frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

fp.

Open in hackernews

Show HN: The King Wen Permutation: [52, 10, 2]

https://gzw1987-bit.github.io/iching-math/
14•gezhengwen•2h ago
I analyzed two orderings of the 64 I Ching hexagrams and found the permutation cycle decomposition between them is [52, 10, 2] with zero fixed points. Nobody has done this kind of analysis before and this cycle type has not been reported in the literature. You can verify it yourself.

Comments

gezhengwen•1h ago
I found this by accident while analyzing the I Ching with code. 81% of hexagrams are locked in one chain, none stays in its original position. You can verify it yourself in the browser. Has anyone seen this before?
dmos62•1h ago
Fascinating. I've barely any knowledge of I Ching. What motivated you to explore this and I Ching in general?
gezhengwen•38m ago
The I Ching has influenced China for over 3000 years. I believe there must be a reason for that. In China, the I Ching is often treated as mysticism. But I believe in science. The end of mysticism must still be science. So I did a lot of research and found a unique pattern inside. I searched all the literature and found nothing about it. So I shared it here.
chordbug•1h ago
We truly live in an age where facts that are worth "maybe one sentence of space on Wikipedia" can be expanded into full-blown AI-coded interactive websites. I'm not sure how to feel about this. I think in this case it ascribes an inappropriate sense of grandeur: making a mathematical curiosity (and is the result even that surprising?) seem like some deep truth has been unveiled, or we finally found God's Number.
thaumasiotes•1h ago
> and is the result even that surprising?

No.

The exposition has its problems too. Consider:

>> Zero fixed points — not a single hexagram occupies the same position in both orderings. The structural difference is total.

As a mathematical matter, the expected number of fixed points for any permutation is 1. Some have more. For some to have more, others must have less, and all of those will have 0.

But as a logical matter, "the structural difference is total" is pure gibberish. Consider these two permutations on 5 elements:

    1. [2, 3, 4, 5, 1]
    2. [5, 1, 2, 3, 4]
"Not a single element occupies the same position in both orderings."

But of course these two permutations have a nearly identical structure (they are rotations in opposite directions, and are each other's inverses); they are far more closely related to each other than either is to

    3. [4, 3, 2, 1, 5]
even though permutation 3 shares the assigned position of "3" with permutation 1, and the assigned position of "2" with permutation 2.

Then:

>> We reframe the question:

>> Transform the question "what is the structural distance between two orderings"

>> into the mathematical problem "what is the cycle structure of a specific permutation in S₆₄?"

This is nonsense. The 'question' cannot be transformed into the 'problem', because they are completely unrelated ideas. It's like transforming the question 'what is the Levenshtein distance between two strings?' into the problem 'if a specific string were in alphabetical order, how would it be pronounced?'.

Someone•52m ago
> and is the result even that surprising?

Not as far as I can tell from skimming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_permutation_statistics.

casey2•25m ago
Random shuffles usually have a big loop

POSSE – Publish on your Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere

https://indieweb.org/POSSE
128•tosh•1h ago•30 comments

PC Gamer recommends RSS readers in a 37mb article that just keeps downloading

https://stuartbreckenridge.net/2026-03-19-pc-gamer-recommends-rss-readers-in-a-37mb-article/
628•JumpCrisscross•16h ago•292 comments

Walmart: ChatGPT checkout converted 3x worse than website

https://searchengineland.com/walmart-chatgpt-checkout-converted-worse-472071
74•speckx•3d ago•58 comments

Tin Can, a 'landline' for kids

https://www.businessinsider.com/tin-can-landline-kids-cellphone-cell-alternative-how-2025-9
139•tejohnso•2d ago•103 comments

Can you get root with only a cigarette lighter? (2024)

https://www.da.vidbuchanan.co.uk/blog/dram-emfi.html
81•HeliumHydride•2d ago•13 comments

