Hacker News: msgilligan

New comment by msgilligan in "We found an undocumented bug in the Apollo 11 guidance computer code"

msgilligan — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 15:15:49 +0000

But this seems like a reasonable approach for reverse-engineering, and it seems the bug they found is real.

New comment by msgilligan in "DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market"

msgilligan — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 22:53:01 +0000

I don't think comparing new Pis to used micro pcs is fair. Compare a _used_ Pi with a used micro pc. If you have any geek friends, it's probably not hard to find a used Pi for free.

New comment by msgilligan in "It’s time to free JavaScript (2024)"

msgilligan — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 02:03:29 +0000

I was in the ballpark!

New comment by msgilligan in "It’s time to free JavaScript (2024)"

msgilligan — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 16:29:04 +0000

POJO is one of my favorite acronyms. Along with POTS and COTS.

POTS = Plain Old Telephony System COTS = Commercial Off-The-Shelf

New comment by msgilligan in "Go Primitive in Java, or Go in a Box"

msgilligan — Sun, 02 Nov 2025 17:50:09 +0000

And I think he's also acknowledging that not everybody has an application that needs these performance optimizations.

New comment by msgilligan in "State of Embedded: Q4 2025 Overview"

msgilligan — Wed, 29 Oct 2025 21:10:59 +0000

What are the most recent and/or highest performance of these?

Update: And mainline support and lack of proprietary boot blobs are two separate criteria. I've heard that NXP offers the former but not the latter.

New comment by msgilligan in "State of Embedded: Q4 2025 Overview"

msgilligan — Wed, 29 Oct 2025 21:09:43 +0000

Well, a 5-year-old chip may not count as "recent" but the RK-3588 boot chain is "almost fully open-source" [1]. And it seems like it took a major amount of effort (from Collabora, others) to get it this far. I don't know of any equivalent or newer chips that are "more" open, but would love to hear if there are.

[1] https://www.collabora.com/news-and-blog/blog/2024/02/21/almo...

New comment by msgilligan in "The Other Linux Logo"

msgilligan — Sat, 27 Sep 2025 15:10:03 +0000

The "seated" option adds the feet and helps make it more recognizable.

New comment by msgilligan in "Microsoft BASIC for 6502 Microprocessor – Version 1.1"

msgilligan — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 18:50:16 +0000

Although that date should really only apply to the `m6502.asm` file. I think for a historical archive accuracy should be important. For example when was it licensed under the MIT license, I assume fairly recently. The file date should reflect that.

New comment by msgilligan in "Are we decentralized yet?"

msgilligan — Sun, 31 Aug 2025 16:50:17 +0000

The wikipedia definition is here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_share

There are multiple methods of measuring multiple (related) things. What you are describing sounds more like the share of the installed base, which only works for certain types of products. (i.e. it doesn't work for consumables like apples or electricity)

New comment by msgilligan in "Are we decentralized yet?"

msgilligan — Sat, 30 Aug 2025 22:17:55 +0000

Sounds depressing (i.e. ~5000 in a typical US election)

New comment by msgilligan in "Are we decentralized yet?"

msgilligan — Sat, 30 Aug 2025 22:06:32 +0000

I have diligently searched for this article online and have been unable to find it. (It might be on microfiche somewhere...)

I did however, find this humorous anecdote:

> A Lotus executive later joked, "The first month we shipped 62,000 copies, and the following month we got 64,000 copies back. It was such a failure they sent us the bootlegged copies back."

https://www.forbes.com/2003/12/16/cx_el_macslide.html

New comment by msgilligan in "Are we decentralized yet?"

msgilligan — Sat, 30 Aug 2025 21:51:16 +0000

I've heard of companies doing things like this to "cook the books" for a quarterly report.

New comment by msgilligan in "Are we decentralized yet?"

msgilligan — Sat, 30 Aug 2025 21:48:25 +0000

There are multiple ways of calculating market share (e.g. units vs dollars or for different time periods) but assuming it is measured in dollars for a quarterly time period, how would you calculate the market share based upon my sample data above?

New comment by msgilligan in "Are we decentralized yet?"

msgilligan — Sat, 30 Aug 2025 21:41:14 +0000

That is how it was calculated in a published trade magazine (either Infoworld or MacWeek, I think) I'm not sure if the the analysis was done by a market research firm or the magazine.

New comment by msgilligan in "Are we decentralized yet?"

msgilligan — Sat, 30 Aug 2025 21:26:23 +0000

> The only way that makes any sense is if you subtract returns for sales made in a different period to the sales period you are considering

Exactly. That's the way accounting works. They did not know in the previous quarter that the product would be returned in the following quarter, so they end up having negative sales in the current quarter.

Yes it produces "garbage output", which I find amusing.

New comment by msgilligan in "Are we decentralized yet?"

msgilligan — Sat, 30 Aug 2025 20:45:12 +0000

TIL about the Herfindahl–Hirschman Index and I wanted to test it with a weird corner-case that I remember.

At one point in the late 1980's Microsoft had a GREATER than 100% market share of the Macintosh spreadsheet market.

How is this possible?

Market share (for a given period) is the participant's sales in the market divided by total sales. It just so happened that Lotus had more returns than sales of their failed spreadsheet, Lotus Jazz. So Lotus, had a negative market share and Microsoft had more sales of Excel than total sales in the market, resulting in a greater than 100% market share.

I don't remember the exact numbers and I believe there was at least one other competitor in the study. But let's just say the numbers were:

Microsoft: 102% Lotus: -2%

In that case the Herfindahl–Hirschman Index would be 102^2 + (-2)^2 = 10404 + 4 = 10408.

So, in this pathological case it is possible for the HHI to exceed 10,000.

Edited: Added (for a given period) above, for clarity.

New comment by msgilligan in "US reportedly forcing TSMC to buy 49% stake in Intel to secure tariff relief"

msgilligan — Wed, 06 Aug 2025 04:01:43 +0000

Good point. They'd get whatever profit they make from the sale of tech to Intel, plus half of whatever benefit Intel receives.

New comment by msgilligan in "US reportedly forcing TSMC to buy 49% stake in Intel to secure tariff relief"

msgilligan — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 22:49:11 +0000

Well, to be fair, Intel stopped laying golden eggs years ago.

New comment by msgilligan in "Trying Guix: A Nixer's impressions"

msgilligan — Fri, 18 Jul 2025 18:57:45 +0000

> We need more of comparative posts

The article focuses on a comparison between GUIX _system_ and NixOS. It would be interesting to see an equally thoughtful comparison that just focuses on GUIX vs. NIX as package managers used on another Linux distribution (e.g. Debian.)

In this case, GUIX might fare better as you won't have to worry about the complexities introduced by binary blobs needed for boot, etc.