Hacker News: szhu

New comment by szhu in "Ask vs. Guess Culture"

szhu — Sat, 19 Aug 2023 01:14:03 +0000

I think that's actually just an example of either ask culture or guess culture, depending on the context.

If the friend should only say yes if they really want to, then that's ask culture.

If the friend should feel obligated to say yes, then that's guess culture.

The only difference here is that the request is worded differently (as a statement rather than as a question), which is simply close friends adopting their own language conventions, a slightly-related but independent concept.

New comment by szhu in "Show HN: I built an autopilot for the lunar lander game"

szhu — Sat, 11 Mar 2023 00:52:28 +0000

I admire your dedication! Thank you for sacrificing 38 minutes of screen time for a noble cause.

New comment by szhu in "Show HN: I built an autopilot for the lunar lander game"

szhu — Fri, 10 Mar 2023 18:42:12 +0000

Update: I added a new algorithm, and I think it might be impossible to crash the ship now.

Let me know if you can still reproduce the bug!

New comment by szhu in "Show HN: I built an autopilot for the lunar lander game"

szhu — Fri, 10 Mar 2023 18:41:17 +0000

Actually, I think my new algorithm fixes this -- and without any dedicated "swaying" edge case!

New comment by szhu in "Show HN: I built an autopilot for the lunar lander game"

szhu — Fri, 10 Mar 2023 18:38:58 +0000

Update: I improved the algorithm.

The autopilot now scores a "perfect landing" almost every single time, it lands very noticeably faster, and the code no longer contains a complicated, trial-by-error formula!

I got my first 103+ point landing! (It does this about half the time now)

https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/1570168/224399420-...

New comment by szhu in "Show HN: I built an autopilot for the lunar lander game"

szhu — Fri, 10 Mar 2023 16:39:58 +0000

Oh that sounds like fun, I would definitely play that. You should suggest it to the developer who made the game!

https://github.com/ehmorris/lunar-lander/issues

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35032506

New comment by szhu in "Show HN: I built an autopilot for the lunar lander game"

szhu — Fri, 10 Mar 2023 16:29:40 +0000

oh no! I'm tried it on Firefox on Mac and it worked fine?

https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/1570168/224370129-...

https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/1570168/224369935-...

New comment by szhu in "Show HN: I built an autopilot for the lunar lander game"

szhu — Fri, 10 Mar 2023 16:23:15 +0000

Oh yeah, the author of the game said he made use of a similar tutorial:

http://students.cs.ucl.ac.uk/schoolslab/projects/HT5/

from the readme here: https://github.com/ehmorris/lunar-lander

New comment by szhu in "Show HN: Send an AI Generated Physical Letter to Congress in Seconds"

szhu — Fri, 10 Mar 2023 15:51:03 +0000

The art collective MSCHF did something similar and slightly more dystopian: https://childrenscrusade.com/

New comment by szhu in "Show HN: I built an autopilot for the lunar lander game"

szhu — Fri, 10 Mar 2023 15:29:56 +0000

Thanks! Yeah it's just (1) rotate to follow the trajectory line and (2) slow down once you get close to the bottom.

New comment by szhu in "Show HN: I built an autopilot for the lunar lander game"

szhu — Fri, 10 Mar 2023 14:57:43 +0000

oh yeah definitely. Left as an exercise for the reader??

(accepting PRs!)

New comment by szhu in "Show HN: I built an autopilot for the lunar lander game"

szhu — Fri, 10 Mar 2023 14:38:51 +0000

That's a ceiling for the speed the autopilot is okay with letting the lander descend. There is no ceiling to how much hard it will try to "apply the brakes".

I agree that the target velocity calculation is off though. I was excited that I came up with something reasonably theoretically correct for correcting rotation... and for figuring out when to fire the engines I just gave up and eyeballed it :)

New comment by szhu in "Show HN: I built an autopilot for the lunar lander game"

szhu — Fri, 10 Mar 2023 08:28:16 +0000

I really wanted to!

But unfortunately none of the lander's stats are exposed as global variables, so the only way I could make the autopilot was by modifying the existing code. (My commits are actually broken down exactly like this: a commit to expose the necessary variables globally, and another to actually add the autopilot.)

I would also love to be able to play it in the original game though, so I made a PR! I think it would be cool for it to be able to be activated as an easter egg.

https://github.com/ehmorris/lunar-lander/pull/7

Show HN: I built an autopilot for the lunar lander game

szhu — Fri, 10 Mar 2023 03:30:29 +0000

I got pretty good at (and very addicted to) the lunar lander game from a few days ago...

so I decided to make an autopilot for the lander based on what I felt like was the best strategy! Now I can have perfect landings every time without lifting a finger :D

Writing the autopilot code was a lot more fun than I expected! It felt a bit like programming a robot.

Source code: https://github.com/szhu/lunar-lander-autopilot

Original lander HN post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35032506

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35090054

Points: 277

# Comments: 69

New comment by szhu in "Kill-sticky, a bookmarklet to remove sticky elements and restore scrolling"

szhu — Tue, 27 Sep 2022 23:02:34 +0000

That doesn't work well, a lot of news websites and React-powered blogs need that initial load or else the page is all blank!

New comment by szhu in "Kill-sticky, a bookmarklet to remove sticky elements and restore scrolling"

szhu — Tue, 27 Sep 2022 18:37:52 +0000

Similar thing I made recently, but as a Chrome extension:

https://github.com/szhu/pagefreeze

It does the same thing, and in addition also prevents any async JS from running. It also can be easily toggled per-site; just click the extension icon! Unfortunately I didn't have time to put a GIF in the README. OP did a better job of explaining what their project does!

Would love feedback on it + hope it helps someone as well!

New comment by szhu in "Why people make dumb financial decisions on purpose"

szhu — Sat, 03 Sep 2022 23:54:19 +0000

This is how VC works, right?

New comment by szhu in "Apple added an orange dot that’s a showstopper for live visuals"

szhu — Thu, 23 Dec 2021 07:54:39 +0000

This thread has a lot of people arguing for the live visuals use case over protecting privacy or vice versa. Not only are they both important, but I think we can actually have both.

To easily solve both the privacy and the live visuals issue, Apple should make it so that the dot is only shown on a display of it is:

- the primary display (the one notifications appear on, since that's where the user typically checks for system status),

- the built-in display, if any,

- the display the cursor is on, or

- the display containing the frontmost window.

These are the only kinds of displays that make sense to have a persistent privacy indicator on. Anyone who's sitting at a computer is looking at at least one of these displays.

The secondary displays that artists use to show fullscreened live visuals always fit none of these criteria.

New comment by szhu in "Amazon Kindles with 3G will start to lose cellular network access in December"

szhu — Fri, 30 Jul 2021 04:55:04 +0000

You can pay $20 to remove it, right? A $20 Kindle is still a pretty good deal.

New comment by szhu in "Mac OS Monterey Features Unavailable on Intel Macs"

szhu — Wed, 09 Jun 2021 18:22:06 +0000

Rearranging displays to match their physical placement is incredibly annoying. I'm so happy Apple finally decided to innovate here.