Hacker News: greatquux

OSnews – 21 years and 20k posts later

greatquux — Sat, 16 May 2026 15:31:10 +0000

Article URL: https://www.osnews.com/story/144962/21-years-and-20000-posts-later/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48161079

Points: 5

# Comments: 0

New comment by greatquux in "AI coders are carrying half-open laptops through airports, offices, & ice rinks"

greatquux — Tue, 12 May 2026 23:32:42 +0000

if only i could open a terminal session on another computer somewhere and have it continue running even if my laptop goes to sleep... hmmmm... i'm sure no one has ever thought of this before because i'm so genius so i'll vibecode it tonight! /s

(now how do i work the name screen or tmux into the joke?)

New comment by greatquux in "I'm writing a history of Visual Basic, Chapter 1 is up"

greatquux — Sun, 10 May 2026 22:59:52 +0000

twinBASIC and radbasic are two projects trying to clone it. But it's definitely harder to do than either anticipated. I still support VB6 apps (some of which are bumping up against the limit of the EXE size!) and I'd love a replacement, but it's slow going!

New comment by greatquux in "For thirty years I programmed with Phish on, every day"

greatquux — Sat, 09 May 2026 22:30:35 +0000

It's very hard for Phish fans to only provide ONE example. :-). I will try to limit my suggestions to only 3.

This is a version of "Sand" from their trancey period and I would think makes for good coding time: https://youtu.be/B73cbfHSuH8?si=WPOI5pYYOfPg7OAi

Here's a rocking version of "Ghost" into a ballad "Mountains in the Mist" from 2003: https://youtu.be/7cMwsBUHjq0?si=5_p64FSvsY08dw0E

This is a multi-section crazy of "Simple" from 2021 where it really seems like aliens have landed: https://youtu.be/wF2j2UPLlA8?si=KWvvL3MlLFpc-LHy

New comment by greatquux in "Trademark violation: Fake Notepad++ for Mac"

greatquux — Mon, 04 May 2026 17:28:25 +0000

I use Notepad++ on WINE and it works very well, doubtless it could be done on macOS too.

New comment by greatquux in "For thirty years I programmed with Phish on, every day"

greatquux — Sun, 03 May 2026 16:36:15 +0000

It’s a full band improvisation when at its best not just guitar noodling thank you very much

Taskrabbit for Witches – $100K MRR (estimated)

greatquux — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 20:08:27 +0000

Article URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7joqcfy-eU

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47939964

Points: 4

# Comments: 0

New comment by greatquux in "Decisions that eroded trust in Azure – by a former Azure Core engineer"

greatquux — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 16:34:19 +0000

"Classic" was never very stable to begin with, and seems to be getting less stable every monthly patch cycle. Decades-old problems remain unfixed, and "new" Outlook still doesn't have all the features of the old one (or compatibility with in-house programs that use MAPI integration, or COM add-ins). "Classic" must have been such a spaghetti-fied mess that they thought they couldn't actually fix it at all and needed to replace it. But I'm not sure that's really the solution... is it ever?

New comment by greatquux in "Restoring a Sun SPARCstation IPX part 1: PSU and NVRAM (2020)"

greatquux — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 19:44:34 +0000

You absolutely can run 32bit Solaris in qemu SPARC emulation. 64bit is not there yet unfortunately. But definitely dd this and get it virtualized!

New comment by greatquux in "RFC 3092 – Etymology of “Foo” (2001)"

greatquux — Sun, 08 Feb 2026 20:53:26 +0000

I stole this handle from GLS many many years ago and I use it pretty much everywhere. I guess I just love the idea of metasyntactic variables, and using that phrase whenever anyone asks me about my handle!

New comment by greatquux in "Microsoft 365 Outage"

greatquux — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 20:38:07 +0000

At least they've updated a public site like https://status.cloud.microsoft so I can show this to all my clients who are calling (most of them can't login to the admin portal, which is down anyway). Let's all just go to the bar!

New comment by greatquux in "The Going Dark initiative or ProtectEU is a Chat Control 3.0 attempt"

greatquux — Sun, 21 Dec 2025 20:08:54 +0000

Yep they are great! Wireguard support on Linux too

Unix v4 Tape Found

greatquux — Thu, 06 Nov 2025 20:57:09 +0000

https://oldbytes.space/@bitsavers/115505135441862982

https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/07/unix_fourth_edition_t...

https://www.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/2025-November/032758.htm...

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45840321

Points: 510

# Comments: 100

Dark patterns killed my wife's Windows 11 installation

greatquux — Thu, 18 Sep 2025 23:05:08 +0000

Article URL: https://www.osnews.com/story/143376/dark-patterns-killed-my-wifes-windows-11-installation/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45296086

Points: 131

# Comments: 64

New comment by greatquux in "Adios Chicos, 25 Years of KDE"

greatquux — Tue, 16 Sep 2025 20:25:19 +0000

Sure, but how the heck do his adopted kids factor into this?

New comment by greatquux in "An Efilist Just Bombed a Fertility Clinic. Was This Bound to Happen?"

greatquux — Mon, 19 May 2025 01:51:59 +0000

Ah, classic nihilism. I first encountered it in high-school literature class reading Turgenev's "Fathers and Sons". Good times. (Of course now you'd probably get a quick TikTok explanation and that's all.) I probably mix in a bit of that, a bit of "apatheism", some epicureanism (the original version), and a dash of solipsism (just a dash mind you), and I find myself pretty comfortable. Going to lots of jam band concerts helps too.

New comment by greatquux in "An Efilist Just Bombed a Fertility Clinic. Was This Bound to Happen?"

greatquux — Sun, 18 May 2025 23:28:01 +0000

It's true, though I try not to do this, I really try. But it's so easy for some kids (like my 11-year old firstborn) to just go play Roblox or Pokemon or watch stupid shorts on YouTube unless I'm enforcing some activity for him. And yeah I have screen time restrictions. It's a constant battle with him. We spend quality time with him for sure, and the taekwondo and drum lessons are great extra activities. But he only has one best friend he has regular hanging out time with, and one neighbor kid he knows that he plays with due to less people around us having kids. Family has spread out too, also due to needing to have dual incomes and car culture. So yeah all these contribute to the birth rate going down, but it's not so much parents fault entirely as it is the modern world's.

New comment by greatquux in "Bored of It"

greatquux — Fri, 04 Apr 2025 12:10:10 +0000

The best song that starts off with that quote: https://youtu.be/UryTypo2qeU?si=CdTPe0ufnktLB_6i “ I Should Be Allowed to Think” by They Might Be Giants Change a couple words here and there and it’s talking about social media

New comment by greatquux in "They Might Be Giants Flood EPK Promo (1990) [video]"

greatquux — Thu, 27 Mar 2025 18:05:24 +0000

seconded, that's some classic linnell right there!

New comment by greatquux in "Outlook classic dropped from Microsoft 365"

greatquux — Fri, 28 Feb 2025 16:26:21 +0000

I found someone's solution that actually does seem to work, even if it's hacky! https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/1640434/... and https://gist.github.com/SelimBasyouni/efec48a197bfefb59d4ff7... basically create an EML file with X-Unsent: 1 and if you open in New Outlook it will show as a draft. This could basically replace what we're doing with MAPI.