Hacker News: olivierestsage

New comment by olivierestsage in "Music for Programming"

olivierestsage — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 23:26:17 +0000

Swans is good for programming. And good for gnosis.

New comment by olivierestsage in "Music for Programming"

olivierestsage — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 22:55:49 +0000

Mamma Mia soundtrack also works well \m/

New comment by olivierestsage in "A pig's brain has been frozen with its cellular activity locked in place"

olivierestsage — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 16:20:08 +0000

No thanks

New comment by olivierestsage in "Why I love FreeBSD"

olivierestsage — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 23:42:02 +0000

Around 10 years ago, I picked up an old Thinkpad T42, put FreeBSD on it, and had an amazing experience. Actually used it as a daily driver for a while, which seems crazy in retrospect, but I enjoy trying to work within that kind of constraint sometimes. I miss it! This post rekindles the flame...

New comment by olivierestsage in "Hollywood Enters Oscars Weekend in Existential Crisis"

olivierestsage — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 19:22:21 +0000

Whenever someone says online that something's declining (Hollywood movies, video games, UX experiences in desktop environments, etc.), I see a variation on this argument: "actually the options are even better today, they're just buried" (often accompanied by: "you were just younger then and everything was new and that's why you liked it").

Sometimes, cultural decline actually does happen, usually eventually followed by some kind of renaissance. Anyone who has studied the cinema, literature, etc. of a certain country in the past knows that there are "hot" periods and "cool" ones. When we see this phenomenon in the past, it doesn't tend to trigger the same defensive reaction, I guess because it doesn't feel as personal.

New comment by olivierestsage in "John Carmack about open source and anti-AI activists"

olivierestsage — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 23:49:39 +0000

He's downplaying the "social change" aspect. For many, open source/free software has a political element, at least implicitly. That element is strongly opposed to aggressive centralization of capital and surveillance power. You can point out how different licenses were always written in a way that permitted monetization/for-profit use, but that's beside the point -- the people who chose those licenses never imagined that their code would be used at this scale for this kind of purpose.

New comment by olivierestsage in "AI toys for children misread emotions and respond inappropriately"

olivierestsage — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 12:19:01 +0000

You gotta be out of your damn mind to give your kid an AI toy

New comment by olivierestsage in "Tech bros are lying to you about the MacBook Neo"

olivierestsage — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 11:24:57 +0000

Nothing against the MacBook Neo, but this reads like an advertisement.

New comment by olivierestsage in "Uploading Pirated Books via BitTorrent Qualifies as Fair Use, Meta Argues"

olivierestsage — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 18:10:43 +0000

Another person who I remember really coming out as a villain in that era was Gene Simmons from KISS: "Sue everybody. Take their homes, their cars."[1]

[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2010/10/kiss-frontman-we...

New comment by olivierestsage in "Plasma Bigscreen – 10-foot interface for KDE plasma"

olivierestsage — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 00:22:46 +0000

Big things from KDE lately. If you haven't tried it since the pre-Plasma days, I really recommend giving it a go. Fabulous as a general DE.

New comment by olivierestsage in "Hacking Super Mario 64 using covering spaces"

olivierestsage — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 13:36:03 +0000

No. (You?)

One of the things that was so magical about this game is that you never knew what the real limits were. Some things were just childhood fantasies, like getting beyond the waterfall, but other things like this actually were possible in retrospect.

New comment by olivierestsage in "Where things stand with the Department of War"

olivierestsage — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 12:24:50 +0000

Well, I’m in the US and have been following politics closely for the entire time window you mention, and this year marks the first time I’ve heard it. It is very jarring and a notable rhetorical shift from the concept of “service”.

New comment by olivierestsage in "Yet Another Fix Coming for Older AMD GPUs on Linux – Thanks to Valve Developer"

olivierestsage — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:54:14 +0000

Same feeling here. What Valve has done honestly leaves me in awe. The Steam Deck is the best device I’ve ever owned, and probably the only one I unreservedly love.

New comment by olivierestsage in "EDuke32 – Duke Nukem 3D (Open-Source)"

olivierestsage — Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:14:25 +0000

Agreed about Duke3D movement being superior to Quake's. Not Doom (at least not for me personally), but I agree about Quake, which feels "artificial" -- no momentum.

New comment by olivierestsage in "EDuke32 – Duke Nukem 3D (Open-Source)"

olivierestsage — Sat, 21 Feb 2026 23:21:19 +0000

Duke3D is one of those weird games where I don't respect it as much as Doom or Quake, but I have to admit I've had a lot of fun playing it at different points in my life. Some seriously great memories deathmatching with friends on the opening map, and the combat in the single player is often really good.

New comment by olivierestsage in "'A Big Fuck You to Big Tech': New Jersey Residents Defeat AI Data Center"

olivierestsage — Sat, 21 Feb 2026 01:35:48 +0000

Been amazing to see how far tech companies have fallen in public esteem (good). I remember when my friends and I would get together to watch the new MacBook announcements, eager to see what was coming. Feels as distant now as sk8erboi culture.

New comment by olivierestsage in "Skip the Tips: A game to select "No Tip" but dark patterns try to stop you"

olivierestsage — Sat, 14 Feb 2026 14:01:42 +0000

The time limit accurately simulates the experience of being under the accusatory stare of the person who handed you the machine

New comment by olivierestsage in "Resizing windows on macOS Tahoe – the saga continues"

olivierestsage — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 21:33:42 +0000

This is definitely not the case, and I invite anyone reading this comment to install a Linux distribution themselves in a VM or something to find out via direct experience. Fedora is a good place to start in my opinion.

New comment by olivierestsage in "Resizing windows on macOS Tahoe – the saga continues"

olivierestsage — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 19:14:11 +0000

I wouldn't know what to recommend for "just works" photo syncing from the phone à la iCloud.

New comment by olivierestsage in "Resizing windows on macOS Tahoe – the saga continues"

olivierestsage — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 16:48:06 +0000

I used macOS as my daily driver from Tiger to last year, actually. I don’t know what the inconsistencies you’re referring to are, but I certainly prefer them to cloud account nagging and constant attempts to monetize user behavior, which is the modern macOS experience.