<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Hacker News: sumtechguy</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=sumtechguy</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Sun, 31 May 2026 07:26:12 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=sumtechguy" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by sumtechguy in "Make zip files smaller with zip shrinker"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Yeah that probably should just be an option.  Basically the default is to least mangle the zip file.  Where the most extreme is turned on by flags.  One of those could be 'remove empty folders'.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 19 May 2026 12:59:17 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48192721</link><dc:creator>sumtechguy</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48192721</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48192721</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by sumtechguy in "S-100 Virtual Workbench"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Yeah I was thinking that.  Also at some point you will be switching motherboards every other cpu update just due to the socket changes between generations.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 14 May 2026 13:29:24 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48135116</link><dc:creator>sumtechguy</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48135116</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48135116</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by sumtechguy in "S-100 Virtual Workbench"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Heh, not sure why but it makes me wonder if you could 'Ship of Theseus' something like that into a modern day desktop.  By going thru the different eras of DIY compute.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 13 May 2026 17:34:42 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48124941</link><dc:creator>sumtechguy</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48124941</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48124941</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by sumtechguy in "They Live (1988) inspired Adblocker"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I want to see the outtake lines they didnt use.  Roddy Piper had tons of one liners he would use for wrestling.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 12 May 2026 13:14:28 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48107815</link><dc:creator>sumtechguy</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48107815</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48107815</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by sumtechguy in "He asked AI to count carbs 27000 times. It couldn't give the same answer twice"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I wanted an accountant I got a poet.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 29 Apr 2026 12:53:53 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47947650</link><dc:creator>sumtechguy</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47947650</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47947650</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by sumtechguy in "HashiCorp co-founder says GitHub 'no longer a place for serious work'"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>That can happen many times during a buyout.  Some company buys a thing.  The problem then is ownership of the thing.  Who in the new company is going to own the 'make sure it stays good' problem.  Sometimes with a buy out the people who were doing that may even stay at the company.  But it is a matter of motivation.  MS has a real serious problem.  You can see the gaps where they have glued together at least 10 companies together and called it microsoft.  They have a huge reputational risk issue.  Where something breaking in the xbox div can have a negative impact on the tools division.  Also the other way around.  They lack focus on many items.  They have needed a 'service pack 2' stop the presses moment and fix this mount everest of tech debt.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 29 Apr 2026 12:49:53 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47947599</link><dc:creator>sumtechguy</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47947599</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47947599</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by sumtechguy in "It's OK to abandon your side-project (2024)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Sometimes also the project is just 'done'.  I many years ago made a windows screensaver (never released to anyone else).  Just so I could have a '2001' screen saver.  Basically in the background of the movie was all these screens flashing just weird status stuff.  It was a cool aesthetic I kinda liked.  Spent many weeks getting it to flash 'just right' and have the right animations for the right feel.  Then LCD screens basically killed any need to have a screen saver.  As basically instant on/off meant there was no reason to have the monitor running all the time.  So the project was done.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 27 Apr 2026 12:33:59 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47920770</link><dc:creator>sumtechguy</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47920770</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47920770</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by sumtechguy in "Changes to GitHub Copilot individual plans"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Think someone got the bill and worked out their burn rate and pushed the big stop button.<p>Remember when you are renting other peoples computers they can and will change the terms for their benefit.  They own it.  You dont.  You rent it.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 22 Apr 2026 13:30:01 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47863349</link><dc:creator>sumtechguy</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47863349</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47863349</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by sumtechguy in "OpenClaw isn't fooling me. I remember MS-DOS"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>IoT was an absolutely terrible fit for the home space.  My parents have light switches in their house installed in the 1940s.  They still work just as good.  Getting something from the IoT of home automation to last like that is very difficult.  Yet it seems to be the first model everyone reaches for when talking about it.  If they had to replace the switches it would not cost too much to do either.