Hacker News: pubby

New comment by pubby in "State of Kdenlive"

pubby — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 21:22:13 +0000

I've had several instances of Kdenlive corrupting my save file, making them unable to be recovered. So no, that's not always a solution.

New comment by pubby in "Lego's 0.002mm specification and its implications for manufacturing (2025)"

pubby — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 14:36:16 +0000

Lego's original moat was their patent. This expired in the 80s, and so their new moat became their manufacturing tolerances. None of their competitors could match the quality of their product. This lasted until about the 2010s when clone brands in China finally caught up, and coincidentally, Lego's own quality started slipping. Thus, they needed a new moat, and the choice was obvious: licensing.

New comment by pubby in "I’m joining OpenAI"

pubby — Sun, 15 Feb 2026 23:24:49 +0000

Single-handed made me smirk. It was vibe coded.

New comment by pubby in "It is 85 seconds to midnight"

pubby — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 18:48:56 +0000

Don't get hung up on the numbers or scale. The value of the doomsday clock is in the direction it's moving.

New comment by pubby in "Why SSA?"

pubby — Thu, 23 Oct 2025 16:21:36 +0000

You're very correct but I suppose I was really answering why compilers centralize around SSA. It's a bold choice to choose one data structure for everything, and that requires more motivation than, "it makes certain optimizations really easy". Because again, it makes other stuff harder.

>And going further with the sea-of-nodes representation just makes them all more powerful; I really do recommend reading Cliff Click's thesis.

We might have to agree to disagree on this one. I actually found sea of nodes to be a boneheaded idea. It makes one or two optimizations a little more elegant but everything else a huge pain in the ass. At least, that was my experience.

New comment by pubby in "Why SSA?"

pubby — Wed, 22 Oct 2025 22:34:17 +0000

I like this article a lot but it doesn't answer the question of "Why SSA?".

Sure, a graph representation is nice, but that isn't a unique property of SSA. You can have graph IRs that aren't SSA at all.

And sure, SSA makes some optimizations easy, but it also makes other operations more difficult. When you consider that, plus the fact that going into and out of SSA is quite involved, it doesn't seem like SSA is worth the fuss.

So why SSA?

Well, it turns out compilers have sequencing issues. If you view compilation as a series of small code transformations, your representation goes from A -> B, then B -> C, then C -> D and so on. At least, that's how it works for non-optimizing compilers.

For optimizing compilers however, passes want to loop. Whenever an optimization is found, previous passes should be run again with new inputs... if possible. The easiest way to ensure this is to make all optimizations input and output the same representation. So A -> B is no good. We want A -> A: a singular representation.

So if we want a singular representation, let's pick a good one right? One that works reasonably well for most things. That's why SSA is useful: it's a decently good singular representation we can use for every pass.

New comment by pubby in "NESFab – A new programming language for creating NES games"

pubby — Thu, 13 Feb 2025 17:50:56 +0000

Hey, this is my project. Cool to see it here again.

You might like this article I wrote on the backend: https://pubby.games/codegen.html

New comment by pubby in "DOGE staffer is trying to reroute FEMA funds"

pubby — Thu, 13 Feb 2025 14:48:03 +0000

Keep in mind that the ruling party has massively powerful surveillance systems at their fingertips. It's hard to say how things will unfold, but being a dissident may not be in one's best interest.

New comment by pubby in "A Coup Is in Progress in America"

pubby — Tue, 04 Feb 2025 01:58:02 +0000

Well, they won two branches democratically. The supreme court is a different matter.

New comment by pubby in "The History of Toontown’s SpeedChat (2007)"

pubby — Wed, 29 Jan 2025 06:53:00 +0000

I remember playing that game once. The vast majority of the chat messages were some variant of, "I need a boy" or "I need a girl", meaning they were looking for dates. I guess boyfriend and girlfriend were banned, but boy and girl weren't. It was hilariously bad.

New comment by pubby in "Trump wins presidency for second time"

pubby — Wed, 06 Nov 2024 20:18:36 +0000

I didn't intend for my post to be about rural vs urban, or smart vs dumb. The point I was trying to make was that some people just aren't interested, no matter their background. You can find these people everywhere, which might explain why Trump gained in almost every county this election, even urban ones.

It's a spectrum of course. The friends you describe sound like they fall somewhere in the middle of caring about politics vs not. My point of discussion is on the people at the low end, as these are likely to swing. People past a certain threshold of attachment have had their votes locked in for years.

