Hacker News Reader

superfamicomon Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2025 – Show and tell

Super Fine Cuts, super low run custom "vinyl" records. I have been working on automating some processing but currently it is all manual.

Had an overwhelming response as people are finding it mostly though ChatGPT which has been very interesting as I did a soft launch to friends only and no marketing.

https://superfinecuts.com/

superfamicomon Myna: Monospace typeface designed for symbol-heavy programming languages

Reminds me of the beautiful M+ fonts.

https://mplusfonts.github.io/

superfamicomon The Peach meme: On CRTs, pixels and signal quality (again)

I grew up with CRTs and bought one at a retro game conference to put on my desk for some gaming. I had all but forgotten the deafening noise they make. The sound is hard to describe if you have not heard it. The sound hits different than an arcade with a bunch of noises and music and everything going on, but in my generally quiet office you can hear it from 2 rooms away when it is on. I tend to prefer how the SNES looks on the CRT compared to any modern screen with super sharp pixels, but that is easily (expensively?) fixed with a RetroTINK 4K to get the CRT style filters. The noise is just something to consider I don't see discussed often. My cats had never heard that noise and it freaked them out the first time they heard it.

https://www.retrotink.com/shop/retrotink-4k

superfamicomon Fast-PNG: PNG image decoder and encoder

Nice! Remarkably similar to my own PNG implementation. I don't think I have pushed up the encoding work I did but should. I would highly recommend anyone / everyone to write a parser for a file format, you learn a lot. I also didn't implement the interlacing support.

My goal was not to be fast however, but to just document a good reference and be able to come back to it and understand what it was doing and what I wrote.

https://github.com/uttori/uttori-image-png

superfamicomon The Video Game History Foundation library opens in early access

One important item was a custom OCR for the magazine scans, particularly those with text on a crazy background. This was discussed in a Patreon call but might also be discussed in the podcast, I haven't listened through just yet. Another important distinction is it is actually being run and curated as a library (backend is preservica.com), not a grab bag like Archive.org can end up being, so the data will be more consistently correct.

superfamicomon Apple Intelligence is available today on iPhone, iPad, and Mac

I signed up for the iOS beta and haven't used any of the writing tools, but the AI summary of texts or emails has been really nice for glancing at the phone and getting a glance, especially for wall of text texters.

superfamicomon Ask HN: Did you personal website help you get hired? Tell about it

I run several sites but 2 of them tend to come up more in interviews and are all linked from my GitHub profile:

https://sfc.fm - A website to listen to Super Nintendo music in the browser. Folks usually find this more cool, talk about WASM and covers several common things we can skip over talking about items like RESTful APIs and random JavaScript questions.

https://wiki.superfamicom.org - A website for all things programming the Super Nintendo. This tends to be more interesting to management folk (which is interesting on its own) but tends to be a point in an interview where the "can this person actually program" questions end and culture questions start getting more specific. Recruiters also tend to latch onto this one as well.

No one ever mentions my blog, but I don't post all that much and the content is technical, but usually very niche.

superfamicomon Show HN: Pixeltune, a nicer chiptune and VGM player

Love this! I've been working on and running https://sfc.fm for about 7 years now so very similar interests!

One thing I did notice was the in the SPC emulation, particularly in Super Mario World `12a Athletic.spc` there is a lot of echo / reverb that isn't present in the actual file or game, is there secondary effect processing happening somewhere, I couldn't seem to turn it off, you can play it here https://sfc.fm/sfc/super-mario-world track 16

superfamicomon Inside the Super Nintendo cartridges

A similar thing happened with the Wolfenstein 3D port as well, where John Carmack gave Rebecca Heineman kudos for learning Japanese to read the patents to get the technical documentation, always cool history around these things, some more in my post about it here: https://eludevisibility.org/super-noahs-ark-3d-source-code

superfamicomon Ask HN: How did yall meet your SO?

We met on Tinder, both with "joke" profiles and neither of us seriously "playing the game". We ended up meeting and hitting it off. That was a decade ago and through COVID and everything else there is no one else I would rather work from home with and spend my whole day with.

superfamicomon Ask HN: Those making $0/month or less on side projects – Show and tell

https://wiki.superfamicom.org/

A custom made wiki for documents and resources related to developing software (games) for the Super Nintendo / Super Famicom. Started in 2010 and still going strong, switched software a few years ago from Ruby to Node.

https://sfc.fm/

An online emulator for the SPC700, the sound chip from the Super Nintendo / Super Famicom with a large selection of the game library's OST to listen to. Designed to scratch a personal itch and play with Emscripten years ago.

superfamicomon A Letter from _why (2005)

Shared previously in 2011 with some good discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2915537

superfamicomon Ask HN: How I get a job that uses C?

