Hacker News: pcai

New comment by pcai in "Show HN: SimCity, but with Permits"

pcai — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 04:22:48 +0000

Thanks - I obviously didn’t get the balance right for everyone, and honestly it’s partly because I started with a maximalist position of “don’t hide the complexity that’s the point”, spent a bunch of time getting those details right…and then quickly realized during playtesting the same thing you and many others pointed out: progressively layering/revealing the depth works better to establish the contrast, while also being significantly easier for players to actually engage with.

Thanks for taking the time to take a look and give thoughtful feedback!

New comment by pcai in "Show HN: SimCity, but with Permits"

pcai — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 03:27:35 +0000

Thanks for checking it out! Eminent domain and covenants are great material - I’m definitely going to work those into the next update.

I’m aiming for a specific mood so the others are going in the backlog until i can do them uhh tastefully

New comment by pcai in "Show HN: SimCity, but with Permits"

pcai — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 23:12:00 +0000

I've never seen this, but this is amazing!

New comment by pcai in "Show HN: SimCity, but with Permits"

pcai — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 22:32:07 +0000

Thanks so much for your feedback! I originally started with a pretty diverse corpus of prewritten story arcs for diversity, and went back to retrofit them into the engine once I started customizing stories and details for the city. It looks like I missed a few spots, sorry about that!

And yes, I did sketch a version that is even more procedurally generated, but it’s taking longer to get right than I thought

New comment by pcai in "Show HN: SimCity, but with Permits"

pcai — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 22:11:56 +0000

I’m sorry you ran into this! It looks like the game tried to allocate too much memory. I got claude to fall back to lower resolution textures when this happens, thanks for reporting.

New comment by pcai in "Show HN: SimCity, but with Permits"

pcai — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 22:07:12 +0000

I’m sorry you ran into this! Taking a quick look.

Show HN: SimCity, but with Permits

pcai — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 18:29:09 +0000

Article URL: https://permit.petercai.com/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50170593

Points: 911

# Comments: 411

New comment by pcai in "AI is Dunning-Kruger as a service"

pcai — Fri, 07 Nov 2025 22:27:22 +0000

A vehicle is driven on public roads and can kill people, that’s why licenses are required.

Outlawing certain kinds of math is a level of totalitarianism we should never accept under any circumstances in a free society

New comment by pcai in "Denver rent is back to 2022 prices after 20k new units hit the market"

pcai — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 20:52:28 +0000

> For this argument to work you have to believe that decreasing the price of service delivery wouldn't decrease the price of health insurance.

I think we are talking past each other. My argument is not that lower prices for medical services wouldn’t lead to lower insurance costs. My argument is specifically that increasing supply doesn’t necessarily lead to lower prices for medical services. It would be quite a finding if US cities with more doctors per capita have cheaper medical services but if anything the opposite is true

New comment by pcai in "Denver rent is back to 2022 prices after 20k new units hit the market"

pcai — Thu, 31 Jul 2025 22:22:13 +0000

I think you’re still missing the point - it’s NOT classic supply and demand because the mechanism by which that works is prices, and in many healthcare markets including the US — the buyer isn’t the payer, and shortages lead to rationing (via wait times) rather than increased prices, so often increasing supply doesn’t change prices even as it increases aggregate costs (because there’s still excess demand and rationing).

New comment by pcai in "Let me pay for Firefox"

pcai — Sun, 13 Jul 2025 18:45:31 +0000

I 100% agree! It's almost like income stability is valuable!

New comment by pcai in "Let me pay for Firefox"

pcai — Sun, 13 Jul 2025 16:31:29 +0000

Hmm if this is true why is it so rare that software devs quit their jobs and make more money freelancing or starting their own companies?

New comment by pcai in "Ask HN: Who is hiring? (February 2025)"

pcai — Mon, 03 Feb 2025 16:01:46 +0000

Sigma Squared | Senior Software Engineer | Cambridge, MA | Full time | ONSITE

Sigma Squared is a mission-driven data science platform for making better people decisions. Companies use our software to make better hiring and promotion decisions - based on merit, not intuitions. This leads to fairer outcomes and less bias.

We recently raised $10MM series A from 8vc and are launching in food&bev and law enforcement this year.

We're hiring senior (full stack) engineers (and in customer success, sales, marketing, and product management).

Our stack: React, Typescript, AWS (we also work closely with data scientists so we dabble in python)

To apply: https://sigmasquared.io/careers?ashby_jid=92adf2c5-8bed-466b...

New comment by pcai in "Ruby Meetups"

pcai — Mon, 30 Sep 2024 02:18:22 +0000

Note this is hosted on gh so you can open a pr to add yours: https://github.com/ruby-conferences/ruby-conferences.github....

I’m on mobile at the moment otherwise I’d do it myself

New comment by pcai in "Ruby Meetups"

pcai — Mon, 30 Sep 2024 02:17:03 +0000

This list is hosted on github, contributions are welcome: https://github.com/ruby-conferences/ruby-conferences.github....

New comment by pcai in "FCC wants all phones unlocked in sixty days, AT&T and T-Mobile aren't so keen"

pcai — Mon, 23 Sep 2024 02:05:01 +0000

My point is that carrier locking is about managing credit risk and fraud, not an evil plot to trap customers, and not a mechanism for discouraging street theft.

It’s only complicated if people conflate issues or fail to understand the mechanics of carrier locking. You can just call up a carrier and ask to have the phone unlocked and they’ll oblige if its paid off. Sometimes people confuse carrier locking with imei blacklists, which is for stolen handsets. Sometimes people confuse phones with modems or firmware that only work with specific carriers as “carrier locked” but again, that’s not the same thing

New comment by pcai in "FCC wants all phones unlocked in sixty days, AT&T and T-Mobile aren't so keen"

pcai — Mon, 23 Sep 2024 01:39:29 +0000

It’s not speculation - this is literally why cell phone locking was invented. The imei blacklists were created much later specifically for theft, not to manage credit risk of customers getting subsidized phones.

You can literally just call your carrier to ask how to get your subsidized phone unlocked. There’s no need to speculate- it’s not a secret!

New comment by pcai in "FCC wants all phones unlocked in sixty days, AT&T and T-Mobile aren't so keen"

pcai — Mon, 23 Sep 2024 01:28:30 +0000

This is incorrect. You can pay off a phone early and simply ask that it be unlocked - the carrier will happily comply because you are no longer a credit risk. You can also just purchase phones unlocked by paying cash upfront. You don’t need to be a genius to deduce how this works.

The imei blacklists for theft were created much later and aren’t honored globally

New comment by pcai in "FCC wants all phones unlocked in sixty days, AT&T and T-Mobile aren't so keen"

pcai — Sun, 22 Sep 2024 01:36:56 +0000

It’s impractical to “repossess” phones so in practice the carriers wouldn’t be able to stop people from deliberately defaulting on the contract with no repercussions (they can bring it to a different carrier who is indifferent)

New comment by pcai in "FCC wants all phones unlocked in sixty days, AT&T and T-Mobile aren't so keen"

pcai — Sun, 22 Sep 2024 01:32:49 +0000

It is 100% an anti theft mechanism - it prevents people from stealing phones from carriers. The scam is: - get a new iphone from tmobile that costs $30 over 2 years. - don’t pay them anything: you just got a free iphone. Tmobile is mad and won’t provide service to that handset because you stole it from them. - You open a new line with at&t and tell them you’re bringing your own phone.

Carrier locking prevents this. If someone steals your phone on the train that’s a different problem with a different solution