Hacker News: michaelcampbell

New comment by michaelcampbell in "Handles are the better pointers (2018)"

michaelcampbell — Tue, 03 Nov 2026 19:49:48 +0000

thanks for the link(s); "Inside Macintosh" was indeed the set of books/folders I had. Shortly after I bought those, I moved from one state to another and of course the box I packed those in was the one box that got lost in the move =(

New comment by michaelcampbell in "Handles are the better pointers (2018)"

michaelcampbell — Tue, 03 Nov 2026 16:16:14 +0000

This article reminds me (on the surface, this is deeper than my experience) of how the recent Goose language orients things.

I never worked with it but I seem to recall the old original Mac API's (Pascal based) used "handles" a lot to solve the issue of being able for the system to move allocations and memory out from under a program without it knowing, as a "pointer to pointer to ". I was poring over those manuals in ~1988/1989 with visions of being a full-time Mac developer in my head.

New comment by michaelcampbell in "Kimi K2.7-Code: open-source coding model with better token efficiency"

michaelcampbell — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 18:39:19 +0000

> while being only marginally better.

It's only marginally better in the things it's actually comparable to. A\ models are MUCH better in many more things; eg: things Kimi/etc. didn't distill.

For those things the difference is like a cliff.

New comment by michaelcampbell in "Anthropic apologizes for invisible Claude Fable guardrails"

michaelcampbell — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 17:17:11 +0000

Safety from what? Competitors? That sounds like a product decision. They're puking on any requests that could be used to create LLMs or competitive products.

New comment by michaelcampbell in "A €0.01 bank transfer could compromise a banking AI agent"

michaelcampbell — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 11:32:20 +0000

> I plan on using this as a sort of benchmark for future AI discussions: "how do you plan on separating data from instructions?"

I'm reminded of the thing that HN drools over constantly with LISP languages.

New comment by michaelcampbell in "Three of our worst VC stories"

michaelcampbell — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 16:44:29 +0000

To a corporation?

New comment by michaelcampbell in "Nvidia is proposing a beast of a CPU system for Windows PCs"

michaelcampbell — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 16:37:00 +0000

> It's similar to the gates quote about RAM (I think it was 64KB?)

640, and Bill Gates said he either never said that, or at least never remembered having said it. I think there is no evidence anywhere that he did.

https://www.computerworld.com/article/1563853/the-640k-quote...

New comment by michaelcampbell in "The perils of UUID primary keys in SQLite"

michaelcampbell — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 11:58:53 +0000

How much time is `(random-uuid7-bytes)` taking?

New comment by michaelcampbell in "Elixir v1.20: Now a gradually typed language"

michaelcampbell — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 14:28:54 +0000

> But then why not just use Rust?

The BEAM?

New comment by michaelcampbell in "Love systemd timers"

michaelcampbell — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 15:56:52 +0000

> With cronie the system needs to be running at the scheduled time, but systemd timer tolerates this and runs the service as soons as the system is available.

Cronie doesn't have a `@reboot` meta-trigger?

New comment by michaelcampbell in "Jef Raskin, the Visionary Behind the Mac (2013)"

michaelcampbell — Sun, 31 May 2026 11:53:30 +0000

Is your deliberate misspelling of "Macintosh" spell-check or the same sort of intransigence that compels some people to misspell "Micro$oft" thinking they're clever?

New comment by michaelcampbell in "Jef Raskin, the Visionary Behind the Mac (2013)"

michaelcampbell — Sun, 31 May 2026 11:48:53 +0000

> The mandatory graphic GUI...

What do you reckon the "G" in GUI stands for, out of curiosity?

New comment by michaelcampbell in "Openrsync: An implementation of rsync, by the OpenBSD team"

michaelcampbell — Sun, 31 May 2026 11:46:00 +0000

Presumably a bunch of Adolf's did too, prior to, you know, the 1930's.

New comment by michaelcampbell in "My new obsession: A horse-racing board game of pure luck"

michaelcampbell — Thu, 28 May 2026 11:04:28 +0000

> character creation in the rpg classic traveller.

This is half the game. I fondly remember a few "game days" in the early 80's with some friends spending hours "rolling" Traveller characters. Partly because it was quite possible for your character to due DURING GENERATION, before the "rpg" part of the game actually started.

New comment by michaelcampbell in "AI has a multiplying effect on existing technical skills"

michaelcampbell — Fri, 22 May 2026 14:27:48 +0000

> Turns out the humans weren't so bad after all...

The people pushing AI _over_ humans never thought they were. They just don't care about 'good' or 'bad', only 'time-to-market'. A bad app making money is better than a good one that isn't deployed yet. And who cares about anything past the end of the quarter? That's the next guy's problem.

New comment by michaelcampbell in "Show HN: Auto-identity-remove – Automated data broker opt-out runner for macOS"

michaelcampbell — Mon, 18 May 2026 13:36:32 +0000

There are "show hn" submissions for things that people just want to show off multiple times a week.

New comment by michaelcampbell in "Colossus: The Forbin Project"

michaelcampbell — Sun, 17 May 2026 11:54:49 +0000

I've worked with companies whose infosec dept. is little more than "see tool alert, ask user what's going on", and then keep searching for the right _tool_ than injecting any human agency in that loop.

If any role is ready for an LLM to take over (or even a shell script), it's that one.

New comment by michaelcampbell in "O(x)Caml in Space"

michaelcampbell — Fri, 15 May 2026 17:13:25 +0000

> the “Ox” in the name is to evoke “oxidizing”

Hah, I was reading it as `0x`, a common prefix indicating hexadecimal, though I can't say my brain made any leap as to why "0xCAML" would be any more hex than standard.

New comment by michaelcampbell in "A message from President Kornbluth about funding and the talent pipeline"

michaelcampbell — Thu, 14 May 2026 17:44:20 +0000

> Many of my professors were from other countries. I literally wouldn’t have an education without immigrants.

Curious take; do you think if there were a no-immigrant law on the books those professorial positions would have gone completely unfilled? You _GOT_ an education with the help of immigrants, but that does not imply you wouldn't have had they not been there.

New comment by michaelcampbell in "Don't hijack my mouse pointer"

michaelcampbell — Tue, 12 May 2026 13:42:09 +0000

Ouch, that is awful.