Ask HN: Who is hiring? (September 2025)

Neat concept. I had to dig through a lot of the docs before I could get a good grasp of exactly how this works, though. It's an OS that mounts/searches all drives (such as an SD card reader) for the first available KZI file which is a format that describes how a specific game is run (the runtime, additional gamescope options, etc).

While the idea of essentially mimicking old school carts by having a dedicated SD card per game is intriguing, I'm not sure I personally see the appeal of something like this over a Steam Deck + EmuDeck installed - particularly since you'll probably need to build/buy a miniPC that is compatible with Kazeta.

Another concern would be controller compatibility, from what I can see only one controller is listed as being officially supported (8Bitdo Ultimate 2C Wireless Controller).

https://github.com/kazetaos/kazeta/wiki/Requirements

hmry · 1h ago

Happy to see they're actually putting the games onto the cartridges. Most projects like this just use pieces of plastic with an NFC/RFID tag containg the Steam game ID. For me, the fact that the data is actually right there in my hand is half the appeal.

serf · 29m ago

sd card contact wear is pretty radical on constant insert/removal.

second: one of the things that made cartridges great was that they were human-sized. as were CDs. An sd card inserted into a more handle-able/human 'cartridge' would be cool, maybe gameboy sized was about perfect imo.

fiddling with sd cards and slots isn't great.

an snes/genesis cartridge falls into the thing, you can't miss or do it backwards without reeally trying to. They give an affirmative 'clunk' when fully engaged.

(also the contact wear on those was horrendous too.. maybe the SD card IS authentic..)

darkwater · 21m ago

An SD card is not that different from what the Switch uses, at least size wise. Use micro-SD for the actual data and a cheap SD adapter with a full size SD slot and contact wear should be an easily solvable issue.

brabel · 1h ago

Before reading this I didn’t realize how today gaming is different from 80’s and 90’s gaming , to the point Kazeta is a thing! I thought that mostly, CDs had replaced cartridges and loading games became slow, but apparently subscription plans, online chat and “micro transactions” are now accepted as standard gaming?!

ZaoLahma · 1h ago

Yep. Most games nowadays are released broken and incomplete. Being able to patch a game after release truly is both a blessing and a curse. Then they throw microtransactions on top of the already rather ugly mess.

Microtransactions were supposed to finance free to play or "live service" games where they paid for new content over several years, but (of course) they've found themselves into what's solidly not... that.

voidfunc · 51m ago

Have you been living under a rock for the last 15+ years?

I haven't touched a CD since the late 2000s.

pansa2 · 3m ago

CDs specifically are obsolete, but games on optical media are still a thing. Unlike ROM cartridges, which AFAICT died with the GBA in 2008.

rkagerer · 34m ago

Have you been living under a rock for the last 15+ years?

Yes, and I'm not coming out until projects like this finish scooping up all the crap MBA's have excreted all over the place in that time.

alex_suzuki · 19m ago

I had to explain to my kids (10 and 6yr old) recently what this shiny round thing was that they got from the library…

reactordev · 51m ago

My children have only known micro transaction riddled games. When I show them old school games, they scoffed at the graphics and returned to their phones.

hulitu · 1h ago

> apparently subscription plans, online chat and “micro transactions” are now accepted as standard gaming?!

And looong download/update times (Delta Force - almost 4 hours). Makes a ZX Spectrum which loaded games from cassettes pale in comparison.

morsch · 1h ago

Neat. Couldn't find a video of it booting up. But here's some background info: https://github.com/kazetaos/kazeta/wiki/Technical-Details

reactordev · 53m ago

>When accessing the terminal/tty, the default username and password is gamer. Because /etc is read-only, this password cannot be changed.

Oh noes! A little further down they say you can get it online using an Ethernet cable and a command. Let’s just hope its never able to be an ssh host. These kind of things scare me from a security standpoint. I feel like the users and /etc/passed should probably be writable so people can change the default to something not published online.

judge123 · 26m ago

It's less about nostalgia for the 90s and more about a cure for the modern "too much choice" anxiety.

BlackLotus89 · 20m ago

This is stupid in too many ways to count. This is more like a joke than an actual product.

I honestly hope that nobody uses this.

Just to list a few points.

* If you do this for your actual gaming library you need way too many SD cards.

* SD cards die horribly in many different ways and I wouldn't trust it as a medium. Especially if you insert it too many times

* many games are too small to be a good fit for this

* SD cards are fucking expensive especially in odd sizes (which you will need)

* they are too slow for larger games

And sooo many more

larodi · 45m ago

…save for the CRT

snvzz · 1h ago

Not a fan of the trend of misusing the concept of "Operating System".

flumpcakes · 41m ago

It seems like an operating system to me. What specifically is misused?

coolcoder613 · 39m ago

Calling Linux distros operating systems is a very common usage.