Hacker News: speed_spread

New comment by speed_spread in "Java sealed classes and exhaustive pattern matching"

speed_spread — Sun, 18 Oct 2026 22:23:57 +0000

I see you drank the kool-aid. Add this dot to your chart: I know Kotlin and _much_ prefer Java.

Also, rest assured that there is still plenty of corporate drones that don't know Kotlin and couldn't care less because Java puts food on the table while providing a stable consensual development environment. Kotlin opens many doors, most of which should have better be left closed.

New comment by speed_spread in "Java sealed classes and exhaustive pattern matching"

speed_spread — Sun, 18 Oct 2026 21:19:14 +0000

I find Kotlin to be full footguns in general, letting you do stuff because 'why the hell not'. It feels like the Kotlin designers just wanted to show off, without considering that many of the resulting code patterns would be terrible.

New comment by speed_spread in "DeepSeek-v4.1-Flash-1017"

speed_spread — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 18:30:37 +0000

Oh but they absolutely do. The difference was mainly that up to a few years ago, the American government (generally) didn't care to repress those with the "wrong" opinions. Whereas China was always quite adamant about it.

New comment by speed_spread in "Waymo in Toronto"

speed_spread — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 22:23:25 +0000

Laughs in Montreal. Over here, the cones surround you, mug you and leave you naked holding nothing but a steering wheel in the middle of the street. _Then_ you fall into a pothole. During a snowstorm. BTW, your car is already in a container headed for Africa.

New comment by speed_spread in "What agents mean for Rust (and vice versa)"

speed_spread — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 20:30:38 +0000

Yes but multiply by feature flag combinations.

New comment by speed_spread in "JetBrains reports revenue growth, net financial loss for 2025"

speed_spread — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 12:03:57 +0000

IMO it's an overengineered sloppy mess. It adds too many bells and whistles without taking away anything. Nul checking is about the only serious feature it has. The rest is chrome and bling. It's "ricer" Java.

New comment by speed_spread in "Gleam doesn't compile to Erlang source anymore"

speed_spread — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 22:08:04 +0000

I have project language called spite. You can write apps in it or out of it.

New comment by speed_spread in "JetBrains reported a net financial loss first time in its tracked history"

speed_spread — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 13:44:45 +0000

Considering that Kotlin is their own invention and that it exists mainly to schmooze people onto their platform I sure hope they're ahead with it!

New comment by speed_spread in "Opus 5.5 agents discover two room-temperature magnetic semiconductor candidates"

speed_spread — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 11:46:30 +0000

Also, cheap maglev trains would be nice. Quiet, fast, reliable.

New comment by speed_spread in "Qualcomm licenses patents on Huawei’s LogicFolding chip tech"

speed_spread — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 02:14:58 +0000

RISC-V is the ISA. They don't need to invent another one. They had Longsoon before. It's all just MIPS in disguise.

Half of the GPU game is software. I'm not saying that it doesn't or can't exist but I have yet to see what good Chinese software looks like.

New comment by speed_spread in "Germany’s RobCo hits $1B valuation"

speed_spread — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 12:14:31 +0000

For Silicon Valley, maybe. But this is Europe, where things are still rooted in reality.

New comment by speed_spread in "Former SR-71 engineer talks NASA's Blackbird revival program"

speed_spread — Sun, 04 Oct 2026 21:45:25 +0000

The only thing it was designed for: recon. It's a spy plane. It has cameras and electronics up the wazoo. You fly it high and fast over a target, collect the info you need, refuel it and change target. Unlike a satellite, you can do that many times per day.

Against the USSR it had become risky because missiles could reach it? And satellites worked great during the cold war. But in a scenario where things got hotter and you wanted regular fresh intel from deep within enemy territory, the SR-71 could be irreplaceable.

New comment by speed_spread in "Former SR-71 engineer talks NASA's Blackbird revival program"

speed_spread — Sun, 04 Oct 2026 12:16:04 +0000

Particularly toxic boron-enriched fuel at that, to sustain those same high temperatures.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JP-7

New comment by speed_spread in "Nissan's third generation e-POWER powertrain"

speed_spread — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 01:40:48 +0000

BMW i3 with REX came out in 2013

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_i3_(hatchback)

New comment by speed_spread in "Flock Wants the Most Detailed Map of Its Surveillance Cameras Taken Offline"

speed_spread — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 00:07:28 +0000

Different logs for different business opportunities.

New comment by speed_spread in "There are no "rogue" AI agents"

speed_spread — Sun, 27 Sep 2026 17:01:24 +0000

And it's still just a machine operating under someone's order. What it does, what it says, where it goes: the owner of that prompt is responsible for all of it even if surprising / unexpected.

New comment by speed_spread in "Scientists build most accurate atomic clock"

speed_spread — Sat, 26 Sep 2026 12:19:36 +0000

... And still come home late for supper

New comment by speed_spread in "OpenAI GPT–6 Astra breaks Enigma message that has resisted solution since 2005"

speed_spread — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 15:24:32 +0000

Probably not, but then again I have an ego, and I have other things going on in my life than decrypting random stuff for someone else's enjoyment. Both of which aren't true for an agent/LLM.

It's a machine - when we attribute it human concepts such as victory, mistakes, ethics, we also shift responsibility away from the operator and soon enough bad people will use it as an umbrella. The agent ate my homework! The agent bombed a school! Bad agent, no!

New comment by speed_spread in "OpenAI GPT–6 Astra breaks Enigma message that has resisted solution since 2005"

speed_spread — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 20:29:04 +0000

Cyclist still chooses the time, mountain and direction the bicycle gets pushed in. Bicycles have no agency and only go down because gravity. Bicycle will not "discover" tree or wall, any outcome solely the result of cyclist's decisions even if thrown bicycles don't have generally deterministic paths. Don't anthropomorphize the bicycle.

New comment by speed_spread in "OpenAI GPT–6 Astra breaks Enigma message that has resisted solution since 2005"

speed_spread — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 15:11:39 +0000

A cyclist pedaling up a mountain isn't a "collaboration" between a bicycle and a human. This is the same. You don't see feral bicycles roaming the land. All models are ultimately built and run by humans, with human-provided instructions. And as with any program, it's garbage in, garbage out.