Hacker News: pkoird

New comment by pkoird in "Ask HN: What are you working on? (August 2026)"

pkoird — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 20:11:00 +0000

Thanks! I'd really appreciate your feedback!

New comment by pkoird in "Ask HN: What are you working on? (August 2026)"

pkoird — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 19:13:41 +0000

I created a make-your-own-circuit simulator in python to help learn electronics. The best part about this is that it is entirely hosted online and people can just go through the lessons, learn electronics by skipping the maths, and in the process have made their own circuit simulator (which is arguably a pretty cool project on its own) at the end of it.

https://spicycircuits.dev/

New comment by pkoird in "Do you understand what I'm saying?"

pkoird — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 18:23:37 +0000

I think they are largely uncorrelated, in fact I'm willing to go out on a limb and say that they are anti-correlated. James Maxwell, who everyone regards as absolute genius, was a famously bad teacher. My own grad experience also adds that an absolute beast of a researcher is not necessarily the best teacher. I believe the term "curse of knowledge" is popular enough that it suggests people who are way too deep into their abstractions seldom rise above it when it comes to communication. Hence the stereotype of nerds being socially awkward and hard to communicate with.

Do you understand what I'm saying?

pkoird — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 15:46:34 +0000

Article URL: https://praveshkoirala.com/2026/08/03/do-you-understand-what-im-saying/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49157328

Points: 2

# Comments: 2

Show HN: I wrote this slowly, a needlessly patient text editor

pkoird — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 12:25:56 +0000

Hi HN! Sometimes, you need to let people know that you took your sweet time writing what you’re sending them.

So I made an app that lets you prove it.

This needlessly patient text editor rate-limits incoming characters on the server, guaranteeing that regardless of how the text originated it took at least a specified amount of time to “write.”

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49057429

Points: 4

# Comments: 0

New comment by pkoird in "I Wrote This Slowly"

pkoird — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 14:23:26 +0000

Hi HN, in the era of agents where people produce upwards of 15 pages under 5 minutes, I present you "I wrote this slowly," a medium that forces you to take your time. Any communication shared via this medium is guaranteed to have taken a defined amount of time to generate. Next time you send your colleagues an appreciation, write apology letters to friends, or communicate something with a human touch, use this app and let them know that you took your time to write it.

I Wrote This Slowly

pkoird — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 14:23:26 +0000

Article URL: https://i-wrote-this-slowly.fly.dev/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49036129

Points: 2

# Comments: 1

New comment by pkoird in "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (July 2026)"

pkoird — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 02:10:13 +0000

For the life of me, I could never get electronics. I used to love the idea of me coming up with electronic circuit designs, but the arcane art of electronics never really clicked for me because I just couldn't intuitively grasp the maths no matter which book I read (AoE, I'm looking at you). But then it hit me, I don't need maths, I just need a formal language to represent the circuits. So over the past few weeks, I worked on a code your own spice (the electronic simulator). So now, for the first time in history, I finally understand how circuits work and how they are designed. And I did this all by coding circuits in python and making my own functional spice (which used to seem impossible at one point, it's surprising how easy it is though).

New comment by pkoird in "Ask HN: Is anyone experimenting with different ways of using LLMs for coding?"

pkoird — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 23:41:21 +0000

Literally converged to this same pattern over this month.

New comment by pkoird in "Fable 5 Is Back"

pkoird — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 02:49:21 +0000

My old thermodynamics professor used to say: the answer's always entropy.

New comment by pkoird in "Fable 5 Is Back"

pkoird — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 00:01:13 +0000

I'm not saying you are on a list now, I'm just saying if you were now to be on a list, I wouldn't be surprised.

New comment by pkoird in "Fable 5 is Back"

pkoird — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 21:26:40 +0000

I gave it a book on human consciousness I was writing and it flagged it. This model is hilariously bad. Anthropic has defanged this model to the point of malice. No way am I paying to use something that is basically useless.

New comment by pkoird in "Show HN: I made a heatmap of 3400 VCs who are open to cold emails"

pkoird — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 04:10:08 +0000

i'm sorry, I meant attention of the project (as in surfacing it). It'd be worth specifying your methodology somewhere in the page. That is arguably an important piece of important.

New comment by pkoird in "Show HN: I made a heatmap of 3400 VCs who are open to cold emails"

pkoird — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 19:33:04 +0000

Does the post explain how the data was obtained? Or is it simply some kind of scraped list to get attention?

New comment by pkoird in "Vitamin D3 During Pregnancy and Cognitive Performance at 10 Years"

pkoird — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 15:58:29 +0000

I'm not sure if there are any research showcasing the effects humanity has had in general due to low sun exposure. From all the benefits of Vitamin D and the recent human behavorial shift leading to low sun exposure (car travel, air conditioning, sunscreens even), there are bound to be new biological or psychological changes humanity is experiencing for the first time.

New comment by pkoird in "How LLMs work"

pkoird — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 05:07:42 +0000

aka "the bitter lesson"

New comment by pkoird in "I don't think AI will make your processes go faster"

pkoird — Sun, 17 May 2026 15:46:39 +0000

Precisely. People don't realize that it's all numbers. Given average IQ of people involved in a project is 140, an AI with an IQ of 150 can replicate each and every such individuals in the pipeline. People saying AI can't do this or AI can't do that should come to terms with the fact that this IQ gap is monotonously increasing.

New comment by pkoird in "A sufficiently detailed spec is code"

pkoird — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 05:23:37 +0000

Meh, it's the age old distinction between Formal vs Informal language.

Simply put: Formal language = No ambiguities.

Once you remove all ambiguous information from an informal spec, that, whatever remains, automatically becomes a formal description.

New comment by pkoird in "Two Bits Are Better Than One: making bloom filters 2x more accurate"

pkoird — Sun, 22 Feb 2026 04:14:18 +0000

Clever. My first impression was that surely this saturates the filter too fast as we're setting more bits at once but looks like the maths checks out. It's one of those non-intuitive things that I am glad I learned today.

New comment by pkoird in "Statement by Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands,Norway,Sweden,UK"

pkoird — Sun, 18 Jan 2026 17:02:32 +0000

Potentially because this is about the extra 10% tarrifs?