Hacker News: keyringlight

New comment by keyringlight in "Microsoft isn't removing Copilot from Windows 11, it's just renaming it"

keyringlight — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 16:34:46 +0000

The issue that has occurred a few times is that some windows updates will decide that they 'own' the disk it's installed on or knows better than whoever is running the system, and overwrite any other boot manager with window's own and you may need to break out a live boot to recover it. Using a single isolated disc at OS install time (if you can have multiple physical drives) and using a motherboard boot selection hotkey means that risk likely goes away.

New comment by keyringlight in "Every GPU That Mattered"

keyringlight — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 10:00:40 +0000

I see it as similar to virtual reality, it was born and grew up with gaming demands and influences, but other disciplines may be more attractive for a mature product

New comment by keyringlight in "Every GPU That Mattered"

keyringlight — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 09:55:48 +0000

The other elephant in the room is the consoles, and even if they're capable of RT they also have to consider the performance capabilities versus visual payoff. As I see it the PC versions of games like Control from studios like Remedy are trailblazers, it's an early implementation (geforce 20 released in 2018, Control was 2019) as the ultra option to shakedown their implementation and start iteration early so future games will benefit, however the baseline is non-RT.

New comment by keyringlight in "Update on the eBay Scam"

keyringlight — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 21:18:12 +0000

Many sellers will cut whatever corners they can to get a lower price point, as that's what purchasers look for. The one that stands out to me is shipping, sure go for for cheap shipping on a trivial cost item, but I question doing the same when you're buying something expensive and not consider spending some proportion of the price on a better courier/service tier to have more certainty the item will get to you and in good condition, assuming the seller doesn't bake-in the cost of upgraded courier.

New comment by keyringlight in "Steam on Linux Use Skyrocketed Above 5% in March"

keyringlight — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 09:17:46 +0000

The other aspect I find interesting is the February spike in win10 usage, presumably from Chinese users. Where will they migrate to over the coming years as support goes away. They seem to be both resisting win11 and resisting linux perhaps as either it's not suitable for the games (online?) they play or not great for Chinese users, or perhaps along with the nvidia spike because of getting more out of those GPUs on windows.

New comment by keyringlight in "Epic Games to cut more than 1k jobs as Fortnite usage falls"

keyringlight — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 21:35:25 +0000

IIRC GoG has a pretty poor history in actually turning a profit with the exception of when CD Projekt release on of their own games, and even then they do the vast majority of their business on steam or the console stores. If GoG was a decent money-spinner then CP projekt wouldn't have split if off. Even a niche has a cost to operate, and that's with GoG being a pretty plain service on top of game downloads.

New comment by keyringlight in "Epic Games to cut more than 1k jobs as Fortnite usage falls"

keyringlight — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 20:47:48 +0000

I can't help thinking the battle was lost before it even started, no matter how good the offering was because the PC and mobile platforms (where epic operate their store) have 99.9% already decided who owns them. The way I see it Epic wanted to copy what Counter-strike and HL2 was to Steam, but using Fortnite to push their store for a fresh generation of gamers. The problem is they couldn't replace or exist alongside the incumbents while trying to bring in more than a trivial amount of income. The only way I can see the outcome being different is if they were in the position Valve were in around 25 years ago with a fresh or poorly served market or something other than video games, few remember Stardock Desktop as a place they got their games.

New comment by keyringlight in "Wine 11 rewrites how Linux runs Windows games at kernel with massive speed gains"

keyringlight — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 20:01:53 +0000

What I wonder about is if MS wants to keep people on windows, what methods they can use to do that. For simple desktop stuff I don't think they have many options to lock in other developers (and their audiences) to windows unless they want do so themselves (putting aside web based or not PC-desktop).

Bleeding edge gaming and multiplayer anti-cheat is one area where I think having a big company owning the OS probably helps them stay ahead, as that structure probably lets them work with hardware designers to get the capabilities in use (i.e. in new versions of DirectX) and available to software developers first. There's generally a lag in adoption for new features within Vulkan and then usage downstream in wine/proton to get compatibility parity with windows, then the games themselves being able to run feature/performance parity. It'd be interesting to see what cooperation would be needed to have the linux gaming stack equal at the point new features are released, and with the least amount of manual hacks or command line tweaking required for the users. As discussed a few weeks back, tough anti-cheat for linux seems like a paradox with the current methods.

New comment by keyringlight in "Microsoft's "Fix" for Windows 11: Flowers After the Beating"

keyringlight — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 14:52:50 +0000

Another aspect to this is that I really doubt consumers would go to linux if there was any pay-wall or 'donate for more features' type aspect to it. Something that really isn't emphasized much is how lots of OSS/linux work is done by the various big corporations often for goals that are not aimed at the small scale users, and it's a happy byproduct that many aspects of their system may run better just by swapping OS, all free to them. Similarly Valve's efforts seem tightly focused on what matters to their products/services and being available to everyone is a byproduct.

The windows cost gets hidden/de-emphasized when buying a PC, or other users just ignore it which is seems to be below MS's pain tolerance for lost revenue on those users. If there was a price of admittance to linux for any other company to devote resources to work on it where it couldn't be treated as a loss-leader for something else, it'd be an even tougher struggle to migrate users over. (and it's likely right now most people moving to linux are somewhat enthusiasts)

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

keyringlight — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 01:20:26 +0000

Something that comes to mind for me is the old Bill Gates trustworthy computing memo [0], from the era when early windows xp was getting flak for poor security. That was supposedly the turning point where they started those overhauls towards service pack 2 and likewise added a security focus in other products, and they decided they couldn't sneak in easter egg flight simulators into excel any more because it just added opportunities for flaws.

