Hacker News: drob518

New comment by drob518 in "Bytecode VMs in surprising places (2024)"

drob518 — Mon, 25 May 2026 13:22:28 +0000

On one hand, all these mini interpreters and compilers are cool. I have a soft spot for extensible systems. On the other hand, all these things are a huge security problem. When every subsystem and data format is carrying around its own Turing complete bytecode and JIT, they all need to be secure and bug free for the system to be secure and bug free. And that far more code surface to keep clean.

New comment by drob518 in "Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses"

drob518 — Sat, 23 May 2026 15:56:32 +0000

Nobody cares until the code gets so twisted in knots that bugs and security issues predominate.

New comment by drob518 in "Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses"

drob518 — Sat, 23 May 2026 15:54:50 +0000

I’d point out that smaller and simpler also makes their router code easier to review and that fewer lines will have fewer bugs (on average) and those bugs will be more obvious. But then, I’m old school and won’t let an AI work on code without reviewing it, and I mostly write code by hand.

New comment by drob518 in "Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses"

drob518 — Sat, 23 May 2026 15:48:53 +0000

Unfortunately, I think this is correct. Such as it ever has been with technological change. The folks at the bottom bear the brunt of the dislocation and the folks at the top pat themselves on the back for being so forward looking and get huge payouts regardless of the actual results. Further, the folks at the top are always incentivized to go along with the herd of their peers because if it works then they were on the bandwagon, and if it doesn’t work, well then, how could they have known because “Everyone was deceived.”

New comment by drob518 in "80386 microcode disassembled"

drob518 — Sat, 23 May 2026 13:57:43 +0000

Right. And the best way to think about microcode is as code for a wacky, custom VLIW processor that implements the programmer-level x86 (in this case) instruction set. Various fields in the microcode send signals to different parts of the processor to activate them, routing values along internal busses and between registers, functional units and memory to cause the processor to execute the x86 instructions.

SpaceX is heavily reliant on Starlink for growth and profit for IPO

drob518 — Thu, 21 May 2026 17:21:57 +0000

Article URL: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/21/spacex-starlink-growth-profit-nasdaq-ipo.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48226147

Points: 4

# Comments: 2

New comment by drob518 in "SpaceX punts Starship launch as investigation opens into Starbase worker's death"

drob518 — Wed, 20 May 2026 20:58:02 +0000

Data?

New comment by drob518 in "Gemini 3.5 Flash"

drob518 — Wed, 20 May 2026 18:35:12 +0000

I think that’s true on divergence. Basically, the only most is living in the frontier, and even that is only temporary. At some point, the frontier advances such that 99% of tasks can use something short of a frontier model and only a very few tasks actually demand frontier performance.

New comment by drob518 in "Gemini 3.5 Flash"

drob518 — Wed, 20 May 2026 18:25:58 +0000

Whoever purchased their RAM last month vs this month has the advantage, I suspect.

New comment by drob518 in "Gemini 3.5 Flash"

drob518 — Wed, 20 May 2026 18:18:10 +0000

I’m curious about the difference between Gemini 3.5 Flash and Gemma 4.

New comment by drob518 in "Qwen3.7-Max: The Agent Frontier"

drob518 — Wed, 20 May 2026 15:11:30 +0000

Yep. Something needs to break soon. Or rather, something WILL break soon, one way of another. Was talking to a friend last night who works planning infrastructure rollout and he said costs for equipment has roughly doubled in the last six months. Soon, these projects aren’t going to be viable.

New comment by drob518 in "Anna's Archive hit with $19.5M default judgment and global domain takedown order"

drob518 — Wed, 20 May 2026 13:44:07 +0000

This is pirate radio all over again.

New comment by drob518 in "Two EA-18 fighter jets collide at Mountain Home airshow, pilots ejected safely"

drob518 — Wed, 20 May 2026 13:41:29 +0000

Agreed. It only takes one of them to have an issue or be out of position. Like you say, it’ll be interesting to see what they come back with after a thorough investigation.

New comment by drob518 in "Saying goodbye to asm.js"

drob518 — Wed, 20 May 2026 13:39:58 +0000

Asm.js is dead! Long live WebAssembly!

New comment by drob518 in "Qwen3.7-Max: The Agent Frontier"

drob518 — Wed, 20 May 2026 13:28:12 +0000

Currently, Apple is letting some of its models go out of stock in preparation for new models coming in a few weeks. I would expect at least 128 GB models at that time. That said, the memory crunch is hitting everyone.

New comment by drob518 in "Elon Musk has lost his lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI"

drob518 — Tue, 19 May 2026 12:12:39 +0000

Right. But why does everyone assume that a billionaire continues to work for the money? Besides, he doesn’t “work” for the money. He’s the primary shareholder in companies that he founded and funded. He gets another billion and another billion when everyone else puts an increasing value on his shares. Even if Elon “retired,” he’d still continue to get richer.