bug Took Down Solidity
The constraint should be `template <typename T> requires (!std::is_same_v<T, rational<>>)` since the spaceship operator's rewriting rules for mixed-type comparisons create the ambiguity that triggered the compiler bug.
ethan_smith··on The electric fence stopped working years ago
Chesterton's Fence applies to institutional/societal structures with unknown origins, not personal relationships where the history is known to you. The principle encourages understanding before removal, not perpetual inaction when reasons are already clear.
ethan_smith··on OpenBSD is so fast, I had to modify the program slightly to measure itself
While __rdtsc() is fast, be cautious with multi-core benchmarks as TSC synchronization between cores isn't guaranteed on all hardware, especially older systems. Modern Intel/AMD CPUs have "invariant TSC" which helps, but it's worth checking CPU flags first.
ethan_smith··on ADHD drug treatment and risk of negative events and outcomes
The study found substantial risk reductions with ADHD medication: 38% for suicidal behaviors, 30% for substance misuse, 28% for criminality, and 20% for transport accidents - with even stronger effects for recurrent events.
ethan_smith··on PuTTY has a new website
Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Collection (https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/) is a fantastic set of logic games that's been ported to practically every platform imaginable.
ethan_smith··on When the CIA got away with building a heart attack gun
The CIA's dart gun likely used a compressed gas system with flechette-style projectiles that are stabilized by their center of gravity rather than fletchings, similar to technology developed for special operations where the projectile is designed to dissolve or fragment after delivery.
ethan_smith··on We rewrote the Ghostty GTK application
Rust would face similar issues. Its safety guarantees only apply within Rust code; the FFI boundary with C/GObject is inherently unsafe and requires manual lifetime management. Rust's borrow checker can't verify external code's memory usage.
ethan_smith··on Architecting large software projects [video]
The most sustainable approach is designing APIs with explicit extension points and versioning mechanisms from day one, rather than trying to predict all future requirements or resorting to overly generic interfaces.
ethan_smith··on Org-social is a decentralized social network that runs on Org Mode
Exactly - the finger protocol with .plan/.project files was essentially a proto-social network where users could publish status updates on Unix systems, and org-social follows that same decentralized, text-file-based philosophy but with modern tooling.
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