Hacker News: mishellaneous

New comment by mishellaneous in "EEVblog: The 555 Timer is 55 years old [video]"

mishellaneous — Wed, 06 May 2026 10:36:29 +0000

somewhere else they were discussing how to use a 555 to time 55 years, and how for such a long period you'd need impractical resistance and capacitance values. easy workaround would be to set a more reasonable period, say, 1 sec, and use a counter to know when you hit 55 years. coincidentally, 55 years is 2 ** 30.7 seconds, so it'd just fit in a 32 bit register.

though i take you were thinking about counting clock cycles or something in which case surely your register would overflow

New comment by mishellaneous in "What I'm Hearing About Cognitive Debt (So Far)"

mishellaneous — Tue, 05 May 2026 11:02:43 +0000

yes, from the point of view of an individual programmer, there is no difference between code created by AI or by some other programmer.

but from the point of view of the company as a whole there is a difference: code created by some programmer is understood by that programmer, while code created by AI is understood by nobody

New comment by mishellaneous in "Why Law Is Law-Shaped"

mishellaneous — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 13:36:47 +0000

some people would, in this case, prefer the unrefined version

New comment by mishellaneous in "Why Law Is Law-Shaped"

mishellaneous — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 11:52:16 +0000

that would slow down the process considerably. it would also not be of much use to the professionals, which i guess make up the majority of those involved most of the time, and so, i guess, would not have much support.

IMO a good middle ground could be attained by everyone having some understanding of the legal system. we could use school for that. i mean, we cover calculus and ancient history, it's not like covering law to some extent would be harder

New comment by mishellaneous in "Why Law Is Law-Shaped"

mishellaneous — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 11:47:31 +0000

> Patent texts read as prose, but are actually precisely structured legal documents.

at that point why not just use something precise like a programming language? have there been efforts in that direction? genuine questions