134 pointsby armandhammer1012 hours ago24 comments
  • TheAceOfHearts6 hours ago
    That's really cute, it reminds me that Will Wright (creator of The Sims) has referenced this book "The Ants", by Bert Holldobler in multiple occasions as a key inspiration for his games (and in particular SimAnt) and systems thinking. Did you come across that during your research phase or had you not heard about it? I haven't read it yet, but maybe someday I'll get around to it.
  • JetSetIlly4 hours ago
    Cool. This is how I imagine the ants were programmed by the spiders in Children of Time.
  • i_am_a_squirrel10 hours ago
    what is this? assembly for ants?
    • forkerenok4 hours ago
      It's assembly for people who can code good.. and can do other things good too.
    • yesthisiswes3 hours ago
      It needs to be at least three times this size!
    • armandhammer1010 hours ago
      ant-ssembly to be precise
  • anta4039 minutes ago
    So.... a sort of modern Corewar?
  • RandomTeaParty5 hours ago
    Did website break?

    I only see "MOMENT" and "All systems nominal"

    • greenbit3 hours ago
      Incredible low contrast font color in use there. Looks like about 0x002000 on pure black (per Mk-1 eyeball).

      What possesses people to go for these barely perceptible color schemes?

      .. a few minutes later ..

      Ok, the crazy low contrast was on the initial landing page. Things have somewhat improved after prodding somewhat blindly at it.

      I'll let the question stand though, bc why do that for what's going to be people's first impression?

    • armandhammer103 hours ago
      try pressing any key or clicking around :)
  • orsornaan hour ago
    The amount of effort put into this tool...just for hiring to your exact shop? I cannot imagine that's a good return on investment?
  • phreeza5 hours ago
    Reminds me of my personal HN glory days, now 16 years ago!! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1395726
  • nozzlegear8 hours ago
    I think I read a Daniel Suarez book about this once.
  • general_reveal4 hours ago
    Orwell would suggest you use the word normal.
  • kleiba8 hours ago
    I wish I could read dark-mode but my eyes somehow cannot handle it (not just on that website, in general).
    • purplehat_7 hours ago
      there is a `theme set` command
  • Thanakorn_5513 hours ago
    This is really quite cool.
  • ivanjermakov2 hours ago
    All dark themes are too low contrast. Give me pure white (including comments) on pure black please.
  • macleginnan hour ago
    What's with "artesenal"? Is this a joke that I don't understand or a surprising way to write "artisanal"?
  • 4b11b410 hours ago
    Wait what this is the best reason to write a bunch of assembly AND learn about ants?
    • armandhammer1010 hours ago
      And (potentially) go to Hawaii!

      But in all seriousness, ants are smarter than they look. They operate as a collective. Just in the same way that assembly needs to operate collectively to get the best output.

      They're more closely linked than they appear from the outside ;)

      • dspillett4 hours ago
        > ants are smarter than they look.

        Many moons ago I had a big pot of rhubarb in my back yard¹ and was initially irritated by the appearance of ants and aphids, until I took a moment to watch them and realise that the ants were bringing in the aphids and tending to them. The buggers were farming. The ants can't digest the leaves of the rhubarb, but the aphids can and excrete a sugary by-product that the ants “milk” from them. It is a fascinating bit of nature to read into. They even defend the aphids from predators and so forth, so it isn't a bad life for them either.

        --------

        [1] Not a euphemism for a lovely garden in that case, it was literally about a square yard of concrete behind the mid-terrace I was renting.

      • embedding-shape5 hours ago
        > But in all seriousness, ants are smarter than they look.

        I'd argue the opposite, ants are dumber than they look. You look at a random ant stack in the forest and it looks like they're smart, but that's only when they're "controlled" by the collective, individual ants themselves are pretty dumb in the end, but it's hard to see as typically we always see them around/in their stacks in nature.

      • lukan7 hours ago
        As a collective, yes. If you look at individuals, they often go in circles and act really dumb. But for the colony it still works out, bigger brains would cost too much energy I suppose and simple algorithms work. (I often watched real ants while and my head translated their behavior to simple algorithms)
      • kitd6 hours ago
        Someone else who has read Godel, Escher, Bach by Hofstadter?
        • oddmade6 hours ago
          Excellent book cheers
  • nurettin10 hours ago
    This is a balancing act between collectors and explorers. There is probably some optimized number. Likely targeted at beginners.
  • FpUser5 hours ago
    Am I being dumb? I was expecting to see ability to look at and run some canned sim
  • TruffleLabs11 hours ago
    Why? =>

    "Moment Engineering by Moment Technology wants to access your {GitHub account name} account Personal user data Email addresses (read-only), profile information (read-only) This application will be able to read your private email addresses and read your private profile information."

  • an hour ago
    undefined
  • jackfranklyn7 hours ago
    [dead]
  • sudo_cowsay11 hours ago
    Nice way of hiring but is it really worth it to give the public a trip to Maui (kinda expensive these days)

    Does it really reveal that much talent to make it worth the money?

    Just curious

    • tgsovlerkhgsel2 hours ago
      The prizes (Maui trip, second/third prizes, swag kits, shipping for the swag kits) probably cost around $20k in total.

      Assuming an engineer costs $200k/year, 200 effective working days per year, that's 1k/day. Developing the contest (from the idea to building the rules to building the site to playtesting) likely cost more than 20 eng-days, making it the biggest cost.

      Hiring is expensive. If it takes 30 minutes to screen one candidate for suitability for the "real" interview and 5h to do a "real" interview (including evaluation etc.), 5 screenings for one interview-worthy candidate and 5 interviews for one hire (I suspect the real factors might be closer to 10), that's 12.5h of screening and 25h of interviewing per hire.

    • armandhammer1011 hours ago
      It's less about the money. It's about giving people a chance to do something fun / show off their skills and get rewarded for it.

      Plus, Hawaii is awesome.

      • dr_kiszonka11 hours ago
        I think it is a fun contest! As for recruitment, it suggests to me you are looking for people with no kids, and possibly young people.
      • nylonstrung6 hours ago
        Appreciate this, very cool of you to do that
    • AndrewKemendo44 minutes ago
      Way less than you would pay for a recruiter

      they usually ask for a non trivial percentage of the first year salary

  • devcraft_ai7 hours ago
    [dead]
  • mdk017an hour ago
    [dead]
  • Uptrenda8 hours ago
    [flagged]
    • mock-possum7 hours ago
      > my goy master

      I’m sorry your what now?

      • Uptrenda7 hours ago
        sorry, im jewish, lets not be racist here
        • wizzwizz44 hours ago
          Nobody who talks like this has ever been Jewish, in my experience: you'd be the first.