This is so true tho
Ronald is indescribably more important than any tech billionaire could ever hope to be. So let's raise a glass and give out a hardy thank you to all the Ronalds of the world!
this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2026
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Too bad all the tech billionaires profit from Ronald's work while he does it for free.
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Bless Ronald
Our math depends on him 🙏
Written in hand-optimized assembly with individual implementation for every CPU on the planet, with integer division function in 10000 lines of code impelented with XOR and bit-shifting which is somehow 0.3% faster than CPU built-in division operation.
He had to de-optimize the init sequence because the little trick he added that caused the init sequence to return a little power to the grid instead of taking it was causing grid stability issues because the returned power from offices starting up was a bit higher than the extra power required for factory startup weekday mornings.
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The mention of division has triggered a memory. I think I actually saw a library like that once. It was in C, not assembly, and was almost certainly for one specific architecture (probably Intel), but other than that, there was a lot of low-level stuff that claimed to make division faster for all CPU-native data types.
It was above my skill level to just pick up and use, let alone read and understand, but I can tell you that it at least looked legit, and the author seemed earnest in their description, so something like your hypothetical is very much out there.
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They are real people
XZ Utils (maintained single-handedly by Lasse Collin) is widely regarded as the most critical infrastructure library run by one person. Its near-catastrophic compromise in 2024 revealed how global digital security hinges on solo, thanklessly managed open-source projects. Other major examples include cURL (Daniel Stenberg) and SQLite (D. Richard Hipp)
When I last talked to Richard he had company to work on SQLite. It was like four people.
SQLite is still deployed on everything, everywhere. You browser. Your phone. Macs. Half of Linux machine. Your airplane. It's super impressive.
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Not sure if it's part of the joke but that word means "jerk" (as in "jerk off") in Swedish.
So a perfect open source name then.
Runk that hog, swedish boy.
pojke/kille/grabb/gosse = boy/dude/guy/kiddo, so have fun with that. 😂
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Everyone who understands Norwegian love the name Ronald chose for his invaluable tool.
For the uninitiated: well, let's just say. jorkin it.
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This is why when Steve Jobs died in 2011 another far more important figure died... Dennis Ritchie. The man who made the C programming language and Unix, without which nothing Apple produced would be possible.
Not to downplay dmr's importance here because he quite literally is the father of modern computing, but without him we'd just have something else and perhaps it would've been a bit later. A different systems programming language and a different operating system everything else is modeled after. High-level programming languages weren't a new concept when he wrote C. Before B they already had Fortran. Funny to call any of those High-level in 2026, but that's the whole importance of C, isn't it? It made writing complex systems easy compared to assembly languages or even fortran.
I'm not gonna bother doing a writeup about Jobs, we all here know he made precisely Jack shit.
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Fabrice Bellard is ten Ronalds.
FFmpeg and QEMU? Holy shit!
I had no idea
and tcc, which while maybe not as 'important', is extremely cool.
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My go to real example is curl
Christopher's Universal Request Library
In case anyone thinks you're serious, that's not what it stands for.
Yeah, its just Chris, dude HATES when people call him Christopher.
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The myth of Steve Jobs needed the actual genius of others to exist. Steve's gift to the world was recognizing and pointing out actual gifts tonthe world that would have otherwise gone unoticed or not brought to their full potential.
If Steve was still around, he would have taken Ronald's idea and had it rebuilt with a little polish and an exorbitant price tag.
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For a long time all systems which deal with timezone data (like ability to convert utc to est for example) was reliant on 1 server in 1 random guy's basement which he paid for himself. I heard they were working to correct this situation but haven't been following it.
You sent me down the exact kind of weird rabbit hole I love. Genuinely thank you.
It's maintained by the IANA now (the same people who basically run the modern Internet, saying what domains are allowed and such for those who don't know). Though Arthur David Olson (the man you mentioned) still contributes his expertise and data.
You're probably thinking of Paul Eggert.
Edit: I was a bit quick to post. The article I linked says Arthur David Olson (mentioned in sibling comment) started the TZ database, with Paul Eggert extending it and maintaining it later. The 2011 lawsuit is also mentioned in the Wikipedia page I just linked.
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The amount of businesses with things you just can't touch for whatever reason is surprising.
The reliance on something made that is barely understood by the entire company makes me think that society will drag on generations after any kind of societal collapse.
Social collapse isn't an exciting day in your life, it's a broad trend historians will puzzle over centuries later. Look at the bronze age collapse for an example.
Some dude in the year 2345 will be shitposting about how we didn't see it coming because we are dumb.
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handles all math on every machine on earth
That's just gmp. The go-to unlimited precision arithmetic library.
I think it’s worth noting there’s few people like Jobs and more like Gates but they’re all psychopaths.
Those were both exploitative business men more than engineers or developers. Jobs wasn't special and there're reasons why Microsoft boosted Gates to be the richest person in the world at one point.
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