MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
Show HN: I built a 3D web-based multiplayer game with Claude Code
by tombuildsstuff | 2026-01-15 21:14:16+00:00
Hey HN!

I’ve shown this to a few people and thought folks here may be interested too.

I’ve been using Claude for a while now, and wanted to see how far I could really push it without writing a single line of code.

I ended up building a 3D web-based multiplayer game, inspired by FutureCop: LAPD (on the PS1, specifically the Precinct Assault multiplayer mode - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDEXfN2ifXY), which Claude suggested would take 2-3 weeks to build (by hand).

Fast forward ~1.5 hours of prompting and I had a fun MVP - and within ~6h I was sharing it with friends. ~12 hours of prompting later - without writing a single line of code - I’m blown away at the result.

There's now multiple levels, multiple units, sounds, a leaderboard and you can use your BlueSky/GitHub username - all in 3D, all in a browser.

You can try the game out here: https://arena.ibuildstuff.eu

The code: https://github.com/tombuildsstuff/web-arena-game

Tech Stack: Three.JS and WebSockets on the frontend and Golang on the backend

I’d love to hear what you think :)
by tzs | 2026-01-15 21:14:18+00:00
If you just want to grab the data to put into a more useful format, as opposed to really needing to actually use them as drives on your modern Mac, you may be able to do it if you happen to have access to something that has a couple dozen GPIOs, works with 5V logic, and is running faster than 1 GHz.

An RPi would be perfect except they use 3.3V logic. There are ways to deal with that such as bidirectional level shifters, such as [1].

Anyway, if you can find such a system bit banging SCSI on the GPIOs should work. Heck, on the original Mac Plus SCSI it was partly bit banged and that was on an 8 MHz 68000 where each instruction took at least 4 clock cycles.

They used an NCR 53C80 SCSI chip which pretty much simply provided registers to read and write the SCSI signals, plus a little bit of logic to handle those few places where something too fast for bit banging was needed.

Looking at my copy of the SCSI 2 spec briefly, it looks like the only thing you might have to worry about is the spec requires at most 10 ns difference in propagation delay between any two signals between the two ends. If you needed to change multiple signals together and used some higher level interface that did them one by one that might be slow enough it would look like propagation delay to the other end.

That could be addressed by directly writing to the registers that control the GPIOs. On most system each register controls multiple GPIOs and you can change them simultaneously. With SCSI we'd be using enough GPIOs that we might have to write to 2 or 3 GPIO control registers, but that would probably be fine.

It looks like the next shortest maximum allowed time is 400 ns. Way too short for an 8 MHz 68000, but trivial for a Pi or similar.

[1] https://www.adafruit.com/product/395 or https://www.sparkfun.com/sparkfun-level-shifter-8-channel-tx...
by peterldowns | 2026-01-15 21:14:26+00:00
Very cool. One usecase the blogpost seems to hint at is to use this to implement async agents that write code for you. Like, you have some system that hears about a new issue — from slack, linear, wherever — and then spins up a Sprite, checks out the codebase, works on a solution, commits, and creates a PR.

Is that what you guys are thinking of? I get that Sprites are a new primitive, but I feel confused as hell about what exactly I'd want to do with it.
by ekidd | 2026-01-15 21:14:38+00:00
I have been reading through this thread, and my first reaction to many of the comments was "Skill issue."

Yes, it can build things that have never existed before. Yes, it can review its own code. Yes, it can do X, Y and Z.

Does it do all these things spontaneously with no structure? No, it doesn't. Are there tricks to getting it do some of these things? Yup. If you want code review, start by writing a code review "skill". Have that skill ask Opus to fork off several subagents to review different aspects, and then synthesize the reports, with issues broken down by Critical, Major and Minor. Have the skill describe all the things you want from a review.

