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Jacobo Tarrío

@jacobo.tarrio.org
103 followers 48 following 1.3K posts

I write software for fun and for profit. Radio amateur (AE2IT and EA1ITI). He/him/爸爸.

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Jacobo Tarrío @jacobo.tarrio.org · 02/10/2026
Includes a description of my hash table implementation, of which I'm quite proud. Last week I read a comment on HN from someone who was impressed by a C implementation ("I didn't even think it was possible!") and it was so amusing to see that after completing my assembly implementation :-)
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Jacobo Tarrío @jacobo.tarrio.org · 02/10/2026
It's funny that the file with the explanation of how it works is bigger than the assembled .COM file.
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Jacobo Tarrío @jacobo.tarrio.org · 02/10/2026
Yay! I've written up how my DOS assembler for the Intel 8086/8088 microprocessor works: github.com/jtarrio/pasm...
github.com
pasm/HOW-IT-WORKS.md at main · jtarrio/pasm
A homemade DOS assembler for the Intel 8086/8088 processor - jtarrio/pasm
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Jacobo Tarrío @jacobo.tarrio.org · 02/10/2026
Today in "you must think me an absolute moron."
Screenshot of a connection request from LinkedIn with the message: "Hi, What do you think about this opportunity? I'm looking for a tech man to handle client video meetings who can help my Japanese friend Taki - especially Upwork. He is good at development but needs English support. ~3 hrs/week and compensation is typically $1000-$1500 per week. Thanks, Jacobo!"Screenshot of an email wanting to "license high quality code" from Jupiter notebooks, which is an oxymoron, and then it says, "We then ask you to download a skill from our platform to run locally on your machine. This does not connect to our systems but instead outputs a file for re-upload on our platform to receive pricing."
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Jacobo Tarrío @jacobo.tarrio.org · 02/10/2026
Oh wow! 96-point word!
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Jacobo Tarrío @jacobo.tarrio.org · 02/10/2026
That's not bad at all! Not bad for me either. playoutlier.com/s/X7BFZ8
playoutlier.com
OUTLIER · Day 135
jacobo scored 910 on Day 135. Can you beat them?
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Jacobo Tarrío @jacobo.tarrio.org · 01/10/2026
I was gonna suggest that :-)
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Jacobo Tarrío @jacobo.tarrio.org · 01/10/2026
Any day I get as many points as Rah is a good day :-) playoutlier.com/s/RL7SHM
playoutlier.com
OUTLIER · Day 134
jacobo scored 917 on Day 134. Can you beat them?
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Jacobo Tarrío @jacobo.tarrio.org · 01/10/2026
Estoy de guardia en el curro y todas y cada una de las veces que me pitó el móvil ayer con el tono que le tengo puesto a las alertas se me escapó un "holy shit!".
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Jacobo Tarrío @jacobo.tarrio.org · 30/09/2026
"Hey Jacobo you're using a lot of LLM!" (Brightly) "Yep!" "I'm glad you came around!" (Brightly) "Yep!" "Remember you used to say you only used LLMs when you didn't care about the result?" (Brightly) "Yep!" "I don't know what made you change your mind but keep it up!" (Brightly) "Yep!"
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Jacobo Tarrío @jacobo.tarrio.org · 30/09/2026
Jokes aside, I think I'm finally (FINALLY!) out of my mourning period. (It's normal to mourn when someone takes away something you cared very much about and they don't even acknowledge how important it was to you, right?) Now I'm motivated by spite, which will work great for the rest of my career.
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Jacobo Tarrío @jacobo.tarrio.org · 30/09/2026
My consolation is that real AI specialists are as fucked as we are. "I need to classify these documents" Real AI person: "oh, I'll use NLP with an autoclustering model which..." AI dweeb: "LLM'll do it" "I want to extract data from this printed page" Real AI: "OCR and a ..." AI dweeb: "LLM"
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Jacobo Tarrío @jacobo.tarrio.org · 29/09/2026
A, R, H, but no C :-) Two pioneer finds, though. playoutlier.com/s/E4ECYX
playoutlier.com
OUTLIER · Day 132
jacobo scored 880 on Day 132. Can you beat them?
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Jacobo Tarrío @jacobo.tarrio.org · 28/09/2026
(Michael just took a note: "no more of those letters all together")
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Jacobo Tarrío @jacobo.tarrio.org · 28/09/2026
If in previous occasions I mined the seam of ore, this time I did full-on mountaintop removal. playoutlier.com/s/PL3QMK
playoutlier.com
OUTLIER · Day 131
jacobo scored 925 on Day 131. Can you beat them?
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Jacobo Tarrío @jacobo.tarrio.org · 28/09/2026
Coa axuda dun balde de auga e un recipiente graduado podemos calcular a diferenza de presión entre as dúas localidades. Que vai ser bastante considerable: xa no edificio no que traballo (52 pisos) a diferenza entre o cumio e o chan é duns 25 milibares, así que estimo uns 85 para o teu.
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Jacobo Tarrío @jacobo.tarrio.org · 27/09/2026
It was so bad! Plus my usual "I can't believe this word is not way rarer" thing. playoutlier.com/s/5K6VUR
playoutlier.com
OUTLIER · Day 130
jacobo scored 878 on Day 130. Can you beat them?
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Jacobo Tarrío @jacobo.tarrio.org · 27/09/2026
I've been working on my 8086 assembler and after implementing hash tables and optimizing hot code paths, I got it to build itself 6x faster. After that, I improved the README with bootstrapping instructions and an offer that I really hope someone will take me up on. github.com/jtarrio/pasm
Features

* Outputs COM files directly. No need to link object files!

