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Verifying your Matrix devices is becoming mandatory

https://element.io/blog/verifying-your-devices-is-becoming-mandatory-2/
67•LorenDB•2h ago•41 comments

Jailbreaking AI Models to Phish Elderly Victims

https://simonlermen.substack.com/p/can-ai-models-be-jailbroken-to-phish
56•DalasNoin•2h ago•19 comments

Crypto got everything it wanted. Now it's sinking

https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2025/11/18/crypto-got-everything-it-wanted-now-it...
23•pseudolus•1h ago•29 comments

Loose wire leads to blackout, contact with Francis Scott Key bridge

https://www.ntsb.gov:443/news/press-releases/Pages/NR20251118.aspx
249•DamnInteresting•6h ago•103 comments

Blame as a Service

https://www.humaninvariant.com/blog/blame
58•humaninvariant•1w ago•3 comments

Researchers discover security vulnerability in WhatsApp

https://www.univie.ac.at/en/news/detail/forscherinnen-entdecken-grosse-sicherheitsluecke-in-whatsapp
146•KingNoLimit•6h ago•44 comments

Workday to acquire Pipedream

https://newsroom.workday.com/2025-11-19-Workday-Signs-Definitive-Agreement-to-Acquire-Pipedream
40•gaws•2h ago•32 comments

Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

https://www.theverge.com/news/823750/european-union-ai-act-gdpr-changes
547•ksec•12h ago•564 comments

Meta Segment Anything Model 3

https://ai.meta.com/sam3/
293•lukeinator42•9h ago•58 comments

Building more with GPT-5.1-Codex-Max

https://openai.com/index/gpt-5-1-codex-max/
346•hansonw•9h ago•201 comments

Microsoft AI CEO pushes back against critics after recent Windows AI backlash

https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/windows-11/microsoft-ai-ceo-pushes-back-against-critics-...
105•thewebguyd•6h ago•111 comments

Precise geolocation via Wi-Fi Positioning System

https://www.amoses.dev/blog/wifi-location/
111•nicosalm•5h ago•59 comments

How Slide Rules Work

https://amenzwa.github.io/stem/ComputingHistory/HowSlideRulesWork/
60•ColinWright•6h ago•16 comments

AI is a front for consolidation of resources and power

https://www.chrbutler.com/what-ai-is-really-for
132•delaugust•8h ago•97 comments

What really happened with the CIA and The Paris Review?

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2025/11/11/what-really-happened-with-the-cia-and-the-paris-re...
13•frenzcan•1w ago•1 comments

Gaming on Linux has never been more approachable

https://www.theverge.com/tech/823337/switching-linux-gaming-desktop-cachyos
254•throwaway270925•5h ago•192 comments

Larry Summers resigns from OpenAI board

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/19/larry-summers-epstein-openai.html
276•koolba•13h ago•275 comments

Thunderbird adds native Microsoft Exchange email support

https://blog.thunderbird.net/2025/11/thunderbird-adds-native-microsoft-exchange-email-support/
342•babolivier•15h ago•100 comments

Static Web Hosting on the Intel N150: FreeBSD, SmartOS, NetBSD, OpenBSD and Linu

https://it-notes.dragas.net/2025/11/19/static-web-hosting-intel-n150-freebsd-smartos-netbsd-openb...
129•t-3•9h ago•43 comments

The patent office is about to make bad patents untouchable

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/11/patent-office-about-make-bad-patents-untouchable
277•iamnothere•5h ago•25 comments

Vortex: An extensible, state of the art columnar file format

https://github.com/vortex-data/vortex
42•tanelpoder•5d ago•7 comments

Racing karts on a Rust GPU kernel driver

https://www.collabora.com/news-and-blog/news-and-events/racing-karts-on-a-rust-gpu-kernel-driver....
49•mfilion•6h ago•3 comments

Launch HN: Mosaic (YC W25) – Agentic Video Editing

https://mosaic.so
109•adishj•11h ago•102 comments

Why CUDA translation wont unlock AMD

https://eliovp.com/why-cuda-translation-wont-unlock-amds-real-potential/
64•JonChesterfield•1w ago•48 comments

Cognitive and mental health correlates of short-form video use

https://psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2026-89350-001.html
227•smartmic•7h ago•163 comments

Pozsar's Bretton Woods III: The Framework

https://philippdubach.com/2025/10/25/pozsars-bretton-woods-iii-the-framework-1/2/
48•7777777phil•7h ago•23 comments

Branching with or Without PII: The Future of Environments

https://neon.com/blog/branching-environments-anonymized-pii
11•emschwartz•1w ago•3 comments

The Death of Arduino?

