HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

robterrell

3,185 karma · joined October 25, 2010

submissionscomments
robterrell··on We ran AI agent swarms in Minecraft and Mindustry
> There was a tendency toward bureaucracy. Four agents spent 11 minutes appointing > a "sole fertilizer operator" for a single piece of bone meal on a single wheat > block.

Feels like a scene from Douglas Adams' B Ark.

robterrell··on I’m leaving OpenAI to build telepathy
For some reason your comment reminded me of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ky-uzsw0kqw
robterrell··on Judge approves $1.5B Anthropic settlement for pirated books used to train Claude
Not true. Individual authors could sign up for the settlement. One of my books was in there under my name.
robterrell··on Making Graphics Like it's 1993
This is so great. Another fun trick we used in the 90s was palette animation -- by swapping the palette you can create incredibly cool effects at a low runtime cost.
robterrell··on MacBook Neo is so popular that Apple doubled production
JAMF is popular. I've heard of Kandji too.
robterrell··on I’m writing again
Recently I've been thinking about the nerds/hippie dichotomy from that book. Really missing the anti-authoritarian streak that was so formative in the early computer industry.
robterrell··on US v. Heppner (S.D.N.Y. 2026) no attorney-client privilege for AI chats [pdf]
But that communication is clearly intended to be confidential. Also isn't having one attorney on a multi-party communication marked confidential sufficient to create privilege?
robterrell··on Roger Ebert Reviews "The Shawshank Redemption" (1999)
There's a pattern of movies flopping in theaters only to become top 10 on Netflix. It's very similar in many ways.

The difference is there was backend participation for VHS/DVD rentals... whereas Netflix is paying a one-time flat rate to acquire your flopped movie.

robterrell··on Byte Shop 50th Year Birthday Party
Fifty years ago this week, The Byte Shop opened its doors, becoming one of the epicenters of the personal computing earthquake that reshaped our world. A secret rebel base for a generation of hackers, engineers and tinkerers who would go on to build many of the technologies you now take for granted, it’s most famous today as the launchpad for the Apple-1.

Paul Terrell's Byte Shop was a nondescript El Camino Real storefront filled with early 8-bit computers, racks of electronics components, soldering irons and supplies, and some of the strangest and most wonderful people. This was a hangout for members of the Homebrew Computer Club. I know Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Lee Felsenstein, Chris Espinosa, and Andy Hertfeld were regulars. In the photo linked at the URL above, that's infamous phone phreaker John Draper (Captain Crunch) sitting in the window. There’s probably many others from here on HN.

This Sunday we’re throwing a party to celebrate the occasion, at the DoubleTree Hotel at the San Jose Airport, from 12–6. The afternoon will include:

* Meet-and-Greet Reception featuring demonstrations and displays of early personal computers by their original designers, plus autographed copies of period advertising.

* Books, products, and memorabilia, including computer books and hardware available for purchase.

* Silent auction of collector memorabilia signed by the designers, running throughout the afternoon.

* Stage presentation and Q&A, narrated by Lee Felsenstein of Homebrew Computer Club fame, with participation from the "Apple-1 Garage Gang” and other dignitaries, both in person and virtually.

* Tribute honoring the pioneers who helped shape the birth of personal computing and are no longer with us.

robterrell··on Lee Felsenstein
I know it's been days but since you asked he made a link:

https://byteshop50thyearbirthdayp.rsvpify.com

robterrell··on An Interview with Unity CEO Matthew Bromberg About Turnarounds
Zynga was acquired by Take2 in 2022 and is very much alive today.

IMHO the "predatory business" period of Zynga (e.g. the Tiny Tower vs Dream Heights) was prior to the arrival of team who executed the turnaround discussed in the interview.

robterrell··on Gemini 3
At this point I'm surprised they haven't been training on thousands of professionally-created SVGs of pelicans on bicycles.
robterrell··on Lee Felsenstein
Yep! Paul is my uncle. My parents had a franchise Byte Shop in Greensboro, NC when I was a kid.
robterrell··on Lee Felsenstein
Lee will be speaking next month in San Jose at an event for the 50th anniversary of the Byte Shop computer store. Incredible opportunity to hear from the man himself. For computer designers of the 8-bit era, I’d say he ranks next to Woz in terms of importance: the Sol-80, Osborne, Homebrew Computer Club, member of the Berkeley free speech movement. Curious to hear his thoughts on the industry today.
robterrell··on Lee Felsenstein
Please, this was my first thought too.
robterrell··on Hosting a website on a disposable vape
holy crap, what a rabbit hole you sent me down.
robterrell··on 996
If you're smart enough to get hired for one of these roles, and you're willing to work 996, be just a little bit smarter and found your own startup and take all the upside.
robterrell··on Mac Clones History: A Tale of Poor Margins and Bad Timing
I have one in the basement! The bar was called the "ISOpoint" bar. It was a great use of the tiny space. Also innovative was the IR keyboard. You could disconnect and move it pretty far from the main unit.
robterrell··on Mac Clones History: A Tale of Poor Margins and Bad Timing
ModBook is mentioned in the article. But Outbound (another deconstructed Mac) is not.
robterrell··on Anthropic agrees to pay $1.5B to settle lawsuit with book authors
As a published author who had works in the training data, can I take my settlement payout in the form of Claude Code API credits?

TBH I'm just going to plow all that money back into Anthropic... might was well cut out the middleman.

robterrell··on Anthropic agrees to pay $1.5B to settle lawsuit with book authors
With the per-item limit for "willful infringement" being $150,000, it's a bargain.
robterrell··on Adafruit Fruit Jam – An RP2350 mini computer running classic Macintosh
There's this one too: https://jcm-1.com/product/picomicromac/
robterrell··on Show HN: Smart email filters to unfuck your email
I have an appscript that uses Gemini for this. Works great. Usage is in in the free tier. I even had Gemini write the appscript.
robterrell··on How to rig elections [video]
This is the correct answer. More memorable and better number of syllables. Although I'm sure he wasn't the first either.
robterrell··on Encryption made for police and military radios may be easily cracked
Wired is killing it with great reporting this year. Worth subscribing and supporting.
robterrell··on GPT-5 for Developers
In what ways?
robterrell··on I designed my own fast game streaming video codec – PyroWave
Isn't the use of the H.264 motion vector to preserve bit when there is a camera pan? A pan is a case where every pixel in the frame will change, but maybe doesn't have to.
robterrell··on Sendkeys: Command line tool for automating keystrokes and mouse events on macOS
AppleScript supports the "delay" command. System Events supports both "keydown" and "keyup" in addition to keystroke.
robterrell··on Sendkeys: Command line tool for automating keystrokes and mouse events on macOS
You've always had this ability, but with more convoluted syntax:

  osascript -e "tell application \"System Events\" to keystroke \"whatever\""
Specify the application too with multiple -e parameters. This will copy whatever is selected in Safari:

  osascript -e "tell application \"Safari\" to activate" -e "tell application \"System Events\" to keystroke \"c\" using {command down}"
robterrell··on Apple announces Foundation Models and Containerization frameworks, etc
IIRC Swift Playgrounds goes pretty deep -- a full LLVM compiler for Swift and you can use any platform API -- but you can't build something for distribution. The limitations are all at the Apple policy level.
Page 1 of 24Next →