Hacker News: georgehm

New comment by georgehm in "Want to Write a Compiler? Just Read These Two Papers (2008)"

georgehm — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 16:28:52 +0000

I have fond memories of implementing an optimizing compiler for the CS241 compiler course offered back then by Prof Michael Franz who was a student of Niklaus Wirth, probably the most exhilarating course during my time at UC Irvine. This was in 2009 so my memory is vague but I recall he provided a virtual machine for a simple architecture called DLX and the compiler was to generate byte code for it.

Google search points me to https://github.com/cesarghali/PL241-Compiler/blob/master/DLX... for a description of the architecture and possibly https://bernsteinbear.com/assets/img/linear-scan-ra-context-... for the register allocation algorithm

New comment by georgehm in "How NASA built Artemis II’s fault-tolerant computer"

georgehm — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 04:11:46 +0000

>Effectively, eight CPUs run the flight software in parallel. The engineering philosophy hinges on a >“fail-silent” design. The self-checking pairs ensure that if a CPU performs an erroneous calculation >due to a radiation event, the error is detected immediately and the system responds.

>“A faulty computer will fail silent, rather than transmit the ‘wrong answer,’” Uitenbroek explained. >This approach simplifies the complex task of the triplex “voting” mechanism that compares results. > >Instead of comparing three answers to find a majority, the system uses a priority-ordered source >selection algorithm among healthy channels that haven’t failed-silent. It picks the output from the >first available FCM in the priority list; if that module has gone silent due to a fault, it moves to >the second, third, or fourth.

One part that seems omitted in the explanation is what happens if both CPUs in a pair for whatever reason performs an erroneous calculation and they both match, how will that source be silenced without comparing its results with other sources.

Solve NYT Pips with Constraints

georgehm — Sun, 26 Oct 2025 17:25:10 +0000

Article URL: https://www.righto.com/2025/10/solve-nyt-pips-with-constraints.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45713622

Points: 4

# Comments: 0

New comment by georgehm in "Leaving Google"

georgehm — Mon, 12 May 2025 17:26:56 +0000

> Having two compilers helped ensure that the language was clearly defined.

> When the two compilers differed, we knew that we had to clarify the spec and figure out what the right behavior should be.

This idea of having two implementations for spec stood out for me.

New comment by georgehm in "Port of Los Angeles says shipping volume will plummet 35% next week"

georgehm — Wed, 30 Apr 2025 18:43:48 +0000

Maybe I am being foolishly optimistic, the section in the video (~ 4:50) where it is mentioned that some giant seed corporation is staying the course betting that this thing will blow over in a quarter or so actually gives me some hope ?

New comment by georgehm in "Moments in Chromecast's history"

georgehm — Tue, 06 Aug 2024 19:10:59 +0000

promptly ordered 2 (an HD and 4K) .. its still cheaper than the new "AI" enabled experience ..

JEPA (Joint Embedding Predictive Architecture)

georgehm — Fri, 28 Jun 2024 14:13:55 +0000

Article URL: https://www.turingpost.com/p/jepa

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40820793

Points: 4

# Comments: 0

New comment by georgehm in "Intuitive Machines successfully lands on the Moon"

georgehm — Fri, 23 Feb 2024 08:22:54 +0000

I am super curious to know what kind of software magic they did to bring the NDL system as the primary navigation system after their own system failed to function prior to landing .. From what I understood listening in to the broadcast, NDL was only a demonstration project and folks somehow managed to bring it up on demand and use 2 of the sensors on it (?) iirc .. Like how !? Was NDL set up in the same orientation as their original system ? If not, they updated their guidance system on the fly too !?? Simply amazing

New comment by georgehm in "Moore vs. United States: Tax Unrealized Income Case"

georgehm — Sun, 10 Dec 2023 19:23:39 +0000

No they didn’t because until the loan is repaid you can’t use whatever gold you put up for other purposes can you. What became tangible is what you used the loan for , that is what can be taxed.

New comment by georgehm in "Moore vs. United States: Tax Unrealized Income Case"

georgehm — Sun, 10 Dec 2023 17:46:14 +0000

Why? Here the asset used as collateral is a commitment to return the money if the loan isn’t repaid. Imagine I bought gold back when gold was 100$ , it’s current price is 1000$ and now I use it as collateral to get a loan . How is it fair that I have to pay taxes on 900$ of unrealized gains ?

The Dissidents Guide to Philanthropy

georgehm — Wed, 25 Oct 2023 08:22:29 +0000

Article URL: https://blog.joelonsdale.com/p/the-dissidents-guide-to-philanthropy

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38010530

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by georgehm in "ChatGPT Plugins"

georgehm — Thu, 23 Mar 2023 18:15:37 +0000

I like to think that to get a sense of how this might be done, one way maybe to extrapolate from this experiment at https://til.simonwillison.net/llms/python-react-pattern .

New comment by georgehm in "Apple’s iPhone 14 Redesign for Repair"

georgehm — Mon, 19 Sep 2022 18:54:56 +0000

Does the iPhone 14 still have the battery glued to the back? Couldn't figure it out from reading the article. I recently replaced the battery on my old iPhone 6s using the ifixit repair kit. Of all the steps I found removing the tape attached to the battery was the flakiest/hardest operation. After many attempts I did remove it but I also ended up cracking the battery a bit :sigh:. Any changes that make the removal of the battery easier would be a great win for repairability.

New comment by georgehm in "Shor, I’ll do it (2007)"

georgehm — Sun, 31 Jul 2022 20:15:51 +0000

> And once we knew (p-1)(q-1), we could then use some more little tricks to recover p and q, the prime factors we wanted.

I am curious to know about these tricks to recover p, q. Does anyone know?

Mark's Editor for C

georgehm — Mon, 06 Dec 2021 20:40:13 +0000

Article URL: https://media.handmade-seattle.com/medc/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29465372

Points: 4

# Comments: 0

Ask HN: Why doesn't the pool section appear on the front-page?

georgehm — Thu, 14 Oct 2021 18:59:07 +0000

Opening https://news.ycombinator.com doesn't show the pool section in the top. But visiting https://news.ycombinator.com/pool shows the pool as well as the other sections in the top.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28868463

Points: 5

# Comments: 4

New comment by georgehm in "Effective Concurrency with Algebraic Effects in Multicore OCaml"

georgehm — Tue, 12 Oct 2021 19:39:45 +0000

Adding some more related articles. this was mostly a result of me trying to find some more useful articles to better understand and it was lost in my browsing history.

https://overreacted.io/algebraic-effects-for-the-rest-of-us/

https://users.scala-lang.org/t/from-scala-monadic-effects-to...

https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3122975.3122977

New comment by georgehm in "Programming Puzzles"

georgehm — Thu, 23 Sep 2021 05:51:38 +0000

well there's https://web.archive.org/web/20111012115624/http://itasoftwar...

New comment by georgehm in "Why Not Rust?"

georgehm — Mon, 21 Sep 2020 01:24:26 +0000

big plus one for Kotlin as a general purpose language

Correlation between solar activity and earthquakes

georgehm — Tue, 21 Jul 2020 16:20:30 +0000

Article URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-67860-3

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23908134

Points: 3

# Comments: 0