Top all-time · #2725
Ben Joffe
Personal blog · benjoffe.com · on HN as benjoffemathprogrammingscience
Ben Joffe writes BenJoffe.com, a personal blog at benjoffe.com about math, programming and science. Since 2009, 27 different Hacker News readers have linked it 50 times, most often “Texas Hold'em Experiment”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-26, and you can follow it by feed.
Most-linked posts?
- Texas Hold'em Experiment4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2010-02-17
- A faster way to convert a timestamp to Hour, Min, Sec4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2026-09-07
- A new faster algorithm to compute 64-bit signed floor division4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2026-10-26
- Show HN: A Zoomable Equal-Area Map Projection that interpolates to Mercator3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2026-09-15
- A faster way to calculate the day of the week3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2026-08-16
- /code/demos/canvascape/textures2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2010-05-05
- HTML 5 Canvas game 2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2009-03-13
- Show HN: Weekle – a web app to learn how to calculate the day of the week2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-05-19
- The Smoital System – A method of timekeeping on Mars based on UTC2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-08-26
- Canvascape - "3D Walker"2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2009-04-13
What Hacker News says?
The first article in this blog post series has a little section talking briefly about this history, and there's a representation of this that I think sheds a lot of light on the original design. See the heading "Side-Note on Month / Day Determination" in the below link [1]. Displaying the months like the following helps see the regularity at a glance. Columns 1, 3 and 5 are the long months, others being shorter: +--…
Comment linking /fast-date
on “A Fast 64-Bit Date Algorithm (30–40% faster by counting dates backwards)”Submitted A Fast 64-Bit Date Algorithm (30–40% faster by counting dates backwards) as a story · 395 points
HN discussionhttps://benjoffe.com/weekle
Comment linking /weekle
on “Lewis Carroll – computing the day of the week for any given date (1887)”Submitted A new faster algorithm to compute 64-bit signed floor division as a story · 158 points
HN discussionHi I'm the author of that page. I also recently put up similar decks for Omaha: http://www.benjoffe.com/omaha Feel free to ask questions.
Comment linking /omaha
on “Texas Hold'em Experiment”Submitted Texas Hold'em Experiment as a story · 148 points
HN discussionThe page http://www.benjoffe.com/holdem_files/heuristic.html is running the two-player case. It seems to be using a Javascript hill-climbing algorithm: pick a scoring function which measures how good the solution is, then start from a random deck and try small changes, keeping them only if the score improves.
Comment linking /holdem_files/heuristic.html
on “Ice cold decks (dealer wins no matter how the deck is cut)”Submitted Ice cold decks (dealer wins no matter how the deck is cut) as a story · 147 points
HN discussionThe opera widget has been around for quite a while. His other demos seem to run pretty well too (using Flock): http://www.benjoffe.com/code/tools/functions3d/ http://www.benjoffe.com/code/demos/canvascape/ http://www.benjoffe.com/code/toys/spirograph/
Comment linking /code/toys/spirograph/
on “HTML 5 Canvas game ”Submitted Very cool uses of HTML5 Canvas. Love Torus "Cylindrical Tetris" as a story · 139 points
HN discussionNot Tetris but similar and so fun and addictive - Torus: https://www.benjoffe.com/code/games/torus Play garbage mode...
Comment linking /code/games/torus
on “Are There Any Tetris Games for Mac?”Submitted HTML 5 Canvas game as a story · 115 points
HN discussionI haven't played Tetris since I found Torus. I like the garbage gameplay so much more. http://www.benjoffe.com/code/games/torus
Comment linking /code/games/torus
on “Tetris Guideline”Submitted Canvascape - "3D Walker" as a story · 19 points
HN discussionThere are also these old html5 2d canvas experiments: http://www.benjoffe.com/code/ Very similar to this one specifically: http://www.benjoffe.com/code/demos/canvascape/textures
Comment linking /code/demos/canvascape/textures
on “Raycaster in HTML5 / JavaScript”Submitted A faster way to convert a timestamp to Hour, Min, Sec as a story · 9 points
HN discussionWith HTML5 http://www.benjoffe.com/code/demos/canvascape/textures
Comment linking /code/demos/canvascape/textures
on “This is what Flash can do in 2008”Submitted A faster way to compute signed 64-bit floor division by constants as a story · 5 points
HN discussionMy favorite torus game is Tetris on a Torus https://www.benjoffe.com/code/games/torus/
Comment linking /code/games/torus/
on “Show HN: Chess on a Donut/Torus and Deep-Dive”Submitted Show HN: A Zoomable Equal-Area Map Projection that interpolates to Mercator as a story · 5 points
HN discussionCorrect URL: https://www.benjoffe.com/fast-leap-year (The link in the submission is incorrect; apologies for the confusion.)
Comment linking /fast-leap-year
on “A faster is_leap_year function (full-range, C++)”Submitted A faster way to convert a timestamp to Hour, Min, Sec as a story · 5 points
HN discussionI'm not saying their UI design is any good, simply that it's adequate. Filling out a form that is completely self descriptive and transparent incorrectly, and then blaming is absurd. This is what I see when I create an event: http://www.benjoffe.com/temp/fbevent.png [] Anyone can view and RSVP to this event (public event) They say twice in that sentence what the implications of that field are. Call me old fashioned…
Comment linking /temp/fbevent.png
on “a thread”Submitted A New Faster Algorithm for Gregorian Date Conversion as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted Show HN: Weekle – a web app to learn how to calculate the day of the week as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted A New Equal-Area Map for Interactive Computer Use (Natively Zooms to Mercator) as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted A faster way to compute signed 64-bit floor division by constants as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted A faster way to convert a timestamp to hour, min, SEC as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Show HN: A faster day-count to Y,M,D algorithm – 30-40% speedup as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Stacking the Deck by Scripting as a story · 3 points
HN discussion
