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Java's PipedInputStream becomes stuck indefinitely when a value greater than the buffer size is written because the PipedInputStream and PipedOutputStream are designed to be used in a piped communication between two threads. When writing to a PipedInputStream, the data is stored in a buffer until it is read by the receiving thread. If the buffer fills up and the receiving thread has not yet read the data, the writing thread will block until some space is made available in the buffer. When data is written to the PipedInputStream that is larger than the buffer size, the writing thread will continue to block indefinitely waiting for space to be made available, as there is no way for the receiving thread to read the data and free up space in the buffer. This is why it is important to ensure that data written to a PipedInputStream is smaller than the buffer size.