frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

fp.

How I do and don't use agents

https://twitter.com/jessfraz/status/2019975917863661760
1•tosh•1m ago•0 comments

BTDUex Safe? The Back End Withdrawal Anomalies

1•aoijfoqfw•4m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Compile-Time Vibe Coding

https://github.com/Michael-JB/vibecode
1•michaelchicory•7m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Ensemble – macOS App to Manage Claude Code Skills, MCPs, and Claude.md

https://github.com/O0000-code/Ensemble
1•IO0oI•10m ago•1 comments

PR to support XMPP channels in OpenClaw

https://github.com/openclaw/openclaw/pull/9741
1•mickael•10m ago•0 comments

Twenty: A Modern Alternative to Salesforce

https://github.com/twentyhq/twenty
1•tosh•12m ago•0 comments

Raspberry Pi: More memory-driven price rises

https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/more-memory-driven-price-rises/
1•calcifer•18m ago•0 comments

Level Up Your Gaming

https://d4.h5go.life/
1•LinkLens•22m ago•1 comments

Di.day is a movement to encourage people to ditch Big Tech

https://itsfoss.com/news/di-day-celebration/
2•MilnerRoute•23m ago•0 comments

Show HN: AI generated personal affirmations playing when your phone is locked

https://MyAffirmations.Guru
4•alaserm•24m ago•3 comments

Show HN: GTM MCP Server- Let AI Manage Your Google Tag Manager Containers

https://github.com/paolobietolini/gtm-mcp-server
1•paolobietolini•25m ago•0 comments

Launch of X (Twitter) API Pay-per-Use Pricing

https://devcommunity.x.com/t/announcing-the-launch-of-x-api-pay-per-use-pricing/256476
1•thinkingemote•25m ago•0 comments

Facebook seemingly randomly bans tons of users

https://old.reddit.com/r/facebookdisabledme/
1•dirteater_•26m ago•1 comments

Global Bird Count Event

https://www.birdcount.org/
1•downboots•27m ago•0 comments

What Is Ruliology?

https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2026/01/what-is-ruliology/
2•soheilpro•29m ago•0 comments

Jon Stewart – One of My Favorite People – What Now? with Trevor Noah Podcast [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44uC12g9ZVk
2•consumer451•31m ago•0 comments

P2P crypto exchange development company

1•sonniya•45m ago•0 comments

Vocal Guide – belt sing without killing yourself

https://jesperordrup.github.io/vocal-guide/
2•jesperordrup•49m ago•0 comments

Write for Your Readers Even If They Are Agents

https://commonsware.com/blog/2026/02/06/write-for-your-readers-even-if-they-are-agents.html
1•ingve•50m ago•0 comments

Knowledge-Creating LLMs

https://tecunningham.github.io/posts/2026-01-29-knowledge-creating-llms.html
1•salkahfi•51m ago•0 comments

Maple Mono: Smooth your coding flow

https://font.subf.dev/en/
1•signa11•57m ago•0 comments

Sid Meier's System for Real-Time Music Composition and Synthesis

https://patents.google.com/patent/US5496962A/en
1•GaryBluto•1h ago•1 comments

Show HN: Slop News – HN front page now, but it's all slop

https://dosaygo-studio.github.io/hn-front-page-2035/slop-news
7•keepamovin•1h ago•1 comments

Show HN: Empusa – Visual debugger to catch and resume AI agent retry loops

https://github.com/justin55afdfdsf5ds45f4ds5f45ds4/EmpusaAI
1•justinlord•1h ago•0 comments

Show HN: Bitcoin wallet on NXP SE050 secure element, Tor-only open source

https://github.com/0xdeadbeefnetwork/sigil-web
2•sickthecat•1h ago•1 comments

White House Explores Opening Antitrust Probe on Homebuilders

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-02-06/white-house-explores-opening-antitrust-probe-i...
1•petethomas•1h ago•0 comments

Show HN: MindDraft – AI task app with smart actions and auto expense tracking

https://minddraft.ai
2•imthepk•1h ago•0 comments

How do you estimate AI app development costs accurately?

1•insights123•1h ago•0 comments

Going Through Snowden Documents, Part 5

https://libroot.org/posts/going-through-snowden-documents-part-5/
1•goto1•1h ago•0 comments

Show HN: MCP Server for TradeStation

https://github.com/theelderwand/tradestation-mcp
1•theelderwand•1h ago•0 comments
Open in hackernews

The undeserved status of the pigeon-hole principle (1991)

https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD10xx/EWD1094.html
18•tosh•2mo ago

Comments

xg15•2mo ago
He wasn't wrong, but I also think this an example of "professional blindness", where experts in a topic can lose the ability to imagine the POV of a layman/novice.

I was thinking this was parody for a moment, because the "bad" formulations (0) and (2) seem obviously easier to understand than the "good" formulation (1).

I needed some attempts to parse what (1) even wants to say. (Minimum, maximum and average of what? I imagine the counts per unique item in the bag, but it doesn't say that anywhere)

It's also not obvious at all that (1) is true, so you'd need to see at least a proof.

But what's true is that (1) is more versatile and easier to apply to new problems - it's just harder to teach. So maybe the right solution would have been to start with (0) and (2), then show how those actually imply (1) - and then go on using (1) as a tool, like the quadratic formula.

It's a bit like "If I have two apples and get three more apples, I have five apples" is easier to understand for someone learning addition than "2+3=5", but you still don't want to spend the rest of your life imagining metaphorical apples whenever you have to calculate something.

gweinberg•2mo ago
Yeah, it may seem like a "better" (because stronger) conclusion to the author that if you have more pigeons than pigeonholes you must have more than one pigeon in a hole even if negative or irrational numbers of pigeons. But you're pretty much only invoking the pigeonhole principle in discrete math, where "more than one" means "at least 2".
xg15•2mo ago
Yeah, I think that was something that irked me about the "general" formulation: It suddenly brought in an average, i.e. a real, even though the "common" formulations only dealt with integers. This may be more general but made reasoning and understanding harder.
karmakaze•2mo ago
The Pigeonhole Principle is merely the Law of Excluded Middle with more than two 'slots'.

Proof by Contradiction relies on the Law of Excluded Middle and is considered inferior than direct or by induction, so there is no elevated status given to these.

bmacho•2mo ago
I think overall it's a good habit to go through your proofs again, and remove unnecessary double negations, and make proofs 'more constructive'.

Reductio ad Absurdum makes coming up with proofs easier (you have one more information to use, you can work from both ends of the problem and try to make 2 half long proofs meet, instead of one normal long), but in the end it is often unnecessary, you can remove it, and your proof reads better.

I don't share his view that Generalized Pigeon-hole Principle makes the normal version unnecessary. The normal version is used a lot in the form it is formulated.