Hacker News: alpaca128

New comment by alpaca128 in "Steam Client Is Now Faster Than Epic's New Vibe Coded Launcher"

alpaca128 — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 17:51:20 +0000

No, that's Microsoft's approach.

Like when they made two generations of XBox consoles boot 5 seconds faster by making the unskippable boot animation 5 seconds shorter. Many years after the exact same issue bottlenecked Windows 7 boot times on SSDs.

New comment by alpaca128 in "Apple HomeView"

alpaca128 — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 01:40:34 +0000

Right, but that's a software problem. My first tablet cost $300 running Android 4.4 and ran pretty smoothly. I don't know what feature since then would justify the drop in efficiency.

To be fair to Apple here, the build quality is probably still pretty decent and worse specs don't necessarily mean lower price at a certain point. Still not much for that price imho.

New comment by alpaca128 in "Apple HomeView"

alpaca128 — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 01:29:35 +0000

They weren't a dick about it

New comment by alpaca128 in "Apple HomeView"

alpaca128 — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 01:21:22 +0000

I think it would be fair to call "Windows subsystem for Linux" a Linux feature, yes.

And Android is still the biggest mobile OS.

New comment by alpaca128 in "A plea not to use uv-build"

alpaca128 — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 23:44:00 +0000

Firefox built from source is sufficiently sped up that I can notice it starting up at least 1-2 seconds faster. Not that I use the distro for speed, but I'm not complaining about a faster browser.

If you insist on acting like a normal person, no one stops you from using something normal.

New comment by alpaca128 in "The people holding up the internet"

alpaca128 — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 22:25:54 +0000

It was possible to just donate money with no strings attached actually, and one of the two companies that helped did just that. And positive press was also involved.

New comment by alpaca128 in "The people holding up the internet"

alpaca128 — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 07:45:35 +0000

I remember when the maintainer of an open source XML library contacted dozens of companies for support to fix a critical vulnerability, and most of them didn't even respond and aside from two the rest went basically "not our problem, get lost".

A handful of companies probably care a bit but most won't bother to pay even a penny.

New comment by alpaca128 in "Turn off Apple Intelligence on macOS 27 and get its disk space back"

alpaca128 — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 22:11:59 +0000

What is not bloat about creating a hidden file for every file in every visited directory? It clutters up outputs, causes needless work for various tools, and deleting them is pointless as the system will just instantly recreate them.

Given the "endless options to change it" as you said, where is the option to turn that off?

New comment by alpaca128 in "Tell HN: GitHub refuses to remove cracked copies of my software after a month"

alpaca128 — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 12:20:51 +0000

> because it would be doing so without having access to the source

I find it unlikely that photopea was never scraped for AI training considering they are looking so hard for new material they started buying up and scanning old books.

New comment by alpaca128 in "Turn off Apple Intelligence on macOS 27 and get its disk space back"

alpaca128 — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 23:50:38 +0000

Somehow people already had time with their kids before Claude. And before computers. Enjoying life is not a technology problem.

New comment by alpaca128 in "Norway Eyes Partial Ban of Smart Glasses"

alpaca128 — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 23:39:29 +0000

No, it wouldn't. Countries with such a law exist, all you need is reasonable exceptions. With some blurring even Google Streetview is not an issue.

New comment by alpaca128 in "Norway Eyes Partial Ban of Smart Glasses"

alpaca128 — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 23:31:17 +0000

That future is avoidable, but not with this self-fulfilling prophecy mindset.

New comment by alpaca128 in "Turn off Apple Intelligence on macOS 27 and get its disk space back"

alpaca128 — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 19:27:16 +0000

I don't want to navigate a dark pattern to avoid accidentally deleting a downloaded program, followed by opening settings and entering my password just to run it.

And if there is a way to stop Mac OS from spamming hidden dot-underscore files everywhere, I haven't found it yet.

New comment by alpaca128 in "Turn off Apple Intelligence on macOS 27 and get its disk space back"

alpaca128 — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 18:57:25 +0000

Chasing maximum productivity in an attempt to outrun time sounds a lot worse if you ask me.

New comment by alpaca128 in "Denmark data breach exposes 8.8M people's personal data"

alpaca128 — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 18:50:45 +0000

> The EU abolished the €22 VAT exemption on low-value imports

Because it was abused by countless vendors that just wrote a random value below 22 Euros on the label no matter how much it cost.

> The EU introduced rules requiring consent for many non-essential cookies, helping turn everyday web browsing into an endless series of cookie banners

Not sure why you're blaming the messenger. Either way this can be solved by installing a browser plugin.

New comment by alpaca128 in "The Tao of Backup"

alpaca128 — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 08:30:53 +0000

> Store your Really Important Info in a Google Drive/iCloud synced VeraCrypt volume

There is no way I would entrust Google or Apple with keeping important data. Google being infamous for account issues with absolutely no support and Apple already borked my account in a way that makes my iPad unusable the moment I turn on backup sync.

New comment by alpaca128 in "Improper redaction reveals Google Data Center water and electricity usage"

alpaca128 — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 08:09:17 +0000

Which makes the often repeated excuse "Closed loop datacenters exist" to refute water use concerns a bit nonsensical.

New comment by alpaca128 in "Improper redaction reveals Google Data Center water and electricity usage"

alpaca128 — Sun, 04 Oct 2026 22:46:33 +0000

So a system to recirculate the same 24 gallons per minute would be more expensive than $100k per year for water?

New comment by alpaca128 in "Improper redaction reveals Google Data Center water and electricity usage"

alpaca128 — Sun, 04 Oct 2026 22:38:00 +0000

Sure the water is still somewhere, but its location is important for future use. US water reservoirs are at problematically low levels already.

> Most data centers are closed loop systems, they circulate the water over and over again.

The linked article talks about >500 million gallons used by one large Google AI datacenter in a year. It's nice that most are closed loop systems, but if it's such a common thing to do then why isn't it done by default with all those AI datacenters? How cheap is water for Google that recirculating it is not a no-brainer?

New comment by alpaca128 in "ADHD, autism or complex trauma? [pdf]"

alpaca128 — Sun, 04 Oct 2026 09:45:35 +0000

Asynchronous writing basically lets me circumvent all problems I have with communication.

I am still terrible at real-time conversations in person, having a weird speech impairment on top is not helpful either.