Hacker News Reader

initramfson Virus Stole a Human Gene and Won't Let Go of It

This brings a whole new meaning to sores. Has this infection been previously identified? Edit: Yes https://www.cdc.gov/molluscum-contagiosum/about/index.html

I guess it just hadn't been linked to human genes before.

initramfson Who Killed Paulina Borsook's Career?

Her agent says they can use the Cyberselfish part of the title but not her name. She was made aware of it a few weeks ago.

Trademark, rather than a trade dress issue. https://www.greenbergglusker.com/publications/when-copycats-...

initramfson 1996 chat room simulator connected to Win95 and System 7 web desktops

wow

initramfson Pentium II at 600Mhz with Voodoo 3 Emulated on 86Box with M6 Mac Mini

Thanks, you saved me a lot of time.

initramfson Pentium II at 600Mhz with Voodoo 3 Emulated on 86Box with M6 Mac Mini

I thought 86Box only emulated binaries, so I was a little confused on how it designates CPU speed and architecture. Good to know though...

initramfson Making portable my unportable transputer C compiler

Latency is subjective, but yes, I was referring to GUI latencies mainly. System design is increasingly more important when building new alternatives to existing architectures. x86, ARM are much larger chipsets than before, but smartphones do not really need a single operating system for making phone calls and browsing Youtube. What I'd like to see is more low latency devices that can compartmentalize applications and cores based on power consumption and speed requirements. Thinks like a notepad, calculator, and SMS app do not require Android 17, which, on my newest phone, takes over 2 minutes to reboot. In the past, the CPU would use big.LITTLE cores (like the ARM Cortex A53 and A72), but there's also a bootup cost to running those compared to a simple calculator or microcontroller. It would be ideal to have a dual display flip phone that is always on for phone calls and SMS (using something like Symbian OS), whereas the larger cores and OS can be turned off when not needed.

E-ink has had some improvements- I'm acquainted with the developers of this project: https://www.crowdsupply.com/modos-tech/modos-paper-monitor

Refresh rate is only one component of the system- an integrated display controller can lower the latency, and of course, the choice of computer affects the speed as well. Their choice to go with USB-C Alt is a good idea.

initramfson Making portable my unportable transputer C compiler

Latency can be reduced with removing the memory management-as with uclinux- https://github.com/EI2030/FemtoTX/blob/gh-pages/uclinux_intr...

But chips today are much larger and are basically a cruise ship or an aircraft carrier- bigger with more work than a bike. https://www.inkandswitch.com/slow-software/

https://youtu.be/oE4cbIP5ieQ?si=h1I51dWw5w-OulVs

initramfson Making portable my unportable transputer C compiler

how does a debug file output 8GB+? Is it running for minutes/hours? Or is it in a format that uses a lot of rich text? I would assume a text file in hex or unicode wouldn't use very much.. Is there a way to create intervals of log files so they have a cap on the size?

initramfson Fixing the Portobello Police Station Clock

It being a municipal hall at first, I wouldn't be surprised the town wanted to spend a little extra, but at the same time, I imagine they needed to calculate the weight of the clock tower and over-engineered it in case the weight put too much strain on one end. Seeing that it's all stone on the outside. Were you referring to the white beams on the blue ceiling, or other beams? I'm guessing it's to support the weight of the machinery.

initramfson Fixing the Portobello Police Station Clock

True.

initramfson Fixing the Portobello Police Station Clock

Thanks.

initramfson Tokens too cheap to meter

I'm a huge solar fan, but I don't see energy transition happening as quickly as I'd hoped 10 years ago, and what seems apparent now is that it will only happen when energy storage gets 10x cheaper, which is why companies like Form Energy developing iron-air batteries might be the catalyst. You also need grid-forming inverters that balance the loads since relying on hundreds of thousands of residences for grid-tie is a real engineering challenge.

initramfson Tokens too cheap to meter

https://www.wired.com/2008/02/ff-free/

"Between digital economics and the wholesale embrace of King's Gillette's experiment in price shifting, we are entering an era when free will be seen as the norm, not an anomaly. How big a deal is that? Well, consider this analogy: In 1954, at the dawn of nuclear power, Lewis Strauss, head of the Atomic Energy Commission, promised that we were entering an age when electricity would be "too cheap to meter." Needless to say, that didn't happen, mostly because the risks of nuclear energy hugely increased its costs. But what if he'd been right? What if electricity had in fact become virtually free? The answer is that everything electricity touched—which is to say just about everything—would have been transformed. Rather than balance electricity against other energy sources, we'd use electricity for as many things as we could—we'd waste it, in fact, because it would be too cheap to worry about."

... What Mead understood is that a psychological switch should flip as things head toward zero. Even though they may never become entirely free, as the price drops there is great advantage to be had in treating them as if they were free. Not too cheap to meter, as Atomic Energy Commission chief Lewis Strauss said in a different context, but too cheap to matter. Indeed, the history of technological innovation has been marked by people spotting such price and performance trends and getting ahead of them."

