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I think that's the joke

chainwaxon New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

I'm actually coming around to realizing that I _do_ expect a desktop PC to be small. I'm finding myself only considering Mini ITX desktop cases when I think about upgrading my desktop. I only have one video card and don't have storage requirements that necessitate lots of 3.5" drives, a big nvme is all I need.

We no longer need CD/DVD/floppy drives, storage has shrunk/moved to the cloud. The only thing that's really grown inside a pc case is the video card, and most of these ITX cases are built specifically around fitting popular cards.

Even folks primarily focused on gaming are probably thinking that a full ATX case is a lot of wasted space.

Maybe it's just me, but I think ATX full and mid towers are going the way of the dinosaur.

chainwaxon Minecraft: Java Edition now uses SDL3

Correct me if I'm wrong, but what you're describing is client-hosted Bedrock servers, not a persistent, always available, self-hosted server. AFAIK connecting to a friend's world in Bedrock is free, but they must also be online. Hosting a persistent Bedrock server is a paid feature (Realms).

Additionally, highlighting that Bedrock Minecraft is not supported on Mac.

There are surely other ways of enabling multiplayer Minecraft for a family than what I've described, but this is the way I'd recommend.

chainwaxon Minecraft: Java Edition now uses SDL3

I'm aware that if you buy Minecraft proper (~$30) you have a license for Bedrock and Java, but I'm a little blurry on what license you get when you buy Minecraft from the Google Play store (~$5). I'm assuming it's a Bedrock-only license, and Microsoft makes money off selling skins etc.

I think most seasoned players, technical folks, or Mac users, would prefer Java. Java Minecraft doesn't have microtransactions, skinning your character is a matter of changing a file, and the plugin/mod support is huge. That's why I stuck to treating the server as "Java first, Bedrock supported" instead of ignoring Java and only playing Bedrock.

chainwaxon Minecraft: Java Edition now uses SDL3

A couple of weeks ago I set up a server this way to help get my fiancee into video games. I already owned a proper Minecraft PC license from way back in the day, and bought Minecraft on Android for ~$5. My thinking is that we could play together, me on a Mac and her on a Galaxy Tab we have with a controller. Attempting to get these two clients to play together is what led me into the same situation you are about to find yourself in.

Something to know is that there are two versions of Minecraft, Java and Bedrock (C++). Some others in this thread have talked about the history of why this is, but the important thing to know is that Java runs on Mac/Windows/Linux, and there are some neat launchers that can run it on Android. Bedrock runs on Consoles/Tablets/Phones/Windows. Note that Bedrock _does not_ run on Linux or Mac.

There are ways to host Bedrock-only servers if you're _sure_ no users will ever be running the Java client, but I would recommend running a Java server with the Geyser and Floodgate plugins for compatibility reasons. The plugins are a translation layer that trick Bedrock clients into thinking they're connecting to a Bedrock server. I've been playing this way (me on Mac/Java, her on Android/Bedrock) for two weeks with no real issues. I haven't explored adding any other plugins to the server.

I'm running this in a container on an old Thinkpad in my office. This setup is common enough that GLM-5.2 set it up in (nearly) one shot.

I also really recommend running an instance of https://bluemap.bluecolored.de/ in another container on the same machine. It hosts a neat map of your world, which your family could pull up on their phones while not playing. My server itself is LAN only, but I used a Cloudflare tunnel to host the map so she can show her friends: https://mcmap.thg3.net/

Let me know if you have any questions or would like my server config!

chainwaxon Ask HN: Should I do a CS masters at Cambridge or start as a new grad at Amazon?

Cambridge. The experience will be more enjoyable, the networking will be good, and seeing a Masters from Cambridge on a resume would make a bigger impression (to me) than seeing that you worked for Amazon.

chainwaxon Higher usage limits for Claude and a compute deal with SpaceX

I think he's referring to the fact that Colossus is powered by fossil fuels.

chainwaxon Migrating to React Native's new architecture

Yes, but not for long.

Src: https://github.com/react-native-community/discussions-and-pr...

chainwaxon Blurry rendering of games on Mac

I played all the way through Space Age on a M1 Macbook Air no problem.

chainwaxon A Rust shaped hole

I does indeed bundle it's runtime into the executable, but this is not dissimilar from Go bundling it's gc into every executable.

