Hacker News: jcl

New comment by jcl in "Stephen's Sausage Roll remains one of the most influential puzzle games"

jcl — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 08:01:51 +0000

I think The Looker might appeal both to those who loved The Witness and those who didn’t. Several laugh-out-loud moments, some fun puzzles of its own - a wonderfully silly send-up, and free, too.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1985690/The_Looker/

New comment by jcl in "Stephen's Sausage Roll remains one of the most influential puzzle games"

jcl — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 07:38:05 +0000

Perhaps a more direct relation: most of those preexisting games were made in puzzlescript, which (per the article) was also made by the author of Stephen’s Sausage Roll.

New comment by jcl in "How to fold the Blade Runner origami unicorn (1996)"

jcl — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 16:17:47 +0000

Correct… they “cheated” a little to make the props for the movie. There are other designs for single-sheet unicorn, winged unicorn, and Pegasus — particularly the ones from John Montroll — but they look a bit different from the movie props, and are harder to fold.

https://johnmontroll.com/books/dragons-and-other-fantastic-c...

New comment by jcl in "Ladybird adopts Rust, with help from AI"

jcl — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 02:03:02 +0000

The impression I get from the article is not that the compiled code of each implementation produces the same object code, but that when the implementations are run with the same inputs, they produce exactly the same output — that is, the same JS VM bytecode.

New comment by jcl in "Explore Sutro Tower"

jcl — Sat, 08 Mar 2025 17:49:07 +0000

I hiked up there once… There was a reservoir with a trail around it and, to my surprise, a fenced-off area full of goats. Apparently they were part of a vegetation control program used in the parks there.

New comment by jcl in "Natural occurring molecule rivals Ozempic in weight loss, sidesteps side effects"

jcl — Fri, 07 Mar 2025 15:49:32 +0000

It only looks for a single leading “e” or “i”, not any number. I’m guessing those tweaks were added to capture specific proper nouns that weren’t captured by simpler “leading capital letter” regexes, like “iPad” or “eBay”.

New comment by jcl in "Wooden satellite heads to space in Mars exploration test"

jcl — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 16:55:45 +0000

The unlikeliness of the wooden spaceship was one of my favorite parts of the sci-fi mystery/adventure game “The Outer Wilds”. (An indie gem…highly recommended, if you like puzzles or exploration.)

https://www.mobiusdigitalgames.com/outer-wilds.html

New comment by jcl in "Wooden satellite heads to space in Mars exploration test"

jcl — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 16:29:56 +0000

I wasn’t sure what the article meant by “no screws or glue”, when the photograph appears to have visible screws. But closer images show that these are apparently some sort of rivet?

I found a (Japanese-language-only) news piece that shows some of the crafting and assembly of the satellite, and the box body certainly holds together by itself, via some beautifully intricate joinery:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_F-NzzC7RA

New comment by jcl in "A Hamiltonian Circuit for Rubik's Cube"

jcl — Mon, 04 Nov 2024 16:15:38 +0000

Heh… that exact situation came up here a few years ago, when someone posted their software implementation of the puzzle:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10540014

New comment by jcl in "FDA warns top U.S. bakery not to claim foods contain allergens when they don't"

jcl — Fri, 28 Jun 2024 11:22:59 +0000

My understanding of the article is that some companies added sesame to their products and ingredients label, while others may have changed their label to say the product “may contain” sesame — but that Bimbo did neither of these things, instead changing their label to say that the product definitely contained sesame, when in fact sesame was not an ingredient.

New comment by jcl in "Gainax, known for 'Evangelion' anime production, goes bankrupt"

jcl — Mon, 10 Jun 2024 21:56:25 +0000

My favorite was toward the end of the Evangelion series, where they generated flashback footage by shooting the backs of earlier cels.

New comment by jcl in "Windows 10 wallpaper was physically built and photographed (2015)"

jcl — Thu, 23 May 2024 12:58:26 +0000

I recall Amazon’s Lord of the Rings title sequence [1] received some criticism for looking fake, even though they filmed it practically [2]. I’d guess it was due to folks assuming title sequences are CGI, combined with the fact that few people really know what poured liquid metal is supposed to look like.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HV-dDyYgwkc

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

New comment by jcl in "Digital Wood Joints"

jcl — Thu, 25 Apr 2024 15:29:35 +0000

There’s a wonderful little carpentry museum in Kobe, highly recommended:

https://www.dougukan.jp/exhibition?lang=en

It focuses a lot on the evolution of precise woodworking tools, like saws and planes. They also had examples of complex joints, made without nails or glue.

New comment by jcl in "40 Years of Sopwith"

jcl — Thu, 25 Apr 2024 15:11:08 +0000

Wouldn’t be surprised if that inspired Altitude, a more recent multiplayer 2d dogfighting game, free on Steam:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altitude_(video_game)

New comment by jcl in "Fallout style RPG made in Excel"

jcl — Mon, 22 Apr 2024 14:41:40 +0000

Looks like their “Baldur’s Gate” and “Fallout” games are practically identical, with similar overworld map and battle systems?

https://storyteller-blog.com/2024/03/22/i-made-a-baldurs-gat...

New comment by jcl in "Marilyn vos Savant and the Monty Hall Problem (2015)"

jcl — Mon, 26 Feb 2024 21:24:48 +0000

As Monty Hall pointed out in interviews, he was not obligated to offer the opportunity to switch and sometimes did not. So in this case knowledge of the actual show may have contributed to confusion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall#Monty_Hall_Problem

(But vos Savant stated in later columns that most of the critical responses she received assumed that the host was obligated to offer the switch, so they were genuinely confused by the paradox.)

New comment by jcl in "Funimation End of Services"

jcl — Fri, 09 Feb 2024 01:15:59 +0000

I think Ubisoft’s intent was more to make customers comfortable with the idea of paying for short-term or ongoing access to content. Their shutdown of online services and DLC for some of their Steam games a few years ago did not exactly inspire confidence.

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/ubisoft-titles-pulled-from-ste...

New comment by jcl in "A confusing probability question: Red and green balls in an urn"

jcl — Wed, 31 Jan 2024 14:24:40 +0000

There are actually 10,100 equally likely situations: 101 choices of N x 100 choices of ball. When you completely discount the N=0 case, it’s because all choices of ball are green. You similarly need to almost completely discount the N=1 case, because almost all choices of ball in that situation are green, etc.

New comment by jcl in "A confusing probability question: Red and green balls in an urn"

jcl — Wed, 31 Jan 2024 11:56:25 +0000

Yes, it’s a mistake to take the expected value before the ball is drawn, because the drawn ball adds information, disproportionately changing the expected value.

Consider an alternate game, where I flip a hidden coin… if it is heads, I let you pick from an urn with 99 red and 1 green; if it is tails, I let you pick from an urn with 1 red and 99 green. The expected number of red is still 50, and the chance of drawing that first red is still 50%. But once that red is drawn, your expectation of what the next draw will be should change significantly.

New comment by jcl in "The Fill and Flush deplaning method"

jcl — Thu, 17 Aug 2023 22:10:45 +0000

I thought Southwest uses “open” seating, where passengers aren’t assigned a seat, but instead just take any unoccupied seat? If so, a perk of being earlier in the boarding order would be that you have a better chance of getting a seat you want, if you have any particular preferences.