There are, as the OP pointed out, a lot of reasons why you can't run it with no human at all. But with an experienced human nudging it? It can do a lot.
by publicdebates | 2026-01-15 21:14:48+00:00
I appreciate the sentiment, but knowing that it's entirely coming from you and your experiences, and nothing to do with me and my own personality except for the one thing we have somewhat in common, means that your comment is to me merely a representation of you and what you stand for. Which is great and beautiful, but it doesn't cross the bridge of being a meaningful comment on my end.

That's actually the exact problem I'm facing, so it's incredibly relevant.

A year ago, I was talking to the local Catholic priest (I was donating some religious statues that I had effectively inherited), and it came up in conversation that I was going through a rough time. He went in for a hug, and it felt so absolutely empty and disingenuous. I accepted it merely to avoid a scene, but it was absolutely not welcome or meaningful.

When I'm out in the city, I want to reach out to those people who put that they feel "100%" alone just like I do. I wrote in the article some of my thoughts and feelings on this, and some things I tried and didn't try.

But ultimately, that's the gap I want to bridge now. We have a thing in common. How do we go from there? (Not you and me, but me and a stranger who has the same problem as me that they want to solve.) What do I say next? What's the next thing we can do in that interaction, or maybe a later one if I ever see them again? This is my question to myself, what I'm wondering in this whole post.
by chrisnight | 2026-01-15 21:14:54+00:00
I’d be interested to see a satirical concept like this that goes more in depth by, say, having the operational semantics help fuel the satire. When I see things like this, I always feel underwhelmed when it’s just a keyword swap.

For example, take the title. Imagine if the PL was a declarative way of describing a distributed system, with HTTP endpoints or web sockets connecting modules. Then, for harvesting, it gives unbounded ability for nodes to read and write to other nodes outside of the standard interface. You can just go in and read/write their data, without any public interface needed. Of course someone else can probably come up with something better, but I think it’d be cool to see something that more fully uses what a “programming language” means.
by hairofadog | 2026-01-15 21:15:12+00:00
They didn't attract the same publicity because

* They didn't jack up the budget to a size larger than most countries' militaries

* They didn't target primarily Republican cities and states out of vengeance for how those cities and states voted

* They didn't explicitly target people here legally

* They didn't send bands of masked men house to house to kick in doors without warrants

* They didn't implement Kavanaugh Stops, which makes racial profiling legal

* They didn't implement a "Papers, please" policy

* They didn't crow about their cruelty on social media or make funny memes about immigrant families being destroyed

* They didn't broadcast that agents had "absolute immunity" even if their agents killed people

* They didn't use fascist iconography and phrasing in their press releases and design systems

* They didn't create a situation in which businesses and schools had to shut down because their employees and students were afraid to leave their houses because even though they were U.S. citizens, they had darker colored skin or spoke with an accent

* They didn't try to end birthright citizenship

I mean the list goes on and on. It's not the same at all. That's why they didn't attract the same publicity.
by idle_zealot | 2026-01-15 21:15:15+00:00
> Because open-borders is how you get more MAGA.

Pretending that immigrants are the underlying cause of every societal failure is how you get MAGA. Enabling that big lie bolsters it.

And I don't think I can enumerate the ways in which an occupied house are different from a country and unsuitable for the metaphor you're trying.
by bigyabai | 2026-01-15 21:15:25+00:00
It's not that, either. Low-margin, high-volume contracts are the worst business you can take. It devalues TSMC's work and creates an unnatural downward force on the price of cutting-edge silicon. By ignoring Apple's demands they're creating natural competition that raises the value of their entire portfolio.

It really is about making better hardware. Apple would be out-bidding Nvidia right now, but only if the iPhone had equivalent value-add to Nvidia hardware. Alas, iPhones are overpriced and underpowered, most people will agree.
by drdaeman | 2026-01-15 21:15:41+00:00
> Torment Nexus

You’re bringing in something that’s (vaguely and poorly, for no one knows what it actually could be) defined as something that fits the narrative and present it: “see, if we think up a tool that’s inherently evil by definition of it, it cannot be neutral”. We might, but could such tool actually exist?

