frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

fp.

Open in hackernews

Al Lowe on model trains, funny deaths and working with Disney

https://spillhistorie.no/2026/02/06/interview-with-sierra-veteran-al-lowe/
57•thelok•4h ago

Comments

mrighele•3h ago
I never realized that Al Lowe was involved with Donald Duck’s Playground, I loved it as a child. I guess I have to be thankful to him for two things now.
throaway146•54m ago
I used to play it on my dad's mac at work (which he hated, it was a non-computer role and management forced a switch from Windows to Mac). It had a great look that does seem similar to LLL.

Of course on those machines, most of my time was spent dealing with the "insert disk for the program you were previously using" bug!

tombert•3h ago
Al Lowe is actually a pretty nice dude.

I’m not entirely sure why I did this, but when I was an adjunct for a few semesters, I emailed him for advice on teaching since he did the transition from teacher->programmer and I did the opposite.

He responded back very quickly with very helpful advice [1] and was very understanding and nice. I like him.

[1] I don’t want to share the emails since they are a bit personal, but the TL;DR was that he recommended I consider finding some training on how to be a teacher.

js4ever•2h ago
Al model train ... I was not expecting that article... To much AI in my life
sodapopcan•1h ago
Ya, I was wondering if this made it to the top because people though "Al" was "AI," heh.
linkjuice4all•1h ago
Much like Factorio - bringing too much tech/automation into your hobbies (such as model trains) just turns a fun weekend hobby into "work". It's really cool to see the progress with digital controls in model trains (read up about Neil Young and Lionel [0]) but I don't want to have to ask AI to rewrite my train handling config files just to get some little motor to spin.

[0] https://thrasherswheat.org/tfa/trains-neil-young-1993.htm

deepthaw•1h ago
I first really started to learn how to use computers playing Leisure Suit Larry on a friend's dad's computer. Started with copying save-games to/from floppy disks, to using MS-DOS in general, to BASIC, etc. and so forth.

It's interesting how much of the humor in those games flew way over my head yet I still had a blast playing them. And looking back as an adult, the "risque" stuff was tame as hell but still fun. Sigh, good times.

unixhero•1h ago
What about Larry 4 Roar and Al

I Write Games in C (yes, C)

https://jonathanwhiting.com/writing/blog/games_in_c/
73•valyala•2h ago•40 comments

Brookhaven Lab's RHIC Concludes 25-Year Run with Final Collisions

https://www.hpcwire.com/off-the-wire/brookhaven-labs-rhic-concludes-25-year-run-with-final-collis...
16•gnufx•1h ago•1 comments

SectorC: A C Compiler in 512 bytes

https://xorvoid.com/sectorc.html
42•valyala•3h ago•4 comments

Hoot: Scheme on WebAssembly

https://www.spritely.institute/hoot/
132•AlexeyBrin•8h ago•25 comments

The AI boom is causing shortages everywhere else

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/02/07/ai-spending-economy-shortages/
150•1vuio0pswjnm7•9h ago•180 comments

We Mourn Our Craft

https://nolanlawson.com/2026/02/07/we-mourn-our-craft/
262•ColinWright•2h ago•298 comments

OpenCiv3: Open-source, cross-platform reimagining of Civilization III

https://openciv3.org/
840•klaussilveira•22h ago•252 comments

Stories from 25 Years of Software Development

https://susam.net/twenty-five-years-of-computing.html
77•vinhnx•6h ago•10 comments

U.S. Jobs Disappear at Fastest January Pace Since Great Recession

https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikestunson/2026/02/05/us-jobs-disappear-at-fastest-january-pace-sin...
205•alephnerd•3h ago•150 comments

Al Lowe on model trains, funny deaths and working with Disney

https://spillhistorie.no/2026/02/06/interview-with-sierra-veteran-al-lowe/
57•thelok•4h ago•8 comments

The Waymo World Model

https://waymo.com/blog/2026/02/the-waymo-world-model-a-new-frontier-for-autonomous-driving-simula...
1069•xnx•1d ago•615 comments

Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback

https://rlhfbook.com/
87•onurkanbkrc•7h ago•5 comments

The F Word

http://muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2026/02/friction.html
7•zdw•3d ago•0 comments

Start all of your commands with a comma (2009)

https://rhodesmill.org/brandon/2009/commands-with-comma/
498•theblazehen•3d ago•186 comments

Vocal Guide – belt sing without killing yourself

https://jesperordrup.github.io/vocal-guide/
218•jesperordrup•13h ago•80 comments

Show HN: I saw this cool navigation reveal, so I made a simple HTML+CSS version

https://github.com/Momciloo/fun-with-clip-path
20•momciloo•2h ago•1 comments

Microsoft Account bugs locked me out of Notepad – are Thin Clients ruining PCs?

https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/windows-11/windows-locked-me-out-of-notepad-is-the-thin-...
18•josephcsible•50m ago•13 comments

Coding agents have replaced every framework I used

https://blog.alaindichiappari.dev/p/software-engineering-is-back
240•alainrk•7h ago•380 comments

France's homegrown open source online office suite

https://github.com/suitenumerique
584•nar001•7h ago•260 comments

72M Points of Interest

https://tech.marksblogg.com/overture-places-pois.html
33•marklit•5d ago•4 comments

A Fresh Look at IBM 3270 Information Display System

https://www.rs-online.com/designspark/a-fresh-look-at-ibm-3270-information-display-system
42•rbanffy•4d ago•8 comments

Selection Rather Than Prediction

https://voratiq.com/blog/selection-rather-than-prediction/
10•languid-photic•3d ago•1 comments

Unseen Footage of Atari Battlezone Arcade Cabinet Production

https://arcadeblogger.com/2026/02/02/unseen-footage-of-atari-battlezone-cabinet-production/
117•videotopia•4d ago•35 comments

History and Timeline of the Proco Rat Pedal (2021)

https://web.archive.org/web/20211030011207/https://thejhsshow.com/articles/history-and-timeline-o...
19•brudgers•5d ago•4 comments

Where did all the starships go?

https://www.datawrapper.de/blog/science-fiction-decline
84•speckx•4d ago•94 comments

Show HN: Look Ma, No Linux: Shell, App Installer, Vi, Cc on ESP32-S3 / BreezyBox

https://github.com/valdanylchuk/breezydemo
280•isitcontent•23h ago•38 comments

Learning from context is harder than we thought

https://hy.tencent.com/research/100025?langVersion=en
204•limoce•4d ago•112 comments

Monty: A minimal, secure Python interpreter written in Rust for use by AI

https://github.com/pydantic/monty
291•dmpetrov•23h ago•156 comments

Hackers (1995) Animated Experience

https://hackers-1995.vercel.app/
561•todsacerdoti•1d ago•272 comments

Show HN: Kappal – CLI to Run Docker Compose YML on Kubernetes for Local Dev

https://github.com/sandys/kappal
23•sandGorgon•2d ago•13 comments