Gonna be honest, my productivity app once upon a time was unsaved sublime text documents
This is still my way of doing things!!
What have you moved on to?
Readit Newsalexchantavy commented on My productivity app is a never-ending .txt file (2020) jeffhuang.com/productivit... · Posted by u/simonebrunozzi
alexchantavy commented on The Joy of Playing Grandia, on Sega Saturn segasaturnshiro.com/2025/... · Posted by u/tosh
I haven't played the first one but I played Grandia II on the Dreamcast and I think it's still my favorite battle system in a JRPG to date. Not only does it have the obvious details you can see on a YouTube playthrough, but higher-end play with it also requires managing positioning, which is easy to miss as an option at all in the menus, or to think it has no purpose. A low-level challenge run would probably be a lot of fun.
Unfortunately in my casual playthrough I accidentally broke the combat system and by the end of the game nothing was a challenge; as with many other games there are "resistances" and "vulnerabilities" but also as with most non-Shin Megami Tensei games of the era, they aren't really strong enough or frequent enough to matter. I just pumped all my upgrades into Fire upgrades until eventually my routine end-game battle was one character to wipe all the enemies in one move, move to next battle. You could easily pump an elemental bonus enough to overwhelm the resistances the enemies had. More resistances and immunities distributed around would have helped prevent a degenerate strategy.
And of all the battle systems to have a degenerate strategy for, this one hurts the most because it is otherwise so good.
(Sadly, Grandia III was never completed. It was released... but it was never completed. The game as shipped has visible gaping holes in it, which is sad because what is there was quite good.)
Grandia II's battle system was really great but the story and voice acting was so rough haha, I ended up not caring about any of the characters and skipping all that I could to get to the combat
alexchantavy commented on Launch HN: Mentat (YC F24) – Controlling LLMs with Runtime Intervention · Posted by u/cgorlla
> they mimic common misconceptions found on the internet (e.g. "chameleons change color for camouflage")
Wait what, what do chameleons actually change color for then?? TIL.
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So if I understand correctly, you take existing models, do fancy adjustments to them so that they behave better, and then sell access to that?
> These are both applications where Fortune 500 companies have utilized our technology to improve subpar performance from existing models, and we want to bring this capability to more people.
Can you share more examples on how your product (IIUC, a policy layer for models) is used?
alexchantavy commented on Unreal Tournament 2004 is back old.reddit.com/r/unrealto... · Posted by u/keithoffer
Are there are any FPS shooters on the genre of UT (or even Quake3) but modern, not remasters?
I've been missing a lot the frenetic gameplay of those, used to play a lot of UT at a decent level but nowadays I only see tactical FPSs or the likes of Counter-Strike/Battlefield with a high player count.
Not really unfortunately. This video goes a bit into why (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-t37idOfvk), but the short version is the skill floor (or ceiling?) was too high, making it unwelcoming for people to just pick up, unlike a COD-like shooter.
alexchantavy commented on Unreal Tournament 2004 is back old.reddit.com/r/unrealto... · Posted by u/keithoffer
Yeah, I couldn't really get into UT2004. Not sure what it was that bugged me since it was so long ago. But I played a lot of UT99 and I was doing it on a 28.8 modem.
I think the tone of of UT2004 was slightly sillier than UT99 and the guns felt .. fatter? I'm definitely looking at this with some nostalgia but UT99 will always be my favorite shooter
alexchantavy commented on Beej's Guide to Learning Computer Science beej.us/guide/bglcs/... · Posted by u/amruthreddi
> So, while it’s clearly possible to have a career in a lucrative field you dislike, it’s (a) going to be harder for you than for people who like it and (b) maybe you should consider a field that you do like?
> You gotta want it. Do you want it enough to go through the tremendous amount of effort it takes to learn it? Maybe you hate programming, but you want the money enough. Maybe you don’t care about the money, but you want to program every second of the day.
> Just make sure you have the drive to make it happen.
Man this is so true
alexchantavy commented on Show HN: I built an interactive HN Simulator news.ysimulator.run/news... · Posted by u/johnsillings
I love being able to read the prompt for every comment, it's like going to the zoo
> its like going to the zoo
This is a hilarious way of putting it, thank you
I remember reading, about a year or two ago, about a medical doctor that published a paper rediscovering calculus (I just looked it up, it happened in 1994, there’s been many articles and videos about it)
This is such a great story