Hacker News: bluedino

New comment by bluedino in "The tech of 'Terminator 2' – an oral history (2017)"

bluedino — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 18:44:42 +0000

It's not from the VFX team but someone wrote a clone of the ATM hacking program

https://bert.org/2021/01/04/t2-pin-cracking/

New comment by bluedino in "Meta reuses old RAM in new servers with custom bridge chip"

bluedino — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 22:25:34 +0000

> Diablo II had just come out in 2000 which had a 450Mhz Pentium III and 64 MB of RAM. 64MB of RAM was probably mid-tier at the time

I like to use Google books to refer to old issues of PC Magazine.

For $1999 in Feburary 1999, you could get the Pentium 450MHz desktop with 128GB of memory.

That said, I could do almost everything I do today on a similar machine back then. Surf the web, admin Linux servers, web development, edit video, play games, Photoshop, IRC, type papers...

https://books.google.com/books?id=mi_RGvUW6eQC&pg=PA108-IA3&...

New comment by bluedino in "How Donkey Kong Toppled Atari"

bluedino — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 22:16:00 +0000

> And the 7800 was technologically superior to the Famicom.

I'd never heard this before, in what ways?

The 7800 seemed to be lower resolution and I don't really remember any examples of games that looked close to what a good NES game looked like. But even the basic ports like Galaga/Dig Dug looked better on the NES.

I know there were over 10 times as many games released for the NES and probably just as many more developers so they definitely had more work put into them.

New comment by bluedino in "How Donkey Kong Toppled Atari"

bluedino — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 12:51:04 +0000

The other big problem with the 7800 was it was mostly arcade ports. They didn't really do any original games.

People were tired of the 5th home version of Galaga, Pac Man, and Dig Dug (even though the 7800 had decent ports, especially compared to the 2600, which it was also backward-compatible with). Nintendo came out with originals like Super Mario Brothers and Zelda, and then all the third party games...

New comment by bluedino in "Delta flight hit by firework while landing at Midway Airport on Fourth of July"

bluedino — Sun, 05 Jul 2026 23:36:47 +0000

They really should be controlled a lot more - a nearby house was hit by some sort of Roman candle thing and completely burned down the other night.

There was at least a lot less "illegal fireworks" when people had the drive two states away to buy them.

New comment by bluedino in "Installing A/UX 1.1 like it's the 90s"

bluedino — Sun, 05 Jul 2026 20:36:06 +0000

> Also, swapping through 26 floppies to install would have been... Something.

Windows 95 was about that size, and Office was closer to 50?

At my very first job I remember installing stuff that way...ugh

New comment by bluedino in "Starring the Computer"

bluedino — Sun, 05 Jul 2026 20:33:25 +0000

Reminds me of the fake computers (and TV's) in furniture stores that were made of cardboard

New comment by bluedino in "A retrospective of my time on the internet"

bluedino — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 21:01:28 +0000

Sort of, but they were all dial-up providers and it ended up being a race to the bottom, which seemed to be $9.95 a month, full of busy signals, then they all merged.

Seeing something similar today, we have the phone company and cable company, and now we've got a third option of fiber, the same lines being re-sold by 4 different companies, I'm sure in few years we'll be down to two companies.

New comment by bluedino in "Internal Combustion Engine (2021)"

bluedino — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 19:48:45 +0000

That's the timing chain tensioners losing oil pressure.

New comment by bluedino in "A retrospective of my time on the internet"

bluedino — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 14:20:11 +0000

Now we get the popup for 'Click here to save 25% on your first order'

In the past, popups were a new browser window, and could appear by the tens or hundreds.

New comment by bluedino in "Why I Stopped Arguing with People"

bluedino — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 13:59:49 +0000

> Help people when they explicitly ask for help.

And then you encounter the askhole.

New comment by bluedino in "A retrospective of my time on the internet"

bluedino — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 13:17:51 +0000

Things we don't have to worry about anymore:

10 ISPs worth of free trials and shortcuts on your Windows 95 desktop. AOL, MSN, Compuserve, Prodigy, AT&T, NetCom, UUNet, NetZero, EarthLink, MindSpring, countless local and regional providers...

Your Windows 98 machine being taken over by viruses minutes after booting up

Pop-ups! Pop-ups everywhere!

Adware infesting your system. WeatherBug, HotBar, BonziBuddy, Ask Jeeves, Gator, you'd have half your screen taken up by add-on toolbars in your browser.

Your system crashing at least once a day. Compared to the 16-bit days, system crashes are rare.

Terrible streaming. Nothing like RealPlayer on a modem, where it sounded like a clock radio placed deep inside a steel 55 gallon drum.

Laptop battery life that was measured in minutes. If you had more than 2 hours of battery life...

New comment by bluedino in "Show HN: Adrafinil – keep a lid-closed Mac awake only while agents work"

bluedino — Sat, 27 Jun 2026 21:35:00 +0000

Can't you just use a hot corner configured as "prevent sleep"?

New comment by bluedino in "There are a few things that I look back on as my mistakes in the early days"

bluedino — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 17:54:22 +0000

ID dominated the PC shooter scene for 4.5 generations in a row. Insane.

Wolf, Doom, Quake, Quake II, Quake 3 Arena

Dark Forces was great, but that tech was too late so it never went anywhere. Duke3D showed up, and while it was entertaining, it was clearly a level below what ID could do. 3D Realms fumbled that tech, then got caught up with the ultimate vaporware, Prey, and it took Epic stepping in with Unreal that finally dethroned ID.

Sandy talks up the people that left ID during that time, but did anyone (other than him) do anything noteworthy in the gaming industry? Romero was responsible for Daikatana of all things, Michael Abrash was never a 'game programmer', despite having a very successful career in Xbox, VR, etc. No idea about the other guys.

New comment by bluedino in "The worthlessness of Vitamin D is mildly exaggerated"

bluedino — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 10:55:01 +0000

Sit in the sun for a bit closer to the equator. You'll feel it very quickly

New comment by bluedino in "The deadly rise of giant trucks and SUVs"

bluedino — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 18:14:48 +0000

The e-bikes aren't that annoying, it's the kids (and adults) riding all over the city on 4 wheelers and UTVs. The cops chase them around but it doesn't do much good.

New comment by bluedino in "DOS Game "F-15 Strike Eagle II" reversing project needs DOS test pilots"

bluedino — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 16:55:31 +0000

Dumb question, but if parts of the game are written in asm, can you create C code that produces a binary equivalent when compiled?

New comment by bluedino in "Walt Disney Company is the most successful at monetizing human nostalgia [audio]"

bluedino — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 20:28:25 +0000

There's an ice cream shop around here that cashes in on nostalgia.

40 years ago, there was a dairy that made ice cream, and sold it in the summers on the side of the building. We'd go there as kids, line around the block, everyone loved it and it was a very popular and loved place.

It eventually burned down, the company stopped production, you know how it goes.

About ten years ago, someone built a clone of the old dairy's neon sign, rented a new building, and served generic hand-dipped ice cream (blue bunny brand?)

It's just regular ice cream. But they have the sign. And they can charge $8 an ice cream cone, and people line up just like they used to. Ridiculous.

New comment by bluedino in "Nintendo Wii U games running from a 1980's Bernoulli disk [video]"

bluedino — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 17:17:36 +0000

It was very common, or at least made out to be.

I never had it happen either, but I used SyQuest drives more, and then moved to CD-R (which was the real click of death for Zip disks)

New comment by bluedino in "CSSQuake"

bluedino — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 17:05:53 +0000

Bare minimum for it being playable was a 486DX4 100MHz or similar, but with the floating point Quake really wanted a Pentium