Hacker News: jcalx

New comment by jcalx in "The only known trebuchet casualty in history"

jcalx — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 16:39:43 +0000

Not the only known trebuchet casualty in history, unfortunately: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2005/oct/31/highereduc...

New comment by jcalx in "The Essential Question: “What should I read next?”"

jcalx — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 21:42:47 +0000

Read [0] and wonder no longer — with the very important caveat that I too have not read Infinite Jest, so I cannot vouch for its accuracy. (I plan on reading it someday, and this has made me more interested in doing so.)

[0] https://mattlakeman.org/2026/03/26/infinite-jest-extraction/

New comment by jcalx in "The Ultimate Horse"

jcalx — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 16:55:07 +0000

Cloned horses are becoming really common in polo — the best polo player in the world won the Argentine Open back in 2016 with six clones of his favorite horse [0][1]!

[0] https://knowablemagazine.org/content/article/technology/2026...

[1] https://www.wired.com/story/cloning-came-to-polo-things-got-...

New comment by jcalx in "Scanning for Pangram Errors"

jcalx — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 17:20:21 +0000

These are all genre fiction books from the 1960s-80s and I imagine they are very stylistically different from the majority of AI-generated text today, in an easily distinguishable way. I'm curious if Pangram would flag LLMs explicitly emulating, or even trained on, genre fiction from that era, given that its primary uses are detecting contemporary AI-generated content (essays, prose, code, assignments).

New comment by jcalx in "Correlated randomness in Slay the Spire 2"

jcalx — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 14:50:15 +0000

Combining this article and discovery of an unwinnable seed in the original Slay the Spire [0] — I've always pondered the existence of some kind of "RNG hell", where a game uses the time as its random seed and, due to some quirk of the hashing function and the game mechanics, the game is rendered completely unwinnable for (say) four days straight. (Sometimes it feels like I'm in it!)

[0] https://oohbleh.github.io/losing-seed/

New comment by jcalx in "Correlated randomness in Slay the Spire 2"

jcalx — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 14:38:29 +0000

Maybe turn-based roguelike deckbuilders aren't the best for this, but I actually like some correlated randomness in some games, as it adds a new hidden mechanic to explore. In Hades 1 there are some (presumably unintentional) RNG manipulations that open up high-level techs for seeded speedruns:

- Hades 1 is a series of "chambers", or enemy encounters, where some layouts are faster than others [0]

- chambers (and other things like enemy spawns, boons, etc.) are "randomly" picked by an RNG with its seed normally unknown to the player (well that, and other factors [1])

- you can see the per-chamber RNG seed using mods [2], and manipulate it with seemingly meaningless actions [3] — e.g. breaking a pot (a mundane, cosmetic environmental item) increments the RNG seed by 1

- this leads to the existence of "routed runs" [4] — very fast speedruns enabled by very deliberate actions that can be replicated by a skilled player [5].

- anecdotally, with enough practice, skilled players can also recognize chamber patterns in unseeded speedruns and give themselves better odds at more favorable chambers by manipulating the RNG (although tbh the ability to recognize this on the fly is a little dubious)

So the invisible correlated RNG seeding adds in a higher skill ceiling for experienced players, while not really taking anything away from casual players.

Another game with this kind of RNG mechanic is Super Mario Bros. 3 — there's an excellent (86-minute, fyi) Summoning Salt video about the history of speedrunning this game and dealing with the "random" Hammer Bros movement (@27:15 to skip to that part).

[0] https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vR6NaU9v1-raeibk...

[1] https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vSl9RGGyPbNqCnTL...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHdt35TDvNY

[3] https://www.speedrun.com/hades/guides/jxpkj

[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBRTQkoOZ4k

[5] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fNlBhBOsCz6092GUnsIt...

[6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EsFyogVvkw

New comment by jcalx in "What if remote working, not AI, is to blame for weak junior hiring?"

jcalx — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 19:56:46 +0000

To be very clear — I was specifically responding to "social engineering won't work on a human security expert". It can, and has. People are not infallible, and a "that would never happen to me" mindset (1) gets people phished when they think they're too smart for it and (2) is a pet peeve of mine and so sometimes I can't resist pointing that out.

