HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

garciansmith

1,208 karma · joined December 15, 2021

submissionscomments
garciansmith··on Xbox for Sale: Don't Believe Anything Until It Is Officially Denied
It's also a quote from a New York Times interview with her: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/30/arts/xbox-microsoft-asha-...

The full quote and context from the interview:

"But she did not stall when asked if her endgame at Xbox was divestiture.

'Xbox is not for sale,' Sharma said. 'We will do whatever it takes to set the company up for success, and we will look at the right partnerships, the right operating model and everything needed to achieve that.'

In boxing, they call that a bob and weave."

garciansmith··on A brief history of Windows scroll bar shortcuts
In KDE's system settings there's a "Clicking in scrollbar track" setting under General Behavior in the Workspace section.
garciansmith··on A brief history of Windows scroll bar shortcuts
With regards to Qt, does that mean Qt apps on Windows or something? I use KDE so there are a lot of Qt apps and they are all click-to-scroll in the scrollbar. Of course it's KDE so it's configurable so you can change it to click-for-page-up/down and middle click to scroll, but left-click to scroll is the default.
garciansmith··on Steam Frame starts at $1059
Thanks for breaking that down. I actually did think on Steam that if there was anything like this Steam would mark it as having a EULA. I don't tend to play games from big companies like that, but the use and sale of your info when you don't even agree to or even know about it is disturbing. All this stuff should be marked up front before you even purchase or interact with the game.
garciansmith··on Steam Frame starts at $1059
Plus Valve also says they don't sell any data the collect to anyone else.

But the idea that games have data collection outside of the platform (e.g., Steam) is surprising to me. Would this be VR games only or a particular type of game, like ones with online multiplayer? I don't own a VR headset and don't really play multiplayer games these days. Of the games I have played (mostly indie), I've come across very few that have a EULA or anything that would imply any data collection of any sort.

garciansmith··on Steam Frame starts at $1059
I appreciate that the review goes into the privacy issues and legal disclaimers with each. I don't doubt that everyone expects the Meta product to be much worse there, but wow it's a stark contrast.
garciansmith··on Decky: Open-source DIY stream deck
Not to be confused with Decky[1] for Steam Deck.

[1] https://decky.xyz/

garciansmith··on 216M Spy TVs – The LG Smart TV Problem [video]
Keep all the processing on device? Do so in a way that is legal in the jurisdiction you are selling the devices in without claiming it's the owner's responsibility to get consent from all individuals (even if they cannot legally consent because they are, say, a child!?) to comply with wiretapping laws in their own home? Choose not to sell an object that comes with software made to spy on you and sell all it learns to advertisers?

That fact that you read something like this as acceptable "legal boilerplate" just shows how, very sadly in my opinion, invasions of privacy have been normalized by these corporations.

garciansmith··on Ganon's Mysterious Origins (Revisited)
The argument hinges on Ganon's sprite in the original Legend of Zelda looking like the a monster from Kamen Rider and the skull on Ganon's belt looking like the monster group's symbol.

I don't think either looks similar, at all. I don't get how you can look at a symbol of an eagle entwined with a snake and say, oh yeah, the skull pixel art they made for Zelda? Totally inspired by that. Not just a skull, you know, that symbol traditionally associated with evil. And Ganon looks like some kind of big pig man, not some vague crab-bat hybrid (e.g., he has no claws or wings). It then the article goes on to cite an Iwata Asks episode where the say the inspiration was a pig character from the Journey to the West, so I'm not sure why it's trying to seek some odd alternative explanation.

garciansmith··on “We want it to really confuse people, but also really make people happy”
I mean, sure, but you seemed to be differentiating the Playdate from other video game hardware. Maybe I misunderstood.
garciansmith··on “We want it to really confuse people, but also really make people happy”
I think the makers of the Playdate have always been pretty clear about what the console is about. And I'm not sure you could ever consider a video game console a "practical" purchase. You never need to play video games.

Video games are always shaped by the hardware they are played on, but there used to be way, way more variance. Hardware limitations forced devs to make choices that resulted in interesting mechanics, interesting ways to tell stories. Which means there are some odd and interesting games on Playdate that probably wouldn't have existed otherwise. That's why I got one anyhow.

...Also it was $170 and came with 20 games when I got it (granted, the price has gone up since). I don't get how that can be considered a luxury good. I get that could be a good amount of money to some people, but compared to other video games, I don't think it is.

garciansmith··on Saab has unveiled its A3 collaborative combat aircraft concept
Wasn't the 9-2x just a rebadged Subaru Impreza?
garciansmith··on “I just chose words carefully”
But he didn't need to do that before either. He did it because he cared (in a weird way, sure). And some people will still care.

