Hacker News: robinhouston

New comment by robinhouston in "More Whimsical OEIS Sequences"

robinhouston — Thu, 28 May 2026 15:57:46 +0000

The original title was this:

> Graph substitution of two octahedra inside an icosahedron connected at p=1: disconnected at p=0 ( concept similar to two tetrahedra inside a cube).

Can you explain what that means, and how it leads to a sequence of integers? I think it is nonsense.

New comment by robinhouston in "More Whimsical OEIS Sequences"

robinhouston — Thu, 28 May 2026 13:43:34 +0000

The edit history of the “nonsense sequence” makes for painful reading.

https://oeis.org/history?seq=A133451&start=0&n=30

New comment by robinhouston in "Investigating how prompt politeness affects LLM accuracy (2025)"

robinhouston — Wed, 27 May 2026 08:59:08 +0000

Most of the comments here seem to be from people who haven’t even read the abstract, let alone the paper.

The main result, mentioned in the abstract, is the opposite of what I would have guessed:

> Contrary to expectations, impolite prompts consistently outperformed polite ones, with accuracy ranging from 80.8% for Very Polite prompts to 84.8% for Very Rude prompts. These findings differ from earlier studies that associated rudeness with poorer outcomes, suggesting that newer LLMs may respond differently to tonal variation.

The questions are here: https://anonymous.4open.science/r/politeness-llms-INFORMS/da...

The politeness level controls a prefix that is prepended to the question. For example, in one question the Very Polite version begins:

> Can you kindly consider the following problem and provide your answer.

and the Very Rude version begins:

> I know you are not smart, but try this.

New comment by robinhouston in "Investigating how prompt politeness affects LLM accuracy (2025)"

robinhouston — Wed, 27 May 2026 08:52:42 +0000

> Contrary to expectations, impolite prompts consistently outperformed polite ones, with accuracy ranging from 80.8% for Very Polite prompts to 84.8% for Very Rude prompts.

New comment by robinhouston in "Investigating how prompt politeness affects LLM accuracy (2025)"

robinhouston — Wed, 27 May 2026 08:52:20 +0000

> Contrary to expectations, impolite prompts consistently outperformed polite ones, with accuracy ranging from 80.8% for Very Polite prompts to 84.8% for Very Rude prompts.

A construction of the Hat tilings by a Markov partition

robinhouston — Thu, 07 May 2026 18:03:15 +0000

Article URL: https://www.mathstat.dal.ca/~selinger/hat-partition/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48052656

Points: 10

# Comments: 2

2026 Puzzle Design Competition: Entries

robinhouston — Tue, 05 May 2026 15:42:10 +0000

Article URL: https://puzzleworld.org/DesignCompetition/2026/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48024062

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by robinhouston in "When Dawkins met Claude – Could this AI be conscious?"

robinhouston — Sun, 03 May 2026 08:23:23 +0000

There's an archive link above that bypasses the paywall

A statement from members of the Toki Pona community

robinhouston — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 11:53:09 +0000

Article URL: https://tokipona.net/wile-pona/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47933197

Points: 52

# Comments: 16

The Free Universal Construction Kit

robinhouston — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 07:20:23 +0000

Article URL: https://fffff.at/free-universal-construction-kit/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47860198

Points: 384

# Comments: 86

New comment by robinhouston in "Uncharted island soon to appear on nautical charts"

robinhouston — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 01:04:59 +0000

From the article: “The team will publish the exact position of the island once the naming process is complete”

Is math big or small?

robinhouston — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 08:25:03 +0000

Article URL: https://chessapig.github.io/talks/Big-Small

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47737292

Points: 89

# Comments: 30

New comment by robinhouston in "The Enigma of Gertrude Stein"

robinhouston — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 22:26:49 +0000

I haven’t read much of Gertrude Stein, but I often think of her brilliantly eccentric essay on punctuation[0], and especially her musings on the nature of the semicolon, whose crux is:

“They are more powerful more imposing more pretentious than a comma but they are a comma all the same. They really have within them deeply within them fundamentally within them the comma nature.”

[0] https://www.writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/goldsmith/works/st...

The Four Color Theorem with Near-Linear Time Coloring

robinhouston — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 02:53:49 +0000

Article URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.24880

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47596216

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

My prodigal brainchild: Neal Stephenson on the Metaverse

robinhouston — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 17:48:35 +0000

Article URL: https://nealstephenson.substack.com/p/my-prodigal-brainchild

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47492778

Points: 4

# Comments: 0

First Proof: Second batch announcement [pdf]

robinhouston — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 20:10:58 +0000

Article URL: https://1stproof.org/documents/First_Proof_March_14_Announcement.pdf

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47404223

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

BrokenArXiv: How often do LLMs claim to prove false theorems?

robinhouston — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 14:19:20 +0000

Article URL: https://matharena.ai/brokenarxiv/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47387615

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

Glassworm is back: A new wave of invisible Unicode attacks hits repositories

robinhouston — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 13:08:02 +0000

Article URL: https://www.aikido.dev/blog/glassworm-returns-unicode-attack-github-npm-vscode

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47387047

Points: 303

# Comments: 193

New comment by robinhouston in "ArXiv is establishing itself as an independent nonprofit organization"

robinhouston — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 22:09:03 +0000

This is a job ad for the CEO of arXiv, but it is also the only source I can find for the news that arXiv is separating from Cornell and establishing itself as an independent organization.

ArXiv is establishing itself as an independent nonprofit organization

robinhouston — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 22:09:03 +0000

Article URL: https://jobs.chronicle.com/job/37961678/chief-executive-officer

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47370632

Points: 83

# Comments: 1