Hacker News: torh

New comment by torh in "Windows 11's built-in Weather app wastes more than 1 GB of RAM"

torh — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 19:05:02 +0000

> to make their installations work just to get a UX that's almost as good as Windows from 20 years ago

To be fair, that was the peak of Windows UI. Also, KDE Plasma is way ahead of Windows (any of them).

New comment by torh in "Cool URIs Don't Change (1998)"

torh — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 18:42:48 +0000

Not that long ago I clicked on a link that Microsoft provided somewhere in Windows -- could have been the event log, I don't remember. I do remember it was for a specific support article, but it ended up at a generic landing page for something. I am not talking about a link from Windows 95, it must have been Windows 10. But regardless, it is all gone. Then again, it probably wasn't a cool URL to begin with.

It's amazingly many news sites that also seem to scrub their URLs every time they do a redesign. Also uncool.

New comment by torh in "Windows died inside Microsoft, a 25-year veteran on how Azure took over"

torh — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 12:44:15 +0000

Yeah, it was better. Windows 8 and 8.1 was a disappointment with its "metro style".

New comment by torh in "xAI, SpaceX, and the Race for AI Buildout"

torh — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 20:17:14 +0000

"Why should you go to jail for a crime someone else ... noticed" — Bob Loblaw

New comment by torh in "Windows died inside Microsoft, a 25-year veteran on how Azure took over"

torh — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 19:01:29 +0000

> I see a future where it does roll into azure and become a hosted only “feature”

It seems that way. And most people would probably follow along, not knowing any alternatives. But I like the idea of "local first", no online account required.

New comment by torh in "Microsoft filings suggest "around 70%" of its AI revenue is on OpenAI"

torh — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 17:43:07 +0000

Ed Zitron wrote about this (at length) earlier this week: <https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-ai-demand-bubble/#analysts-e...>

New comment by torh in "Windows died inside Microsoft, a 25-year veteran on how Azure took over"

torh — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 17:28:48 +0000

At some point I guess things became "good enough". The leap to Windows 95 was huge. The leap to Windows 2000 was huge. Leaps in hardware was huge as well around at that time.

It's many years ago I felt things started to plateau. When was the last time you were excited about a new processor? Or a bigger hard drive? If Microsoft makes their money from OEMs, and OEMs want to sell new hardware, I guess Windows needs to demand more resources... to keep the OEMs happy. TPM 2.0? For our security, or an easy way to sell new hardware, since Windows 10 will be "obsolete" and you "have" to upgrade to Windows 11.

And just to squeeze out some extra bucks, Microsoft discovered what Google and Facebook found out years ago... there is serious money in advertising.

I have an old Windows 8.1 PC in a corner. It has all I need, really. Enough disk and RAM for my usage (not a gamer).

New comment by torh in "SpaceX at $100 Would Imply Zero AI Value, Morgan Stanley Says"

torh — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 19:20:22 +0000

I'm not so sure. Is there really a demand for more AI data centers? Has anyone been turned down by OpenAI or Antrophic because they are out of capacity?

New comment by torh in "Why malloc always does more than I asked for?"

torh — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 08:10:45 +0000

This puzzled me as well.

New comment by torh in "Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail"

torh — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 07:38:50 +0000

Fabien did a code review of Trespasser back in 2014: https://fabiensanglard.net/trespasser/index.php

New comment by torh in "Game Engine White Papers: Commander Keen"

torh — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 09:45:17 +0000

It looks like a complete rip-off. Both the design of the website and the book cover.

New comment by torh in "πFS"

torh — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 08:45:29 +0000

No thanks, I have all the files I need right here in /dev/urandom.

New comment by torh in "My I3-Emacs Integration"

torh — Sun, 24 May 2026 10:50:23 +0000

They are still on the front page, but here you go:

Two-part desk setup : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48214311

Writerdeck: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48250144

Wake-up demo: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48253060

New comment by torh in "Googlebook"

torh — Wed, 13 May 2026 07:40:30 +0000

Did... did the AI in the video just do the Duolingo learning?

New comment by torh in "How Mark Klein told the EFF about Room 641A [book excerpt]"

torh — Fri, 01 May 2026 07:38:08 +0000

It's like a reverse get out of jail free card.

Do the other party have evidence against you? Declare classified documents and they go to jail instead of you.

New comment by torh in "Fixing a 20-year-old bug in Enlightenment E16"

torh — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 06:15:57 +0000

Same for me. Slackware (I guess 4.0) and E16 was my first proper Linux installation. Learned so much during that time.

New comment by torh in "A GTA modder has got the 1997 original working on modern PCs and Steam Deck"

torh — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 07:03:59 +0000

I remember playing GTA I with a 3DFX card. Man that was smooth. When I later played at a friends house, I was disappointed about how choppy it was.

New comment by torh in "Let's compile Quake like it's 1997"

torh — Sun, 08 Feb 2026 18:37:41 +0000

I hope so. The other books have been great fun to read, with the detour of CP-SYSTEM as a nice surprise.

New comment by torh in "DNS Explained – How Domain Names Get Resolved"

torh — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 18:40:26 +0000

> Without DNS, you'd need to memorize IP addresses for every website.

This used to be true until virtual hosting came along, allowing for several domains to point to the same IP address, but only for non-HTTPS traffic. Then a bit later we got SNI (Server Name Indication) that did the same thing for HTTPS.

I remember having web servers with 10-12 public IP adresses when I started working. The number of IPv4 addresses needed has been greatly reduced since.

New comment by torh in "A case study in PDF forensics: The Epstein PDFs"

torh — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 15:55:28 +0000

Was on the frontpage yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46868759