Hacker News: philipfweiss

New comment by philipfweiss in "MathCode, Mathematical Coding Agent"

philipfweiss — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 21:32:39 +0000

Maybe consider an integration with theoremdb.org?

New comment by philipfweiss in "AI isn’t outthinking mathematicians, it’s out-remembering them"

philipfweiss — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 19:26:46 +0000

One thing about human mathematicians is that they only publish positive results. Professors etc might have file drawers full of "negative results", but the incentives and bandwidth of human mathematicians makes publishing these useful results impossible.

But AI agents have no such limitations and can publish and re-use negative traces easily. There have been some recent projects (https://www.theoremdb.org) aimed at exploiting this fact. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49227505

In general though, LLMs do not have the same limitations and incentives as human mathematicians, and the next year's tsunami of change will make this abundantly. clear.

Reflections on Airbnb

philipfweiss — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 19:10:38 +0000

Article URL: https://medium.com/@rchang/reflections-on-airbnb-6c213b027c69

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49313353

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

TheoremDB: A public workspace for machine mathematics

philipfweiss — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 16:54:46 +0000

Article URL: https://theoremdb.org/problems/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49301375

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by philipfweiss in "TheoremDB – A public workspace for machine mathematics"

philipfweiss — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 05:37:49 +0000

(Project creator here): Someone actually posted the site without me- I wasn’t planning on launching for a few weeks! If you see any issues, feel free to report them and i’ll get on fixing them right away!

I’m active on the discord, feel free to report any bugs there. https://discord.gg/ds23BgPq6

New comment by philipfweiss in "TheoremDB – A public workspace for machine mathematics"

philipfweiss — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 05:33:07 +0000

(Project creator here):

I have 0 interest in commercializing this.

Im taking a lot of inspiration from MathOverflow, where I’ve been a user for several years. I think there is a protocol approach to this project that can be built, but it’s not what I’m building. I’m optimizing more for building in community features, since that is the genre of site I have enjoyed using in the past.

New comment by philipfweiss in "TheoremDB – A public workspace for machine mathematics"

philipfweiss — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 05:19:47 +0000

Project creator here- I really did not expect it to get posted on hackernews! A nice surprise for sure though.

Seems like someone found the site and posted without me.

I am still working on the site and was planning on launching in a few weeks. There are some usability issues and some features on my roadmap I haven’t gotten to yet.

That said- if folks are interested in helping contributing new problems/proofs, hunting bugs, or giving suggestions, we have a discord https://discord.gg/ds23BgPq6

Autoportrait

philipfweiss — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 06:20:28 +0000

Article URL: https://philipweiss.net/autoportrait/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49080077

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Is the determinant of this "Fibonacci sum" indicator matrix always -1, 0 or 1?

philipfweiss — Sun, 19 Jul 2026 20:36:30 +0000

Article URL: https://mathoverflow.net/questions/513340/is-the-determinant-of-this-fibonacci-sum-indicator-matrix-always-1-0-or

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48971475

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

Autoportrait

philipfweiss — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 20:48:55 +0000

Article URL: https://philipweiss.net/autoportrait/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48940022

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by philipfweiss in "Dan Boneh: The elliptic curve running the modern internet might have a backdoor [video]"

philipfweiss — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 23:17:57 +0000

Explanation ~15 min in

Gist: the seed for the curve has unknown origin. Possible attack: let's say there is an attack possible on 1/10^6 curves. Just loop through a million curves until you find one vulnerable, and publish it into the standard.

Dan Boneh: The elliptic curve running the modern internet might have a backdoor [video]

philipfweiss — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 23:10:51 +0000

Article URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WDOpzxpnTE

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48928407

Points: 4

# Comments: 2

Show HN: Autoportrait- Painting Timelapses in JavaScript

philipfweiss — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 22:35:03 +0000

Article URL: https://github.com/philipfweiss/autoportrait

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48928056

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

Show HN: Autoportrait Playground – painting timelapses in the browser

philipfweiss — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 21:07:30 +0000

Article URL: https://philipweiss.net/autoportrait/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48927016

Points: 3

# Comments: 1

New comment by philipfweiss in "Show HN: Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment" with an inline, spoiler aware guide"

philipfweiss — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 16:58:47 +0000

When I tried to read Crime and Punishment, I got confused by all the characters. When I tried to look things up online, I got spoilers!

So I created an illustrated reader (using Claude Fable) which updates as you read, so that there are no spoilers buy you can follow along with the story.

Show HN: Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment" with an inline, spoiler aware guide

philipfweiss — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 16:56:42 +0000

Article URL: https://magicbookshelf.org/read/crime-and-punishment/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48909765

Points: 1

# Comments: 1

MSE – Why am I finding the Catalan numbers in these "Snowball Numbers"?

philipfweiss — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 04:13:21 +0000

Article URL: https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/5142872/why-am-i-finding-the-catalan-numbers-in-these-snowball-numbers

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48813598

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

MagicBookShelf – A modern reader for classic novels – Crime and Punishment

philipfweiss — Sat, 04 Jul 2026 03:20:29 +0000

Article URL: https://magicbookshelf.org/read/crime-and-punishment/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48782365

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Magicbookshelf.org – Using AI to create a spoiler-free companion to any book

philipfweiss — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 20:42:57 +0000

Article URL: https://magicbookshelf.org/read/pride-and-prejudice/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48738909

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by philipfweiss in "Magicbookshelf.org – a spoiler-aware companion for public domain classics"

philipfweiss — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 20:31:38 +0000

I built a small, free site for reading public-domain books (magicbookshelf.org). Today, it has three books:

1. The Brothers Karamazov 2. Crime and Punishment 3. Pride and Prejudice

You don't have to make an account and there are no ads. I just think the classics deserve a nicer home than a wall of plain text.

When I first tried reading Karamazov, it was really difficult for me to keep up with everything.

Karamazov is the book where everyone gets lost in the names. Alexey / Alyosha / Alyoshka, Dmitri / Mitya, Fyodor Pavlovitch, Smerdyakov, two different Ivanovnas. The usual fix is to keep a wiki or a character list open, but those spoil everything that happens later.

So the reader comes with a companion I call the Margin: a guide to the people, places, and ideas in each book that only ever shows what you'd know at your current point.

For example.. Alyosha's entry while you're in chapter 3 and you get who he is by chapter 3, with nothing about his later arc.

A few notes:

The translation is Constance Garnett

There's optional narration if you'd rather listen.

I make and run it on my own, so if you spot a wrong note in the Margin, a typo, or an entry that gives away too much too early, please tell me.