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Max Kreminski
mkremins.github.io · Personal blog · on HN since 2015
Max Kreminski, a researcher in games and computational creativity, writes about game design, storytelling tools, Unix and creativity support.
What HN saysHN commenters link his posts on Unix as unacceptable, and on locked doors and intellectual need, as thoughtful pieces for related discussions.
23HN people shared it
5linked it in comments
19stories submitted
903story points
2 years agolast shared
2015people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Locked doors, headaches, and intellectual need6 people · 299 points · first shared 2015 · 26 comments on HN
- 2Unix is not an acceptable Unix6 people · 290 points · first shared 2015 · 174 comments on HN
- 3Epitaph – Fermi Paradox Simulator4 people · 236 points · first shared 2016 · 73 comments on HN
- 4Blabrecs2 people · 68 points · first shared 2020 · 17 comments on HN
- 5Controls as Language1 people · 3 points · first shared 2016 · discussion on HN
- 6Games as storytelling partners1 people · 3 points · first shared 2017 · discussion on HN
- 7Failure margins and feedback loops1 people · 2 points · first shared 2016 · discussion on HN
- 8Creativity Support Tools1 people · 2 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 9Interactive1 people · first shared 2025
What HN people wrote when they linked it
seagreen · 2015-09-19
I'll take this one:) http://housejeffries.com/articles/unix-delenda-est
I criticize Unix because I think it's getting in the way of the adoption of what I really love: the CLI.
Really a much better article is this one, but I didn't write it: https://mkremins.github.io/blog/unix-not-acceptable-unix/
pkinsky · 2015-11-06
Interesting, sounds like another instance of problem solution ordering: http://mkremins.github.io/blog/doors-headaches-intellectual-need/.
>Think of yourself as someone who sells aspirin. And realize that the best customer for your aspirin is someone who is in pain. Not a lot of pain. Not a migraine. Just a little.
>One of the worst things you can do is force people who don’t feel pain to take your aspirin. They may oblige you if you have some particular kind of authority in their lives but that aspirin will feel pointless. It’ll undermine their respect for medicine in general.
>Math shouldn’t feel pointless. Math isn’t pointless. It may not have a point in job [y] or [z] but math has a point in math. We invented new math to resolve the limitations of old math. My challenge to all of us here is, before you offer students the new, more powerful math, put them in a place to experience the limitations of the older, less powerful math.
mkremins · 2025-04-08
Really cool! I also made some blackout poetry tools back in like 2019, maybe of interest… https://mkremins.github.io/blackout/interactive
frankus · 2019-08-24
This seems to address a lot of the shortcomings presented here: https://mkremins.github.io/blog/unix-not-acceptable-unix/
jodooshi · 2017-03-26
> monads aren’t actually all that complicated. In fact, most of the experienced functional programmers I’ve met consider them downright simple. It’s just that newcomers often have a really hard time trying to figure out what exactly monads even are... A lot of intermediate-to-advanced functional programmers have taken it upon themselves to write monad tutorials... But for the most part, these tutorials never seem to work.
Why is that? Locked doors, headaches, and intellectual need: https://mkremins.github.io/blog/doors-headaches-intellectual-need/ :-)