Hacker News Reader

dasKrokodilon Lunatic Fringe is a game originally distributed as an AfterDark screensaver

I love that they want to recreate it, as I spent quite some time with the original when I was younger.

However, right now it doesn't seem to run that well. I'm getting estimated framerates of around 5 fps on a M3 Macbook Pro, making it essentially unplayable.

I don't see any other comments about the performance - am I the only one?

dasKrokodilon A Student's Guide to Writing with ChatGPT

At the time I'm writing this, there are over 260 comments to this article and yours is still the only one that mentions the enormous energy consumption.

I wonder whether this is because people don't know about it or because they simply don't care...

But I, for one, try to use AI as sparingly as possible for this reason.

dasKrokodilon MonkeyType: A customizable typing practice playground

I also like https://www.typelit.io/

Makes me feel like I'm writing a book.

dasKrokodilon Designing my own watch (2020)

I can appreciate the looks and the engineering, but it would drive me crazy to figure out the current date on that watch. I think readability is super important for watches, and at least for the date, this one isn't really that readable at all.

It's less of a problem, but the low contrast between the hands and the face is also not that great for readability.

dasKrokodilon Denver gave homeless people $1k/mth. Year later, nearly half had housing

I would like to see a study on the opposite case: give them free housing and see how many of them will then manage to get a job that pays at least 1000$ per month.

dasKrokodilon AI headphones let wearer listen to a single person in a crowd by looking at them

I think that the problem of not hearing well in places like busy restaurants and bars is also often exacerbated by bad room acoustics. Acoustics are sadly an often overlooked factor when designing interior spaces (except for concert halls and such obviously).

dasKrokodilon The New Audi A3 Is Amess with In-Car Subscriptions

Does the emission cheating also require a subscription now?

dasKrokodilon Motorola's newest budget phones look surprisingly good

In my personal (and anecdotal) experience, they don't last long enough to sell them anyway.

dasKrokodilon What Is Woodshedding? Mastering the Art of Focused Music Practice

Yeah, I also thought the article had been AI-generated. Super shallow and low-effort, and it seems like the other articles on that site aren't any better. Avoid.

dasKrokodilon RimWorld: A sci fi colony SIM driven by an intelligent AI storyteller

I don't really get the complaints about Rimworld's difficulty. There is a variety of difficulty settings, which can even be adjusted during the game. There is also the option to turn off Mechanoids and/or Bugs.

There's no shame in adjusting the settings of a single-player game to your own liking.

dasKrokodilon Magnitude 7.3 earthquake off the Coast of Fukushima Prefecture

Interesting theory, but wouldn't the ice only melt at one pole cap at a time?

dasKrokodilon uBlock Origin becomes top addon on Firefox

There was an internet before everything was funded by ads. It was different, but also nice.

dasKrokodilon What makes a great opening line?

"The majority of Terrans were six-legged."

dasKrokodilon Lenovo announces the first Arm-based ThinkPad

> In most cases that I've seen, a 16:10 vs 16:9 display has the same pixel width (the 16 part) part and more vertical pixels. So you were never actually sacrificing width as you claim.

Sure, that's true for the pixels (which might also be the more important part), but the actual width (inches) is still bigger on a 16:9 (for the same diagonal).

dasKrokodilon Lenovo announces the first Arm-based ThinkPad

True, but if you're having two windows side by side, the wider 16:9 will give you more horizontal space to do so.

One more thing about display sizes and aspect ratio:

Since display sizes are usually given by the length of the diagonal, those aspect ratios that are closer to a square (1:1) will have a bigger area for the same diagonal. With the same diagonal length, a 16:10 has a ~5% larger area than a 16:9, and a 4:3 has a ~12% larger area than the 16:9.

This is a nice tool for display size calculations: https://displaywars.com/

dasKrokodilon Ledit: Simple, GPU-rendered, no bullshit text editor

Good points!

However, the high-refresh-rate monitor also needs to be supported. I have a 144 hz monitor which works fine with my Windows PC, but when I connect it to my work Macbook, it goes back to 60 hz. In the MacOS display settings, there is a dropdown for the refresh rate, but it only lets me choose between 50 and 60 hz... :(

dasKrokodilon Dwarf Fortress Steam Updates – Release Roadmap

Yes you can, but at that point a laptop might be a more convenient solution.

dasKrokodilon Time to run or time to walk? Your body knows the answer

Here in Germany, back in the 90s, racewalking was sometimes broadcast at night on Eurosport, along with other weirdo sports like Australian Football.

dasKrokodilon Traffic Simulator

I love the 'politeness' slider :)

dasKrokodilon How to know if you’re addicted

Funny how they keep writing 'drugs OR alcohol'

dasKrokodilon Silicon Valley’s tech monopoly is over. Is the future in Austin, Texas?

...book banning/burning

dasKrokodilon The data are clear: The boys are not all right

> Capitalism has taken more people out of poverty than anything else on planet earth and produced incredible abundance and flourishing in the past 200 years.

That's not wrong, but it came at the cost of massively depleting the oil reserves and polluting the ecosystems.

dasKrokodilon Separating urine from sewage could mitigate some environmental problems

https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2010/09/recycling-animal-and...

A related article from Low-Tech Magazine, published in 2010.

dasKrokodilon Why is the Zoom app listening on my microphone when not in a meeting?

I agree with you, except for the word 'subtly'. It's not subtle at all.

dasKrokodilon Inside Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator’s deliberately designed friction

In FTL, losing is part of the fun.

dasKrokodilon Rustenstein 3D: Game programming like it's 1992

Yeah, so many comments here talking about the 'original' Wolfenstein while meaning Wolfenstein 3D...

This is where it all started:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fgok9eHqO8

dasKrokodilon Koenigsegg's Tiny Electric Motor Makes 335 HP and 443 LB-FT of Torque

For better or worse, hp is still used a lot in European publications as well.

dasKrokodilon Please make a dumb car

Yeah I can't imagine it either. With the current state of its "self-driving" technology, the Tesla would probably cause several accidents on the way to the impound lot.

dasKrokodilon Sega quits arcade business after 50 years

While it hasn't been the case recently, way back in the day arcade machines had much better graphics than anything you could play on home consoles or computers.

dasKrokodilon Kazushige Goto, a patent clerk who became one of the best assembly optimisers

Respectfully, that's not such a good example, as both of those names can be first or last names. DOE John would be a better example.