MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
Show HN: Marches and Gnats – Coding puzzle game where you program Turing machine
by maltsev | 2026-01-28 16:53:30+00:00
Marches & Gnats is a browser-based coding puzzle game inspired by Advent of Code, but instead of writing code in a conventional programming language, you program a Turing machine.

Each quest presents a concrete problem and a minimal model of computation. You define transition rules, run the machine, inspect the output (or errors), and iterate until it works.

The game is set in 19th-century Estonia during the Romantic era and combines narrative with progressively harder problems, including arithmetic, sorting, parsing, ciphers, and cellular automata.
by shevy-java | 2026-01-28 16:53:36+00:00
My main operating system is Linux since 2005 or so, or actually late 2004. I still use Win10 on my laptop, for various reasons; in part to test java code and ruby code on windows, in part due to elderly relatives.

Win11 really annoyed many users though. That's actually interesting, since Microsoft committed to it yet it gets harder for Microsoft to retain the people. Linux is unfortunately way too complex to really break the desktop system (and no, Wayland, GNOME, KDE, are not going to change any of that either), but if it were, Microsoft would probably have lost its de-facto monopoly already. Either way it is interesting how much people hate Win11. Microsoft really committed to driving down the cliff here.
by eli_gottlieb | 2026-01-28 16:53:38+00:00
1) There's a very reasonable chance the company discriminates. Sorry, but once bitten, twice shy. One company gets caught at it and the whole industry develops a reputation.

2) If you've got a problem finding candidates, there's 16,000 more on the market now. Congratulations!

3) If you think there must be something wrong with those 16,000, well, that would explain where your pipeline is going wrong.
by reenorap | 2026-01-28 16:53:48+00:00
I think it's pretty clear they are using Medicare and Medicaid data. They both fall under the umbrella of HHS so it would technically be correct to say they got data from HHS, but it seems like it's specifically Medicare and Medicaid data.

“Several federal laws authorise the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to make certain information available to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS),”

> > does that mean that undocumented migrants are getting Medicare and Medicaid?
> Not necessarily.

Not necessarily, but probably. I was told explicitly that undocumented migrants weren't getting Medicare and Medicaid services, but at this point, I don't know who to believe.
by maltsev | 2026-01-28 16:53:51+00:00
Hi, I am the creator of Marches & Gnats.

I enjoy Advent of Code and was inspired by it, but since it runs for a short time each year, I wanted to build something in a similar spirit that people could play year-round.

In Marches & Gnats, you do not write code in a conventional programming language. Instead, you program a single-tape Turing machine by defining its transition rules, running it, and inspecting the tape to see what happened.

There are currently 33 quests. Some are small and can be solved in ~20 minutes, while others are more involved and reward careful planning. The problems cover arithmetic, sorting, parsing text, ciphers, cellular automata, and related topics.

The game also has public leaderboards that focus on solution quality (program size and efficiency), rather than how quickly a solution was submitted. I've also experimented with AI agents that attempt to solve the same quests by directly programming Turing machines under the same constraints.

I would be very interested in feedback, especially from Advent of Code players. Happy to answer any questions!
by medvezhenok | 2026-01-28 16:54:27+00:00
What exactly would that evidence look like, for you?

It definitely increases some types of productivity (Opus one-shot a visualization that would have likely taken me at least a day to write before, for work) - although I would have never written this visualization before LLMs (because the effort was not worth it). So I guess it's Jevons Paradox in action somewhat.

In order to observe the productivity increases you need a good scale where the productivity would really matter (the same way that when a benchmark is saturated, like the AIME, it stops telling us anything useful about model improvement)
by baka367 | 2026-01-28 16:54:36+00:00
Win partition will make you want to cry.

Win insists on bootlocker/secure boot, meanwhile most of the Linux doesn’t boot with it or you have to go though hell and back to install unsigned drivers (nvidia, gentle-yall).

I’d all say that Linux is like living in a car with 0 euros and saving up for a house. Simple user can scrape by, but mowing dev work life to Linux is much harder than to Mac. VPNs, inconsistent distro support for weird work stuff and such will make you spend days to weeks of unpaid overtime to get comfortable
by zeta0134 | 2026-01-28 16:54:37+00:00
The giant bugbear in this conversation is always multiplayer. That's because almost all of the big players in that space currently favor rootkits in the form of overly invasive anti-cheat, which the Linux wrappers (mostly the wine project) refuse to support for security reasons.

