Hacker News Reader

pathikriton Credit Card Rewards Became a $9.2B Wealth Transfer

Why is it so hard lol? I have the Bank of America Rewards card for 25+ years. 2.62% cashback on everything, 3.5% on dining/travel. Maybe there are better ones out there but this is good. I have auto-pay setup so I don't have to worry. I have not spent a second of my time optimizing anything in last 15 years

pathikriton How I write software with LLMs

10-15 years ago HN was the place where everyone showed off their new shiny toys and people would jump over themselves to try some new framework or db or tool. Now, so much negative sentiment about AI coding. I bet if LLMs came 15 years ago, HN would be brimming with excitement. What happened?

pathikriton I built Timeframe, our family e-paper dashboard

Related: My project to display daily newspaper: https://github.com/pathikrit/newswall

pathikriton Mathematics is hard for mathematicians to understand too

I love math but the symbology and notations get in my way. 2 ideas:

1. Can we reinvent notation and symbology? No superscripts or subscripts or greek letters and weird symbols? Just functions with input and output? Verifiable by type systems AND human readable

2. Also, make the symbology hyperlinked i.e. if it uses a theorem or axiom that's not on the paper - hyperlink to its proof and so on..

pathikriton E-paper display reaches the realm of LCD screens

I made a e-ink newspaper display: https://github.com/pathikrit/newswall

This would be amazing

pathikriton Ask HN: Go deep into AI/LLMs or just use them as tools?

Do you need to know internals of a database or just use them as a tool. If you hit some bottleneck, you go deep.

pathikriton E Ink’s color ePaper tech gets supersized for outdoor displays

Cool! I make this as a hobby project: https://framed.news/

Would be cool to have a color option too

pathikriton CIA now favors lab leak theory to explain Covid's origins

My favorite conspiracy theory:

After Tiananmen, the CCP planned many contingents next time something similar happened.

Cue, the [2019 Hong Kong Democracy Protests][1]. The MSS releases Covid19 at the peak of the protests (actually they do pick Wuhan so they can use lab leak as a plausibility if needed) in Sep 2019 and later they use the lockdown laws to completely clamp down the protests.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%932020_Hong_Kong_pr...

pathikriton What we know about CEO shooting suspect

Most likely he realized once the authorities have his name - he can't run forever.

That being said - some obvious stuff he could have done like grow a beard and shave it after and fly out of the country to somewhere cheap like Thailand with $10k

pathikriton MomBoard: E-ink display for a parent with amnesia

Cool! Btw, I make this: https://framed.news/ framed e-ink news display

pathikriton 32“ E Ink screen that displays daily newspapers on your wall (2021)

Here's my version: https://github.com/pathikrit/newswall/

pathikriton The X-Y Problem

Why not respond with both X and Y? e.g. for the last 3 character thing, here would be an appropriate response:

To get the last 3 characters, do `echo ${foo: -3}`. Are you trying to get the file extension though? What if the extension is not 3 characters e.g. `foo.jpeg`? You then want to do `${foo##*.}`

pathikriton The End of Manual Transmission

Teslas have creep off by default.

pathikriton Argo CD goes mainstream with hosted version

Honestly, probably worth it just to not have to pay for hosting.

pathikriton Making the Monty Hall problem weirder but obvious

When I first read Monty Hall problem, I actually thought it was blindingly obvious to switch. The fact the presenter had 2 doors to chose from and the one he opens is a goat _should_ increase the chance of the other one being not(goat) right?

pathikriton Math.Round opens the browser print dialog

Haskell

pathikriton The SR-71 Spy Plane Was So Fast, It Outran Every Missile Fired at It

The speed record for a car over a kilometer has not been broken since 1937 [1]

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercedes-Benz_W125_Rekordwagen

pathikriton Ask HN: Why don't websites show password requirements at the login screen?

Is there a database of leaked passwords somewhere? I would simply enforce that your password is not in the leaks? Probably would capture the most common 100k passwords anyway this way?

pathikriton What are covariance and contravariance?

My quick and dirty tl;dr: https://gist.github.com/pathikrit/a7845f72645159646fdb632bc3...

Let C<A> be a higher-kinded type e.g. in List<Animal>, List is C and Animal is A.

Let S be a subtype of T e.g. in class Cat extends Animal, Cat is S and Animal is T

If C<S> is a subtype of C<T>, then C is covaraint on T e.g. List<Cat> is a subtype of List<Animal>

If C<T> is a subtype of C<S>, then C is contravariant on T e.g. Predicate<Animal> is a subtype of Predicate<Cat>

If neither C<T> and nor C<S> are subtypes of the other, thenC is invariant on T

pathikriton What Is the Highest Salary Can a Programmer Make?

I know someone in high-frequency trading who makes $150,000 and a bonus between $1m-$2m each year

pathikriton How Ikea's Billy bookcase took over the world

Honest question: If I want the diversity of a Ikea catalogue with higher price and quality, where should I go?

pathikriton Western Digital unveiled its SanDisk 1TB SDXC card prototype

Or just pay $100/yr to back it up to Dropbox (or even cheaper AWS Glacier)?

pathikriton Giant ‘Arrows’ Seen From Space Point to a Vanished World

Some buffalo jumps were used for thousands of years and had CRUSHED BONES from millions of animals falling over compressed into walls tens of feet high.

pathikriton Why are your friends more popular than you? (2013)

Basically in a social graph, you are more likely to be in the edge (because there are more vertices in the edge) than in the center (visualize how in a balanced binary tree there are more leaf nodes than inner vertices).

pathikriton How to prepare your fresh Mac for software development

Here's mine: https://github.com/pathikrit/mac-setup-script/blob/master/se...

pathikriton Ask HN: How do you install developer tools on a fresh system?

Here's my brain dead script: https://github.com/pathikrit/mac-setup-script/blob/master/se...

pathikriton The Swift Algorithm Club

Shameluss plug. Here's a Scala one I try to maintain: https://github.com/pathikrit/scalgos

pathikriton N-queen puzzle in 4 lines of Scala

OP here. Sorry for the code-golfy post on HN. But, some clarifications:

1. Yes, it is O(n!) - it says so in the description but not on the title of the post on HN.

2. It is 4 lines of code for `nQueen` function. I did not include the printing code in the line count.

3. And no, I did not cheat by using semicolons in same lines - these are 4 legit lines IMO. You can put the `&` clause in 1 line to reduce it further.