Hacker News: bengarney

New comment by bengarney in "The C-Shaped Hole in Package Management"

bengarney — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 16:27:36 +0000

Here is a thought experiment (for devs who buy into package managers). Take the hash of a program and all its dependency. Behavior is different for every unique hash. With package managers, that hash is different on every system, including hashes in the future that are unknowable by you (ie future "compatible" versions of libraries).

That risk/QA load can be worth it, but is not always. For an OS, it helps to be able to upgrade SSL (for instance).

In my use cases, all this is a strong net negative. npm-base projects randomly break when new "compatible" version of libraries install for new devs. C/C++ projects don't build because of include/lib path issues or lack of installation of some specific version or who knows what.

If I need you to install the SDL 2.3.whatever libraries exactly, or use react 16.8.whatever to be sure the app runs, what's the point of using a complex system that will almost certainly ensure you have the wrong version? Just check it in, either by an explicit version or by committing the library's code and building it yourself.

New comment by bengarney in "Safe zero-copy operations in C#"

bengarney — Tue, 30 Sep 2025 19:28:00 +0000

The world falls into two categories for me. "Must be fast" and "I don't care (much)". C/C++ is ideal for the first one, and C# is awesome for the second.

My argument isn't that C# is bad or performance is unachievable. It's that the mental overhead to write something that has consistent, high performance in C/C++ is very low. In other words, for the amount of mental effort, knowledge, and iteration it takes to write something fast + maintainable in C#, would I be better served by just writing it in C/C++?

The linked assembly is almost certainly non-optimal; compare to -O3 of the C version: https://godbolt.org/z/f5qKhrq1G - I automatically get SIMD usage and many other optimizations.

You can certainly make the argument that if X, Y, Z is done, your thing would be fast/faster. But that's exactly my argument. I don't want to do X, Y, Z to get good results if I don't have to (`return ref Unsafe.Add(ref MemoryMarshal.GetArrayDataReference(array), (nuint)index);` and using/not using `[MethodImpl(MethodImplOptions.AggressiveOptimization)]` are non-trivial mental overhead!).

I want to write `foo.bar` and get good, alloc free, optimized results... and more importantly, results that behave the same everywhere I deploy them, not dependent on language version, JIT specifics, etc.

If I was operating in a domain where I could not ever take the C/C++ path, these features of C# are of course very welcome. And in general more power/expressiveness is very good. But circling back, I wonder if my energy is better spent doing a C version than contorting C# to do what I want.

New comment by bengarney in "Safe zero-copy operations in C#"

bengarney — Tue, 30 Sep 2025 19:14:09 +0000

It is, but it isn't quite the same as C, either. That is to say, there is some semi-unknowable stack of stuff happening under the covers.

I will predict the future: you will pull up the JIT assembly output to make the case that they output similarly performant assembly on your preferred platform, and that you just have to do X to make sure that the code behaves that way.

But my problem is that we are invoking the JIT in the conversation at all. The mental model for any code like this inevitably involves a big complex set of interacting systems and assumptions. Failure to respect them results in crashes or unexpected performance roadblocks.

New comment by bengarney in "Safe zero-copy operations in C#"

bengarney — Tue, 30 Sep 2025 15:24:55 +0000

I increasingly wonder if writing and binding performance critical things in C/C++ would be less overall effort. Performant zero-alloc C# vs C/C++ is backdoor magic vs first class language support. Boxing gloves vs. surgical gloves.

C# _can_ do this! But I face many abstractions: special perf APIs, C#, IL, asm. Outcomes will vary with language version, runtime version, platform, IL2CPP/Burst/Mono/dotnet. But C/C++ has one layer of abstraction (the compiler), and it's locked in once I compile it.

I want to do the thing as exactly and consistently as possible in the simplest way possible!

A build environment that compiles .cpp alongside .cs (no automatic bindings, just compilation) would be so nice for this.

----

Example of what I mean regarding abstractions:

  void addBatch(int *a, int *b, int count)
  {
    for(int i=0; i


versus:
    [MethodImpl(MethodImplOptions.AggressiveOptimization)]
    public static void AddBatch(int[] a, int[] b, int count)
    {
        ref int ra = ref MemoryMarshal.GetArrayDataReference(a);
        ref int rb = ref MemoryMarshal.GetArrayDataReference(b);
        for (nint i = 0, n = (nint)count; i < n; i++)
            Unsafe.Add(ref ra, i) += Unsafe.Add(ref rb, i);
    }

(This is obviously a contrived example, my point is to show the kinds of idioms at play.)



