Hacker News: Ntrails

New comment by Ntrails in "OpenAI fires three safety researchers for "mishandling research information""

Ntrails — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 17:28:18 +0000

Sam started wearing an earring lately - some wearable tech prototype. I'm told it is never wrong.

New comment by Ntrails in "Man discovers his parents' coffee machine used 1TB of data in 10 days"

Ntrails — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 16:43:25 +0000

I toast, therefore I am.

New comment by Ntrails in "We ported the original Doom to SQL"

Ntrails — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 11:05:50 +0000

> There are very few things I would want to do less than complicated logic in SQL.

Would you change your mind if I told you it would be giant strings with a bunch of `+ @database_name +` scattered around? Syntax highlighting is a crutch imo

(yes I refactored it to be parameterised yada, but for years those 2000 lines had grown and grown)

New comment by Ntrails in "Infidel goes wild"

Ntrails — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 11:53:04 +0000

The risk, I imagine, is that they open up unintended avenues of gameplay as they generously interpret options

New comment by Ntrails in "How Singapore's government-run dating service works"

Ntrails — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 15:13:34 +0000

I think it still had a lot of fairly abhorrent experiences for female users, and suffered from the inability to screen messages at all.

New comment by Ntrails in "September 2026: The world today, as seen by one Polish guy"

Ntrails — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 16:01:24 +0000

Oh yes, I was primarily referring to the metaphorical - hundreds of abhorrent non nuclear "wrath of god" options exist.

New comment by Ntrails in "September 2026: The world today, as seen by one Polish guy"

Ntrails — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 11:36:22 +0000

> And the problem with the current US president is he won't accept a loss.

At least he hasn't yet gone nuclear (metaphorically but also literally)

New comment by Ntrails in "Owed a billion dollars in Nvidia stock"

Ntrails — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 16:51:23 +0000

I still don't think I understand the actual events. Is it that he got 1/4 of the shares as he expected after a year and did not chase for years 2/3/4 (and they never offered them)?

New comment by Ntrails in "SpaceX's Starship launching to orbit for first time ever today"

Ntrails — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 14:06:37 +0000

> This is ballistics weapons technology

It's like a thousand different technologies, some ancient some relatively new. I don't precisely delight in my new space overlords, but I can still wonder at the enormous object being launched into space!

New comment by Ntrails in "What even is an OS now?"

Ntrails — Sat, 26 Sep 2026 17:45:47 +0000

> you should be able to write the scripts and programs by yourself if you want to do it that way

Having chat gpt one write me a powershell script took a 3 hour manual task using software and made it a 10 minute task which I can repeat any time I fancy should I need to.

Writing something similar would've taken me an hour+ just to dig out the key pieces of information I needed to start in a language I am proficient in. Why would I waste my time?

New comment by Ntrails in "Plan mode is dead"

Ntrails — Sat, 26 Sep 2026 11:19:42 +0000

> planning had become interactive and iterative

I find myself endlessly ctrl+c ing claude now as it flies off doing deep first principles analysis to work out how to find a thing it isn't sure about but I know the answer. Being able to give it that answer without needing to ctrl c would be a massive improvement

New comment by Ntrails in "An open source roguelike adventure through dungeons"

Ntrails — Sun, 20 Sep 2026 21:33:48 +0000

Most people I've spoken to, even players who long since ditched the game, describe food and hunger as tedium. All sorts of tedious gameplay has been targeted for a variety of reasons - but i freely concede it cost something in terms of story/worldbuilding/etc.

Mummies are still miserable to play, only now they have no upsides at all... xD

New comment by Ntrails in "An open source roguelike adventure through dungeons"

Ntrails — Sun, 20 Sep 2026 08:35:42 +0000

I started playing (from a thread on HN) ~7 years ago. The changes are both broad and deep - devs are not afraid to rework something three times until happy with the outcome. I missed food/hunger entirely but very few players speak highly of it.

There is no difficulty playing previous versions, changing and compiling your own etc etc. Devs are changing the game to be better (in their own view), more fun, more engaging. They should do that! It is a living piece of art imo

New comment by Ntrails in "US interest rates raised for first time in three years"

Ntrails — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 14:09:27 +0000

Yeah. I'm not sure how a strict reading doesn't end up with obvious policies ending up making all of the policies below "vote buying":

    - Cancel student loans
    - Reduce federal tax rates
    - Increase unemployment/pension/etc payouts

There is always a state of "this policy upside is contingent on voting for me" - though in Trumps case he is making it contingent Not on his own electoral outcome in some sense. Just messy.

New comment by Ntrails in "Blizzard Revives 'StarCraft' Franchise with Open-World Sci-Fi Shooter"

Ntrails — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 17:07:01 +0000

They basically only did it because the private servers had enough of a userbase that they felt obliged to get that money for themselves afaict

New comment by Ntrails in "We've followed their lives for six decades; now the stars of 7 Up are bowing out"

Ntrails — Sat, 12 Sep 2026 16:53:19 +0000

In my headcanon it was all born from an experimental show (Big Brother) in around 2000 - which was obviously and intentionally stage managed but otherwise largely genuine behaviours. It took them a couple of seasons to really optimise for the "right" contestants and how to maximise the drama etc etc.

The move to more and more of reality tv content is as much about budgets as anything else imo

New comment by Ntrails in "Go grandmaster Shin defeats AI KataGo with a two-stone handicap"

Ntrails — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 04:02:15 +0000

I don't think exploit is the right term?

Anyway. Yes if you throw examples into training it will be able to handle the situation - but handling unseen things for me is a key goal.

New comment by Ntrails in "Go grandmaster Shin defeats AI KataGo with a two-stone handicap"

Ntrails — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 22:54:19 +0000

I saw the same things when the OpenAI Dota bots could eviscerate humans 1v1 - even pros lost!

Until a more average player confuses the AI with an unseen behaviour (pulling creeps between the towers etc) to get an advantage.

New comment by Ntrails in "I like 'em thick: an apology to my English teachers"

Ntrails — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 08:58:06 +0000

> The very best paintings in the world, in person, can stop people cold.

I will always remember literally stopping mid stride to just stare at a Francis Bacon I'd seen in the corner of my eye in the Tate modern. Slightly later same day I am just staring at Monet lillies bewildered.

I gotta be honest, any time I go back I am disappointed because the same surprise and wonder have simple not been present. Idk

New comment by Ntrails in "AliExpress runs silent WebAudio fingerprinting that breaks Bluetooth multipoint"

Ntrails — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 12:39:48 +0000

I just request the desktop site, it's fine