<p>IoT really comes into its own space though when you pair it up with something that is a real pain to get to.  Think somewhere you have to have a crainlift and a 4 hour drive just to touch the 20 year old computer something is hooked up to.  Or basically anywhere that takes hours to get to.  The space my company typically targeted was high rise air con companies.  Or companies where the customer would service out any sort of PLC work to a 3rd party.  At that point the savings of having to roll a guy out there vs looking on a computer has the thing pay for itself in 1-2 trips.  Also the ability to show up on site with the correct parts.  That alone was a huge savings.<p>IoT's big issues is you have to beat many things that are already dead simple to do.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 20 Apr 2026 17:22:25 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47837578</link><dc:creator>sumtechguy</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47837578</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47837578</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by sumtechguy in "Direct Win32 API, Weird-Shaped Windows, and Why They Mostly Disappeared"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Had one project where for some reason one of the devs wanted to access the messages before it got translated.  The reasons are lost to time.  You technically could create other types of application that is not CLI or 'windows'.  But then you are own your own making the queues or console items.  Think they were typically used for device drivers or background service manager tasks.<p><a href="https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/build/reference/subsystem-specify-subsystem?view=msvc-170" rel="nofollow">https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/build/reference/subsys...</a><p>Pretty sure it just changes out what the default function that is called before winmain.  So you probably could just switch out the first function called (dont remember the cli option for that).<p>Most of the time you just picked the right type at project creation so it would feed correctly into the project solution which would set the right flags on build.  But technically you could pick the most basic one and do it all yourself.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 15 Apr 2026 13:04:53 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47778436</link><dc:creator>sumtechguy</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47778436</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47778436</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by sumtechguy in "Direct Win32 API, Weird-Shaped Windows, and Why They Mostly Disappeared"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It was more of you had to know where to grab control.  It was not always clear.<p>With some of them it was dead easy and you can do it on window creation.<p>Others you had to hook it out by playing with the window params (SetWindowLong) and getting the underlying control and then changing it.<p>Some controls had their own bespoke way where you would send messages to the control then it would take care of it.<p>Some you would have to iterate over the control list that window controlled and change it.<p>In some cases it was just such a pain you were better off making your own custom control window that was just a mashup of other controls that you could control.<p>It was one part experimentation and one part reading the docs (if the control had it).  Now if it was a built in windows control you were playing with.  You had to take on the risk on windows version update the customization you did would break if you did non documented things.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 15 Apr 2026 12:52:52 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47778324</link><dc:creator>sumtechguy</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47778324</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47778324</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by sumtechguy in "Direct Win32 API, weird-shaped windows, and why they mostly disappeared"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> This isn't actually true though. You can delegate to the default window proc, and only customise what you want.<p>Yeah that was my memory of doing this stuff.  You basically just added what you wanted to the case statement (or other hooks depending on your framework).  Then dump the rest onto the default proc.  The default 'wizards' usually made the standard petzold structure for you and you didnt even really have to think much about it.  Now if you were doing everything by yourself just make sure you read the docs and make sure you call the default in the right cases.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 15 Apr 2026 12:42:50 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47778230</link><dc:creator>sumtechguy</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47778230</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47778230</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by sumtechguy in "DRAM has a design flaw from 1966. I bypassed it [video]"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I saw a few years ago one group buying spools of fiber just to 'slow down' the trades.  As they were submitting them to different datacenters across the country.  They wanted everything to show up at the exact same time so no one would front run their trades on different datacenters.  They are willing spend millions on HW if it gives them an edge in the market.  They would buy bespoke boards that could hold 16x the RAM if it gave them a 50ns edge.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 10 Apr 2026 12:50:48 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47717368</link><dc:creator>sumtechguy</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47717368</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47717368</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by sumtechguy in "DRAM has a design flaw from 1966. I bypassed it [video]"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I can not think of any reason they would not want to do it.<p>However, I do seem at least 2 downsides to this method.<p>Number one it is at least 2x the memory.  That has for a decently long time been a large cost of a computer.  But I could see some people saying 'whatever buy 8x'.<p>The second is data coherency.  In a read only env this would work very nicely.  In a write env this would be 2x the writes and you are going to have to wait for them to all work or somehow mark them as not ready on the next read group.  Now it would be OK if the read of that page was some period of time after the write.  But a different place where things could stall out.