Hacker News: fabiensanglard

New comment by fabiensanglard in "Intel 486 CPU announced April 10, 1989"

fabiensanglard — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 12:20:38 +0000

The 486 killer app was DOOM. It was butter-smooth at 20 fps if you also had a VLB graphic card.

The 486 DX2 66MHz was the target platform for gaming during almost two years (1992-1994). That was an huge achievement back in the days to be at the top that long.

New comment by fabiensanglard in "Microsoft confirms a major Windows 11 update with faster Explorer, less Copilot"

fabiensanglard — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 21:51:23 +0000

word!

New comment by fabiensanglard in "Throwing away 18 months of code and starting over"

fabiensanglard — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 18:41:28 +0000

Pearls.

> I would NOT allow people to write tests

> now [...] we started with tests from the ground up

New comment by fabiensanglard in "My “grand vision” for Rust"

fabiensanglard — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 04:56:41 +0000

I agree that the complexity is getting scary. They keep on adding more and more stuff and it is hard to follow.

New comment by fabiensanglard in "I started programming when I was 7. I'm 50 now and the thing I loved has changed"

fabiensanglard — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 16:53:15 +0000

> the VGA Mode X tricks in Doom

Doom does not use mode-X :P ! It uses mode-Y.

That being said as a 47 years old having given 40 years to this thing as well, I can relate to the feeling.

New comment by fabiensanglard in "Let's compile Quake like it's 1997"

fabiensanglard — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 01:42:42 +0000

I asked John Carmack and he told me they did.

There is also an interview of Dave Tayor explicitly mentioning compiling Quake on the Alpha in 20s (source: https://www.gamers.org/dhs/usavisit/dallas.html#:~:text=comp... I don't think he meant running qbsp or vis or light.

New comment by fabiensanglard in "Resurrecting Crimsonland – Decompiling and preserving a cult 2003 classic game"

fabiensanglard — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 02:29:19 +0000

There are many ghidra plugin, like GhidrAssist, you can use to connect to a LLM. They will automatically put a name on each function and variable. It is far from perfect but it is way faster than doing it by hand in my experience.

New comment by fabiensanglard in "Android’s desktop interface leaks"

fabiensanglard — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 05:02:27 +0000

SerenityOS GUI is a dream

New comment by fabiensanglard in "People who know the formula for WD-40"

fabiensanglard — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 21:47:35 +0000

This is how they do it. There was a documentary about coca-cola and they explained that they completely separated the supply pipeline. Operators manipulate unlabelled sources coming from separate parts of the company.

New comment by fabiensanglard in "Building a Quake PC"

fabiensanglard — Sat, 17 Jan 2026 07:14:52 +0000

What a timing you have :) ! Digital Foundry did a piece just 12 days ago (https://youtu.be/npMujOQsjGQ?si=4c8fmYDTMrRzFNhl&t=503).

"When Unreal came out, it supported three renderer. Software, Glide, and PowerVR."

My MMX Pentium MMX 233MHz (512x384 with Creative Voodoo 2, patch patch 223 from https://oldunreal.com/downloads/unreal/oldunreal-patches/) benchmark, the intro goes from 60fps down to 10 fps when the whole castle is seen in the intro. When I start the game, in the cell, I can see 20fps.

I think the CPU is too light for this game. Definitely a title that requires a Pentium II.

Note that all fps gathered with "stat fps". There is a timedemo (https://www.gweb.me.uk/gweb/unrealsetup.htm) that I shall give a try someday.

New comment by fabiensanglard in "LLM Structured Outputs Handbook"

fabiensanglard — Sat, 17 Jan 2026 00:30:50 +0000

What would be the point of outputting unconstrained json if the output is consumed by a human?

New comment by fabiensanglard in "The 3D Software Rendering Technology of 1998's Thief: The Dark Project (2019)"

fabiensanglard — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 18:54:01 +0000

This is one of my all-time favorite page.

Zero effort in presentation but the pure gold content proves that the fluff does not matter the slighest.

New comment by fabiensanglard in "A web developer posted a payment shaming message on their client's site"

fabiensanglard — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 17:54:37 +0000

As much as I want to side with the developers I think they are exposing themselves to legal repercussions and made their situation worse.

New comment by fabiensanglard in "Street Fighter II, the World Warrier (2021)"

fabiensanglard — Sun, 04 Jan 2026 19:51:40 +0000

That was very interesting :) !

New comment by fabiensanglard in "RoboCop – Breaking the Law. H0ffman Cracks RoboCop Arcade from DataEast"

fabiensanglard — Sun, 28 Dec 2025 02:35:27 +0000

I can feel the passion. Great write up!

New comment by fabiensanglard in "Learn LaTeX in 30 Minutes"

fabiensanglard — Thu, 25 Dec 2025 04:02:39 +0000

I wrote three books with LateX. I hate this language with the intensity of a thousand suns. I hope Typst will be able to take over.

New comment by fabiensanglard in "Who Watches the Waymos? I do [video]"

fabiensanglard — Thu, 25 Dec 2025 02:20:39 +0000

Thank you, I was about to start searching for it :) !

New comment by fabiensanglard in "Why WinQuake exists and how it works"

fabiensanglard — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 17:22:58 +0000

Fixed it. Sorry about that.

New comment by fabiensanglard in "Why WinQuake exists and how it works"

fabiensanglard — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 17:19:47 +0000

It is WinQuake or QuakeWorld?

New comment by fabiensanglard in "George Hotz: Replacing My MacBook"

fabiensanglard — Fri, 28 Nov 2025 20:33:39 +0000

The battery life is what keeps me going back to my MacBook Pro every time I try to switch to a Linux laptop.

From what I understand, almost all linux problems in this area are firmware/driver shortcoming. So, in theory, could the Framework laptop rival Apple?

They are built from the ground up to run Linux so I assume they have access to the firmware or at least can request features from vendors?