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Weird Things Happen When Math Gets Too Expressive

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVwQsvof7Hw

Peano arithmetic is sufficiently expressive enough to be equivalent to any possible future theory of mathematics.

contrapositon The Closing of the Frontier

Human race is indeed fascinating. We kill millions of cows for food while doing the following in the same breath.

A bronze sculpture unveiled in March 2026 in Almaty, Kazakhstan (near the Europe/Asia border region), honors strangers who formed a human chain to save a dog from the Sayran Reservoir in 2016. The statue, located along the canal embankment, symbolizes unity and collective action after the 2016 viral rescue.

contrapositon The Closing of the Frontier

On the efficiency side, why do we need 10 companies doing the same thing. "Don't Repeat Yourself" principle would agree with your proposal.

contrapositon The Closing of the Frontier

I can't run my business without electricity. Yet we don't fear of its access being revoked. Sam makes the comparison of intelligence to electricity a lot. So we are on the path to these systems becoming utilities.

contrapositon Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (April 2026)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superformula

Have you heard of Superformula ? I remember playing with them few years ago.

contrapositon Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (April 2026)

You should collaborate with Huygens Optics. I find his videos thought provoking

https://youtu.be/hYyrgDEJLOA

contrapositon Friends are hiding their best ideas from you

AI told me my ideas are so good that I should write a book. Luckily I am in charge of I spend my time. Idea guys are very common in game industry.

contrapositon Layoff Thinking

> Certain regions of the world or U.S. seem to care a lot more about peer-perception than others.

This wasn't true even for US few decades ago.

Jerry Seinfeld - MONEY became EVERYTHING

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/7BgwUL_X75Y

contrapositon Layoff Thinking

Yes. It is similar to the military saying that, "cemetry is full of indespensible people." We think the company won't thrive without us, but flow of life finds a way to do without it. This realization can be good or bad depending on your outlook.

The Day I Realized Work Was Stealing My Life https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yw6tBaT0X4

contrapositon Now is the best time to write code by hand

One great opportunity is for expert-developers to push the boundary of better algorithms or libraries. No one rolls out their own cryptographic library, majority problems faced in our systems are common. If that common problem is solved once and packaged into a library to be used by anyone, no one else needs to bother looking at it. Most of modern software dev is all about plumbing. The harder parts need to solved once and that solution becomes available to everyone immediately.

contrapositon Launch HN: Twill.ai (YC S25) – Delegate to cloud agents, get back PRs

Another question is would a future world require so much code that we turn code generation into a service itself. Perhaps an analogy will help. e.g. do we use our lawnmowers 24x7? I understand we will have far more code in future but current capacity (devs working on code on laptops) should be sufficient.

contrapositon The Problem That Built an Industry

There is a parody youtube video in which one delusional pro-blockchain speaker is talking about how he wants his food to be put on blockchain which was the audio part, the video part was showing how a no-name China restaurant is using oil from sewers to cook food.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutter_oil

contrapositon The Problem That Built an Industry

A glove (software) that fits the hand (company processes) perfectly.

contrapositon JVM Options Explorer

I hope AI will make automated translation of such legacy codebases into any favourite langauge possible in future. Fingers crossed.

contrapositon Borges' cartographers and the tacit skill of reading LM output

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42041926-the-scout-minds...

This is my favourite book. I have followed their podcast for so long. You might like the ideas in this book. Or you can watch the 1-hour lecture by her on youtube. We needs scouts to faithfully explore the territory and report back.

https://rationallyspeakingpodcast.org/ by Julia Galef and Massimo Pigliucci

contrapositon AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel

Also blaming the tool for the crime is some sort of fallacy. I don't know name you can ask AI.

contrapositon I collected startup ideas. It changed how I think about ideas completely

Nothing wrong in that. But in research we have a thing called survey the already existing literature on the problem and checking what worked or didn't. If you want to learn by doing mistakes of your own, be my guest. Just know that it is expensive. Also if you aren't thinking that hard about your startup ideas, then most probably the VCs aren't either which means you get some free money to play around with and make mistakes as long as the music last. That is also a thing.

contrapositon Optimal Strategy for Connect 4

Yes it could just simply be a syntactic sugar for a complex operation taking in 4 numbers. But this reminds me of Mirror Symmetry between two theories in String Theory where complex calculations in one theory gets mapped to simple calculation in another theory. Similarly we might have translation dictionary between standard arithmetic and non-standard arithmetic where complex calculation in standard arithmetic becomes easy calculation in non-standard arithmetic.

contrapositon Optimal Strategy for Connect 4

I also liked the one on lambda calculus. I hope one day we will be able to find interpretation of what it actually means for PLUS Times Plus. Maybe this is how we will explore nonstandard arithmetic.

What is PLUS times PLUS?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcVA8Nj6HEo

contrapositon AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel

This is like blaming a knife as being a killer weapon. Social media is inherently good if owners of the platforms allow for good interactions to take place. But given the mismatch between incentives alignment, we don't have nice things.

contrapositon I collected startup ideas. It changed how I think about ideas completely

If you think you have found the right idea to devote your next 5-10 years of life, then normatively thinking you should be able to create a 500-1000 pages PPT to document all the strengths and shortcomings of your idea/product and it's possible evolution path for next 5 years. If you think this exercise is not worthwhile enough, then know that you are not serious and are just chasing the hype. This exercise is much easier now due to AI but you still need to ask right questions.

contrapositon The difficulty of making sure your website is broken

I remember Facebook while developing it's mobile app in the early days of smartphones did similar tests.

https://highscalability.com/how-facebook-makes-mobile-work-a...

contrapositon 1D Chess

The Search for the Longest Infinite Chess Game

https://youtu.be/b-Bb_TyhC1A

contrapositon Nowhere Is Safe

Even biology doesn't cross check that much. Cells are happy to copy virus materials.