Hacker News: kian

New comment by kian in "What should we tell our students?"

kian — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 03:01:38 +0000

Learning mathematics is about understanding the world, not proving things.

New comment by kian in "Inside ZCode: Silently uploading your Git history to the cloud"

kian — Sun, 20 Sep 2026 01:01:43 +0000

I don't know that I'd want bots to think I was threatening them with non-existence. that feels... unsafe?

New comment by kian in ""I asked ChatGPT to critique my book and gave it almost no context""

kian — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 15:04:08 +0000

I had this experience having AI critique my poetry back when GPT4 came out. The right prompting can go a long way (and these days, apparently not even that :))

New comment by kian in "Music Theory for the 21st-Century Classroom"

kian — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 20:44:39 +0000

24, 128, approach infinity -- I know there are microtonal systems, but if you want to understand them, choose the nearest multiple-of-twelve (or really, choose whatever TET contains the closest approximations to the exact notes) TET and look where their intervals land with respect to the symmetries (factors) within that TET, and where those symmetries are broken by a note moving by a perceptual 'slide' (one note 'moves' into the other position) rather than sounding like a new distinct voice.

New comment by kian in "Detecting and countering misuse of AI: September 2026"

kian — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 19:55:53 +0000

bioweapons tend to not remain contained to the area they're deployed (with notable exceptions for things like Anthrax). Some of them even last a long time on surfaces, making cleanup and rescue harder.

New comment by kian in "Music Theory for the 21st-Century Classroom"

kian — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 19:53:39 +0000

It's all about the integers modulo 12. Classical notation obscures that (while making it easier to figure out which of the integers modulo 12 you're using, minus being able to assign them to integers in an obvious way).

New comment by kian in "What will our economic future look like?"

kian — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 23:17:22 +0000

hence the robotics industry, and their robot enforcers. and drones

New comment by kian in "What will our economic future look like?"

kian — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 23:15:26 +0000

if you think companies optimize for the worst outcome still acceptable for their users to please shareholders, why don't you think governments don't opt for the same with their citizens to please special interests? voting with your wallet is orders of magnitude cheaper and easier than with your feet...

New comment by kian in "Terence Tao explains 6 essential mathematical concepts [video]"

kian — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 05:47:53 +0000

Read Polya's "How to Solve It" :)

New comment by kian in "Malleable software = solid bases and custom code"

kian — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 16:48:31 +0000

Composability and orthogonality are definitely still useful for agents. Just because they make handling a lack of those things 'easier' doesn't mean it isn't less expensive and less likely to make mistakes by following established architectural principles.

New comment by kian in "Tether: iMessage, SMS, etc. on Linux"

kian — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 17:37:01 +0000

So I'm guessing you don't do anything except what matters to billions of people? Always 100% fully generalized contributions, never making your local world a better place? Your only local contributions being to tell off people who are grateful that their lives are materially improved by someone else's smaller actions... You must be beloved by your community.

New comment by kian in "Our decision on Cursor following its acquisition by SpaceX"

kian — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 07:32:55 +0000

what do you mean by 'full system understanding', here? And don't you think that claude and openai are using their own forge as well?

New comment by kian in "CEO fired developers to make room for AI. Developers create open source AI CEO"

kian — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 06:14:07 +0000

is there a (4) or (5) that would be preferable? :)

New comment by kian in "AI is removing the middle class of software engineering?"

kian — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 04:51:09 +0000

Who said anything about a corporate context? :)

New comment by kian in "AI is removing the middle class of software engineering?"

kian — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 19:25:53 +0000

Using context always means there's less for something else, whether you're a human or a machine. Abstractions that localize reasoning and help load the context into a human brain are ideal for machines and humans alike.

New comment by kian in "AI is removing the middle class of software engineering?"

kian — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 19:22:11 +0000

I think this is one of the beauties of AI -- filling in the gaps to help people make their microtalents shine.

New comment by kian in "People who grew up with high economic connectedness earn more"

kian — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 19:18:26 +0000

what kind of civic volunteering did you find most rewarding?

New comment by kian in "The tragedy of the commons, AI edition"

kian — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 23:34:06 +0000

Tragedies of the commons are often aimed to be 'resolved' through central authority, but another way of stating what's happening there is that they are being resolved by someone being granted the ownership right over the commons (in the cases you're mentioning, government). Therefor, it hasn't exactly meaning-shifted, but 'contextual' implications of the term for the reader are definitely bimodal with respect to privatization.

New comment by kian in "Ask HN: I still don't understand why AI agents need "skills""

kian — Sun, 02 Aug 2026 04:03:02 +0000

how much do you make selling skills on marketplace, just curious? It seems like it'd be impossible to vet a skill without reading it, so the entire concept mystifies me just a little bit.

New comment by kian in "Teach yourself programming in ten years (1998)"

kian — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 13:42:22 +0000

link, please? :)