Largely agree with you otherwise, not sure why you read my comment as mental gymnastics to justify LLMs. I don't think that they have an internal emotional state that can feel rushed, panicked, so on. They do — superficially — "respond" to such cues in language, which is why they can be "threatened" [0] and "flattered" [1]. But without an internal theory of mind, LLMs do this sycophantically without any internal model of the world (hence the quotes above, to avoid fully anthropomorphizing their behavior).

The only parallel I'm drawing is that both humans and LLMs can be coerced into unintended behavior via language ("social engineering" and "prompt jailbreaking" respectively), and those attacks are more effective if an attacker is allowed to control more "context", even if the underlying mechanism of why those attacks work is completely different.

[0] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2507.21133

[1] https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/09/these-psychological-...

New comment by jcalx in "What if remote working, not AI, is to blame for weak junior hiring?"

jcalx — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 17:34:10 +0000

> Social engineering won't work on a human security expert who knows and understands the implications of the information they are giving away

Social engineering, like prompt injection, is a context attack — easy to spot if you're ready for it, but harder in different circumstances (rushed, panicked, tired, having a bad day, etc.).

Troy Hunt (security consultant, creator of HaveIBeenPwned) and Cory Doctorow have both been successfully phished [0][1]. They're both tech- and security-savvy people who "should have known better" but it happened to them anyway. But maybe you're different... you'd never fall for an online scam, right? [2]

[0] https://www.troyhunt.com/a-sneaky-phish-just-grabbed-my-mail...

[1] https://doctorow.medium.com/https-pluralistic-net-2025-04-05...

[2] https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2024/09/youd-never-fa...

New comment by jcalx in "I believe there are entire companies right now under AI psychosis"

jcalx — Sat, 16 May 2026 01:04:22 +0000

Someone responded to a previous comment of mine [0] positing a Peter principle [1] of slopcoding — it will always be easier to tack on a new feature than to understand a whole system and clean it up. The equilibrium will remain at the point of near, but not total, codebase incomprehensibility.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48037128#48038639

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle

New comment by jcalx in "Appearing productive in the workplace"

jcalx — Wed, 06 May 2026 22:08:23 +0000

I wish cultural norms around documentation would shift to "pull" rather than "push" — generating "views" of organized knowledge on the fly instead of making endless rearrangements of the same information. It's become too cheap in terms of proof of (mental) work to spray endless pages of notes, reports, memos, decks, etc. but the "documentation is good" paradigm hasn't caught up yet.

Ideally AI would minimize excessive documentation. "Core knowledge" (first principles, human intent, tribal knowledge, data illegible to AI systems) would be documented by humans, while AI would be used to derive everything downstream (e.g. weekly progress updates, changelogs). But the temptation to use AI to pad that core knowledge is too pervasive, like all the meaningless LLM-generated fluff all too common in emails these days.

New comment by jcalx in "Vibe coding and agentic engineering are getting closer than I'd like"

jcalx — Wed, 06 May 2026 17:04:59 +0000

There is definitely going to be some Wirth's law-like [0] effect about the asymmetry of software complexity outpacing LLMs' abilities to untangle said software. Claude 9.2 Optimus Prime might be able to wrangle 1M LoC, but somehow YC 2035 will have some Series A startup with 1B+ LoC in prod — we'll always have software companies teetering on the very edge of unmaintainability.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirth%27s_law

New comment by jcalx in "GitHub's fake star economy"

jcalx — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 13:49:24 +0000

> This would be like an NFL team drafting a quarterback based on how many instagram followers they have rather than a relevant metric like pass completion, or god forbid, doing some work and actually scouting candidates. Maybe the Cleveland Browns would do that

Not quite the same, but the New York Jets (one of the few NFL teams that can match the dysfunction of the Browns — they have the longest active playoff drought in big 4 North American sports) passed on a few successful players because the owner, Woody Johnson, reportedly didn't like their Madden (video game) ratings [0]:

> A few weeks later, Douglas and his Broncos counterpart, George Paton, were deep in negotiations for a trade that would have sent Jeudy to the Jets and given future Hall of Fame quarterback Aaron Rodgers another potential playmaker. The Broncos felt a deal was near. Then, abruptly, it all fell apart. In Denver’s executive offices, they couldn’t believe the reason why.

> Douglas told the Broncos that Johnson didn’t want to make the trade because the owner felt Jeudy’s player rating in “Madden NFL,” the popular video game, wasn’t high enough, according to multiple league sources. The Broncos ultimately traded the receiver to the Cleveland Browns. Last Sunday, Jeudy crossed the 1,000-yard receiving mark for the first time in his career.

