Hacker News Reader

jeff_carron A missing underscore sent innocent man to prison for 18 months

I'd rather have Brazil be accurate for the future than Idiocracy. Both suck, but Robert Di Nero as the hero HVAC guy is excellent.

jeff_carron Coreutils for Windows

Christ. I'm guessing it's to be BSD so they can pull it back and keep it proprietary at any time also. Never trust Microsoft to act in good faith. We USE THE GPL for a reason.

jeff_carron US national debt reaches a record $37T, the Treasury Department reports

Ridiculous claim. Both parties are exactly the same on this issue. It's politics and nothing more. No one has any idea what to do about it.

Well, mathematicians do, but nobody listens to us.

jeff_carron Why DeepSeek is cheap at scale but expensive to run locally

I am impressed. Your personal website is down. HN doesn't allow private messages.

I'm Jeff Carr. I co-founded digital ocean. I assume I can't post email addresses here, but I will try. lets see how smart things are from banning me. I am: wit AT wit com

jeff_carron Long live American Science and Surplus

> a GoFundMe for a for-profit enterprise rubs me the wrong way

It should. They should be selling shares. The Green Bay Packers are similar.

jeff_carron Bus stops here: Shanghai lets riders design their own routes

> Huh? Chinese government is insanely bureaucratic.

Indeed. It takes a pretty big bureaucracy to be able to ban the wikipedia. Oh, and ban gmail & all of google. And all news sites in general. Can customize your bus schedule though I guess.

jeff_carron Universe expected to decay in 10⁷⁸ years, much sooner than previously thought

/remindme in 10^60 years

jeff_carron CVE program faces swift end after DHS fails to renew contract [updated]

The contract with MITRE has been extended.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2025/04/16/cve-...

My guess indefinitely.

DOGE might be a bunch of idiots, but in the entire DOD, there are non-idiots.

jeff_carron xAI has acquired X, xAI now valued at $80B

> This whole thing seems like a big pyramid scheme.

That's because his scam of charging $8k over the price of a Tesla for "self driving" was complete vaporware. It never worked and it never was going to work. I am disappointed I fell for it.

There should be a class action lawsuit against TESLA for everyone that purchased the $8k self driving "feature". We were all told it was "being rolled out". It was a total lie.

jeff_carron The earliest versions of the first C compiler known to exist

The first 4 commits in GO are:

commit d82b11e4a46307f1f1415024f33263e819c222b8 Author: Brian Kernighan <bwk@research.att.com> Date: Fri Apr 1 02:03:04 1988 -0500

    last-minute fix: convert to ANSI C
    
    R=dmr
    DELTA=3  (2 added, 0 deleted, 1 changed)

:100644 100644 8626b30633 a689d3644e M src/pkg/debug/macho/testdata/hello.c

commit 0744ac969119db8a0ad3253951d375eb77cfce9e Author: Brian Kernighan <research!bwk> Date: Fri Apr 1 02:02:04 1988 -0500

    convert to Draft-Proposed ANSI C
    
    R=dmr
    DELTA=5  (2 added, 0 deleted, 3 changed)

:100644 100644 2264d04fbe 8626b30633 M src/pkg/debug/macho/testdata/hello.c

commit 0bb0b61d6a85b2a1a33dcbc418089656f2754d32 Author: Brian Kernighan <bwk> Date: Sun Jan 20 01:02:03 1974 -0400

    convert to C
    
    R=dmr
    DELTA=6  (0 added, 3 deleted, 3 changed)

:100644 000000 05c4140424 0000000000 D src/pkg/debug/macho/testdata/hello.b :000000 100644 0000000000 2264d04fbe A src/pkg/debug/macho/testdata/hello.c

commit 7d7c6a97f815e9279d08cfaea7d5efb5e90695a8 Author: Brian Kernighan <bwk> Date: Tue Jul 18 19:05:45 1972 -0500

    hello, world
    
    R=ken
    DELTA=7  (7 added, 0 deleted, 0 changed)

:000000 100644 0000000000 05c4140424 A src/pkg/debug/macho/testdata/hello.b

jeff_carron Show HN: "Git who" – A new CLI tool for industrial-scale Git blaming

Yes, that is awesome. I wonder if "go" works like that also?

jeff_carron Flappy Bird in 1000 lines of C

Cool. It's worth mentioning again, because it seems to not be quite as common knowledge as it should be, C has been deprecated by GO.

jeff_carron SP1: A performant, 100% open-source, contributor-friendly zkVM

L. Ron Hubbard has entered the chat.

jeff_carron It's raining PFAS in South Florida – study

Trump can just take the whole NOAA budget himself now and replace them with a legal pad and a black sharpie. I assume that's the plan. Say, we can just steal anything from any budget now right?

jeff_carron Trump wins presidency for second time

Thank god Biden legalized weed. Oh, wait, nope, they didn't even bother to do that.

jeff_carron Steam games will need to disclose kernel-level anti-cheat on store pages

> This is bad for the entire industry.

