News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

roskelld

Re:Triple-A Minesweeper on Saturday October 10, 2026 @10:49AM (#50033540)
My only criticism was the lack of shader compilation. I miss the time where I can go and make a sandwich without fear of missing out.

Bravo overall, nailed many tropes of modern gaming.

Glad I could help! Your post gave me a walk down memory lane. I'd forgotten all about the trips I used to do to this local music store that carried bootlegs. The Nirvana section was substantial. I remember having a number of them with the mislabeled tracks, including the one you mentioned. I also picked up a few live show recordings that were unlistenable, though luckily the store accepted returns.

I found an archive of the full set that includes the Nothing Compares 2 U track. Seems that they opened the gig with the song [0]. There's a neat story in the link about the show and how this bootleg got around.

  Mr.Bungle
  Date: 1990-05-27
  Venue: (BBurnett) @The Full Moon Saloon, San Francisco, CA
  Recorded By: Sean Lyons
  Source: Sony Stereo Clip-On Mic > Cassette Walkman > audience master cassette > Tascam 3-head Professional Cassette Deck Model 130 > Tascam DA40 > Tascam CDRW5000 > Samplitude Professional 7.11
[0] https://archive.org/details/bungle1990-05-27.sony
Are you certain Faith No More did the cover? There's certainly a Mr. Bungle version [0] from a San Francisco gig in 1990. I remember grabbing this from the Bungle Fever FTP site back in around '99. I'd often download the bootlegs, burn them to audio CD and print out a cover of the gig poster if one was available.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTfSrUThyDk

Re:Fun With Pinball on Tuesday February 10, 2026 @11:45PM (#46970950)
I should have waited till after I dove deeper into the site before replying as I see the site links to a cool looking cardboard kit you can buy[1] (or you could if it wasn't sold out).

1. https://pinbox3000.com/

Re:Fun With Pinball on Tuesday February 10, 2026 @11:42PM (#46970933)
I would have loved seeing this as a kid. I was obsessed with wanting to build a pinball machine when I was young. At the time my skills only stretched as far as cardboard builds with elastic band bumpers and pencils for flippers, but I got a huge kick out of making different layouts for the balls to travel around.

It would be great to see some home made efforts now with so many amazing off the shelf bits of tech and 3D printers.

The site is also a nice compliment to the Technology Connections series on old pinball machines [1].

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue-1JoJQaEg

Re:Web-based image editor modeled after Deluxe Paint on Sunday January 25, 2026 @12:47PM (#46756243)
Steffest was just showing off his entry for the color cycling competition at GERP 2026 which uses a few of his tools to produce including DPaint.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyB5cvA6f78

EDIT: I see he posted a link at the bottom of the Readme.md I guess I should have scrolled to the bottom first.

The context seemed to last a few seconds. I went from a mock up screenshot of a fantasy video game, complete with first person weapon. Then as I moved forward the weapon became part of the scenery and the whole world blurred and blended until it became some sort of sci-fi abstract space. Spinning the camera completely changed look and style.

I ended up with a UI that closely resembled the Cyberpunk 2077 one complete with VO modal popup. I guess it must have featured a lot in the training data.

Really not sure what to make of this, seems to have no constraints on concept despite the prompt (I specifically used the word fantasy), no spatial memory, no collision, or understanding of landscape features in order to maintain a sense of place.

I do enjoy these kinds of write ups, especially when it's about something that might seem so simple on the surface, but in order to get looking great you really have to go in deep.

Lucas Pope did a really nice write up on how he developed his dithering system for Return of The Obra Dinn. Recommended if you also enjoyed this blog post.

https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=40832.msg136374...

Re:Building a Quake PC on Saturday January 17, 2026 @02:49PM (#46661399)
You've just brought back an old memory there. We used to do LAN parties at the weekend, and none of us has network cards, but one of our friends worked in the IT department of the local university. So he would bring a stack of cards with him and we'd spend hours setting them up and getting each PC on the network, often with great failure if he couldn't bring a batch of same branded cards.

We did learn over time which cards hated connecting with each other, and if he could bag a full batch of 3com we knew we'd likely be in for some early gaming.

Re:ASCII-Driven Development on Saturday January 10, 2026 @06:53PM (#46571213)
This type of issue comes up in the video game development world. Perhaps in part due to modern engines being off-the-shelf ready to render high quality assets and assets being so available, either internally or from an asset store. It helped push developers into putting high quality assets into games from the start, skipping the "grey box" steps.

I've had it on a number of projects now where high quality assets were pushed into early builds causing execs eyes to light up as they feel like they're seeing a near final product, blind to the issues and under developed systems below. This can start projects off on bad footing because expectations can quickly become skewed and focus can go to the wrong places.

At one studio there was a running joke about trees swaying because someone had decorated an outdoor level with simulated trees. During an early test the execs got so distracted by how much they swayed and if it was too much or too little that they completely ignored the gameplay and content that was supposed to be under review. This issue repeated itself a number of times to the point where meetings would begin with someone declaring "We are not here to review the trees, ignore the trees!"

I've brought this issue up more recently with the advent of AI, which with things like Sora, the act of creating video clips can be stitched together can look like subjectively exciting movie trailers. This now has people declaring that AI movies are around the corner. To me this looks like the similar level of excitement as seeing the trees sway. An AI trailer looks much closer to a shipping product than it should be because the underlying challenges are far from solved; nothing is said about the script, pacing, character development, story etc...

