Hacker News: robinhouston

New comment by robinhouston in "Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science"

robinhouston — Sat, 01 Aug 2026 11:45:12 +0000

That's true, but submissions are only killed in that way if they receive a ‘fatal’ number of flags. However, flags lower the rank of a story even at non-fatal levels. What antirez is suggesting here is that the rank of this story has been lowered by flags – and that seems plausible, if you compare its rank to that of other stories with a similar age and number of points.

New comment by robinhouston in "Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science"

robinhouston — Sat, 01 Aug 2026 10:06:49 +0000

In a way the most remarkable thing about this is that it isn't even at the top of the HN homepage. Even if this is a step up from what we've seen before, we're no longer astonished by the idea that AI can make significant advances in mathematics and computer science.

The Ramanujan Challenge for AI

robinhouston — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 20:58:29 +0000

Article URL: https://www.ramanujanmachine.com/ramanujan-challenge/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48767285

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

What is it like to live in a world you believe is about to end?

robinhouston — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 14:01:35 +0000

Article URL: https://asteriskmag.substack.com/p/what-is-it-like-to-live-in-a-world

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48660007

Points: 4

# Comments: 1

New comment by robinhouston in "The empty field that wasn't"

robinhouston — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 10:13:59 +0000

Thanks! It looks like the viewer app somehow mangled the link I was reading into a link to the whole issue. If a mod sees this, it would be great to use this link instead.

It's unfortunate that they use this ghastly viewer app, but I promise the content is worth it.

The empty field that wasn't

robinhouston — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 10:00:19 +0000

Article URL: https://lsc-pagepro.mydigitalpublication.com/publication/?i=865273

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48382019

Points: 3

# Comments: 2

The French Have the Quantum Circuits

robinhouston — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 17:47:17 +0000

Article URL: https://algassert.com/post/2602

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48373588

Points: 3

# Comments: 1

Sum-product, unit distances, and number fields

robinhouston — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 05:54:27 +0000

Article URL: https://www.erdosproblems.com/forum/thread/blog:6

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48353098

Points: 67

# Comments: 19

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.