Granted a compiled hello world Go program will be <2mb while a similar compiled Deno program will be more like 70. I imagine many usecases may not have a storage constraint though, and in that case why not?

chainwaxon Ask HN: What are you working on? (February 2025)

I've been working on an app that will use ai to decorate my Anki cards with audio/example sentences/images. The more I get into it though, the more I think I may just end up writing my own flashcard app. I feel like most of the project has been spent wrestling with AnkiConnect, while the fun stuff has been fairly simple.

chainwaxon E Ink’s color ePaper tech gets supersized for outdoor displays

I personally love this. I have a pretty strong distaste for bright screens everywhere and rather like the look of e-ink screens. I'd love a future where we move away from putting up LCD panels on every surface we can advertise on.

chainwaxon E Ink’s color ePaper tech gets supersized for outdoor displays

https://usetrmnl.com/

This was recently shared here on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42137513

chainwaxon Show HN: Bike route planner that follows almost only official bike trails

I love where you're going with this, nearly all of my little side projects have something to do with maps and bikes. No comment on how the routes are as I'm not really familiar with any good routes in bigger Euro cities, but as someone who rides around NYC a lot this would be really useful in making routes for visitors who aren't as keen on riding in NYC traffic.

Mobile needs some work. Are you planning on open sourcing this? I'm a mobile dev that might be able to clean that up a little. Good candidate for React Native.

chainwaxon How good are American roads?

I'm from South Carolina, pretty close to the border with North Carolina. All my life i've heard that South Carolina's roads are terrible, especially compared to North Carolina's _amazing_ roads.

Looking at this data though, it seems while NC edges out SC by a small margin on interstate roads, SC actually beats NC on local roads.

Take that, North Carolina!

chainwaxon My first game with Carimbo, my homemade engine

because code is like pasta

In more ways than one

chainwaxon Bluesky adds direct messages

I'd give it a spin

chainwaxon Exercises to Learn Rust

Being the first language to contest C++ in places like the kernal is a pretty big deal, no? It helps that the borrow checker is a new idea around being safe without gc.

chainwaxon Oh My Git: An open source game about learning Git

Love this, and may be helpful for incoming interns who are fuzzy on Git. Up until now my strategy has been to let them figure it out and point them to https://ohshitgit.com/ if they screw up.

chainwaxon Ask HN: Are height adjustable desks worth it?

I recently purchased a walking treadmill for my standing desk, though it hasn't come in yet. I do think that if you're interested in burning some calories on the clock, a standing desk is a prerequisite.

chainwaxon Nutrient found in beef and dairy improves immune response to cancer in mice

This has been called into question recently.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36216940/

https://www.healthdata.org/research-analysis/library/health-...

chainwaxon Microsoft completes $69B deal to buy Activision Blizzard

A Fallout 3 remaster is in the works.

https://www.ign.com/articles/oblivion-remaster-fallout-3-rem...

chainwaxon Nintendo demoed Switch 2 to developers at Gamescom

I have to imagine the Steam Deck playing in the same price bracket (the refurb base model was going for $320), Nintendo _may_ feel the pressure to support backwards compatibility. Why buy a new device and Breath of the Wild over again when you could just get a Deck and play a large % of ever PC game to have ever existed?

Nintendo is also in a different position this time around, as the WiiU, DS, 3DS, etc had such different hardware that remaking a game for the Switch was essentially a necessity, whereas I expect the Switch 2 to be a Switch with faster hardware.

chainwaxon Ask HN: Tell us about your project that's not done yet but you want feedback on

Currently working on a site that allows you to use your data from run/bike apps to visualize your data on a map, make it look neat, and order a print.

I have an early version of it hosted on https://ridemapper.henrygrant.dev and add features as I think of them/when I have time.

https://github.com/henrygrant/ridemapper-svelte

chainwaxon Cruise vehicle gets stuck in wet concrete while driving in San Francisco

Same on Chrome/osx

chainwaxon Htmx is part of the GitHub Accelerator

My map has a _bunch_ of controls overtop of it that let the user mess around with what's displayed.

