<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: ky3</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=ky3</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Fri, 07 Aug 2026 09:22:33 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=ky3" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by ky3 in "The Sylvester–Gallai Theorem"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> the Sierpinski triangle is a counterexample<p>How so? It's bounded by the large initial triangle. The line containing any two of the vertices doesn't intersect any other point.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 07 Aug 2026 07:05:01 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49206883</link><dc:creator>ky3</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49206883</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49206883</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by ky3 in "The Sylvester–Gallai Theorem"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Find one that bridges only two points, no more. Unless ofc you're given a configuration that's obviously impossible: all of them in a line.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 07 Aug 2026 06:51:37 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49206790</link><dc:creator>ky3</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49206790</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49206790</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by ky3 in "The Sylvester–Gallai Theorem"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Maybe this'll help: Every bunch of points on a plane has a lonely bridge. A lonely bridge is a line connecting only two points, no more.<p>Obvious caveat: The points can't all lie in the same line (the collinear condition).<p>Not-so-obvious caveat: There can't be an infinite number of points.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 07 Aug 2026 06:41:17 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49206709</link><dc:creator>ky3</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49206709</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49206709</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by ky3 in "Gemini 3 Deep Think"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>You can ask the LLM to write a prompt for you. Example: "Explore prompts that would have circumvented all the previous misunderstanding."</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 13 Feb 2026 18:01:24 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47005636</link><dc:creator>ky3</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47005636</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47005636</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by ky3 in "Gemini 3 Deep Think"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>LLM to the rescue. Feed in a problem and ask it to explain it to a layperson. Also feed in sentences that remain obscure and ask to unpack.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 13 Feb 2026 17:55:17 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47005561</link><dc:creator>ky3</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47005561</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47005561</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by ky3 in "Using an engineering notebook"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> If you are skipping a step in the procedure, aren't you also possibly going to skip writing a step down?<p>Exactly, so when she reviewed the notebook, she caught the error.<p>Even if she made a slip in the notebook, merely reviewing it helps jog the memory to revisit and replay what she did in the lab. It's the power of touchstones.<p>> What if you have to do several steps rather quickly? Say adding a particular chemical, then waiting for ten seconds and adding, another chemical? Do you have time to write it down?<p>The notebook doesn't always have to operate as a log. It can also operate as a plan of action.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 13 Feb 2026 15:53:22 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47004121</link><dc:creator>ky3</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47004121</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47004121</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by ky3 in "The Day the Telnet Died"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Wouldn't attention to getenv() calls yield more benefit? Such calls are where input typically isn't parsed--because parsing is "hard"--becoming targets for exploit.<p>The present fix is to sanitize user input. Does it cover all cases?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 11 Feb 2026 06:55:20 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46971749</link><dc:creator>ky3</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46971749</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46971749</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by ky3 in "Code is cheap. Show me the talk"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>EWD 1036: On the cruelty of really teaching computing science (1988)<p>“My point today is that, if we wish to count lines of code, we should not regard them as ‘lines produced’ but as ‘lines spent’: the current conventional wisdom is so foolish as to book that count on the wrong side of the ledger.”</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 31 Jan 2026 10:42:50 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46835401</link><dc:creator>ky3</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46835401</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46835401</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by ky3 in "Mathematics for Computer Science (2018) [pdf]"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>For even better measure here's a slice of HN reactions to EWD1094:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46085897">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46085897</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 10 Jan 2026 17:36:20 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46567884</link><dc:creator>ky3</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46567884</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46567884</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by ky3 in "Mathematics for Computer Science (2018) [pdf]"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> Good textbooks have gone through expert reviews and multiple iterations of improvement.<p>That's an assumption increasingly false, unfortunately. The spirit of collegiality has been beaten back.<p>Far better to hone logical skills that sift between fact and error than to rely on social reputation. Ironically we're discussing a text designed to do exactly that.<p>The savvy LLM user already knows to be on the lookout for falsehood, if not bad pedagogy. That's a benefit, not a drawback of LLMs.