* Only 10 kilobytes! You can fit it and all your programs in a single floppy disk.

* Blazing fast! 75 lines per second on an IBM PC-XT!

* Written in assembly! You can assemble it with itself, or you can bootstrap it using a computer from the future that can run the Go programming language.

* A not completely terrible assembly language reference is available in ASSEMBLY.md.Alternatively, if you live in the year 1986 and you don't have access to a computer from 2026, you can request a ready-built copy of PASM. COM Send a SASE with two 3%" floppy disks (one to return, one to keep) to the following address:

(Address removed)
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Jacobo Tarrío @jacobo.tarrio.org · 27/09/2026
This is why, even if I do write my assembly code by hand, I like using LLMs to review it.
The new XLAT-based implementation is **brilliant, clean, and fully verified**.
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Jacobo Tarrío @jacobo.tarrio.org · 26/09/2026
Oh wow that word.
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Jacobo Tarrío @jacobo.tarrio.org · 26/09/2026
I found a Rarity-83 word worth 94 pts in OUTLIER. EAGLE EYES · 905 points · 10 rare words. Only 8 players have ever found it in all of Outlier. 9 finds no one else found today. OUTLIER: the daily word hunt where the rarest words win. Can you beat me? playoutlier.com/s/FU93A8
playoutlier.com
OUTLIER · Day 129
jacobo scored 905 on Day 129. Can you beat them?
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Jacobo Tarrío @jacobo.tarrio.org · 25/09/2026
Yeah, wanted an M so badly. I started strong, but then tripped. playoutlier.com/s/U879P9
playoutlier.com
OUTLIER · Day 128
jacobo scored 905 on Day 128. Can you beat them?
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Jacobo Tarrío @jacobo.tarrio.org · 25/09/2026
(No estoy diciendo que se venga todo el mundo al extranjero. Lo que estoy diciendo es que no tiene sentido pagar un premium por vivir en España).
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Jacobo Tarrío @jacobo.tarrio.org · 25/09/2026
Ya adelantándome a lo que he oído tantas veces: "Ah, pero todo cuesta más" Hace 20 años sí, pero compensaba. Ahora cuesta lo mismo. "Pero la terracita y la cervecita y el jamoncito." Y el mercado de navidad y el biergarten. "Pero anochece tan pronto" Y en España amanece tan tarde.
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Jacobo Tarrío @jacobo.tarrio.org · 25/09/2026
I wrote a DOS assembler for the Intel 8086/8088 microprocessor! github.com/jtarrio/pasm In fact, I wrote it twice: once in Go, and then again in assembly, so you can bootstrap it and then run it in your DOS machine. Only 10 kB so you can have it in the same 5¼" floppy disk as your source code!
github.com
GitHub - jtarrio/pasm: A homemade DOS assembler for the Intel 8086/8088 processor
A homemade DOS assembler for the Intel 8086/8088 processor - jtarrio/pasm
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Jacobo Tarrío @jacobo.tarrio.org · 24/09/2026
Well, it looks like I've been successful in writing a 8086 assembler in 8086 assembly. The assembler can assemble itself, yielding the same binary, which is less than 10kB. I need to finish it up and then there's some text I want to write before I publish it.
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Jacobo Tarrío @jacobo.tarrio.org · 23/09/2026
I got a first-ever outlier! playoutlier.com/s/FL7ZFL Though I am extremely surprised that the astronomy term is less rare than this.
playoutlier.com
OUTLIER · Day 126
jacobo scored 890 on Day 126. Can you beat them?
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Jacobo Tarrío @jacobo.tarrio.org · 23/09/2026
Como me dijo mi padre un día que me quejaba, todo indignado, de los privilegios de otros: "Pero a ver, ¿tú qué quieres? ¿Tener lo que tienen ellos o quitarles a ellos lo que no tienes tú?"
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Jacobo Tarrío @jacobo.tarrio.org · 23/09/2026
Until four years ago, the only ones on this planet who could tell stories were Us, so suddenly we encounter this thing that can tell stories and our brains think it's Us too. But you don't need intelligence to tell stories! You only need a sufficiently large Mad Libs with a good dictionary.
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Jacobo Tarrío @jacobo.tarrio.org · 23/09/2026
When I was at Google we had access to an LLM chatbot a couple of ¿years? before the public did, and that's totally what it was. You could go through a whole customer service session with it, including sending emails and everything, except that it was all in the LLM's "mind". There were no emails.
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Jacobo Tarrío @jacobo.tarrio.org · 23/09/2026
Someone with the same view of LLMs as me! Though I call them "machines for telling stories". An LLM does not fix your k8s setup; it tells the story of how your k8s setup was fixed, and it's attached to a harness that makes the story reality.
