Hacker News: dadrian

New comment by dadrian in "Margaret Hamilton has died"

dadrian — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 04:10:42 +0000

Hamilton invented the idea of error handling in software, and that error handling in the Apollo computer is why Buzz Aldrin was able to handle the error 1201/1202 in the minutes before the Eagle landed on the moon, instead of having to abort the mission.

New comment by dadrian in "Bill to Ban Private Equity from Owning Medical Practices"

dadrian — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 03:53:39 +0000

That’s absolutely not true. Private equity regularly buys small businesses, D2C businesses, retail businesses, failing businesses, software businesses…

New comment by dadrian in "Playing whack-a-mole is losing"

dadrian — Sun, 13 Sep 2026 17:31:00 +0000

I was actually referencing repeated exploitation by leaking TheHole, which actually has no particular reason it needs to be sensitive.

New comment by dadrian in "GPS and the Lost Art of Getting Lost"

dadrian — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 17:16:38 +0000

Have you attempted to kidnap the DA during a prisoner transfer on Lower Wacker, only to be thwarted by a vigilante? If not, I question your Chicago bona fides.

New comment by dadrian in "NSA and IETF, Part 9"

dadrian — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 17:35:25 +0000

In fact, the default behavior in every web browser right now is to use a hybrid.

New comment by dadrian in "NSA and IETF, Part 9"

dadrian — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 17:32:57 +0000

The cryptographers in charge of major web browsers, TLS libraries, and programming language standard libraries do not stand by DJB’s points.

New comment by dadrian in "LLMs won't break symmetric crypto"

dadrian — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 02:23:11 +0000

RSA is asymmetric crypto. This article is about symmetric cryptography. I expect LLMs will advance state of the art in factoring algorithms, considerably.

New comment by dadrian in "Memory safety absolutists"

dadrian — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 02:22:08 +0000

There are only three programs where memory safety matters: HTTP server, browsers, and operating systems. In practice, really just browsers and operating systems. Memory safety schemes that don't work for those systems are primarily cosplaying if their goal is safety.

New comment by dadrian in "Exploit brokers pay $500k for WordPress RCEs. I found one with GPT5.6 and $25"

dadrian — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 17:38:50 +0000

The pricelist was a marketing stunt.

New comment by dadrian in "An OpenAI model has disproved a central conjecture in discrete geometry"

dadrian — Wed, 20 May 2026 19:36:28 +0000

While the result is impressive, this blog post is extremely disappointing.

- It does not show an example of the new best solution, nor explain why they couldn't show an example (e.g. if the proof was not constructive)

- It does not even explain the previous best solution. The diagram of the rescaled unit grid doesn't indicate what the "points" are beyond the normal non-scaled unit grid. I have no idea what to take away from it.

- It's description of the new proof just cites some terms of art with no effort made to actually explain the result.

If this post were not on the OpenAI blog, I would assume it was slop. I understand advanced pure mathematics is complicated, but it is entirely possible to explain complicated topics to non-experts.

New comment by dadrian in "YC's Biggest Scandals"

dadrian — Sun, 10 May 2026 20:42:33 +0000

There's something ironic about vibe-coding an anti-YC site. They're why OpenAI exists!

New comment by dadrian in "Using the internet like it's 1999"

dadrian — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 14:57:27 +0000

The Internet in 1999 was not good at all. Browsers barely worked, computers crashed constantly, the ability to actually search for useful things was limited, and many things we take for granted as being online (news, people, documentation) were not.

The mid-to-late 2000s are perhaps closer to what the author is looking for.

New comment by dadrian in "OpenSSL 4.0.0"

dadrian — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 22:20:01 +0000

I dunno, they'll let anybody get on the Internet and start a podcast.

New comment by dadrian in "Cloudflare targets 2029 for full post-quantum security"

dadrian — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 18:07:17 +0000

I will bring this up at the next meeting of the secret cryptographer cabal where we decide what information to reveal to non-cryptographers.

New comment by dadrian in "The cult of vibe coding is insane"

dadrian — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 20:51:26 +0000

Except for the part where it's constantly having quality and reliability issues, even independent of the server-side infrastructure (OOMs on long running tasks, etc).

New comment by dadrian in "Astral to Join OpenAI"

dadrian — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 17:14:20 +0000

As opposed to Pip, which is obviously free and sustainable forever.

New comment by dadrian in "DJB's Cryptographic Odyssey: From Code Hero to Standards Gadfly"

dadrian — Sun, 22 Feb 2026 01:54:43 +0000

The person with the most HN karma of anyone on this site, currently thinks djb's actions are wrong.

New comment by dadrian in "Be wary of Bluesky"

dadrian — Sat, 21 Feb 2026 22:25:37 +0000

For someone to come in and buy Bluesky and then hold everyone’s data hostage, then Bluesky would actually have to have enough value that someone would want to buy it.

New comment by dadrian in "DJB's Cryptographic Odyssey: From Code Hero to Standards Gadfly"

dadrian — Sat, 21 Feb 2026 17:43:31 +0000

RMS has, at minimum, showed that he swayed by parrots, spider plants, and free plane tickets and guest lodgings.

New comment by dadrian in "What Is OAuth?"

dadrian — Sat, 21 Feb 2026 17:40:52 +0000

> SAML is arguably the worst cryptographic standard ever created

The PGP packet has entered the chat.