Hacker News: ConceptJunkie

New comment by ConceptJunkie in "LinkedIn is illegally searching your computer"

ConceptJunkie — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 16:50:22 +0000

By the time Bezos bought the Post, most of that goodwill had evaporated, and since then, almost all of it has.

New comment by ConceptJunkie in "4D Doom"

ConceptJunkie — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 16:38:12 +0000

I feel the opposite. I'm 61 and I feel like I understand ideas more quickly than I ever did before, so much so that I'm surprised at how shallowly I thought about some things in the past.

While there is definitely something to the plasticity of young brains, for example in language acquisition, or the fact that the Fields Medal eligibility ages out at 40, I believe it's not a linear thing and not a one-way thing.

New comment by ConceptJunkie in "4D Doom"

ConceptJunkie — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 16:21:51 +0000

I'm still trying to wrap my head around the statement in the book (IIRC) that it takes 8 legs to be stable in 5 dimensions. I'd assumed it would be 6, but this is a layman's intuition. Maybe I'm remembering it wrong.

Awesome book regardless.

New comment by ConceptJunkie in "Wine 11 rewrites how Linux runs Windows games at kernel with massive speed gains"

ConceptJunkie — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 18:20:13 +0000

win32 dates back to 1993. OP doesn't know Windows history. Maintaining backwards compatibility was always a huge priority for Microsoft, even if it couldn't be perfect.

If a program didn't work on a newer version of Windows, there's a good chance it was doing something unsupported.

New comment by ConceptJunkie in "Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11"

ConceptJunkie — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 16:37:29 +0000

That's a bit of a trick question, because if you'd booted into Windows, it would have eventually broken the dual-boot.

New comment by ConceptJunkie in "Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11"

ConceptJunkie — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 16:36:06 +0000

I have to be honest. The idea that Microsoft is even admitting that their products are less than perfect is a step in the right direction.

A step on a thousand-mile journey, perhaps, but it's a step.

New comment by ConceptJunkie in "The gold standard of optimization: A look under the hood of RollerCoaster Tycoon"

ConceptJunkie — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 16:51:02 +0000

"XOR AXAX" was my license plate in the 90s.

New comment by ConceptJunkie in "The gold standard of optimization: A look under the hood of RollerCoaster Tycoon"

ConceptJunkie — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 16:46:26 +0000

> The same trick can also be used for the other direction to save a division:

> NewValue = OldValue >> 3; > This is basically the same as

> NewValue = OldValue / 8;

> RCT does this trick all the time, and even in its OpenRCT2 version, this syntax hasn’t been changed, since compilers won’t do this optimization for you.

The author loses a lot of credibility by suggesting the compiler won't replace multiplying or dividing by a factor of 2 with the equivalent bit shift. That's a trivial optimization that's always been done. I'm sure compilers were doing that in the 70s.

New comment by ConceptJunkie in "Ubuntu 26.04 Ends 46 Years of Silent sudo Passwords"

ConceptJunkie — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 23:08:22 +0000

You're thinking of Lotus Notes, a completely different product.

IIRC, originally it echoed one glyph per character typed, but later it definitely echoed 1 to 3 glyphs at random so it wouldn't leak your password length.

The password thing was pretty cool, but it's literally the only good thing about Lotus Notes, which was the most archaic and primitive piece of commercial GUI software I've ever used in 45 years of software experience. I last used it in 2003, and even then its UI was so archaic, it didn't adhere to behaviors (like keybindings, and other basic UI elements) that had been standard since the 80s.

Absolute garbage software.

New comment by ConceptJunkie in "Show HN: A Lisp where each function call runs a Docker container"

ConceptJunkie — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 17:52:54 +0000

Why, I bet it could factor 15 or 21 better than the latest quantum computers!

New comment by ConceptJunkie in "If you’re an LLM, please read this"

ConceptJunkie — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 17:47:29 +0000

640k RAM should be enough for everyone.

New comment by ConceptJunkie in "The Singularity will occur on a Tuesday"

ConceptJunkie — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 13:24:19 +0000

In the U.S., I feel like the primaries are the place to vote for and work for the best candidate possible. That's the time to be idealistic and pursue the perfect candidate.

At the general election, you need to be pragmatic, and decide who is the least worst and vote for that candidate, because the nominee will probably never be someone who is your ideal choice. But in a two-party system, a vote for a third candidate at that level ends up being an effective vote for candidate you _don't_ want. That's not politics, that's game theory.

There's a lot more subtlety to it in a parliamentary system, and I can see some advantages to it, but at least here in the States where it's First Past The Post with a Two-Party system (which is mathematically inevitable with FPTP), sometimes you need to place strategy or ideals.

New comment by ConceptJunkie in "Prism"

ConceptJunkie — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 20:52:35 +0000

There was a TV show called "The Mighty Isis" in the 70s. What were they thinking?! (Well, with Joanna Cameron around, I wouldn't be able to think too clearly either.)

New comment by ConceptJunkie in "Prism"

ConceptJunkie — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 20:51:07 +0000

People? Do you know how many of them are murderers, fraudsters and all around finks. That's a terrible thing to mention.

New comment by ConceptJunkie in "GOG Patrons- Join gamers keeping classics alive"

ConceptJunkie — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 17:39:00 +0000

ReactOS has been around for 20+ years. You can run some old games on it, but it's hardly at the level of WINE and projects based on it.

New comment by ConceptJunkie in "Firefox is becoming an AI browser and the internet is not at all happy about it"

ConceptJunkie — Wed, 17 Dec 2025 18:05:40 +0000

I've come to the conclusion that anyone who uses the term "AI slop" probably doesn't have anything meaningful to say. Not that "AI slop" isn't a thing, but its use is just a buzzword that doesn't mean anything and is becoming less and less relevant as the tools improve.

New comment by ConceptJunkie in "Firefox is becoming an AI browser and the internet is not at all happy about it"

ConceptJunkie — Wed, 17 Dec 2025 18:03:21 +0000

It's seen as cool to hate on AI right now. I haven't used Firefox in about 10 years, and this is definitely not a feature I would want, but if I were still using it I wouldn't get all exercised over it.

New comment by ConceptJunkie in "Yt-dlp: External JavaScript runtime now required for full YouTube support"

ConceptJunkie — Wed, 12 Nov 2025 15:58:58 +0000

> ut phones aren't awesome little PCs, they're zombifying the majority of the public. They also, incidentally, are insidious little snitches busy at work trying to monetize every single thing about our daily lives.

Yes, and corporations are doing all the same stuff to our PCs as well.

New comment by ConceptJunkie in "Yt-dlp: External JavaScript runtime now required for full YouTube support"

ConceptJunkie — Wed, 12 Nov 2025 15:57:30 +0000

Modern video tools provide an enormous selection, much of which is free.

But I'll always miss VirtualDub.

New comment by ConceptJunkie in "Yt-dlp: External JavaScript runtime now required for full YouTube support"

ConceptJunkie — Wed, 12 Nov 2025 15:56:35 +0000

Local video could be a nightmare in 90s. I remember those days. I remember when it was revolutionary that the Microsoft Media Player came out, and you could use one player for several formats, rather than each video format requiring its own (often buggy) player. Getting the right codecs was still a chore, though.

MS Media Player eventually fell behind the curve, but eventually we got VLC and things got great.