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Jacobo Tarrío @jacobo.tarrio.org · 21/09/2026
Yeah, I have a classification-shaped project that I was for sure not going to use an LLM for because of cost, but I can consider it with Jev.
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Jacobo Tarrío @jacobo.tarrio.org · 21/09/2026
I was going ok and then I was robbed. Robbed! playoutlier.com/s/LD3LLP
playoutlier.com
OUTLIER · Day 124
jacobo scored 868 on Day 124. Can you beat them?
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Jacobo Tarrío @jacobo.tarrio.org · 21/09/2026
Absolutely, I was so surprised, I dropped my monocle.
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Jacobo Tarrío @jacobo.tarrio.org · 21/09/2026
I'll be honest with you: I routed two airplanes at the same altitude on the same path despite instructions to the contrary on the AGENTS file, and that's on me. I'll save a memory so I will avoid doing that next time. There was already a memory! No updates needed.
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Jacobo Tarrío @jacobo.tarrio.org · 20/09/2026
Oh wow that's impressive. I beat my record *and* got three outliers, but I started with two whoppers so my score wasn't as high as it could have been. A good one anyway. playoutlier.com/s/RT74KS
playoutlier.com
OUTLIER · Day 123
jacobo scored 909 on Day 123. Can you beat them?
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Jacobo Tarrío @jacobo.tarrio.org · 20/09/2026
Every job posting nowadays: "we use AI to revolutionize healthcare finance with prediction markets!"
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Jacobo Tarrío @jacobo.tarrio.org · 20/09/2026
I've been getting pretty ok at writing 8086 assembly.
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Jacobo Tarrío @jacobo.tarrio.org · 20/09/2026
Now, I'm not saying that sandboxing LLMs is easy. It is hard. But there is trying and there is "not even trying".
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Jacobo Tarrío @jacobo.tarrio.org · 20/09/2026
There's also the type of sandbox. Some people put a gVisor or a seccomp-based sandbox and... Ok, the LLM can't read from /proc but it can still connect to gmail and send copies of your most embarrassing purchases to your parents.
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Jacobo Tarrío @jacobo.tarrio.org · 20/09/2026
You could build proxies for the services you want your LLM to access, that only allow some operations and use "fake" keys so the LLM never sees the real key. But then you have to build and maintain those. You could use an LLM to help you, but ¿weren't you trying to limit the LLM in the first place?
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Jacobo Tarrío @jacobo.tarrio.org · 20/09/2026
The problem is that an effective sandbox has to actually block things, and when you want your LLM to be able to do "everything but bad things"... There is no way you can effectively sandbox that. You could do a lot of credential and permissions management, but that's hard and only takes you so far.
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Jacobo Tarrío @jacobo.tarrio.org · 20/09/2026
Having built sandboxes, it is so fucking painful to read about what passes for a sandbox in the LLM world.
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Jacobo Tarrío @jacobo.tarrio.org · 19/09/2026
I beat my record still mining yesterday's seam, but my best word was one I stole from you :-) playoutlier.com/s/AYHFQ5
playoutlier.com
OUTLIER · Day 122
jacobo scored 905 on Day 122. Can you beat them?
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Jacobo Tarrío @jacobo.tarrio.org · 19/09/2026
"The Oxford comma removes ambiguity." The Oxford comma:
He lives in Buckinghamshire with his wife, Rachel, a newsreader for Virgin Radio, and their three sons.
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Jacobo Tarrío @jacobo.tarrio.org · 18/09/2026
They feel normal to me, yours are fancy :-) Today I found a seam of ore so I exploited it a little. playoutlier.com/s/NQPRSL
playoutlier.com
OUTLIER · Day 121
jacobo scored 895 on Day 121. Can you beat them?
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Jacobo Tarrío @jacobo.tarrio.org · 18/09/2026
The funniest joke the guy told us during my citizenship ceremony was "now you are not required to carry id".
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Jacobo Tarrío @jacobo.tarrio.org · 18/09/2026
If you choose the $50k, your thinking is _so_ short-termist.
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Jacobo Tarrío @jacobo.tarrio.org · 18/09/2026
You can choose between receiving $50,000 guaranteed, or infinite pulls at a slot machine that gives you a 50% chance of winning $1,000,000: you lose on the first Avogadro's Number of pulls, win on the next Avogadro's Number of pulls, and so on. Which one do you choose?
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Jacobo Tarrío @jacobo.tarrio.org · 18/09/2026
So many echoes of "$50k guaranteed or 50% chance at $1M".
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