Hacker News: userbinator

New comment by userbinator in "Happy 45th Birthday to the IBM PC and Model F/XT"

userbinator — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 01:38:08 +0000

Might be something like "IBM? What's that?"

New comment by userbinator in "A shell exclamation mark is not for yelling. Be lazy"

userbinator — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 00:36:38 +0000

So instead of just retyping the command (much less than 1s), I have to remember to open the editor, and then think of how to edit it, and then execute those steps? Hell no. At that point I'll have long lost my original train of thought. The original command, and at least the subsequent one, are already in my mind and can be output immediately. Any deviations from that plan are going to be much slower.

ctrl-x ctrl-e

Just thinking about that almost makes my fingers hurt. A chorded sequence of two keys, same side of the keyboard, nearly in a vertical line on the top and bottom row, is basically the slowest and most awkward possible combination to type.

New comment by userbinator in "A shell exclamation mark is not for yelling. Be lazy"

userbinator — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 06:55:18 +0000

Every time someone brings this up, I think "oh right, I could do that" and then immediately forget. Especially if you can type quickly, it's easier to just "drive straight ahead" with the command you want, than add another "mental branch" to interrupt the flow. For the same reason I'll often Ctrl+C and start again instead of trying to backspace and correct.

New comment by userbinator in "England set to be one of the first countries to eliminate hepatitis C"

userbinator — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 06:33:32 +0000

...followed by Hepatitis Rust

New comment by userbinator in "Compression is prediction"

userbinator — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 06:21:49 +0000

they discovered from scratch themselves

If you followed the data compression scene in the 80s and early 90s, there were plenty of reinventions of LZ-ish and Huffman-ish algorithms (I also coded my own variant...), and people even tried to patent some of them, so at least for the basics I think it is something that many can discover independently; of course in these times, it's more likely they didn't.

New comment by userbinator in "Grok Bot"

userbinator — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 06:06:14 +0000

That's the whole "agent" part of User Agent and the founders of the Internet had incredible foresight to name it this way.

Now it's the Agentic User Agent.

New comment by userbinator in "London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces"

userbinator — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 06:00:42 +0000

Henry Nowak

New comment by userbinator in "Microsoft Responds to Outcry After Quiet Enterprise Install of Beta 'Photos' App"

userbinator — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 06:07:52 +0000

It sounds like what an AI would say. Perhaps their Copilot has become Pilot.

New comment by userbinator in "Recycle – Floppydisks"

userbinator — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 06:04:13 +0000

Are you sure it's not just the bag attempting to return to its original shape? They are also not truly airtight, so there might be some sort of osmosis effect too.

The possibility of mold growth may also be considered.

New comment by userbinator in "Exploiting System Management Mode with a very long interrupt"

userbinator — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 05:50:01 +0000

the SMM code would have no reason to disallow the kernel modifying or replacing it

Don't forget that SMM code started out in A0000 --- the area of RAM that would've otherwise been inaccessible and wasted anyway, because it was usually decoded to the VGA. Also, this was the era of DOS; there was no difference between "kernel" and "application".

New comment by userbinator in "Exploiting System Management Mode with a very long interrupt"

userbinator — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 02:03:14 +0000

SMM was originally conceived for power management, as it first appeared in the laptop-oriented 386SL. Then it was used for seamless backwards compatibility e.g. peripheral emulation. Unlike e.g. TPMs or other DRM-ish schemes, IMHO SMM was never hostile from the beginning.

New comment by userbinator in "Exploiting System Management Mode with a very long interrupt"

userbinator — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 01:59:32 +0000

IIRC clock control doesn't need to be done in SMM, especially PROCHOT which is a hardwired thermal shutdown. That said, power management is one of the things SMM was originally designed for, so it may be used for some of that.

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

userbinator — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 06:41:04 +0000

There's probably multiple devs, which is part of the problem.

Ironically AI could likely do better than this if prompted right.

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

userbinator — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 06:37:04 +0000

This: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49226923

New comment by userbinator in "The climate benefits of retiring an operational combustion engine vehicle"

userbinator — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 23:56:45 +0000

Exactly.

My daily driver turns 54 this year.

Never cared much about the climate scam, never will.

New comment by userbinator in "Deletes all instances of Microsoft's GDID and prevents minting of new ones"

userbinator — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 23:54:14 +0000

Vibe-coding a sufficiently compatible replacement seems increasingly possible. ReactOS and WINE can either get on board, or if they still try their IP pearl-clutching, I suspect they'll be replaced by something else. Bonus points for using Copilot to do it.

New comment by userbinator in "Deletes all instances of Microsoft's GDID and prevents minting of new ones"

userbinator — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 23:41:41 +0000

You'd think that LLMs are trained on human writing, so they should sound human to some extent, but I've never come across a real human writing like that.

The last time I tried ChatGPT, it had the tone of "bland, attempting-to-be-helpful-but-stupid corporate HR person", which is annoying but still much more human-sounding than this mess.

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

userbinator — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 21:37:49 +0000

They're supposed to have much better AI than average

I suspect there will be a bit of revelation once people realise how much better AI can make software if prompted correctly. Of course a lot of slop will always exist, but things like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49226923 show that it can be a powerful force multiplier if used right.

New comment by userbinator in "Os8088: A powerful Mac-like OS for the IBM XT, 286, 386"

userbinator — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 21:21:07 +0000

it's wholly / mostly AI gen, so it takes the wow away

No? It's the exact opposite for me. This is a great demo of how AI can do efficient software if you prompt it the right way.

New comment by userbinator in "Os8088: A powerful Mac-like OS for the IBM XT, 286, 386"

userbinator — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 21:17:33 +0000

Don't give the haters any attention. Let them complain all they want, you're the one having fun and they're not.