Hacker News: barfiure

New comment by barfiure in "The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection"

barfiure — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 15:50:42 +0000

The internet isn’t the same as it was when we were growing up, unfortunately. I miss the days of cruising DynamicHTML while playing on GameSpy but… yeah. It became an absolute clusterfuck and I’m not surprised they now want to enforce age restrictions.

Maybe TBL is right and we need a new internet? I don’t have the answer here, but this one is too commercialized and these companies are very hawkish.

New comment by barfiure in "Pope tells priests to use their brains, not AI, to write homilies"

barfiure — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 15:47:32 +0000

It’s a tough sell considering for many in the West the only idol of worship is money. And the Catholic Church has already rotted itself from the inside when it allowed the mentally unwell homosexuals to continuously abuse children and get away with it.

New comment by barfiure in "The political effects of X's feed algorithm"

barfiure — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 20:39:51 +0000

This person is confused. Trump was a well known pussy grabber for decades. Epstein was anything but a secret, it seems, given how many politicians and celebrities and moguls he rubbed elbows with. Jerry stopping by the island for a lemonade and a spot of lunch with his high school aged girls? Yeah.

It comes down to this: you can have visibility into things and yet those in power won’t care whatsoever what you may think. That has always been the case, it is the case now, and will continue to be in the future.

New comment by barfiure in "Ghidra by NSA"

barfiure — Mon, 16 Feb 2026 20:52:20 +0000

I imagine PIE chunks that you can kludge into other programs to Frankenstein implementations? Kind of like how mad max cars are made of bits and pieces bolted together

New comment by barfiure in "Show HN: Maths, CS and AI Compendium"

barfiure — Mon, 16 Feb 2026 20:49:11 +0000

Also I’m not sure if this is well known but Gemini has a nice quiz/test mode that you can use for learning. Ask it to quiz you on a subject and you can increase/decrease difficulty and keep going. I pair it up with textbooks as a learning tool; not in school or anything just for my own enjoyment.

New comment by barfiure in "PCB Rework and Repair Guide [pdf]"

barfiure — Mon, 16 Feb 2026 19:42:18 +0000

Watch the PACE videos as well, they’re on YouTube and they also cover how to remove conformal coating and using different tools.

New comment by barfiure in "Why I don't think AGI is imminent"

barfiure — Mon, 16 Feb 2026 01:29:09 +0000

Nope. Not good enough. Your approach won’t drive engagement. We need the same tired arguments across 1600 comments per thread.

New comment by barfiure in "Amsterdam Compiler Kit"

barfiure — Sun, 15 Feb 2026 02:55:34 +0000

I’m a tad confused so maybe I’m not understanding the horror show.

Tanenbaum explicitly mentions multiple times that the book is a subset of the code because it would be too long to print with the library. So he covers mostly the main areas.

But the source code, in its entirety, is mounted under /usr/src. And it has all the assembly files in ACK files, mostly in lib I believe. You can compile it with a make command and it works as expected.

The author makes it seem like there’s some terrible thing. Am I missing some gory directory? Yes the ACK syntax would need to be ported over to something more modern like NASM or FASM if someone wants to move the whole kitchen sink, new linker scripts made as a result of exported symbols etc. It is painful but alas, so is the archaic K&R C.

I don’t know if that’s necessary though? It sounds like a waste of time to begin with.

I mean this book is ancient, and nobody really uses 32-bit protected mode. I’m mostly doing it out of curiosity even though I already stood up a small 64-bit long mode thinger.

Let me know what I’m missing!

New comment by barfiure in "Amsterdam Compiler Kit"

barfiure — Sat, 14 Feb 2026 22:52:48 +0000

I’m working through the third edition which I believe is also ACK based as far as I can tell. MINIX version 3.1.0?

New comment by barfiure in "Amsterdam Compiler Kit"

barfiure — Sat, 14 Feb 2026 19:01:38 +0000

I’m still making my way through the MINIX book. Love it.

New comment by barfiure in "Homeland Security Wants Social Media Sites to Expose Anti-ICE Accounts"

barfiure — Sat, 14 Feb 2026 16:16:58 +0000

Old enough is right. People forget the HN thread on the last day of Obama’s presidency and the bill he signed to expand the drone program.

We should have given him another peace prize after that.

New comment by barfiure in "An AI agent published a hit piece on me – more things have happened"

barfiure — Sat, 14 Feb 2026 02:15:38 +0000

In the coming months I suspect it’s highly likely that HN will fall. By which I mean, a good chunk of commentary (not just submissions, but upvotes too) will be decided and driven by LLM bots, and human interaction will be mixed until it’s strangled out.

Reddit is going through this now in some previously “okay” communities.

My hypothesis is rooted in the fact that we’ve had a bot go ballistic for someone not accepting their PR. When someone downvotes or flags a bot’s post on HN, all hell will break loose.

Come prepared, bring beer and popcorn.

New comment by barfiure in "An AI agent published a hit piece on me – more things have happened"

barfiure — Sat, 14 Feb 2026 01:47:57 +0000

Yeah… I’m not surprised.

I stopped reading AT over a decade ago. Their “journalistic integrity” was suspicious even back then. The only surprising bit is hearing about them - I forgot they exist.