Hacker News: techman9

New comment by techman9 in "Ithkuil IV Language FAQ"

techman9 — Sun, 31 Oct 2021 00:54:54 +0000

This article [0] covers its fascinating history and adoption by somewhat unsavory characters.

[0] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/12/24/utopian-for-be...

New comment by techman9 in "Microsoft Refuses to Open Source VSCode Python Language Server"

techman9 — Sun, 10 Jan 2021 20:50:00 +0000

> I think very few people realize that many parts of it are closed source

Which parts are closed-source?

New comment by techman9 in "Why do we use the Linux kernel's TCP stack? (2016)"

techman9 — Sat, 03 Oct 2020 21:17:03 +0000

> So – this made me wonder. When we do high performance networking – why do we bother using the Linux kernel’s TCP stack at all, if it’s so expensive?

What makes the Linux kernel TCP stack expensive?

New comment by techman9 in "Why do we use the Linux kernel's TCP stack? (2016)"

techman9 — Sat, 03 Oct 2020 21:13:59 +0000

This is super useful! I've been hacking recently on qdisc classifiers, and trying to set a filter up with BPF, but there's a paucity of documentation on the subject. The tc tools are sorta documented here (https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man8/tc-bpf.8.html), but it's quite hard to find docs on the underlying syscalls and the behavior of `bpf_prog_type_sched_cls`.

I bought a copy of BPF performance tools to learn more about the BPF interface, and it's really useful but quite focused on performance! I wish there was a resource of similar depth and breath about eBPF for classification/XDP.

New comment by techman9 in "The Case for Dumping the Electoral College"

techman9 — Mon, 14 Sep 2020 05:43:22 +0000

I do wonder whether the electoral college system somewhat insulates the US from election tampering or voter fraud. The current system disaggregates election certification to the state level, which is then made official by a discrete vote of the electoral college. For instance, if Donald Trump wants to claim that the election was rigged or tampered with, it's sort of moot as it's ultimately up to the state electors.

It feels like in the face of this, it's very hard for one candidate to dispute the election, as it's ultimately resolved by electoral vote. If we were to change the system to one based only a national first past the post poll, even one certified by vote totals from individual states, I wonder how you'd ensure an impartial certification of the final result.

New comment by techman9 in "Basic Intro to Elliptic Curve Cryptography (2019)"

techman9 — Sun, 31 May 2020 18:54:01 +0000

It looks like several of the images in this post are taken (without credit?) from Cloudflare's primer? https://blog.cloudflare.com/a-relatively-easy-to-understand-...

New comment by techman9 in "Ask HN: Best Talks of 2019?"

techman9 — Mon, 23 Dec 2019 08:05:01 +0000

Build Impossible Programs - Julia Evans: https://jvns.ca/blog/2018/09/18/build-impossible-programs/

New comment by techman9 in "The “bicameral mind” 30 years on: A reappraisal of Jaynes’ hypothesis (2007)"

techman9 — Sun, 25 Nov 2018 07:05:23 +0000

Hm.. Is Functional Neurology (the journal in which this published) related in any way to the field of functional neurology? I think the latter is a rebranding of chiropractic neurology, which some would argue purports some less than scientific ideas.

Giant lock

techman9 — Sun, 28 Oct 2018 23:44:15 +0000

Article URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_lock

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18323935

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by techman9 in "IBM acquires Red Hat"

techman9 — Sun, 28 Oct 2018 19:40:23 +0000

- etcd

New comment by techman9 in "Japan's Hometown Tax"

techman9 — Sat, 20 Oct 2018 03:15:17 +0000

Can you explain a bit more more about why you believe Delaware is the proffered place to register a corporation?

New comment by techman9 in "Our Approach to Employee Security Training"

techman9 — Sat, 05 May 2018 23:57:41 +0000

> That said, I didn’t want to mislead people. So we chose to be clear to them that there is a technical term; it’s just not going to be important for the rest of the content.

New comment by techman9 in "Our Dental Insurance Sent Us “Free” Internet-Connected Toothbrushes"

techman9 — Sat, 14 Apr 2018 21:38:42 +0000

Maybe I missed something in the article, but how do you know the phone app is transmitting data to the insurance company?

New comment by techman9 in "Ask HN: Is Hacker News GDPR Compliant?"

techman9 — Fri, 13 Apr 2018 22:40:13 +0000

My understanding was that GDPR requirements apply to all citizens of the EU regardless of where the company is located. Someone else can chime in if that's not accurate!

New comment by techman9 in "In 2004, Zuckerberg Broke Into a Facebook User's Private Email Account (2010)"

techman9 — Sun, 08 Apr 2018 18:04:17 +0000

I'm hopeful that Zuckerberg has matured at least slightly in the intervening 14 years.

New comment by techman9 in "If iPads were meant for kids"

techman9 — Sun, 08 Apr 2018 09:05:27 +0000

Oh my god. And Starcraft, and Axis and Allies, (original) DOTA. I was even a WOW player back in the day before I got fed up buying expansions. Man, the hours of productive time I wasted...

New comment by techman9 in "If iPads were meant for kids"

techman9 — Sun, 08 Apr 2018 08:45:11 +0000

I don't know. I grew up in the XP era and I played a lot of brainless games (3D pinball was where it was at) and read a lot of mindless Wikipedia articles as a kid. But then I got curious about how it all worked behind the scenes.

Maybe I'm too optimistic, but my hope is some of that inquisitive spirit hasn't been totally quashed. It's too depressing think that kids are not still discovering the internet as a virtually boundless repository of human information and a fascinating set of technical problems.

New comment by techman9 in "If iPads were meant for kids"

techman9 — Sun, 08 Apr 2018 08:28:39 +0000

I credit much of my current aptitude with (and interest in) computers to getting to use one throughout my childhood with no restrictions. I understand it can be nerve-wracking for parents ceding that much control to children, but I think children are both smarter and more self-disciplined than we give them credit for and I think digital free range can build independence in the long run. Maybe my opinion will change when I have kids of my own someday. Who knows.

New comment by techman9 in "Global cyber attack that left U.S. flag on screens"

techman9 — Sun, 08 Apr 2018 07:28:09 +0000

What do you believe defines terrorism?

New comment by techman9 in "Vial-Http – Simple HTTP REST Tool for Vim"

techman9 — Sat, 07 Apr 2018 19:31:14 +0000

This seems very cool, but it's hard to imagine myself ever using this for anything. What use cases do you imagine this has or have other people found for something like this?