If you don't play PvP specifically, the rest of the library is significantly more open to you. Personally I have always favored single player experiences and indie games from smaller studios, and for the most part those run great.
by bambax | 2026-01-28 16:54:39+00:00
Same experience here, but I'm not sure it's just MS fault; companies have a way of installing a bunch of stupid software on top of one another, that you can't get rid of without admin rights, that continuously do things that slow the system down.

(And, you can have a tabbed file browser on Win7. I still have a Win7 box at home that works perfectly well and that does have tabs in file explorer. I think it was an addon I installed a while ago; don't remember exactly, but it works perfectly.)
by cassepipe | 2026-01-28 16:54:40+00:00
> There are many benefits relative to Up Up Up workflow

With your shell's vi mode, it's even better L -> k k k

Or search them with /

And if you are proficient with vim, you can edit your previous one-line really fast

(Remap/Swap CapsLock with Escape system-wide. It's just a gui setting on linux and MacOS and a registry key way on Windows)
by cmiles8 | 2026-01-28 16:54:47+00:00
Amazon is flailing at this point and now in a pattern of mass layoffs every 3-6 months. Not good.

Leadership can’t even gets its story straight about why… “It’s AI” correction “Pandemic over-hiring” correction “delayering” correction “restoring our culture” correction “actually AI!”.

There’s a whole mess of rando projects and teams with bloated management layers and often little to show for it revenue wise.

While on the one hand it’s obvious that mess needs to be cleaned up, on the other hand the top leadership has been in place for a while so the very people that created/oversaw the mess are struggling to position themselves as the one to fix it. That seems unlikely to work and the best talent in areas like AI seems to be fleeing voluntarily.

Everything I hear from the inside says moral is in the toilet and the once proud culture is in shambles as prior focus on a culture of innovation and growth is now focused on politics, infighting, and endless reorgs.

Frankly, sounds like a s*itshow.
by godelski | 2026-01-28 16:55:02+00:00
> idk why Arch doesn't invest in whats standard in every other major distro

Because its supposed to be stripped down. To serve as a base to create things like Endeavour, Manjaro, or Cachy.

There's still a lot of utility to doing things the hard way. I do suggest people that want to actually learn Linux install Arch and live in the terminal. You learn a lot very fast because you're forced to. But it's not for everyone and that's totally okay too. That's the beauty of Linux after all. That's the beauty of computing. You can't build a product for everyone but you can build an environment that can become what anyone needs.

But I'll second your point. I've been on Endeavour on my main machine for about 3-4 years now and only had one problem where I just got a mismatch in a new kernel and new Nvidia driver so I couldn't load the desktop. Easy rollback (from the cache) and a day or two later the issue was solved so I could upgrade without a problem. Took no more than 10 minutes to solve and that's the worst problem I've had the entire time. I will also give the advice that if you have an Nvidia card give your boot partition like 5GB instead of 1GB
by AnonC | 2026-01-28 16:55:06+00:00
On my company provided laptop with Windows 11 (previously Windows 10), the top three CPU usage was and is usually from Antimalware Executable, Microsoft Defender and MS Teams (or Crowdstrike). I don’t download files or get files from other sources often, yet these things keep doing busywork and slowing things down. Despite virus and threat protection running quick scans often and forcing a full disk scan every couple of weeks or so.

It’s almost as if these programs are people who ought to show that they’re doing something even though they’re just heating the room and running the fan.
by shevy-java | 2026-01-28 16:55:09+00:00
Well I used to game a lot when I was younger.

Initially I hated that Linux was so niche in 2005 or so.

Meanwhile now, I don't have time for games anyway. I still think gaming should be better on Linux, but I don't miss Windows anymore either (though I have it as secondary operating system on another computer; I just don't really care about it, it could die tomorrow and I would not miss it one iota).
by morserer | 2026-01-28 16:55:12+00:00
Iirc it was to force the extra step necessary for the user to acknowledge that the AUR can bootstrap malware if used blindly.

This seems to be a relatively consistent discussion surrounding AUR helper development; for example, adding UX to incentivise users to read PKGBUILDs, lest the AUR becomes an attractive vector for skids.

