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Tiny C Compiler

https://bellard.org/tcc/
102•guerrilla•3h ago•44 comments

SectorC: A C Compiler in 512 bytes

https://xorvoid.com/sectorc.html
186•valyala•7h ago•34 comments

Speed up responses with fast mode

https://code.claude.com/docs/en/fast-mode
110•surprisetalk•7h ago•116 comments

Brookhaven Lab's RHIC concludes 25-year run with final collisions

https://www.hpcwire.com/off-the-wire/brookhaven-labs-rhic-concludes-25-year-run-with-final-collis...
43•gnufx•6h ago•45 comments

Software factories and the agentic moment

https://factory.strongdm.ai/
130•mellosouls•10h ago•280 comments

OpenCiv3: Open-source, cross-platform reimagining of Civilization III

https://openciv3.org/
880•klaussilveira•1d ago•269 comments

Stories from 25 Years of Software Development

https://susam.net/twenty-five-years-of-computing.html
129•vinhnx•10h ago•15 comments

Hoot: Scheme on WebAssembly

https://www.spritely.institute/hoot/
166•AlexeyBrin•12h ago•29 comments

The F Word

http://muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2026/02/friction.html
97•zdw•3d ago•46 comments

FDA intends to take action against non-FDA-approved GLP-1 drugs

https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-intends-take-action-against-non-fda-appro...
60•randycupertino•2h ago•90 comments

First Proof

https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.05192
96•samasblack•9h ago•63 comments

Vocal Guide – belt sing without killing yourself

https://jesperordrup.github.io/vocal-guide/
265•jesperordrup•17h ago•86 comments

I write games in C (yes, C) (2016)

https://jonathanwhiting.com/writing/blog/games_in_c/
167•valyala•7h ago•148 comments

Al Lowe on model trains, funny deaths and working with Disney

https://spillhistorie.no/2026/02/06/interview-with-sierra-veteran-al-lowe/
85•thelok•9h ago•18 comments

Eigen: Building a Workspace

https://reindernijhoff.net/2025/10/eigen-building-a-workspace/
4•todsacerdoti•4d ago•1 comments

Start all of your commands with a comma (2009)

https://rhodesmill.org/brandon/2009/commands-with-comma/
549•theblazehen•3d ago•203 comments

Show HN: I saw this cool navigation reveal, so I made a simple HTML+CSS version

https://github.com/Momciloo/fun-with-clip-path
49•momciloo•7h ago•9 comments

Show HN: A luma dependent chroma compression algorithm (image compression)

https://www.bitsnbites.eu/a-spatial-domain-variable-block-size-luma-dependent-chroma-compression-...
26•mbitsnbites•3d ago•2 comments

The silent death of Good Code

https://amit.prasad.me/blog/rip-good-code
48•amitprasad•1h ago•47 comments

Selection rather than prediction

https://voratiq.com/blog/selection-rather-than-prediction/
24•languid-photic•4d ago•6 comments

The AI boom is causing shortages everywhere else

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/02/07/ai-spending-economy-shortages/
246•1vuio0pswjnm7•13h ago•388 comments

Microsoft account bugs locked me out of Notepad – Are thin clients ruining PCs?

https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/windows-11/windows-locked-me-out-of-notepad-is-the-thin-...
80•josephcsible•5h ago•107 comments

Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback

https://rlhfbook.com/
108•onurkanbkrc•12h ago•5 comments

Unseen Footage of Atari Battlezone Arcade Cabinet Production

https://arcadeblogger.com/2026/02/02/unseen-footage-of-atari-battlezone-cabinet-production/
138•videotopia•4d ago•44 comments

A Fresh Look at IBM 3270 Information Display System

https://www.rs-online.com/designspark/a-fresh-look-at-ibm-3270-information-display-system
57•rbanffy•4d ago•17 comments

Learning from context is harder than we thought

https://hy.tencent.com/research/100025?langVersion=en
215•limoce•4d ago•123 comments

Coding agents have replaced every framework I used

https://blog.alaindichiappari.dev/p/software-engineering-is-back
303•alainrk•12h ago•482 comments

72M Points of Interest

https://tech.marksblogg.com/overture-places-pois.html
48•marklit•5d ago•9 comments

Where did all the starships go?

https://www.datawrapper.de/blog/science-fiction-decline
121•speckx•4d ago•185 comments

Show HN: Look Ma, No Linux: Shell, App Installer, Vi, Cc on ESP32-S3 / BreezyBox

https://github.com/valdanylchuk/breezydemo
294•isitcontent•1d ago•39 comments
Open in hackernews

Constraint satisfaction to optimize item selection for bundles in Minecraft

https://www.robw.fyi/2025/10/12/using-constraint-satisfaction-to-optimize-item-selection-for-bundles-in-minecraft/
41•someguy101010•3mo ago

Comments

Liftyee•3mo ago
Neat idea, though I didn't fully understand the details since I'm not experienced in constraint solvers. Might have to look into it.

