Hacker News: 1313ed01

New comment by 1313ed01 in "WebUSB Extension for Firefox"

1313ed01 — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 13:52:27 +0000

Sounds like something that could have a standalone usb-driver-container or special chromium fork for the 0.00001% of users that need it instead of bloating every browser with yet another niche API and the inevitable security holes it will bring.

New comment by 1313ed01 in "Android CLI: Build Android apps 3x faster using any agent"

1313ed01 — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 11:33:42 +0000

CLI in a product name now means LLM agent TUI specifically and not just, as I would have expected, any kind of Command Line Interface? And usually there is barely a CLI included at all and you are expected to mostly launch the full TUI with its own embedded readline-loop rather that use the CLI?

New comment by 1313ed01 in "Direct Win32 API, weird-shaped windows, and why they mostly disappeared"

1313ed01 — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 12:48:29 +0000

I never had a problem with that. I want a specific application to behave the same no matter where I run it. I do not want my muscle memory for how to use an application to be confused by an application not looking or behaving the way I am used to when moving to a different platform.

Of course all the applications bundled with a specific OS should be designed to work the same and work well together. It still makes sense to have guidelines and standard widgets in a system. But I prefer very much any third-party multi-platform app to be identical everywhere I run it.

Not to defend Electron. There are many native frameworks that work the way I prefer, looking the same across platforms.

New comment by 1313ed01 in "Haunted Paper Toys"

1313ed01 — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 11:55:54 +0000

I have cut and glued some of Peter Dennis' Paperboys for use in miniature wargames:

https://peterspaperboys.com/

He has some free sets to download.

Also his instruction videos taught me a lot about how to cut and glue paper miniatures. Using so much glue basically that you end up with something that feels more like plastic than paper.

New comment by 1313ed01 in "LÖVE: 2D Game Framework for Lua"

1313ed01 — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 23:45:17 +0000

Was going to post a link to the minimal template for setting up Löve2D with Fennel, that I can really recommend, and found this recent article describing that...

https://itch.io/jam/love2d-jam-2026/topic/6082771/how-to-get...

... posted in the site of the 2026 Löve2D Game Jam, that sounds like something also worth mentioning: https://itch.io/jam/love2d-jam-2026

Too late to enter. Jam was last month. But there are 47 games to check out there, plus many from previous years.

New comment by 1313ed01 in "LÖVE: 2D Game Framework for Lua"

1313ed01 — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 23:37:12 +0000

Pretty sure there is still app packaging documented somewhere. There is also, at least for Android, an official Löve2D Launcher app that can open any love-file saved to the phone and execute it. I use that all the time.

The Launcher is available also for old Android versions, which means that old obsolete Android devices (I have some tablets and phones) can be used for whatever it can be fun to still write some GUI for on some spare touchscreen device.

New comment by 1313ed01 in "OpenCiv1 – open-source rewrite of Civ1"

1313ed01 — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 16:27:04 +0000

I run the GOG installer, then copy the game files to where the virtual C: is for my DOSBox-X (in a git-repo). Then there is usually some small BAT script to write to launch the game (what is required can be figured out from the config GOG installed). I play all the games from within DOSBox-X, so I start that up in fullscreen and then run games as if running real DOS (from COMMAND.COM prompt).

It is of course possible to launch games from outside of DOSBox the way GOG does it, using host OS (non DOS) launch scripts and config for each game, but I prefer to have more like a virtual DOS fantasy console with all games installed. It also means DOSBox is fully self-contained, with no dependencies on the host OS. Once set up there is no maintenance. There is no code rot in DOS of course, so when something has been set up it will always work.

New comment by 1313ed01 in "OpenCiv1 – open-source rewrite of Civ1"

1313ed01 — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 22:53:40 +0000

> The game is still very popular and easy to play. But the obsoletness of DOS

Nothing obsolete about DOS when it comes to playing 2D games. Thanks to DOSBox and other emulators (FreeDOS is also not bad though) it is a fantastic OS (or virtual machine). DOS as a platform for (2D) games has never been better than it is today, on modern hardware running DOSBox.

New comment by 1313ed01 in "VNDB founder Yorhel has died"

1313ed01 — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 13:44:45 +0000

Isn't it the opposite, that they are mechanically the same, but differs on the surface (art style and type of stories)?

New comment by 1313ed01 in "VNDB founder Yorhel has died"

1313ed01 — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 10:36:51 +0000

It is fascinating how some similar niche genres of games have managed to mostly ignore each other, from what I have seen.

Interactive fiction has https://ifdb.org/.

Gamebooks ("CYOA" to outsiders) have https://gamebooks.org/.

I think there is some community around branching browser text stories like (mostly) Twine games that have their own database somewhere?