Video game text FAQs in general though were a dying genre before gen AI anyhow. Something I bemoan when I try to find one little piece of info and I'm faced with guides that are spread out on dozens of webpages for impressions of ads that I don't even see, or long videos that I have try to scroll through and take a ton of time just to find out if the person even went to the area I'm interested in. I sure miss Ctrl+F on GameFAQs.

garciansmith··on Stopping the smart TV from being used against you
Yeah, previous discussion about this issue with LG monitors and TVs is here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48956688
garciansmith··on Ordinary Abundance
At least in whatever apartment you can afford you won't trip constantly due to each of the four rooms having slightly different floor heights. And you won't have a wall that extends into another room but somehow not take up the space, like you're in some perpetual "House of Blue Leaves"-esque horror. Your apartment will be real and not made by AI.
garciansmith··on Video game lawyer says all her clients have anti-AI contracts
So many companies and individuals using AI and are like, here's our (sloppy) product! Whether it's a game or program or just a blog post. But it's not theirs. They didn't create it. They can't claim copyright over it. Even if they change it a little bit, I don't get how that somehow is transformative enough to grant any protection. So unless how copyright works drastically changes, I don't understand what they think is going to happen, at least from a perspective of a person or company who is doing this to make money.
garciansmith··on Microsoft Edge is about to lock out older ad blockers, just like Chrome did
It's still a security risk though: you still have to visit those sites to determine if they have ads or not. Why browse without proper protection?
garciansmith··on Mykhailo Fedorov reveals struggle to secure Patriot missiles and Western support
EA-3167 is referring to Iran, not Ukraine.
garciansmith··on The BBC Tetris Companion
There's a MiSTer core: https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/BBCBridgeCompanion_MiSTer
garciansmith··on Medieval Ideas About Food
I'm continually baffled that there are people on HN that browse the internet without a content blocker. UBlock origin on Firefox, I see none of what you describe. I just wouldn't read anything except Wikipedia if I didn't use them.
garciansmith··on Just because a game is on disc doesn't mean it will work in the future
> Sony is discontinuing disc sales as a response to how gamers are buying games not the other way around.

I disagree. They are using that as an excuse, when in reality they simply desire more control. When Sony releases their sales numbers they never compare physical and digital sales of games that are offering both, but rather compare physical sales to everything digital including DLC and digital-only games to make the percentage of digital sales seem higher. You can't ever get a real comparison when there are options for both. Since it is true that physical sales are declining, they feel that they can do so without significant push back. Disc sales are still significant, and even besides the big companies there are tons of smaller companies that would gladly continue to order discs for indie games, limited editions, collectors, etc.

That said, I think you are quite correct about the "ongoing relationship with the manufacturer". This is just another step in the direction of seizing total control over things that people once considered that they owned.

garciansmith··on The great wealth transfer reality check
I disagree about drywall versus plaster, save for ease of repair. Maybe it's just in most cases you won't encounter the highest quality drywall, nor will the installation be well done and actually last even if, in theory, it could be done well. E.g., my 100+ year plaster is still there and totally fine save in high-moisture rooms, whereas my friend's 20-year-old house has screws or nails starting to pop out of the drywall everywhere.

I was speaking to an architect about this very issue a few weeks ago, and he also noted that there are also acoustic properties to plaster and lathe that make it much nicer for residences (and if you have an old home and can afford it, repair the plaster and don't replace it with drywall).

Although maybe texture and acoustics count as aesthetics to you (same with real wood floors looking far better than vinyl). When it comes to materials used in residences, aesthetics matter to a lot of people.

garciansmith··on The only road in London where you have to drive on the right
There are some spots in the US where you drive on the left, albeit for a short distance and the road is divided. Still messes with my brain. E.g., here in the northern suburbs of Detroit (W. Big Beaver going under I-75): https://www.google.com/maps/@42.5620634,-83.1581674,18z
garciansmith··on PlayStation Network outage leaves players dreading all-digital future
You don't care about game ownership, collecting physical media or being able to sell or let someone borrow your games, nor that a big company controls when you can play your games. Ok.

Do you not understand that other people do care about those things? The main reason people are mad is exactly the word you use to describe what you seem to be happy with: games are becoming "a service". Games did not use to be "a service" that someone other than you, the game owner, controlled. That is what companies like Sony are destroying; this is what people are upset about.

garciansmith··on I'm So Tired of "Is This AI?"
"Somewhat dishonest"? It's plagiarism. Just because you claim the output of a machine as your own instead of the writing of another human as your own doesn't somehow make it yours and not plagiarism.
garciansmith··on Map of the world's great castles and fortresses
It also lists some "castles" that no longer exist, e.g., Fort Detroit, which was where downtown is and very much not extant (and not to be confused with Fort Wayne to the southwest of downtown, which does exist but isn't on the map). This is just some AI slop wasting our time.
garciansmith··on Nearly one-third of Steam users have ten-year-old GPUs [video]
What is microtx? I see some Oracle product called that but I don't get what it has to do with games.
garciansmith··on Valve say there's no end in sight to the memory crisis, prices going to increase
This article is just a summary of one from Bloomberg: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2026-07-17/valve-...
garciansmith··on LG monitors silently install software through Windows Update without consent
If Windows continually supports third parties installing malware (without your consent and through Windows update, not some third party updater), at what point can the OS itself be considered malware?
garciansmith··on Steam Machine: Between 12k and 15k Units Sold per week
The selling point, for me, is that it's a console in both form factor (not a PC tower, smaller than small PC cases) and easy of use (you plug it in, you play games, no shopping around for parts), yet because it's a PC you have control over it (load non-Steam games, use the desktop to do whatever, install a different OS even).

Clearly not for everyone, but for someone like me who wants a more powerful box than the Steam Deck or Switch under a TV, yet hates the locked-down nature of the traditional console makers (which are just slowly getting worse, viz. Sony's announcement to kill physical media and the control it brings owners).

Page 1 of 10Next →