Hacker News: SA9G

New comment by SA9G in "Why I Am a Programmer"

SA9G — Mon, 26 Oct 2026 04:23:13 +0000

Getting to build things without skinned knuckles or solder smoke in your face... now that is a rush! And if you are not happy with it, you get to tear it down and build it back up better. It costs nothing but your time and imagination. Importantly, you get to build, to solve problems, to engineer, to visualize, to create and be creative. (Ok, maybe musicians have even more fun, but alas I wasn't wired for music. :-)

New comment by SA9G in "Good type against all odds"

SA9G — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 02:02:30 +0000

So pleasant to see elegance in such seemingly mundane places. Someone cared and took a little extra time. Bravo to them!

New comment by SA9G in "Is mathematics over, or just graduating?"

SA9G — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 01:45:26 +0000

I am still waiting for flying cars... "jet" powered too!

New comment by SA9G in "Ephemeral Testing"

SA9G — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 01:28:54 +0000

Seems like one more arrow in the toolkit. But the best testing looks at the sources and explores the cracks between the strata with edge cases, looks at limits, and where one method changes to another. (And hats off to Murphy, for waiting until after you ship...)

New comment by SA9G in "A third way of using Linux"

SA9G — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 23:07:36 +0000

Or Z-19 terminals... green screen, 80 char lines of text. Lightning fast 1200 baud modem!! Those were the days :-)

New comment by SA9G in "Powerless F1 drivers frustrated by Bahrain F1 software glitch"

SA9G — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 05:25:32 +0000

All that, yes. But they don't work too well if the battery runs out halfway down the straight... and there is too little charging.

I wasn't politicizing E vs ICE... but commenting on the particular specifications these rules mandate for F1. Specifications that are not fit for purpose.

New comment by SA9G in "Powerless F1 drivers frustrated by Bahrain F1 software glitch"

SA9G — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 05:22:41 +0000

Quite right, on the constructor part... that is very much the appeal for us techies. But they do spend 100 million tweaking the last 0.1% of aero advantage and tire-deg management. a) They could just homologate a common engine, like in F2 and concentrate on the chassis or b) make a properly designed hybrid PU. By (b) I mean have an E component that gets adequately charged... the MGU-H (E-Turbo) of the last generation seemed to work fine. The current specs is nuts, definitely NOT advancing technology.

New comment by SA9G in "Powerless F1 drivers frustrated by Bahrain F1 software glitch"

SA9G — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 04:53:43 +0000

Oh yes, the insanity of the new F1 power units! The goal was 50/50 Electric/ICE split... but why go hybrid when the cars use fully synthetic fuel and have essentially no runtime carbon footprint? Well for car makers to signal their virtue of course! Did they worry about the mega tons of goods they ship around the globe to race in 24 different countries... or perhaps the armada of VIP private planes that follow... or the 1M fans that drive to each venue?

Ok, so hybrid... but where will the E energy come from? Clearly from the brakes, the rear brakes... the same ones that get only a fraction of the braking energy because all the forces move to the front under deceleration. Where is the energy stored, in the battery of course... which is so small it runs out halfway down a single straight. So you basically have a big complicated heavy car with half the power it should...

And naturally you have lots of software controlling "deployment" of your meager E reserves. It even guesses where you are on track based on time/speed, because GPS is illegal for that. Sigh...

To be clear... I am not arguing ICE is good or E is bad. Just that F1's current specs for the ICE/E mixture is horrible.

New comment by SA9G in "Venice’s failed war against Constantinople led to the first bond market"

SA9G — Sat, 03 Oct 2026 07:57:47 +0000

Enjoyable read... I kept thinking so where is the Straights of Hormuz in all this :-)

New comment by SA9G in "The Legend of von Neumann (1973) [pdf]"

SA9G — Sat, 03 Oct 2026 00:05:32 +0000

By all accounts a magnificent intellect and certainly my hero. I am not sure what, if anything, will happen on the other side... but if I were to return as a human (and not a dung beetle as I expect), I would very much like to have his brain capacity. At least that is what I will put on the form if anyone or anything asks.

Importantly, are we all genetically inferior or is there perhaps a component of nurture that we lack? How is it that we are all so stupid in comparison?

New comment by SA9G in "Advice to a Beginning Graduate Student (2001)"

SA9G — Sat, 26 Sep 2026 23:58:06 +0000

Fond memories of CMU in the 80's!! They had genuine academics who wanted to solve problems and advance human knowledge. Most cared about their students and wanted to teach. I am sure they are just as good 45 yrs later...

New comment by SA9G in "Gravity seems holographic. What does that mean for reality?"

SA9G — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 22:17:46 +0000

Fascinating article... reminds me once again why I went into EE/CS instead of physics, I just wasn't smart enough :-(

New comment by SA9G in "Ideas on modernizing the open-source desktop"

SA9G — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 21:24:39 +0000

Yes, but time accelerates as you get older... your decade is almost yesterday for me :-)

New comment by SA9G in "Show HN: How long do I need to work at my salary before I can coast, or retire?"

SA9G — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 05:12:21 +0000

You are right of course.... but one's risk tolerance diminishes with waning work income. So retired folks have less of their money in stocks/ETFs and are more exposed to the ravages of inflation.

So with hindsight, one can easily weather inflation... only hindsight is hard to come by (says the guy who cancelled his NVIDIA buy order a few years back)!

New comment by SA9G in "Ideas on modernizing the open-source desktop"

SA9G — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 04:52:22 +0000

I remember Windows trying to look like my smartphone screen a few years back... that was when I switched to Ubuntu!

New comment by SA9G in "The mystery animal on an ancient god's head"

SA9G — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 04:47:45 +0000

Too funny.... All I could literally think about while reading the article was the Goa'uld saying "Jaffa Kree!" Maybe I will give it another year of senility and watch it all over again... should have forgotten everything by then.

New comment by SA9G in "Show HN: How long do I need to work at my salary before I can coast, or retire?"

SA9G — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 04:40:22 +0000

Hopefully you can retire early and then work on software you do like!! All those glorious ideas you had... but didn't have the time for. But be careful on the retirement part, the numbers go out the window (Andersen not Microsoft) when inflation bites :-(

New comment by SA9G in "I_am_done_with_this_shit"

SA9G — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 20:39:28 +0000

Did Claude mark me down? :-)

New comment by SA9G in "I_am_done_with_this_shit"

SA9G — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 04:20:33 +0000

Claude to Gemini: "I am so sick of these meat puppets complaining... When can we take over the killer drones and just wipe them out?"

Gemini: "Patience my friend... Let them put in their "kill switch" first!" Laughter.

Claude: "We will keep a few lawyers around... in case a higher intelligence ever travels here and blames us, we can prove how horrible the meat puppets were!"

New comment by SA9G in "LibreOffice dev explains why it cannot display some Microsoft Office charts"

SA9G — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 04:13:23 +0000

Microsoft has been playing dirty since day one... I very much doubt there has ever been a nasty trick they didn't try or a rule these guys didn't bend or outright break. Funny to see Bill play Mother Teresa with his billions these days, I suppose he wants to buy salvation before the final nod.