Top all-time · #1772
Anish Athalye
Personal blog · anishathalye.com · on HN as anishathalyeprogrammingmathai
Anish Athalye's personal blog at anishathalye.com covers programming, math and ai. Since 2014, 43 different Hacker News readers have linked it 84 times, most often “Inverting PhotoDNA (2021)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-09-21, and you can follow it by feed.
Anish Athalye's blog. I write about math, computer science, programming, and software and hardware hacks.
Most-linked posts?
- Inverting PhotoDNA (2021)7 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2024-01-06
- Experiments in Constraint-Based Graphic Design6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2019-12-12
- Turning a MacBook into a Touchscreen with $1 of Hardware (2018)5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2018-04-03
- Validity, Trust, and the Design of Interfaces3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2016-08-21
- Micro-WWVB (2016)3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2018-12-25
- An AI that can mimic any artist: Neural Style in TensorFlow3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2015-12-19
- Semlib: Semantic Data Processing2 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2025-09-11
- An Asynchronous Shell Prompt2 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2015-02-07
- Testing Distributed Systems for Linearizability (2017)2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2018-09-07
- ChatOps at HackMIT2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-12-22
What Hacker News says?
https://www.anishathalye.com/ I write mostly about playful hacks that I have worked on. Many posts tend to have a researchy flavor. Some of my favorites: * Turning a MacBook into a touchscreen with $1 of hardware: https://www.anishathalye.com/2018/04/03/macbook-touchscreen/ * Doing graphic design with an SMT solver: https://www.anishathalye.com/2019/12/12/constraint-based-gra... * Building a watch stand that automat…
Comment linking /2016/12/26/micro-wwvb/
on “Ask HN: What is your blog and why should I read it?”Submitted Turning a MacBook into a Touchscreen with $1 of Hardware (2018) as a story · 1724 points
HN discussionThere are a few things that need to come together for a complete diagram publishing system: * Converting hand-drawn sketches to tidy diagrams [1] * Converting tidy diagrams to look hand-drawn [2] * A textual DSL for diagrams (e.g. Penrose) * Support of declarative constraints for the diagram [3] * Animation of the diagram [4][5] [1] Paper https://www.fiftythree.com/think [2] rough.js https://github.com/pshihn/rough…
Comment linking /2019/12/12/constraint-based-graphic-design/
on “CMU’s ‘Penrose’ Turns Complex Math Notations into Illustrative Diagrams”Submitted Turning a MacBook into a touchscreen with $1 of hardware (2018) as a story · 524 points
HN discussionSee also Anish Athalye 2019, "Experiments in Constraint-based Graphic Design" [1], which takes a similar approach to diagram creation. I'd also recommend looking at Keenan Crane's other research [2], in particular his book on Discrete Differential Geometry, which inspired some of the diagrams you see on the Penrose site. [1]: https://www.anishathalye.com/2019/12/12/constraint-based-gra... [2]: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/…
Comment linking /2019/12/12/constraint-based-graphic-design/
on “CMU’s ‘Penrose’ Turns Complex Math Notations into Illustrative Diagrams”Submitted Dropbox as a Git Server as a story · 284 points
HN discussionHi HN! I made a service to enable me to easily monitor long-running experiments (e.g. training neural nets). I thought it would be generally useful, so I'm opening it up to the public. I'm curious to hear what you all think! Read a little bit more about the motivation here, if you're interested: http://www.anishathalye.com/2017/07/10/seashells/
Comment linking /2017/07/10/seashells/
on “Show HN: Seashells – Pipe output from CLI apps to the web in real time”Submitted μWWVB: A Tiny WWVB Station as a story · 250 points
HN discussion> Maybe think of it as scrambled data that has just the right level of detail for the machine to do its thing but not something where you can get back the full color image via any means. Information theory says this is impossible. https://anishathalye.com/inverting-photodna/
Comment linking /inverting-photodna/
on “ABC News hacks into popular robot vacuum, watches owner through camera”Submitted Turning a MacBook into a Touchscreen with $1 of Hardware as a story · 239 points
HN discussionIt's not that bad actually - I've been using one since February. Here's a demo (+ code): http://www.anishathalye.com/2015/02/07/an-asynchronous-shell...
