Hacker News: colkassad

New comment by colkassad in "Google Antigravity TOS: 3rd party usage can get Google account suspended"

colkassad — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 14:48:36 +0000

Good argument for breaking up the company.

New comment by colkassad in "Paint.net 5.2 alpha now runs on Linux"

colkassad — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 19:11:45 +0000

Paint.net is my go-to image editing software. I'm not a digital artist or professional photographer, I just need to downsize/crop/adjust the occasional image. I don't need the kitchen sink. Regular MS Paint is annoyingly basic and Krita, GIMP, et al., are too much UI-wise. That said, I use Linux daily but not for images so not sure if there is a Paint.net analog on Linux already.

New comment by colkassad in "What If America Went Dark?"

colkassad — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 01:58:47 +0000

I feel for you. Went one to two weeks without power a few times from hurricanes over the years. One time our power came on after two weeks just as I came home. I had two hours to enjoy it before a storm came through and knocked it out again. Had to wait a few more days. I had a super loud gas generator and was worried about the noise but my neighbor just begged me to use it to dry her hair. I threw an extension chord over the fence and told her to keep it there.

New comment by colkassad in "An all-sky map of half a million supermassive black holes"

colkassad — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 16:51:14 +0000

Anyone ever worked with data from SDSS? What have you done with it? I imagine it's a gold mine for university students. I took an astronomy class and was able to plot the largest structures in the universe from their data, which was cool but pretty basic. I've loved astronomy all my life and I've always wondered if there was anything more one person or a small team could do with SDSS data. I took the class in 2010 so I imagine there are more possibilities now with AI?

New comment by colkassad in "EVE Online's Carbon engine is now open source: Fenris Creations explains why"

colkassad — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 01:59:01 +0000

Yes! Bombers Bar! That was it :) It was so much fun and quickly became the only thing I wanted to do.

New comment by colkassad in "EVE Online's Carbon engine is now open source: Fenris Creations explains why"

colkassad — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 01:56:08 +0000

Others have explained it pretty well in their replies. It's basically a slide-show. My big battle was the fight over the UALX-3 Keepstar that TEST was attempting to build as a FOB. My experience was sitting at my computer clicking my attack button when ordered and watching everything go by at a few frames per second. I had no idea if what I was doing was effective. The only fun part is knowing how momentous it was, with massive ramifications for each side depending on the outcome.

New comment by colkassad in "EVE Online's Carbon engine is now open source: Fenris Creations explains why"

colkassad — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 01:43:21 +0000

I know exactly how you felt. I had many moments like that exploring, which was a mechanic they might have added after you left. Searching for loot in ancient artifacts (or whatever it was) and never knowing if you are being hunted until it's too late was so nerve racking.

New comment by colkassad in "EVE Online's Carbon engine is now open source: Fenris Creations explains why"

colkassad — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 14:39:43 +0000

My coworker ended up defecting to a corporation that lived in wormhole space! The wormholes add so much to the game. A lot of times we'd find the mining ops by people scouting through wormholes. Another activity I liked was hacking those resource thingies (I forget what they were called, or even what they were). Doing that in wormhole space was so scary but the payoffs could be huge.

New comment by colkassad in "EVE Online's Carbon engine is now open source: Fenris Creations explains why"

colkassad — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 13:56:40 +0000

I bought the game when it first came out (2003? Boxed, from Target) and played with an online friend for a while. We mostly mined and we didn't really have a corporation, it was just the two of us. There wasn't much else to do at the time. At one point I fell asleep at my keyboard during a mining op. Gave up soon after.

In 2015 a coworker talked me into trying it again. We joined a small corporation, swore fealty to a larger corp (Brave? Band of Brothers?) and moved to low-security space. We got involved in massive 3000+ ship battles, some of which made the news. These are not as fun as you would think.

However, the most fun I had was joining 100+ ship bomber fleets that would warp in on unsuspecting mining operations and destroying billions of ISK (in game currency) worth of ships. We'd use Mumble for voice chat, which allows for a hierarchy of chat rooms, so that we could hear the fleet commander giving orders but he couldn't hear us. It was super organized and our fleet commander was really skilled.

In the end I couldn't keep up with the time commitments. For the fun stuff, you had to be online at a certain time and there was a lot of prep involved (buying the proper ships which changed all the time, getting your ships to the right station, etc). I still consider it some of the best multiplayer experiences I've ever had though. Nothing beats warping in and seeing those huge mining ships and then hearing the fleet commander start issuing targeting orders. It would raise the hair on my arms.

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

colkassad — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 20:02:32 +0000

I was deep into the worlds of Quake 3 and UT99 back then. I made maps for Weapons Factory Arena, a popular spin on Team Fortress but much faster and frenetic (more like Overwatch). I also created all the weapons and some maps for the port of Weapons Factory to Unreal Tournament, which did well but was no where near as popular as the original. UT was by far the easier game to mod but there was something about the physics in Quake 3 that just lent itself better to that type of mod.

