j2kun

People do this all the time

https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1iu44ub/up...

https://usafacts.org/government-spending/

https://sankeymatic.com/gallery/federal-budget.html

Discovery is the entertainment for the rest of us.

FTA:

> the number 12 features heavily in the Bible: Jacob’s 12 sons, the 12 tribes of Israel, the 12 apostles and the crown of 12 stars in the Book of Revelation are just a few examples.

And about "aspect ratios" (the article doesn't mention aspect ratios):

> 12 is a number particularly well-suited to establishing proportions, as it has many divisors

> the apse, at 75m (7.5 × 10), followed by the vault of the transept at 60 metres (7.5 × 8). The nave vault is 45m high (7.5 × 6), the side aisle 30m (7.5 × 4), and the choir 15m (7.5 × 2).

neither 10 nor 8 are divisors of 12, and 10 has a factor of 5. TBH it seems like 15m is the base length here, not 7.5, then you get multiples 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, but I'm guessing these sequential integers are not considered "beautiful" numbers by the author so they picked 7.5 to pigeonhole some divisors of 12 in there.

Call me grumpy, but numerology does not make architecture more beautiful.

In my view, LinkedIn has never really been a place for serious discussion.

I heard someone say recently that one reason tech sucks is because the sociopathic narcissists domesticated the hackers.

I think I agree, the FAR bigger impact on my book's sales was Google search deciding not to surface it in search results. Presence on pirate websites had no effect, and eventually I switched to the PDF as "pay what you want."

The main function of copybara is not moving code but modifying code to make it suitable for a different repository structure, build system, etc.

There are at least some technological solutions here, such as anonymous credentials. [1] Modern versions of this technique allow one to associate metadata (like a proof of age exceeding a threshold) in such a way that the verifier can't even correlate repeated requests across users.

Governments that are serious about age verification and individual privacy (which, doubtful they truly are) should agree on a protocol and set up certificate issuers that are associated with a digital ID. Then age verification will not be an invasive procedure or risk data leaks or insider threats.

[1]: https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2026/03/02/anonymou...

For our situation, building a foundation of trust in our community is more important than attracting as many contributors as possible. If a one-time face-to-face introduction is infeasible, then there are many other projects to contribute to. (And this is considering that our community is all math PhDs, cryptographers, and compiler engineers; we are no strangers to neurodiversity.)

> and if their bot is actually good? why not? fix

One reason: automating the construction of a "trustworthy" profile lowers the bar for attackers who want to plant xz-style backdoors. Not to mention polluting the various signals people use to evaluate candidates for jobs.

Indeed, a request for a short video call filters out most of the people who are looking to pad their resume with LLM-automated contributions, while adding an extra layer of welcome to genuine newbies who want to join the community.

In my main project we added a new requirement that all new contributors meet a maintainer in a non-textual format before their first PR is merged. Seems to work well for a small project.

Neat! I also enjoyed https://q.uiver.app/ by https://github.com/varkor which is a bit more specialized.

> Yes, Steam Machine is optimized for gaming, but it's still your PC. Install your own apps, or even another operating system. Who are we to tell you how to use your computer?

Indeed, thankful for that.

Perhaps polyhedral optimization, tiling, scalar evolution, vectorization...

I guess garbage collection is pretty advanced in the syllabus.

Looks like there is quite a bit of overlap with regards to the optimizing parts between these two courses. I guess it's switching from the dragon book to academic papers that makes it advanced.

I'm a bit confused about what makes this course "advanced." Most of the topics (dead code elimination, data flow, dominator analysis, SSA form) seem like they belong in a first course on compilers.

What is kind of annoying is that the author jumps to "I hate compilers" instead of "I will report/help fix this bug upstream."

Instead, Google gave up on search engine development /s

Their whole argument is that AI's added efficiency means they don't need to set aside valuable human time anymore. Why can't they just point Claude at Claude Code and ask it to reduce memory usage by 90%?

We all saw their code...

I would say the same thing about stories purely about AI company stock price changes, but I imagine that is a losing battle here.

I disagreed with that as well. There is no technical content in a finance publication playing the price change horserace.

Bitcoin price stories should no longer be considered on topic for HN.

It drags on a bit and is rather verbose, which is what made me notice it was AI-assisted.

While the article is mostly about cryptocurrency, my response is in re:

> But what do you do if you already live under tyranny? The rule of law is a great defense, but cryptography alone can't bring about the rule of law. What is the role of technology in this foundational struggle?

My colleague Moti Yung has studied this and there are some surprising results

https://eprint.iacr.org/2022/639

> Anamorphic Encryption: Private Communication against a Dictator

...

> In this work, as a technical demonstration of the futility of the dictator’s demands, we invent the notion of “Anamorphic Encryption” which shows that even if the dictator gets the keys and the messages used in the system (before anything is sent) and no other system is allowed, there is a covert way within the context of well established public-key cryptosystems for an entity to immediately (with no latency) send piggybacked secure messages which are, in spite of the stringent dictator conditions, hidden from the dictator itself! We feel that this may be an important direct technical argument against the nature of governments’ attempts to police the use of strong cryptographic systems, and we hope to stimulate further works in this direction.

The hypothesis that companies today need to really focus so they can make money ignores the fact that, in fact, most or the major AI companies are not making money relative to their costs.

There is also old-fashioned marketing. Go find your audience to be heard.

Public pressure campaigns work on companies, and this situation is thanks to Google.