Comment linking /2015/02/07/an-asynchronous-shell-prompt/
on “A heads up display for git”Submitted Experiments in Constraint-Based Graphic Design as a story · 211 points
HN discussionIt can be done, and it actually works quite well. See this post for a demo + code: http://www.anishathalye.com/2015/02/07/an-asynchronous-shell...
Comment linking /2015/02/07/an-asynchronous-shell-prompt/
on “A heads up display for git”Submitted Lumen: Auto brightness based on screen contents as a story · 182 points
HN discussionYes. This reminds me how you can turn a macbook/laptop into a touchscreen [0]. [0] https://www.anishathalye.com/2018/04/03/macbook-touchscreen/
Comment linking /2018/04/03/macbook-touchscreen/
on “Acoustic Keyboard Eavesdropping”Submitted Show HN: Git-remote-dropbox – use Dropbox as a true Git server as a story · 174 points
HN discussionHi HN! I've been frustrated with standard GUI-based design tools, because they don't match the way I think: like a programmer, in terms of relationships and abstractions. (Does this resonate with the community here?) So I've been hacking on this new DSL for design that allows the designer to specify figures in terms of relationships, which are compiled down to constraints and solved using an SMT solver. This also le…
Comment linking /
on “Experiments in Constraint-Based Graphic Design”Submitted Inverting PhotoDNA as a story · 131 points
HN discussionRelated: Constraint-based Graphic Design [ https://www.anishathalye.com/2019/12/12/constraint-based-gra... ] "Designers write programs that produce figures described in terms of relationships. These relationships are compiled down to constraints, which are then solved automatically." Discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21774018
Comment linking /2019/12/12/constraint-based-graphic-design/
on “Penrose: Create diagrams by typing mathematical notation in plain text”Submitted A Guide to Synthesizing Adversarial Examples as a story · 123 points
HN discussionHere [1] is a cool project that uses Z3 to make graphics specified by constraints. I remember reading an article about someone using Z3 to optimize the placement of cutout drawings on a piece of paper (kind of like a spritesheet) and optimizing for the smallest possible area in order to reduce the use of paper/materials. However, I can't seem to find the article anywhere. One more use of z3 is as one of the availabl…
Comment linking /2019/12/12/constraint-based-graphic-design/
on “Programming in Z3 by learning to think like a compiler”Submitted Inverting PhotoDNA (2021) as a story · 76 points
HN discussionI made one of these GPS -> WWVB simulators a couple years ago. There's a short write-up here, in case anyone is interested in reading about it: https://www.anishathalye.com/2016/12/26/micro-wwvb/ There are also some neat iPhone apps that use the audio circuitry to produce a low-power signal that can be picked up by radio-controlled clocks that are close by: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/clock-wave/id1073576068?mt=…
Comment linking /2016/12/26/micro-wwvb/
on “What Closing a Government Radio Station Would Mean for Clocks”Submitted Experiments in Constraint-based Graphic Design (2019) as a story · 62 points
HN discussionThe blog post (easily missed at the bottom of the read me) is likely more interesting to non-technical reader (like me) : https://www.anishathalye.com/2018/04/03/macbook-touchscreen/
Comment linking /2018/04/03/macbook-touchscreen/
on “Turn a MacBook into a Touchscreen with $1 of Hardware”Submitted An Asynchronous Shell Prompt as a story · 62 points
HN discussionIt's all software that the HackMIT team has written to make it easier for us to organize and run our event. It's easy to see how some of the tools like HELPq and Gavel fit into the event. OffiX is not something we use day-of, but it is something that we've used to help make us a more tight-knit (and hence more effective) organizing team - see http://www.anishathalye.com/2016/06/03/whos-in-the-office/ for more info.
Comment linking /2016/06/03/whos-in-the-office/
on “Show HN: Code.hackmit.org – Software for Hackathons”Submitted Algorithms in the Real World: Host Matching as a story · 31 points
HN discussionThis (made by a friend) is exactly that idea! https://www.anishathalye.com/2019/12/12/constraint-based-gra...
Comment linking /2019/12/12/constraint-based-graphic-design/
on “Automatic layout algorithms compute layouts for diagrams”Submitted Validity, Trust, and the Design of Interfaces as a story · 20 points
HN discussion