New comment by bengarney in "Marble Blast"
bengarney — Tue, 24 Jun 2025 03:47:43 +0000

I was a developer on that version!
We got the team back together and did a spiritual successor, Marble It Up!. If you are still enjoying the original I’d recommend checking it out (on consoles and Steam).



Sequels: Hubris, Distraction, and Obsession
bengarney — Fri, 16 May 2025 20:52:46 +0000

Article URL: https://bengarney.com/2025/05/15/sequels/
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44009735
Points: 2
# Comments: 0



New comment by bengarney in "WorldGen: Open-source 3D scene generator for Game/VR/XR"
bengarney — Wed, 30 Apr 2025 13:32:57 +0000

Is there an example of this?
A skybox with depth is only marginally better than a skybox for any sort of 3d experience. Using the depth for occlusion would be kind of cool.



New comment by bengarney in "Deleting multiplayer from the Unreal engine can save memory"
bengarney — Tue, 08 Apr 2025 15:20:36 +0000

I would not expect much, but you'd have to measure to be sure.
If you actually have a million of something you're better off writing a custom manager thing to handle the bulk of the work anyway. For instance, if you're doing a brick building game where users might place a million bricks - maybe you want each brick to be an Actor for certain use cases, but you'd want to centralize all the collision, rendering, update logic. (This is what I did on a project with this exact use case and it worked nicely.)



New comment by bengarney in "Deleting multiplayer from the Unreal engine can save memory"
bengarney — Tue, 08 Apr 2025 02:47:48 +0000

Really interesting analysis of where the data lives… cutting 3-4 textures would save you more memory even in the 100k actor case, though.



New comment by bengarney in "Ten Rules for Negotiating a Job Offer"
bengarney — Sun, 06 Apr 2025 00:40:52 +0000

As someone on the hiring side, I strongly agree with GP.
I can think of a specific example where someone with experience and strong qualifications pushed for a higher salary - which I agreed to - then struggled with the role and ended up not sticking around. In another instance, someone had lower qualifications and experience, but also negotiated hardest out of their hiring cohort - same outcome, plus they weren't a great fit personality wise.
Meanwhile, I can think of several other people who cross-trained from their initial non-technical careers at the local community college, came in with low experience, didn't negotiate aggressively (although did stand up for themselves)... They've done great work (and grown substantially and been good to work with) over the long term, and seem to enjoy working for me enough that a few who left for other jobs were interested in being hired again later on.
Negotiating employment terms is the first task you complete at a new job. It is a good predictor. If it leaves a bad taste in the mouth for either side, it's not a good sign of things to come...



New comment by bengarney in "Reverse Engineering Apple's typedstream Format"
bengarney — Mon, 03 Feb 2025 17:31:00 +0000

I have a product that does exactly this. E-mail me at ben AT theengine DOT co, I'd love to show it to you and see if it would help.



New comment by bengarney in "Reverse Engineering Apple's typedstream Format"
bengarney — Mon, 03 Feb 2025 17:30:09 +0000

This is stuff is such a PIA to parse. I assume it's just different teams doing different features over the years, and being alternately repulsed/seduced by each format. Probably features are implemented as libraries so there isn't a master oversight - they aren't trying to make iMessage's internal formats follow a consistent plan, just let all the libs coexist...



New comment by bengarney in "Genesis – a generative physics engine for general-purpose robotics"
bengarney — Sat, 21 Dec 2024 20:35:17 +0000

Given what's there today, especially the sizzle reel, I'm pretty dubious.
If the author drops an amazing generative text-to-sim system on top of this... THAT is impressive - but effectively orthogonal to what's there - so I'm withholding excitement for now.
Take the time to read over the repo. It is not revolutionary. It is an integration of a bunch of third party packages (which are largely C/C++ libraries with Python wrappers, not "pure python"!). The stuff unique to Genesis is adequate implementations of well-known techniques, or integration code.
The backflip is awesome but plausibly explained by the third party RL library, and they include an example program which... runs a third party library to do just this.
The performance numbers are so far beyond real world numbers as to be incoherent. If you redefine what all the words mean, then the claims are not comparable to existing claims using the same words. 43 million FPS means, if my math is right, you are spending 70 clocks per frame on a 3ghz processor. On a 4080 you would have ~500k clocks in the same period, but that implies 100% utilization with zero overhead from Amdahl's law. (Also, Hi, Erwin, maybe you think these claims are 100% realistic for meaningful workloads in which case I'll gladly eat crow since I have a huge amount of respect for Bullet!)
I can only judge what's released now, not a theoretical future release, and what's here now is something a really good developer could bang out in a couple of months. The USP is the really good spin around the idea that it's uniquely suited for AI to produce beyond-SOTA results.
I have slightly longer form thoughts: https://x.com/bengarney/status/1869803238389887016