Show HN: The King Wen Permutation: [52, 10, 2]

https://gzw1987-bit.github.io/iching-math/
14•gezhengwen•2h ago•7 comments

The gold standard of optimization: A look under the hood of RollerCoaster Tycoon

https://larstofus.com/2026/03/22/the-gold-standard-of-optimization-a-look-under-the-hood-of-rolle...
392•mariuz•15h ago•115 comments

The future of version control

https://bramcohen.com/p/manyana
536•c17r•19h ago•294 comments

Reports of code's death are greatly exaggerated

https://stevekrouse.com/precision
414•stevekrouse•23h ago•304 comments

The way CTRL-C in Postgres CLI cancels queries is incredibly hack-y

https://neon.com/blog/ctrl-c-in-psql-gives-me-the-heebie-jeebies
68•andrenotgiant•2d ago•10 comments

Why I love NixOS

https://www.birkey.co/2026-03-22-why-i-love-nixos.html
327•birkey•17h ago•232 comments

Project Nomad – Knowledge That Never Goes Offline

https://www.projectnomad.us
458•jensgk•21h ago•154 comments

Flash-MoE: Running a 397B Parameter Model on a Laptop

https://github.com/danveloper/flash-moe
356•mft_•22h ago•114 comments

Plane and ground vehicle collide at New York's LaGuardia airport halting flights

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy01g522ww4o
51•mememememememo•3h ago•37 comments

Show HN: Agent Kernel – Three Markdown files that make any AI agent stateful

https://github.com/oguzbilgic/agent-kernel
13•obilgic•3h ago•6 comments

GoGoGrandparent (YC S16) is hiring Back end Engineers

https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/gogograndparent/jobs/2vbzAw8-backend-engineer
1•davidchl•6h ago

MAUI Is Coming to Linux

https://avaloniaui.net/blog/maui-avalonia-preview-1
217•DeathArrow•18h ago•121 comments

The LCA problem revisited [pdf]

https://www3.cs.stonybrook.edu/~bender/talks/BenderFa00-lca-talk.pdf
4•remywang•5d ago•1 comments

Dataframe 1.0.0.0

https://discourse.haskell.org/t/ann-dataframe-1-0-0-0/13834
8•internet_points•1h ago•0 comments

They’re vibe-coding spam now

https://tedium.co/2026/02/25/vibe-coded-email-spam/
96•raybb•12h ago•55 comments

A Copy-Paste Bug That Broke PSpice AES-256 Encryption

https://jtsylve.blog/post/2026/03/18/PSpice-Encryption-Weakness
52•jtsylve•3d ago•11 comments

You are not your job

https://jry.io/writing/you-are-not-your-job/
188•jryio•18h ago•208 comments

GrapheneOS will remain usable by anyone without requiring personal information

https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/116261301913660830
422•nothrowaways•13h ago•117 comments

What young workers are doing to AI-proof themselves

https://www.wsj.com/economy/jobs/ai-jobs-young-people-careers-14282284
140•wallflower•16h ago•228 comments

Five years of running a systems reading group at Microsoft

https://armaansood.com/posts/systems-reading-group/
165•Foe•17h ago•50 comments

Ordered dithering with arbitrary or irregular colour palettes (2023)

https://matejlou.blog/2023/12/06/ordered-dithering-for-arbitrary-or-irregular-palettes/
43•surprisetalk•5d ago•3 comments

Migrating the American express payment network, twice

https://americanexpress.io/migrating-the-payments-network-twice/
76•madflojo•10h ago•27 comments

Building an FPGA 3dfx Voodoo with Modern RTL Tools

https://noquiche.fyi/voodoo
195•fayalalebrun•21h ago•43 comments

LLMs predict my coffee

https://dynomight.net/coffee/
121•surprisetalk•4d ago•49 comments

More common mistakes to avoid when creating system architecture diagrams

https://www.ilograph.com/blog/posts/more-common-diagram-mistakes/
192•billyp-rva•22h ago•57 comments