HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

jpfr

1,706 karma · joined March 5, 2014

submissionscomments
jpfr··on More German than many Germans
Sorry you had that experience.

I supervised a PhD who had come to Germany and through her indirectly experienced the immigration office.

When your residence permit runs out, and your application is still being processed, you automatically get a temporary permit for the time until your application is done.

But the temporary permit arrives only a few days before the deadline. Quite a few people don’t understand that part or don’t trust the process - and get into a real panic.

For the GmbH: It’s quite easy. Google for “Musterprotokoll”. That’s a one-page document with all the statutes a company needs and a fast-track process if you want to not deviate from it. Or you get a template from the IHK homepage and adjust it.

I did it - no problemo.

jpfr··on The peril of laziness lost
Probably the second rewrite is really tight with good abstractions and little repetition.

So no, the end result can still be DRY.

jpfr··on WolfIP: Lightweight TCP/IP stack with no dynamic memory allocations
As the project is GPL’ed I guess they sell a commercial version. GPL is toxic for embedded commercial software. But it can be good marketing to sell the commercial version.

Edit: I meant commercial license

jpfr··on Better JIT for Postgres
The "byte-code" coming from the query planner typically only has a handful of steps in a linear sequence. Joins, filters, and such. But the individual steps can be very costly.

So there is not much to gain from JITing the query plan execution only.

JITing begins to make more sense, when the individual query plan steps (join, filter, ...) themselves be specialized/recompiled/improved/merged by knowing the context of the query plan.

jpfr··on Welcoming Elizabeth Barron as the New Executive Director of the PHP Foundation
Sometimes, but not necessarily. It depends on the competence of the DEI "figurehead".

Some communities had a figurehead installed by committee who provoked negative reactions due to bad decisions. Sometimes the leadership arose naturally or just turned out very competent.

jpfr··on An Update on Pytype
MOPSA does abstract interpretation for both C and Python. It even works across language boundaries.

https://mopsa.lip6.fr/#features

It also has more abstraction domains than „just“ the type of objects.

jpfr··on An almost catastrophic OpenZFS bug and the humans that made it
The problems with C are real.

At the same time, the tooling has gotten much better in the last years.

Clang-analyzer is fast enough to run as part of the CI. Newer gcc also give quite a few more warnings for unused results.

My recommendation to the project is to

- Remove all compiler warnings and enable warning-as-error

- Increase the coverage of unit tests to >80%

That is a lot of work. But that's what is required for high-criticality systems engineering.

jpfr··on Implementing Logic Programming
Microkanren et al are nice! But it is becoming sort of a mono-culture where other approaches get ignored.

Before Microkanren, the rite of passage for logic programming was to build a Prolog using Warren's Abstract Machine (WAM).

https://direct.mit.edu/books/monograph/4253/Warren-s-Abstrac...

jpfr··on The Canadian C++ Conference
They don‘t personally.

It’s typically a training event paid by the employer.

jpfr··on My favourite fonts to use with LaTeX (2022)
Microtype support for LuaTeX doesn't look so bad. At least on paper...

https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/654089/microtypograp...

jpfr··on Finding paths of least action with gradient descent (2023)
This is corresponds to Chapter 1.4 of SICM (Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics).

Although SICM doesn't expose the underlying optimization method in the library interfaces. The path is represented as polynomial. I'd have to check if they also do gradient descent.

https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/gjs/6946/sicm-html/bo...

jpfr··on Christianity was always for the poor (2024)
Of course not. But you might get paid only a 50% salary for a PhD in the natural sciences (or liberal arts). Different fields have different cultures in that regard.
jpfr··on Christianity was always for the poor (2024)
Are you an engineer?

Come to Europe. PhD candidates are not treated as students. They are treated as adults, and get the salary of an (entry-level) engineer with a master degree.

You get paid a living wage to do a PhD in most countries actually.

If this is about (your) kids? Send them to Europe for higher education. Many universities with great international ranking have virtually no tuition. But they can be quite competitive in terms of getting a passing grade.

jpfr··on A startup doesn't need to be a unicorn
I just founded in Germany. The paperwork is … okay.

Not much more crazy than tax returns or internal accounting you need to do in any jurisdiction.

But yes, running any organization is a lot of work.

jpfr··on "Hands off working COBOL code" –protest sign in NYC
Given the context he means the first.
jpfr··on Compiler Options Hardening Guide for C and C++
Most of these are implicit with -fhardened.

https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Instrumentation-Options.h...

jpfr··on The PhD Metagame: Don't try to reform science – not yet
Exactly, everybody can publish on arXiv. And there are enough semi-predatory journals/conferences which basically accept everybody. Especially since the LLM can rewrite any paragraph nicely.

So the role of journals and conferences is not to prevent "the word getting out". It is to provide value by a curated list of on-topic and high-quality publications.

So no need to wade through tons of crap. Especially for PhD students who might take more time to detect crap as such.

In my experience, the publications at the good venues get a lot more eye-balls and by consequence citations. So there seem to be a lot of people who like this role as a "filter" for what to focus on.

jpfr··on The PhD Metagame: Don't try to reform science – not yet
I happen to be an (associate) editor of an academic journal.