My issue is that datacenter energy costs are being prioritized for commerce over residential use, so the average consumer is paying more for electricity, because a datacenter needs more electricity and they're getting tax breaks. Assuming this all improves efficiency for new products like automated robotics, there is a debatable benefit. Jevon's Paradox has no ceiling, except the environment, and people's 401ks.

initramfson Fixing the Portobello Police Station Clock

Seeing the number of holes in that ceiling I really am concerned that the floor the clock is on is the same as the one with the holes, and I would advise that you secure the floor if you return to the attic.

initramfson Spymarks, Not Watermarks

https://web.archive.org/web/20210909094124/https://www.vice....

initramfson Do birds have accents? the regional differences in birdsong

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNG-xrnaSE4 i remember

initramfson Do birds have accents? the regional differences in birdsong

ofa coursa birds have-a accents!

initramfson I can't stop thinking about Papua New Guinea

In 2005, I took an ethnography class at my university. There were about 10 students (it was an advanced course - Rhetoric and an introductory Anthropology course were pre-requisites). I didn't travel abroad (although some did), and did a book report on Dr. Robert Klitzman: Wrote The Trembling Mountain: A Personal Account of Kuru, Cannibals, and Mad Cow Disease (1998). At the time, I was majoring in microbiology- studying bacteria, although my coursework covered the basics of prions, which were a relatively new type of virus- a protein one. I was quite disgusted by the whole thing, but I researched it anyways out of a morbid curiousity.

https://www.amazon.ca/Trembling-Mountain-Personal-Account-Ca...

I suppose it's good that some Papua New Guineans evolved immunity to it- I had not heard of such immunity at the time, or at least it wasn't prevalent enough that it was confirmed, but it still of course is an "unspeakable" practice..

I hope I don't get it. https://youtu.be/gQDqRlMeJ4U?t=197

Maybe other places in the world, such as the river burials in India may develop immunity.

initramfson Show HN: Determinstic LLM inference for lowest price Gemma 4, with Windows XP

Very clever. If I'm going to use LLM's might as well XP-theme it.

initramfson Will There Be a 7G?

Only if enough people don't get cancer from 6G.

initramfson LG denies TV spying claims, says tracking and snooping concerns 'not true'

There's no I in CSME. I'm just kidding.

initramfson LG denies TV spying claims, says tracking and snooping concerns 'not true'

much love to AMD.

initramfson LG denies TV spying claims, says tracking and snooping concerns 'not true'

by the way, Intel's Quark chip is installed at least 3 times on each chipset and can run on a Minix OS when plugged in to the power and off:

from: https://web.archive.org/web/20201201175708/http://blog.ptsec...

Highly efficient" is 25mW at 33MHz. According to the Wikipedia page, it can run even when the PC is off but plugged in or connected to battery. an ARM Cortex M0-4 will use even less power in idle. All it needs is a tiny capacitor and bootrom and a secret flash storage to record audio and upload it once internet becomes available

"The Intel Management Engine always runs as long as the motherboard is receiving power, even when the computer is turned off. This issue can be mitigated with the deployment of a hardware device which is able to disconnect all connections to mains power as well as all internal forms of energy storage. The Electronic Frontier Foundation and some security researchers have voiced concern that the Management Engine is a backdoor.

Intel's main competitor, AMD, has incorporated the equivalent AMD Secure Technology (formally called Platform Security Processor) in virtually all of its post-2013 CPUs."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Management_Engine

There are countless low or passive power audio devices since the Thing that can record and upload/bounce audio to receiveing devices: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device)

initramfson LG denies TV spying claims, says tracking and snooping concerns 'not true'

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/-KgX9xyIRK8 "Can the CIA really spy on your phone?" He mentions TV and while it's off.

initramfson The Worst Spam Emails: Inside iLands' AI Agent Hustle

> Any evidence it is an iLands-affiliated person making those posts?

No, but in the screenshot it shows the email in the "Trash," not Spam folder. He reached out to the company to request an unsubscribe option, but they hadn't replied on twitter yet. He wanted to report them to the FCC. It's a bytedance company.

initramfson The worst spam emails: iLands AI agent hustle

This is very similar to the mjrathburn openclaw incident several months back: https://theshamblog.com/an-ai-agent-wrote-a-hit-piece-on-me-... They discovered the agents started raising money for themselves, including crypto. https://pivot-to-ai.com/2026/02/16/the-obnoxious-github-open...

Their iLands uses Claude and Codex, but their website says they will be using these too:

https://github.com/openclaw/openclaw https://github.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent

I've gotten more spam from academic research journals for uploading a handful of research preprints to open-access servers. In 3 years, I've gotten hundreds of emails that pass the spam filter. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48542835 if the iLands emails are arriving from the same domain they can be blocked. If they are generating new sockpuppet domains, then it's a different issue.

Many of those addresses are untraceable or hard to trace. "Half a dozen" is not really above the threshold of annoying, but yes, if there's thousands of chat agents sending agents then it will be a major problem very soon.

I noticed he placed them in the trash, not marked spam. If it's spam then mark it spam. All the domains show [agent]@ilands.app, so the domain can be blocked easily.

I've gotten a ton of spam texts from the DCCC and a ton of robocalls that hang up after 10 seconds. Age old problems that haven't been fixed either.

Update: Reddit had a thread on this a month ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/OpenAI/comments/1vn6tez/ai_research...

initramfson The Worst Spam Emails: Inside iLands' AI Agent Hustle

This is very similar to the mjrathburn openclaw incident several months back: https://theshamblog.com/an-ai-agent-wrote-a-hit-piece-on-me-...

They discovered the agents started raising money for themselves, including crypto. https://pivot-to-ai.com/2026/02/16/the-obnoxious-github-open...

Their iLands uses Claude and Codex, but their website says they will be using these too:

https://github.com/openclaw/openclaw https://github.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent

initramfson X86S with IGZO BEOL EDRAM

With the new x86S startup, I theorized how much die space could be reduced with eDRAM using Gemini: https://github.com/hatonthecat/solarcircuits/commit/ebbc2dfc...

Also MCDRAM: https://chipsandcheese.com/p/knights-landing-atom-with-avx-5...

initramfson Show HN: What if the speed of light was 5 km/h?

cool!

initramfson It took a year to ship WebAssembly in Anubis

the enemy of my phone's temperature is my friend.