Hacker News: SamLL

New comment by SamLL in "Statement on US government directive to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5"

SamLL — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 01:51:18 +0000

Hello. I live in St. Paul, Minnesota. In January of this year my city was under hostile armed occupation. I volunteered for weeks packing boxes of food for people who were afraid to leave their houses because the masked secret police were ripping people off the streets with little regard for legality. Two of my neighbors were murdered by the secret police; a hundred of us sang hymns outside the local elementary school in 20 below weather. One of those murdered was my friend's coworker. The secret police agency has so far successfully opposed any attempt to bring the murderers to justice, and indeed was trying to bring legal charges against the families of the murder victims.

Which 'F' word do you think is appropriate to describe all this? Or has meaning already been lost?

New comment by SamLL in "Sam Altman's home targeted in second attack"

SamLL — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 02:45:00 +0000

I am a resident of the Twin Cities and I agree wholeheartedly with this perspective. I found reading the book Waging A Good War very educational about the deliberate, strategic use of nonviolence by the American Civil Rights Movement and its ultimate triumph as a means to win support and achieve social change. It was a clear and inspiring parallel for me during the worst times of this year so far.

New comment by SamLL in "[dead]"

SamLL — Mon, 12 Jan 2026 00:59:27 +0000

Statement by Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell:

https://youtu.be/KckGHaBLSn4

New comment by SamLL in "Librarians are dangerous"

SamLL — Sat, 19 Apr 2025 16:04:53 +0000

It seems relevant to this article, and its portrayal of librarians as dangerous, that the national Institute for Museum and Library Services was recently essentially destroyed by Presidential executive order and DOGE, probably illegally, its grants largely or entirely revoked, and its employees laid off.

See, e.g., https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/04/11/trum...

https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/l...

New comment by SamLL in "Whistleblower details how DOGE may have taken sensitive NLRB data"

SamLL — Tue, 15 Apr 2025 23:26:21 +0000

Are there any structural or systematic changes that should be made to how the site works right now, so that remedies such as this do not need to be hand performed one-offs?

New comment by SamLL in "Tail Call Recursion in Java with ASM (2023)"

SamLL — Sun, 30 Mar 2025 23:41:26 +0000

Kotlin has a syntactic opt-in for tail call elimination (the "tailrec" modifier).

New comment by SamLL in "I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney, who does work for YC and startups. AMA"

SamLL — Tue, 21 Jan 2025 00:42:02 +0000

NPR reports that President Trump seeks to "end asylum entirely", according to officials within the administration - https://www.npr.org/2025/01/20/g-s1-43650/trump-inauguration...

New comment by SamLL in "Temu Is Losing Millions of Dollars to Send You Cheap Socks"

SamLL — Mon, 14 Aug 2023 00:01:06 +0000

FYI a tungsten carbide ring, although it cannot realistically be cut off your finger, is brittle, and can easily and safely be snapped with a pair of locking pliers (locking to avoid clamping down on your finger). You may be thinking of titanium rings which are not removable in this fashion and thus are less safe.

New comment by SamLL in "The story of the first “computer bug” is a pile of lies"

SamLL — Fri, 19 Aug 2022 13:13:02 +0000

Ada Lovelace wrote what is often considered the first computer program, a set of instructions for the (unbuilt) Analytical Engine to calculate Bernoulli Numbers.

Appropriately, if this is the first computer program, it also contains the first bug! It's impossible to say whether this was a typesetting error or Lovelace's original, but the transcription of her instructions accidentally transpose a "v4" and "v5".

source: https://twobithistory.org/2018/08/18/ada-lovelace-note-g.htm...

New comment by SamLL in "FDA to order Juul e-cigarettes off U.S. market"

SamLL — Thu, 23 Jun 2022 03:48:26 +0000

"Sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from malice."

New comment by SamLL in "The Shortest Possible Game of Monopoly (2010)"

SamLL — Mon, 31 May 2021 01:27:30 +0000

Speedrun - Monopoly 0:21 (Any%, RNG manipulation, glitchless)

New comment by SamLL in "Ultra High Resolution Photos of Snowflakes"

SamLL — Wed, 16 Dec 2020 17:22:44 +0000

Ken Libbrecht was my undergraduate advisor and I worked in his lab for a couple summers (in fact, growing snowflakes in a tank and measuring their growth rate at different temperatures and humidities - although mine had to be boring perfect hexagons to get accurate measurements).

He's a great guy and a very talented communicator. I would absolutely recommend his book, and his website, http://snowcrystals.com/ , for anyone wanting to see great photos and learn about the science behind them.

New comment by SamLL in "Linus Torvalds did not commit this"

SamLL — Wed, 05 Aug 2015 02:13:49 +0000

In my day (ca. 2000) there was no "forced to give an F" and in fact it was very common for exam-takers to draw a line, write "everything below this line I did after the time limit", and get partial credit for it.