What the people who critique the publication process are missing: 90% of submissions are crap - unfit for publication.

We need some process to gate-keep.

a) The venue of publication is a good signal, whether the time to read a paper is well-spent. b) The PhD students learning the craft need objective feedback. The supervising professior/university often has the incentive to "just submit" -- even if they know that a publication does not meet the quality standard.

Before peer-review, somebody also needed to make a decision on what to publish. This typically fell to a single individual. The editor or some well-known member of the community who could recommend a paper for publication. On old journal issues they even mention the "recommender".

So the question is not whether peer-review is bad, the question is which alternative gate-keeping process would be better. Otherwise we will drown in crap publications (even more) and the PhD students don't get a honest feedback signal upon which they can improve their craft.

jpfr··on Let’s code a TCP/IP stack, 1: Ethernet and ARP (2016)
Many embedded devices run the lwip implementation of TCP/IP.

The "POSIX port" of lwip does the same. It takes the raw Ethernet bytes from a TUN/TAP device.

https://github.com/lwip-tcpip/lwip/blob/master/contrib/ports...

jpfr··on ArXiv LaTeX Cleaner: Clean the LaTeX code of your paper to submit to ArXiv
Many researchers learn LaTeX by looking at the idioms used for the papers they really like.

That includes code for Tikz figures.

I hope people will use this tool only to remove the inadvertent disclosure of commented regions and to reduce the file size. But keep the LaTeX source intact otherwise!

jpfr··on CTO / cofounder exit deal after 1.5y at 600k revenue without SHA
You could agree to have the value of the company evaluated by a neutral outsider. There are specialists for it -- on the VC side and expert advisors for the legal system and arbitration courts. Typically the regional chamber of commerce keeps a list of accredited experts.

Where I am from (Germany), many founders agreements refer to a neutral arbitration body to resolve conflicts regarding the value of company shares. Typically the agreement requires that you attempt an arbitration process before triggering a real lawsuit.

jpfr··on My Colleague Julius
seconded
jpfr··on Modelica
Modelica underneath uses DAE (differential algebraic equations) [1,2].

Think of it like a solver for many coupled differential equations. The coupling happens through "linear" equality constraints. Such as "the output pressure variable of component A needs to be equal the input pressure variable of component B".

Something that Modelica doesn't do very well is stochastic systems. There you would need to go into SDE and that brings a lot of technicalities.

[1] Petzold, Linda R. Description of DASSL: a differential/algebraic system solver. No. SAND-82-8637; Sandia National Labs, 1982.

[2] Kunkel, Peter. Differential-algebraic equations: analysis and numerical solution. European Mathematical Society, 2006.

jpfr··on On Linux MAINTAINERS file removal of Russian developers
Yes, this can be circumvented. But the optics are important.

Imagine a backdoor planted by a Russian asset. Linux could get removed from some list of approved OS that can be used in a government context.

jpfr··on MQTT turns 25
Umm. There is a deep integration between OPC UA and MQTT since ca. 2017.

For binary and JSON payloads, and with encryption and group key management features.

I see quite a bit of unsubstantiated bashing lately. Especially advocating 20% solutions that solve the easy parts with less effort.

What are you missing from OPC UA?

jpfr··on Real-time Linux is officially part of the kernel
This is a big achievement after many years of work!

Here are a few links to see how the work is done behind the scenes. Sadly arstechnica has only funny links and doesn't provide the actual source (why LinkedIn?).

Most of the work was done by Thomas Gleixner and team. He founded Linutronix, now (I believe) owned by Intel.

Pull request for the last printk bits: https://marc.info/?l=linux-kernel&m=172623896125062&w=2

Pull request for PREEMPT_RT in the kernel config: https://marc.info/?l=linux-kernel&m=172679265718247&w=2

This is the log of the RT patches on top of kernel v6.11.

https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/rt/linux-rt-...

I think there are still a few things you need on top of a vanilla kernel. For example the new printk infrastructure still needs to be adopted by the actual drivers (UART consoles and so on). But the size of the RT patchset is already much much smaller than before. And being configurable out-of-the-box is of course a big sign of confidence by Linus.

Congrats to the team!

jpfr··on Buy, Borrow, Die – Explained
Universities, cities, regions and countries do have PR departments.

Arguably the public image of a university is its most important asset. Because that attracts the best students, researchers and third party funding (public and private).

jpfr··on Buy, Borrow, Die – Explained
You assume that the salary is what it costs for the company to have an employee. You need to at least double that.

There is overhead for the person itself (employer subsidized healthcare, office space, equipment) and there is overhead within the organization. Like a secretary and accounting departments who cannot be billed to a client. And management layers of course…

Most likely the 80k are enough to cover one person-year for a consulting agency in Eastern Europe.

That said, the new logo is atrocious.

jpfr··on Why SQLite Uses Bytecode
They called it p-code at the time. The purpose was (purported) to simplify the porting between architectures.

https://casadevall.pro/articles/2020/11/compiling-word-for-w...

jpfr··on The last crimes of Caravaggio
I agree! The ArtHoles podcast is superb.

There were some updates on his Instagram lately. Fingers crossed for more episodes.

This is the first online-first content producer I'd consider paying real money for...

Page 1 of 11Next →