(And before we joke about building it, we can think up of its polar opposite too, something unquestionably good that just cannot be evil in the slightest. Again, I suspect, no such thing can exist in reality.)
by fuoqi | 2026-01-15 21:15:54+00:00
1) Introduce a lot of intermittent generation into energy grid without sufficient amount of storage capacity.

2) Use marginal pricing model which effectively guarantees windfall profits for those sources.

3) Utilization of peaking power plants falls, but you still have to keep them because there is not enough storage capacity.

4) Peaking power plants rise generation costs to offset the lower utilization, further adding to the windfall profits.

5) You need more grid capacity to handle energy transfers from distributed generation sources.

5) ????

6) Act surprised when people loudly complain about electricity bills despite abundant "cheap" generation.

Intermittency of generation is an externality (same as CO2 emissions) and should be priced accordingly. People are willing to pay premium for supply stability, but the current pricing model does no account for that. Trying to change consumption habits (like smart grids, dynamic pricing, etc.) works poorly, especially for such vital resource as electricity.

I think there should be some kind of price penalty for intermittent sources dependent on total ratio of intermittent generation in the mix. At least until grid-scale energy storage technology will be advanced enough to store approximately week of total energy consumption.
by GuB-42 | 2026-01-15 21:16:04+00:00
I didn't notice this, in fact, I still find Wikipedia to be remarkably neutral on controversial topics. It is very explicit about not being a news website, and yet, that's where I find the best coverage for hot topics like the war in Ukraine and Gaza, Black Lives Matter, protests in Hong-Kong, etc... For instance, most western media completely disregard the Russian side of the Ukraine war, not Wikipedia, where you have both points of views shown side by side, as well as international reactions, and most importantly, sources.

It is not perfect of course, small topics and non-English Wikipedias usually show more bias, and not just about controversial topics. Even on scientific articles, you may find some guy who considers himself the king of the Estonian Striped Beetle and will not tolerate any other ideas than his, driving away other contributors because they have better things to do than go to war to defend beetle truths.
by Retric | 2026-01-15 21:16:43+00:00
When your country emits more CO2 there’s more CO2 in the atmosphere independent of what anyone else does.

So it’s true each individual country only receives a fraction of the negative impact of their own emissions, but that fraction isn’t zero and therefore should be taxed to maximize economic efficiency. Further joining international treaties to agree to collectively tax carbon at a higher rate representing the harm across all those countries is even more economically efficient.
by 15155 | 2026-01-15 21:16:44+00:00
> Transphobes are constantly imposing their beliefs on trans people, trans people want equal rights

What happens if you don't use the correct pronouns someone has declared for themselves?

Is this not "imposing beliefs" on other people?

This goes far beyond "tolerance": you must be an active, enthusiastic participant or face punishment.

> It's very easy to hide your beliefs if you want to participate

That's the point: only one set of ideas are allowed, everyone else must hide, regardless of forum.

> anyone is free to join and start getting support

Try espousing ideals contrary to theirs in completely unrelated venues and see how much support you get sans anonymity.

> places that don't make people feel unsafe.

"Feeling unsafe" is an outstanding weapon to crush behavior one doesn't like. Doesn't even require logic: it's literally a feeling.
by headcanon | 2026-01-15 21:17:19+00:00
Thats a fair counterpoint, and it has helped translate my random thoughts into more coherent text. I also haven't taken advantage of dictation much at all either, so maybe I'll give it a try. I still think the baseline skill that writing gives you translates to an LLM-use skill, which is thinking clearly and knowing how to structure your thoughts. Maybe folks can get that skill in other ways (oration, art, etc.). I don't need to give it essays, but I do need to give it clear instructions. Every time it spins off and does something I don't want, its because I didn't clarify my thoughts correctly.
by irishcoffee | 2026-01-15 21:17:36+00:00
It’s 10 bucks for me to haul mulch and topsoil from a place down the road.

It’s hundreds of dollars to have the same literal dirt, delivered and dumped on my property. So now, instead of driving the truck full of dirt around my property and using it as desired, I now need to do it one wheelbarrow full at a time.

