Hacker News: hoyd

New comment by hoyd in "Lost Doctor Who Episodes Found"

hoyd — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 06:48:30 +0000

Perhaps the doctor meant for these to be lost and not found, or that the daleks was afraid of them?

New comment by hoyd in "Unseen Footage of Atari Battlezone Arcade Cabinet Production"

hoyd — Sun, 08 Feb 2026 15:04:56 +0000

This is what the internet is about, finding blogs and stumbling over pages like this with such content. Thanks!

New comment by hoyd in "Hackers (1995) Animated Experience"

hoyd — Sat, 07 Feb 2026 15:14:52 +0000

Sounds like something I would do too. Awesomeness

New comment by hoyd in "Ask HN: Share your personal website"

hoyd — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 19:46:44 +0000

https://blog.hoyd.net

New comment by hoyd in "Mistral OCR 3"

hoyd — Sat, 20 Dec 2025 19:57:42 +0000

Voynich manuscript next :-)

New comment by hoyd in "Bot vs. Bot: Will the Internet Soon Be a Place Without Humans? (2018)"

hoyd — Wed, 30 Jul 2025 09:45:56 +0000

Interesting to read this article again now, after the raise of LLMs. The bot vs. bot then could perhaps be read as llm vs. llm today?

"The paradox is that this bot glut could eventually push most human interaction offline again; news (real news, that is) will be shared by talking, jobs will be found through connections, and friends will discover major life updates about one another at events and reunions. This is the best case. Another option is that we will have bot-free zones online."

"As more components of our lives become automated, we may want to give some extra thought to which of our routine human interactions are ok to reduce to a bot, and which are worth doing the old-fashioned way, with our own voices, hands, and eyes."

Bot vs. Bot: Will the Internet Soon Be a Place Without Humans? (2018)

hoyd — Wed, 30 Jul 2025 09:45:56 +0000

Article URL: https://singularityhub.com/2018/07/07/bot-vs-bot-will-the-internet-soon-be-a-place-without-humans/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44732420

Points: 2

# Comments: 1

New comment by hoyd in "Unusual distribution of steps needed to reach Kaprekar's constant (6174)"

hoyd — Sun, 01 Jun 2025 19:31:41 +0000

In the distribution of the number of steps needed to reach Kaprekar's constant (6174), I observe an unexpected distribution pattern, with three steps being the most common number of steps required. I cannot think of why this is the case. Has anyone done some though about this phenomenon?

Ask HN: Unusual distribution of steps needed to reach Kaprekar's constant (6174)

hoyd — Sun, 01 Jun 2025 19:31:41 +0000

Article URL: https://earth.hoyd.net/posts/the-distribution-of-the-number-of-steps-to-kaprekars-constant/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44153221

Points: 1

# Comments: 1

Can LLMs Aid in Deciphering the Voynich Manuscript?

hoyd — Sun, 25 May 2025 22:25:07 +0000

Article URL: https://viao.co.uk/blog/can-large-language-models-aid

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44091781

Points: 5

# Comments: 0

New comment by hoyd in "Ask HN: Unusual distribution of steps needed to reach Kaprekar's constant (6174)"

hoyd — Fri, 07 Mar 2025 21:10:54 +0000

Sure, here is a translated post:

Title: Distribution of the Number of Steps to Kaprekar's Constant

We are trying Kaprekar's routine.

I choose a four-digit number with at least two different digits: 2345. We find the largest possible variant 5432 and the smallest possible variant 2345 from the digits and begin the routine...

5432 - 2345 = 3087 8730 - 0378 = 8352 8532 - 2358 = 6174

We have arrived at Kaprekar's constant: 6174 after 3 steps.

This is fine. If I now do this on all possible four-digit numbers, the number of steps required before 6174 is reached is distributed as follows:

The diagram showing the distribution of steps: https://earth.hoyd.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/kaprekars_...

This distribution seems a bit strange and not entirely intuitive. I immediately feel that the distribution should have been more evenly distributed.

Perhaps not evenly, but I think that one step to 6174 should be rarer than seven steps, shouldn't it? It has to do with the calculation i guess. There are a limited number of combinations where the result is 6174 on the first attempt. It feels a bit obvious and matches the diagram above. It slowly rises towards seven steps, is that to be expected?

What I find most strange is that three steps tops all others. Why is that? Why is there such a large presence of three? What does it mean? I would very much like to find an explanation for this.

New comment by hoyd in "Ask HN: Unusual distribution of steps needed to reach Kaprekar's constant (6174)"

hoyd — Wed, 05 Mar 2025 12:58:12 +0000

Sorry about that. The post itself isn't relevant, it's just the plot from it I refer to.

Ask HN: Unusual distribution of steps needed to reach Kaprekar's constant (6174)

hoyd — Tue, 04 Mar 2025 09:51:42 +0000

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43252570

Points: 2

# Comments: 5

New comment by hoyd in "Knitting Your Parachute"

hoyd — Tue, 25 Feb 2025 22:48:05 +0000

On the side, from the title I was picturing actual knitted parachutes, which isn't the first time. At work, we had a student cansat team who did just that. To everyone's surprise, it worked better than regular ones. Here is a video where she explains it.

https://www.esero.no/prosjekter/cansat/ https://vimeo.com/866239028

New comment by hoyd in "Some terminal frustrations"

hoyd — Sun, 09 Feb 2025 23:38:02 +0000

Same

New comment by hoyd in "VS Code Pets"

hoyd — Sat, 18 Jan 2025 23:19:59 +0000

Reminded me of that too.

New comment by hoyd in "Google is making AI in Gmail and Docs free, but raising the price of Workspace"

hoyd — Wed, 15 Jan 2025 16:53:42 +0000

Do you happen to have a link for that comic?

Microfortnight

hoyd — Mon, 30 Dec 2024 20:39:30 +0000

Article URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FFF_system

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42553251

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by hoyd in "Classic Computer Magazines"

hoyd — Sun, 22 Dec 2024 16:40:45 +0000

Of computer magazines today, I can only think of Hello World. Not a gaming magazine, but still.

New comment by hoyd in "Three hundred words you can spell on a calculator [pdf]"

hoyd — Fri, 22 Nov 2024 21:50:00 +0000

This was right up my alley, and inspired by this post, I had to check against the norwegian scrabble dictionary: https://earth.hoyd.net/posts/ord-du-kan-stave-med-en-kalkula...