Hacker News: sriram_malhar

New comment by sriram_malhar in "Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz"

sriram_malhar — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 11:12:58 +0000

You are right to some extent. But there are huge differences between all the wars the US has fought and is currently involved in, and a China-Taiwan war.

Taiwan is only a couple of miles from mainland China at its closest point. It is possible to land large numbers of boots on the ground. Next, unlike the US, the Chinese govt is not dependent on the approval of its citizens for waging a war. It exercises complete control of the media, and squelches dissent immediately. AndIt has the largest navy in the world and a relatively modern fleet, and the supply chain is very very short. The US has no leverage over China.

New comment by sriram_malhar in "Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz"

sriram_malhar — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 04:54:41 +0000

Sure, they will find out it is a good military. No doubt about that. What the US has found out repeatedly but fails to acknowledge is that the opposition proves to be a match. Vietnam, Afghanistan, Somalia have shown just how deep reserves of human resilience and arsenal of guerrilla tactics they have. This doesn't fit the US's mindset about how war is to be waged.

Meanwhile, the American public wants a quick skirmish and a bold "We WON" claim .. it has no appetite for body bags coming home and the price of oil rising.

Which is why if China makes a move on Taiwan, the US can do nothing.

New comment by sriram_malhar in "What 81,000 people want from AI"

sriram_malhar — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 06:18:34 +0000

Reminds me of Abraham Wald's survivorship bias. What of the millions of others who like me who want to live in world without AI?

New comment by sriram_malhar in "AI and the Illegal War"

sriram_malhar — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 04:48:37 +0000

I didn't know Hesgeth posts on HN.

New comment by sriram_malhar in "Judge orders government to begin refunding more than $130B in tariffs"

sriram_malhar — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 18:58:11 +0000

Ah! Sorry!

New comment by sriram_malhar in "Judge orders government to begin refunding more than $130B in tariffs"

sriram_malhar — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 03:57:47 +0000

Socialism, you mean, not communism.

This is a way of spending taxes on the public, the kind Denmark does. It isn't "no private property; everything belongs to the govt".

Also, if we are redistributing taxes to fund endless wars and subsidizing almond/avocado farmers, and propping up public money to ensure banks don't collapse, we are already in socialist territory. Have always been. But God forbid we spend the money on healthcare ... that's "taking us back to Mao".

New comment by sriram_malhar in "Judge orders government to begin refunding more than $130B in tariffs"

sriram_malhar — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 16:01:30 +0000

Wouldn't it be simpler to implement a 'spend-forward scheme' rather than returning? For example, spend that money on research grants and health care. It is returning the money to the people. A man can dream, no?

New comment by sriram_malhar in "Process-Based Concurrency: Why Beam and OTP Keep Being Right"

sriram_malhar — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 10:46:56 +0000

One process is made the logical goto for all operations on that data. The process identity is logically the identity of the shared state.

In other words, it is exactly a database, albeit an in-memory one.

New comment by sriram_malhar in "The United States and Israel have launched a major attack on Iran"

sriram_malhar — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 07:56:46 +0000

Is this a deflection? I'd be asking this question of any admin. I cannot stand what Obama and Biden let Merrick Garland get away with.

New comment by sriram_malhar in "Show HN: I built a zero-browser, pure-JS typesetting engine for bit-perfect PDFs"

sriram_malhar — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 06:02:34 +0000

Love it, love it! Thanks for sharing.

New comment by sriram_malhar in "Everett shuts down Flock camera network after judge rules footage public record"

sriram_malhar — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 05:55:56 +0000

Red states have zero crime, so they don't need them in the first place. /s

New comment by sriram_malhar in "Show HN: Timber – Ollama for classical ML models, 336x faster than Python"

sriram_malhar — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 04:06:59 +0000

Perhaps because the performance is good enough and this approach is much simpler and portable than shared libraries across platforms.

New comment by sriram_malhar in "An ode to houseplant programming (2025)"

sriram_malhar — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 10:16:58 +0000

As someone said, "Machines were supposed to rid us of tedious work. Instead they write poetry and create art, and we fill captchas to prove to them that we are human"

New comment by sriram_malhar in "The United States and Israel have launched a major attack on Iran"

sriram_malhar — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 04:28:11 +0000

Equally? Sigh.

All the people who huffed about Kamala and Trump being sides of the same coin have brought us to this stage. You think Kamala's admin would be anywhere as venal, corrupt, blatantly unlawful as this?

New comment by sriram_malhar in "The United States and Israel have launched a major attack on Iran"

sriram_malhar — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 04:25:24 +0000

It seems the admin would rather you focus on DoW or DOW. Any mention of Epstein is getting downvoted.

New comment by sriram_malhar in "The United States and Israel have launched a major attack on Iran"

sriram_malhar — Sat, 28 Feb 2026 18:17:01 +0000

Why is no one calling it the Epstein War?

New comment by sriram_malhar in "OpenAI agrees with Dept. of War to deploy models in their classified network"

sriram_malhar — Sat, 28 Feb 2026 05:40:03 +0000

What has an impact is cancelling a subscription and then talking about it. The media will amplify it the pushback. The goal is to make the name OpenAI and ChatGPT toxic, that whatever you do will be converted into a technology that will surveil or bomb you.

New comment by sriram_malhar in "Show HN: I ported Manim to TypeScript (run 3b1B math animations in the browser)"

sriram_malhar — Sat, 28 Feb 2026 04:36:05 +0000

This is fantastic! Thank you for sharing.

New comment by sriram_malhar in "Show HN: I created a beautiful number animation library for React Native"

sriram_malhar — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 11:21:05 +0000

Beautiful! Thanks for sharing!

New comment by sriram_malhar in "A Programmer's Loss of Identity"

sriram_malhar — Sun, 15 Feb 2026 06:56:00 +0000

I totally felt this! It is almost as if the author had decided to reply to my question on Ask HN that didn't receive any eyeballs.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46960408