Hacker News: colonwqbang

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

colonwqbang — Thu, 28 May 2026 09:30:52 +0000

It's funny, some people commenting here seem to be a bit lost.

It's also obvious from the article that his home was indeed searched.

The idea that the government would not obtain a warrant if they suspect you of stealing millions...

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

colonwqbang — Thu, 28 May 2026 09:22:50 +0000

I don't think you know what you are talking about.

New comment by colonwqbang in "Microsoft offers buyouts up to 7% of US employees"

colonwqbang — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 21:21:44 +0000

Another way to look at it: Microsoft APIs have fallen from grace. Even their own devs don't dogfood anymore. They download something that Facebook made instead and reimplement the Holy Start Menu using that.

New comment by colonwqbang in "XML is a cheap DSL"

colonwqbang — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 11:10:44 +0000

I didn't say that json can represent all rational numbers. I said that all json numbers have an obvious interpretation as a rational number.

So far you haven't really shown an example of a json number which has an ambiguous or ill defined interpretation.

Maybe you mean that json numbers may not fit into 32 bit integers or double floats. That's certainly true but I don't see it as a deficiency in the standard. There is no limit on the size of strings in json, so why have a limit on numbers?

New comment by colonwqbang in "XML is a cheap DSL"

colonwqbang — Sat, 14 Mar 2026 22:35:15 +0000

How do you feel numbers are ill defined in json? The syntactical definition is clear and seems to yield a unique and obvious interpretation of json numbers as mathematical rational numbers.

A given programming language may not have a built in representation for rational numbers in general. That isn't the fault of json.

New comment by colonwqbang in "OpenCiv3: Open-source, cross-platform reimagining of Civilization III"

colonwqbang — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 11:38:34 +0000

...The code signing requirement?

New comment by colonwqbang in "Go is portable, until it isn't"

colonwqbang — Sat, 13 Dec 2025 14:41:46 +0000

Has nothing to do with go. You added a dependency which is not portable. It is well known that systemd project only targets Linux.

Vendorise systemd and compile only the journal parts, if they are portable and can be isolated from the rest. Otherwise just shell out to journalctl.

New comment by colonwqbang in "Is C++26 getting destructive move semantics?"

colonwqbang — Fri, 21 Nov 2025 18:00:08 +0000

Your post could be (uncharitably) paraphrased as: "once you have written correct C++ code, the drawbacks of C++ are not relevant". That is true, and the same is true of C. But it's not really a counterargument to Rust. It doesn't much help those us who have to deliver that correct code in the first place.

New comment by colonwqbang in "Giving C a superpower: custom header file (safe_c.h)"

colonwqbang — Wed, 19 Nov 2025 12:29:19 +0000

True, but locks are not only needed inside IRQ handler routines.

New comment by colonwqbang in "Giving C a superpower: custom header file (safe_c.h)"

colonwqbang — Mon, 17 Nov 2025 17:13:00 +0000

I wrote "multithreaded" but I really meant "multicore". If two cores are contending for a lock I don't see how irq protection help. As long as there is only one core, I agree.

New comment by colonwqbang in "Giving C a superpower: custom header file (safe_c.h)"

colonwqbang — Mon, 17 Nov 2025 15:59:37 +0000

Does there exist any platform which has multithreading but not atomics? Such a platform would be quite impractical as you can't really implement locks or any other threading primitive without atomics.

New comment by colonwqbang in "Guests ejected mid-stay from bankrupt hotel chain Sonder"

colonwqbang — Thu, 13 Nov 2025 23:12:34 +0000

The company is bankrupt. It means they can't/won't/didn't honour their promises.

New comment by colonwqbang in "Launch HN: Tweeks (YC W25) – Browser extension to deshittify the web"

colonwqbang — Thu, 13 Nov 2025 22:29:02 +0000

Convenience? Websites are moving targets. I don't love having to update my tampermonkey scripts when they break.

New comment by colonwqbang in "Launch HN: Tweeks (YC W25) – Browser extension to deshittify the web"

colonwqbang — Thu, 13 Nov 2025 22:20:31 +0000

"Ban" and "sue" are very different things...

New comment by colonwqbang in "Launch HN: Tweeks (YC W25) – Browser extension to deshittify the web"

colonwqbang — Thu, 13 Nov 2025 22:09:52 +0000

What a positive application of AI. Refreshing to see a product which wants to reduce the amount of slop and noise in my life, instead of the opposite.

A bit disappointed that it doesn't work on Firefox. Since Google banned ublock origin I would think much of your core audience is on FF.

New comment by colonwqbang in "SlopStop: Community-driven AI slop detection in Kagi Search"

colonwqbang — Thu, 13 Nov 2025 21:48:16 +0000

It looks like a method of fabricating more convincing slop?

I think the Kagi feature is about promoting real, human-produced content.

New comment by colonwqbang in "FFmpeg to Google: Fund us or stop sending bugs"

colonwqbang — Wed, 12 Nov 2025 00:15:43 +0000

Relicensing isn't necessary. If you violate the GPL with respect to a work you automatically lose your license to that work.

It's enough if one or two main contributors assert their copyrights. Their contributions are so tangled with everything else after years of development that it can't meaningfully be separated away.

New comment by colonwqbang in "Canadian military will rely on public servants to boost its ranks by 300k"

colonwqbang — Mon, 10 Nov 2025 22:03:34 +0000

How much useful combat skills can be taught in only a week? It seems like an extremely low estimate on the training needed to play a useful role in the military.

New comment by colonwqbang in "Why JPEG XL ignoring bit depth is genius (and why AVIF can't pull it off)"

colonwqbang — Mon, 27 Oct 2025 18:16:57 +0000

That is true! But AVIF is based on AV1. As a video codec, AV1 often does need to be implemented in dedicated hardware for cost and power efficiency reasons. I think the article is misleading in this regard: "This limitation comes from early digital video systems". No, it is very much a limitation for video systems in the current age too.

New comment by colonwqbang in "Why JPEG XL ignoring bit depth is genius (and why AVIF can't pull it off)"

colonwqbang — Mon, 27 Oct 2025 10:51:30 +0000

So they "ignore" bit depth by using 32 bits for each sample. This may be a good solution but it's not really magic. They just allocated many more bits than other codecs were willing to.

It also seems like a very CPU-centric design choice. If you implement a hardware en/decoder, you will see a stark difference in cost between one which works on 8/10 vs 32 bits. Maybe this is motivated by the intended use cases for JPEG XL? Or maybe I've missed the point of what JPEG XL is?