...

> Johnson’s reference to Jeudy’s “Madden” rating was, to some in the Jets’ organization, a sign of Brick and Jack’s influence. Another example came when Johnson pushed back on signing free-agent guard John Simpson due to a lackluster “awareness” rating in Madden. The Jets signed Simpson anyway, and he has had a solid season: Pro Football Focus currently has him graded as the eighth-best guard in the NFL.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6005172/2024/12/19/woody-jo...

New comment by jcalx in "Let's talk space toilets"

jcalx — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 00:51:09 +0000

If you like space toilets you may be interested in this [0] HN submission where you can track how full the ISS urine tank is from the comfort of your menu bar.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42505454

New comment by jcalx in "Android now stops you sharing your location in photos"

jcalx — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 13:18:53 +0000

Quite good, per Bellingcat [0] — Google Lens and ChatGPT could localize the majority of their test photos pretty specifically.

[0] https://www.bellingcat.com/resources/2025/08/14/llms-vs-geol...

New comment by jcalx in "Claude mixes up who said what"

jcalx — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 18:24:32 +0000

Computers Don't Argue [0] by Gordon R. Dickson! A horrifying read in how a simple misunderstanding can spiral out of control.

[0] https://nob.cs.ucdavis.edu/classes/ecs153-2019-04/readings/c...

New comment by jcalx in "Why so many control rooms were seafoam green (2025)"

jcalx — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 18:10:17 +0000

Reminds me of turquoise cockpits [0], another workspace where visual fatigue considerations are important.

[0] https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/16434/why-are-r...

New comment by jcalx in "France's aircraft carrier located in real time by Le Monde through fitness app"

jcalx — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 17:12:35 +0000

I would have thought so too but Naval Gazing has a short series [0] on why it's not as dire as one might think. An aircraft carrier's location being "secret" in this case is just one layer of the survivability onion [1] anyhow. (Caveat that as someone who takes a casual interest in this, I can't vouch for accurate this is at all.)

[0] https://www.navalgazing.net/Carrier-Doom-Part-1

[1] https://www.goonhammer.com/star-wars-armada-naval-academy-wa...

New comment by jcalx in "Snowflake AI Escapes Sandbox and Executes Malware"

jcalx — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 16:53:38 +0000

> Cortex, by default, can set a flag to trigger unsandboxed command execution

Easy fix: extend the proposal in RFC 3514 [0] to cover prompt injection, and then disallow command execution when the evil bit is 1.

[0] https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3514

New comment by jcalx in "Building a Procedural Hex Map with Wave Function Collapse"

jcalx — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 13:37:20 +0000

I didn't want to nitpick terminology, but yes, the tile-placement algorithm here is just a way of solving constraint satisfaction problems with DFS using a "minimum remaining values" heuristic [0]. The original use case for generating textures [1] is different in that the constraints are implicit in the input bitmap, but this project is a more straightforward tile placement with explicit constraints.

I think this algorithm is more efficient for generating maps with only local (adjacency) constraints, but setting this up as an integer linear program and plugging it into a constraint solver is more generalizable (say, if you wanted to enforce a constraint that rivers had to flow across the whole map and could not loop).

But I agree "wave function collapse" is not really the best name, for two reasons:

- the original repository mentions "it doesn't do the actual quantum mechanics, but it was inspired by QM", but it implies something QM-related.

- as an ORIE major in college that loved optimization, I think constraint satisfaction problems are really cool and actually somewhat approachable! So calling the heuristic something else like "wave function collapse" might limit people from finding previous work and known improvements (e.g. forward checking).

[0] https://www.cs.cornell.edu/courses/cs4700/2011fa/lectures/05...

[1] https://github.com/mxgmn/WaveFunctionCollapse

New comment by jcalx in "Building a Procedural Hex Map with Wave Function Collapse"

jcalx — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 18:31:29 +0000

Reminds me of Jasper Flick's Unity tutorial on hex terrain [0] which is similarly wonderfully detailed. Interesting contrast: this project uses premade tiles and constraint solving to match tile boundaries, while that one dynamically generates tile boundaries (geometries, blending, etc.) on the fly. Both enjoyable reads!

[0] https://catlikecoding.com/unity/tutorials/hex-map/