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ramshanker

1,656 karma · joined January 11, 2016

Civil & Structural Engineer by profession and a computer science amateur. My long term goal : https://mv.ramshanker.in/
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ramshanker··on Early US Intel assessment suggests strikes on Iran did not destroy nuclear sites
Moreover, I read the wiki ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GBU-57A/B_MOP ) that 60m penetration specification is for ~35MPA concrete. And good basalt rocks easily go 100MPA. So if Iranians choose just good Mountain, and there are plenty of them...... Mother earth is really strong some places.
ramshanker··on Ask HN: How Are Parents Who Program Teaching Their Kids Today?
Touch typing is fun amd magic for kids. 9 more keys left out of 26 for my kid. I clearly see her developing muscle memory faster than I did myself.
ramshanker··on Beating Google's kernelCTF PoW using AVX512
Awesome.

Just when I was starting to wonder if we finally had a chance to thwart L7 attacks using these PoW tricks.

ramshanker··on Moment of heart's formation captured in images for first time
That is like perfect order emerging in chaos. Awesome.
ramshanker··on Office is too slow, so Microsoft is making it load at Windows startup
This... 100 times. Everyday wastes my few minutes. 5 figure commercial application, state of art in it's domain, but somehow It has to wait for that unresponsive network printer and hang the startup UI.
ramshanker··on Foreign visits into the U.S. fell off a cliff in March
2md order effect, Hotel bookings!
ramshanker··on The Llama 4 herd
I have a gut feeling, next in line will be 2 or more level of MoE. Further reducing the memory bandwidth and compute requirements. So top level MoE router decides which sub MoE to route.
ramshanker··on OpenAI's Motion to Dismiss Copyright Claims Rejected by Judge
Good. It may finally lead to Legislative action reducing the 95 year absurdity.
ramshanker··on US Administration announces 34% tariffs on China, 20% on EU
The way I see it, it is more like a very-high initial negotiation position. From here on, each country will be dealt with individually. You accept our terms and get 5% discount on tariff ! Every country has a set of red lines. Fewer the red lines better they will be placed in one-to-one "trade agreements".

EDIT: Someone from white-house explicitly declined tariff to be a negotiation. Next few days will be interesting.

ramshanker··on War story: the hardest bug I ever debugged
Seems it is a story time thread. Here goes my strangest one.

Back in 2005, when I had only paid-by-cash internet cafe access to computer, one of the shopkeeper offered me free time on computer IF I typed and ran a 15 page of class 12 computer project printed on A4 sheets, onto the compiler. TurboC++. I gladly accepted the offer and typed things.

When I finished typing, taking out all the compile error, the program didn't work as expected. Few hours latter, I find out that 1 or 2 pages of printed source codes were not in original order. :-O . So had to swap code from one function to another to finally get it working. That was one hell of a lesson!

Shopkeeper must have sold that project to many students, and I got some Free internet access.

ramshanker··on Launch HN: Maritime Fusion (YC W25) – Fusion Reactors for Ships
Excellent initiative. From the 1st reading, it does seem "within the realms of current technology". All the best.

I have a small question. Which CAD / 3D / Physics software is used for such design and simulations ?

ramshanker··on TSMC 2nm Process Disclosure – How Does It Measure Up?
How much would the Non-Recurrent Cost associated with designing a RISC-V CPU using this 2nm? EDA Tools, Photo-Masks, One Time Chip Design Engineer Cost, Simulation/Virtual Verification and so on. I mean every thing till tape-out.
ramshanker··on Some homes withstood the LA fires – architects explain why
I am a civil-structural engineering and have obvious bias for Concrete. Over here in India, literally all houses are built using Concrete and Burnt-Clay-Brick / Fly-Ash-Brick Masonry. I hope Concrete gets promoted more as a building material. They buildings which are professionally designed easily withstand 2500 Year Return Period magnitude earthquakes. Last time I enquired on HN about preference for Wood in US (remote areas) Building Materials, someone said, can't design house venerable to High Seismic Activity. While my exposure to US Building codes is limited, I know for sure, ASCE (American Society of Civil Engineers) have excellent Earthquake Loading criteria. It should be doable. Perhaps some regulation could help there.

