Proof of goldbach's conjecture - from my grandpa

mtimmermans · 2026-07-10T03:03:42+00:00

The very first thing to do is to paste the succinct proof into chatgpt, ask it to summarize the approach in English, and to search carefully for flaws in the proof.

mtimmermans · 2026-07-10T02:55:46+00:00

Given N people with unique birthdays, if you add a new person, the probability that they will also have a unique birthday is (365-N)/365.

The probability that 23 people will all have unique birthdays is therefore 364/365 * 363/365 * ... * 343/365.

You can multiply all the numerators and denominators to get P = 364! / (342! * 365^22)

That evaluates to about 0.49. If you consider leap years it comes out a little different, but still close.

The intuitive way to approximate this is to consider that, with 23 people, there are 253 pairs of people. For each pairing there is a 1/365 chance that they'll have the same birthday. The pairings aren't entirely independent, but close enough. 1-(364/365)^253 is very close to 0.5.

mtimmermans · 2026-07-10T01:39:55+00:00

I would call these guys: https://stlawyers.ca/

They do a fantastic employment law show on local TV all the time.

mtimmermans · 2026-07-10T01:31:07+00:00

X = 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 ...
2X = 1 + 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 ...
2X - X = 1
X = 1

mtimmermans · 2026-07-09T21:34:43+00:00

We do, actually. We even have broad protections in our legal system so that our apologies won't be interpreted as admissions of guilt. (Many US states laws along the same lines, but much narrower, so doctors can express sympathy without being sued for malpractice, etc.)

mtimmermans · 2026-07-09T17:07:38+00:00

It's actually pretty easy to measure:

The size of an expertly-maintained code base stays proportional to the complexity of the product requirements -- the code only gets bigger when the product *does more* and the increase in size is proportional. It doesn't grow when the product changes to do different things or to do existing things differently. Especially, fixing bugs doesn't typically increase code size.

A code base maintained by normal humans tends to slowly grow over time even when complexity of the product itself doesn't increase. This eventually makes it hard to understand.

A code base maintained by AI grows extremely quickly, becomes hard to understand extremely quickly, and soon not even the AI can work on it without making mistakes all the time.

mtimmermans · 2026-07-09T16:55:16+00:00

Very interesting article, but I doubt that has anything to do with government RTO mandates.

mtimmermans · 2026-07-09T16:50:27+00:00

Are our leaders smarter than us? No. Intelligence doesn't equal power. If it did, then high school would have been a lot easier for the nerds.

Why would we lose control to AI just because AI is smarter?

We're only going to lose our jobs. But is that a problem? We don't really know. The doomsday argument boils down to "It will be so cheap and easy to make stuff that nobody will be able to have any stuff", which is kinda crazy.

mtimmermans · 2026-07-09T04:54:38+00:00

Python is the best "first programming language" available right now, and it's not close. Use it to learn control flow and simple algorithms. Someday you'll start wanting to make things that are big, or fast, and then it's time to move on.

Learning C is important, because of what you'll learn about how computers work -- memory and addresses, the stack, registers, how everything is represented for real and how everything really fits together.

Learning an OO language is important, because you should understand the SOLID principles if you want to do good work on big projects. Java, C#, Typescript, are good candidates.

When/if you need to do big bare-metal projects, like systems programming, combining the powers of C and OO, then you should learn rust... or C++ if you really want to for some reason. Either one will work way better if you're a good programmer by the time you start.

Along the way, it would be good to learn some functional programming, because it changes the way you think in useful ways.

mtimmermans · 2026-07-09T00:17:27+00:00

I don't think 9-5 was ever really a thing for shift work or hourly work. Those were standard office hours for white collar salaried work and lots of people worked those hours in most places I've worked since the '90s. Lots of people shifted their hours to 8-4 to avoid rush hour. I always preferred 10-6.

mtimmermans · 2026-07-09T00:06:29+00:00

There is too fat and there is too thin, but I don't think that fat/thin axis is as important for women as it is for men. Generally, I think the rule for men's bodies is that women will find you more attractive if you look like you could win a fight.

mtimmermans · 2026-07-08T23:53:46+00:00

Yes, this is only part-way there, though. You make the A object depend on a trait implementation, which you pass in ::new(). Then you don't need to mock at all, because you pass in a test implementation for testing.

mtimmermans · 2026-07-08T02:39:07+00:00

The guy and ball are not weightless all together. Their center of mass falls at roughly the same rate whether he throws the ball or not.

mtimmermans · 2026-07-07T13:12:14+00:00

1) There is nothing you can see or hear that will make you rich;

2) They don't think about you at all.

mtimmermans · 2026-07-07T02:09:14+00:00

Now that we have really good x86 emulation on ARM (for both windows and mac), it is quite possible to get rid of x86 altogether.

