Hacker News: nkellenicki

New comment by nkellenicki in "Ron Gilbert started production on Thimbleweed Park 2"

nkellenicki — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 13:02:20 +0000

SteamCMD doesn't strip Steam DRM - even with files backed up (which the Steam GUI will do, no need for SteamCMD), you wont be able to use them without an internet connection and authenticating with Steam every now and then.

GOG's bundles are offline and DRM free. You could store them on a disk, and 30 years from now reinstall and play on an airgapped computer with no authentication required.

New comment by nkellenicki in "Two guys hated using Comcast, so they built their own fiber ISP"

nkellenicki — Mon, 14 Jul 2025 18:34:33 +0000

You've always had the _option_ of paying extra for unlimited data, however its only in the past month or two that they've started offering unlimited data as standard (in select markets).

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/06/stung-by-custome...

New comment by nkellenicki in "NCSC, GCHQ, UK Gov't expunge advice to “use Apple encryption”"

nkellenicki — Wed, 05 Mar 2025 20:46:56 +0000

I'm all for the DSA as well, but this argument doesn't hold water. Any sufficiently large cloud provider alternative (ie. Google, Microsoft, etc) would likely be the target of similar government instructions. In fact, I bet they already are - they just can't talk about it.

And of course, it's already possible to disable iCloud backups and use a smaller provider or host your own alternatives. I already do, through Nextcloud, etc. It's not as fully integrated of course, but you bet that if it was, then the largest alternatives would be targeted all the same.

New comment by nkellenicki in "Chase will soon share their customers' credit card with digital wallet Paze"

nkellenicki — Thu, 27 Jun 2024 04:32:51 +0000

So, this seems like an alternative to things like Apple Pay and Google Wallet. What's the benefit of the banks? Bigger cut of the transaction fees somehow?

I must admit, I use Apple Pay whereever possible, I'll even temporarilly switch my browser to Safari if I see a merchant accepts Apple Pay, just because its so much easier than any other payment method.

New comment by nkellenicki in "PainStation"

nkellenicki — Wed, 13 Dec 2023 07:53:11 +0000

This (or, PainStation v2) visited the student union at Abertay University a good 15 or so years ago. I played it on many occasion.

One aftertnoon I played with a particularly competitive friend of mine. I am also competitive. The game went on far longer than it should have, and I ended up with some pretty painful burns on the bottom of my hand and a large welt on top of it. I also had twinges in my arm for several hours afterwards.

Was a great time, highly recommended.

New comment by nkellenicki in "Blizzard developers say return-to-office policy 'cost us some amazing people'"

nkellenicki — Mon, 15 May 2023 18:47:20 +0000

They're not non-existent, I work with a few myself. But generally I've found that they're single, live by themselves, and enjoy the social interactions of meeting coworkers in person. (Of course, there will be exceptions to this).

New comment by nkellenicki in "Reversing UK mobile rail tickets"

nkellenicki — Sun, 05 Feb 2023 03:55:41 +0000

That's not what the OP claimed at all. Paper tickets still exist. A mobile phone is not requisite. People can choose the option that works for them.

New comment by nkellenicki in "Production Twitter on one machine? 100Gbps NICs and NVMe are fast"

nkellenicki — Sun, 08 Jan 2023 18:29:42 +0000

No, that's the second link - generated data, separate from tweets.

Tweets alone generate petabytes of data a year.

https://ankush-chavan.medium.com/twitter-data-storage-and-pr...

Also, many people would disagree that stuff required to run a business is "mostly unnecessary".

New comment by nkellenicki in "Production Twitter on one machine? 100Gbps NICs and NVMe are fast"

nkellenicki — Sun, 08 Jan 2023 05:57:54 +0000

It does not fit on one machine. Tweets alone generate petabytes of data a year, and other events are petabytes per day.

https://blog.twitter.com/engineering/en_us/topics/infrastruc...

https://ankush-chavan.medium.com/twitter-data-storage-and-pr...

New comment by nkellenicki in "Production Twitter on one machine? 100Gbps NICs and NVMe are fast"

nkellenicki — Sun, 08 Jan 2023 05:09:02 +0000

You're not taking into account data, you're only talking about features. What about when the data no longer fits on the one machine? Or processing the data exceeds the capacity of the machine?

