Hacker News: martinhath

Answers at the Back of the Book

martinhath — Wed, 28 Oct 2026 11:09:17 +0000

Article URL: https://mmapped.blog/posts/53-answers-from-the-book

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50271687

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by martinhath in "Three new discoveries in mathematics, computer science, and physics"

martinhath — Mon, 26 Oct 2026 23:11:38 +0000

ETH is false! This is one of the big long-standing hypotheses that I actually remember from university, and afaik, it was reasonable to assume it would be true; reasonable enough for a lot of papers and results to assume this for bounds or hardness proofs of common problems in parameterized complexity, anyways.

Also glad to see that one of the authors of the paper stating it is also in the loop here.

2026 is weird.

New comment by martinhath in "Reverse Jevons Paradox"

martinhath — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 08:26:03 +0000

> Jevons paradox occurs when a more efficient use of a resource leads to an increase in its use

I think these are the same, because efficiency is value over cost. In the original formulation of the paradox, a more efficient steam engine lead to a rise in coal consumption. You can look at this as a "money buys coal, coal drives locomotion" system, where the latter part was improved. Modulo practical issues with coal (transport, storage, etc), dropping the price of coal would (probably?) lead to the same effect, since the end result is that locomotion per money is increased. For an outside observer, it doesn't matter if you get more coal per money or more locomotion per coal.

> standard supply and demand

Standard supply and demand doesn't say anything about increase of spend. If food prices drop, I'm not going to buy more food. I might buy better food for the same budget, but there's no reason why my total food spend should increase.

Reverse Jevons Paradox

martinhath — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 22:04:18 +0000

Article URL: https://mht.wtf/post/jevons/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49162080

Points: 62

# Comments: 58

Four months of Ruby Central moving Ruby backward

martinhath — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 13:33:55 +0000

Article URL: https://andre.arko.net/2026/03/03/four-months-of-ruby-central-moving-ruby-backward/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47232085

Points: 15

# Comments: 5

Trillion Dollar Elephants

martinhath — Mon, 08 Sep 2025 11:19:44 +0000

Article URL: https://dbushell.com/2025/09/08/trillion-dollar-elephants/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45166944

Points: 4

# Comments: 0

Building a Better Web Takes a Village

martinhath — Sat, 06 Sep 2025 09:15:38 +0000

Article URL: https://blog.kagi.com/kagi-specials

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45147786

Points: 4

# Comments: 0

Navigate Gates

martinhath — Sun, 27 Jul 2025 19:17:40 +0000

Article URL: https://mht.wtf/post/navigate/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44703783

Points: 9

# Comments: 0

The Rise of Fluid Teams

martinhath — Mon, 21 Jul 2025 09:35:26 +0000

Article URL: https://blog.pwkf.org/2025/fluid-teams.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44633310

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

AIcohol

martinhath — Sun, 06 Jul 2025 20:26:19 +0000

Article URL: https://mht.wtf/post/aicohol/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44483748

Points: 7

# Comments: 0

Armin Ronacher – Claude Code Fixes Two MiniJinja Issues [video]

martinhath — Sun, 08 Jun 2025 17:24:58 +0000

Article URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQYXZCUvpIc

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44218268

Points: 1

# Comments: 1

New comment by martinhath in "Rust's Two Kinds of 'Assert' Make for Better Code"

martinhath — Sun, 24 Nov 2024 11:38:15 +0000

This is from C.A.R Hoare's "Prospects for a better programming language" (1972) [0]:

> It is on production runs that the security is most required, since it is the results of production runs that will actually be trusted as the basis of actions such as expenditure of money and perhaps even lives. The strategy now recommended to many programmers is equivalent to that of a sailor who wears a lifejacket during his training on dry land but takes it off when he is sailing his boat on the sea. It is small wonder that computers acquire a bad reputation when programmed in accordance with this common policy.

It is also quoted by Donald Knuth in "Structured programming with goto statements" (1974) [1] ( which incidentally is also the source of the quote about premature optimization):

> He [Tony Hoare] points out quite correctly that the current practice of compiling subscript range checks into the machine code while a program is being tested, then suppressing the check during production runs, is like a sailor who wears his life preserver while training on land but leaves it behind when he sails!

[0]: https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:dff9483b-e72f-4599-bf90-76... p. 341

[1]: https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/356635.356640 p. 269

Comments are gray and it's weird

martinhath — Mon, 30 Sep 2024 20:33:04 +0000

Article URL: https://mht.wtf/post/comments/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41701775

Points: 4

# Comments: 4

Simplicity as a Value

martinhath — Sat, 11 Nov 2023 11:13:36 +0000

Article URL: https://mht.wtf/post/simplicity/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38229268

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

Finitecurve.com: TSP art on a CPU budget

martinhath — Tue, 07 Nov 2023 10:02:45 +0000

Article URL: https://www.vidarholen.net/contents/blog/?p=1062

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38175100

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Eisenhower Vectors

martinhath — Sun, 29 Oct 2023 17:17:50 +0000

Article URL: https://thesquareplanet.com/blog/eisenhower-vectors/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38060638

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

Searching High and Flow

martinhath — Sun, 29 Oct 2023 17:16:57 +0000

Article URL: https://mht.wtf/post/flow/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38060634

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by martinhath in "Error Handling in Zig"

martinhath — Sun, 06 Aug 2023 15:16:37 +0000

How would errdefer work in the general union setting?

Having errors as a first class construct in the language allows things like errdefer to be very simple and easy to use. It looks needlessly specialised at first, but I think it’s actually a really good design.

New comment by martinhath in "Why early modern books are so beautiful"

martinhath — Thu, 03 Aug 2023 19:27:50 +0000

I’m pretty sure it’s intentionally a dark pattern.

New comment by martinhath in "Zig now has built-in HTTP server and client in std"

martinhath — Thu, 18 May 2023 20:26:29 +0000

Not just in theory, they can, and do, fail in practice.