Hacker News: Trixter

New comment by Trixter in "Bcachefs Goes to "Externally Maintained""

Trixter — Thu, 04 Sep 2025 14:53:07 +0000

This is missing one of the finer points of redundancy: With 4 disks, losing two of them could take out a RAID-10 (both halves of a stripe component), but losing two cannot take out a RAID-6.

The fact that btrfs isn't stable after 15+ years for parity setups is, IMO, unreasonable.

New comment by Trixter in "A deep dive into Debian 13 /tmp: What's new, and what to do if you don't like it"

Trixter — Fri, 29 Aug 2025 16:34:43 +0000

earlyoom is what we use to address this. We can't tolerate any kind of swapping at all in our workloads, where it is better for the system to kill one process to save the others, than for the system to slow down or lock up.

New comment by Trixter in "FDA approves eye drops that fix near vision without glasses"

Trixter — Thu, 07 Aug 2025 17:33:37 +0000

But I'm allergic to Retinox.

New comment by Trixter in "Local LLMs versus offline Wikipedia"

Trixter — Mon, 21 Jul 2025 19:40:35 +0000

Would MobyGames be a better source for this information? The information is curated, and an API is available.

New comment by Trixter in "Young graduates are facing an employment crisis"

Trixter — Thu, 17 Jul 2025 20:20:02 +0000

It can also mean that on the way down. At a private unix software company in 1994, the rise of Linux destroying our business led to firing nearly everyone in support except the cheapest person (me). As I was the only person left in tech support, I became Director of Tech Support by default.

New comment by Trixter in "Show HN: Ten years of running every day, visualized"

Trixter — Wed, 16 Jul 2025 18:41:52 +0000

I have posterior tibial tendonitis, and will never run (or walk without pain for more than 10 minutes) again. I am happy for you, in a bittersweet way.

New comment by Trixter in "Trying to find meaning in owning an old Mac"

Trixter — Tue, 08 Jul 2025 20:48:54 +0000

Just because you can't find a useful purpose for an old computer doesn't mean they don't have any. For example, any computer, regardless of age, can be used to write a novel.

New comment by Trixter in "Engineer creates ad block for the real world with augmented reality glasses"

Trixter — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 18:00:27 +0000

Lots of prior art for this concept. For example, this is almost exactly the plot of The Outer Limits (1995), Season 4 Episode 3 "Hearts and Minds".

New comment by Trixter in "Canyon.mid"

Trixter — Mon, 16 Jun 2025 20:32:42 +0000

While the picture isn't technically incorrect for an MPC level one (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimedia_PC) system, it borders on anachronistic because, as you note, many hoops would have to be jumped through. Any 386dx-33 or 486 clone would be much more period-correct.

New comment by Trixter in "Canyon.mid"

Trixter — Mon, 16 Jun 2025 20:29:44 +0000

Most Tandys with 8-bit ISA slots could not take a VGA card because the internal graphics chip could not be disabled. It was only the later series where that became an option.

New comment by Trixter in "Typing 118 WPM broke my brain in the right ways"

Trixter — Tue, 03 Jun 2025 18:29:55 +0000

It is my guess that everyone in the thread with "Hey, I don't type normally either and my speed is just fine" comments are likely staring at the keyboard when they type. All two-finger typists I've personally witnessed, even the extremely prolific Roger Ebert, couldn't effectively transcribe a printed document with their learned typing style.

If you never have to type something you're reading, I'm sure unique typing styles are just fine.

New comment by Trixter in "A server that wasn't meant to exist"

Trixter — Thu, 15 May 2025 18:07:17 +0000

Worse, the formatting failed. Lines are breaking before the sentence is over, leading to two words in the next line, then a new line. (Linux, Chrome)

New comment by Trixter in "Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney"

Trixter — Mon, 28 Apr 2025 14:49:31 +0000

I used to, until entire notable topics within a certain culture were deleted as "not notable" by editors unfamiliar with the topics.

"not notable" is the cancer within wikipedia. You can't claim to be the sum of human knowledge but also arbitrarily remove articles to meet some imaginary criteria.

New comment by Trixter in "Show HN: I used OpenAI's new image API for a personalized coloring book service"

Trixter — Mon, 28 Apr 2025 14:44:52 +0000

They look generated, which is off-putting. Maybe use three real photos instead?

New comment by Trixter in "The movie mistake mystery from "Revenge of the Sith""

Trixter — Mon, 21 Apr 2025 15:20:58 +0000

> Painting out these movie mistakes as part of a restoration is wrong.

As part of a restoration, yes. As part of a remaster, no.

If the remaster is overseen by the primary creative (such as everything done to the Aliens UHD 4k release, which was overseen and approved by Cameron), then it's official -- and as an audience member, you have to examine how you feel about that. For example, some enthusiasts lament the removal of film grain in Aliens, but Cameron has said in interviews that he hated the grain in Aliens because he was forced to use a particular film stock and didn't like the result. So it was never the director's vision to have excessive grain in that movie, and the audience should accept the 4k UHD release as canonical and authorized.

These debates are colored (no pun intended) by nostalgia, much like the vinyl vs. digital debates.

New comment by Trixter in "How many supernova explode every year?"

Trixter — Tue, 15 Apr 2025 19:15:54 +0000

I did not play with a controller, which made Dark Bramble effectively impossible to finish because the keyboard is all-or-nothing thrust. Had to cheat to get past it. They should have said that using a controller was mandatory, not recommended.

New comment by Trixter in "Goblin.tools: simple, single-task tools to help neurodivergent people with tasks"

Trixter — Wed, 26 Mar 2025 19:11:39 +0000

Pedantry welcome :-) I have always viewed the semicolon as a creative choice, and the comma as a technical requirement; hence, my reply.

New comment by Trixter in "Goblin.tools: simple, single-task tools to help neurodivergent people with tasks"

Trixter — Tue, 25 Mar 2025 18:13:46 +0000

Biasing the tool for a developer audience would hurt it's usefulness to more general audiences. I did not get the impression the tools were meant only for developers.

In the 1990s, we frequently used the phrase "launch a website" to mean "navigate to the website", so your prompt could have been clearer than just three words.

New comment by Trixter in "Goblin.tools: simple, single-task tools to help neurodivergent people with tasks"

Trixter — Tue, 25 Mar 2025 18:09:57 +0000

Your reaction proves the entire point of the Oxford comma -- to eliminate this kind of confusion. It absolutely should have been written as "...Buyser, an AI, software, and data engineer."

There are more reasons to use an Oxford comma than not, and I remain continually surprised that it is not taught as the default.

New comment by Trixter in "Dithering in Colour"

Trixter — Fri, 14 Mar 2025 20:20:23 +0000

You're downplaying "Of course those were interlaced to two sets of 262.5 lines". That is what makes interlaced video 59.94 different images per second, and the difference between 30hz updates and 60hz updates is most definitely noticeable.

The eye's response to changing color is slow, but the response to changing luminance is very fast.