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Math & Algorithms
The most popular blog posts about math & algorithms on Hacker News. 2,851 posts.
A pilot project in universal algebra to explore new ways to collaborate
Traditionally, mathematics research projects are conducted by a small number (typically one to five) of expert mathematicians, each of which are familiar enough with all aspects of the project that…
Math and Analogies
Here's a talk on "Math And Analogies" I did for the Center on Contemporary Art (CoCA) in Seattle. What's this? Well, it's a number. Probably written down a…
New string search algorithm
ULTRARUBY JEWELRY menghadirkan pilihan perhiasan berlian yang elegan untuk melengkapi gaya dan momen istimewa Anda.
A new line drawing method for the cycle savvy
In the demoscene, there's never a boundary that can't be pushed. My recent 4k demo "Boo!" ( YouTube ), released at X 2023, is a humble attempt to contribute to this ongoing evolution. In particular, it pioneers a new way of computing lines.
Monte-Carlo Simulations
Monte Carlo simulations (or methods ) is the technique of applying randomness and the Law of large numbers to the solution of various scientific and engineering problems. One of its first documented uses was by Stanislaw Ulam and John von Neumann for nuclear weapon simulations after WWII [1] .
The Most-Used Mathematical Algorithm Idea in History (2016)
Stephen Wolfram shares a glimpse into his conversations with Solomon Golomb, developments on shift registers, polyominoes, scientific contributions.
Roman Finger Counting
I recently wrote a final paper on the history of written numerals. In the process, I discovered this fascinating tidbit that didn’t really fit in my paper, but I wanted to put it somewhere. So I’m writing about it here.
Java Hangs When Converting 2.2250738585072012e-308
Konstantin Preißer made an interesting discovery , after reading my article “ PHP Hangs On Numeric Value 2.2250738585072011e-308 ”: Java — both its runtime and compiler — go into an infinite loop when converting the decimal number 2.2250738585072012e-308 to double-precision binary floating-point. This number is…
Why it’s harder to forge a SHA-1 certificate than to find a SHA-1 collision
It’s well known that SHA-1 is no longer considered a secure cryptographic hash function. Researchers now believe that finding a hash collision (two values that result in the same value when SHA-1 is applied) is inevitable and likely to happen.
English Letter Frequency Counts: Mayzner Revisited
Here's what we can do with today's computing power (using publicly available data and the processing power of my own personal computer; I'm not relying on access to corporate computing power):
Learning to break ciphers
Every now and then, I read a question about learning how to break ciphers, or more generally how to become a cryptographer/cryptologist. From my viewpoint, the most important part of learning this…
The strange story of “Extended Random”
Yesterday, David Benjamin posted a pretty esoteric note on the IETF’s TLS mailing list. At a superficial level, the post describes some seizure-inducingly boring flaws in older Canon printers…
Spline Distance Fields
Earlier this year I decided to put my main project Tangerine on hold indefinitely and began prototyping a new renderer in an unfamiliar language using a totally new graphics API with the goal of overcoming all of Tangerine's technical shortcomings. The new renderer is an eccentric CPU ray tracer called Star Machine…
Burning Man death rates – A short lesson in statistics
What statistics can teach us about observing 3 deaths at Burning Man in 2026.
What even is a JSON number?
An exploration of numbers in JSON and various JSON implementations
Compressing chess moves for fun and profit
UPDATE: I’ve written a new post with a new technique which is about 2.5x more efficient than this approach Chess notation has come a long way since descriptive notation, now we have nice and decipherable Standard Algebraic Notation, like Qxf7 (queen takes on f7) or Nf3 (knight takes on f3). This is a great text…
PHP 5.3.3 hangs on numeric value 2.2250738585072011e-308
I stumbled upon a very strange bug in PHP; this statement sends it into an infinite loop:
Exploring Weight Agnostic Neural Networks
Posted by Adam Gaier, Student Researcher and David Ha, Staff Research Scientist, Google Research, Tokyo When training a neural network to accompl...
A Software Engineer’s Guide to Cybernetics
Before ‘cyber’ was a prefix for everything internet and computers, it was how mathematicians were going to conquer the world.
What are Differential Equations and how do they work?
Science News, Physics, Science, Philosophy, Philosophy of Science
Base-4 fractions in Telugu
From the highly eclectic blog of Mark Dominus
Principal component analysis: pictures, code and proofs (2018)
The code used to generate the plots for this post can be found here.