Hacker News: jasoneckert

New comment by jasoneckert in "Show HN: I built a frontpage for personal blogs"

jasoneckert — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 22:26:43 +0000

Of course I don't mind - please do! :-)

New comment by jasoneckert in "Show HN: I built a frontpage for personal blogs"

jasoneckert — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 13:51:04 +0000

This is great, thanks! It sort of feels like browsing for gems in a used bookstore and stumbling onto authentic, personal writing. I'm always up for that, and plan on spending plenty of time exploring the list.

I’ve submitted mine as well - cheers!

New comment by jasoneckert in "Apple at 50"

jasoneckert — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 19:22:51 +0000

It's a nice animation, but for such a significant anniversary - and from a company like Apple - I expected a lot more hoopla and content. This could indicate that there wasn't a lot of planning involved, that it wasn't a high-priority item, or that Apple had enough people with time to focus on it.

It's almost as if someone near the end of a meeting said "Oh crud, we've got to do something to acknowledge our 50th anniversary - can someone put something together, and quick?"

New comment by jasoneckert in "Do your own writing"

jasoneckert — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 21:16:24 +0000

For me, drawing the line as to when you will leverage AI and when you won't comes down to a quote from Kurt Vonnegut: "Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something."

Art is where I choose to draw the line, for both ideation and content generation. That work report I leveraged AI to help flush out isn't art, but my personal blog is, as is anything I must internalize (that is thoroughly understand and remember). This is why I have the following disclaimer on my blog (and yes, the typo on this page is purposeful!): https://jasoneckert.github.io/site/about-this-site/

New comment by jasoneckert in "Apple discontinues the Mac Pro"

jasoneckert — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 03:03:30 +0000

As someone who came from the SGI O2/Octane era when high-end workstations were compact, distinctive, and sexy, I’ve never really understood the allure of the Mac Pro, with the exception of the 2013 Mac Pro tube, which I owned (small footprint, quiet, and powerful).

For me, aesthetics and size are important. That workstation on your desk should justify its presence, not just exist as some hulking box.

When Apple released the Mac Studio, it made perfect sense from a form-factor point-of-view. The internal expansion slots in the M2 Mac Pro didn't make any sense. It was like a bag of potato chips - mostly air. And far too big and ugly to be part of my work area! I'm surprised that Apple didn't discontinue it sooner.

New comment by jasoneckert in "Arm AGI CPU"

jasoneckert — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 20:28:26 +0000

This was exactly my first thought when I saw the title. And after reading the contents of the blog, it's pretty clear that ARM is laser focused on getting a piece of their customer's cake by competing with them. This is likely why they are riding the AI hype train hard with their ill-suited name (AGI).

Unfortunately for them, I think hardware vendors will see past the hype. They'll only buy the platform if it is very competitively priced (i.e., much cheaper) since fortune favours long-lived platforms and organizations like Apple and Qualcomm.

New comment by jasoneckert in "Wayland set the Linux Desktop back by 10 years?"

jasoneckert — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 01:12:04 +0000

In short, this reads like a mix of valid historical pain points and outdated assumptions.

The post frames Wayland security as “you can’t do anything,” but that’s a misunderstanding. Even under X11, any app can log keystrokes, read window contents, and inject input into other apps. Wayland flips this to isolation-by-default: explicit portals/APIs for screen capture, input, etc.

Moreover, the performance argument is weak and somewhat contradictory. The author claims there is no clear performance win, and that it's sometimes slower and hardware improvements make it irrelevant. But Wayland reduces copies and avoids X11 roundtrips (architectural win). Actual performance depends heavily on compositor + drivers, and I've found that modern hardware has HUGE performance improvements (especially Intel, AMD, and Apple Silicon via the Asahi driver).

The NVIDIA argument is also dated. Sure, support was historically bad due to EGLStreams vs GBM, but this has improved significantly in recent driver releases.

Many cited issues are outdated too. OBS, clipboard, and screen sharing issues are now mostly (if not entirely) solved in the latest GNOME/KDE.

I've been using Wayland exclusively on Fedora and Fedora Asahi Remix systems for many years alongside Sway (and occasionally GNOME and KDE). Adoption has accelerated in many distros, and XWayland for legacy apps is excellent (although I believe using the word "legacy" here would be a trigger word for the author ;-).

There's no stagnation here... what we're looking at is a slow migration of a foundational layer, which historically always takes a decade or more in the Linux world.

