Hacker News: thyrsus

New comment by thyrsus in "After 7 years in production, Scarf has reluctantly moved away from Haskell"

thyrsus — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 08:21:38 +0000

The article makes a convincing argument that Haskell compilation is too slow for the fast code generation of AI. But python?

I have yet to experience a RHEL major version change that did not blow up all my tiny simplistic python scripts. I see the following options for using python: * run inside the container it was developed in * build your own python interpreter and environment and libraries and never use python pieces from the OS (i.e., act like a container without using one) * keep different versions of the code for different OS versions and use AI to rewrite all the code for the new OS version

Start to consider third party dependencies, and none of those feels tractable without an AI assist.

I've dabbled in C device driver code and kernel version differences were my only problem, not C. My perl scripts never break. My bash scripts rarely break. My dabbling in erlang didn't suffer from language version differences. My little elisp hasn't broken. Only python has inflicted this level of version pain. I have a colleague who says java has the same version pain as python, and from what I've seen from Jenkins maintenance he may be right, but I don't have colleagues who want to read java code, so I haven't written my own.

New comment by thyrsus in "American capitalism has taken an apocalyptic turn"

thyrsus — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 04:36:39 +0000

That claim needs explanation. My understanding is that substantially less than 20% hold the controlling ownership of U.S. productive capacity.

New comment by thyrsus in "The Struggle Is Gone"

thyrsus — Mon, 11 May 2026 03:19:37 +0000

As an ancient one (graduated college 1981), my use of AI is very conservative: look things up. Generate code I can read and understand in less than 30 minutes. This is working well for me, because when the AI botches the answer, I know quickly. It either works or fails fast: there's no importable function by that name, that keyword isn't in the language, that only works in a different version of the OS. I never ask it to do something I couldn't do myself in 10x the time (spent fixing typos or missing punctuation). If I ask it to do something I don't know how to do, I create tests - usually informal - to ensure that I understand what the code is doing. If the syntax is unfamiliar, I make it explain what it's doing, and then I informally test that explanation (usually toy examples at the command line). You must learn to do these things regardless of where the answers come from - the Internet, a journal, a book, a colleague. Otherwise >>when<< it fails, you will not be able to reason about the causes for the failure and how to find a correction.

New comment by thyrsus in "Who owns the code Claude Code wrote?"

thyrsus — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 23:04:40 +0000

I've seen copyright notices that explicitly forbid use for AI training. Would this "transformation" argument still hold in such cases?

For example:

No Generative AI Training Use

For avoidance of doubt, Author reserves the rights, and grants no rights to, reproduce and/or otherwise use the Work in any manner for purposes of training artificial intelligence or machine learning technologies to generate text, text to speech, voice, or audio including without limitation, technologies that are capable of generating works in the same style or genre as the Work, unless individual or entity obtains Author’s specific and express permission to do so. Nor does any individual or entity have the right to sublicense others to reproduce and/or otherwise use the Work in any manner for the purposes of training artificial intelligence or machine learning technologies to generate text, text to speech, voice, or audio without Author’s specific and express permission.

New comment by thyrsus in "Who owns the code Claude Code wrote?"

thyrsus — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 22:51:12 +0000

What is being licensed by the End User License Agreement (EULA) is the copyright on the code and its artefacts (executable bytes, etc.) - you can't have an EULA without having the copyright to license.

New comment by thyrsus in "Bitcoin and quantum computing"

thyrsus — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 01:07:54 +0000

Are there currently circulating cryptocurrencies that use quantum resistant cryptography?

New comment by thyrsus in "Author of "Careless People" banned from saying anything negative about Meta"

thyrsus — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 18:32:02 +0000

The first amendment protects from U.S. government censorship (with exceptions for national security and commission of otherwise illegal acts, such as child molestation, fraud, or yelling fire in a crowded theater). The suppression here is a civil matter in which the author signed a contract not to "disparage" and would suffer civil penalties (monetary, other negotiated constraints) for violating the contract.

New comment by thyrsus in "Paper Tape Is All You Need – Training a Transformer on a 1976 Minicomputer"

thyrsus — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 16:50:51 +0000

I dealt with physical paper tape on only three or four occasions in the early 1980's, each time terrified of a jam or tear. It seems in this case it's a read-once operation, which is plausible. Read-many, not so much. Punch cards are orders of magnitude more reliable.

