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- Hacker News
- If you liked the playing card interaction at the start (I did), I run a random side project where you (or your coding agent) can build similar 3d cards:
build a card here: https://requirement5.com/create (and the CLI instructions are there too)
by FailMore - I noticed DaisyUI also has a component for this just a couple of days back - https://daisyui.com/components/hover-3d/
- On a tangent, I was a bit confused by the everyday examples given in this article.
"We're often faced with similar trade-offs. You want a meal that's both cheap and delicious? A job that's both well-paid, easy, and fulfilling?"
I really don't feel like "easy" is a dimension I wish to optimize for in a job. It almost feels opposite to what I've actually optimized for - since for me a fulfilling job usually means full of deep technical challenges. I want a job without unnecessary friction, without interpersonal drama, even one that's low stress. But definitely not easy.
by Agentlien - Felt like covert advertisements.by elwell
- Well then, you would prioritize "fulfilling" in your utility function. Others might make a different choice; e.g. a single parent who needs to save time and energy for family might prefer "easy" at the cost of boring drudgery
- Maybe instead of "easy" what they really meant that axis to convey is something more like "low stress" or "not frustrating"by ytpete
- It sounds like you're saying "easy" and "fulfilling" cannot coexist, and obviously they are in tension, but a Pareto frontier still exists there.by StilesCrisis
- They’re just hypothetical examples, not meant to apply to everyone.by jimbokun
- I think the author didn't want to go too in depth for the sake of simplicity, very similar to the blog post itself, which just hit the surface. That being said, many more dimensions can be made out of easy - when I think of easy, I think of technically easy, management easy, drama levels, west coast nice vs east coast nice easy, etc... Depending on the individual they could probably split the word easy alone into 5 to 15 dimensions.by Shocka1
- I get what you’re saying, but I wouldn’t say easy is the opposite of challenging. As a quick example, I would surely find a day job of manual labor harder and significantly less enjoyable than a day job of software engineering challenges.
(And please note that I do not mean to imply that there are no challenges in manual labor or that software engineering is more important.)
by blanched
That's part of how I see an "easy" job. Where I can focus on working on the actual tasks at hand.> I want a job without unnecessary friction, without interpersonal drama, even one that's low stress.Doesn't matter if the actual job is filling glasses of water or building rockets; as long as I can focus on it for 100% of my working hours, I'd see it as an "easy" job.
by wiether- I would really love to be able to explore this data, e.g. what is the "worst" driver? Is there an inverse Pareto front?by charv
- > Is there an inverse Pareto front?
Yes, trivially. Just look at the opposite end of each metric. Pareto optimality doesn't know/care what each metrics means, since it keeps them all separate.
by chriswarbo - Ive been played. Me and my brother used to play this all the time. He would always beat me and whenever I would win it would be a momentous occasion. Turns out his build was directly on the pareto frontier and mine was not even close. Damn you brother. Hes totally screwed next time we playby hspeiser
- I love when people do an amazing job carefully explaining something complicated in a way that makes it seem very intuitive. Excellent job. Way to show off those technical communication chops!
- Previous discussion (2024): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39936246by Retr0id
- Of course I, and most of the dads I know, optimise for something else: what’s the car that will keep me competitive, but probably losing, to the kids?by moomin
- I often use the wii wheel as my handicap for family, but my wife (new to games) is now good enough that I might need to switch that soon.
When my oldest was first trying Mario Kart, his uncle came over and played against him blindfolded (and still won). It was very entertaining to watch.
by sudobash1 - My trick is to just never power slide when I need to be handicapped to not ruin the kids Christmas. Or tap the accel A button in a PWM pattern.by kridsdale1
- I don't. I need to keep winning until I can't to keep the boy in his place. He is getting closer every time. I know my day is soon to end, and a new house champion will reign.by jedberg
- There are a few things that are assumed to be true when talking about the Pareto frontier here, but aren’t always true.
One, that more of something is always better, e.g. it is always better to have more speed.
Maybe, but what if having too much speed causes you to run off the track and perform worse? It could be that there is actually a peak in the utility of speed that declines as it increases.
There could also be important relations between attributes that make determining a Pareto frontier impossible or at least more difficult. For example, some pairs of attributes work best when they are a specific ratio, and increasing one or the other will actually decrease utility unless the other is increased at the same time.
by cortesoft - Wouldn't that just change the shape of the pareto frontier? It stops at some point (when marginal utility becomes negative) - but this is not special, they typically stop at 0 as well.by dfdydx
- I agree that many assumptions are made, but the concept was presented well in combination with something most people can relate to. They mention in the Acknowledgements section at the end of the post that assumptions are made, but not sure if they added it after your post or not. When something goes viral on HN authors tends to add things...
I think to truly do a deep dive into the best overall character in Mario Kart would be a fairly complex task. We'd need data from years of real games and players to even get started. As an ML engineer/software engineer who played a lot of Mario Kart back in the day, this post was a very enjoyable read for me.
by Shocka1 - > [is it really] always better to have more speed[?]
I'm reminded of two things that in a way support your premise with the second example being more relevant. Both are outside what’s being discussed exactly, more about knock-on effects maybe, anyway:
The first is that Angry Birds found the speed of launching birds into structures was important for engagement: it cannot be too fast.
The second is from a commenter somewhere who said they had or worked on software that took ten minutes to boot in the morning, which is when employees made coffee and talked and brainstormed. Everyone was disappointed when after refactoring, the software booted immediately.
by Barbing - One way of defining Wisdom is the ability to look at a set of metrics and discern when an adjustment or adaptation to them is needed in order to better approach the true objective we are optimizing toward—since the true objective is almost never perfectly described by any of the metrics that we can find to approximate it.
Eventually, almost every attribute we can practically and objectively measure is at best a proxy measure for the thing we actually want to know, which is, in this case, "Most likely to win races." The thing we actually want to measure is often hard, impossible, or impractical to objectively measure, which is why we resort to proxies in the first place. By "proxy measure" we mean, not a perfect 1:1 to the thing we want to measure, but containing some amount of signal about it.
So yes, sometimes there's a peak in the utility of speed. But perhaps that trade-off can be modeled by another attribute called "Proneness to fly off the track" which increases as speed does, and is weighted such that the peak and then taper-off of benefit in speed is captured between the combination of the two of them.
But then, any vehicle that has the same speed but lower "Proneness to fly off the track" would be objectively preferable to any equally-fast vehicle with greater "Proneness to fly off the track." And so it continues.
by cfiggers - > You probably won't pick a driver sitting on the edge of the frontier because you want some balance between speed and acceleration
for super mario kart speedruns go with bowser/dk: https://www.speedrun.com/smk/runs/zp68nr8m
That seemed to hold up for Mario Kart 8 too going with Bowser at the edge of their pareto frontier, https://www.speedrun.com/mk8
needing acceleration is a skill issue
by __s - Acceleration is pointless because of the hidden Mini Turbo statby dmonitor
- > needing acceleration is a skill issue
Skill level is an attribute you use to weight the dimensions. Sure, if you're an expert player who rarely gets hit (and can optimally use a mini boost to recover when you do), acceleration doesn't matter as much. But most people are not expert players, and play too casually to ever get to that level. Ignoring acceleration just won't create a fun experience for them.
by kelnos - no, even in time trials it depends on the track. If top speed were the most important metric you would see the same meta build for every world record time trial, but that's not the case.
Also, miniturbo is the single most important stat in the game, not top speed
by kommunicate - Lol skill issue... Right! But that's how you choose your weights. If you're not a great driver you need to give more consideration to acceleration.