Hacker News: hoyd

New comment by hoyd in "Jeff Dean leaving Alphabet"

hoyd — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 17:00:22 +0000

«Jeff Dean's PIN is the last 4 digits of pi.»

I had not read this before, but told many students the same about my PIN code and I a quiz about the last digits. Love it.

New comment by hoyd in "I joined the IndieWeb, here's what I learned"

hoyd — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 18:17:42 +0000

«Keep the web weird and interesting.»

This made me smile and I agree.

New comment by hoyd in "Becoming a dad changes men's brains"

hoyd — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 14:08:11 +0000

Songs too.

New comment by hoyd in "Becoming a dad changes men's brains"

hoyd — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 14:07:40 +0000

With four kids, I think I have grown more patient with people in general. Also one who got more sentimental.

New comment by hoyd in "Ask HN: What are tools you have made for yourself since the advent of AI?"

hoyd — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 14:18:05 +0000

I would not so much, perhaps look for spelling errors. For me writing the sermon is the goal, diving into the deep and exploring the topic, passage and such. If I preach it, it is kind of a bonus, or a driver to begin with :-)

New comment by hoyd in "Ask HN: What are tools you have made for yourself since the advent of AI?"

hoyd — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 14:15:45 +0000

I could, but I would most likely print out a copy from the pdf export or bring a tablet. ;-)

New comment by hoyd in "Ask HN: What are tools you have made for yourself since the advent of AI?"

hoyd — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 21:35:45 +0000

I have made a TUI tool for organizing and authoring sermons written by myself. It also has a third mode for reading one or two bible versions in parallel. I love the interface and keep adding features to make it easy to navigate in and something that actually helps me to organize and write sermons. Some features are to have notes at specific places in the bible, summaries, notes, exports to html/pdf, metadata for each sermon and autofocus on widgets when changing between the three modes. Happy to work in the terminal this way. :-)

New comment by hoyd in "Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format"

hoyd — Sat, 16 May 2026 08:41:43 +0000

«That feedback loop is breaking. If the visible scoreboard is dominated by teams using AI, a beginner is pushed toward using AI before they have built the instincts the AI is replacing. That is an anti-pattern. It prevents active learning, and active struggle is the bit that actually teaches you. It is also completely demotivating to put in real effort and see no visible progress because the ladder above you has been automated.»

This stands out to me, and speaks perhaps broader than the article itself? I’m sure this has been in the spotlight before, but well put for many areas I think.

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.