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The lost joy of music piracy

https://www.pigeonsandplanes.com/read/music-piracy-what-cd-oink-nine-inch-nails-streaming
230•mcgin•3h ago•112 comments

Inkling: Our Open-Weights Model

https://thinkingmachines.ai/news/introducing-inkling/
935•vimarsh6739•14h ago•229 comments

If you want to create a button from scratch, you must first create the universe

https://madcampos.dev/blog/2026/07/accessibility-from-scratch/
93•treve•4h ago•43 comments

Teardown: A Generic 7-Port USB 3.0 Hub That Wasn't

https://goughlui.com/2026/07/09/teardown-a-generic-7-port-usb-3-0-hub-that-wasnt/
38•speckx•3d ago•5 comments

What's the story behind the names of Cloudflare's name servers? (2013)

https://blog.cloudflare.com/whats-the-story-behind-the-names-of-cloudflares-name-servers/
15•aragonite•3d ago•8 comments

1,300 Beautiful Wildlife Illustrations from the 19th Century Now Restored

https://www.openculture.com/2026/07/explore-1300-beautiful-wildlife-illustrations-from-the-19th-c...
73•gslin•5h ago•10 comments

SQLite should have (Rust-style) editions

https://mort.coffee/home/sqlite-editions/
248•gnyeki•9h ago•97 comments

Grok Build is open source

https://github.com/xai-org/grok-build
424•skp1995•12h ago•443 comments

Governments, companies, nonprofits should invest in free, open source AI [pdf]

https://www.siegelendowment.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/fortune-david-siegel-open-source-ai.pdf
178•bilsbie•11h ago•62 comments

Can LLMs Perform Deep Technical Comprehension of Computer Architecture Papers

https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.11859
44•Jimmc414•6h ago•7 comments

Stripe and Advent have made a joint offer to acquire PayPal – sources

https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/stripe-advent-offer-buy-paypal-more-than-53-billion-sour...
433•rvz•1d ago•232 comments

Bluesky Trademarks ATProto

https://atproto.com/blog/at-protocol-trademark
88•chaosharmonic•7h ago•34 comments

Making 768 servers look like 1

https://planetscale.com/blog/making-768-servers-look-like-1
71•hisamafahri•4h ago•10 comments

G# – A modern .NET language with Go, Kotlin, and Swift ergonomics

https://davidobando.github.io/gsharp/
95•serial_dev•4d ago•56 comments

I also filed the corners off my MacBook

https://www.brt.fyi/posts/mac-book-filing/
164•maxbrt•1d ago•57 comments

Reynard: A real Firefox web browser for iOS 13 or later

https://github.com/minh-ton/reynard-browser
21•AbuAssar•3h ago•6 comments

Netstrings (1997)

https://cr.yp.to/proto/netstrings.txt
15•signa11•2h ago•7 comments

High-Bandwidth Flash offers efficient storage for model weights

https://spectrum.ieee.org/high-bandwidth-flash
36•Gaishan•1d ago•17 comments

The Tokio/Rayon Trap and Why Async/Await Fails Concurrency

https://pmbanugo.me/blog/why-async-await-complect-concurrency
54•LAC-Tech•6h ago•35 comments

Running Gemma 4 26B at 5 tokens/sec on a 13-year-old Xeon with no GPU

https://www.neomindlabs.com/2026/06/08/running-gemma-4-26b-at-5-tokens-sec-on-a-13-year-old-xeon-...
277•neomindryan•16h ago•181 comments

The Last Picture Show: A Conversation with George Lucas

https://a-rabbitsfoot.com/editorial/confessions/the-last-picture-show-a-conversation-with-george-...
16•Michelangelo11•2d ago•2 comments

Job queues are deceptively tricky

https://typesanitizer.com/blog/job-queues.html
77•ingve•1d ago•21 comments

Launch HN: Coasty (YC S26) – An API for computer-use agents

https://coasty.ai/docs
34•nkov47•16h ago•8 comments

LLM Networking with MikroTik

https://blog.greg.technology/2026/07/14/llm-networking-with-mikrotik.html
86•gregsadetsky•10h ago•38 comments

Command Line Interface Guidelines

https://clig.dev/
118•subset•3d ago•26 comments

Rebuilding My Homelab with Compose, Ruby, IPv6, and No Kubernetes

https://www.petekeen.net/homelab-resolved/
20•zrail•4d ago•15 comments

Metal-Organic Frameworks, Chemistry's New Miracle Materials (2018)

https://chemistry.berkeley.edu/news/meet-metal-organic-frameworks-chemistry%E2%80%99s-new-miracle...
53•andsoitis•9h ago•12 comments

Duskers, the scary command line game, is getting a sequel

https://elbowgreasegames.substack.com/p/misfits-attic-announces-duskers-20
124•spacemarine1•12h ago•39 comments

Collection of Digital Clock Designs

https://clocks.dev
236•levmiseri•15h ago•42 comments

Voxatron

https://www.lexaloffle.com/voxatron.php
87•lsferreira42•12h ago•22 comments
Open in hackernews

Show HN: Reverse Pac-Man

https://reverse-pacman.staticrun.app/index
78•Eagle64•1y ago
Keep one eye on the first ghost and the other on the second

Comments

brudgers•1y ago
I can't see the whole screen on my laptop, and the screen doesn't scroll.
Eagle64•1y ago
Thanks for the feedback. It is fixed
pmontra•1y ago
It's one of those things that "why did nobody think about it yet?!"
toast0•1y 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•1y ago
I was going to say the same thing. Pac-Man Vs was incredibly fun and a great party game.
thih9•1y ago
Fixed link: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pac-Man_Vs%2E

(trailing dot escaped via %2E)

roskelld•1y 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•1y ago
genius
Eagle64•1y ago
Haha. I’ll take the compliment.
roskelld•1y 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•1y 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•1y 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•1y ago
Really ? Even if you specify that ghosts can turn only at intersections?
xnx•1y 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•1y 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•1y 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•1y ago
Yellow Wizard Needs Food Badly!
chrisweekly•1y ago
Warrior is about to die!

man that takes me back

CloudNetPro•1y 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/

KennedyHere•1y ago
Fun game! From the title, I was expecting to guide Pac-Man to put all the dots back in place.
Eagle64•1y ago
Haha. I haven’t thought of this. That would be a cool other mode
GlassOwAter•1y ago
Poo-Man or Puke-Man
xnx•1y ago
Crap-Man?
vunderba•1y ago
While that would be amusing, mechanically it would be identical to the original game.
derefr•1y 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.

mtVessel•1y 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•1y 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•1y 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•1y ago
Would be fun to have dual stick controller support: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Gamepad_API
tantalor•1y 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•1y ago
Thank you for the suggestion. Your wish has been granted. It is definitely better like this.
tantalor•1y ago
Yes! thanks
bentcorner•1y 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•1y 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•1y ago
It's not loading at all for me. Hug of death?
Eagle64•1y ago
Even with this link ? https://themarelle.itch.io/reverse-pac-man
narcindin•1y 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•1y 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•1y 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•1y ago
The game screen is cut on the right when browser window is small.
nprateem•1y ago
This was why I liked opposing force. Give NPCs their own backstory and make them playable.
staticman2•1y 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•1y 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

vunderba
•
1y 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.

LocalH•1y 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•1y ago
For that, you want this rom hack/patch

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

mrighele•1y 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