And then there is always some overlap and discussions around what games to allow where, with each community gatekeeping to some degree what games are allowed in their database or not.

So, for example, I never heard about VNDB and never really crossed paths with VN players online, even if I have been around communities for IF and gamebooks since last century and the similarities are obvious.

New comment by 1313ed01 in "Tell HN: Litellm 1.82.7 and 1.82.8 on PyPI are compromised"

1313ed01 — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 15:02:07 +0000

Sure, and that is basically what sane people do now, but that only works until something needs a security patch that was not provided for the old version, and changing one dependency is likely to cascade so now I am open to supply chain attacks in many dependencies again (even if briefly).

To really run code without trust would need something more like a microkernel that is the only thing in my system I have to trust, and everything running on top of that is forced to behave and isolated from everything else. Ideally a kernel so small and popular and rarely modified that it can be well tested and trusted.

New comment by 1313ed01 in "Tell HN: Litellm 1.82.7 and 1.82.8 on PyPI are compromised"

1313ed01 — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 14:44:32 +0000

This assumes that we can get a locked down, secure, stable bedrock system and sandbox that basically never changes except for tiny security updates that can be carefully inspected by many independent parties.

Which sounds great, but the way things work now tend to be the exact opposite of that, so there will be no trustable platform to run the untrusted code in. If the sandbox, or the operating system the sandbox runs in, will get breaking changes and force everyone to always be on a recent release (or worse, track main branch) then that will still be a huge supply chain risk in itself.

New comment by 1313ed01 in "I hate: Programming Wayland applications"

1313ed01 — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 19:18:27 +0000

Firefox Reader mode. As long as that works, as was the case on this site, I don't care how bad pages people make.

New comment by 1313ed01 in "Padel Chess – tactical simulator for padel"

1313ed01 — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 12:31:16 +0000

5+ years ago, perhaps? Almost all the places have closed down now here in Sweden. The bubble popped and now it's a joke and you see repurposed ex-padel buildings around every city. It's been years since I heard anyone talk about it other than to comment on how weird it was that it was so popular for a short time and then disappeared.

New comment by 1313ed01 in "Chuck Norris has died"

1313ed01 — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 23:59:13 +0000

WTR did air here in Sweden in the 90s. From a quick search in the news archives, it was on late at night on tv3 in the late 90s and then it ran on that or/and some other cabel channels in the 00s as well (reruns?).

New comment by 1313ed01 in "Delphi 13.1 Released, with ARM64 support"

1313ed01 — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 12:54:26 +0000

I have not tried the IDE, but I like FreePascal. The compiler is fast and it has great multiplatform and cross-compilation support. In particular for older platforms.

It feels more stable and mature than most other languages. I do not know if there are enough developers keeping it alive, but hopefully it will mostly get bug fixes and ports to new platforms. Better if they do not mess with the language or standard libraries. Those that want a programming language that keeps breaking backwards compatibility every few months have plenty to choose from already.

New comment by 1313ed01 in "An update on Steam / GOG changes for OpenTTD"

1313ed01 — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 21:03:59 +0000

After installing TTD from GOG I panicked a bit, not seeing any DOSBox or DOS files. For a moment I thought it was files from an old Windows 95 version only, but there was (also) a DOS installer (INSTALL.EXE). I ran that, went through all the usual steps (select Sound Blaster IRQs and so on) and now I can run it from my virtual (git-managed) DOS disk install directory where I install all my DOS games and applications. Next to the original TT that I installed a few months ago from an old CD-ROM. For completeness.

New comment by 1313ed01 in "Conway's Game of Life, in real life"

1313ed01 — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 08:14:12 +0000

> used to be

Looks like they are still around? https://novationmusic.com/launchpad

Also seems to be in stock locally.

The device that I think popularized that design (citation needed) was the Monome (https://monome.org/) that looks like it is also still around and it has (always had?) some kind of open source license (https://github.com/monome).

New comment by 1313ed01 in "AI coding is gambling"

1313ed01 — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 22:25:32 +0000

What you can do is to instruct it to type out the word, in some language that you don't know at all, making it available in the context while also effectively hidden from you. Simpler than printing it to a file.

New comment by 1313ed01 in "Kagi is contemplating the removal of the assistant from its professional tier"

1313ed01 — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 11:24:52 +0000

I use the assistant daily, often instead of search. The search is good, but the sad fact is searching www has been getting less interesting fast and there simply isn't much of value to find (maybe if they added an option to search in the Wayback Machine? I would pay extra for that!). Adding a LLM on top of search results and to fire off multiple searches makes it possible to sometimes squeeze a little bit of actually useful information out of the cesspool that is modern web.

Without the Assistant I would probably go back down to the lowest kagi tier.