New comment by thyrsus in "“Your frustration is the product”"

thyrsus — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 00:08:31 +0000

As a subscriber to The Guardian, I have a very different experience.

New comment by thyrsus in "How to defer US taxes"

thyrsus — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 22:54:20 +0000

This year, the first $15,000,000 of an estate is exempt from federal taxes, so unless it is on top of a different $14,000,001 in estate net assets, the estate tax (a tax on the estate) on that $1,000,000 house is $0. [0]

Some U.S. states have an additional inheritance tax (payable by the inheritors). Those rules vary. [1]

[0] https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employe... [1] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/inheritancetax.asp

New comment by thyrsus in "The TSA's New $45 Fee to Fly Without ID Is Illegal"

thyrsus — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 23:48:59 +0000

Explain to me how qualified immunity is better than any ill it is supposed to address? And how is it that if you sue the government and win, then the judgement doesn't automatically award reasonable legal fees?

New comment by thyrsus in "Silver plunges 30% in worst day since 1980, gold tumbles"

thyrsus — Sun, 01 Feb 2026 09:54:08 +0000

The left hand scale is presumably dollars per ounce of silver. The right hand side is "margin requirement ($)". I can think of two interpretations of that, neither of which make sense to me. The first interpretation is that one recently needs a $25000 margin per $90 ounce of silver instrument - obviously absurd. The other interpretation is that once you have a $25000 margin you can buy unlimited silver instruments, which is only barely less absurd. How does reality work?

SRE Is Anti-Transactional

thyrsus — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 08:56:48 +0000

Article URL: https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=3773094

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46763328

Points: 5

# Comments: 0

New comment by thyrsus in "Firefox profiles: Private, focused spaces for all the ways you browse"

thyrsus — Thu, 06 Nov 2025 03:33:48 +0000

I've got Firefox 144.2 on Android; are profiles available there? If so, how does one use them?

New comment by thyrsus in "Car has more than 1.2M km on it – and it's still going strong"

thyrsus — Sat, 09 Aug 2025 19:33:02 +0000

My 2007 Corolla odometer has been at 299999 since 2019. I've replaced the transmission once, but the rest is original, aside from expected maintenance - tires, brakes, fans, etc. - and an added stereo.

New comment by thyrsus in "Literate programming tool for any language"

thyrsus — Thu, 19 Jun 2025 23:57:33 +0000

If your colleagues just don't feel the benefit of the extra .lit file, is there a way to pull their changes to the derived files into your own .lit files and to keep the .lit files in a parallel version control repo or branch?

New comment by thyrsus in "Time saved by AI offset by new work created, study suggests"

thyrsus — Sun, 04 May 2025 07:22:36 +0000

Nope. The current system may be misdirecting 95% of labor, but until we have sufficiently modeled all of nature to provide perfect health and brought world peace, there is work to do.

New comment by thyrsus in "Time saved by AI offset by new work created, study suggests"

thyrsus — Sun, 04 May 2025 07:03:20 +0000

And not only that, but most >>changes<< to software shouldn't happen, especially if it's user facing. Half my dread in visiting support web sites is that they've completely rearranged yet again, and the same thing I've wanted five times requires a fifth 30 minutes figuring out where they put it.

New comment by thyrsus in "Haskelling My Python"

thyrsus — Tue, 22 Apr 2025 00:47:38 +0000

I'm a python newby, so please correct the following: The first function looks quadratic in time and linear in stack space, while the second function looks linear in time and constant in stack space. Memoizing would convert the first function to linear in time and linear in space (on the heap instead of the stack). For python, wouldn't I always use the second definition? For Haskell, I would use the [1..] syntax which the compiler would turn into constant space linear time machine code.

New comment by thyrsus in "YAML: The Norway Problem (2022)"

thyrsus — Sun, 13 Apr 2025 01:28:24 +0000

I do a lot of ansible which needs to run on multiple versions, and their yaml typing are not consistent - whenever I have a variable in a logic statement, I nearly always need to apply the "| bool" filter.