Hacker News: major4x

New comment by major4x in "How to Attend the Altman vs. Musk Trial"

major4x — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 16:29:00 +0000

I wish I had money for gambling, but what would your bet would be? Also, the trial will probably affect the option prices of Tesla and Nvidia, although I am not sure how deeply the investors are following...

How to Attend the Altman vs. Musk Trial

major4x — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 17:06:06 +0000

This is a bunch of questions for lawyers or for journalists or for people who have been to this kind of events: next week starts the Musk vs Altman trial. The trial is in Oakland. The court schedule says that the jury selection starts at 8:00 am on Monday and after that the trial is on Thursday at 8:00 am. My questions are: 1. What time do I have to line-up so I can get a chance to enter the court-room? 2. Is it allowed to bring water and snacks in the court room? 3. Is the jury selection on Monday open to the public and if so, is it any interesting? During jury selection will they send the assistant lawyers or senior ones? Will Musk and Altman be present during the jury selection (I guess not). 4. Is photography allowed (I guess not). If not, can I bring a camera and not use it? Is photography in the hallways of the court allowed? Is photography in the garage allowed? 5. When the jury decides who pays whom, will money change hands or will the decision be immediately appealed? If so, will it go to a circuit court or the superior court in DC (apologies about my illiteracy, I am computer scientist from Europe and I don't know much if anything about law). 6. Do you have any advise (like don't go) to the general kibitzer like me? These are serious questions, if you share them in your professional network, you will help me not embarrass myself and look uncool next week, thank you!

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47902888

Points: 17

# Comments: 2

How to Attend the Altman vs. Musk Trial

major4x — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 16:39:44 +0000

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47902716

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

The Art of Crossword Creation

major4x — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 17:01:16 +0000

Article URL: https://llama.gs/blog/index.php/2026/04/24/the-forgotten-art-of-crossword-creation/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47892933

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

A communist Apple II and fourteen years of not knowing what you're testing

major4x — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 22:36:24 +0000

Article URL: https://llama.gs/blog/index.php/2026/04/10/friday-archaeology-a-communist-apple-ii-and-fourteen-years-of-not-knowing-what-youre-testing/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47724571

Points: 229

# Comments: 117

Diagnosing Circuits into Existence

major4x — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 18:13:06 +0000

Article URL: https://llama.gs/blog/index.php/2026/04/06/diagnosing-circuits-into-existence/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47664673

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Friday Archaeology: A 25-Year-Old Crypto Library, the Cult of the Dead Cow

major4x — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 23:17:21 +0000

Article URL: https://llama.gs/blog/index.php/2026/04/03/friday-archaeology-a-quarter-century-old-crypto-library-the-cult-of-the-dead-cow-and-a-rijndael-buffer-overwrite/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47633594

Points: 5

# Comments: 0

From DSL to FPGA: Closing the Loop

major4x — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 22:59:01 +0000

Article URL: https://llama.gs/blog/index.php/2026/04/02/from-dsl-to-fpga-closing-the-loop/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47621286

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

Show HN: Open-source logic synthesis – formal logic to FPGA

major4x — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:21:13 +0000

Happy to answer questions about the architecture, the QBF synthesis approach, or the FPGA implementation. Repos: https://gitlab.llama.gs/logic

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47537587

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by major4x in "GPT-5.2 derives a new result in theoretical physics"

major4x — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 21:54:15 +0000

Can't help not thinking of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogdanov_affair

New comment by major4x in "Xerox Alto Source Code (2014)"

major4x — Fri, 31 Jan 2025 07:24:42 +0000

Yeah, one of those machines (either the Palo or the Alto) was put on display near the entrance of the late Xerox PARC on Coyote hill (near VA). I was playing with the idea to power it but was told that it doesn't work anymore, at least the power supply is dead and allegedly there were also missing components... I suppose SRI will toss it soon if not already...

New comment by major4x in "Lies I was told about collab editing, Part 1: Algorithms for offline editing"

major4x — Fri, 06 Dec 2024 21:41:53 +0000

I love this mini article, however, I disagree with the main conclusion that collaborative editing is not an algorithmic but a UI/UX problem. I think that collaborative editing is a semantic problem. To the best of my knowledge (I'm writing this comment without much preparation), all SVN/Git algorithms are based on UNIX diff (Hunt–Szymanski algorithm). UNIX diff (and patch) is purely syntax driven.

Actually, I will make a small deviation here: I think it is a big industry/startup/open source project there, in creating a set of semantic diff algorithms/implementations. For example, due to my present job, I am very interested in collaborative editing of electrical circuits, and layouts for PCB and chips. Altium and KiCad are trying, for exmaple, to store everything in XML/text files and put the text files in Git/SVN and I can tell you a botched C++ program is nothing in comparison to a botched and malformed electrical circuit. So we need diff tools that "know" about a text file, vs rich-text with formatting, vs bitmap vs vector image, vs song, vs English text. Anybody want to start an open source project (DM me or put a comment here).

