Hacker News Reader

knoebberon Simply Scheme: Introducing Computer Science (1999)

Grinnell 17' here. At first I didn't enjoy intro with Racket. But by the end I changed my mind and it ended up being one of my favorite courses. In retrospect that class easily had the most impact on me during my CS major... I still have quite a few functional programming habits. These days I like to code in elixir for side projects, which has quite a few similarities.

Anyways, cool to see another alum here! I hope the department keeps it around for a while longer :)

knoebberon Women who make Samsung semiconductors are striking

I assume 'work life balance'

knoebberon Show HN: I made a Note-Taking app for people who keep texting themselves

Like any good yakshaving programmer, i built/use my own note taking / TODO app. Now I want to implement a feature where I can send a SMS to my app, and it will save the text/media to my database. Seems like a lot less friction than using the UI on my phones browser if I just need to save a quick note.

knoebberon How I've Learned to Live with a Nonexistent Working Memory

the act of writing it down probably makes them remember it.

knoebberon PayPal is planning an ad business using data on its shoppers

I’m surprised they weren’t doing this already . This is standard for CC companies afaik.

knoebberon I Lost Faith in Kagi

Fair criticisms, but at the end of the day, Kagi offers a better search experience then all the alternatives for a fair price, so I pay for it. I don't really need to have 'faith' in it, though I do hope it sticks around.

Also, can't wait to get my tshirt! (closed beta user here)

knoebberon Millions in California could lose their AT&T landlines. Here's why

I live about 180 miles north of silicon valley. The only utility I get here is high speed internet via a radio receiver in a redwood tree[0]. I just tested and I'm getting 20mb down/30 up, 30ms ping. Plenty for wifi calling, video calls, etc. I'm surprised your WISP has such poor performance?

[0] https://furtherreach.net/

knoebberon Millions in California could lose their AT&T landlines. Here's why

Yeah, I believe they send DSL through the same lines that they don't want to support anymore.

knoebberon A response to "Erlang – overhyped or underestimated" (2010)

> *90% of all internet traffic goes through Erlang controlled nodes (Cisco)

(source: https://erlangforums.com/ )

Seems like a pretty good outcome to me?

knoebberon Millions in California could lose their AT&T landlines. Here's why

Not useful for people who live in areas without cell service. These folks will have no way to make calls from home if ATT pulls out.

knoebberon jQuery 4.0 99% Complete

I think the main use case today is the dom traversal API. It makes operations like "add the 'error' class to all <input> elements in the form" simple:

    $('#some-form').find('input').addClass('error')

Obviously you can do this in vanilla JS, but it's more cumbersome so you'll probably end up rewriting your own less complete version of jquery. There is some value to using a well worn library with public documentation that other developers can find/extend instead of a home grown solution.

With that said, I wouldn't use it for a green field project. For sites that require lots of interactivity I would pick a modern front end framework that doesn't require this kind of manual dom traversal (probably phoenix/liveview).

knoebberon Dead grandma locket request tricks Bing Chat’s AI into solving security puzzle

Please drink a verification can

knoebberon Flameshow: A terminal flamegraph viewer

from the README:

> Currently it only supports Golang's pprof dump, I am working on supporting more formats

knoebberon Klack – Satisfying sound with every keystroke

Anecdote: I had serious wrist/hand pain after using a mechanical keyboard for years. I changed to a low profile keyboard, and I don't have pain anymore. Who knows, maybe it was coincidence.

knoebberon Remote workers are increasingly less productive, anxious, depressed and lonely

Lol, if you say so.

knoebberon Scripting with Elixir

two reasons:

1. you prefer functional style languages, such as elixir 2. you want to avoid `pip install` ing dependencies

knoebberon Show HN: Gat – cat alternative written in Go

Has anyone made a "cat" like tool that uses treesitter under the hood?

knoebberon The Vindication of Ask Jeeves

I'm a happy paying user... I almost never have to !g. I tried DDG before kagi, and it just seemed like a worse version of google to me. I definitely prefer the kagi results.

knoebberon Ask HN: What have you created that deserves a second chance on HN?

https://dotfilehub.com

No JS, and easy to self host. It’s a place to put your dotfiles. It comes with a CLI loosely based on git for editing, versioning, pushing, and pulling.

knoebberon Ask HN: Why it is hard for US to move to metric system?

we don't want to: 12 is more divisible than 10

knoebberon California pulls the plug on rooftop solar

Up here in Northern California quite a few of us live off grid with just solar/batteries. What law says that a grid hookup is required? Is it at the county level?

knoebberon Dwarf Fortress – randomly generated, persistent fantasy world

> How do they efficiently update everything on each tick?

The player is responsible for some aspects of keeping their game running efficiently.

See: https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Maximizing_fr...

knoebberon Ask HN: What do you use for a personal database?

A postgres database that is managed by a custom app that I wrote in Elixir / Phoenix / LiveView. Hosted for free on fly.io.

it stores:

- My TODO list (items -> entries -> checkboxes)

- My credit card transactions (scraped from alert emails with gmail api)

- A running log with miles/times/routes

i've implemented misc features to organize everything like content tagging, custom markdown rendering, etc.

knoebberon Marten: a Crystal web framework

No, the authors state it takes more inspiration from django: https://martenframework.com/docs/the-marten-project/acknowle...

knoebberon Espresso.js – minimal React alternative – is now a decade old

I wonder how many folks chose Expresso.js + coffee script because it was the 'hot new thing'.

knoebberon React I love you, but you're bringing me down

I spent about 2 years at my last job building a greenfield react app mostly by myself (around 10k sloc). I enjoyed it for the most part. But I did run into all the issues raised here, they are valid. I think the worst issue with React is the dependency arrays that get sprinkled around everywhere - in my opinion the framework is unusable without a 3rd party linting tool that points out when your dependency array is missing something. If you accidentally add the wrong value in there, hello infinite render loop!

One of the biggest level ups I had was extracting complex hooks into their own .js files instead of stuffing next to component code. This helps a lot with readability/reusability.

Overall I liked what I came up with, but it felt like a lot of inventing stuff on my own, which I'm not sure if the next developer who comes along will appreciate.

knoebberon 2000-Watt Society

I haven't, I'll check them out, thanks!

knoebberon 2000-Watt Society

I'm living/working remotely off grid with a solar panels, batteries, and a 2000w inverter. It's comfortable. I usually have a few lights, the wifi router, a monitor, laptop charger, and a fridge plugged in. This comes out between 100w and 300w, so I have room to spare for bigger items like power tools.

I do cheat by using a propane range for cooking and wood for heat. At some point I'd like to move to an electric induction stove, but I need to do some research how efficient they are.

knoebberon YouTube Free Is Silently Testing 5 Ads, Instead of 2, Before Your Video Starts

I can't believe people are using YT without ublock origin. It is such an improvement.

I'm also surprised that YT hasn't worked around it. It's just a matter of time I guess...