Hacker News: herodotus

New comment by herodotus in "Warren's Abstract Machine: A Tutorial Reconstruction"

herodotus — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 14:39:48 +0000

For those who need some context: In 1983 David Warren published a paper describing an abstract machine that could be used as the target of a Prolog compiler. This machine became the basis of most Prolog compilers - it is much faster than interpreters. His paper was not easy to understand. Hasan Air-Kaci's book was a brilliant exposition of Warren's work, and was a must-read for anyone serious about working on Prolog interpreters or compilers.

New comment by herodotus in "Laws of Software Engineering"

herodotus — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 14:13:10 +0000

Knuth's Optimization Principle: The computer scientist Rod Burstall had a pithy way of saying this: "Efficiency is the enemy of clarity"

New comment by herodotus in "Michael Rabin has died"

herodotus — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 15:14:09 +0000

I don't know what country your ancestors came from, but I assume you are not held responsible for any horrible thing that government does.

New comment by herodotus in "Artemis II crew see first glimpse of far side of Moon [video]"

herodotus — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 15:46:20 +0000

I am curious. If it is on the far side, where does the light come from for the photos? Other stars?

New comment by herodotus in "Bored of eating your own dogfood? Try smelling your own farts"

herodotus — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 14:48:54 +0000

And lying: "Please listen carefully as our menu items have changed". Only once did I get what everyone should use instead: "Please listen carefully to be sure you make the right selection". (Lying is also normalized by "I have read and agree to ....". Maybe better would be: "By clicking this box, you are agreeing to our needlessly lengthy terms, whether or not you have read them."

We Study Mass Shooters. Something Terrifying Is Happening Online

herodotus — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 16:20:45 +0000

Article URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/17/opinion/mass-shooters-online-radicalization.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47414799

Points: 21

# Comments: 10

In Memoriam: John W. Addison, my PhD advisor

herodotus — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 15:46:19 +0000

Article URL: https://billwadge.com/2026/03/15/in-memoriam-john-w-addison-jr-my-phd-advisor/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47388531

Points: 138

# Comments: 6

New comment by herodotus in "Sumerian Star Map Recorded the Impact of an Asteroid (2024)"

herodotus — Sat, 31 Jan 2026 15:47:22 +0000

Sumerian and Akkadian are two different languages. This tablet is written in Akkadian and is dated in the Akkadian era. The authors claim is that the tablet is a [translated] copy of a much (much) older Sumerian tablet. Apparently the author's theory is not taken seriously by assyriologists or ancient science historians.

New comment by herodotus in "The End"

herodotus — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 15:46:33 +0000

And here in Canada I worry that the same irrational forces that elected Trump twice and voted for Brexit will lead to new referendums on the break up of Canada in Quebec and in Alberta, leading to the end of this country.

New comment by herodotus in "LearnixOS"

herodotus — Fri, 26 Dec 2025 15:31:12 +0000

Thanks ....

New comment by herodotus in "LearnixOS"

herodotus — Fri, 26 Dec 2025 14:59:20 +0000

This is an ambitious project. Might I respectfully suggest that you use your favourite AI (or an English-speaking friend) to fix your many grammatical errors and typos? For example "Note: ALL the syntax highlighting of the Rust code is custom and create by me! If you see and bug, please write in the comments or submit an issue." should be "Note: ALL the syntax highlighting of the Rust code is custom and was created by me! If you see a bug, please leave a comment or submit an issue." Also, Rust, not rust. And many more.

New comment by herodotus in "Salesforce regrets firing 4000 experienced staff and replacing them with AI"

herodotus — Thu, 25 Dec 2025 16:27:00 +0000

It is impossible to verify anything in this article. For example "In recent internal discussions and public remarks". Where are these public remarks? How did this author get access to internal discussions? I rate this article as clickbait nonsense.

New comment by herodotus in "Texas is suing all of the big TV makers for spying on what you watch"

herodotus — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 15:23:35 +0000

What bugs me is that it is impossible to buy a TV these days that is not "smart". (Of course I know I can just not connect it to the internet, and I don't, but I wish there was a company in the TV market which would make privacy a selling point).

New comment by herodotus in "Show HN: I wrote a book for software engineers, based on 11 years at Uber"

herodotus — Tue, 02 Dec 2025 15:45:46 +0000

Thanks for doing this. I am well retired now (from Apple) - so too late for me, but after sampling a few chapters I think every fresh software engineer should read your book!

New comment by herodotus in "Human Fovea Detector"

herodotus — Thu, 13 Nov 2025 01:18:16 +0000

Amazing - but iPhone screen is too small. Works on my iPad.

New comment by herodotus in "A Fond Farewell"

herodotus — Fri, 07 Nov 2025 15:35:48 +0000

In the early 1990's, during my days as a Comp. Sci. prof, I was so excited about the emergence of the internet. When I saw the Mosaic browser (a precursor to Netscape and later Firefox) I knew the world had changed for the better. Now I have such mixed feelings. Magazines (like the Farmers Almanac) either go online completely or just disappear. They just cannot compete for advertising dollars with Google. And small family run local retail stores, offering not just goods, but a social hub for people are shutting their doors because how can they compete with the convenience of Amazon. Much has been gained from the internet, and much has been lost.

New comment by herodotus in "Hello-World iOS App in Assembly"

herodotus — Thu, 30 Oct 2025 13:58:54 +0000

When I was in second or third year of computer science in 1971 or '72, we (of course) learned IBM 360 assembler, but we also had to design a simple binary adder using AND OR and XOR gates. All on paper - no need for any soldering or electronics, which I regret. I cannot remember how many bits of input - probably 4 but may have been 6. But I did do quite a bit of asm programming, including a routine for calculating square roots using Chebyschev polynomials and newtons algorithm.

Al Nagler Obituary

herodotus — Wed, 29 Oct 2025 13:40:57 +0000

Article URL: https://televue.com/_private/Legacy.asp

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45746715

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by herodotus in "Unified Line and Paragraph Detection by Graph Convolutional Networks (2022)"

herodotus — Mon, 22 Sep 2025 16:38:31 +0000

https://ppubs.uspto.gov/api/pdf/downloadPdf/8166037?requestT...

New comment by herodotus in "Unified Line and Paragraph Detection by Graph Convolutional Networks (2022)"

herodotus — Mon, 22 Sep 2025 14:35:31 +0000

Ahem. Actually what I am most proud of is that I made pinch to zoom keep characters focussed during zooming. At that time, Safari let things get blurry until the user stopped zooming and then it snapped to focus. That is what I was supposed to do, but I decided to use mipmaps instead.