Top posts

Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 2,346 posts.

Design & UX
Any year
2162

Designing game narrative

Imagine one day you are struck with a flash of inspiration: freshly seared onto your mind is a story, one that is undoubtedly the greatest tale ever conceived by Man. It has all the elements of a great narrative: a gripping plot, nuanced characters, and an evocative setting.

2178

Beautiful plots of roots of polynomials

Click on the picture for bigger view. Roots of quadratic polynomials are in grey; roots of cubics are in cyan; roots of quartics are in red and roots of quintics are in black. The horizontal axis of symmetry is the real axis; the vertical axis of symmetry is the imaginary axis. The big hole in the middle is centered…

2184

Video Games as Art

Video games are art, but a strange art: their essence is transformation of the player, not description to the player. This makes meaningful criticism nearly impossible—you can point at the moon, but it’s not the moon, and once someone sees it, they no longer need the pointing.