Anyhow, thanks to the authors on the great insights and let's work on the take home!

New comment by major4x in "LLMs don't do formal reasoning"

major4x — Fri, 11 Oct 2024 20:33:43 +0000

What an obvious article. But it, because it comes from Apple, everybody pays attention. Proof by pedigree. OK, here is my two cents. Firstly, I did my Ph.D. in AI (algorithm design with application to AI) and I also spent seven years applying some of the ideas at Xerox PARC (yes, the same (in)famous research lab). So, I went to and published at many AI conferences (AAAI, ECAI, etc.). Of course, when I was younger and less cynical, I would enter into lengthy philosophical discussions with dignitaries of AI on what does AI mean and it would be long dinners and drinks, and wheelbarrows of ego. Long story, short, there is no such thing as AI. It is a collection of disciplines: the recently famous Machine Learning (transformers trained on large corpora of text), constraint-based reasoning, Boolean satisfiability, theorem proving, probabilistic reasoning, etc., etc. Of course, LLMs are a great achievement and they have good application to Natural Language Processing (also intermingled discipline and considered constituent of AI).

Look at the algorithmic tools used in ML and automated theorem proving for example: ML uses gradient descent (and related numerical methods) for local optimization, while constraint satisfaction/optimization/Boolean satisfiability, SAT modulo-theories, Quantified Boolean Optimization, etc., rely on combinatorial optimization. Mathematically, combinatorial optimization is far more problematic compared to numerical methods and much more difficult, largely because modern computers and NVidia gaming cards are really fast in crunching floating point numbers and also largely that most problems in combinatorial optimization NP-hard or harder.

Now thing of what LLM and local optimization is doing: it is essentially searching/combining sequences of words from Wikipedia and books. But search is not necessarily a difficult problem, it is actually an O(1) problem. While multiplying numbers is an O(n^2.8 (or whatever constant they came up with)) problem while factorization is (God knows what class of complexity) when you take quantum computing into the game).

Great, these are my 2 cents for the day, good luck to the OpenAI investors (I am also investing there a bit as a Bay Area citizen). You guys will certainly make help desk support cheaper...

Did Intuitive Machines-1 Flop?

major4x — Thu, 22 Feb 2024 23:47:00 +0000

I have been watching the lunar landing of Intuitive Machines-1. I was perplexed. To summarize, there was a faint signal but it was not the strong transmission everybody was hoping was. There was some clapping and a CEO read (part) of their speech, which ended with "welcome to the moon". Is this a failure or a success or something in-between? Is this indicative of the Silicon Valley way of designing software and hardware and robots and rovers and rockets? Was this hacked? What do you think?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39474962

Points: 4

# Comments: 0

New comment by major4x in "Optical effect advances quantum computing with atomic qubits to a new dimension"

major4x — Sat, 02 Dec 2023 05:55:42 +0000

Does anybody know how the coupling between the individual qubits is achieved/configured?

New comment by major4x in "OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman"

major4x — Sat, 18 Nov 2023 07:22:12 +0000

What? He didn't tell the board that behind ChatGPT, there is actually a bunch of low-paid people copying/pasting quickly from Wikipedia?

Yosemite got cleaned up. This is what was found amid 10k pounds of trash

major4x — Mon, 06 Nov 2023 04:39:57 +0000

Article URL: https://www.sfchronicle.com/outdoors/article/yosemite-trash-18464875.php#photo-24407713

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38158916

Points: 4

# Comments: 0

New comment by major4x in "Elon Musk predicts X will replace banks in 2024"

major4x — Sat, 28 Oct 2023 06:25:20 +0000

Fax me the address of his magic mushrooms supplier. Potent stuff, I want some!

Burning Man 2024: Curiouser and Curiouser

major4x — Sat, 28 Oct 2023 06:17:49 +0000

Article URL: https://journal.burningman.org/2023/10/philosophical-center/the-theme/2024-curiouser-curiouser/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38047589

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by major4x in "We have decided to pause driverless operations across all of our fleets"

major4x — Fri, 27 Oct 2023 19:01:04 +0000

This is a great diverging discussion about the "censorship" and the commenting style in public forums. Let me add something: when I was writing the original comment that started all this, I wanted it to be funny, catchy, snarky, and karma-point-worthy. So, I decided to put a swear word as a stylistic choice. Then, to add some extra to the short comment, I decided to poke fun at the whole FCC bleeping regulation. Here, I will warmly recommend a book dedicated to bleeping over the seven "unspeakable words": the famous Steven Pinker's famous book "The Stuff of Thought".

Now, about the number of asterisks: I really didn't think that much about this, I kind of think I counted the right number of letters, but then there is no caret overwrite mode in the bleeping browser, which is yet another story...