Fuck that.

As for weather, they make removable flat and domed “roofs” for truck beds, the weather argument is a nonstarter.
by MontyCarloHall | 2026-01-15 21:17:54+00:00
Bizarre; this was originally posted 5 days ago (as evidenced by clicking on the poster's submission history [0]), but timestamps on the submission and on comments throughout the post show 11 hours ago. @dang, is this a bug in HN software? I was feeling some serious déjà vu scrolling seeing this and scrolling through the comments.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=jszymborski
by adrian_b | 2026-01-15 21:18:12+00:00
I agree that after discussions with a LLM you may be led to novel insights.

However, such novel insights are not novel due to the LLM, but due to you.

The "novel" insights are either novel only to you, because they belong to something that you have not studied before, or they are novel ideas that were generated by yourself as a consequence of your attempts to explain what you want to the LLM.

It is very frequent for someone to be led to novel insights about something that he/she believed to already understand well, only after trying to explain it to another ignorant human, when one may discover that the previous supposed understanding was actually incorrect or incomplete.
by phoehne | 2026-01-15 21:18:20+00:00
Okay, that's where you draw the line. But someone provides power to their data center and their offices. Someone provides hand-held devices. Someone provides network connectivity. Someone has a contract to house and feed these agents. Someone has the logistical and fleet services for their vehicles. Someone is likely the landlord to their buildings. Someone has a contract to clean the buildings. Someone is a deciding to buy a block of Palantir stock versus some other software company. Someone runs the private prison into which people are herded. An attorney has a choice to file a charge or not file a charge. A judge has the choice to bend over backward to give ICE/CBP the benefit of the doubt, or be skeptical.

Baking a roll of bread is not immoral. Baking bread as part of a contract to feed the gestapo, is.
by astura | 2026-01-15 21:18:31+00:00
Phrases like "I’d start with personal passions, and work from there" and "we need to be willing to start small" are NOT actionable, they are meaningless platitudes. Not to mention it assumes everyone has "personal passions," an the majority of people probably don't.

I didn't "just go for one." I spent like a month trying to volunteer , for anyone. I was on medical leave from work at time time so I had plenty of time to give. Nobody ever got back to me or picked up the phone. It was worse than applying for a job. I have an anxiety disorder, so even reaching out caused me massive stress and anxiety. So I caused myself distress to feel more worthless than I already felt. My heart is racing and I'm on the verge of tears just typing this up.

So I'll ask again, how does one "join a volunteer organization?"
by threethirtytwo | 2026-01-15 21:18:45+00:00
>I think the true mind boggle is you don't seem to realize just how much content the AI conpanies have stolen.

What makes you think I don't realize it? Looks like your comment was generated by an LLM because that was an hallucination that is Not true at all.

AI companies have stolen a lot of content for training. I AGREE with this. So have you. That content lives rent free in your head as your memory. It's the same concept.

Legally speaking though, AI companies are a bit more in the red because the law, from a practical standpoint, doesn't exactly make illegal anything stored in your brain... but from a technical standpoint information on your brain, a hard drive or a billboard is still information instantiated/copied in the physical world.

The text you write and output is simply a reconfiguration of that information in your head. Look at what you're typing. The English language. It's not copywrited, but every single word your typing was not invented by you, the grammar rules and conventions were ripped off existing standards.
by hkt | 2026-01-15 21:19:01+00:00
Rationed electricity might also come in the form of a universal basic entitlement, followed by market price for higher usage. One assumes under such a system that the state would own and operate energy production and that they would, for instance, increase the ration over time, leaving the remaining needed capacity to be fulfilled by the market.

Honestly, pricing based on the cost of financing and operation isn't a terrible idea.
by wbobeirne | 2026-01-15 21:19:09+00:00
Do you have any strong evidence that this would improve the situation? It may be correlative and not causative, but as working from home is increasing, it seems that most related statistics to loneliness are increasing as well. What if it's actually part of the problem and not the solution?