Games often lead to interesting computational problems. Another example - I was designing a solver for Flow [0] which made me think about graph problems and applications in e.g. circuit board wire routing. Intuitively it's easy, but translating that into logic is more challenging.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_Free

ViscountPenguin•3mo ago
Back in uni, we had to design a MIP program to solve flow, it was a nice and fun problem.

Turns out you can save a lot of time and effort by just cutting infeasible solutions out one by one, and resuming the solver, as opposed to writing some tricky constraints.

charcircuit•3mo ago
>You have 27 inventory slots, 9 hotbar slots, 4 armor slots, 4 temporary crafting slots, 1 offhand slot, and 1 temporary slot for the result of crafting.

There is also a slot for your cursor. When your inventory is open you can click on an item to put it in your cursor slot and it will allow you to pick up an additional item.

someguy101010•3mo ago
Thanks for catching this!
SOTGO•3mo ago
I get that the author wanted to explore constraint solvers, but why can't you use a greedy algorithm for this problem? Sort the inventory slots by how much bundle space they consume, and insert the cheapest slots. The only way I see this failing is with multiple bundles, but in practice in Minecraft (which is admittedly not really part of the constraint problem) bundles only help when you have many distinct items but a large number of items occur only a few items. In that case it isn't hard to find combinations that fill each bundle completely by only inserting all of a given item (as opposed to inserting only part of an inventory slot) since many items will have only 1 or 2 copies.
someguy101010•3mo ago
I opt for the greedy strategy in most game play scenarios for pretty much the reasons you described here. I was considering making a mod to perform this action for me and was looking for a more "correct" solution but greedy is way simpler and just as effective for most cases.
akoboldfrying•3mo ago
If you greedily fill bundles by first inserting all weight-4 items (pearls, etc.) in any order into a single bundle, moving to a new bundle each time the current one gets full, then inserting all weight-1 items (sticks, etc.) in any order in the same way, the solution you get will use an optimal number of bundles, and also leave an optimal amount of free capacity in the final bundle. (It helps to notice that every bundle except the last must be completely full with no wasted space, since both 4 and 1 divide 64.)

If you do the same, but add all weight-1 items before adding all weight-4 items, you'll still get a solution using the same (optimal) number of bundles, but you may use more capacity in the final bundle than needed -- e.g., if you have 61 sticks and 1 pearl, and add them in that order, the first bundle wastes 3 slots and the second uses 4 slots (vs. no wasted space in the first bundle and just 1 slot used in the second if adding in the reverse order).

OTOH, if you mix adding items of different weights (while staying with the approach of only ever adding to the current bundle if there's room, and if not, moving to a fresh bundle) then you can arrive at a suboptimal number of bundles. E.g., adding 61 sticks, 1 pearl and 3 dirt in that order will require 3 bundles instead of the optimal 2.

doctorpangloss•3mo ago
This is cool.

Another POV is, is any game made better by having serious constraint satisfaction problems hiding inside of it?

Before I get flamed for the question, another way of stating the question is, would Minecraft be made better if it didn’t limit the inventory size, or if the inventory limits were so simple as to not require any kind of constraint satisfaction, whether traditional (ie reading a wiki what to do) or programmatic?

mylesp•3mo ago
I think it would be a worse game by quite a lot. Most of the "fun" moments in minecraft come from the stories of moving back and forth between your home and your mine for example. If there was no constraint the only thing stopping you from mining as much as you would ever need is your boredom.
3eb7988a1663•3mo ago
Backpack Hero[0] is just a pretty knapsack problem? I assume, never played it, but that was the gist I got from the trailer.

[0] https://store.steampowered.com/app/1970580/Backpack_Hero/

criteseneca11•3mo ago
Well, the text indicates a requisite for the bundle framework.

Might optimise to run Minecraft servers on a WAN.

LAN should specify whether item selection is hostable.