Hacker News: pontifier

New comment by pontifier in ""Disregard That" Attacks"

pontifier — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 06:35:20 +0000

The unstructured input attack surface problem is indeed troublesome. AI right now is a bit gullible, but as systems evolve they will become more robust. However, even humans are vulnerable to the input given to us.

We might be speed running memetic warfare here.

The Monty Python skit about the deadly joke might be more realistic than I thought. Defense against this deserves some serious contemplation.

New comment by pontifier in "Interference Pattern Formed in a Finger Gap Is Not Single Slit Diffraction"

pontifier — Mon, 16 Feb 2026 06:46:16 +0000

What an amazing and strange effect! I'm not even going to attempt to evaluate the reasons or causes because it's brand new to me.

How wonderful to find something new like this!

New comment by pontifier in "The "confident idiot" problem: Why AI needs hard rules, not vibe checks"

pontifier — Mon, 08 Dec 2025 17:23:19 +0000

What if we just aren't doing enough, and we need to use GAN techniques with the LLMs.

We're at the "lol, ai cant draw hands right" stage with these hallucinations, but wait a couple years.

New comment by pontifier in "1D Conway's Life glider found, 3.7B cells long"

pontifier — Sat, 06 Dec 2025 08:43:56 +0000

Yeah, what was I thinking?? I really need to slow down sometimes. This should contain every finite pattern, right?

New comment by pontifier in "1D Conway's Life glider found, 3.7B cells long"

pontifier — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 13:12:58 +0000

Since it's not provable with pi, then we'd have to do a more circuitous proof of every finite pattern occurring. Inspired by Champernowne's constant, I propose a Pontifier Pattern that is simple, inefficient, but provably contains every finite pattern.

Starting at the origin, mark off rows of squares. the Nth row would contain NxN^2 squares of size n x n. Each square would be filled in left to right reading order with successive binary numbers with the most significant digit at the top left.

Somewhere in that pattern is the physics simulation of you reading this comment :)

New comment by pontifier in "1D Conway's Life glider found, 3.7B cells long"

pontifier — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 20:25:56 +0000

The thing that blows my mind is: say you start filling the plane with pi. Pi has been proven to contain every finite sequence. That means that somewhere in the plane is a full physics simulation of YOU in the room you are in right now.

Does that you exist any less fully because its not currently in the memory of a computer being evaluated?

New comment by pontifier in "1D Conway's Life glider found, 3.7B cells long"

pontifier — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 20:16:09 +0000

Always a fun read :) they turned it into a futurama episode

New comment by pontifier in "Researchers complete first human trial on viability of enteral ventilation"

pontifier — Wed, 22 Oct 2025 06:25:05 +0000

My mother is currently dying in the hospital with breathing problems. I mentioned this to her earlier today... I thought this would have been much farther along than it is. Hurry up with the medical tech already!

New comment by pontifier in "The Trinary Dream Endures"

pontifier — Mon, 20 Oct 2025 02:46:05 +0000

Here's a couple of sources that back up what I was talking about:

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9200021

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer%27s_principle

New comment by pontifier in "The Trinary Dream Endures"

pontifier — Sun, 19 Oct 2025 23:41:43 +0000

I remember reading somewhere that because Ternary computing is inherently reversible, that from an information theoretic point of view that ternary computations have a lower theoretical bound on energy usage, and as such could be a way to bypass heat dissipation problems in chips built with ultra-high density, large size, and high computational load.

I wasn't knowledgeable enough to evaluate that claim at the time, and I'm still not.

New comment by pontifier in "Building the most accurate DIY CNC lathe in the world [video]"

pontifier — Thu, 04 Sep 2025 07:06:55 +0000

I recently saw another video about a high accuracy 3d positioning stage. The differences and similarities were very interesting. For instance, both used rigid rods with ball joints for accuracy, but wildly different encoders and testing methods.

https://youtu.be/MgQbPdiuUTw?si=5r0DVsxVT1owyKk6

New comment by pontifier in "We should have the ability to run any code we want on hardware we own"

pontifier — Mon, 01 Sep 2025 10:42:49 +0000

I'm attempting to revive/create a streaming service to compete with Netflix et al. without any DRM. This would leverage physical media to eliminate requirements from copyright holders about how you might access something you actually own. There are challenges, and I'm almost certain to be sued, but it's a fight I believe is needed.

New comment by pontifier in "Dynamically patch a Python function's source code at runtime"

pontifier — Mon, 25 Aug 2025 06:44:44 +0000

I did this by accident in bash scripts many years ago when I was just getting into linux. I'd be running a script, and editing the script at the same time. It caused some REALLY weird issues before I figured out what was happening. For instance I'd change the text somewhere and it would change in the running program, or the program would get into states it should never be in. I didn't use it constructively, I just avoided editing running programs after that.

New comment by pontifier in "9 Years of "Learning to Code" and I Still Couldn't Build a To-Do App"

pontifier — Wed, 20 Aug 2025 01:30:32 +0000

Consistency is key. I need it too. With 1000 things pulling me this way and that, I get the most done when I just open my IDE and do it. It's so hard though. I feel like an agoraphobic trying to leave the house. What's the big deal? Just open the IDE and start doing stuff... but it's almost physically painful to even think about... I gotta get help.

New comment by pontifier in "Recto – A Truly 2D Language"

pontifier — Wed, 13 Aug 2025 07:47:16 +0000

I started thinking about Ven diagrams too and how that might be a useful flow control mechanism. It feels like there is a disconnect somewhere, and im not sure what it is.

New comment by pontifier in "Sacramento Uses Smart Electric Meters to Spy on Residents"

pontifier — Thu, 24 Jul 2025 18:32:28 +0000

I had an idea a few years ago that it might be useful to be able to detect if someone started flickering their lights in an S-O-S pattern. Sounds like this system might have been able to do that with the right software.

New comment by pontifier in "Research suggests Big Bang may have taken place inside a black hole"

pontifier — Thu, 12 Jun 2025 02:28:59 +0000

Imagine a being inside a turing machine wondering what came before it was turned on... implying the turing machine is even on and we're not just looking at the set of all possible rule sets on a similarly abstracted mathematical chart.

New comment by pontifier in "Research suggests Big Bang may have taken place inside a black hole"

pontifier — Thu, 12 Jun 2025 00:47:20 +0000

-Just watched the lecture again, and you wouldn't actually see the outside universe speed up.

New comment by pontifier in "Research suggests Big Bang may have taken place inside a black hole"

pontifier — Thu, 12 Jun 2025 00:38:31 +0000

Found the lecture. Here is a link to the appropriate part: https://youtu.be/BdYtfYkdGDk?si=iNHi7N68DHxT-52-&t=3182

New comment by pontifier in "Research suggests Big Bang may have taken place inside a black hole"

pontifier — Thu, 12 Jun 2025 00:37:03 +0000

At the event horizon of a large enough black hole, the tidal difference in gravity between your toes and head shouldn't be noticeable. There shouldn't actually be anything special about falling through the event horizon when looking at yourself.

Outside though, you'd see everything start to blue-shift. Things below you would blue shift back to normal, and the universe above you would blue-shift and speed up until you'd see the heat death of the universe. Anything falling in after you would red-shift again as it approached to match your "normal" rate of time. Critically this would include any light or other particles, so it might be very hard to survive.

No matter how fast you go or how weird the space time you are in, your local clock should still tick steadily to you, and you wouldn't notice anything weird.