Data growth through user growth or just normal day-to-day usage is expected.

New comment by nkellenicki in "Lego Is Discontinuing Mindstorms"

nkellenicki — Wed, 26 Oct 2022 23:27:23 +0000

Just to clarify, Mindstorms has had many iterations. I believe what you're referring to is Mindstorms 1.0 (RCX). It's had three successors in the past 20 years or so - NXT, EV3, and most recently, RIS.

The most recent iteration is based on SPIKE Prime. It's the same hub, but with slightly different firmware. The motors are and sensors are the same but in different colors.

All Mindstorms iterations (including the most recent) are untethered. As is SPIKE Prime.

Essentially this announcement is that they are discontinuing the consumer-facing branding, but continuing with the education product, SPIKE Prime. Both products are actually identical, minus a few firmware differences. The number of motors and sensors included in the box also differed.

New comment by nkellenicki in "I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)"

nkellenicki — Fri, 10 Jun 2022 00:18:01 +0000

That may have been your intention, but your statement of "environments where people aren't curious" comes across as putting the blame on the people themselves. As has been stated elsewhere, often times engineering is lacking in bandwidth to do anything but meet the deadlines.

I don't disagree that the "environment" itself could do more to further making improvements outside of the assigned work - initiatives such as 20% time, cafe days, etc. exist in other companies. But I don't put the blame on the curiosity of the people themselves.

New comment by nkellenicki in "Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract"

nkellenicki — Sun, 06 Feb 2022 01:30:25 +0000

> The part that irked me here was I only got like 1 years use out of the software.

Surely it doesn't actually stop working after a year? ie. You can keep using the version you bought after a new version comes out. I presume it still does what you bought it to do?

New comment by nkellenicki in "Alder Lake Core i9 processor is faster than the M1 Max"

nkellenicki — Thu, 27 Jan 2022 04:25:17 +0000

You're correct, just checked my receipt, it was 16GB. I upped it to 32GB with my new laptop.

New comment by nkellenicki in "Alder Lake Core i9 processor is faster than the M1 Max"

nkellenicki — Thu, 27 Jan 2022 03:58:43 +0000

I bought my 2013 MacBook Pro with a 1TB SSD and 32GB of RAM, with the highest specced i7 at the time.

I sold it last month to pick up a new 2021 MacBook Pro M1 Max. I bought it with 32GB RAM and a 1TB SSD because I don't need anymore, 8 years later. And the i7 I had still beat out last years base model on Geekbench.

New comment by nkellenicki in "Lego has designed a set that can't be taken apart"

nkellenicki — Sat, 04 Dec 2021 00:19:33 +0000

You're forgetting the set design in the first place. All the knockoffs do is copy the set with their own bricks.

The few other brick manufacturers that design their own sets are clearly inferior in set design. Even Mega has a long way to go.

New comment by nkellenicki in "How Bad Is Omicron?"

nkellenicki — Fri, 03 Dec 2021 06:46:48 +0000

"deadly" is not the same statement as "as deadly".

New comment by nkellenicki in "Notes on Web3"

nkellenicki — Thu, 18 Nov 2021 22:28:58 +0000

I find it similar to the two currently in-vogue uses of the world "Metaverse" - you've got the crypto/web3 people using it to describe a world where NFT's are usable and recognised across software (ie. Armor you buy in Call of Duty is useable in Battlefield), and Facebook/Meta, trying to build a social VR environment not entirely unlike the vision of Ready Player One.

It's entirely probably they'll merge at some point if they haven't already.

New comment by nkellenicki in "Apple to face EU antitrust charge over NFC chip"

nkellenicki — Wed, 06 Oct 2021 16:41:11 +0000

I find this pretty funny - I can't imagine carrying more than two cards around with me on a daily basis. In fact one is just a backup.

I do of course have many more cards; one of the downsides of the credit system in the US is how you have to game it to improve your credit. But for the most part those stay in the drawer.

New comment by nkellenicki in "Masscan: TCP port scanner, scanning entire Internet in under 5 minutes"

nkellenicki — Tue, 28 Sep 2021 17:15:03 +0000

You still can, but that's for pentests _targetting_ AWS hosted infrastructure. They've always frowned upon using AWS to target _other_ services, however.