No one wants the AUR to become NPM, and the thing that will incentivise that is uneducated users. Having the small barrier of not having helpers in the main repos is an effective way of accomplishing that.
by VBprogrammer | 2026-01-28 16:55:17+00:00
> If you are not resisting arrest, you don't need three officers to pin you to the ground.

If three officers decide to push you to the ground and jump on top of you, you have three officers on top of you. This says nothing about whether you were resisting arrest or not.

Resisting arrest at least implies that you have some understanding that you are actually being arrested and by someone who at least notionally has some legal basis for doing so. It's why police officers will typically identify themselves and tell you under what you are suspected of during an arrest. If after that someone attempts to flee or fightback then sure.

I'm relatively sure spraying chemical irritants at point blank range is not following any reasonable use of force guidelines. They are just retaliating with force because it suits them.
by mehackernewsacc | 2026-01-28 16:55:23+00:00
I’m genuinely not trying to be combative here — I’m just noticing that a lot of your choices seem pretty unconventional, and I’m trying to understand the reasoning behind them, because they are making it hard to interact with you and your project.

- You’re using Nix (which I am familiar with, and why I am here).

- Instead of Git, you’re using “darcs,” which I haven’t encountered before.

- Instead of Flakes, you built Nixtamal.

- For communication, you’re using an XMPP chatroom, which I’m also not familiar with. (Same with MUC — that’s new to me as well.)

Which leaves me with the one experience I'm able to have, in the one place I'm able to share it with you (here):

% nix run "github:toastal/nixpkgs?ref=nixtamal-init#nixtamal" -- nixtamal set-up
error: Cannot build '/nix/store/6s9ich4n35c8dna24vvz44ynxwdiyvy8-ocaml5.3.0-nixtamal-0.1.1-beta.drv'.
Reason: builder failed with exit code 1.
Output paths:
/nix/store/x1qgdd1p9q3y2bsr79cgic51m5cgbc5f-ocaml5.3.0-nixtamal-0.1.1-beta
Last 25 log lines:
> [OK] Input 3 Manifest frozen Pijul of KDL.
> [OK] Input 4 Manifest frozen Pijul sameshape.
> [OK] Input 5 Patch is_local_path detection.
> [OK] Input 6 Patch strip_file_prefix.
> [OK] Input 7 Manifest input codec sameshape.
> [OK] Input 8 Patch source detection.
> [OK] Silo 0 Generation sameshape.
> [OK] Silo 1 GC Cutoff Math/cap=2, gen=5.
> [OK] Silo 2 GC Cutoff Math/cap=10, gen=2 (underflow).
> [OK] Silo 3 GC Cutoff Math/cap=0 (keep all).
> [OK] Silo 4 GC Cutoff Math/cap=2, gen=14 (e hex).
> [OK] Silo 5 GC Cutoff Math/cap=1, gen=1.
> [OK] Lockfile 0 0 inputs & 0 patches.
> [OK] Lockfile 1 2 inputs & 2 patches.
> [OK] Lockfile 2 Local patches in default.nix.
>
> Full test results in `/nix/var/nix/builds/nix-build-ocaml5.3.0-nixtamal-0.1.1-beta.drv-6016-3976314062/fetchdarcs/_build/default/test/_build/_tests/Nixtamal'.
> Test Successful in 21.472s. 18 tests run.
> Running phase: installPhase
> Warning: Cache directories could not be created: Read-only file system;
> disabling cache
> Hint: Make sure the directory /homeless-shelter/.cache/dune/db/temp can be
> created
> Error: Program codesign not found in the tree or in PATH
> Hint: codesign should be part of the macOS installation
For full logs, run:
nix log /nix/store/6s9ich4n35c8dna24vvz44ynxwdiyvy8-ocaml5.3.0-nixtamal-0.1.1-beta.drv
by dijit | 2026-01-28 16:55:32+00:00
> You never buy a laptop or pre-build? They are often full of ads that are not Microsoft Windows build in but add-on by the OEM.

This was never acceptable, but we tolerated it because it subsidised the cost of the laptop.