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 10 Jan 2026 03:56:08 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46562604</link><dc:creator>ky3</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46562604</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46562604</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by ky3 in "Mathematics for Computer Science (2018) [pdf]"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The logical skills to evaluate the output of a LLM are the same skills brought to bear reading any book. What makes you trust this textbook then? Textbooks are not infallible.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 09 Jan 2026 17:50:15 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46556663</link><dc:creator>ky3</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46556663</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46556663</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by ky3 in "Mathematics for Computer Science (2018) [pdf]"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>re: Chapter 15.8 on the so-called pigeonhole principle<p>Following Dijkstra’s EWD1094, here’s a way to solve the hairs-on-heads problem eschewing the language of pigeonholes and employing the fact that the mean is at most the maximum of a non-empty bag of numbers.<p>We are given that Boston has 500,000 non-bald people. The human head has at most 200,000 hairs. Show that there must be at least 3 people in Boston who have the same number of hairs on their head.<p>Each non-bald Bostonian must have a hair count between 1 and 200,000. The average number of such people per hair count is 500,000 / 200,000  = 2.5. The maximum is at least that; moreover, it must be a round number. So the maximum >= 3. QED.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 09 Jan 2026 17:44:39 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46556589</link><dc:creator>ky3</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46556589</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46556589</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by ky3 in "Mathematics for Computer Science (2018) [pdf]"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Such problems are a cakewalk for LLMs, you realize? Lots of didactic activities you could do with LLMs.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 09 Jan 2026 17:15:37 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46556175</link><dc:creator>ky3</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46556175</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46556175</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by ky3 in "Trump says Venezuela’s Maduro captured after strikes"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Which nation did Maduro invade again? Did you confuse Venezuela with Russia?<p>> By that logic the US shouldn’t get involved in any other foreign entanglement or global police action because of unintended consequences.<p>Strawman. No-one is claiming that.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 05 Jan 2026 13:37:28 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46498583</link><dc:creator>ky3</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46498583</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46498583</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by ky3 in "Trump says Venezuela’s Maduro captured after strikes"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Are you arguing two wrongs make a right? This most recent wrong would likely gestate an even worse authoritarian regime than the earlier wrong.<p>Where is the right you're seeing?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 03 Jan 2026 18:24:07 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46479830</link><dc:creator>ky3</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46479830</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46479830</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by ky3 in "Reverse math shows why hard problems are hard"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>A grid with 19 columns is enough. Every column at worst has all 3 colors, one of them used twice. Once we fix that one color, there are C(4,2)=6 ways of filling out the rest of the entries. Since there are 3 colors, there are exactly 6*3=18 worst possible columns. With 19 columns a repetition is guaranteed, yielding the desired rectangle.<p>For fun, try strengthening the result to a square.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 05 Dec 2025 14:27:53 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46161704</link><dc:creator>ky3</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46161704</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46161704</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by ky3 in "The Math Legend Who Just Left Academia–For an AI Startup Run by a 24-Year-Old"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>M&Ms much? There is no finite field with six elements.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 05 Dec 2025 01:40:17 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46155877</link><dc:creator>ky3</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46155877</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46155877</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by ky3 in "Tell HN: I am doing online reading sessions on analytic number theory"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I'm game. Email's in the profile. Aside from HN, do you have other plans on gathering up the numbers?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 06 Mar 2021 21:26:56 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26370660</link><dc:creator>ky3</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26370660</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26370660</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by ky3 in "LenPEG (2017)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>No, I actually mean what I wrote: Not everything that counts can be counted. Take the happiness produced by a piece of software. Can we put a number on it?<p>Contrast Lord Kelvin: “When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it, when you cannot express it in 
numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarely, in your thoughts advanced to the
stage of science.”<p>And also this doozy writ large in our lives: “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.”</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 10 Jan 2021 01:13:35 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25707208</link><dc:creator>ky3</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25707208</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25707208</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by ky3 in "LenPEG (2017)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Worth filing under: Gaming the System, in this case: image compression benchmarks.<p>Not everything that counts can be counted.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 09 Jan 2021 22:53:21 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25705883</link><dc:creator>ky3</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25705883</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25705883</guid></item></channel></rss>