9 ms·

The Ramanujan Machine is an intellectual fraud (2019)

40 points by spekcular 6y ago

spekcular 6y ago
An update is also available: https://www.galoisrepresentations.com/2021/02/11/ramanujan-machine-redux/ https://www.galoisrepresentations.com/2021/02/11/ramanujan-m...
- rfreytag 6y ago
  Update is archived here: https://archive.vn/nf70K https://archive.vn/nf70K
- chias 6y ago
  I love this intro to the update :D July 17, 2019: "Perhaps this is why I find the self-promotion surrounding the Ramanujan Machine so distasteful. (I wasn’t going to bother wasting any more time on this but here I am, last time I promise.)" February 11, 2021: "I had no intention to discuss the Ramanujan Machine again, but [...]"
myself248 6y ago
I've learned to be skeptical (to the point of total dismissal) of anything self-named by its inventor. If it's truly notable, others will name it.
- klyrs 6y ago
  Ramanujan died in 1920. If anything, I'd rather they self-named rather than besmirch Ramanujan's name in this way.
  - lifeisstillgood 6y ago
    Very good point - this sadly ties in with the rest of the self-consciously heavily marketed and branded project. On the other hand, we should just double the science budget globally every five years and perhaps people would worry less about cashflow and focus on what got them into science in the first place.
- mellosouls 6y ago
  Self-named? It's clearly named after the mathematician, though curiously they don't mention him on the homepage: https://www.ramanujanmachine.com/ https://www.ramanujanmachine.com/ https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan
centimeter 6y ago
Server is down. Come on, people; if you have a personal blog or something, you have to be prepared for traffic spikes many orders of magnitude higher than normal. If your writing is decent, you should expect to end up getting a hug from HN or Reddit at some point. This isn’t even that hard; you can easily serve HN from a $5/mo VPS as long as you’re not using some slow interpreted language backend and you do a bit of kernel param tuning. If you can handle peak 1k req/sec you should be fine.
- notafraudster 6y ago
  There's a lot of people for whom the marginal effort to migrate off Wordpress to a static site generator isn't worth it on the off chance that once every 3 years they write something that goes viral enough to take down their hosting. I agree that if your business model is to write a viral blog post for your startup or to get hired at a cool place then you should be worried about downtime, but if anything on my server goes viral and it crashes, I... don't care. It's just not a concern.
  - centimeter 6y ago
    Why are you putting your content online if you don't care if people can read it? I think it's great when people really like my writing, and I felt sad when I had a crappy slow blog that couldn't handle HN traffic and a bunch of people were unable to read my content. I don't make any money off my blog or anything, but it kind of defeats the purpose of having it if 90% of prospective readers are shut out. (And, indeed, probably 90% of traffic occurs in the intervals when I front-page HN or a popular subreddit.)
- gkedzierski 6y ago
  Come on, I've been building websites professionally for the past 15 years and I don't think I would know how to "tune the kernel params". I do build my blog as a static site and keep it on a serverless Firebase Hosting, so wouldn't need to though...
  - centimeter 6y ago
Zhenya 6y ago
Cache since site is getting hugged to death: https://archive.is/xZtb2 https://archive.is/xZtb2
klyrs 6y ago
I'd be most curious to hear Doron Zeilberger's take on this. He's previously teased mathematicians for writing proofs that are (in his view) better left to computers. He didn't seem to grandstand as much as the R.M. though -- like his opinions on finitism, he's honest in his shit-disturbing nature.
dang 6y ago
Recent and related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26142483 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26142483 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26044640 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26044640 A thread from 2019: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20352252 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20352252

40 points by spekcular 6y ago

An update is also available: https://www.galoisrepresentations.com/2021/02/11/ramanujan-machine-redux/ https://www.galoisrepresentations.com/2021/02/11/ramanujan-m...

rfreytag 6y ago
Update is archived here: https://archive.vn/nf70K https://archive.vn/nf70K
chias 6y ago
I love this intro to the update :D July 17, 2019: "Perhaps this is why I find the self-promotion surrounding the Ramanujan Machine so distasteful. (I wasn’t going to bother wasting any more time on this but here I am, last time I promise.)" February 11, 2021: "I had no intention to discuss the Ramanujan Machine again, but [...]"

myself248 6y ago

I've learned to be skeptical (to the point of total dismissal) of anything self-named by its inventor. If it's truly notable, others will name it.

klyrs 6y ago
Ramanujan died in 1920. If anything, I'd rather they self-named rather than besmirch Ramanujan's name in this way.
- lifeisstillgood 6y ago
  Very good point - this sadly ties in with the rest of the self-consciously heavily marketed and branded project. On the other hand, we should just double the science budget globally every five years and perhaps people would worry less about cashflow and focus on what got them into science in the first place.
mellosouls 6y ago
Self-named? It's clearly named after the mathematician, though curiously they don't mention him on the homepage: https://www.ramanujanmachine.com/ https://www.ramanujanmachine.com/ https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan

centimeter 6y ago

Server is down. Come on, people; if you have a personal blog or something, you have to be prepared for traffic spikes many orders of magnitude higher than normal. If your writing is decent, you should expect to end up getting a hug from HN or Reddit at some point. This isn’t even that hard; you can easily serve HN from a $5/mo VPS as long as you’re not using some slow interpreted language backend and you do a bit of kernel param tuning. If you can handle peak 1k req/sec you should be fine.

notafraudster 6y ago
There's a lot of people for whom the marginal effort to migrate off Wordpress to a static site generator isn't worth it on the off chance that once every 3 years they write something that goes viral enough to take down their hosting. I agree that if your business model is to write a viral blog post for your startup or to get hired at a cool place then you should be worried about downtime, but if anything on my server goes viral and it crashes, I... don't care. It's just not a concern.
- centimeter 6y ago
  Why are you putting your content online if you don't care if people can read it? I think it's great when people really like my writing, and I felt sad when I had a crappy slow blog that couldn't handle HN traffic and a bunch of people were unable to read my content. I don't make any money off my blog or anything, but it kind of defeats the purpose of having it if 90% of prospective readers are shut out. (And, indeed, probably 90% of traffic occurs in the intervals when I front-page HN or a popular subreddit.)
gkedzierski 6y ago
Come on, I've been building websites professionally for the past 15 years and I don't think I would know how to "tune the kernel params". I do build my blog as a static site and keep it on a serverless Firebase Hosting, so wouldn't need to though...
- centimeter 6y ago

Zhenya 6y ago

Cache since site is getting hugged to death: https://archive.is/xZtb2 https://archive.is/xZtb2

klyrs 6y ago

I'd be most curious to hear Doron Zeilberger's take on this. He's previously teased mathematicians for writing proofs that are (in his view) better left to computers. He didn't seem to grandstand as much as the R.M. though -- like his opinions on finitism, he's honest in his shit-disturbing nature.

dang 6y ago

Recent and related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26142483 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26142483 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26044640 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26044640 A thread from 2019: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20352252 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20352252