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ZachSaucier

203 karma · joined August 1, 2014

I'm a design and product minded engineer.

ZachSaucier.com

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ZachSaucier··on Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (July 2026)
An iOS app to help toddlers get bored of smart phones more quickly: https://toddlerphotolock.com/
ZachSaucier··on Build Software. Build Users
Letting the LLM generate use cases is probably not a good idea. But writing common use cases and having a bot crawl your app and then write up how many steps it took to accomplish the goal is a good idea that I hadn't thought of before. You could even set it up as a CI check to make sure that new features that introduce more steps for specific flows are very conscious decisions. In a large application this could be a very useful feature.
ZachSaucier··on Remove Black Color with Shaders
That's not CSS, it's GLSL
ZachSaucier··on Remove Black Color with Shaders
The author creates art using their own custom library that uses CSS-like syntax to render HTML, SVG, and more recently shaders. The point isn't that this is the best way to do it. It's simply a trick that the author used to do something with their own bespoke library that they were trying to do.
ZachSaucier··on My productivity app is a never-ending .txt file (2020)
Actual checkboxes that are reorderable but otherwise a text file is the way to go.

Longer explanation: https://zachsaucier.com/blog/notes-the-best-todo-app/

ZachSaucier··on Claude Code: Now in Beta in Zed
Ona makes this easy: https://ona.com/
ZachSaucier··on Webflow makes GSAP 100% free – plus more updates
GSAP is a bit more robust than anime.js. Over the years anime has been adding more functionality and changing its syntax to be more like GSAP's. They're both solid libraries though
ZachSaucier··on Show HN: I reverse engineered top websites to build an animated UI library
There are other, similar sites which do this. One example: https://madewithgsap.com/
ZachSaucier··on Discover the IndieWeb, one blog post at a time
If you were to die, is there a way for someone to continue with the project?
ZachSaucier··on Ask HN: What's the most creative 'useless' program you've ever written?
I can't believe you didn't even mention your website dedicated to this, Tim! https://theuselessweb.com/

Longer list here: https://tholman.com/

ZachSaucier··on Ask HN: Should you reply STOP to unwanted texts?
Unsubscribing from one Mailchimp subscription doesn't remove you from any other subscriptions...
ZachSaucier··on European Consumer Organization goes after publishers for their in-game currency
Most all "real-world" stores offer discounts for buying more things at once. Just think of all of the "buy 2 get the 3rd free" etc. deals. Changing the currency from virtual to "real" does nothing to change that.

Showing the "real" cost should DECREASE the cost because when people see it in terms that they use day to day it feels like it's more expensive, so they are more likely to spend less. This would decrease profits for these video games.

The more likely unintended, if you can call it that, outcome would be that less games are solely free to play, relying exclusively on in-game cosmetic transactions.

ZachSaucier··on European Consumer Organization goes after publishers for their in-game currency
I think you missed the joke
ZachSaucier··on More Agents Is All You Need: LLMs performance scales with the number of agents
Also the amount of non-renewable resources used and emissions goes up 7-15x
ZachSaucier··on Where I'm at on the whole CSS-Tricks thing
Chris now helps run the Frontend Masters blog (called Boost). It's got solid content (some from myself) on there!

https://frontendmasters.com/blog/

ZachSaucier··on Hacking ADHD: Strategies for the modern developer
Reader modes for reading web articles can be really handy for those with HDHD.

I maintain a reader mode called Just Read that is pretty customizable if you're interested: https://justread.link/

ZachSaucier··on Unicode Character “𝕏” (U+1D54F)
As far as I know, for something like this you can only copyright the specific application. So for example it couldn't be used for social media sites.
ZachSaucier··on Reddit Strike Has Started
It'd be nice if there was a count of the total # of subscribers across all of the subreddits that have gone dark
ZachSaucier··on Why I Like Using Maps (and WeakMaps) for Handling DOM Nodes
Any reference for this?
ZachSaucier··on How much can you earn creating content on Youtube?
Ironic that the author has a principle of "no clickbait bullshit" but the article uses a clickbait title since it only talks about his personal experience.
ZachSaucier··on Why I Like Using Maps (and WeakMaps) for Handling DOM Nodes
Couldn't you do elementReference.foo = whateverTypeYouWant? No need to restrict things to just the data attribute.

This wouldn't work if you need to know the order of the properties.

ZachSaucier··on Teach at a Community College
You can do this sort of thing on a smaller scale but with similar results by volunteering for mentoring organizations like Underdog Devs, Vets Who Code, Operation Code, or another organization that helps underprivileged people try to get programming jobs.
ZachSaucier··on Ask HN: What is the most impactful thing you've built?
Customizable, feature packed read mode that is used by a lot of teachers and people with disabilities: https://justread.link/
ZachSaucier··on Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce
As someone who went through the process at Stripe, I recommend giving managers more awareness ahead of time and perhaps some forewarning to the company at large ahead of time
ZachSaucier··on Stripe laying off around 14% of workforce
I believe that this is the case for all employees laid off by Stripe, including myself.
ZachSaucier··on Ask HN: What is your spiritual practice?
There's not much point in spiritual practices if you don't believe in some truth behind them. Instead of focusing on practices, focus on finding truth (I believe it can be found about God). Truth will lead to practices.
ZachSaucier··on Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2021 – Show and tell
I made a customizable, feature-packed reader mode that earns around that: https://justread.link/
ZachSaucier··on Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2021 – Show and tell
I use it ♥
ZachSaucier··on The most underused browser feature: reader mode
It uses a pretty simple text selection algorithm I've developed through trial and error: https://github.com/ZachSaucier/Just-Read/blob/6dcb4f05b93287...

I don't know how it compares to Readability.js.

ZachSaucier··on The most underused browser feature: reader mode
Shameless plug: I maintain a cross-browser reader extension that is like reader mode with some additional features. It's called Just Read: https://justread.link/
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