Hacker News: alcidesfonseca

New comment by alcidesfonseca in "Show HN: Tusk for macOS and Gnome"

alcidesfonseca — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 22:56:16 +0000

Is it possible that the [x Telemetry] [x Electron] and [x Subscription] means that the app does not have those things?

New comment by alcidesfonseca in "Apple Business"

alcidesfonseca — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 17:20:17 +0000

The next neo might have the SSDs of the current pros, making swapping less problematic.

Why should operating systems and websites track the user age?

alcidesfonseca — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 10:55:38 +0000

Article URL: https://wiki.alcidesfonseca.com/blog/age-verification-in-operating-systems-and-the-internet/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47333983

Points: 2

# Comments: 1

New comment by alcidesfonseca in "Bootstrap Bio (solves health at the genetic level/promotes eugenics)"

alcidesfonseca — Sat, 31 Jan 2026 08:53:06 +0000

I wonder about the ethical and legal implications of this work. We've all read and watched sci-fi that warn about the implications of doing this, but biologists agree that reducing diversity within a population makes it much more at risk.

Bootstrap Bio (solves health at the genetic level/promotes eugenics)

alcidesfonseca — Sat, 31 Jan 2026 08:53:06 +0000

Article URL: https://bootstrapbio.com

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46834756

Points: 1

# Comments: 1

New comment by alcidesfonseca in "Typechecking is undecideable when 'type' is a type (1989) [pdf]"

alcidesfonseca — Sun, 23 Nov 2025 16:28:25 +0000

Liquid Types are more limited than "full dependent types" like Lean, Rocq, Agda or Idris. In Liquid Types you can refine your base types (Int, Bool), but you cannot refine all types. For instance, you cannot refine the function (a:Int | a > 0) -> {x:Int | x > a}. Functions are types, but are not refinable.

These restrictions make it possible to send the sub typing check to an SMT solver, and get the result in a reasonable amount of time.

New comment by alcidesfonseca in "Typechecking is undecideable when 'type' is a type (1989) [pdf]"

alcidesfonseca — Sun, 23 Nov 2025 16:25:43 +0000

I believe it to be historically true, but Dependent Haskell might change this (https://ghc.serokell.io/dh see unification of types and kinds).

In Lean (and I believe Rocq as well), the Type of Int is Type 0, the type of Type 0 is Type 1, and so on (called universes).

They all come from this restriction.

New comment by alcidesfonseca in "Racket v9.0"

alcidesfonseca — Sun, 23 Nov 2025 16:21:45 +0000

If it taught them the core concepts of writing good software, that's a win in my book.

Copyright, AI and the Future of the Web

alcidesfonseca — Wed, 12 Mar 2025 16:13:42 +0000

Article URL: https://wiki.alcidesfonseca.com/blog/on-copyright-and-ai/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43344770

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by alcidesfonseca in "M4 Mac mini's efficiency"

alcidesfonseca — Wed, 13 Nov 2024 08:30:07 +0000

Jobs would have kept the button on the bottom, as it's not the proper way to use a computer.

Instead, he would have put motion/light sensors on the screen, so it would automatically wake up when you are sitting in front of it. Macs don't shutdown, they just go to sleep and wake up when you need them.

New comment by alcidesfonseca in "Bend: a high-level language that runs on GPUs (via HVM2)"

alcidesfonseca — Sat, 18 May 2024 12:56:13 +0000

I think the (hidden) reasoning is that it is really easy to have speedups with slow interpreters. However, getting speedups in high-performance level programs is quite hard, mainly due to micro-optimisations.

That's where the comparison to Python comes from: getting speedup on slow interpreters is not very _relevant_. Now if your interpreter has the same optimisations as Python (or v8 or JVM), even a small fraction of what you show would be impressive.

Having said this, the work your team did is a really challenging engineering feat (and with lot more potential). But I do not believe the current speedups will hold if the interpreter/compilers have the level of optimisation that exist in other languages. And while you do not claim it, people expect that.

New comment by alcidesfonseca in "Shoes makes building little graphical programs for Mac, Windows, Linux simple"

alcidesfonseca — Sat, 24 Feb 2024 16:45:48 +0000

He was a poet who could code. Not a software engineer.

(disclaimer: I really like most of his ruby stuff)

New comment by alcidesfonseca in "System memory allocator free operation zeroes out deallocated blocks in iOS 16"

alcidesfonseca — Wed, 21 Sep 2022 12:47:22 +0000

Is there any way of measuring how many apps were affected by this change?

New comment by alcidesfonseca in "I Miss RSS"

alcidesfonseca — Wed, 05 Jan 2022 23:38:29 +0000

I am looking for more webcomics. Any that you'd recommend to others?

I mostly follow Dilbert and Questionable Content. I used to follow Wizard of Id and a few more, but they also lost support for RSS.

New comment by alcidesfonseca in "Getting a Computer Science PhD in the USA"

alcidesfonseca — Sat, 04 Dec 2021 21:48:25 +0000

In Portugal it is usually expected that you have one, but every now and then we accept a student without one.

Also notice that in Europe you can get a bachelor and masters in 4-5 years (3+1 or 2), which can be the length of a US undergrad degree.

New comment by alcidesfonseca in "TensorFlow Graph Neural Networks"

alcidesfonseca — Fri, 19 Nov 2021 10:26:42 +0000

Couldn't you use a regular DNN with one-hot encoding of all the movies seen by a user (and the corresponding genres)? And boosting can give more weight to certain movies or genres.

New comment by alcidesfonseca in "Ubuntu 21.10"

alcidesfonseca — Thu, 14 Oct 2021 20:28:00 +0000

I’ve learned that ubuntu upgrades only if you update to the next version as soon as it is released. I have a 14.04 server that I cannot upgrade anymore and it sucks.

Also, NVidia and Cuda drivers mess the upgrade path as well. And ubuntu is the most supported distro.

New comment by alcidesfonseca in "Java Is Underhyped"

alcidesfonseca — Fri, 16 Apr 2021 15:32:36 +0000

Oracle suited Google for copying the APIs (not the implementation) of the Java standard APIs. It all started in 2010 [0]

Kotlin was Google's backup if the suit went Oracle's way.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_LLC_v._Oracle_America,_....

New comment by alcidesfonseca in "The beautiful Silent ThunderBolt-3 PC"

alcidesfonseca — Thu, 24 Dec 2020 12:57:06 +0000

I have the WD15 connected to a 2016 MacBook Pro and it is incredibly unreliable. USB devices stop working randomly (mouse+keyboard), ethernet comes and goes as it pleases and the display output works for one month before stops working all together. The only thing that works reliably is power supply.

New comment by alcidesfonseca in "My own C compiler on my own compiler infrastructure"

alcidesfonseca — Fri, 23 Oct 2020 17:52:00 +0000

I agree that Cilk is not a great name for compiler stuff as there is already a Cilk extension to C.

That said, it’s the author’s prerogative.