<p>Really liked her vid.  She explained it very nicely.  She exudes that sense of joy I used to have about this field.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 10 Apr 2026 12:41:39 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47717251</link><dc:creator>sumtechguy</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47717251</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47717251</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by sumtechguy in "Dr. Dobb's Developer Library DVD 6"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>dobbs and msdn were my reading while I was waiting on a 2 hour compile many times.  then msdn went terrible, and dobbs out of business :(</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 09 Apr 2026 12:46:20 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47703011</link><dc:creator>sumtechguy</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47703011</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47703011</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by sumtechguy in "I won't download your app. The web version is a-ok"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Interesting.  I personally aggressively prune open pages.  If I have too much open I get off task and wander into whatever random thing pops up.  Anything that needs long term storage I bookmark it in a folder.<p>Using the session manager that is one I used to use.  But backed away from.  I use a lot of tools to keep me on task and not wander off into random things.<p>For me it is about attention and focus.  You seem to have a very different pattern than what I use.  ctrl-w and alt-left arrow are my buddies.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 07 Apr 2026 15:54:22 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47677243</link><dc:creator>sumtechguy</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47677243</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47677243</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by sumtechguy in "I won't download your app. The web version is a-ok"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Honest question do you really use all of those tabs?  As a small handful of tabs user I use the bookmark feature to hold things I want to keep for later.  ctrl-d and it is in the list.  Even then 99% of the time I open it again and go 'why did I keep this'.  I get it that it is your workflow.  Just sort of curious why you would consider that a 'power user' thing?  Would not saving them to the bookmark list be more of 'power user' sort of thing to do?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 06 Apr 2026 16:32:54 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47663157</link><dc:creator>sumtechguy</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47663157</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47663157</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by sumtechguy in "Microsoft hasn't had a coherent GUI strategy since Petzold"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>totally.<p>MS ended up where it was at because there was basically NO upgrade path between the few different GUI frameworks they had.  They broke the whole thing in 2002 when they decided .NET was the way.<p>You had to basically retool your whole GUI for whatever they were pushing at the time.  Then they basically abandoned win32 GUI items and put them in mothballs.  Then change their minds every other year.<p>No sane person is going to pick that model of building an application.  So the applications kinda stagnated at whatever GUI level they came into being with.  No one wanted to touch it.  If I am doing that why am I sticking with windows?  I can get the same terrible effect on the web/mobile and have a better reach.<p>Even their flagship application windows is all over the place.  If you click on the right thing you can get GUI's that date back to windows95.  Or maybe you might get a whitespaced out latest design.  It is all over the place.  It has been 10 years at this point.  They should have that dialed in years ago.<p>I do not think Google will be able to pay attention long enough to have a stable GUI.  Apple maybe.  As for MS you can see it from the outside there are several different competing groups all failing at it.<p>MS needs another 'service pack 2' moment.  Where they focus on cleaning up the mess they have.  Clean up the GUI.  Fix the speed items.  Fixup the out of the box experience (should not take 4gig of used memory just to start up).  Clean up the mountain of weird bug quirks.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 06 Apr 2026 15:16:38 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47662047</link><dc:creator>sumtechguy</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47662047</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47662047</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by sumtechguy in "Usenet Archives"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>spam murdered it.<p>It got ridiculous pretty quickly.  The overhead to spam was so low as the protocol was designed to be low friction for posting.  The system then took care of carrying the payload everywhere in a reasonable time.  People fought back with filters and kill lists.  But was not really enough.<p>Once the ISPs decided they did not want the added cost of running the servers usenet tanked pretty quick.  Still alive here and there.  Not even close to what it could have been or even was.<p>Surprised someone has not made a mastadon to usenet transfer protocol.  It almost fits both projects goals.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 06 Apr 2026 12:13:23 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47659892</link><dc:creator>sumtechguy</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47659892</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47659892</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by sumtechguy in "Samsung Magician disk utility takes 18 steps and two reboots to uninstall"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Each version up thru Win8 had a style guide.  If you wanted the windows sticker on your box you made it consistent.  Why would you want that sticker?  If you did not have it it was much harder to get floor space at many of the big box stores.<p>It was at win8 where everyone just noped out and just started doing whatever they wanted.  XP/2000 was the last era where anyone really cared.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 03 Apr 2026 19:04:19 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47630730</link><dc:creator>sumtechguy</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47630730</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47630730</guid></item></channel></rss>