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/adafruit_opensource-privacy-techpolicy-activity-739690336223705497...
379•ChuckMcM•7h ago•190 comments

Measuring political bias in Claude

https://www.anthropic.com/news/political-even-handedness
37•gmays•7h ago•59 comments

A $1k AWS mistake

https://www.geocod.io/code-and-coordinates/2025-11-18-the-1000-aws-mistake/
281•thecodemonkey•17h ago•241 comments
Open in hackernews

That fractal that's been up on my wall for years

https://chriskw.xyz/2025/05/21/Fractal/
571•chriskw•6mo ago

Comments

taeric•6mo ago
Holy cow, I was expecting a quick read. Wound up having to skim some, as I need to get some work today. Will be coming back to this to play with some. Really well done!
CBLT•6mo ago
Well written! Would you mind sharing how you came up with the "middle out" numbering system? I can never seem to come up with something this inspired when I'm doing math problems by myself.
chriskw•6mo ago
The post presents it a bit out of order, but it was mostly from realizing at some point that the way the fractal grows by a factor of 5, base 5 number systems, and the "spiral" mentioned in the post can all fit together. I also thought a lot about how to programmatically draw the fractal and a natural way would be to start from the middle and zoom out.

There's an apocryphal story about Richard Feynman about how he used to keep a dozen or so random problems in the back of his mind and made a little bit of progress on them every time he saw a connection, until finally he'd solve one and everyone would think he magically figured it out instantly. This was a bit similar except I'm not nearly at that level and I've only been able to do that for one problem instead of a dozen.

leni536•6mo ago
Got a bit nerd-sniped by this and came up with an L-system that fills out (I think) "the wallflower":

https://onlinetools.com/math/l-system-generator?draw=AB&skip...

edit: On second thought, this probably generates the other fractal, but I'm not sure.

leni536•6mo ago
Found a space-filling curve for the wallflower:

https://onlinetools.com/math/l-system-generator?draw=ABCD&sk...

The previous one fills out the Koch island.

chriskw•6mo ago
That's really cool! I tried to get something to work last week on pen and paper but couldn't get anything to stick. Is there a strategy you used or did you just go by feel?

Edit: just noticed how you encoded a flip (AB <--> CD) between iterations like how the matrix flips the orientation of space. Super neat!

leni536•6mo ago
> noticed how you encoded a flip (AB <--> CD)

Exactly! There is also a less obvious relationship between A and B too: B is a A "backwards" (A rotated 180°, starting the curve from the opposite end).

The strategy was to put 5 lines on the plus sign on the sides of the 5 cells, with the idea that each line eventually fills out a neighboring cell in subsequent iterations. I found one such path that had a chance of working. Not sure if this makes sense.

entropicdrifter•6mo ago
Kinda looks like a propeller
shermantanktop•6mo ago
Things with four arms that all curve the same way unfortunately tend to look swastika-ish.
leni536•6mo ago
The the arms of the author's "wallflower" fractal don't seem to curve, as opposed to the other, similar fractal (quadratic von Koch island). Which can be explained by each iteration adding a mirroring.
winnit•6mo ago
The unfortunate thing here is that the swastika was appropriated by a genocidal regime. The symbol still has a totally different life in India and Japan.
bdamm•6mo ago
That was fun.
nico•6mo ago
Amazing insightful and thoughtful write up, thank you!

Loved the 3d visualizations

It reminds me of this thing I built some time ago while playing with recursive decimation to generate effects similar to fractals from any image

You can play with it here: https://jsfiddle.net/nicobrenner/a1t869qf/

Just press Blursort 2x2 a couple of times to generate a few frames and then click Animate

You can also copy/paste images into it

There’s no backend, it all just runs on the browser

Don’t recommend it on mobile

Iwan-Zotow•6mo ago
Curious if it would work in 3D
nico•6mo ago
Very interesting! I wonder what that would look like

Right now, roughly, the algorithm recursively divides the image by doing decimation (ie. picking every other pixel), and keeps the decimated pixels as a second image

Not sure how that algorithm would apply to a 3d data structure

Do you know how 3d objects/images are usually represented?

It would be cool to recursively decompose a 3d object into smaller versions of itself :)

Scene_Cast2•6mo ago
I wonder if something similar can be applied to get a dither pattern with built-in level of detail adjustment.
cess11•6mo ago
Nice writeup. The Heighway dragon of Jurassic Park fame is pretty neat too.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_curve

CliffStoll•6mo ago
Outstanding work and a delightful read.
chriskw•6mo ago
Thanks Cliff, it means a ton coming from you! The videos from you and all the other folks on Numberphile always inspired me to see the beauty in math growing up :)
speeder•6mo ago
Please you two, make an awesome YouTube vídeo out of this. It is fascinating and beatiful and deserves a chance to viralize a little :)
sakesun•6mo ago
Wow
tcshit•6mo ago
Nice writeup! I was hoping to see a photo of the fractal on your wall.. Nice link to Knuth video that I somehow have missed.
leephillips•6mo ago
Isn’t that it on the left in the last image?
tcshit•6mo ago
Yeah, maybe it is. It would be cool to make it much bigger, frame it and put it on the wall. Or create a mosaic tiled artwork, similar to Knuth’s dragon curve wall.
chriskw•6mo ago
Yeah, it's in the last image and in the thumbnail at very top (which I realize now is really hard to spot on mobile), intentionally not in the spotlight to leave space for the twist at the end.

