Hacker News: leephillips

New comment by leephillips in "A Forlorn Hope of Fortran Modernisation"

leephillips — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 03:30:34 +0000

But he didn’t say “scientific computing”. There are not “many other languages” that are used for the stuff that he did describe. Nevertheless, his claim is incorrect. C, C++, Julia, and Fortran are all routinely used for these purposes, sometimes with parts written in assembly. Nothing else, really. The “scientific computing” that people do with Python, Matlab, etc. is not this.

And of these four languages that are successful in this arena, only Fortran and Julia are enjoyable to program in. Between those two, Julia is far more fun and flexible (but brings other drawbacks, of course).

New comment by leephillips in "Explanation of everything you can see in htop/top on Linux (2019)"

leephillips — Sun, 05 Jul 2026 14:37:53 +0000

Seems clear to me: it’s a silly number that people think is important. Like the Dow, H-index, GNP, ...

New comment by leephillips in "Pandoc Lua Filters"

leephillips — Sun, 05 Jul 2026 13:58:23 +0000

Lua filters for Pandoc have been around for a quite a while. What’s newer is Pandoc’s ability to be used in web browsers. There’s a bit more about this and a general rundown of Pandoc in my recent article for LWN:

https://lwn.net/Articles/1064692/

Flexible Metaprogramming with Rhombus

leephillips — Sat, 04 Jul 2026 13:19:59 +0000

Article URL: https://lwn.net/Articles/1079001/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48785219

Points: 8

# Comments: 0

New comment by leephillips in "Exercise intensity influences body composition in healthy older adults (2025)"

leephillips — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 18:26:25 +0000

Exactly. I pointed this out in another comment before seeing yours. They admit they found nothing.

New comment by leephillips in "Exercise intensity influences body composition in healthy older adults (2025)"

leephillips — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 18:22:36 +0000

From the Conclusion:

“High-intensity training reduced fat and maintained lean mass in apparently healthy older adults, though changes were small and not clinically meaningful compared with exercise of lower intensity and considering measurement error.”

I didn’t read the whole paper (didn’t see any reason to after seeing this). But the title seems to be contradicted by this conclusion.

Primed for Malware: Stop Selling Compromised Android Devices

leephillips — Sat, 27 Jun 2026 14:50:35 +0000

Article URL: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/06/primed-malware-stop-selling-compromised-android-devices

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48698792

Points: 11

# Comments: 0

New comment by leephillips in "Making Sense of Proof by Contradiction [pdf]"

leephillips — Sat, 27 Jun 2026 13:41:29 +0000

All difficult conjectures should be proved by reductio ad absurdum arguments. For if the proof is long and complicated enough you are bound to make a mistake somewhere and hence a contradiction will inevitably appear, and so the truth of the original conjecture is established QED.

-- John Barrow

New comment by leephillips in "Springer Nature has removed two studies by Max Planck"

leephillips — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 20:38:44 +0000

You’re welcome. I hope it’s useful. And I’m glad you loved my book!

New comment by leephillips in "Springer Nature has removed two studies by Max Planck"

leephillips — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 17:24:11 +0000

Well, yes. There are several ways to get papers:

https://lee-phillips.org/articleAccess/

New comment by leephillips in "AI and Liability"

leephillips — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 14:55:46 +0000

It should be obvious that a company is responsible for what it says. I hope this decision spreads to other countries.

New comment by leephillips in "Blogger defeats photographer's copyright claim"

leephillips — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 04:40:03 +0000

These are civil penalties. I wonder if the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishments applies to the (high) statutory punitive damages. Any legal scholars want to help us out?

New comment by leephillips in "Vulgar Materialism"

leephillips — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 01:13:23 +0000

Good points, especially if one is familiar with the actions if U.S. banana companies in Central America (mainly 19th, early 20th c.).

New comment by leephillips in "Blogger defeats photographer's copyright claim"

leephillips — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 00:57:49 +0000

“life-ruining sums of money from legally careless bloggers” is deterrence. Don’t do the crime if you can’t .....

New comment by leephillips in "Blogger defeats photographer's copyright claim"

leephillips — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 00:54:51 +0000

The language of the article is strongly biased in favor of people stealing artwork: “photographers should stop suing bloggers for copyright infringement!”

The plaintiff gets scolded for not trying to settle. But, by the article’s own account, the defendant ignored emails from the plaintiff!

Photographers should not stop suing if that’s what it takes. People should stop stealing.

Vulgar Materialism

leephillips — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 21:04:40 +0000

Article URL: https://borretti.me/article/on-vulgar-materialism

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48636176

Points: 10

# Comments: 3

New comment by leephillips in "The Wholesale Plagiarism of Obscure Sorrows"

leephillips — Sun, 21 Jun 2026 15:03:03 +0000

They would be in violation even if there were no copyright notice. You own the copyright to anything you create; no notice required.

New comment by leephillips in "Byobu – text-based window manager and terminal multiplexer"

leephillips — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 15:31:56 +0000

Look at the list of contributors on the Github page, and you will see one of the popular plagiarism machines. It’s the third most prolific committer to the project.

Gregory Williams, Academic with an Uncommon Perspective on Race, Dies at 81

leephillips — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 14:42:23 +0000

Article URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/16/books/gregory-williams-dead.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48586167

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by leephillips in "Byobu – text-based window manager and terminal multiplexer"

leephillips — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 14:24:27 +0000

Caution: partly authored by an LLM.