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Start all of your commands with a comma (2009)

https://rhodesmill.org/brandon/2009/commands-with-comma/
256•theblazehen•2d ago•85 comments

Hoot: Scheme on WebAssembly

https://www.spritely.institute/hoot/
26•AlexeyBrin•1h ago•2 comments

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

https://openciv3.org/
706•klaussilveira•15h ago•206 comments

The Waymo World Model

https://waymo.com/blog/2026/02/the-waymo-world-model-a-new-frontier-for-autonomous-driving-simula...
969•xnx•21h ago•558 comments

Vocal Guide – belt sing without killing yourself

https://jesperordrup.github.io/vocal-guide/
69•jesperordrup•6h ago•31 comments

Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback

https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.12501
7•onurkanbkrc•47m ago•0 comments

Making geo joins faster with H3 indexes

https://floedb.ai/blog/how-we-made-geo-joins-400-faster-with-h3-indexes
135•matheusalmeida•2d ago•35 comments

Where did all the starships go?

https://www.datawrapper.de/blog/science-fiction-decline
45•speckx•4d ago•36 comments

Unseen Footage of Atari Battlezone Arcade Cabinet Production

https://arcadeblogger.com/2026/02/02/unseen-footage-of-atari-battlezone-cabinet-production/
68•videotopia•4d ago•7 comments

Welcome to the Room – A lesson in leadership by Satya Nadella

https://www.jsnover.com/blog/2026/02/01/welcome-to-the-room/
39•kaonwarb•3d ago•30 comments

ga68, the GNU Algol 68 Compiler – FOSDEM 2026 [video]

https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/PEXRTN-ga68-intro/
13•matt_d•3d ago•2 comments

What Is Ruliology?

https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2026/01/what-is-ruliology/
45•helloplanets•4d ago•46 comments

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

https://github.com/valdanylchuk/breezydemo
240•isitcontent•16h ago•26 comments

Monty: A minimal, secure Python interpreter written in Rust for use by AI

https://github.com/pydantic/monty
238•dmpetrov•16h ago•126 comments

Show HN: I spent 4 years building a UI design tool with only the features I use

https://vecti.com
340•vecti•18h ago•149 comments

Hackers (1995) Animated Experience

https://hackers-1995.vercel.app/
506•todsacerdoti•23h ago•248 comments

Sheldon Brown's Bicycle Technical Info

https://www.sheldonbrown.com/
389•ostacke•22h ago•98 comments

Show HN: If you lose your memory, how to regain access to your computer?

https://eljojo.github.io/rememory/
304•eljojo•18h ago•188 comments

Microsoft open-sources LiteBox, a security-focused library OS

https://github.com/microsoft/litebox
361•aktau•22h ago•186 comments

An Update on Heroku

https://www.heroku.com/blog/an-update-on-heroku/
428•lstoll•22h ago•284 comments

Cross-Region MSK Replication: K2K vs. MirrorMaker2

https://medium.com/lensesio/cross-region-msk-replication-a-comprehensive-performance-comparison-o...
3•andmarios•4d ago•1 comments

PC Floppy Copy Protection: Vault Prolok

https://martypc.blogspot.com/2024/09/pc-floppy-copy-protection-vault-prolok.html
71•kmm•5d ago•10 comments

Was Benoit Mandelbrot a hedgehog or a fox?

https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.01122
23•bikenaga•3d ago•11 comments

Dark Alley Mathematics

https://blog.szczepan.org/blog/three-points/
96•quibono•4d ago•22 comments

The AI boom is causing shortages everywhere else

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/02/07/ai-spending-economy-shortages/
26•1vuio0pswjnm7•2h ago•16 comments

How to effectively write quality code with AI

https://heidenstedt.org/posts/2026/how-to-effectively-write-quality-code-with-ai/
271•i5heu•18h ago•219 comments

Delimited Continuations vs. Lwt for Threads

https://mirageos.org/blog/delimcc-vs-lwt
34•romes•4d ago•3 comments

I now assume that all ads on Apple news are scams

https://kirkville.com/i-now-assume-that-all-ads-on-apple-news-are-scams/
1079•cdrnsf•1d ago•461 comments

Introducing the Developer Knowledge API and MCP Server

https://developers.googleblog.com/introducing-the-developer-knowledge-api-and-mcp-server/
64•gfortaine•13h ago•30 comments

Understanding Neural Network, Visually

https://visualrambling.space/neural-network/
306•surprisetalk•3d ago•44 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.