Top all-time · #7274
Comfortably Numbered
Personal blog · hardmath123.github.ioprogrammingmath
Comfortably Numbered is a personal blog at hardmath123.github.io about programming and math. Since 2014, 10 different Hacker News readers have linked it 60 times, most often “Conway's Gradient of Life”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2024-11-26, and you can follow it by feed.
Most-linked posts?
- Conway's Gradient of Life2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-08-13
- Hybrid Hyperoptimization: The most ambitious crossover event in autodiff history2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-09-11
- Jazz is open source2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2014-07-22
- There are no rules in math2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-10-25
What Hacker News says?
If you liked this, you might enjoy this little trick you can do with moiré patterns -- near the end of the post, I talk a little bit about the math behind the FFT connection. https://hardmath123.github.io/moire.html
Comment linking /moire.html
on “Moiré No More”Submitted Conway's Gradient of Life as a story · 403 points
HN discussionComfortably Numbered ( http://hardmath123.github.io ) is about how you can learn so much about the world just by thinking deeply about the simplest things — shadows, trees, orchards, laundry, fish. The lesson is to keep your eyes open.
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: What is your blog and why should I read it?”Submitted Words that do Handstands as a story · 324 points
HN discussionSee also: "Words that do Handstands" (2019), where similar tricks are used to hallucinate an ambigram font! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20820036 http://hardmath123.github.io/ambigrams.html
Comment linking /ambigrams.html
on “Uppestcase and Lowestcase Letters”Submitted How random is xkcd? (2015) as a story · 209 points
HN discussionSee also: using differentiable approximations of cellular automata in PyTorch to reverse Conway's Game of Life; in some cases, you can get striking Turing patterns similar to what's described in this paper! http://hardmath123.github.io/conways-gradient.html
Comment linking /conways-gradient.html
on “Self-organising textures from cellular automata”Submitted Learning to Play the Chaos Game as a story · 149 points
HN discussionSee also, a post from mid-2020 that does something similar with a "softened" Life: http://hardmath123.github.io/conways-gradient.html
Comment linking /conways-gradient.html
on “Finding Mona Lisa in the Game of Life”Submitted Perchance to Scheme (2016) as a story · 82 points
HN discussionSimilar post from mid-2020, using PyTorch instead of JAX, and using a "continuous" (gradient-based) hill-climbing: http://hardmath123.github.io/conways-gradient.html And the HN discussion from the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23095190
Comment linking /conways-gradient.html
on “Finding Mona Lisa in the Game of Life”Submitted Tuning a Typewriter as a story · 59 points
HN discussion"un-" is indeed a funny prefix. You might enjoy (or be frustrated by) this analysis… https://hardmath123.github.io/un-unravelable.html
Comment linking /un-unravelable.html
on “What you could steal from the Kakoune code editor, and get away with”Submitted Cryptolegal – a short story as a story · 44 points
HN discussionIndeed, you can "learn" (by gradient descent) new parameters to this algorithm, to generate fractals in any target shape that you want! https://hardmath123.github.io/chaos-game-fractal-foliage.htm...
Comment linking /chaos-game-fractal-foliage.html
on “A stochastic method to generate the Sierpinski triangle”Submitted Dancing Orchards on the I-5 as a story · 42 points
HN discussionSee also: "learning" Conway's Game of Life configurations by gradient descent. https://hardmath123.github.io/conways-gradient.html
Comment linking /conways-gradient.html
on “Cellular Automata as Convolutional Neural Networks”Submitted There are no rules in math as a story · 31 points
HN discussionSubmitted Conway's Gradient: Reversing Life with differentiable programming as a story · 28 points
HN discussionSubmitted e^19709930078 = 0xdeadbeef… as a story · 14 points
HN discussionSubmitted Show HN: Nearley.js v1.2.0 – a fast, powerful JavaScript parser generator as a story · 12 points
HN discussionSubmitted How to take pretty TTY screenshots as a story · 10 points
HN discussionSubmitted Hybrid Hyperoptimization: The most ambitious crossover event in autodiff history as a story · 6 points
HN discussionSubmitted Perchance to Scheme: A field guide to the menagerie of Scheme dialects as a story · 6 points
HN discussionSubmitted How Random is xkcd? as a story · 6 points
HN discussionSubmitted Lord of the Strings as a story · 6 points
HN discussionSubmitted A Case Against Calculus as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted Spaghetti's Shadows are Spirali-Shaped (reasoning about PCA on trajectories) as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Don't Call Us, We'll Call You – Comfortably Numbered as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Armchair Philosophy: an allegory as a story · 4 points
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