What I Learned Running Two College Video Game Programs (2011-2018)

jasoneckert — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 02:10:53 +0000

Article URL: https://jasoneckert.github.io/myblog/vg-programs/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47394359

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by jasoneckert in "Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans"

jasoneckert — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 21:27:44 +0000

I actually do something similar on my personal site using this note that includes a purposeful typo: https://jasoneckert.github.io/site/about-this-site/

I'm hoping people catch that typo after reading "every single word, phrase, and typo (purposeful or not)" and smiled every time I've had someone post a PR with a fix for it (that I subsequently reject ;-)

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

jasoneckert — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 16:30:13 +0000

God that machine was terrible - underpowered and undercooled, which led to frequent overheating and component failures. When I first started at Sun, they put one of those on my desk as a joke on my first day (it was quickly replaced so that I could get some real work done).

New comment by jasoneckert in "Nintendo Sues U.S. Government for Tariff Refunds"

jasoneckert — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 22:17:37 +0000

Certain companies are well-known for their legal teams. Qualcomm is one (often described as a legal company that employs some engineers). Nintendo is the other.

As a result, Nintendo's legal team is far more likely to ensure they get refunded, and quickly. They could provide a template for others to follow.

New comment by jasoneckert in "Asahi Linux Progress Report: Linux 6.19"

jasoneckert — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 16:51:51 +0000

macOS is a capable UNIX, but it's not Linux - which has since become the standard platform for most cloud/web/ML development.

As a developer myself who uses Fedora Asahi Remix as my daily driver, I can also tell you that Linux runs 2x faster (often much more) for everything compared to macOS - on the same hardware! And that performance gain is also important for my work :-)

New comment by jasoneckert in "Arm wants a bigger slice of the chip business"

jasoneckert — Mon, 16 Feb 2026 04:25:45 +0000

ARM's failed lawsuit with Qualcomm revealed these same ambitions, albeit in a much more negative light: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42475228

After following that drama, it's difficult to see ARM as anything but a greedy profiteer.

New comment by jasoneckert in "Microsoft account bugs locked me out of Notepad – Are thin clients ruining PCs?"

jasoneckert — Sat, 07 Feb 2026 21:30:36 +0000

Imagine if Fedora locked you out of vi because your Red Hat account had an issue.

The unsettling part of stories like this isn’t “Microsoft bad,” it’s the growing assumption that local tools should be downstream of remote identity systems. A text editor is about as offline and fundamental as software gets, yet it’s now possible for account state, sync bugs, or policy enforcement to make it inaccessible on your own machine.

This is where non-macOS UNIX and Linux systems draw the line - if it’s installed locally and you have permission, it runs. Cloud services can enhance that experience (backups, sync, collaboration) but they don’t get veto power over whether vi opens.

When that boundary erodes, we start to see our systems as thin clients, instead of full local OSes, as the author mentions.

New comment by jasoneckert in "Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux"

jasoneckert — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 15:17:39 +0000

If Linux had a revenue stream and model, this would make sense. But the style of open-source is to make good software, and let others gravitate to you as a result.

New comment by jasoneckert in "I added a Bluesky comment section to my blog"

jasoneckert — Sat, 24 Jan 2026 22:30:35 +0000

This is great!

I did something similar, but with GitHub Discussions because my blog is hosted on GitHub Pages and composited with Hugo, and I wanted all components to run as close as possible to one another: https://jasoneckert.github.io/myblog/github-discussions-blog...

New comment by jasoneckert in "'The old order is not coming back,' Carney says in speech at Davos"

jasoneckert — Wed, 21 Jan 2026 03:44:55 +0000

I don't think that's inconsistent - all but one member of NATO share the same values currently, and it's important they work together to resolve the current annexation threats from the US. That particular sign can be taken off later, if necessary.

New comment by jasoneckert in "Prediction: Microsoft will eventually ship a Windows-themed Linux distro"

jasoneckert — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 03:02:22 +0000

With WSL2, Windows can run a real Linux kernel and Linux apps with tight integration into the graphical, network, and storage subsystems.

In that configuration, I guess you could say it's already a Linux distribution.

New comment by jasoneckert in "ThinkNext Design"

jasoneckert — Sun, 18 Jan 2026 14:03:45 +0000

When it comes to laptops, I’ve primarily used MacBooks but really miss the excellent keyboard and TrackPoint on ThinkPads. Nothing seems to comes close.

My solution was to buy a Lenovo ThinkPad TrackPoint Keyboard II and pair it with my MacBook over Bluetooth. An added benefit is that I can keep the MacBook on a stand, avoiding the wobble you get when typing directly on it.

I also use an Apple Trackpad alongside this setup, since I find it hard to beat for certain tasks.

New comment by jasoneckert in "Apple Creator Studio"

jasoneckert — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 14:30:23 +0000

The most important benefits in my opinion are choice and price - people like me who prefer to buy software outright can still do so at a reasonable cost, while others who opt for a subscription can also do so (again, at a reasonable cost).