Hacker News: virissimo

New comment by virissimo in "Anthropic employees accuse Trump administration of targeting them"

virissimo — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 20:23:01 +0000

Applying equally to all the industry is a characteristic of good regulation, not of regulation tout court.

New comment by virissimo in "Can Europe train a frontier AI model on the compute it owns?"

virissimo — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 21:47:16 +0000

The U.S. Constitution is older than the current constitution of every EU member state and has remained continuously in force longer than any of them.

New comment by virissimo in "European sunscreens are safer than American (2024)"

virissimo — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 16:21:03 +0000

Furthermore, even if the trade deficit was something to worry about, why should the food and drug safety bureaucracies be the ones to determine that kind of economic policy?

New comment by virissimo in "Build Your Own ALU"

virissimo — Sun, 10 May 2026 01:36:19 +0000

I've been working through Nand2Tetris with my 13-year-old son, but the official hardware simulator was pretty overwhelming. That's why I built a browser version that tests the first 2 chapters, is simpler, and has a tighter feedback loop with more helpful hints.

Let me know what you think, especially if you are young or teaching young people. If you have any feedback, open an issue here or comment below: https://github.com/jaysonvirissimo/build-your-own-alu.

Build Your Own ALU

virissimo — Sun, 10 May 2026 01:36:19 +0000

Article URL: https://virissimo.info/build-your-own-alu/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48080140

Points: 3

# Comments: 1

New comment by virissimo in "Flock cameras keep telling police a man who doesn't have a warrant has a warrant"

virissimo — Fri, 01 May 2026 18:02:06 +0000

It's not insane at all to return both in a lookup. The "reporting person" will often be wrong about slight variations when calling in a license plate and the downside of errors are asymmetric: it is much more dangerous for the officer to think a driver doesn't have a warrant when they do versus thinking they have a warrant when they don't.

New comment by virissimo in ""People who don't use AI will be left behind""

virissimo — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 19:55:50 +0000

People are worse at mental arithmetic than they were in the recent past, so it's not clear that they aren't "dumber" in the sense people meant at the time.

New comment by virissimo in "Scores decline again for 13-year-old students in reading and mathematics (2023)"

virissimo — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 22:39:24 +0000

US teacher pay is near the top for OECD countries: https://www.oecd.org/en/data/indicators/teachers-salaries.ht...

New comment by virissimo in "The Rational Conclusion of Doomerism Is Violence"

virissimo — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 17:02:21 +0000

Does this apply to other domains or just AI? For example, if you think gain-of-function research accidents put millions of lives at risk, is the logical next step to quit your job and become a terrorist?

New comment by virissimo in "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (April 2026)"

virissimo — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 20:37:28 +0000

I'm beginning to homeschool my kids in computing, and we are pairing up chapters of The Elements of Computing System (the Nand2Tetris book) with games that teach similar skills/kinds of thinking (Human Resource Machine, Comet 64, etc...), but we didn't find anything to supplement the first two chapters (where you build basic chips up to an ALU in HDL). I ended up starting creating a kind of browser based kata for those chapters here:

https://virissimo.info/build-your-own-alu/

LMK what you think.

New comment by virissimo in "How to Keep ICE Agents Out of Your Devices at Airports"

virissimo — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 15:39:47 +0000

The quote literally contains the string "Transportation Security Administration" in it.

New comment by virissimo in "Tim Bray on Grokipedia"

virissimo — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 22:39:20 +0000

Some left-coded popular conspiracies:

1. The Iraq war was a plot to steal oil reserves

2. World Economic Forum / IMF intentionally impoverish nations

3. Police across America are systematically hunting and executing Black men (thousands per year), but are protected by racist institutions

4. Trump assassination attempts were false flag operations

5. Big Pharma deliberately hides natural cures for cancer to protect corporate profits

New comment by virissimo in "SQL Anti-Patterns"

virissimo — Sun, 19 Oct 2025 00:32:18 +0000

There are ZIP codes that overlap a city and also an unincorporated area. Furthermore, there are zip codes that overlap different states. A data model that renders these unrepresentable may come back to bite you.

New comment by virissimo in "Menstrual tracking app data is gold mine for advertisers that risks women safety"

virissimo — Wed, 11 Jun 2025 23:06:21 +0000

While it's true that CNN ran an article like that, the underlying claim has been formally rebutted by the West Virginia Prosecuting Attorneys Association, who clarified that:

> Women who experience miscarriage are not required to notify law enforcement and should not fear prosecution…recent public statements do not reflect the consensus of West Virginia prosecutors.

https://wchstv.com/news/local/wva-prosecuting-attorneys-deno...

New comment by virissimo in "The Truth about Atlantis (2019)"

virissimo — Tue, 22 Apr 2025 22:33:31 +0000

Many European scholars did consider Troy fictional. For example, Jacob Bryant's "A Dissertation concerning the War of Troy" (1796) explicitly argued that Troy never existed as a real city and that the Trojan War was purely mythological. He thought Homer's place names derived from Egyptian and Phoenician religious vocabulary, so the entire Trojan War narrative should be interpreted as imported solar allegory without any historical basis.

New comment by virissimo in "Why hasn't commercial air travel gotten any faster since the 1960s? (2009)"

virissimo — Tue, 11 Feb 2025 00:11:46 +0000

Perhaps it's more likely at an American airport, but I've been asked to remove shoes in both the UK and Portugal when flying to other European countries.

Understanding the Tech Right

virissimo — Mon, 10 Feb 2025 04:55:20 +0000

Article URL: https://www.richardhanania.com/p/understanding-the-tech-right

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42997075

Points: 5

# Comments: 1

New comment by virissimo in "Why DeepSeek had to be open source"

virissimo — Thu, 30 Jan 2025 18:58:55 +0000

Your original claim was that "only European powers had the urge for colonization," but now you're citing Arab, Egyptian, and Phoenician examples. Do you see these as exceptions? If so, wouldn't that contradict your original claim? Or are you reconsidering your definition of colonialism—or using "European" in a broader sense (that somehow includes Arabs and Egyptians)?

New comment by virissimo in "Why DeepSeek had to be open source"

virissimo — Wed, 29 Jan 2025 18:15:24 +0000

> Only european powers had the urge for colonization, no other civilization in Americas, Africa or Asia really ever want to colonize, expand perhaps but not really colonize.

* Inca Empire: Relocated entire communities (the mitmaqkuna) into new provinces to cement imperial control—these were explicit colonies with an imposed administrative and cultural framework.

* Ancient Egypt: Occupied Nubia, built forts, stationed garrisons, and imposed Egyptian officials and religion on the local population.

* Mongol Empire: Installed governors across conquered regions stretching from Eastern Europe to East Asia, moved artisans and workers to bolster Mongol centers, and demanded tribute—hallmarks of a colonial system.

* Imperial China: Established commanderies in newly acquired territories (e.g., southern China), encouraged Han settlement, and superimposed its bureaucracy over local governance.

New comment by virissimo in "Who is Marcellus Williams: Execution in Missouri despite evidence of innocence"

virissimo — Wed, 25 Sep 2024 22:37:10 +0000

Prior convictions are evidence in the broad sense (because they provide information that could update one's belief about a defendant's character or likelihood of committing a crime), but not legally admissible evidence (in many jurisdictions).