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A “frozen” dictionary for Python

https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/1047238/25c270b077849dc0/
101•jwilk•4h ago•63 comments

Size of Life

https://neal.fun/size-of-life/
2234•eatonphil•22h ago•248 comments

Show HN: Local Privacy Firewall-blocks PII and secrets before ChatGPT sees them

https://github.com/privacyshield-ai/privacy-firewall
38•arnabkarsarkar•1d ago•13 comments

Show HN: WhatHappened – HN summaries, heatmaps, and contrarian picks

https://www.whathappened.tech/
15•marsw42•2d ago•7 comments

Getting a Gemini API key is an exercise in frustration

https://ankursethi.com/blog/gemini-api-key-frustration/
640•speckx•17h ago•255 comments

Meta shuts down global accounts linked to abortion advice and queer content

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/dec/11/meta-shuts-down-global-accounts-linked...
264•ta988•3h ago•183 comments

Patterns.dev

https://www.patterns.dev/
388•handfuloflight•13h ago•86 comments

Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban

https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/australia-social-media-ban-takes-effect-world-first-2025...
855•chirau•1d ago•1280 comments

The Cost of a Closure in C

https://thephd.dev/the-cost-of-a-closure-in-c-c2y
108•ingve•7h ago•36 comments

Helldivers 2 on-disk size 85% reduction

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/553850/view/491583942944621371
95•SergeAx•1w ago•67 comments

Booting Linux in QEMU and Writing PID 1 in Go to Illustrate Kernel as Program

https://serversfor.dev/linux-inside-out/the-linux-kernel-is-just-a-program/
177•birdculture•1w ago•49 comments

How the Brain Parses Language

https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-polyglot-neuroscientist-resolving-how-the-brain-parses-languag...
57•mylifeandtimes•3d ago•18 comments

How can I read the standard output of an already-running process?

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20251204-00/?p=111841
15•ibobev•5d ago•4 comments

Show HN: oeis-tui – A TUI to search OEIS integer sequences in the terminal

https://github.com/hako/oeis-tui
15•wesleyhill•1w ago•1 comments

Auto-grading decade-old Hacker News discussions with hindsight

https://karpathy.bearblog.dev/auto-grade-hn/
484•__rito__•21h ago•217 comments

French supermarket's Christmas advert is worldwide hit (without AI) [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Na9VmMNJvsA
37•gbugniot•50m ago•15 comments

Python Workers redux: fast cold starts, packages, and a uv-first workflow

https://blog.cloudflare.com/python-workers-advancements/
89•dom96•2d ago•39 comments

How Google Maps allocates survival across London's restaurants

https://laurenleek.substack.com/p/how-google-maps-quietly-allocates
320•justincormack•2d ago•160 comments

VCMI: An open-source engine for Heroes III

https://vcmi.eu/
135•eamag•4d ago•15 comments

Go's escape analysis and why my function return worked

https://bonniesimon.in/blog/go-escape-analysis
28•bonniesimon•6d ago•17 comments

Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/rubio-stages-font-coup-times-new-roman-ousts-calibri-2025-12-09/
331•italophil•1d ago•543 comments

Super Mario 64 for the PS1

https://github.com/malucard/sm64-psx
259•LaserDiscMan•19h ago•100 comments

Show HN: Wirebrowser – A JavaScript debugger with breakpoint-driven heap search

https://github.com/fcavallarin/wirebrowser
48•fcavallarin•23h ago•10 comments

Qwen3-Omni-Flash-2025-12-01:a next-generation native multimodal large model

https://qwen.ai/blog?id=qwen3-omni-flash-20251201
284•pretext•22h ago•96 comments

Incomplete list of mistakes in the design of CSS

https://wiki.csswg.org/ideas/mistakes
150•OuterVale•10h ago•97 comments

Show HN: Automated license plate reader coverage in the USA

https://alpranalysis.com
206•sodality2•20h ago•120 comments

Flow Where You Want – Guidance for Flow Models

https://drscotthawley.github.io/blog/posts/FlowWhereYouWant.html
29•rundigen12•5d ago•1 comments

Fossils reveal anacondas have been giants for over 12 million years

https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/twelve-million-years-of-giant-anacondas
60•ashishgupta2209•1w ago•27 comments

Why no fish wants a tongue-eating parasitic louse in its mouth

https://animals.howstuffworks.com/marine-life/parasitic-tongue-eating-louse.htm
8•thunderbong•58m ago•1 comments

