frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

fp.

OpenCiv3: Open-source, cross-platform reimagining of Civilization III

https://openciv3.org/
475•klaussilveira•7h ago•116 comments

The Waymo World Model

https://waymo.com/blog/2026/02/the-waymo-world-model-a-new-frontier-for-autonomous-driving-simula...
813•xnx•12h ago•487 comments

How we made geo joins 400× faster with H3 indexes

https://floedb.ai/blog/how-we-made-geo-joins-400-faster-with-h3-indexes
33•matheusalmeida•1d ago•1 comments

Show HN: Look Ma, No Linux: Shell, App Installer, Vi, Cc on ESP32-S3 / BreezyBox

https://github.com/valdanylchuk/breezydemo
157•isitcontent•7h ago•17 comments

Monty: A minimal, secure Python interpreter written in Rust for use by AI

https://github.com/pydantic/monty
156•dmpetrov•7h ago•67 comments

A century of hair samples proves leaded gas ban worked

https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/02/a-century-of-hair-samples-proves-leaded-gas-ban-worked/
92•jnord•3d ago•12 comments

Dark Alley Mathematics

https://blog.szczepan.org/blog/three-points/
50•quibono•4d ago•6 comments

Show HN: I spent 4 years building a UI design tool with only the features I use

https://vecti.com
260•vecti•9h ago•123 comments

Show HN: If you lose your memory, how to regain access to your computer?

https://eljojo.github.io/rememory/
207•eljojo•10h ago•134 comments

Microsoft open-sources LiteBox, a security-focused library OS

https://github.com/microsoft/litebox
328•aktau•13h ago•158 comments

Sheldon Brown's Bicycle Technical Info

https://www.sheldonbrown.com/
327•ostacke•13h ago•86 comments

Hackers (1995) Animated Experience

https://hackers-1995.vercel.app/
411•todsacerdoti•15h ago•219 comments

PC Floppy Copy Protection: Vault Prolok

https://martypc.blogspot.com/2024/09/pc-floppy-copy-protection-vault-prolok.html
23•kmm•4d ago•1 comments

An Update on Heroku

https://www.heroku.com/blog/an-update-on-heroku/
337•lstoll•13h ago•242 comments

Show HN: R3forth, a ColorForth-inspired language with a tiny VM

https://github.com/phreda4/r3
52•phreda4•6h ago•9 comments

Delimited Continuations vs. Lwt for Threads

https://mirageos.org/blog/delimcc-vs-lwt
4•romes•4d ago•0 comments

How to effectively write quality code with AI

https://heidenstedt.org/posts/2026/how-to-effectively-write-quality-code-with-ai/
195•i5heu•10h ago•145 comments

I spent 5 years in DevOps – Solutions engineering gave me what I was missing

https://infisical.com/blog/devops-to-solutions-engineering
115•vmatsiiako•12h ago•38 comments

Learning from context is harder than we thought

https://hy.tencent.com/research/100025?langVersion=en
152•limoce•3d ago•79 comments

Understanding Neural Network, Visually

https://visualrambling.space/neural-network/
245•surprisetalk•3d ago•32 comments

I now assume that all ads on Apple news are scams

https://kirkville.com/i-now-assume-that-all-ads-on-apple-news-are-scams/
996•cdrnsf•16h ago•420 comments

Introducing the Developer Knowledge API and MCP Server

https://developers.googleblog.com/introducing-the-developer-knowledge-api-and-mcp-server/
26•gfortaine•5h ago•3 comments

FORTH? Really!?

https://rescrv.net/w/2026/02/06/associative
46•rescrv•15h ago•17 comments

I'm going to cure my girlfriend's brain tumor

https://andrewjrod.substack.com/p/im-going-to-cure-my-girlfriends-brain
67•ray__•3h ago•30 comments

Evaluating and mitigating the growing risk of LLM-discovered 0-days

https://red.anthropic.com/2026/zero-days/
38•lebovic•1d ago•11 comments

Show HN: Smooth CLI – Token-efficient browser for AI agents

https://docs.smooth.sh/cli/overview
78•antves•1d ago•59 comments

How virtual textures work

https://www.shlom.dev/articles/how-virtual-textures-really-work/
30•betamark•14h ago•28 comments

Show HN: Slack CLI for Agents

https://github.com/stablyai/agent-slack
41•nwparker•1d ago•11 comments

Female Asian Elephant Calf Born at the Smithsonian National Zoo

https://www.si.edu/newsdesk/releases/female-asian-elephant-calf-born-smithsonians-national-zoo-an...
7•gmays•2h ago•2 comments

Evolution of car door handles over the decades

https://newatlas.com/automotive/evolution-car-door-handle/
41•andsoitis•3d ago•62 comments
Open in hackernews

What are the real numbers, really? (2024)

https://www.infinitelymore.xyz/p/what-are-the-real-numbers-really
31•EthanHeilman•5mo ago

Comments

thatguysaguy•5mo ago
Joel's blog in general is an extremely great read. I highly recommend subscribing.
morpheos137•5mo ago
Real numbers are the concept of quantities built up from continuous flows.
glial•5mo ago
Hopefully someone better educated than me can answer this - several of the definitions in the link feel constructivist, i.e. they describe constructions of of real numbers. It seems easy to think of methods of constructing non-rational numbers, by e.g. using infinite sequences, by taking roots, or whatever.

