<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Hacker News: irchans</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=irchans</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Mon, 06 Apr 2026 05:42:56 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=irchans" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by irchans in "Herbie: Automatically improve imprecise floating point formulas"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>How about:<p>(* Mathematica Notation, Assume x>0 <i>)
If[  x < 10^(-10),  1+ x/2,   (</i> order x^2 error <i>)
   If[ x> 10^10, Sqrt[x],     (</i> order 1/Sqrt[x] error <i>)
       (</i>else<i>)  Sqrt[x +1] ] ]
(</i> I guess the If statements take too much time.  *)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 04 Apr 2026 14:24:52 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47639337</link><dc:creator>irchans</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47639337</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47639337</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by irchans in "Artemis II is not safe to fly"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Us humans do have difficulty with safety.  Sometimes we are able to overcome that problem to an extent.  Here are some the few examples where humans have done well with safety:  FAA commercial airlines, Soyuz, ISS, Shinkansen trains, US Nuclear power post 3 mile island, Vaccines, and the Falcon 9.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 31 Mar 2026 13:42:44 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47587283</link><dc:creator>irchans</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47587283</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47587283</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by irchans in "Reports of code's death are greatly exaggerated"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I think that finding proofs for open mathematical questions should count as critical thought.  (See  <a href="https://medium.com/%40cognidownunder/three-erdős-problems-fell-in-seven-days-and-terence-tao-verified-every-proof-himself-1a1ff4399bc6" rel="nofollow">https://medium.com/%40cognidownunder/three-erdős-problems-fe...</a>)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 23 Mar 2026 14:56:45 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47490410</link><dc:creator>irchans</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47490410</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47490410</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by irchans in "Reports of code's death are greatly exaggerated"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>AI makes it possible for someone who has never written code to generate a program that does what they want.  One of my friends wanted to simulate a 7,9 against a dealer 10 upcard in the card game blackjack.  GPT was able to write the simulation for him in javascript/html.  So it took a 0.001x coder and turned him into a 0.2x coder.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 23 Mar 2026 14:52:28 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47490358</link><dc:creator>irchans</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47490358</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47490358</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by irchans in "Reports of code's death are greatly exaggerated"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This morning a person posted a question to the Reddit group r/Mathematica (<a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Mathematica/comments/1s1fin2/can_homeomorphism_exists_between_one_point/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/Mathematica/comments/1s1fin2/can_ho...</a>).<p>I asked GPT to write code to address their question and the code was quite acceptable drawing the circle and finding the correct intersection point.  It would have take me about 40 minutes to write the code, so I would not have done it myself.<p>Currently, GPT is great for writing short programs.  The results often have a bug or two that is easy to fix, but it's much faster to have GPT write the code.  This works fine for projects that are less than 100 lines of code where you just want something that works.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 23 Mar 2026 14:42:57 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47490235</link><dc:creator>irchans</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47490235</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47490235</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by irchans in "Venn Diagram for 7 Sets"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Type "Polar plot 6 curves of the form  r = (1 + Sin[2^(k - 1) t]/2^(k - 1))    where k =1, 2, .., 6  and t=0 to 2 Pi  each curve should be a different color" into ChatGPT5.<p><a href="https://chatgpt.com/share/690f675d-c340-8013-b598-41fe487b4ea1" rel="nofollow">https://chatgpt.com/share/690f675d-c340-8013-b598-41fe487b4e...</a><p>It has the nice properties that you can do any number of sets (in theory) and all the boundary intersections are either osculating or perpendicular.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 08 Nov 2025 16:02:50 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45857625</link><dc:creator>irchans</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45857625</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45857625</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by irchans in "Venn Diagram for 7 Sets"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I think this 6 set Venn Diagram is nice because I made it.   :)<p><a href="http://162.243.213.31/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Ven3.png" rel="nofollow">http://162.243.213.31/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Ven3.png</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 08 Nov 2025 02:05:39 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45853424</link><dc:creator>irchans</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45853424</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45853424</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by irchans in "Using information theory to solve Mastermind"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> I became a mathematician. From this childhood exposure, entropy was the first mathematical "concept" beyond arithmetic that I understood.<p>Very cool.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 27 Aug 2025 21:06:47 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45045288</link><dc:creator>irchans</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45045288</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45045288</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by irchans in ""Privacy preserving age verification" is bullshit"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>So, I think that I can avoid a lot of the data leak problems.<p>There might be a simple way to do this with a crypto-currency.  If possession of a credit card is considered proof of age, then possession of cryptocurrency should also be considered proof of age.  Maybe the user could play $0.01 to the porn site using crypto currency to prove that he is over 18.  If done properly, no one, not even the government, would know who the user was.<p>Here is another idea.<p>You have independent stores where the clerks can sell proof-of-age certificates to people.  These certificates are essentially just 20 random Base64 characters.  By law, the independent stores are not allowed to identify the customer (who pays with cash).  The store clerk is only permitted to issue certificates to people who appear to be over the age of 18, no id required.  The store keeps a list of every certificate that they have sold along with the month in which the certificate was sold so that the certificates can expire after several months.<p>Now I claim that it is possible to create open source zero knowledge proof software that runs on a server for each store, a few government certifying authorities, the porn websites, and on the users computer so that as long as the stores don't identify the users, no one will be able to identify the user.  The government will not be able to tell which certificate was used to access the porn.  The government will not have access to the certificates.  It will not be able to tell which store issued the certificate.  The porn site will not learn the certificate of the user nor will it know his identity.<p>Also, the number of lines of code needed for each program of the five needed open source programs will be less than 1000 lines, maybe less than 100 lines.<p>I think that all of this could be done at a cost of about $50,000 to develop the software plus the cost of running the servers.  I feel like I could write all the code for less than that.<p>The system is not perfect.  You have to trust the stores to not identify the customers and to do a decent job of identifying who is over the age of 18.