This is Microsoft continuing to demonize free software and Linux. If they actually cared, they would support an open source solution to the problem. SOMETHING THEY ABSOLUTELY OPPOSE. That is the core issue. Say it over and over, Microsoft _DOES NOT WANT A SOLUTION TO THESE PROBLEMS_.

jeff_carron Steam games will need to disclose kernel-level anti-cheat on store pages

Not at all correct! Nothing of what was said is true. The actual reality is:

* Microsoft makes piles of money from Gaming * Microsoft got involved with Gaming to damage Linux adoption and corporate support (Sony/Linux/Playstation) * Microsoft spends massive amounts of attention on gaming to lock in the general public to Windows * Microsoft continues to lose to Linux * Microsoft uses cheating to lie about open source being 'something something' cheaters

The fact of the matter is that Microsoft has absolutely no interest in an open source solution to these problems and are using these issues to lie, mislead and spread FUD in some absurd fantasy world where only some superior microsoft driven closed source solution is the only possible way this can be solved. All of that is a complete lie. Nothing more.

A smart linux and free software lawyer would be wise to file a class action lawsuit for discovery documents inside Microsoft where one would undoubtedly find piles of emails between the executives hell bent on doing everything to damage Linux adoption have stupidly wielded this unidentified axe which is actually a -4 cursed boat anchor.

Anyone that tells you that computer security or trust can only be done with proprietary software is lying to you for their own benefit.

jeff_carron AMD Unveils Its First Small Language Model AMD-135M

Has anyone tried it? I mean, I would, but as far as I can tell understand I need 4 boxes with 4 GPU's. Plus an interconnect. I mean, I could put in an order for my homelab but at around $80k per box and maybe $20k for the right switches and some other gear, my wife will probably frown at me ordering a $340,000 rig to try this code that I don't know what to do with it if it works.

Maybe some other heavy hitter out there can explain what all this whatchamacallit newfangled synergy producing matrix algebra does after you have it running?

jeff_carron Trove of dinosaur fossils found high in B.C. mountains

Black rock around white bone could be volcanic ash or mud buried the bones, then pushed down into the mantle just right, heated it under lots of pressure and cooked it all into rock like a kiln?

jeff_carron Cautionary tale on using Chase bank for indie business

There are lots of us that made good money over the years and your books were important to lots of us.

Sell signed copies of your books for $1000 at the klein bottle store so we can buy them. Let us help you have fun in your retirement! (A signature or signed bottle would be awesome too.)

jeff_carron U.S. imposes first-ever national drinking water limits on PFAS

That EPA site more than obtuse. It's impossible to find a company that has a service that will mail you a container, have you add the water to it, then send it back to them to have them test it.

The closest I found was: https://www.meritlabs.com/sample-bottle-order but there are not even prices and it appears that you have to be more or less an industry expert to even fill out the order form.

Someone should make a startup like 23andMe but for water. Lots of us would pay $500 to have water accurately tested. Especially if the data could be aggregated and made pubic.

jeff_carron Direct File officially opens in 12 pilot states

The IRS being accused of being criminal all the time doesn't gain any confidence running it's own user authentication through a foreign country instead of login.gov.

jeff_carron Germany's days as an industrial superpower are coming to an end

You know, the one where Germany is falling in stature on the international stage so it pulls itself up from it's bootstraps so it can once again rise up to an international superpower. I forget the title. I think they made a sequel.

jeff_carron Wyoming discovery could be America's first new source of rare-earths since 1952

> Rare earth refining traditionally generates a lot of toxic waste of various sorts.

Could someone explain why? It certainly seems obviously easier than radioactive waste. All that has to happen is a stable solid. Why are there liquids?

jeff_carron Jeff Bezos announces $3.4B NASA contract to land astronauts on lunar surface

> There were major concerns about maintaining a viable industrial base

Or everyone took the money and ignored what Present Eisenhower had to say.

jeff_carron Engineers develop water filtration that removes “forever chemicals”

Also every stain resistant material. Clothes, carpet, etc.

I'm not sure, but I suspect even bubbles. Like when we were kids.

jeff_carron HyperShell: Spawn shells anywhere. Fully peer-to-peer

It would seem useful to control a large botnet of compromised hosts.

jeff_carron Framework Laptop 16

I've been using a nipplemouse for at least 20 years. Exclusively. I hate trackpads. I always disable mine.

I always use tables that my elbows rest on the table.

jeff_carron The Rust Implementation of GNU Coreutils Is Becoming Remarkably Robust

> I just wish it was copyleft

Yes, the GPL is very important. The BSD license _is_ a problem. Those of you that were around when FreeBSD was maybe going to 'win' remember why Linux(GPL) ended up capturing everyone's attention.

You can not count on your code staying free if it's under a BSD license. If there is a way to make money on it, someone will fork it privately and force you to pay for it. If they don't succeed, you will still be under continual threats that you will have to pay for it.

jeff_carron New mathematical model shows how the body regulates potassium

Since No one ever talks about the elephant in the room that is the Human Population Growth problem, let's just bury our heads in the sand and pretend we aren't on the cusp of a massive catastrophic failure of limited resources.