Show me the ThinkPad T or X series (or EliteBook, or Precision/Latitude) that shipped with ads and I'll take it as a valid point. Otherwise, it's not valid.
by thewebguyd | 2026-01-28 16:55:32+00:00
Of course, and it's mostly DRM and/or anti-cheat. The studios want full control over the device running their IP, and they can't achieve that with desktop Linux, but they also don't want to leave the PC gaming market behind entirely to launch exclusively on consoles. Hence why the Windows versions of these games install rootkits on your PC, they aren't cooperating with the PC ecosystem, they are forcibly turning your computer into a locked-down console.
by dheera | 2026-01-28 16:55:38+00:00
> there are enough american job seekers in CS

To be blunt: Not enough qualified ones. Look at the names of all the top AI papers of the past 3 years, not too many are American.

When you get bullied in American public schools for being a "nerd" and liking science and math, your country doesn't exactly produce a lot of state-of-the-art STEM professionals. You get a small handful of exceptional people who overcame the adversity but that's it.

The top 0.1% are perhaps mostly American-educated. The top 10% on the other hand are mostly not American. And you need the top 10% to code for the top 0.1%.
by bicepjai | 2026-01-28 16:55:41+00:00
With all great observations made, the quote still stands.
"If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants" - Isaac Newton
When people say I feel the sense of community, this is exactly what it means in software philosophy: we do something, others learn from it, and make better ones. In no way is the inspiration’s origin below what it inspired.
by ryandrake | 2026-01-28 16:55:59+00:00
I've never understood this meme. Maybe I'm naive, but why would a company hire someone to "not do anything?" How would they stay employed if their performance review showed they "weren't doing anything?" Everyone around me is busy doing 3x the amount of work they can sustain because we're so short staffed. Where are these companies that have people just sitting there picking their nose watching YouTube? I've never really seen this either in BigTech or MediumTech companies.

Maybe these employees are actually doing things--just things you don't see or appreciate?
by sampo | 2026-01-28 16:56:00+00:00
This is an interesting question.

Dataframes first appeared in S-PLUS in 1991-1992. Then R copied S, and from 1995-1996-1997 onwards R started to grow in popularity in statistics. As free and open source software, R started to take over the market among statisticians and other people who were using other statistical software, mainly SAS, SPSS and Stata.

Given that S and R existed, why were they mostly not picked up by data analysts and programmers in 1995-2008, and only Python and Pandas made dataframes popular from 2008 onwards?
by ecshafer | 2026-01-28 16:56:17+00:00
I can give you a few examples:

Packages are not done well compared to linux. Brew is a poor replacement. It feels like the terminal and everything involved is constantly out of date.

The OS just has a lot of weird things, like the ribbon at the bottom taking up so much space. When I made is smaller and hidden except on mouse over it was incredibly rough.

Window management is decades behind windows or linux. It doesn't like maximizing windows and doesn't make partitioning screen space easy. I had to download a third party app to make it better, which was still worse than windows even in windows 7, and miles worse than linux with i3.

Mac has a lot of rough spots. I have two external monitors and occasionally after updates one monitor would be fuzzy or different resolutions, and it wouldn't go back until the next update.
by tracker1 | 2026-01-28 16:56:20+00:00
AGAIN this is NOT what I was referring to... I'm referring to when you start typing in the name of a program you have installed, and you get a short list of matches, with maybe additional results... not a PRODUCT ADVERTISEMENT (not software) from the internet at the top, which is what I got.

It's not a feature that should EVER exist at an OS level... I didn't even mind the adjacent product ads or the Recommended section you mention that much... but it's emphatically not what I'm fucking talking about.

The fact that this was even something that was implemented and tested means that I'm not someone who will buy or choose Microsoft Windows at all from here forward. I have over 3 decades of development experience on/for/with software that runs on Windows.

An even then... It doesn't matter if I can shut it off, it shouldn't have existed in the first place.
by syhol | 2026-01-28 16:56:49+00:00
Do these scripts need to be productionised? I prefer working in an environment where efficient sharing of knowledge and solutions is encouraged, rather than framed as a burden of responsibility.

Given the choice between starting with an almost-working script or starting from scratch, I’ll take the former, it might save a few hours.

My colleagues and I don’t do this 100% of the time, but I never regret it and always appreciate it when others do.
by spacechild1 | 2026-01-28 16:57:12+00:00
> Being on the ground doesn't remove any potential that he could be dangerous.

When the shots were fired, he was restrained by several agents and did not pose any immediate threat.