It seems harder to prove that every real number can be constructed via such a method.

Is there a construction-based method that can produce ALL real numbers between, say, 0 and 1? This seems unlikely to me, since the method of construction would probably be based on some sort of enumeration, meaning that you would only end up with countably many numbers. But maybe someone else can help me become un-confused.

jtimdwyer•5mo ago
I may be misunderstanding your concern, but I believe this is what is meant by "Categoricity for the real numbers"
Kranar•5mo ago
The definitions provided appear as though they are constructive, but they are not actually constructive, they are set-theoretic existence claims that quantify over all sequences, in particular over undefinable sets. Specifically, the description that appears constructive doesn't actually define any particular real number, it only defines the universe in which the real numbers live.

Another subtle detail is that while it's true that every real number corresponds to (and can be represented by) a Cauchy sequence of rationals, the very sequence itself might be undefinable.

jostylr•5mo ago
Constructivist basically means being able to be explicit. Dedekind cuts and Cauchy sequences are not necessarily constructivist though something described by one of them can be explicitly descriptive for some applications. Any approach which produces all real numbers as commonly accepted will fail to be explicit in all cases as such explicitness presumably implies the real number has been expressed uniquely with finite strings and finite alphabets which can describe at most a countable number of them.

The decimal numbers, for example, can be viewed as an infinite converging sum of powers of ten. Theoretically one could produce a description, but only a countable number of those could be written down in finite terms (some kind of finite recipe). So those finite ones could fall in a constructivist camp, but the ones requiring an infinite string to describe would, as far as I understand constructivism, not fall under being constructivist. To be clear, the finite string doesn't have other be explicit about how to produce the numbers, just that it is naming the thing and it can be derived from that. So square root of 2 names a real number and there is a process to compute out the decimals so that exists in a constructivist sense. But "most" real numbers could not be named.

ryandv•5mo ago
> several of the definitions in the link feel constructivist, i.e. they describe constructions of of real numbers.

If you are a constructivist, then you will supply direct proofs for your results as you reject indirect proof, proof by contradiction, law of excluded middle, and things of this nature.

The converse does not necessarily hold. Providing a direct construction of an object satisfying the field and completeness axioms (e.g. the Dedekind construction) does not necessarily mean that one is a constructivist. Indeed, one can use the Dedekind construction and still go on to prove many more results on top of it that still do rely on indirect proof and reductio ad absurdum.

hackandthink•5mo ago
Interestingly, constructive mathematics cannot prove that the Cauchy and Dedekind constructions are isomorphic:

"As often happens in an intuitionistic setting, classically equivalent notions fork. Dedekind reals give rise to several demonstrably different collections of reals when only intuitionistic logic is assumed"

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1510.00641

jostylr•5mo ago
I came up with a different definition that is a kind of inverse of Dedekind cuts. It is the idea that a real number is the set of all rational intervals that contain it. Since this is circular, there are properties that I came up with which say when a set of rational intervals qualifies to be called a real number in my setup. I have an unreviewed paper which creates a version that is a bridge between numerical analysis and the theoretical definition of a real number. Another unreviewed paper shows the equivalence between my definition and Dedekind cuts. You can read both at [1].

There is a long tradition of using intervals for dealing with real numbers. It is often used by constructivists and can be thought of viewing a real number as a measurement.

1: https://github.com/jostylr/Reals-as-Oracles

prmph•5mo ago
Its interesting. When I first encountered complex numbers when starting high school it was very difficult to wrap my head around how they could be actual numbers.

I no longer have that problem, ever since I truly understood how all numbers are simply abstract tools for reasoning. In a way, it's interesting that complex numbers seem more "real" than the real numbers themselves.

I remember listening to a radio show where a physicist discussed the link between quantum mechanics and complex numbers, and thus how they were fundamental to reality [1], whereas we don't know whether real numbers actually describe physical reality.

[1] If I remember correctly, one argument was that although a common use of complex numbers is an alternative number system for making trigonometric/polar calculations simpler, they underpin quantum mechanics in a way that cannot be alternatively formulated in terms of real number numbers

tim333•5mo ago
A lot of physics equations describe real quantities like E=mc2. We just kind of take it for granted. You can formulate quantum mechanics without complex numbers but they seem kind of fundamental to it in a similar way to how real quantities like energy seem fundamental to reality.
prmph•5mo ago
If everything is actually quantized, then real numbers do not reflect reality
bsoles•5mo ago
I am no mathematician, but the idea of real numbers as the limit of rational numbers that don't belong to the set of all rational numbers blows my mind. And to top, the set of real numbers is so much bigger than the set of all rational numbers!
deterministic•5mo ago
Maybe worth checking out if you want a formal (as in machine checkable) definition of reals:

https://leanprover-community.github.io/mathlib-overview.html

loning•5mo ago
real number seems to be the ∞ of fibonacci, please use translator, this is in Chinese, but have all proofs

https://binary.dw.cash/binaryuniverse/T27-3-zeckendorf-real-...

loning•5mo ago
Zeckendorf → ℝ → ζ(s) → ψ₀ → Zeckendorf