Hacker News: CalChris

New comment by CalChris in "The mask that compiles to nothing: how HotSpots JIT learned to reason about bits"

CalChris — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 14:39:12 +0000

Why is this known bits optimization being done by the JIT rather than the Java compiler?

New comment by CalChris in "Is The Economist Always Wrong?"

CalChris — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 04:15:50 +0000

It started with Greenspan but ramped up under Bernanke.

https://www.richmondfed.org/publications/research/econ_focus...

New comment by CalChris in "Dostoyevsky isn't difficult"

CalChris — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 02:32:00 +0000

I liked The Possessed by Elif Batuman. I had read The Idiot in high school, a death march for a term paper. But I liked Batuman's reading of it better than mine (but not enough to re-read it).

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

New comment by CalChris in "1,700 free online courses from top universities"

CalChris — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 03:45:18 +0000

Thanks. Stanford's archive seems to be one big 296.2G blob. But it's there at least.

https://archive.org/details/stanford_itunesu/

New comment by CalChris in "1,700 free online courses from top universities"

CalChris — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 03:13:03 +0000

The Stanford iTunesU classes have been truncated to a few seconds. So Susanna Braund's Aeneid course (which was brilliant) is gone. Same thing with their Hannibal course. I don't know that they're available elsewhere. Apple dropped iTunesU (2021?) and Stanford didn't have a backup.

New comment by CalChris in "DOS Game "F-15 Strike Eagle II" reversing project needs DOS test pilots"

CalChris — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 23:57:26 +0000

I have a friend who flew F15s. I’ve sent him this.

New comment by CalChris in "A backdoor in a LinkedIn job offer"

CalChris — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 20:40:33 +0000

It’s odd that the operator of the scam knew full stack level details of its implementation. To me, it seems like they were targeting the author, perhaps as something like privilege escalation, identity escalation perhaps.

New comment by CalChris in "A dumpster arrived behind my university's library"

CalChris — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 17:20:23 +0000

Berkeley has the Northern Regional Library Facility in Richmond, CA for this very purpose. I’ve checked out books where they crackled as I opened them and it was clear I was the first to read them.

https://www.lib.berkeley.edu/visit/nrlf

New comment by CalChris in "Nobody ever gets credit for fixing problems that never happened (2001) [pdf]"

CalChris — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 05:14:17 +0000

People don’t get credit for fixing problems that do happen. Maybe possibly in a sales scenario where your fix unblocked the sale. Otherwise nada.

New comment by CalChris in "The Russian who invented semiconductors 25 years before the USA"

CalChris — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 04:24:29 +0000

His death at the Siege of Leningrad sounds a lot like Archimedes death at the hands of a centurion during the fall of Syracuse to the Romans. That death was told by the always reliable Livy.

New comment by CalChris in "Using Tailscale with an OrbStack VM on macOS"

CalChris — Thu, 28 May 2026 19:00:56 +0000

Interesting. Can you do this with Forgejo?

New comment by CalChris in "Jank now has its own custom IR"

CalChris — Mon, 18 May 2026 22:23:43 +0000

Your custom IR is above LLVM’s IR, correct? Is it like SwiftIR then? Maybe you could add a paragraph or two going through that design decision.

New comment by CalChris in "Jank now has its own custom IR"

CalChris — Mon, 18 May 2026 02:30:48 +0000

The natural question is why doesn't Jank use MLIR?

New comment by CalChris in ""Not Medically Necessary": Helping America's Health Insurers Deny Coverage"

CalChris — Thu, 14 May 2026 02:02:37 +0000

In fact, MA costs the government more per person than does TM. MA may have been lobbied for as a cost saving measure. It is, in fact, a profit center for insurance companies.

https://www.kff.org/medicare/higher-and-faster-growing-spend...

New comment by CalChris in ""Not Medically Necessary": Helping America's Health Insurers Deny Coverage"

CalChris — Wed, 13 May 2026 20:39:35 +0000

Medicare has a similar issue. When you sign up at 65, you have to make a first big decision, Traditional Medicare (yay!) or private Medicare Advantage (boo!).

Traditional Medicare consists of Part A (hospitals), Part B (doctors) and Part D (drugs). Part A+B don't cover everything so you have a Medigap plan. I have Plan G which has very little paperwork. All up, I spend about $400/mo and I'm very happy with A+B+G+D.

With Medicare Advantage you sign over your Medicare rights+benefits to a private insurer. This may save you some money, especially early on. In fairness, not really a lot and the $0/mo plans are a scam. With Medicare Advantage, you will then have to argue with an insurance company for the rest of your life. You'll have to deal with preauthorizations and a restricted network.

With Traditional Medicare, what's covered is spelled out pretty clearly ahead of time. Docs know it. You know it. There's literally an app for that. With Medicare Advantage, medically necessary is at the discretion of the private insurance company.

Here is the scenario from a relative: he had a heart event which ended up needing a stent. He had to argue with Kaiser while this was going on. Kaiser is 240,000 people. He is one.

Medicare Advantage is very profitable.

It is possible to switch back from MA to TM which really revolves around your Medigap plan. You are guaranteed issue for Medigap plans for about 3 months before/after you turn 65. After that, you will have to undergo medical underwriting.

New comment by CalChris in "Getting arrested in Japan"

CalChris — Sun, 10 May 2026 03:06:14 +0000

The description of the detention center reminds me of Room 101 in 1984.

New comment by CalChris in "Rise of the Forward Deployed Engineer"

CalChris — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 18:52:05 +0000

Buzzword compliant.

New comment by CalChris in "The Joy of Folding Bikes"

CalChris — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 23:04:20 +0000

I have a Tern Eclipse P18 24" folding bike which I like a lot. Tern and Dahon are related. Wasn't cheap and is hard to find. I literally drove to Vegas and met an IT sysadmin in a casino parking lot at 2am. He was coming off shift. It was legit (found it on EBay and he had the manuals) but it looked+felt like a drug deal.

I have upgraded the Tern. The original FSA crank would come loose and so I replaced it with a Shimano 105 part which required a Wheels Mfg 386 EVO Adaptor. I've never had a problem with it since. I also replaced the front derailleur with an SRAM Yaw which is just perfection.

It's great out to about 20 miles and you can't go up anything really steep because the shorter wheelbase just pops a wheelie. Tires and tubes are hard to find. But it's an awesome bike to have around.

New comment by CalChris in "Acetaminophen vs. ibuprofen"

CalChris — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 05:57:40 +0000

For migraines, I take two CVS Migraine about every week to ten days. It's a cocktail of acetaminophen, aspirin and caffeine which tallies to 500 mg of acetaminophen, well under then 4g limit. It's good for four hours but you can only take two per day.

I didn't know about this acetaminophen risk. So I'll be looking for alternatives. Ibuprofen is for inflammation and not headaches. Naproxen is a candidate.

New comment by CalChris in "College instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work"

CalChris — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 20:31:36 +0000

Next up: allow slide rules on exams.