Hacker News: flenserboy

New comment by flenserboy in "macOS needs its grid back"

flenserboy — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 13:04:37 +0000

Apple has a strange habit of making the first version excellent, then finding ways to degrade the experience. The grid pattern of spaces is definitely one; Spotlight, as it appeared in Tiger, is another.

New comment by flenserboy in "Microsoft Office 2019 and 2021 for Mac view-only conversion"

flenserboy — Sun, 31 May 2026 12:54:41 +0000

It's clear they don't want stand-alone Office anymore. One gets the feeling, given how Windows has devolved, that they'd like to rid themselves of all desktop software so they can focus on the backroom, perhaps because the data they could acquire is tastier.

New comment by flenserboy in "YouTube to automatically label AI-generated videos"

flenserboy — Wed, 27 May 2026 22:21:45 +0000

the ability to simply exclude such content from recommendations & search results would be welcome.

New comment by flenserboy in "Mycorrhizal Fungi, Nature's Key to Plant Survival and Success"

flenserboy — Fri, 22 May 2026 01:57:34 +0000

No problem! Myco Bliss has worked well for me.

New comment by flenserboy in "Mycorrhizal Fungi, Nature's Key to Plant Survival and Success"

flenserboy — Fri, 22 May 2026 00:09:31 +0000

I have added spores to my garden for a few years, & the results have been excellent. Not only have the plants thrived, the network spread through the lawn to a further extent every year, & the grass in that zone looks much healthier than the rest of the lawn. Mostly I sprinkle a bit in with each seed or row — it does the work from that point on.

Trees have shown the same pattern — we had a large, older tree go down, one which had quite a bit of fungus growing around it, & the trees planted near the old site did well while new trees on the other side of the yard did not, even with significant, regular watering.

New comment by flenserboy in "Google changes its search box"

flenserboy — Wed, 20 May 2026 17:33:08 +0000

We need a second, new internet that cuts these rent-seekers out. The backbone is there, we can use mesh, we could use Starlink (there's a real opportunity there) — locking out & starving the current titans of cash is where we need to be. It won't happen, but it should, for all sorts of economic, cultural, & liberty-oriented reasons.

New comment by flenserboy in "LinkedIn scans for 6,278 extensions and encrypts the results into every request"

flenserboy — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 21:57:06 +0000

Fun to have to spin up a whole VM just to use a particular website!

New comment by flenserboy in "Advanced Mac Substitute is an API-level reimplementation of 1980s-era Mac OS"

flenserboy — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 23:03:12 +0000

Efforts like this could be a nice way to get old apps to run "natively" on current hardware, as there are a ton of them out there which are perfectly good for work, but which cannot run today.

New comment by flenserboy in "Second Revision of 6502 Laptop"

flenserboy — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 11:48:59 +0000

Speed certainly wouldn't be there, but capabilities would. Plenty could get done on those old machines — most of it had to do with programmers having the imagination & skill to be able to shoehorn their ideas into spaces they weren't meant to be crammed into.

One memory this project brought to mind for me was a hack I came across which allowed simultaneously running DOS 3.3 & ProDOS on a 128k Apple II, giving each 64k (well, a little less due to overhead) & a way to switch between the two with a simple command. Two programs couldn't run at once, but one could step between the two OSes to run programs made for each pretty seamlessly. If this sort of thing was possible on basic consumer hardware, ten or twenty years of development would have led to many far more interesting & useful things.

New comment by flenserboy in "Author of Red Mars calls 'bullshit' on emigrating to the planet"

flenserboy — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 15:51:37 +0000

this rhymes with the arguments for pullback at the end of Apollo, with the decades of stagnation that followed. doing things, & doing them at scale, is worth it if for no other reason than we can't know what spinoffs & useful developments will come of this. giving capable, motivated minds something to actually do, giving them a chance to explore & engage in trying things, is always preferable to keeping them tied down & hoping that they'll devote themselves to tossing away their dreams in order to make a beancounter happy.

New comment by flenserboy in "Author of Red Mars calls 'bullshit' on emigrating to the planet"

flenserboy — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 15:45:47 +0000

but that isn't what would or will happen. at best there will be a wind-down where spending goes toward mollifying an aging, uneducated population with food & shiny baubles as infrastructure decays, access to resources & power is reduced year after year, & in a gen or two there won't be anyone left who knows how to make the old systems run (& if they do they won't have the resources needed because the supply chain will be gone).

without an eye on advancing things for the future, & keeping the wheel spinning with activity & forward movement, with optimism that things can get better, all we're looking at is a controlled demolition of what has been built up.

New comment by flenserboy in "Author of Red Mars calls 'bullshit' on emigrating to the planet"

flenserboy — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 15:33:25 +0000

not taking the chance is cowardly & nihilistic, & everyone who went up would know the score when they signed up. better to give it as much of a chance as possible than to give up & just watch the world degrade & rot around us.

New comment by flenserboy in "Author of Red Mars calls 'bullshit' on emigrating to the planet"

flenserboy — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 15:25:21 +0000

but this is the economic case for it — if things are as dire as you paint them, this is the last chance to get a toehold off-world for at least 3-4 generations, if ever.

New comment by flenserboy in "Our commitment to Windows quality"

flenserboy — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 21:12:50 +0000

the plan should be simple:

fire most of your leads & new programmers.

hire back anyone willing to come back with competence.

return to the Windows 10 LTSC codebase.

try again.

New comment by flenserboy in "4Chan mocks £520k fine for UK online safety breaches"

flenserboy — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 21:37:41 +0000

"safety breaches" is a deeply Orwellian term.

New comment by flenserboy in "How kernel anti-cheats work"

flenserboy — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 14:11:49 +0000

yes. this is why there's one box for work, & another for play.

New comment by flenserboy in "The MacBook Neo"

flenserboy — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 22:01:11 +0000

This does look great for its use case, but I'd love a version as a latter-day eMate.

New comment by flenserboy in "US Court of Appeals: TOS may be updated by email, use can imply consent [pdf]"

flenserboy — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 12:32:08 +0000

interesting. if this is to be allowed, it must be allowed both ways.

New comment by flenserboy in "MacBook Neo"

flenserboy — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 16:59:26 +0000

This sounds great, but it pains me that I can't dual-boot my iPhone 15 Pro as a lightweight Mac. Would be great with an HDMI connector & BT keyboard/mouse.

New comment by flenserboy in "A new California law says all operating systems need to have age verification"

flenserboy — Sat, 28 Feb 2026 04:42:18 +0000

vague laws are put in place so that they can be used selectively to punish particular victims while letting friends through the nets