Hacker News: ocdtrekkie

New comment by ocdtrekkie in "32GB of DDR5 now costs $375 – AI shortage continues to squeeze PC building"

ocdtrekkie — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 15:33:48 +0000

I got quoted $4K, $6K, and $8K for the same enterprise SSD part in three different quotes within about a week. (I normally expect this part to be $1.5-2.5K.) In one case, a storage array with two SSDs in it cost approximately the same as buying those two SSDs standalone.

When it comes to server RAM, I got quoted double a previous quote within the span of a week.

Buying servers is basically quote roulette now.

New comment by ocdtrekkie in "Coreutils for Windows"

ocdtrekkie — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 18:08:34 +0000

The best part is the reason it conflicts with a lot of PowerShell is PowerShell shimmed Linux commands over to their Windows equivalents for years even though the flags were different.

So ls in many systems will match the behavior of dir, and only accept the flags for dir. But if you use a system with the newer coreutils release here, ls will expect ls flags!

New comment by ocdtrekkie in "Nvidia RTX Spark"

ocdtrekkie — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 12:25:34 +0000

The thing I think is really funny is that if this takes off, frontier model companies and datacenters will end up holding the bag, and as per usual after the last few tech hype cycles, NVIDIA will still be selling.

Eventually a lot of inference will get right-sized into something you affordably run yourself.

New comment by ocdtrekkie in "The California state assembly has passed the 'Protect Our Games Act'"

ocdtrekkie — Fri, 29 May 2026 21:28:58 +0000

No worries, I disagree with your read on the text of the bill there, but I can appreciate there being reason for debate. ;)

New comment by ocdtrekkie in "The California state assembly has passed the 'Protect Our Games Act'"

ocdtrekkie — Fri, 29 May 2026 21:24:34 +0000

There are a bunch of these, and they are silly/unviable. I see a lot more free-to-play than single-purchase live service games, but the latter is a fun additional exploit in that they get you to pay up front for something that they never have any intention to survive long-term.

Currently I'm heavily playing both a free-to-play with microtransactions title (Heroes of the Storm) and a subscription title (EVE Online), both of which are live service games which would be exempt from this bill by definition, but are both games I would meaningfully like to play even if the companies decided they didn't want to run them anymore. (Yes, I'm aware both games I am playing regularly are old as time itself.)

Meanwhile, yes, there are single purchase games with an online model, and they fail and get shut down because they were never sustainable to begin with. The bill would arguably cover something like the FPS-of-the-years which are intended to grab everyone's attention for a few months and then die off when the company needs you to buy the next version of the title because they get no recurring revenue from you continuing to play the current one. (See Call of Duty, Battlefield, etc.)

New comment by ocdtrekkie in "The California state assembly has passed the 'Protect Our Games Act'"

ocdtrekkie — Fri, 29 May 2026 21:19:33 +0000

I don't read it that way. "Free-to-play" games generally include games with microtransactions, and the bill text does nothing to disagree with that:

> (b) This section does not apply to any of the following:

> (2) Any digital game that is advertised or offered to a person for no monetary consideration.

This solely refers to the game being available for free, not for any additional powerups or cosmetics being available for free.

New comment by ocdtrekkie in "The California state assembly has passed the 'Protect Our Games Act'"

ocdtrekkie — Fri, 29 May 2026 20:59:50 +0000

So this only really applies to games you have to purchase once but are online-only? That's... an incredibly narrow law, that only covers a class of games which are particularly stupid by design. (Continuous cost without continuous revenue.)

New comment by ocdtrekkie in "Tulip mania: when a single flower was worth more than a house (2025)"

ocdtrekkie — Fri, 29 May 2026 17:50:50 +0000

Labubu was last year:

https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/21/us/labubu-doll-plushie-pop-ma...

https://nypost.com/2025/08/02/us-news/this-is-the-most-expen...

It burnt out much faster than Beanie Babies did.

New comment by ocdtrekkie in "We replaced Zendesk"

ocdtrekkie — Thu, 28 May 2026 16:12:15 +0000

Our helpdesk provider wanted a three year annual commitment at double the price we've been paying after they got bought by private equity. We are not continuing with our helpdesk provider.

The correct answer to this behavior needs to be "lol no" until these companies learn this behavior is unacceptable at any price. They could've boiled the frog at a 10% annual hike and nobody would've cared, but you double and you are fired as a vendor and that's that.