> Not sure how many times he was shot

It was ten shots, fired by two agents. That is a lot of shots.

Yes, the shooting itself was very likely an accident by grossly incompetent agents. (You can hear an agent shout the word "gun", which probably triggered the other agents to immediately start firing.)

However, it was the ICE agents who started the very situation that led to this tragedy: One agent violently pushed a women from behind. Why? Alex tried to help her and he immediately got peppersprayed in the face. Why? Then he was wrestled to the ground. Why? Then he was beaten to the head. Why?

All these actions are already outrageous in themselves. It is worrying how police brutality has been normalized in the US.

It is pretty rich to blame Alex when it was really the ICE agents who started this whole mess!

In fact, the videos are so damning that even Stephen Miller had to backpedal and admit that these agents "may not have been following proper protocol".

> I don't know what Kristi Noem is on about, but she's a political appointee and not an investigator.

What confidence do you have in DHS to lead an independent investigation of their own people?
by radicalethics | 2026-01-28 16:57:12+00:00
A drug is a drug is a drug is a drug.

America has never been able to successfully thwart drug proliferation. Porn, Video Games, Social Media, all substance-less drugs. It's up to you to keep your kid off Heroin and it's also up to you to keep them off those other things at addictive levels.

The thing is, keeping your kid away from things like Heroin takes a village (especially if Heroin pervasive in the environment). The same is true for those other things. Adults have to enter the room at some point.

We've been needing a trillion-dollar class action lawsuit against social media companies. Long overdue.
by oreally | 2026-01-28 16:57:15+00:00
This shifting of goalposts just to cater to linux just explains it all.

Comeon. If a customer bought a game that says it runs on linux, they should be able to play it on linux well, not just launch it and quit within 5 mins.

I get you have the ideology up in your head, but don't lie and embellish linux to this degree. The attitude just turns people off.
by Orygin | 2026-01-28 16:57:21+00:00
> UI framework balkanization has always been, and remains a hideous mess

I thought you were talking about Windows there. There are 4 (5?) different UI paradigms within Windows, and doing one thing sometimes requires you to interact with each of them.

At least on Linux, with GTK/KDE, you can pick a camp and have a somewhat consistent experience, with a few outliers. Plus many apps now just use CSD and fully integrate their designs to the window, so it's hopeless to have every window styling be consistent.

I never had to mind X vs Wayland when starting user applications tho.
by cogman10 | 2026-01-28 16:57:28+00:00
I disagree, I think companies mostly just don't want to spend development money on existing "finished" products. That's the smell I'm getting from microsoft.

There are plenty of easily identifiable issues with performance in windows 11. There should be people in the windows team dedicated to eliminating "jank". MS product owners, on the other hand, are much more interested in getting copilot integrations into every menu. That's an "easy" task which looks good on a scorecard when you complete it.
by deadbabe | 2026-01-28 16:57:34+00:00
Good long lived software is not a bunch of functions and components cobbled together.

You need to see the big picture and visions of the future state in order to ensure what is being built will be able to grow and breathe into that. This requires an engineer. An agent doesn’t think much about the future, they think about right now.

This browser toy built by the agent, it has NO future. Once it has written the code, the story is over.
by blub | 2026-01-28 16:57:39+00:00
The dependency management and complexity/poor ergonomics are the two major technical problems with Rust. Normally the first one’s ignored while the second is downplayed, so it would have been interesting to see what (if anything) Facebook have done about them.

Not only can AIs help, but they can write most if not all the code and spare the human from learning all the intricacies of individual programming languages.
Problem is, reports are contradictory on compatibility with Rust. We know they work great with simpler/friendlier languages like Go or Python.
by WalterBright | 2026-01-28 16:58:08+00:00
None of the history classes in grade/high school I attended advanced after 1900.

However, I knew a lot about WW2 because my dad (and relatives) was heavily involved in it, and also became a historian when he left the AF. He had a mountain of history books, mostly about aviation and WW2. I read some of them, and watched movies like "The Blue Max" and "The Battle of Britain", the "World At War" series, and so on. There are also endless WW2 documentaries on TV.

My neighbor was a paratrooper who lost his leg, my dad's best friend was a P-51 pilot who had his face burned off in combat. WW2 vets were everywhere. They're all dead now, and WW2 is ancient history.