Right now Handmade Seattle is happening and has job booths specifically target low level programming, check out some of those companies https://handmade-seattle.com/

superfamicomon Ask HN: Can I see your scripts?

On macOS this can be really useful, change the current terminal to the top most folder in Finder, do not recall where it came from:

  # Change to the Front Folder open in Finder
  function ff {
    osascript -e 'tell application "Finder"'\
    -e 'if (0 < (count Finder windows)) then'\
    -e 'set finderpath to get target of the front window as alias'\
    -e 'else'\
    -e 'set finderpath to get desktop as alias'\
    -e 'end if'\
    -e 'get POSIX path of finderpath'\
    -e 'end tell';};\
  function cdff { cd "`ff $@`" || exit; };

superfamicomon Ask HN: Share your personal site

Fun: https://sfc.fm/ Super Nintendo music emulated in the browser

Emulation Blog: https://eludevisibility.org/ Mostly retro gaming prototype and other development hardware or otherwise obscure content.

superfamicomon First look: adding type annotations to JavaScript

It seems odd to go out of the way to not break older libraries like mootools by renaming built in functions only to now break all older parsers for hints that don't convert to any performance improvement. I love the idea, and use JSDoc comments for that exact reason, but it feels inconsistent.

superfamicomon Ask HN: What is your “I don't care if this succeeds” project?

I've been waiting on this for decades. I think the not being popular is helping out on this front. Also that it only ever costs money and never makes any really helps.

superfamicomon Ask HN: What is your “I don't care if this succeeds” project?

I made a website to listen to Super Nintendo / Super Famicom music emulated in the browser. It was a great way to learn about Emscripten. Not sure what it would succeed at other than being popular, and I can assure you it is not.

https://sfc.fm/

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

There was a more recent Kickstarter that got my interest in the DOS style games restarted: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/eniko/coding-history-3d...

superfamicomon Why don't we use the math we learn in school?

I'm sorry you had so many less than awesome teachers. I had an Algebra 1 teacher in middle school (United States) that really made a huge difference. The way she taught was so different than every other teach I had up until that point. She approached everything in a meaningful and useful way. It really set me up for success then and now.

superfamicomon AI could end foreign-language subtitles

The article seems more against manual dubbing and related difficulties than actual subtitles. The best subtitles I've seen included relevant context on cultural jokes I would have completely missed had there not been explanation text. One example would be recently while watching a Korean drama with dubs that didn't address cultural items and beauty standard, the content itself came off very differently than the intention seemed.

superfamicomon Street Fighter II, Sound System Internals

If anyone else was curious and wanted to extract the samples to a usable format you can extract the contents with the repo linked in the article, convert with the other tool linked and finally convert from PCM to WAV with ffmpeg:

  node bin/extract-samples.js sf2ua

  for f in *.vox; do echo "Processing $f file.."; ./adpcm/adpcm od "$f" "$f.pcm"; ffmpeg -f s16le -ar 8000 -ac 1 -i "$f.pcm" -ar 44100 -ac 2 "$f.wav"; done

superfamicomon Ask HN: What do you snack on while coding?

I've developed a routine of walking to my local grocery store (Metropolitan Market) and getting a soup from their lunch counter / deli area and sipping on it while I work.

superfamicomon The Matrix Resurrections estimated to lose Warner Bros $100M

I saw it, and enjoyed it for what it was. I will say that it very much felt like a few "Matrix" projects mashed-up together. I especially feel like the new characters could have stood on their own as a miniseries much better.

superfamicomon Study finds no detrimental effects of psilocybin in 10mg or 25mg dose

A few comments pointing out the correlation to spiritual / mystical communities. I know many engineers who use or have used and have fallen deeper into their hustle life style. I would say that it helps you explore yourself, be that chakras or crypto.

superfamicomon Americans are rethinking where they want to live

I have a home in Nashville, Tennessee but chose to move to Seattle, Washington for work (software engineering), but stay here for the access to everyday life improvements- restaurant variety, activities, etc. Nashville has grown a lot, but you are still car dependent and the Conservative values run deep there, though those folks are being displaced as the housing market continues to boom which makes them more hostile to outsiders than they already were.

superfamicomon Neon Genesis Evangelion (2019)

Lots of good comments from the last time this was posted too:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21323736

superfamicomon Man left shocked as his house is 'stolen'

I live in the US and had my debit card (number only, one of the bigger data leaks) stolen years ago and ever since then my bank will check every purchase with me over $300. It was really frustrating for years until someone else took my card (from another data leak) and was easily stopped and new card issued. I cannot imagine someone selling my home without involving me, or at the very least without several other of my personal contact methods also compromised at the same time.