1021
Programming in Z3 by learning to think like a compiler
Programming in logic can help you produce better optimized, more secure, bug-free code … if only you knew how to do it.
Top posts
Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 2,391 posts.
1022
A Random Distribution of Wealth (2017)
W hat happens, if 100 persons in a room are given $100 each and give away a Dollar to one randomly chosen person in this room each tick of the clock? How is wealth distributed over time by pure chance?
1023
1024
The Unknotting Number Is Not Additive
On June 30, 2025, Mark Brittenham and Susan Hermiller uploaded a preprint to the arXiv called “Unknotting number is not additive under connected sum” (and an updated version on Septembe…
1025
How does a computer/calculator compute logarithms?
Summer of Math Exposition 3 - How does a computer/calculator compute logarithms?
1026
My Notes on Apple Math Notes
Apple's effort to improve the UX of math.
1027
Towards λ-calculus
lambdaway is built on a wiki engine, lambdatank, and a small Lisp dialect, lambdatalk.
1028
Fitting Cubic Bézier Curves
Blog of Raph Levien.
1029
Fourier Transforms
Fourier Transform
1030
The Federalist Papers: Author Identification Through K-Means Clustering
Using K-means clustering on writing style to classify disputed Federalist Papers authorship.
1031
210 IQ Is Not Enough
You will never have enough IQ, nor money, nor time, nor energy.
1032
Hindley-Milner Type Inference (2012)
Robin Milner's type system with parametric polymorphism was a significant advance over the systems of Russell and Church. Arguably it is the ability to use type-variables that makes higher order logic a practical vehicle for proving non-trivial theorems. The Hindley-Milner algorithm is used to automatically infer…
1033
The secret life of NaN
The floating point standard defines a special value called Not-a-Number (NaN) which is used to represent, well, values that aren’t numbers. Double precision ...
1034
How random are TOTP codes?
I'm pretty sure that the 2FA codes generated by my bank's TOTP app have a bias towards the number 8 - because eight is an auspicious number. But is that just my stupid meaty brain noticing patterns where none exist? The TOTP algorithm uses HMAC, which in turn uses SHA-1. My aforementioned brain is not clever enough to…
1035
1036
Reflected Diffusion Models
Diffusion models are trained to reverse a stochastic process through score matching. However, a lot of diffusion models rely on a small but critical implementation detail called thresholding. Thresholding projects the sampling process to the data support after each discretized diffusion step, stabilizing generation at…
1037
Patent 5,893,120 reduced to mathematical formulae
I have previously argued that the Bilski ruling renders all software unpatentable in the US because any method of manipulating information ...
1038
1039
Algorithms tutorial series for beginners
As a developer, you have the power to change the world! You can write programs that enable new technologies. For instance, develop software to find an earlier diagnosis of diseases. But that’s not the only way. You might do it indirectly by creating projects that make people more productive and help them free up time…
1040
We're Knot Friends
It’s April Cools again. For a few summers in high school and undergrad, I was a day camp counselor. I’ve written before about how it helped me develop storytelling skills, but recently I thought of it again because, while I was cleaning out a closet full of old junk, I happened upon a bag of embroidery thread. While…
1041
1042
The most famous transcendental numbers
The mathematical constant pi represents the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. It is the most famous ratio in mathematics both on Earth and probably for any advanced civilization in the universe. The number pi, like other fundamental constants of mathematics such as e = 2.718..., is a…
1043
1044
“I don't know the numbers”: a math puzzle
I saw a math puzzle the other day on Hacker News. It reads as follows: Two numbers are chosen randomly, both are positive integers smaller than 100. Sandy is told the sum of the numbers, while Peter is told the product of the numbers. Then, this dialog occurs between Sandy and Peter: Peter: I don’t know the numbers…
1045
Bayes' rule in Haskell (2007)
Random code snippets, projects and musings about software from Eric Kidd, a developer and occasional entrepreneur.
1046
Why is x & -x equal to the largest power of 2 that divides x?
Or how to find the largest power of 2 that divides x?
1047
Smoother sailing: Studying audio imperfections in Steamboat Willie
A deep dive into investigating and reducing the flutter distortion on the soundtrack of Steamboat Willie (1928).
1048
The Prime That Wasn’t
Life, technology, and other good things
1049
Number theory explained from first principles
A lot of modern cryptography builds on insights from number theory, which has been studied for centuries.
1050