I'm not saying that I have evidence on hand to the contrary, just trying to challenge the idea.
by Imustaskforhelp | 2026-01-15 21:19:20+00:00
So groq is bought by nvidia, OpenAI partners with Cerebras. Nvidia and OpenAI are partners/Nvidia invests in OpenAI which then buys its hardware

Cerebras was one of the few companies in the AI space which was independent and one of the few companies I thought which could even survive a bubble but this partnership and OpenAI's involvement with Cerebras raises some questions
by tick_tock_tick | 2026-01-15 21:19:21+00:00
Rust doesn't allow specialization and likely never will because it's unsound https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/1p346th/specializatio... has a couple of nice comments about it.

But yes it's basically

template <typename T, size_t N>
class Example {
vector<T> generic;
};

template<>
class Example<int32_t, 32> {
int bitpackinhere;
}
by TacticalCoder | 2026-01-15 21:19:32+00:00
In Europe it's very common to have trains stopped (for hours and for the entire community) because robbers stole copper cables. One technical answer to make theft less juicy is to (sadly slowly) replace the copper cables with similar cables but using 1/10th the amount of copper. Another "answer" is a spray, with a chemical compound that has a very specific signature and that's incredibly hard to remove: so the robbers, once caught, cannot deny that they were on scene committing the act: it's not perfect but it makes some of the thieves think twice.
by palata | 2026-01-15 21:19:37+00:00
We have 3 problems that are the consequence of abundant fossil energy:

1. Biodiversity loss. We are measurably living in a mass extinction that is happening orders of magnitude faster than the famous one of the dinosaurs. It is due to what humans do when they have abundant energy. If we all had a nuclear reactor in our pocket, we would still be destroying the biodiversity, so it's not just a fossil energy problem.

2. Climate change. It's only the beginning, and the cause of it is the CO2 we release by burning fossil fuels. Society as we know it depends on abundant energy, and 80% of the energy we use is fossil. The solution to climate change is degrowth, but nobody wants to accept it.

3. Energy abundance. Energy became abundant thanks to fossil fuels, and those are not unlimited. Conventional peak oil was in 2008, and Europe's economy has been slowing down since then (though Americans like to think that it's slowing down because the Europeans are lazy). Eventually (soon), the global economy will slow down because of that. Which will bring global instability (even though now doesn't sound like the most stable it has ever been).

The only solution we have to those is that we need to stop living the way we live, and we need to do it fast. It's already too late so it will hurt, but the faster we react, the lesser it will hurt.

The reality is too bad for most of us to accept it, and by not accepting it we make it even worse. We're pretty much screwed. There is a business to make on "not being defeatist" and offering "solutions" for a "sustainable growth", but that's just business, that won't save us.
by tptacek | 2026-01-15 21:19:38+00:00
It's too early to say. We started the bracket back in 2020 with a nomination Google Sheet, and then the pandemic happened, and then I kept saying I'd throw a web app together for us to actually do a seeded bracket with; 5 years later, some of the restaurants have changed, so we're re-doing nominations, and we'll have bracket voting rounds starting probably in February. I owe it all to Sprites!

Nhu Lan's Banh Mi #1 and JPG's Muffaletta are the top 2 current noms, but I think the Tempesta B. Franklin is a sleeper, and the Phodega Viet Dip has a cheering section and I haven't tried it yet. The joy of doing an actual bracket is that it'll involve people doing field trips to have their first Mr. D's Pork Shish-Ka-Bob sandwich, or the Alpine Combo.

It's a 16 sandwich tournament and we're at like 26 nominations right now so it'll be interesting to see what happens.
by kemotep | 2026-01-15 21:19:42+00:00
The biggest problem I have seen with AI scrapping is that they blindly try every possible combination of URLs once they find your site and blast it 100 times per second for each page they can find.

They don’t respect robots.txt, they don’t care about your sitemap, they don’t bother caching, just mindlessly churning away effectively a DDOS.

Google at least played nice.

And so that is why things like anubis exist, why people flock to cloudflare and all the other tried and true methods to block bots.