We review some advances relating to direct N-body codes. In particular, there has been significant progress in dealing with large-N systems containing a few dominant members. The simulation of massive black holes also requires treatment of relativistic effects for strongly bound two-body orbits. Although somewhat costly, the addition of post-Newtonian terms is still straightforward when used in connection with regularization methods. Several versions of multiple regularization are especially well suited to studying black hole problems. We also report on a new stability criterion for the general three-body problem which will provide a robust test in systems where hierarchies are a troublesome feature, as in the case of star cluster simulations with primordial binaries.