Hacker News: chacha21

New comment by chacha21 in "[dead]"

chacha21 — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 19:46:00 +0000

A study about black holes that highlights mathematical errors from the very beginning, already mentioned by some scientists in the past, but never really considered seriously.

Another model is proposed to describe the cosmologic objects currently considered as black holes.

New comment by chacha21 in "Show HN: Unsure Calculator – back-of-a-napkin probabilistic calculator"

chacha21 — Wed, 16 Apr 2025 06:01:44 +0000

Chalk also supports uncertainty : https://chachatelier.fr/chalk/chalk-features.php (combined with arbitrary long numbers and interval arithmetic)

New comment by chacha21 in "“A calculator app? Anyone could make that”"

chacha21 — Sun, 16 Feb 2025 21:36:43 +0000

I share a lot of thoughts with that, and built my own calculator, too A calculator that gives right instead of wrong answers

https://chachatelier.fr/chalk/chalk-home.php

I tried to explain what was going on https://chachatelier.fr/chalk/article/chalk.html, but it's not a very popular topic :-)

New comment by chacha21 in "Calculators now emulated at Internet Archive"

chacha21 — Sun, 29 Jan 2023 15:08:21 +0000

Desktop calculators are the best. Shame on computers !

https://chachatelier.fr/chalk/article/chalk.html#toc-14

New comment by chacha21 in "2-in-1 calculator app adds up to surprise hit for retired engineer"

chacha21 — Tue, 20 Sep 2022 13:15:04 +0000

Most people didn't understand that my goal was not to benchmark all existing calculator apps. It is on purpose that I did not mention all "pretty good" softwares, because I cannot know them all.

The article I wrote wants to mention every point that should be adressed (in my opinion) to make a good calculator. Qalculate, like many others, does address some of them.

But as far as I know, only Chalk addresses all of them.

New comment by chacha21 in "2-in-1 calculator app adds up to surprise hit for retired engineer"

chacha21 — Tue, 20 Sep 2022 06:00:18 +0000

An opportunity to post again my thoughts about software calculators !

https://chachatelier.fr/chalk/article/chalk.html

New comment by chacha21 in "Show HN: All desktop software calculators are wrong, so I had to build my own"

chacha21 — Tue, 08 Mar 2022 07:52:24 +0000

Let's say that : if you do not use arithmetic interval, at some point your floating point computations will be wrong and misleading if you do not carry information about how much bits are garbage. Chalk does that.

New comment by chacha21 in "Show HN: All desktop software calculators are wrong, so I had to build my own"

chacha21 — Tue, 08 Mar 2022 07:15:53 +0000

You can achieve that, this is a preference of Chalk about what should be the next input

New comment by chacha21 in "Show HN: All desktop software calculators are wrong, so I had to build my own"

chacha21 — Tue, 08 Mar 2022 07:14:35 +0000

Just a zip on the web page

New comment by chacha21 in "Show HN: All desktop software calculators are wrong, so I had to build my own"

chacha21 — Tue, 08 Mar 2022 07:13:28 +0000

RPN is just an option (provided by Chalk). The "minimalist" GUI is just the introduction of the full article. You have to reach <https://chachatelier.fr/chalk/article/chalk.html#toc-36> to go deeper into numerical problems of usual softwares.

Once again, Chalk is not the best software ever, it is just what I have to build myself to fix the problems I usually encounter. Not to say that all other softwares are equally bad, but to my knowledge, none of them will address as much limitations at the same time.

New comment by chacha21 in "Show HN: All desktop software calculators are wrong, so I had to build my own"

chacha21 — Tue, 08 Mar 2022 07:08:27 +0000

Chalk is kind of robust, I am surprise you hit a bug at first use. Go to <https://chachatelier.fr/chalk/chalk-contact.php> for bug reports

New comment by chacha21 in "Show HN: All desktop software calculators are wrong, so I had to build my own"

chacha21 — Tue, 08 Mar 2022 07:05:05 +0000

Thanks ! There were so many things to say that I was afraid nobody would read up to the end. GUI is only the visible part of the iceberg. Number representation (to keep exact values), accuracy, interval arithmetics... are hard to introduce in the first place.

New comment by chacha21 in "Show HN: All desktop software calculators are wrong, so I had to build my own"

chacha21 — Tue, 08 Mar 2022 07:02:30 +0000

Chalk has an option to use RPN

New comment by chacha21 in "Show HN: All desktop software calculators are wrong, so I had to build my own"

chacha21 — Mon, 07 Mar 2022 21:21:22 +0000

Thanks, I have added some more "mobile compliant" CSS styles.

New comment by chacha21 in "Show HN: All desktop software calculators are wrong, so I had to build my own"

chacha21 — Mon, 07 Mar 2022 21:16:56 +0000

Even with numbers only, it can still be useful to know how wrong the result is. Chalk keeps track of every inaccuracy when dealing with decimal numbers.

New comment by chacha21 in "Show HN: All desktop software calculators are wrong, so I had to build my own"

chacha21 — Mon, 07 Mar 2022 20:50:18 +0000

I don't use Emacs, but I feel that people should just have access to a decent calculator without digging developer forums. As good as Emacs Calc is, we can admit that it's unlikely to be seen as an easy-to-find lightweight tool.

New comment by chacha21 in "Show HN: All desktop software calculators are wrong, so I had to build my own"

chacha21 — Mon, 07 Mar 2022 20:49:02 +0000

I agree, but as good as it is, this is not where people would like to find a good calculator.

New comment by chacha21 in "Show HN: All desktop software calculators are wrong, so I had to build my own"

chacha21 — Mon, 07 Mar 2022 20:29:06 +0000

Thanks to Show HN I will be given tons of links to softwares I would never have found by myself :-)

New comment by chacha21 in "Show HN: All desktop software calculators are wrong, so I had to build my own"

chacha21 — Mon, 07 Mar 2022 19:05:12 +0000

You know what ? I was not even aware that it would work ! (Am I the only one to discover that just now ? I am not using Spotlight very often)

It's kind of cool, but I can still find many grievances about the way it's done :-)

New comment by chacha21 in "Show HN: All desktop software calculators are wrong, so I had to build my own"

chacha21 — Mon, 07 Mar 2022 18:55:56 +0000

We will somewhat disagree, partly because I can't help using calculators as a scientist, so my opinion is particularly biased. However, I don't like the trend to hide everything that looks technical. On the long run, letting people play with advanced features (that won't break things) is a win-win.