As for id drama, there was plenty after Quake 3. I remember a .plan update from John where he talked about people leaving and people getting fired...I think one of them was John Steed (rest in peace), one of the player modelers who was very active in the modeling community and well liked. Felt like a disaster at the time. I just think there was a lot of conflicting personalities at the company and it was doomed to fail (no pun intended).

New comment by colkassad in "Why is almost everyone right-handed? A new study connects it to bipedalism"

colkassad — Tue, 19 May 2026 22:43:03 +0000

Yeah, I went snowboarding once in my life (loved it but it was exhausting) and naturally rode goofy-footed. They only thing I really needed to learn was slowing myself down.

New comment by colkassad in "Why is almost everyone right-handed? A new study connects it to bipedalism"

colkassad — Tue, 19 May 2026 22:40:00 +0000

Interesting. Never really thought about one of my eyes being dominant. I do have a bad habit of covering my left eye when reading in bed.

New comment by colkassad in "Why is almost everyone right-handed? A new study connects it to bipedalism"

colkassad — Tue, 19 May 2026 22:35:39 +0000

When I stand on a skateboard, both feet on, I face to the left. My right foot is in front, which I steer with while pushing myself with my left foot.

New comment by colkassad in "Why is almost everyone right-handed? A new study connects it to bipedalism"

colkassad — Tue, 19 May 2026 21:55:17 +0000

I always faced left when riding a skateboard back in the day, otherwise known in skater parlance as being "goofy-footed". Facing right felt as difficult as writing with my left hand. I always wondered whether that was just the way I first rode a skateboard and it stuck, but if that was the case, I would expect the distribution of which skateboarders face which way to be about even. But goofy-footed riders are in the minority. I'm right-handed as well. I wonder what's up with that.

New comment by colkassad in "Why it’s impossible to measure England’s coastline"

colkassad — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 00:24:26 +0000

A radius of plank length is the only true answer

New comment by colkassad in "Introduction to Computer Music (2009) [pdf]"

colkassad — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 19:37:56 +0000

Thanks for listening. Feel free to reach out if you ever want to share. I create music strictly for my own enjoyment so I understand where you are coming from. Take care!

New comment by colkassad in "Introduction to Computer Music (2009) [pdf]"

colkassad — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 16:26:12 +0000

Yes, I have a soundcloud account: https://soundcloud.com/emmets-music

I like to mix electronic and orchestral sounds. Some examples:

https://soundcloud.com/emmets-music/the-seven-hills-of-rome

https://soundcloud.com/emmets-music/dark-matter

I also like piano a lot (I only know how to play guitar badly, I just draw in the notes and work velocity until it sounds good to me):

https://soundcloud.com/emmets-music/life-is-delicate-remixed

https://soundcloud.com/emmets-music/soledad

Do you put yours online? I enjoy listening to other musicians. People give soundcloud a lot of grief but I love the service and the musicians I have met there.

New comment by colkassad in "Introduction to Computer Music (2009) [pdf]"

colkassad — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 03:25:48 +0000

I love the world of music production. I started with Ableton Live six years or so ago and it's been a wonderful hobby. It has such a vibrant cottage industry of plugins (sampled instruments, synthesizers, effects, etc) thanks to the VST standard.

New comment by colkassad in "Coding after coders: The end of computer programming as we know it?"

colkassad — Sat, 14 Mar 2026 22:47:41 +0000

I've found LLMs to be extremely powerful in research projects. A lot of code related to research is very bespoke by its nature. Using Codex, I've been able to iterate on ideas that I would never had the time or courage to explore before. As for code quality/brevity, it doesn't really matter in this context as long as it works. And it's incredible to have this companion that understands broadly every aspect of tangential knowledge required to execute an idea. I do think it helps that I have over 25 years of experience in my domain (geospatial), which helps me guardrail my interactions and get good results in as few shots as possible.

New comment by colkassad in "Dan Simmons, author of Hyperion, has died"

colkassad — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 22:27:42 +0000

I've had this internet handle since the last century. Most people in here are talking about Hyperion but Simmons was a fantastic cross-genre author. My favorites were his historical fiction that contained a fantastical bent:

Drood: Has Wilkie Collins as an unreliable narrator, depicting the last five or so years of Charles Dickens' life.

Crook Factory: An FBI agent is sent to Cuba to keep an eye on Ernest Hemingway, hijinks ensue.

The Fifth Heart: Henry James and Sherlock Holmes team up to solve a mystery.

The Terror: Tells the story of what happened to the HMS Terror that attempted to make the northwest passage. The Arctic is a character in itself in this amazing story. I thought the TV mini-series was fine.

Abominable and Black Hills: I haven't read these yet but look forward to doing so.

Honestly, I think Dan Simmons is my favorite author. I know his politics became unpalatable but I could never find it in myself to care. My heart sank when I saw this post.