Hacker News: allenrb

New comment by allenrb in "What is it like to be a bat? (1974) [pdf]"

allenrb — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 22:08:25 +0000

Came here hoping for an AMA.

New comment by allenrb in "FBI Arrests CIA Official with $40M in Gold Bars in His Home"

allenrb — Thu, 28 May 2026 13:07:05 +0000

I’ve walked off with a few of my employer’s pens over the years. Is this really so different?

New comment by allenrb in "SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket"

allenrb — Sat, 23 May 2026 01:27:34 +0000

Big takeaway for me is that the reentry and “landing” of Ship looked great. For the first time, it felt like they’re really on the path to achieving upper stage reuse. That was always the biggest “reach” of the entire program in my view, and today they took a major step forward.

Is it disappointing that they had a couple of engine outs, and also trouble with the booster relight? Sure. Do I have even a little doubt by now that they can fix these problems? None whatsoever.

The success of Ship 39 today was a big, big deal.

New comment by allenrb in "Hindenburg’s Smoking Room"

allenrb — Sun, 17 May 2026 15:54:43 +0000

I’ve been told by someone who was in the service that when smoking was no longer allowed on submarines, it made a huge difference in the cleanliness of machinery and thus how much work was required to maintain it.

Yeah, I’d love some of that goodness in my lungs, please.

New comment by allenrb in "Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format"

allenrb — Sun, 17 May 2026 00:41:15 +0000

When I encounter new terms, I look them up. Just like any other new word. Been doing it since I was a kid with a dictionary. Now, it’s too easy not to. There is literally no excuse.

New comment by allenrb in "OP's script shuts down every single computer in the company"

allenrb — Mon, 11 May 2026 13:17:49 +0000

Or every time it comes back up!

New comment by allenrb in "Warp is now open-source"

allenrb — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 21:57:06 +0000

Was briefly surprised to see IBM open-sourcing OS/2 after all these years. Alas, this appears to be some AI widget.

New comment by allenrb in "Making RAM at Home [video]"

allenrb — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 15:26:39 +0000

With enough sauce, the end result won’t even taste like chewing on a rock. :-)

New comment by allenrb in "XOR'ing a register with itself is the idiom for zeroing it out. Why not sub?"

allenrb — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 12:56:59 +0000

Not sure why this is being downvoted, but it’s absolutely correct. For most of the history of computing, people were happy that it worked at all. Being concerned about energy efficiency is a recent byproduct of mobile devices and, even more recently, giant amounts of compute adding up to gigawatts.

New comment by allenrb in "How to make Firefox builds 17% faster"

allenrb — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 23:08:24 +0000

I guess “purge 17% of the code” is not the correct answer?

New comment by allenrb in "Artemis II safely splashes down"

allenrb — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 01:05:17 +0000

My friends and I have been deriving much amusement from the comms issues. We can fly people around the moon, talk with them, send back high res video, but talk to the boat that’s close enough to swim to? Forget about it!

Note: next time, pack a walkie talkie. ;-)

New comment by allenrb in "LibreOffice – Let's put an end to the speculation"

allenrb — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 19:02:14 +0000

As a person who refuses to use “free” cloud products, and won’t even consider Office on Windows, I’m a big fan of LibreOffice. I’ve donated a few times over the years but probably not enough.

I’ll be sad if there’s not a free & local “office” solution available.

That said, my eyes crossed trying to read this. Do I need to ask an LLM to read the various messages and tell me what’s going on? ;-)

New comment by allenrb in "Artemis II is not safe to fly"

allenrb — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 12:54:58 +0000

Absolutely! Think of the many new ways to display advertising that are being neglected while we foolishly launch people and things into space.

New comment by allenrb in "Artemis II is not safe to fly"

allenrb — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 12:52:55 +0000

Strapped to one of the boosters?

New comment by allenrb in "I am leaving the AI party after one drink"

allenrb — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 17:16:08 +0000

For what it’s worth (ie, absolutely nothing), I agree with her 100%. I didn’t get into this field in order to prompt an AI to take care of the details. I got into it because I love the details.

I’m a strong performer on a good team at a company many people would want to work at… and I know the clock is ticking. Sooner or later, I will be too slow.

I’m not going to claim that this is the wrong way to go. It’s obviously the future, and the future doesn’t care what allenrb does or does not want. I’m somewhat hopeful that power and cooling requirements will come down by multiple factors of 10x over time, reducing the environmental damage.

The fact is, I love what I’ve been able to do “the old way” and just don’t feel the urge to move on. So it goes.

New comment by allenrb in "$96 3D-printed rocket that recalculates its mid-air trajectory using a $5 sensor"

allenrb — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 22:36:50 +0000

There are no few smart, knowledgeable people in the world (perhaps self-educated, perhaps not) who for a huge variety of reasons may be either unwilling or unable to hold a typical job.

I’ll bet most of us here know at least a few people along these lines.

New comment by allenrb in "ASML unveils EUV light source advance that could yield 50% more chips by 2030"

allenrb — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 00:38:40 +0000

Seeing this news story made me briefly fear that they’d found a way to replace this glorious mechanism. Thankfully not. In fact, they’re going to shoot more droplets, more often!

So much more fun than LEDs.

New comment by allenrb in "Fluorite – A console-grade game engine fully integrated with Flutter"

allenrb — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 23:21:51 +0000

I actually like that a lot. Does the job without providing a (practical) target for infotainment. TIL.

New comment by allenrb in "Fluorite – A console-grade game engine fully integrated with Flutter"

allenrb — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 22:15:35 +0000

Give me a backup camera without a screen and then we’ll talk. Doubly so because once you’ve got that screen, no automaker will resist making it do other things.

New comment by allenrb in "xAI joins SpaceX"

allenrb — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 22:48:53 +0000

This makes me genuinely sad. SpaceX was the one thing of his that Elon has largely avoided screwing up. Imho, this is in large part due to Gwynne Shotwell. She seems to have the personality (not to mention, personal wealth) to kick Elon in the head when he tries to mess things up.

What’s happening now is nothing more than a transparent effort to couple the AI hype-wagon to SpaceX in order to drive the valuation higher in the minds of investors who still think that LLMs will completely transform society.

I’ll be thrilled if the rocket folks can avoid being distracted by this nonsense, but I’m not optimistic.

I’ve been following SpaceX since something like the 2nd Falcon 1 launch and this is the worst thing I’ve seen happen. Sad times.