Could I have made it work? Yes

Could I have just made the map it's own self-sufficient component and left the rest of the app as is? Also yes

Did I do these things? No. As one tends to do, I just nuked it and started over

chainwaxon Htmx is part of the GitHub Accelerator

Congratulations! I had a fun time making a little project with Htmx, though ultimately went with something else as I ended up heavily using a openlayers, and map libs are notoriously heavy with clientside javascript and Svelte ended up being a better tool for the job.

I plan on using it again for a future Golang project and look forward to following it's development. If you're in need of a simple/medium complex front end for your app, and _especially_ if you're already using template fragments[0], I really recommend giving HTMX a shot. It's pretty fun to work with coming from Javascriptland.

Also, the guy who runs their Twitter account[1] is hilarious.

[0] https://htmx.org/essays/template-fragments/

[1] https://twitter.com/htmx_org

chainwaxon Expo – Open-source platform for making universal apps for Android, iOS, and web

My company is moving our app to React Native and evaluated Expo as an option. Our conclusion was that we needed some of the features that using Expo doesn't let you use (a lot of native modules, as we're not rewriting 100% of the app all at once).

Additionally, I think RN has come a really long way from where it was when Expo first came about. Expo sought to smooth over a lot of rough edges, some of which no longer exist.

I think Expo realizes this as well, as their main revenue generator is now their deployment tools. The framework is opinionated toward using those paid services, which my org doesn't want to use as we already have processes for building and deploying, which makes working with it cumbersome.

https://expo.dev/pricing

chainwaxon Expo – Open-source platform for making universal apps for Android, iOS, and web

No I don't think so. Next.js adds a truckload of functionality to React, plus handles the server side, etc.

Expo aims to abstract away everything that a web developer wouldn't inherently understand when moving to mobile, i.e. the native stuff. Whether or not it succeeds in that mission, or if it's worth it, is up for debate.

chainwaxon Ask HN: How can a junior dev maximize their income?

Though I don't make a killing, I think I've done pretty well jumping up the pay scale over my career so far. In 6 years I went from $60k to ~$185k, and I'm still aiming up.

Graduated college in 2017 and landed a job at a Real Estate company that employed 2 other developers. I was the "junior" for 1.5 years or so, but when we hired another I sort of fell into "mid-level", as I wan't the most-junior person.

In year 3, I jumped to a smaller company that was mostly engineers in ecommerce. They wanted someone to lead a consumer-facing marketplace thing that fed off a bunch of existing APIs. It was maybe a little over my head in hindsight, but they were letting me build something from scratch and hire some juniors to help so I jumped on the opportunity. Went from 60k to 100k here.

That place ended up being fairly chaotic and I didn't really believe in leadership, so after I finished the platform and had it basically in maintenance mode, I started looking for another job. I went from 100k to 120k here.

I think the last place bolstered my resume a bit, as I led building out an app from scratch. This got the attention of a f500 finance company that hired me at 155k+20k bonus as a senior. After a year that went to 165+20. I wanted more, but this was during all of the layoffs and apparently a lot of the org just got a 3-5% raise.

I definitely could have started higher, but coming from a ~3.0 GPA from a Southeastern liberal arts school I wasn't complaining and I think I've done a pretty good job so far moving up in pay. If I have any advice to give, its

1. Work hard. I generally only work 40hrs, but it's not unusual for me to do more without being asked. I care about my work, I take ownership of it, and I try to learn more outside of work.

2. Never accept the raise/bonus amount that is offered to you. Until the f500 company, I asked for a bigger raise/bonus than was offered to me and I have always gotten it. This move was probably the biggest contributor to my take-home, though I don't think it'd have worked if I didn't do [1] above. No one is going to fire you if you ask for more, the worst they will do is say no and acknowledge what you're looking for in the future. This is what happened to me at my current company at the end of the last fiscal year, and honestly I understood why they said no. The company was tighter than last year, but my boss and his boss both know what I'm after this year.

I hope this is helpful to someone. Not all of us land the cushy tech job out of college, but you can run your way up the ladder if you apply yourself.