Hacker News: triska

Conway's Game of Life in Prolog

triska — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 18:57:53 +0000

Article URL: https://manzikert.ca/aoc25pl/gol

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48361100

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

A local-first multimodal knowledge platform for managing entities

triska — Fri, 22 May 2026 08:34:41 +0000

Article URL: https://github.com/mat-mgm/humanist

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48233407

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by triska in "Prolog Basics Explained with Pokémon"

triska — Sun, 17 May 2026 18:36:48 +0000

I think this is very well phrased, and I would argue the same holds for Prolog too.

In my opinion, a key difference between Prolog and other languages in that regard is one of degree, not kind: Compared to other languages, addressing performance problems in Prolog engines tends to have far greater effects on Prolog programs, because so much is implicit (i.e., left to the engine).

If the performance problem is not in the engine, but in the program itself, then we will face the same questions with Prolog as with other languages: How to formulate the program better, is there a better approach altogether?

For example, earlier today an interesting question regarding performance was posted in the Scryer discussions:

https://github.com/mthom/scryer-prolog/discussions/3341

The comparison in this case is between Gecode and Scryer on a seemingly simple but nontrivial combinatorial task. What is the problem here? Most likely the Scryer engine itself can be improved. And also very likely, there are better ways to model the task, and also better search strategies, and these tend to have far greater performance impact than the base language, and these questions remain also if we change the base language.

In my opinion, these questions regarding different kinds of formulations tend to be more frequently associated with Prolog than with other languages because Prolog is more frequently used for complex tasks where it is not a priori clear how to even approach the problem.

New comment by triska in "Prolog Basics Explained with Pokémon"

triska — Sun, 17 May 2026 18:17:57 +0000

How is this different from other programming languages though?

One example I often think about is from Ken Silverman: "sub eax, 128" → "add eax, -128". So equivalent ways to write the same program may have different performance characteristics also depending on the tools that are applied. How many people could tell without trying which way to write this example is preferable?

The same phenomenon will be encountered in all kinds of languages, where engine and compiler improvements make existing code faster or slower.

New comment by triska in "Prolog Basics Explained with Pokémon"

triska — Sun, 17 May 2026 17:52:02 +0000

Regarding distributed systems, I find Torbjörn Lager's recent work on Web Prolog particularly interesting. He recently posted about it here:

https://github.com/mthom/scryer-prolog/discussions/3322

and also in the course of a discussion on various approaches to implement concurrency in Prolog:

https://github.com/mthom/scryer-prolog/discussions/3307

New comment by triska in "Prolog Basics Explained with Pokémon"

triska — Sun, 17 May 2026 13:40:07 +0000

Very nice!

In the Scryer Prolog discussions, Alex has shared a few ideas and considerations for possible improvements to the Prolog code, including the use of metaprogramming to automatically generate more general relations:

https://github.com/mthom/scryer-prolog/discussions/3221

I hope for an interesting followup article!

Another very interesting Prolog program by Alex is factgraph.pl:

https://github.com/alexpetros/factgraph.pl

It's a Prolog implementation of the IRS Fact Graph, an application of Law as Code.

From Taxman to VATmiraal: Fifty Years of Teaching Machines the Law

triska — Fri, 01 May 2026 09:08:39 +0000

Article URL: https://vatmiraal.be/blog/from-taxman-to-vatmiraal

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47972652

Points: 1

# Comments: 1

Prolog Implementation of the IRS Fact Graph

triska — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 15:46:09 +0000

Article URL: https://github.com/alexpetros/factgraph.pl

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47767180

Points: 5

# Comments: 0

Tax Logic Evaluation with Prolog

triska — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 19:11:56 +0000

Article URL: https://github.com/mthom/scryer-prolog/discussions/3287

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47679974

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

A simple online forum written in Prolog

triska — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 16:55:40 +0000

Article URL: https://github.com/danilp-id/bbs

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47616975

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

Forth VM and compiler written in C++ and Scryer Prolog

triska — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 16:21:20 +0000

Article URL: https://github.com/no382001/forth-vm

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47589732

Points: 37

# Comments: 0

New comment by triska in "The EU still wants to scan your private messages and photos"

triska — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 20:46:36 +0000

Quoting from the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:12... :

"Article 7

Respect for private and family life

Everyone has the right to respect for his or her private and family life, home and communications.

Article 8

Protection of personal data

1. Everyone has the right to the protection of personal data concerning him or her.

2. Such data must be processed fairly for specified purposes and on the basis of the consent of the person concerned or some other legitimate basis laid down by law. Everyone has the right of access to data which has been collected concerning him or her, and the right to have it rectified.

3. Compliance with these rules shall be subject to control by an independent authority."