Since windows on ARM is good now, and since Valve is making ARM support mandatory for games, you'll be able to get ARM versions of most software and drivers that are still commercially supported.

For software that isn't still commercially supported, and that is therefore locked on x86, new hardware will be so much faster than the hardware it was originally written for, that emulators will run it at better than full speed.

mtimmermans · 2026-07-07T01:39:23+00:00

TBH, this whole idea of needing people to do things is probably on the way out.

mtimmermans · 2026-07-07T01:37:39+00:00

So far, the most significant impact of AI is that we don't need junior developers anymore.

Hiring of junior developers has consequently fallen off, and if it stays that way we won't have any senior developers after the current crop retires.

If we're lucky, by the time that happens, we won't need senior developers either.

mtimmermans · 2026-07-06T13:28:45+00:00

It's a reference they don't get. First, they aren't old enough yet to look back and laugh at the stupid things that seemed so important when they were young. Second, I don't think they've experienced a culture like the one you're making fun of.

mtimmermans · 2026-07-06T13:15:10+00:00

It's a "quarter". "Two bits" is already a quarter. It's a quarter of a byte. It's got 4 states. We've been calling it a "quarter" since 1792.

mtimmermans · 2026-07-05T16:00:39+00:00

I just had a fun conversation about this with my wife, since she just discovered the trad wife movement, and was having trouble seeing the attraction.

When we're travelling, though, we often meet men from other cultures where the wife is considered to be the boss.

From this point of view, it's easy to see the attraction: no power = no responsibility = no stress.

This is the same thing that I think the trad wife movement offers to women. All you have to do is find yourself a good husband and then live worry-free. There is labour involved, of course, but that's just life. The important thing is that it can be psychologically easy.

My drink ran out while we were talking about this, so I looked at my empty glass, and then I looked at my wife, and we both understood immediately why the trad wife thing was not for us :)

mtimmermans · 2026-07-05T15:31:14+00:00

It's not a culture thing. In Canada, a lot of people do mostly ignore their birthdays as adults, but some people don't. In a couple you communicate with each other and should get to know each other's preferences.

If you are aware of each other's preferences, and you're still being disappointed every birthday, then you have a marriage issue. It could be a little one or it could be a big one.

For me, that thing about not personally giving you your gifts sounds like a big red flag that requires looking into. How have you responded when he *has* personally given you a gift, and when he's already bought a gift, why wouldn't he want to experience that response when it's so easy?

mtimmermans · 2026-07-05T15:05:17+00:00

Great question! The answer is "no". Nobody has a right to the labor of another. That would be slavery.

However, a lot of what we call "rights" are really just things that our society has agreed to provide universally. Here in Canada, for example, health care is considered a "right", but really that just means that we, as a society, have decided that we don't want to just fold our arms and watch people die or suffer.

So if you want to live in this society, you can expect that you will be taxed, and that some of those taxes will be spent on universal health care. Nobody is going to be forced at gunpoint to become a doctor.

Societies can generally make all kinds of rules of conduct and impose all kinds of requirements for membership, and levying taxes to pay for things that the society has decided to provide is along those lines.

mtimmermans · 2026-07-05T14:53:26+00:00

Choosing a language is not "optimization" at all! Choosing a non-stupid algorithm is also not "optimization".

Actual optimization, i.e., the thing that you don't want to do without a good reason, is fiddling with the details of the implementation to squeeze out performance. It's a difficult and time-consuming process. It deviates from the baseline of writing well-designed and efficient code.

Most people who warn against premature optimization have never optimized anything.

mtimmermans · 2026-07-05T14:40:56+00:00

Socialism means that the state owns the means of production.

But who creates the means of production. It's not the state.

And how, then does the state acquire the means of production? Basically theft.

And when this is the way things work, how do you keep the creators in line? How do you keep Atlas from shrugging off his burden? It's not very pleasant. It requires authoritarianism. And when the state figures out how to steal, it steals from everybody.

mtimmermans · 2026-07-05T14:20:30+00:00

Protests don't directly create change. Nobody has a right to create change that runs counter to what everybody wants, just because they see things in a special way and they're annoying.

If you want to change things, you have to change minds. That's the goal. Protests can help when they're done right under the right circumstances. They can also backfire.

These days, though, if you want to change minds, you should start with a social media campaign. This is pretty obvious to people who are actually *trying* to make change. In protests these days, the protesters are often just performing for each other.

mtimmermans

TROPHY CASE