Some kids will get certificates by copying their parent's code or copying the code of an older friend.  Some 16 year olds will look like they are 18 and they will be able to buy proof of age certificates.  But, over 80% of kids under 17 will not be able to view porn.<p>Despite the low cost and effectiveness of the idea above, I am not sure that it is a good idea.  I don't like the government censoring content.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 15 Aug 2025 14:55:07 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44913215</link><dc:creator>irchans</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44913215</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44913215</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by irchans in ""Privacy preserving age verification" is bullshit"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Even after reading the article, I think there are reasonable ways to set up a low cost system that uses zero-knowledge proofs to "prove" your age without disclosing your identity.  I do think that you will need trusted entities and the system will only stop most, maybe 80 or 90 percent of children under 18 from seeing porn.  But, if you do this, then maybe 99% of kids under the age of 14 will have a lot of difficulty viewing porn which is a good thing.  There may be valid a slippery slope argument for not setting up the age validation system even if everything I said above is true.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 14 Aug 2025 19:41:44 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44904719</link><dc:creator>irchans</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44904719</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44904719</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by irchans in "Steve Wozniak: Life to me was never about accomplishment, but about happiness"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>My son accidentally brought a knife to school at age 12 -- maybe a 4 inch blade.  When he realized that he had a knife in his backpack, he told his teacher.  He was suspended from school for about 3 days and we had a fairly pleasant conversation with the principal after the suspension.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 14 Aug 2025 19:21:40 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44904498</link><dc:creator>irchans</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44904498</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44904498</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by irchans in "To be a better programmer, write little proofs in your head"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>When I was in eighth grade my advanced algebra teacher said "I wonder if you always did your homework in pen, would you make fewer mistakes."  That was 45 years ago.  Now I am a mathematician and I have done 95% of my math in pen since then.  I'm not sure how much it helped, but as you said maybe I think a bit more before I write because I don't like scratching out mistakes.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 17 Jul 2025 11:35:32 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44592151</link><dc:creator>irchans</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44592151</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44592151</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by irchans in "To be a better programmer, write little proofs in your head"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This might be the best article that I have read this year.  It might change the way that I program.  I really want to write up examples for each of the ideas presented:  Monotonicity, Pre- and post-conditions, Invariants, Isolation, Induction, and Proof-affinity as a quality metric.  I think it's easy to find these ideas in my code, but I want to try to practice writing proofs "in my head" as I code to make my code better.  It is not apparent to me now how this will work, but if I write up some examples, I imagine it will become clearer.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 16 Jul 2025 14:12:57 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44582611</link><dc:creator>irchans</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44582611</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44582611</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by irchans in "Rules of good writing (2007)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Forth :)     It's been like 30 years since I the last time I wrote a Forth program that was more than 10 lines long---fond memories.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 09 Jul 2025 13:19:48 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44509713</link><dc:creator>irchans</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44509713</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44509713</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by irchans in "Rules of good writing (2007)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I believer there is an error in<p>"Readers comprehend “the boy hit the ball” quicker than “the ball was hit by the boy.” Both sentences mean the same, but it’s easier to imagine the object (the boy) before the action (the hitting). All brains work that way. (Notice I didn’t say, “That is the way all brains work”?)".<p>It should be, "the SUBJECT (the boy) before the action (the hitting)."  (I added caps for emphasis.)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 09 Jul 2025 01:43:09 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44505594</link><dc:creator>irchans</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44505594</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44505594</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by irchans in "Reflections on Sudoku, or the Impossibility of Systematizing Thought"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I also wrote a brute force, kinda dumb, depth-first Suduoku solver.  I think it took me a few hours in C or C++.  At every node in the search tree, I just checked to make sure no constraints were violated.  If I remember correctly, it would run in less than 30 seconds and it would always find a solution if a solution existed.  (It might have been a lot less than 30 seconds.  I only remember thinking, "That was quick".)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 12 Jun 2025 17:20:46 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44260259</link><dc:creator>irchans</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44260259</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44260259</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by irchans in "The Race to Decipher Cuneiform in the 19th Century"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The article is a very enjoyable history of how Cuneiform was deciphered by a small group of often competing scholars.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 23 Mar 2025 13:31:13 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43452820</link><dc:creator>irchans</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43452820</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43452820</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by irchans in "How do you process the news?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Oh yes, I also will listen to NPR and other radio news when I'm driving.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 09 Mar 2025 17:29:32 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43311421</link><dc:creator>irchans</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43311421</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43311421</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by irchans in "How do you process the news?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I forgot.  I also watch NBC Nightly News and "What about it?" on YouTube.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 09 Mar 2025 17:23:34 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43311344</link><dc:creator>irchans</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43311344</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43311344</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by irchans in "How do you process the news?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Mostly I read Slashdot, HN, and the Wall Street Journal.  I read the Economist when I feel like paying for it (sometimes I get a deal like $50 for the digital version for a year).  I did Ground News for a year.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 09 Mar 2025 17:21:34 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43311315</link><dc:creator>irchans</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43311315</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43311315</guid></item></channel></rss>