Hacker News: juliangamble

New comment by juliangamble in "What if the Apple ][ had run on Field-Sequential?"

juliangamble — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 07:20:43 +0000

But would it have run Shufflepuck Cafe? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47128631

New comment by juliangamble in "Living human brain cells play DOOM on a CL1 [video]"

juliangamble — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 07:10:53 +0000

I am so proud to be an Australian technologist today.

New comment by juliangamble in "Favorite Tech Museums"

juliangamble — Sat, 10 Jan 2026 03:39:00 +0000

Some more

- Cambridge Centre for Computing History - https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/

- London Museum for Science - Babbage's Difference Engine https://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/objects-and-stories/charles...

- National Museum of Computing (near Bletchley Park Museum) https://www.tnmoc.org/

- Bletchley Park Museum https://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/

- Manchester Museum (Manchester Baby) https://www.scienceandindustrymuseum.org.uk/whats-on/meet-ba...

I visited these all last year in a single trip to the UK and it was incredible. I can recommend it to anyone who has spent some time thinking about the history of computing.

Bell Labs Won Its First Nobel Prize

juliangamble — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 13:19:41 +0000

Article URL: https://www.construction-physics.com/p/how-bell-labs-won-its-first-nobel

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46312285

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by juliangamble in "50 years of proof assistants"

juliangamble — Sat, 13 Dec 2025 04:39:54 +0000

I'd like to call out the work from Nada Amin in this area:

Dafny and verification-aware programming, including proof by induction to verify properties of programs (for example, that an optimizer preserves semantics). Dafny Sketcher (https://github.com/namin/dafny-sketcher)

Multi-stage programming, a principled approach to writing programs that write programs, and its incarnation in multi-stage relational programming for faster synthesis of programs with holes—with the theoretical insight that a staged interpreter is a compiler, and a staged relational interpreter for a functional language can turn functions into relations running backwards for synthesis. multi-stage miniKanren (https://github.com/namin/staged-miniKanren)

Monte Carlo Tree Search, specifically the VerMCTS variant, and when this exploration-exploitation sweet spot is a good match for synthesis problems. VerMCTS (https://github.com/namin/llm-verified-with-monte-carlo-tree-...), and Holey (https://github.com/namin/holey).

New comment by juliangamble in "Messenger Deprecation for Mac"

juliangamble — Tue, 18 Nov 2025 04:42:45 +0000

Meta is removing its Messenger apps for Windows and macOS

Messenger Deprecation for Mac

juliangamble — Tue, 18 Nov 2025 04:42:45 +0000

Article URL: https://www.facebook.com/help/messenger-app/1789649698300122

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45961472

Points: 3

# Comments: 2

New comment by juliangamble in "Spatial intelligence is AI’s next frontier"

juliangamble — Tue, 11 Nov 2025 07:15:52 +0000

Thanks for your article. The references section was interesting.

I'll add to the discussion a 2018 Nature letter: "Vector-based navigation using grid-like representations in artificial agents" https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0102-6

and a 2024 Nature article "Modeling hippocampal spatial cells in rodents navigating in 3D environments" https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-66755-x

And a simulation in Github from 2018 https://github.com/google-deepmind/grid-cells

People have been looking at spacial awareness in neurology for quite a while. (In terms of the timeframe of recent developments in LLMs).

Strap Rail

juliangamble — Thu, 06 Nov 2025 20:14:24 +0000

Article URL: https://www.construction-physics.com/p/strap-rail

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45839834

Points: 50

# Comments: 6

New comment by juliangamble in "Vibe Coding in the 90s"

juliangamble — Sat, 25 Oct 2025 00:13:23 +0000

> Anything more complex than a few lines, you can just copy it from lib\ folder of the CD-ROM. There's a component for everything. You want to left-pad a string?

This got me.

New comment by juliangamble in "Microsoft doubles down on small modular reactors and fusion energy"

juliangamble — Mon, 08 Sep 2025 21:33:34 +0000

They started with a different, more brilliant idea, of using human brains as a giant neural net, then backed away from that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12508832

Ford and the Birth of the Model T

juliangamble — Thu, 28 Aug 2025 13:00:46 +0000

Article URL: https://www.construction-physics.com/p/ford-and-the-birth-of-the-model-t

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45051655

Points: 4

# Comments: 0

How does the US use water?

juliangamble — Thu, 21 Aug 2025 12:21:38 +0000

Article URL: https://www.construction-physics.com/p/how-does-the-us-use-water

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44971850

Points: 241

# Comments: 195

New comment by juliangamble in "GHz spiking neuromorphic photonic chip with in-situ training"

juliangamble — Mon, 04 Aug 2025 21:41:47 +0000

“Zero success” seems a bit strong. People have been able to get 96% accuracy on MINST digits on their local machine. https://norse.github.io/notebooks/mnist_classifiers.html I think it may be more accurate to say “1970s level neural net performance”. The evidence suggests it is a nascent field of research.

New comment by juliangamble in "Concurrency in Haskell: Fast, Simple, Correct"

juliangamble — Thu, 17 Apr 2025 09:27:39 +0000

Quibble: Both Clojure and Scala have a Software Transactional Memory implementation, and the original Clojure Ant demo showed this.

Understanding US Power Outages

juliangamble — Thu, 10 Apr 2025 20:35:02 +0000

Article URL: https://www.construction-physics.com/p/understanding-us-power-outages

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43647799

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by juliangamble in "Bletchley code breaker Betty Webb dies aged 101"

juliangamble — Tue, 01 Apr 2025 16:48:02 +0000

I did the tour of Bletchley Park today and my Tour Guide said he'd met Betty Webb, that he mourned her loss, and that when he had met her at a reunion, she had remained tight-lipped about what her work had been on.

Construction Physics: Google's answer to Starlink, US food imports, BYD factory

juliangamble — Sat, 22 Mar 2025 12:19:46 +0000

Article URL: https://www.construction-physics.com/p/reading-list-032225

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43445238

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

How will the Trump tariffs affect construction?

juliangamble — Sat, 15 Feb 2025 21:17:44 +0000

Article URL: https://www.construction-physics.com/p/how-will-the-trump-tariffs-affect

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43062429

Points: 8

# Comments: 1

New comment by juliangamble in "Yann LeCun predicts "new paradigm of AI architectures" within 5 years"

juliangamble — Sat, 25 Jan 2025 00:04:39 +0000

> These “limitations” inhibit truly intelligent behavior in machines, LeCun says. This is down to four key reasons: a lack of understanding of the physical world; a lack of persistent memory; a lack of reasoning; and a lack of complex planning capabilities.