Hacker News: jakebasile

New comment by jakebasile in "What are the best coping mechanisms for AI Fatalism?"

jakebasile — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 14:56:11 +0000

HN is not one mind.

New comment by jakebasile in "What are the best coping mechanisms for AI Fatalism?"

jakebasile — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 14:53:47 +0000

Matthew 6:34 is probably my favorite verse and one I come back to often in my anxiety.

New comment by jakebasile in "Message from Pope Leo XIV on the 60th World Day of Social Communications"

jakebasile — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 06:09:27 +0000

> [...] [I]n the long run, choosing to evade the effort of thinking for ourselves and settling for artificial statistical compilations threatens to diminish our cognitive, emotional and communication skills.

Probably the pull quote of the (short) thing for me. It lines up exactly with my personal experience, and is probably one of the biggest overall dangers of this technology aside from mass unemployment and making my RAM cost too much.

I'm very glad that Pope Leo continues to speak about AI in such clear ways. It's obvious he and/or the Curia really get it and the costs and dangers it has.

New comment by jakebasile in "Linux is good now"

jakebasile — Fri, 02 Jan 2026 04:15:54 +0000

I also game on Ubuntu and snaps have never been in my way. I actually like them and wish more non-game software was distributed this way, but Canonical has a brown thumb when it comes to growing their weird little side projects.

New comment by jakebasile in "Linux is good now"

jakebasile — Fri, 02 Jan 2026 04:14:29 +0000

I'm sorry if you hear this a lot, but your house is so cool, and I must admit I am more than a little jealous.

I've also said it here before but I will just give up on PC gaming wholesale before I go back to Windows. It's crazy how much gaming on Linux has improved in just the past couple years.

New comment by jakebasile in "Ask HN: How did you learn to code?"

jakebasile — Thu, 01 Jan 2026 08:21:37 +0000

I think the very first code I wrote was in QBasic, but the first _real_ code I wrote was in Visual Basic 6. I drew a row of dice and then a bunch of buttons and wrote a Yahtzee game (single player). It took me weeks and it was mostly a giant nested if statement.

Good times.

New comment by jakebasile in "Tell HN: Merry Christmas"

jakebasile — Thu, 25 Dec 2025 07:48:41 +0000

Merry Christmas to you, too, and to all that read this.

A relevant verse about a sometimes stressful day:

Do not worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will take care of itself. Sufficient for a day is its own evil.

- Matthew 6:34

New comment by jakebasile in "Noclip.website – A digital museum of video game levels"

jakebasile — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 15:58:41 +0000

What a lovely hit of nostalgia on this cold winter morning. Thanks for sharing this, and thanks to the people who made it. Cruising through Besaid Village and Ironforge brought back some strong memories. I could hear the music in my head even though the room was silent.

New comment by jakebasile in "Has the cost of building software dropped 90%?"

jakebasile — Tue, 09 Dec 2025 16:20:10 +0000

So, you say that AI has made you "ridiculously faster", but then admit you've always been terrible at estimating how long something would take?

New comment by jakebasile in "Average DRAM price in USD over last 18 months"

jakebasile — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 06:52:17 +0000

Yeah. Thanks for trying to keep me positive.

Hopefully this all calms down eventually. But it's hard not to feel like shit in this situation.

New comment by jakebasile in "Average DRAM price in USD over last 18 months"

jakebasile — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 05:14:08 +0000

It’s frustrating that it’s been one thing after the other, seemingly aimed directly at the thing I enjoy most.

New comment by jakebasile in "Average DRAM price in USD over last 18 months"

jakebasile — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 05:13:20 +0000

Hopefully this blows over in a few years and you’re right and I’m just catastrophizing.

New comment by jakebasile in "Average DRAM price in USD over last 18 months"

jakebasile — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 05:12:50 +0000

I can afford it. Other people cannot, and the hobby is driven by a market existing for games. If newer people don’t enter the hobby as others die out, it fades away.

New comment by jakebasile in "Average DRAM price in USD over last 18 months"

jakebasile — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 03:02:39 +0000

I hate this. PC gaming is my hobby, the only one that’s lasted my whole life. It’s always been there. It’s how I met my wife. It’s how I relax after a long day. It’s how I’ve participated in so many stories that stick with me and given me so many memories.

All of it is being murdered by the AI bros. Before them it was the crypto bros. It’s one thing after the other and I hate it so much.

New comment by jakebasile in "Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business"

jakebasile — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 02:19:03 +0000

If only this were the case.

New comment by jakebasile in "Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business"

jakebasile — Wed, 03 Dec 2025 21:39:08 +0000

> This decision reflects Micron’s commitment to its ongoing portfolio transformation and the resulting alignment of its business to secular, profitable growth vectors in memory and storage. By concentrating on core enterprise and commercial segments, Micron aims to improve long-term business performance and create value for strategic customers as well as stakeholders.

What the fuck does "secular" even mean in this context? Is there religious DRAM?

What a short-sighted, boneheaded move. I'm so tired of the MBA-ificiation of every single part of my life.

New comment by jakebasile in "Codex, Opus, Gemini try to build Counter Strike"

jakebasile — Tue, 02 Dec 2025 05:45:13 +0000

Can't wait to see this at the Game Awards in a week or so.

New comment by jakebasile in "Bazzite: Operating System for Linux gaming"

jakebasile — Sun, 30 Nov 2025 01:56:38 +0000

Isn't every distro a custom distro, by definition?

Anyways, I get that this is a "risk" to consider, but installing a new distro isn't so bad that it should prevent one from trying and using a currently extant distro if it works for them.

New comment by jakebasile in "Bazzite: Operating System for Linux gaming"

jakebasile — Sun, 30 Nov 2025 00:17:54 +0000

I mostly use Ubuntu for my gaming PCs but I put Bazzite on my living room PC and it works a treat. It’s much more of a console-like experience and kind of gets out of the way. It also works better with Steam Remote Play.

Give it a shot, not like it costs anything!

New comment by jakebasile in "Installing Java in 2025, and Version Managers"

jakebasile — Fri, 28 Nov 2025 07:08:27 +0000

I just don't see the point in installing a version manager specifically for the JDK. It's fine to have multiple installed, and at least on Debian-likes you have the built in update-java-alternatives method to switch between them.

On macOS I wrote my own 9-line Zsh function that lists the JDKs available and sets JAVA_HOME.

In containers you'll never switch at all, just install whatever you want and be done with it.

ETA: I see in another comment someone said this doesn't work for things that aren't OpenJDK. But I've yet to run into a situation where I'd want to install anything except OpenJDK. That said, I think update-java-alternatives would work with them if they provide deb files to install themselves.