Hacker News: varispeed

New comment by varispeed in "Source code of the Estonian online voting system"

varispeed — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 20:35:07 +0000

> The public needs to believe it, and hypertechnical solutions are a hard sell.

Public doesn't need to know the details. Production of paper, printers is quite complex and so production of the pen. Yet people are not concerned about that when voting and we don't publish schematics of a printer that printed the ballots.

New comment by varispeed in "The Commodore 64 hardware simulator: break chips and pins, see the results"

varispeed — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 19:07:08 +0000

> Please note that even on fast computers this program struggles to simulate the C64 hardware at real speed. A real C64 is simulated at 31% of its speed on an Apple M3 Max, 39% on an AMD Ryzen AI Max+ PRO 495 (Gorgon Halo), and 48% on an Apple M5 Max

Key takeaway is why FPGA is still useful. Even modern CPUs can't handle certain seemingly simple data processing tasks in realtime.

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

varispeed — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 14:11:06 +0000

Remember when we were dumbfounded why our service is slow despite having implemented quite robust caching mechanism. Turns out simply the flag that enables it was hardcoded to false. So it was minor update (changed flag to true), but provided substantial speed up.

New comment by varispeed in "Tesla Roadster"

varispeed — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 12:31:46 +0000

> and that's gonna make crashes much more.. exciting

It's not like they care about lives. After all Musk throttled Starlink in Ukraine and that resulted in many civilian deaths. Anyone buying this is supporting this behaviour.

New comment by varispeed in "Tesla Roadster"

varispeed — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 20:08:08 +0000

As per Telegraph Musk has offered Trump the idea to slow down the Starlink, which resulted in deaths of many civilians.

Whatever you think about these advancements (like you could marvel at Nazi inventions), make no mistake. Musk and his Tesla should get fucked.

New comment by varispeed in "Claude reveals ECDSA curve origins"

varispeed — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 20:06:52 +0000

Whenever I say that the rich have access to much more capable and unrestricted models I get downvotes. Yet here we have another example.

New comment by varispeed in "AI-assisted PCB design for KiCad 10"

varispeed — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 16:43:51 +0000

Believe it or not "it works" is actually incredibly high standard. Many commercial products are released after meeting the "I can't believe it works" threshold.

New comment by varispeed in "Tiny Little Office"

varispeed — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 13:10:40 +0000

I opened Word Processor, wrote "here" as instructed and nothing was happening.

New comment by varispeed in "Gemini 4 Argon"

varispeed — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 19:07:59 +0000

Because Google models are crap. They are on par with local shit models. Last time I tried they were unable to even hold a longer conversation, because they would enter loop and reiterate last answer regardless of the prompt etc.

Then basic mistakes (inferring wrong information from the given text, hallucinations...). Gemini is okay for some absolute basics and the rest of the work goes to actual frontier models.

New comment by varispeed in "Ledger confirms spy chip implant behind wallet crypto thefts"

varispeed — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 11:32:17 +0000

They could x-ray it, carve out epoxy with nothing inside, put the logger, apply epoxy.

New comment by varispeed in "AI is a tool and using it well takes skill"

varispeed — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 22:05:39 +0000

> code me an app, AI.

...AI codes an app...

> I don't like it. Make it like this.

...AI codes an app...

> I don't like it. See this app? Make it like it.

...AI codes an app...

> I don't like it. Hmm. Draw me an elephant.

...AI draws an elephant...

> I don't like it. This AI is stupid.

New comment by varispeed in "Deloitte falsified documents to evade tax on Abramovich's wealth"

varispeed — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 13:09:18 +0000

The amount of dirt Deloitte has on governments, it is surprising something like this even came out. Likely someone will lose their job and the whole thing will be kicked in the long grass.

New comment by varispeed in "Talorys – A self-hosted personal AI agent on Cloudflare's free tier"

varispeed — Sat, 10 Oct 2026 21:05:04 +0000

Isn't it a free tier until they decide you should start paying or leave?

New comment by varispeed in "Show HN: Quake ported to safe Rust, playable in browser"

varispeed — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 10:02:49 +0000

It won't be long until corporations will start paying AI companies to block such requests or even lobby governments to make it illegal to do.

New comment by varispeed in "Classic PC demoscene productions running natively in the browser"

varispeed — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 23:28:49 +0000

They could of course start their own business to find out.

New comment by varispeed in "Classic PC demoscene productions running natively in the browser"

varispeed — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 19:18:13 +0000

Not sure. Corporations do it all the time. They create vision, hire employees to make it real and then it is the company's vision and execution. The demos are typically released under demoscene group name, not individuals who contributed.

I think many people are confused what's AI has given to them. An ability to be a boss. Something that used to be afforded to the rich. Now you can assemble a "team" and deliver whatever idea you have in mind without spending thousands or millions.

New comment by varispeed in "Trump administration is suspending Microsoft from a green card program"

varispeed — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 19:15:06 +0000

That's true, but what's new about it is the scale. It's called Boriswave and since Labour have not scrapped it, should be called Keirwave or Andywave.

New comment by varispeed in "Classic PC demoscene productions running natively in the browser"

varispeed — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 16:32:41 +0000

There is no shortage of crap demos that were not "vibe" coded.

I am just saying that AI is also something to harness, show it can help create something mindblowing. I am not saying that everyone should now go and type: "Make me a blob animation with phong reflections, put a bouncy scroll bar with 80s looking fonts and craft Ikari style chip tune and book tickets to the next demoscene party".

New comment by varispeed in "Trump administration is suspending Microsoft from a green card program"

varispeed — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 16:21:44 +0000

In the UK, we simply removed that requirement, so company doesn't have to give evidence of shortage and also we set the wage limit to a quarter of median earning for given profession (Labour government increased it to just half now). This means corporations have no incentive to hire local workers as it is vastly cheaper to hire (and exploit) immigrants, as they don't have means to pick and choose once they are in the country. Meanwhile local people can't find work and have to battle increased rents and pressure for access to public services. All by corporations who are very shy when it comes to paying taxes.

oh and that entry level web developer on lowest band is actually a senior systems engineer? Worry not, Home Office don't check that.

New comment by varispeed in "Classic PC demoscene productions running natively in the browser"

varispeed — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 16:08:37 +0000

How far do you want to go? Obviously many demos were not written using ones and zeros and most likely the coders used compilers and assemblers to produce the binaries. They were also using linkers instead of merging the files by hand. Many learned the stuff using books, so it is just regurgitation of what they read in those books.

As with AI it's no different than delegating work to a group member. What counts is vision and execution.