https://chriskw.xyz/images/fractal/thumbnail.jpg

I think it would work perfectly as a mosaic eventually, but for the time being I'm perfectly content with the "rustic" 8x11 graph paper sized one taped to the wall. Currently planning to put up a slice of the orthotopeflower as a companion piece once I find matches for the colored pencils I used back then.

matt3210•6mo ago
Now make a tiling game engine that uses these!
Cogito•6mo ago
Thought I'd check the arithmetic for 2 two-digit numbers, and it works!

I expect 41+14 to be 12 (two right plus two up equals two right and two up).

Long addition in long form below uses:

'=' to show equivalent lines (reordering of terms (1+2=2+1), spliting numbers (41=40+1), adding single digits (1+4=22))

'->' for when the algorithm gives a digit

'<' for when we move over a column

    41+14
    = (40+1)+(10+4)
    = 40 + 10 + (1+4)
    = 40 + 10 + 22
    -> 1s digit = 2
    < 4 + 1 + 2
    = 22 + 2
    = 20 + 2 + 2
    = 20 + 41
    -> 10s digit = 1
    < 2 + 4
    = 0
    -> done
    == 12
[edit] Just noticed the article has two different numbering systems, one where 10, 20, 30, 40 are clockwise and one where they are anticlockwise. In both, 1, 2, 3, 4 are clockwise. My addition is on the second, where 10s are anticlockwise (this is what is used in the addition table).

It still works in the alternative system (14+21 should equal 12)

    14+21
    =10+20+42
    ->2
    <1+2+4
    =13+4
    =10+3+4
    =10+31
    ->1
    <1+3
    =0
    ==12
cies•6mo ago
I had this one up the wall (giant print) at a place I worked:

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cies/haskell-fractal/refs/... [17MB, sorry Github]

It contains the Haskell code that produced it: https://github.com/cies/haskell-fractal

Especially the `sharpen` function was interesting to come up with (I used some now-offline tool to do curve fitting for me): https://github.com/cies/haskell-fractal/blob/master/fractal....

Fun little project. :)

baq•6mo ago
This went much deeper and harder than expected. One has to admire the dedication.

Question to the author: what would you recommend to hang on my kid’s wall today?

chriskw•6mo ago
I'm by no means a parenting expert, but my answer would be anything related to something they feel passion or wonder for in the moment. I snuck in a paragraph near the end about burnout. At the root of the problem for me was that I lost the feeling of fascination and curiosity I had for math and programming, and doing this write-up helped me tap into that feeling of childlike wonder that used to come easily.
Tade0•6mo ago
> Deciding to delegate to a future version of me that knows more math

Relatable. Huge part of my decision on what degree to pursue was a list of problems (mostly linear algebra) I needed to solve, but didn't have the guidance (and internet connection) to.

867-5309•6mo ago
well, that escalated beautifully
kragen•6mo ago
This is beautiful. Thank you.
mathfailure•6mo ago
Too much math.
wistlo•6mo ago
This is so much better than reading the news.

Favorited—I'll be coming back to absorb more, as my aging semi-fluency in engineering physics and SQL doesn't help much with the notation I last saw in the 1980s.

mckeed•6mo ago
Fun post! I drew the first 5 iterations by hand myself and I'm finding it easiest to think of as a self-similar coloring of a square tesselation.

If you start with the shape of iteration 3, it tessellates as a 5x5 square tile. Make an infinite grid of those tile shapes with one iteration 3 version in the center. Treat that center tile as the center square in the iteration 3 pattern and color the tiles around it according to how the 2nd and 3rd iterations were built of squares. This gives you the 4th and 5th iteration and you can continue to iterate on the coloring outwards to color the grid of tiles in the wallflower pattern.

mbty•5mo ago
Really cool and in-depth, thank you!

I believe that there is a typo in the pattern formula (right after "Looking closely you might pick up on the pattern"): it should read

  5**(n/2) instead of 5**n
  5**((n-1)/2) instead of 5**(n-1)
(\overrightarrow{10*4} is [0, 25] but your original formula gives [0, 625])

Also, regarding Knuth's mistake: Youtube comments point out that his fractal is in fact correct; he just mistook the beginning point with the end point. Loosely speaking, the fractal is symmetrical about its middle turn, which is precisely the one Knuth believed to be incorrect. All in all, he still made a fractal-related mistake, so the conclusion holds.

chriskw•5mo ago
Good catch, corrected the formula!