Hacker News: vdupras

New comment by vdupras in "Americans are destroying Flock surveillance cameras"

vdupras — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 01:51:55 +0000

That's some nice guillotine energy going on here on this unflagged topic. You surprise me, HN.

New comment by vdupras in "Hetzner Prices increase 30-40%"

vdupras — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 19:21:02 +0000

If you delay your iPhone upgrade because of RAM prices, you're not going to buy two at once because you were delayed. So push, forward, push forward, sure, but to a point.

New comment by vdupras in "Hetzner Prices increase 30-40%"

vdupras — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 19:13:17 +0000

If we end up with metric tons of unused HBM memory lying around, I'm sure that someone will design a general purpose computer using them, or design a HBM-to-DDR interface.

New comment by vdupras in "Hetzner Prices increase 30-40%"

vdupras — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 12:30:27 +0000

Silver lining: can you imagine how dirt cheap RAM will be after that bubble has popped? Oh my...

New comment by vdupras in "Ladybird adopts Rust, with help from AI"

vdupras — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 12:11:01 +0000

This comment raises an interesting question: Would Serenity OS have brought Andreas the same kind of serenity had it been developed with AI? Open candid question.

New comment by vdupras in "Permacomputing"

vdupras — Sat, 21 Feb 2026 20:48:07 +0000

Your reasoning is sound, but is already covered by Collapse OS' manifesto. It refers to two stages of collapse, Collapse OS being for the second.

As long as we have working modern machines, self-contained modern open source OSes, NetBSD being one, are good choices.

One problem there is with such system is their overall complexity. Sure, you can use them, and they're pretty flexible for the user. However, when necessity forces you to crack the kernel open, the learning curve is pretty big.

For example, let's imagine a computer with a broken SATA controller. How would NetBSD behave on it? Hard to say, NetBSD developers don't develop with that target machine in mind. Usually, when you have such a machine, you replace it or repair it. But what if you can't? Maybe you'll have to play in the kernel to manage to do something with that machine, route around it. Maybe it will work, but maybe you'll be stuck, and maybe that in that particular situation, it's going to have tragic consequences.

And that's kind of what Dusk OS (http://duskos.org/) is about.

New comment by vdupras in "Is Show HN dead? No, but it's drowning"

vdupras — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 11:41:07 +0000

  > sloptimists

That's a good one! Did you just come up with it? I've never seen it before.

New comment by vdupras in "More macOS 26.3 Finder column view silliness"

vdupras — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 03:47:35 +0000

We truly are in the age of incompetence. Isn't Apple supposed to have budgets big enough to hire the brightest minds of the world? And this is all they can come up with? Then the emperor has no clothes and they're a bunch of overpaid bozos.

New comment by vdupras in "A Programmer's Loss of Identity"

vdupras — Mon, 16 Feb 2026 11:28:55 +0000

If we want to make that distinction, then we should also acknowledge that "vibecoding" is a misnomer and should be called "vibeprogramming", because it delegates the whole act of programming to the LLM, leaving you with fleshing out the specs (which is not programming).

If that is so, then your whole comment is inconsistent and akin to "I do all my poetry with LLMs now and I don't see what people have against it: it's often better than me at punctuation!"

New comment by vdupras in "A Programmer's Loss of Identity"

vdupras — Sun, 15 Feb 2026 21:06:35 +0000

  > Being able to code doesn't make you better than the "plebs" who are creating massive value with a vibe coded tool.
  > [...] I noticed AI could really code better than me [...]

AI code output is generally considered mediocre (in the sense of "on the median"). If it codes better than you, it might be that your code output is generally below average.

Might it be the case that you don't grasp how good one can get with computers and thus not realize that one could be much better than you are at programming them? Did you consider for a moment the possibility that you were missing something?

New comment by vdupras in "The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory"

vdupras — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 20:11:37 +0000

An effective way to cut carbon emissions before feedback loops are triggered

New comment by vdupras in "The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory"

vdupras — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 20:06:51 +0000

And yet, the only reasonable action to take is to flag this topic and move along with the "humanity has always found a way out, technology will save us. Remember, we were supposed to drown in horse manure!"

Why? Because candidly looking at those risks as a society means deep collective existential dread, which automatically means an immediate civilizational collapse.

So I'm guessing some of our elite is actually ignorant and the other part is willfully shutting the hell up on this subject to let our civilization run on fumes a few more years.

It's unfortunate because a rapid civilizational collapse could give humanity as a species a better chance of survival.

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

vdupras — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 00:08:37 +0000

Oh my, this is a slap in the face for me too. For me, GTA is the first one. The other ones (III and following) are GTA with 3D and a story line slapped on top. I must have a dislike for 3D because I've tried again the original GTA a few years ago and liked it a lot more than GTA III+. It's just fun without complication.

New comment by vdupras in "Bye Bye Humanity: The Potential AMOC Collapse"

vdupras — Sun, 08 Feb 2026 13:08:42 +0000

20k years ago, humans hadn't invented agriculture. Our whole civilization has existed in one particular geological time, an exceptional one. There is absolutely no indication that it's flexible enough to be transposed in another, and particularly not at that speed of transition, which is, in geological time, exceptionally fast.

New comment by vdupras in "Ask HN: The Coming Class War"

vdupras — Sun, 08 Feb 2026 02:36:07 +0000

It's such a weird take. You have a project, it costs X to make. Either it's worth it or it's not worth it. Some tool might bring the cost down, but the breakdown is the same. If X is too high, don't do the project.

If the tools you use are cheaper, shouldn't it make you more competitive? If the expensive tools are worth it, wouldn't it mean that you can jack your price? Where's the problem?

New comment by vdupras in "NIMBYs aren't just shutting down housing"

vdupras — Sat, 07 Feb 2026 03:06:50 +0000

Native americans were initially pretty YIMBY and that ended up very well for them.

In any sane world, being open and welcoming is a pretty rad posture to have. But in a capitalist world? Naive and stupid.

New comment by vdupras in "A Very Small SAT Solver (From Haskell) Now in Dafny, Proved Correct with LLMs"

vdupras — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 02:04:53 +0000

I asked the LLM whether my program was correct and it answered: you're absolutely right!

New comment by vdupras in "A Broken Heart"

vdupras — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 14:09:40 +0000

... and a broken world.

How infuriating it is to see complexity so spuriously piled up upon an already holy mess.

New comment by vdupras in "Steve Bannon Proposes Using ICE in Elections"

vdupras — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 17:47:31 +0000

Every accusation, an admission

The process is so blunt, so blatant, it's surprising that it works. I'm guessing it's the result of years and years of lessening the american people so that they can roll over in the most undignified way.

New comment by vdupras in ""Yes, It's Happening. Yes, it's real." March For Billionaires, SF, 02/07/2026"

vdupras — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 03:19:58 +0000

It must be some kind of a joke.

If it's not, well, it's interesting that they feel the vibe strong enough in their disfavor to come to the conclusion that they need this kind of event. I guess it's an indication that this vibe is stronger than commonly admitted.