A personal example: Wardrobes are usually made using synthetic-wood over here in India. I went a step ahead, and got it build using Steel-Sheets. So a major chunk of fire potential removed from the house. And it was within 10% of the cost of wood work. Termite free forever as bonus ! Have a look at the photos in google maps listing of the local manufacturer. https://maps.app.goo.gl/7Wrt4rNtcpez53Bm6

ramshanker··on LA wildfires force thousands to evacuate, NASA JPL closed
What was the major building material? Wood or Concrete? I hear wood houses are a lot more popular in US.

Sorry for your loss.

ramshanker··on 1B nested loop iterations
Personally I have gone max 5 level deep. It worked reasonably well with agressive break condition checking in my specific case.

How deep people have actually written useful nested loops?

ramshanker··on The two factions of C++
I am working on a new C++ project in 2024 for my part time project. And this article provided me enough information to battle future "Why not use XYZ instead" discussion. ;)

My Rational for Using C++ in 2024: (A) Extreme computational performance desired. (B) I learned C++ 20 years back. (C) C++ has good enough Cross-Platform (OS) compatibility.

ramshanker··on Get me out of data hell
Acting against your own better Judgement, I have to take that fight/ urge every few days. ;)
ramshanker··on Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (October 2024)
Yesterday I created a simple Nubmer Factorization website. Basically to learn webasm. Will be spending few days implementing different algorithms and optimizing the hell out of it.

https://www.ramshanker.in/prime/?n=15081947

ramshanker··on Developers Now Required to Share Phone Number and Address on EU App Store
You are required to provide a phone number. All phone have dual SIM capabilities these days. I hope there is no rule to pick up the phone when it rings. !!

As for address, no workaround yet.

ramshanker··on New Mersenne Prime discovered (probably)
Awesome. I have been recommending in my organization, 24 Hrs. Prime95 Stress Test as part of acceptance protocol for all new servers ! Happy to see it find another record Mersenne Prime.
ramshanker··on Starship Flight 5: Launch and booster catch [video]
Ok. I will admit this. SpaceX Engineering is making me feel regret for not choosing Aerospace Engineering back in Undergrad. Oh well, That Tower is almost within Civil-Structural Engineering.
ramshanker··on Lunar Lake's iGPU: Debut of Intel's Xe2 Architecture
>>> It can generally handle most decode operations with CPU help and a very narrow encoding spec.

This is so much spot on. Video coding specs are like a "huge bunch of tools" and encoders get to choose whatever subset-of-tools suits them. And than hardware gets frozen for a generation.

ramshanker··on Meta Movie Gen
It feels like in the field of AI, a major advancement happens every month now!
ramshanker··on Why my apps will soon be gone from the Google Play Store
Last I looked into publishing on App/Play Stores, the thing scarring me away most was some verbose declaration on exporting encryption from US etc. Couldn't wrap my head around it.
ramshanker··on Don't build your castle in other people's kingdoms (2021)
Nice. Convinced me to add a mailing list to my website. :D

I promise, 1 mail update per month. Exceptional cases, 1 mail a week.

ramshanker··on Ask HN: What are you working on (September 2024)?
Mission Vishwakarma 2035.
ramshanker··on Two new Gemini models, reduced 1.5 Pro pricing, increased rate limits, and more
One company buying expensive NVIDIA hardware vs another using in-house chips. Google got a huge advantage here. They could really undercut OpenAI.
ramshanker··on Life without Aadhaar
Let's accept this, AADHAR is the most friction-less process to get things done. And Private Institutions aren't going to spend extra to satisfy some errant ideology.
ramshanker··on Nothing: Simply Do Nothing
Loved this one.

Off Topic: Since it linked to GitHub. I clicked. Than my 1st thought was, "This must be a web learning project for the author." Otherwise this page could be made in 1 .html page instead of 50+ files present in the repository!

ramshanker··on LLMs Will Always Hallucinate, and We Need to Live with This
Few Humans (all?) will always Hallucinate, and we already live with this. ;)
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