What stands out to me is the organization needs to be accept that change is needed and 'walk the walk', and also that those efforts take time. I've no idea what things are in motion in MS, but I wonder how quickly they can turn the ship, how much momentum is in their current direction and how much force is in turning. Moving the taskbar seems like addressing a loud persistent talking point, but it's one among many. What's the timeline (even though windows version timing seems like 'when they need branding')? Win12? Win13?

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20020204233701/http://www.comput...

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

keyringlight — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 00:05:34 +0000

It looks like the combination of PostmarketOS (based on Alpine linux) and Waydroid would seem to fit that.

New comment by keyringlight in "Google details new 24-hour process to sideload unverified Android apps"

keyringlight — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 10:57:05 +0000

Even then with cards they may still need to consider fraud via skimmers, or that the equipment can be vandalized. Going app-only (or vastly reducing the availability of payment machines) means less upkeep for them, but it also moves the kind of fraud to where people have replaced the information or QR codes to scan. It seems like a parallel to what google and whatever entities are pushing them to make these changes are trying to do, at some point someone has to put in work to keep the system working securely and everyone wants to delegate it to someone else.

New comment by keyringlight in "Finding a CPU Design Bug in the Xbox 360 (2018)"

keyringlight — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 16:08:50 +0000

I seem to recall baking PC nvidia GPU boards in your oven was a reasonably common out-of-warranty fix around that era.

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

keyringlight — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 10:44:45 +0000

It's interesting how often accuracy problems fall back to requiring humans in the loop, and in the case of big consumer systems that means employing people in low wage parts of the world. For playing a match of a video game I don't think there's that much money involved balanced against the amount of playtime to pay for enough monitoring or to ensure a timely response to reports. Gamers always wheel out community run servers and admins because it's pushing the cost onto someone else (I don't think I've ever seen someone volunteer themselves for it), and they'd mostly refuse pay to play if that meant employing a staff that scaled as their online games are popular.

New comment by keyringlight in "RAM kits are now sold with one fake RAM stick alongside a real one"

keyringlight — Sat, 14 Mar 2026 20:10:32 +0000

Two things that strike me.

One is the "when everyone is special, no one is special" factor, but I think that's tempered a bit by PCs becoming a status item (alongside the rise of streaming that shows the streamer and their environment) so it's important the PC is conspicuous. Also for those that have invested significant time/money it has become a point of pride for them that they want to display, and get into flamewars on the internet to defend their team. The manufacturers probably don't mind that it lets them display their brand in lights too and not be hidden away as a sticker or PCB marking.

Also that there seems to be space in the market for 'PC as a pretty lightbox', RGB systems are sophisticated now alongside LCD systems getting attached to various components. The PC becomes a decoration as opposed to a tool that fades into the background like a lot of other devices which are pure display or have enthusiasts salivating about thinner bezels. The thing I find curious is that the lightbox is constrained in the form of a PC (even if they sometimes try hard to hide the machinery of it such as wires or putting components on PCBs hidden behind panels), there's not a lot of consumer products where you could assemble elaborate colored lighting displays.

New comment by keyringlight in "Yoghurt delivery women combatting loneliness in Japan"

keyringlight — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 22:59:15 +0000

Another variation on this is La Poste in France have a paid service "Watch over my parents" where you can get the postie to do a short regular visit to them (presumably alongside any deliveries) for distant children who can't.

https://www.laposte.fr/services-seniors/visites-du-facteur

New comment by keyringlight in "10% of Firefox crashes are caused by bitflips"

keyringlight — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 23:12:57 +0000

One of the points Linus Torvalds made a few years back was that enthusiasts/PC gamers should be pissed that consumer product availability/support for ECC is spotty because as mentioned up-thread they're the kind of user that will push their system, and if memory is the cause of instability there will be a smoking gun (and they can then set the speed within its stable capacity). Diagnosing bad RAM is a pain in the rear even if you're actively looking for a cause, never mind trying to get a general user to go further than blaming software or gremlins in the system for weirdness on whatever frequency it's occurring at.

New comment by keyringlight in "The L in "LLM" Stands for Lying"

keyringlight — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 11:24:38 +0000

Another example is upscaled texture mods, which has been a trend for a long while before 'large language' took off as a trend. Mods to improve textures in a game are definitely not new and that probably means including from other sources, but the ability to automate/industrialize that (and presumably a lot of training material available) meant there was a big wave of that mod category a few years back. My impression is that gamers will overlook a lot so long as it's 'free' or at least are very anti-business (even if the industry they enjoy relies upon it), the moment money is involved they suddenly care a lot about the whole fabric being hand made and need verification that everyone involved was handsomely rewarded.

New comment by keyringlight in "“It turns out” (2010)"

keyringlight — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 16:37:09 +0000

Language is filled with those types of phrases, the one which bugs me once it was pointed out (even though I use it myself) is "to be honest...", which could carry the implication anything said without that qualifier may be dishonest. What including those phrases seem to come down to is an informal style, a bit more acceptable in a spoken conversation but for written it probably depends on the audience.

Something I'd wonder about is if usage of it has changed based on the medium people use over the years, whether that's in-person, telephone, writing letters, or computer/smartphone writing. Has using computers for short form conversations allowed conversational phrases to bleed into formal writing.

New comment by keyringlight in "I built a pint-sized Macintosh"

keyringlight — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 11:58:06 +0000

Something I wonder about is whether the next few years will see a (small) fashion trend towards 'dumb PCs' similar to how there's a small group of people that prefer simple/feature/dumb phones. There's a number of factors within the PC space now that could see a PC with limited capabilities or primarily offline find its niche. Along with that, having a distinct form to set it apart from regular computing devices would be interesting, and Apple has a lot of them especially from the G3/G4 era.