Scientists create ultra fast memory using light

https://www.isi.edu/news/81186/scientists-create-ultra-fast-memory-using-light/
111•giuliomagnifico•6d ago•26 comments
Open in hackernews

Show HN: Reverse Pac-Man

https://reverse-pacman.staticrun.app/index
78•Eagle64•7mo ago
Keep one eye on the first ghost and the other on the second

Comments

brudgers•7mo ago
I can't see the whole screen on my laptop, and the screen doesn't scroll.
Eagle64•7mo ago
Thanks for the feedback. It is fixed
pmontra•7mo ago
It's one of those things that "why did nobody think about it yet?!"
toast0•7mo ago
Pac-Man Vs. [1] was a commercial game on this wavelength. I don't think I ever played that one.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pac-Man_Vs.

jaimebuelta•7mo ago
I was going to say the same thing. Pac-Man Vs was incredibly fun and a great party game.
thih9•7mo ago
Fixed link: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pac-Man_Vs%2E

(trailing dot escaped via %2E)

roskelld•7mo ago
One Little Ghost (2012) [1] [2] for the ZX81 is one version I only recently found out about. Figured it was worth mentioning here given how impressive it is for a game on the humble ZX81 machine that's well over 40 years old.

[1] https://bobs-stuff.itch.io/one-little-ghost

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rq2hOlC97SQ

iorekz•7mo ago
genius
Eagle64•7mo ago
Haha. I’ll take the compliment.
roskelld•7mo ago
Are you planning on adding the power pills to give Pac Man a fighting chance?

Also, I noticed that he often circles around the upper left area a few times at the start even though there are no dots to collect.

Eagle64•7mo ago
Good idea ! That will add a new cool dynamic. The behavior of the Pac-Man is to avoid the ghost with some random pattern added. This might happen.
xnx•7mo ago
Very cool. Gemini is such a fun tool to do a one-shot MVP of a game like this: https://g.co/gemini/share/7639ee864df7

Gemini wasn't clever enough to disallow ghosts changing directions mid-way, but it did do a smart thing with "pellets remaining" scoring.

Eagle64•7mo ago
Really ? Even if you specify that ghosts can turn only at intersections?
xnx•7mo ago
I'm sure it could. I was very unspecified with my prompt (below). No doubt it could add sound, etc. as well.

Prompt: Create a game of Pacman with only 2 ghosts. Instead of the player controlling pacman, the player controls the ghosts.

Controls: Ghost 1 (Red): WASD or ZQSD Ghost 2 (Cyan): Arrow Keys

amadeuspagel•7mo ago
Awesome. It's mind-bending to control two players. The idea of using arrow keys to control one player and WASD to control another is genius. Maybe you can visualize which is which by coloring the explanatory text.
eesmith•7mo ago
I used to solo play 2-player Gauntlet for the PC this way, back around 1990.

In the 1980s it was pretty common to have 2-player games with both players on the same keyboard.

Edit: Spacewar (see https://archive.org/details/msdos_Spacewar_1985) is an example of a two-player-on-one-keyboard game, from 1985.

redbluething•7mo ago
Yellow Wizard Needs Food Badly!
chrisweekly•7mo ago
Warrior is about to die!

man that takes me back

CloudNetPro•7mo ago
Me and my friends used to play 3 player simultaneously in D-Zone. Obviously we had to be kind with each other about space around the keyboard and about key presses. Still one of the best gaming experiences I ever had.

https://www.mobygames.com/game/69231/destruction-zone/

vunderba•7mo ago
I built a dual snake game where you simultaneously control two snakes a while back, perhaps I should do a Show HN about it at some point.

https://specularrealms.itch.io/the-twins-of-caduceus

Fair warning: It's a game made for people who excel at ambidextrous tasks like patting one's head and rubbing one's tummy, or juggling Rubik's cubes that you are also solving.

KennedyHere•7mo ago
Fun game! From the title, I was expecting to guide Pac-Man to put all the dots back in place.
Eagle64•7mo ago
Haha. I haven’t thought of this. That would be a cool other mode
GlassOwAter•7mo ago
Poo-Man or Puke-Man
xnx•7mo ago
Crap-Man?
vunderba•7mo ago
While that would be amusing, mechanically it would be identical to the original game.
derefr•7mo ago
Not really. Presume that everything is time-reversed, and the game kills you if you do anything not possible when your playback is flipped around and played "forward." Then:

- Obviously, you "emit" dots and fruit and power pellets as you traverse the grid.