New comment by pubby in "Trump wins presidency for second time"

pubby — Wed, 06 Nov 2024 11:18:30 +0000

Something I've been wondering lately is how big of a blind spot I have from being habitually online. Like, I'll read the news, and I'll read political discussions on HN and r/politics and r/conservative and Twitter, and I'll try to get a sense of what everyone is thinking, but unfortunately I don't think that's possible. The posters on these sites all have one thing in common: they're into politics and current events.

Having a chance to talk to more people in meatspace this year, it was a surprise to find out how many people have only a passing interest in politics, but still vote. Like, the average user here probably reads 5+ news articles a day, but there are plenty of people IRL that will read one a month, or maybe just skim a headline. They don't really keep up-to-date with the race. They mostly vote by feel and pragmaticism.

People always talk about "shy" Trump voters, but what makes me more curious are voters that match the description above. If you put someone in a voting booth who isn't interested by news, who do they vote for? I mean, Trump has a lot of surface-level qualities - he's a tall, confident white man who's a successful boss of business and an anti-establishment outsider - and maybe that's enough to capture this demographic.

Ask HN: I feel both valuable and worthless

pubby — Thu, 18 Apr 2024 01:32:46 +0000

Sorry if this is trite, but I'm looking for life advice. Right now, I'm not making much money, and that needs to change relatively soon.

For the past few years I've been applying to programming jobs, but I just can't get any interviews. I'm guessing this is because I don't have formal education nor do I have relevant work experience. If there was a cookie cutter for Joe Developer, I just don't fit.

My second thought was to start a company/side hustle of my own. Over the past year or two I've done a small amount of this and made a profit thus far, but I'm definitely more passionate about making things than sales or running a business. It doesn't help that all my interests are in bad markets, like games.

This leaves me with a very uncomfortable feeling, where I feel confident that I can create things, but nervous that the final result will earn nothing and be a huge waste of time. I feel like an obscure fine artist, who can paint a beautiful scene but will die in poverty because nobody cares about owning it. And I do love "painting", but I have bills to pay.

If I was sitting on a wad of cash, I'd probably feel better about this. But with my lack of funds, I don't know what to do. Companies don't want me, and the path to self employment feels like a risky grind. And yet, I still want to write code. Is there any advice for someone like me?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40072065

Points: 9

# Comments: 9

New comment by pubby in "Ask HN: C++ devs who went C only"

pubby — Sun, 14 Apr 2024 23:14:19 +0000

Take strings for example. In C you have to manually manage memory and there are a million pitfalls. Lots of programmers are lazy and use fixed-sized arrays and "unsafe" functions like strcpy which results in security vulnerabilities and large-input bugs. But even if you do it correctly you have all this mental overhead and lots of lines of code.

In C++ you just drop in std::string and go.

New comment by pubby in "Ask HN: C++ devs who went C only"

pubby — Sun, 14 Apr 2024 23:11:35 +0000

I mean it depends on the project and scope, but if you just write C-style code but use unique_ptr, vector, string, and , you're already at an advantage.

New comment by pubby in "Ask HN: C++ devs who went C only"

pubby — Sun, 14 Apr 2024 22:23:41 +0000

I've seen a few people/companies do this and it always baffles me. You don't have to use every C++ feature in existence, but a little bit here and there is far more productive and safe than writing C.

New comment by pubby in "The U.S. government may finally mandate safer table saws"

pubby — Tue, 09 Apr 2024 18:58:22 +0000

So here's the problem: you can buy an older cast-iron table saw with good precision and a large bed for $50-$150 on craigslist, or you can buy a cheap piece of made-in-china plastic at home depot for $500. The cheap piece of plastic checks off more safety features from a regulatory standpoint, but tiny size and poor tolerances results in more kick-back and accidents.

Blue Ball Machine

pubby — Thu, 28 Mar 2024 21:07:46 +0000

Article URL: https://blueballfixed.ytmnd.com/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39857315

Points: 330

# Comments: 126

New comment by pubby in "Deficiencies in GCC's code generator and optimiser"

pubby — Wed, 27 Mar 2024 05:16:33 +0000

Trying to write a perfect optimizer is like trying to slay a hydra. Every time you address one weakness, two more are spotted. The overall approach has to run in polynomial time (or close to it), so there will always be missed optimization chances.

And then half the time it's just your compiler being stupid.

New comment by pubby in "Why did we wait so long for the bicycle? (2019)"

pubby — Thu, 21 Mar 2024 07:22:37 +0000

I'd recommend just googling how a bike works instead of pursuing this argument. There's lots of good articles, like this one: http://www.cyclelicio.us/2011/bicycle-dynamics/ It looks like my theory on wheel angle may not be entirely true either. You can also find videos on youtube.