Re:Video Game Websites in the early 00s on Wednesday January 07, 2026 @12:18AM (#46522890)
Blues News is still very much alive https://www.bluesnews.com/ I only recently rediscovered it and it was such a nice surprise to see that it still looks pretty much as I remember back in '96.
Re:enclose.horse on Tuesday January 06, 2026 @02:22AM (#46509611)
I did Day 8 - I don't know if Perfect means I got the most optimal score, I do show up at the top of the graph.

https://enclose.horse Day 8 PERFECT! 100%

Re:GBC Boot Animation 88×31 Web Button on Tuesday January 06, 2026 @02:02AM (#46509508)
I've missed Web buttons. I remember entire movements done using them back in the mid 90's. There were some boycotts where people would put the buttons on their site to show support.

I also remember the ones proudly showing that their web page was written in Notepad or even Edit instead of some bloat ridden Frontpage or other generator site.

This was a really fun read. Will sub to your rss!

Re:enclose.horse on Tuesday January 06, 2026 @01:54AM (#46509463)
Enjoyed that.

Removing a block was a bit fiddly on FireFox (Floorp) due to the right click menu appearing when I tried to click on a tile.

Looking forward to tomorrows!

Why buy a new PC when your crummy old one can just connect to a fancy "cloud" computer which you can rent for a snappy monthly fee.

Want faster or more hours of access, they'll sell you a higher tier for that.

Remember the bigger the tier, the bigger the savings. 20% off if you subscribe for 12 months.

Already this week on ChatGPT+ I've had multiple banners above the chat box saying

"Shop smarter this session

Let ChatGPT do the digging for you, with in-depth research into the best deals and gifts."

I was working on a coding bug at the time, so not sure what kind of gift shopping it was hoping I was interested in.

That button will soon become "Show fewer ads" if it doesn't just get removed at all.

Just like how Youtube won't let you switch off Shorts, but will let you click "Show fewer" which lasts for a few weeks.

Re:I miss using em dashes on Monday September 01, 2025 @10:12PM (#45098413)
Same, it's one of the few alt codes I've committed to memory ALT+0151 in Windows.
HODL came from a drunk post on bitcoin talk.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=375643.0

This bugs me no end. Image search is so challenging to use because the results are a vague interpretation of what you ask for, and don't try to be more descriptive because that's just more words to throw in the mix of results
You can run a script to scoop up the search points for desktop and mobile to skip the monkey work of collecting points. It won't get the extra points for doing other reward tasks.

https://github.com/jack-mil/bing-rewards

Re:Using Windows 10 past EOL (via LTSC supported to 2032) on Thursday June 19, 2025 @01:59AM (#44315875)
I just looked up stats on the install base. I don't know how trustworthy statcounter is, but they state that this data is from may

  Desktop Windows Versions  Percentage Market Share
  Win10  53.19%
  Win11  43.22%
  Win7    2.48%
  WinXP  0.54%
  Win8.1  0.29%
  Win8    0.22% 
  Desktop Windows Version Market Share Worldwide - May 2025
Re:Using Windows 10 past EOL (via LTSC supported to 2032) on Tuesday June 17, 2025 @06:35PM (#44304723)
My PC doesn't have TPM. It's old, but still perfectly fine to run for my needs. I use Unreal 5, play games, watch videos. Could run quicker but it's no landfill device. I don't think it'll suddenly fall to pieces come October so I wasn't looking to scrap it by then.

Looks like the IoT LTSC version will work. I'm still hoping that Microsoft relent on this move. Last I checked Windows 10 is still a very popular OS and I find it unlikely that people are going to update if they haven't already. If some kind of WannaCry attack happens due to a security hole it's going to look bad on them.

Also, as a kinda dark humor moment. October 14th is the retirement day of Windows 10, which is also international e-waste day. Unless I missed the memo, I thought it was an effort to prevent creating e-waste not one of planned obsolescence to try and make more.

Re:I Made a Chair on Monday June 02, 2025 @06:00PM (#44163600)
When I heard that a friend had bought one of these for a week long canoe trip we were going on I thought it was absurd. The idea of taking such a home comfort on a camping trip went against everything I felt camping stood for. Then I tried it, then I bought one, now I take it on every camping trip I make.

It's so light it adds basically nothing to your carry weight. It takes seconds to put together. It's insanely comfortable. Kicking back in it after a long day's hike or canoe whilst prodding at the camp fire is such a joy.

I put it alongside my thermarest as a thing I never felt I'd ever buy and now use on every trip.

I only read about this recently. Such a dark premise, which I could imagine being an incredibly powerful movie if shot well, but missing the mark by even an inch would likely just end up to be an offensive mess. I presumed this movie was a case of the latter.
I find that using ways to step away from code help think things through in ways to overcome roadblocks. One recent trick I've found is rubber duck my issue into ChatGPT, which I used to do in a notepad (either digital or physical), the added advantage of ChatGPT is I can hit Enter once I'm done with my thoughts and get a response, which might have a solution in it.
I don't know if Discord fixed it as I haven't checked in a few years, but I tinkered with scraping some public Discords and I found that I could see hidden channels, not the data, but the channel names, which could do things like reveal to me if the same Discord was used for in-house development if it was a product Discord. Not great.

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