Hacker News: samus

New comment by samus in "CRISPR takes important step toward silencing Down syndrome’s extra chromosome"

samus — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 09:08:12 +0000

Presumably by targeting them toward these differences.

New comment by samus in "CRISPR takes important step toward silencing Down syndrome’s extra chromosome"

samus — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 09:07:13 +0000

Since the presence of that chromosome causes problems in an organism that functions normally with just two of these chromosomes, the change is actually not that big. And the therapy might also not be intended for adults or even children - most of the developmental impediments have already happened at that stage, and neither cutting out the extra chromosome or silencing it will fix this up.

New comment by samus in "The local LLM ecosystem doesn’t need Ollama"

samus — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 08:38:16 +0000

How about kobold.cpp then? Or LMStudio (I know it's not open source, but at least they give proper credit to llama.cpp)?

Re curation: they should strive to not integrate broken support for models and avoid uploading broken GGUFs.

New comment by samus in "Want to Write a Compiler? Just Read These Two Papers (2008)"

samus — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 15:28:04 +0000

Getting an overview of parsing theory is mainly useful to avoid making ambiguous or otherwise hard to parse grammars. Usually one can't go too wrong with a hand-written recursive descent parser, and most general-purpose language are so complicated that parser generator can't really handle them. Anyway the really interesting parts of compiling happen in the backend.

Another alternative is basing the language on S-expressions, for which a parser is extremely simple to write.

New comment by samus in "All elementary functions from a single binary operator"

samus — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 06:59:24 +0000

Single transistors aren't yet logic gates by themselves; they are amplifiers with a very specific gain function that makes it possible to use them as switches. Logic gates usually consist of at least two transistors. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CMOS for an example of how it is done in CMOS technology.

New comment by samus in "New synthesis of astronomical measurements shows Hubble tension is real"

samus — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 22:00:42 +0000

I was referring to that model :-)

New comment by samus in "New synthesis of astronomical measurements shows Hubble tension is real"

samus — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 05:20:02 +0000

We don't just use one single method to infer distances. TA is about that there are multiple methods, and that the framework is open for new ones. What is more likely at fault is the underlying model of how the cosmos developed, which is highly likely to be incomplete or misguided.

New comment by samus in "Chimpanzees in Uganda locked in eight-year 'civil war', say researchers"

samus — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 15:43:21 +0000

It's just the sin with the greatest consequences since it invokes the wrath of the groups the person being killed belonged to. Unlawful killings challenge the authority of those who determine which killings are lawful and which aren't, therefore destabilizing societies that are more complex than a hunter-gatherer group.

However, most religions do more than just declare murder to be a sin. They usually aim to foster bonds between relative strangers as well. And values like the guest-host relationship are held to apply to all humans and even to sentient non-humans.

New comment by samus in "France Launches Government Linux Desktop Plan as Windows Exit Begins"

samus — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 12:43:17 +0000

There is one very serious issue with software: it needs updates for security issues that are uncovered. And it might be built requiring access to MS cloud services to work. To get rid of these problems is basically equivalent to adopting open source products.

New comment by samus in "France Launches Government Linux Desktop Plan as Windows Exit Begins"

samus — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 12:08:36 +0000

At the same time, TFA is about software, not about the computers themselves.

New comment by samus in "France to ditch Windows for Linux to reduce reliance on US tech"

samus — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 11:53:49 +0000

At the same time it is an open source product and can therefore be forked. Being controlled by Google presents not nearly such an issue as Microsoft products or the Apple ecosystem.

New comment by samus in "France Launches Government Linux Desktop Plan as Windows Exit Begins"

samus — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 11:22:21 +0000

Android Open Source is good enough. The tough part are device-specific drivers that never make it upstream and are eventually abandoned by the vendor, making upgrade past specific kernel versions very troublesome.

New comment by samus in "France to ditch Windows for Linux to reduce reliance on US tech"

samus — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 11:18:22 +0000

Which powerful computers are made in the USA? Design and assembly don't count, as these are the least robust to replication attempts. Apart from that, the manufacturing is all in East Asia; Intel is the exception, not the normal!

New comment by samus in "France Launches Government Linux Desktop Plan as Windows Exit Begins"

samus — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 11:12:14 +0000

Achieving redundancy from China is likely not possible in the near future. Meanwhile, the risk emanating from a rugpull or from deliberate sabotage by the USA is very concrete.

New comment by samus in "Artemis II and the invisible hazard on the way to the Moon"

samus — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 11:05:49 +0000

None of these devices are mission-critical. Worst case they have to be restarted; then they are fine again and the world moves on.

New comment by samus in "Artemis II and the invisible hazard on the way to the Moon"

samus — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 10:45:01 +0000

Unshielded circuits are basically radiation detectors. Even here on planet Earth bitflips are an underappreciated source of unreproducible bugs.

A bit flip in an index variable, a pointers or in native code can send the CPU on a wild goose chase around memory.

To add insult to injury, applications like browsers use JITs, which generate and execute large amounts of native code on the fly, making them even more vulnerable for this kind of fault.

The same issue arises from overclocking, inconsistent power sources, and from damaged RAM cells, but those problem sources can presumably be dismissed on a vehicle with pristine, well-made hardware during a short hop to the moon and back.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47252971

New comment by samus in "What game engines know about data that databases forgot"

samus — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 10:23:59 +0000

Isn't this pretty much what SQL databases with column stores provide? It's not a novel idea at all, but obvious to anyone who knows how caches work and how to optimize applications for it.

New comment by samus in "Got kicked out of uni and had the cops called for a social media website I made"

samus — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 08:56:11 +0000

Guess what kind of person has an inherent motivation to gain power and has the traits necessary to do so?

New comment by samus in "Peptides: where to begin?"

samus — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 08:54:53 +0000

Sure, they are not mercury-level toxic. However, these recommendations are for people who consume way too much of these dishes, and it's a safe assumption that this is the case for a significant part of the population.

New comment by samus in "In Japan, the robot isn't coming for your job; it's filling the one nobody wants"

samus — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 07:40:36 +0000

That's IMHO not a concern at all in Japan. Being polite and accommodating to customers is held paramount.