JK-Swizzle | Hacker News

Comment by JK-Swizzle | original | Knuth reward check

[−]JK-Swizzle · 2026-10-10 Sat 19:52 UTC · link

If I am reading this right, you can generate 268 435 456 ^ 62 alphabets.

I would say he could have even gotten away with “functionally infinite number of alphabets”.

[−]rawling · 2026-10-10 Sat 20:24 UTC · link

Some of the parameters are bools. So somewhere between 2^62 and your figure...

[−]winwang · 2026-10-11 Sun 06:49 UTC · link

Why would anybody need more than `268 435 456 ^ 62` KB of RAM?

[−]_ph_ · 2026-10-11 Sun 10:37 UTC · link

Sure. For practical purposes, the number is infinite. This is why I found the bug and the bug report so amusing: In "normal" language, the sentence is correct, but for a mathematician, especially such a renowned professor, it is an amazing blunder. Bonus points for being the first word in the document.