New comment by ocdtrekkie in "The real cost of owning a home"

ocdtrekkie — Tue, 26 May 2026 21:54:30 +0000

Again the difference is though that if you are renting that money is not going into your net worth. The principal from your mortgage is. Concern about difficulty with handling it is resolved by having a good will that makes preferences on how it should be handled clear.

New comment by ocdtrekkie in "The real cost of owning a home"

ocdtrekkie — Tue, 26 May 2026 20:17:54 +0000

Passing it down to your kids is huge. Unfortunately what I've learned is most people are incredibly selfish and do not actually care what happens to their family when they pass.

Renting and owning may not be all that financially different to you with a mortgage of 30+ years, but it will definitely be financially different to your heirs.

New comment by ocdtrekkie in "Reviving old scanners with an in-browser Linux VM bridged to WebUSB over USB/IP"

ocdtrekkie — Thu, 21 May 2026 05:06:08 +0000

I don't want this enough to subject myself to WebUSB, but I am particularly fond of a no-longer-supported flatbed scanner I own which powers entirely off the USB port. It was super handy if you wanted to scan to like a tablet in a car or something, as long as you had a USB-A port to work with.

New comment by ocdtrekkie in "EU weighs restricting use of US cloud platforms to process government data"

ocdtrekkie — Sun, 17 May 2026 18:51:34 +0000

No it's essentially just that a bunch of hype people sold everyone on the idea "the cloud is the future" and so even government types think they have to do it to modernize even if it costs more, is less secure, and less reliable than just paying your own IT guy to do it.

On-prem is not expensive or complicated, people just make dumb choices. Any IT engineer with two years of experience can run a small on-prem data cluster.

New comment by ocdtrekkie in "I believe there are entire companies right now under AI psychosis"

ocdtrekkie — Sat, 16 May 2026 01:34:53 +0000

I used to gripe about various ERP companies but after having dealt with enough, yeah, that's just what the world of ERP systems is like. You will spend your time even with the best of them desiring to scream endlessly at everyone who works there. And they also know your pain but are powerless to help.

New comment by ocdtrekkie in "Setting up a free *.city.state.us locality domain (2025)"

ocdtrekkie — Wed, 13 May 2026 22:46:05 +0000

The entire domain squatting/parking industry exists because filing an ICANN dispute costs more than paying the squatter. Absolutely insane.

New comment by ocdtrekkie in "Googlebook"

ocdtrekkie — Tue, 12 May 2026 17:59:05 +0000

This is the dumbest branding Google has ever come up with and I am here for it. I can't wait for the memes. Is that your Chromebook? No, it's my Googlebook!

Edit: It lists five OEMs, so it's not a Pixel equivalent, not Google-made hardware. Which makes it funnier, actually. Like if Windows laptops from every OEM were called Microsoftbooks.

New comment by ocdtrekkie in "Taxpayers May Be Eligible for Significant Tax Refunds – If They Act by July 10"

ocdtrekkie — Sun, 10 May 2026 16:41:45 +0000

I think the interest rate is 7% so if you have other debts, not making the quarterly payments is probably the cheapest loan you can get.

New comment by ocdtrekkie in "Google Cloud Fraud Defence is just WEI repackaged"

ocdtrekkie — Fri, 08 May 2026 21:40:40 +0000

I am a Kagi early adopter. ;) But the reality is what can be on the web is dictated by Google Search, because nothing survives if you can't find it on Google.

New comment by ocdtrekkie in "Google Cloud Fraud Defence is just WEI repackaged"

ocdtrekkie — Fri, 08 May 2026 17:23:56 +0000

People forget that Sundar Pichai's entire claim to success at Google was injecting the Google Toolbar into the Adobe Reader installer which would hijack your search and browsing data on IE, and the launch of Chrome, which was then also injected into the Adobe Reader installer, occurred because Google was concerned IE might block or limit their toolbar.

People absolutely did like Google at the time, but the majority of its growth is actually shoveling hijackers into other software installs just like BonzaiBuddy.

New comment by ocdtrekkie in "Google Cloud Fraud Defence is just WEI repackaged"

ocdtrekkie — Fri, 08 May 2026 16:37:40 +0000

> rapidly becoming

Always has been.

Google was creating cartels like the "Open Handset Alliance" literally decades ago.

Via their control of Chrome and Search which are both monopolies, Google holds absolute authority on how websites are rendered and if websites can be found.