- Less obviously, once you populate a dot/fruit/power pellet onto a grid square, you can't visit that position again — as, if reversed, that'd look like you going over those things without collecting them.

- You'd randomly enter the powered-up state, and you'd then have to visit one of the unpopulated power-pellet grid positions in order to emit the power pellet to get out of that state — before the powered-up-state timer expires. (The power-up-state going on longer than that is invalid!)

- While in the powered-up state, you'd see pairs of ghost eyes unavoidably approaching you; they'd touch you, turn into ghosts, and then flee from you. That's fine. But once they become ghosts and move off of the grid-space you occupy, you can't touch them again.

LocalH•7mo ago
Idea for a "challenge mode" on top of that, since this would probably be too hard for casual play:

A series of levels where you are given a score at the beginning. You must find the path around the map that brings your score exactly to zero, using reverse Pac-Man scoring rules (each dot you lay reduces your score by 10, etc). If you reach zero with more dots to lay, or finish laying down all dots without reaching zero, you die (as those would also be invalid states).

Recording input for these challenge runs would be a cool idea too, as you could have the option to watch the run "forwards" for further entertainment. To lessen the difficulty a little bit, the player could even have access to the "forward" version of a run that completes the desired score target (with appropriate bonuses for players who don't utilize the "hint" run).

alnwlsn•7mo ago
For that, you want this rom hack/patch

http://48k.ca/bacman.html

mrighele•7mo ago
Me too, also because I remember playing that kind of game, on a Creativision, more than 40 years ago [1]

[1] https://archive.org/details/Crazy_Chicky_1981_VTL

mtVessel•7mo ago
On FF (similar on Edge):

Secure Connection Failed

An error occurred during a connection to reverse-pacman.staticrun.app. PR_END_OF_FILE_ERROR

Eagle64•7mo ago
Thanks for letting me know. There is a problem with the host. I moved it to itch.io https://themarelle.itch.io/reverse-pac-man
kmoser•7mo ago
On Firefox it freezes on the keyboard instructions screen for me. Console shows it requires WebGL. Maybe put a message on screen indicating that?
xnx•7mo ago
Would be fun to have dual stick controller support: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Gamepad_API
tantalor•7mo ago
You should make it so user can hold down a key to change direction before they reach the intersection, joystick style.

As it is, it feels like you are checking for key press (not key down) in a narrow window when the ghost reaches the intersection. That is very hard to play. It is much more forgiving if I can press and hold the key whenever I want.

Eagle64•7mo ago
Thank you for the suggestion. Your wish has been granted. It is definitely better like this.
tantalor•7mo ago
Yes! thanks
bentcorner•7mo ago
For anyone interested in this style of gameplay mechanic, the game Brothers - A Tale of Two Sons (steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/225080/Brothers__A_Tale_o...) uses a twin-stick approach to this, and builds puzzles around controlling two "people".

It's a quick play and the game is pretty good, I recommend experiencing it.

bitwize•7mo ago
That game was an emotional journey, man. Very short as these games go, but it hit hard.

And the music was by Gustaf Grefberg, "Lizardking", my favorite oldskool demo musician by a mile.

progforlyfe•7mo ago
It's not loading at all for me. Hug of death?
Eagle64•7mo ago
Even with this link ? https://themarelle.itch.io/reverse-pac-man
narcindin•7mo ago
Reminds me of a demo I played 10 years ago called swap box turbo. Designed for two players, it is a simple platformer where you and your partner swap positions and momentum every 3 seconds.

You can play it single player too and have an experience similar to this.

https://www.freeindiegam.es/2012/12/swap-box-turbo-nifflas/

kazinator•7mo ago
The ghosts don't respond to a key until they encounter to an intersection, so that you cannot reverse direction instantly. Maybe there is a deliberate point to that, but it doesn't make it less annoying.
adamiscool8•7mo ago
I like the concept but shouldn't the score be counting down? Or am I trying to shepherd Pac-Man into eating as many as possible to get a high score?
lostmsu•7mo ago
The game screen is cut on the right when browser window is small.
nprateem•7mo ago
This was why I liked opposing force. Give NPCs their own backstory and make them playable.
staticman2•7mo ago
Nintendo did something like this with "Pacman vs" for GameCube. The multiplayer gimmick was the players controlling the ghosts couldn't see the entire map and the player controlling Pacman could with a Game Boy Advanced linked to the Gamecube.
thih9•7mo ago
The game is also available on nintendo switch and it supports multiplayer with that same gimmick, with two devices.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pac-Man_Vs%2E