New comment by bengarney in "Ask HN: Is there any software you only made for your own use but nobody else?"
bengarney — Fri, 05 Jul 2024 15:03:02 +0000

I wrote a tool to do automated QA on internet video (HLS/DASH, tech used for Netflix, YouTube, Twitch, etc.).
It evaluates streams against a database of 100 or so "quirks" that identify either general issues or issues that will only manifest on certain player libraries. For instance, specific "in spec" encodings which are actually non-standard in practice get flagged.
Built on TypeScript/node/Docker over the course of maybe 18 months. Used it fairly often when I was working in the space, not at all these days. Originally the plan was to license it as an enterprise vid tool.
(I've been considering open-sourcing it - would YOU use it if so?)



New comment by bengarney in "An open-source implementation of Apple code signing and notarization (2022)"
bengarney — Mon, 15 Apr 2024 16:55:37 +0000

The code signing process has sucked and always been deeply cryptic, even on macOS - getting something usable and improvable that's cross platform is a fantastic win.



New comment by bengarney in "OnScreen: AI generated long form sci fi TV show"
bengarney — Thu, 04 Apr 2024 01:06:59 +0000

I'd label Warden an "AI maximalist" approach. Also has a lot of merit and is very interesting, but much harder to have fine control or tweakability, and much much harder to do fully hands off. "Hands off"-ability is an important metric because it's useful to not babysit every second of footage.



New comment by bengarney in "OnScreen: AI generated long form sci fi TV show"
bengarney — Wed, 03 Apr 2024 22:46:18 +0000

Writing comedy is really hard! Great concept for a show, tho. TBH a good example of something that could be interesting and viable with a tool like On Screen but never make it as a studio or even indie production.
The scope and target complexity of the series I'm making with On Screen is _dramatically_ cut down from what I started with, and it's still a bit of a stretch for the models at times. I started at DS9/Babylon 5 and ended up at Flash Gordon...



New comment by bengarney in "OnScreen: AI generated long form sci fi TV show"
bengarney — Wed, 03 Apr 2024 22:43:21 +0000

I agree, BTS is definitely very interesting.
But I had 8 kids 5-15 watch all of Ep1 _AND_ choose to watch Ep2 afterwards last night. They actually sat and watched, too, instead of having it on in the background... AND they were bummed they couldn't watch the super secret pilot episode (which has MAJOR audio issues - I couldn't bring myself to inflict it on them).
So I think something is there.
I agree, there are some great opportunities to track things somewhat more quantitatively. It takes ~15 minutes and $10 bucks to generate a script depending on how fast OpenAI is feeling. So in a real scale v2 it would be very reasonable to explore this.
Man, I sure hope I get to build this further!



New comment by bengarney in "OnScreen: AI generated long form sci fi TV show"
bengarney — Wed, 03 Apr 2024 22:35:36 +0000

Good call on the playlist. I'll do that soon. I agree, ep1 is rough.
I shot you an e-mail on a v2. (An MVP would be less; I realized I sent you the pitch for a full v2.)
There are a LOT of art packs out there for a ton of different looks and genres. Building sets is quick and easy even with kitbashing. I think you could synthesize 3d content in a lot of ways (vid2vid, Gaussian diffusion generative models, prop placement by LLM, clever use of stable diffusion/firefly for mattes, etc.) or have a small stable of fiverr types to make art for people on demand in a specific style...



New comment by bengarney in "OnScreen: AI generated long form sci fi TV show"
bengarney — Wed, 03 Apr 2024 17:55:38 +0000

Great feedback. Thank you Mike and HanClinto.
I am planning on doing some more articles/director commentary as it goes along.
I have a number of episodes in the queue and each one is better than the last. My plan is to release an entire season of 12 or so.
The "I'm a GPT that wants everyone to be friends and how" is increasingly better in those episodes.
Even incremental improvements in stuff like background music make a big big difference.
I really want to do a v2 that is more of a "copilot" than an "AI first" experience. But I need partners to help with funding; I've taken it about as far as I can on a solo basis. The next step is a team of 4-5 people levelling it up. Every piece could be 10x better, and it would be a different beast entirely if that happened. I think there are some super exciting directions this could go.
The vision of a distributed creator system is very interesting, as is letting people do more hands-on writing/rewriting.
If any VCs are reading, I'd love to talk. :)
(PS - Hi Han!)