Universal Pause Button
Productivity
process control utility
SHOW HN2015
How HN took it
14 positive, 13 neutral or asking, 1 mixed, 8 critical, out of 36 comments about the project. Thread score +0.30.
Idea: 8 for, 2 againstExecution: 1 for, 3 againstDesign: 1 for, 0 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Small, lean, old-school Win32 app
From 2 comments
Wow, coded like a simple old school Win32 API win app, I didn't realize that was still possible in modern Visual Bloatio. Nicely done.
snorkel on HNNice idea and app. Having a quick look at the code I had forgotten how much work needed to be done for old-skool Windows applications. They do give you great lean applications…
kozukumi on HN
Useful idea
From 2 comments
I love this!!! The pause button was incredibly useful when trying to figure out what went wrong with DOS boot sequence. I wonder if it would be possible to include support for it…
Drdrdrq on HNReally clever. What a thoughtful project, too. Hope your SO appreciates the work you put in on it!
ohitsdom on HN
Objections
Pausing may trigger anti-cheat in games
From 2 comments
That's interesting. However, I wonder ... don't you think it can be abused in some games that try to compensate lag? For example, what if they use a code similar to: ``` delay =…
arcatek on HNI have thought about this. In fact I even asked Gabe Newell about whether the use of this program might falsely trigger some anti-cheat mechanism within Steam. (He hasn't replied…
RyanRies on HN
Timers and system clocks can still advance the game
From 2 comments
But what if the process uses a timer to update an animation? (I.e., the state of the timer determines the frame in the animation). In that case, after unpausing, the animation…
amelius on HNYep, different applications are guaranteed to react differently to this, depending on how they were written. And a lot of games use the _rdtsc intrinsic straight from the CPU...…
RyanRies on HN
Requests
Pause browser tabs or media playback
From 1 comment
I would love this for Mac, not for games but for all browser tabs. Find whichever tab I'm playing music in, and pause it, whether it be SoundCloud, YouTube, or some other…
Carrok on HN
Kill high CPU or memory processes via shortcut
From 1 comment
Great idea, will be helpful. Now, I only need a similar tool that kills the process with the highest CPU and MEMORY load with a short cut. Reasons: Sometimes a process leaks…
frik on HN
Questions
Does it work with games that use timers for cutscenes
From 2 comments
"I've already gotten great value out of the program, as there are lots of cut scenes in The Witcher 3, that I don't want to skip." The Witcher 3 pauses cutscenes when the window…
scandinavian on HNBut what if the process uses a timer to update an animation? (I.e., the state of the timer determines the frame in the animation). In that case, after unpausing, the animation…
amelius on HN
Alternatives named
SIGSTOP/SIGCONT via kill or killall on Unix
From 1 comment
This is nice! On OSX, processes can be paused and continued too (by name via killall, and by PID via kill): ``` kill -STOP 1234 kill -CONT 1234 killall -STOP -c "Pandora" killall…
tomkinstinch on HN
cpulimit and cputhrottle
From 2 comments
This is nice! On OSX, processes can be paused and continued too (by name via killall, and by PID via kill): ``` kill -STOP 1234 kill -CONT 1234 killall -STOP -c "Pandora" killall…
tomkinstinch on HNOn debian the program is cpulimit.
ars on HN
Windows Resource Monitor suspend
From 1 comment
You can do this to any process in Windows' Resource Monitor too - the one you can open from task manager. On the CPU tab you can right click any process and suspend it.
ubercow13 on HN