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pbowyer

3,799 karma · joined July 16, 2013

To contact, strip all upper-case letters: pREDetREDer@pREDeterbowOOyer.NETco.FRuk
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pbowyer··on HTMX is hard, so let's get it right
I do this with Vue in Symfony PHP apps. Depending on the scope I eitehr have a full build pipeline for the JS (preferred) or will include the files direct from a CDN and have in-HTML templates that are parsed on load.

For passing data into it I've used Inertia.js [0] and also my own data-in-page setup that's parsed and loaded into the Vue app. The app then writes the changes back out, usually into a hidden form input. The form on the page is then submitted as usual to the server, along with any other data that I need.

It's a great way for adding more complicated behaviour to an existing app.

0. https://inertiajs.com/

pbowyer··on Simplify, then add delightness: On designing for children
No, it reads like someone who appreciates why skeuomorphism was good in specific situations, and that this is one of them.
pbowyer··on Gemini CLI
I'm so confused.

Workspace (standard?) customer for over a decade.

pbowyer··on Show HN: Claude Code Usage Monitor – real-time tracker to dodge usage cut-offs
Film video, transcribe, edit to become article?

I'm of an age where I rarely watch short-form videos so would read the article but you'll miss an audience if that's all you produce.

pbowyer··on Show HN: Claude Code Usage Monitor – real-time tracker to dodge usage cut-offs
With uv, is there a way to install Python and Node tools like this in a self-contained way so they appear to the system as a single executable?

I guess I don't want to duplicate Python/Node for every tool, but I also don't want it to be fragile. And this wants a Node CLI tool installed globally, which I've found breaks easily with changing versions.

pbowyer··on GitHub issues is almost the best notebook in the world
This. Everything is getting priced for U.S. (software engineer) incomes.
pbowyer··on Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf?
I've had trials for both running and tested both on the same codebases.

Cursor works roughly how I've expected. It reads files and either gets it right or wrong in agent mode.

Windsurf seems restricted to reading files 50 lines at a time, and often will stop after 200 lines [0]. When dealing with existing code I've been getting poorer results than Cursor.

As to autocomplete: perhaps I haven't set up either properly (for PHP) but the autocomplete in both is good for pattern matching changes I make, and terrible for anything that require knowledge of what methods an object has, the parameters a method takes etc. They both hallucinate wildly, and so I end up doing bits of editing in Cursor/Windsurf and having the same project open in PhpStorm and making use of its intellisense.

I'm coming to the end of both trials and the AI isn't adding enough over Jetbrains PhpStorm's built in features, so I'm going back to that until I figure out how to reduce hallucinations.

0. https://www.reddit.com/r/Codeium/comments/1hsn1xw/report_fro...

pbowyer··on Show HN: Basecoat – All of the shadcn/ui magic, none of the React
Well done, this looks like a great beginning! I'll be giving this a test on my next project.

Hoping you add more of shadcn/ui, I'm partial to the sheet.

pbowyer··on OpenAI reaches agreement to buy Windsurf for $3B
I trialled Cursor for a month and then Windsurf. Cursor read entire code files in while Windsurf would read the first 100 lines (or was it 50?), then the next 100, and often stop before it got to the part of the file with the method in which was needed.

So I went back to Cursor.

pbowyer··on Modern Latex
Just a note on MyST's citations feature as I was researching it this morning: until this ticket [1] is worked on there's one bibliography style and that's it.

1. https://github.com/jupyter-book/mystmd/issues/1462

pbowyer··on Deno Under TinyKVM in Varnish
I borderline love Varnish cache, but the way the open source and commercial versions have diverged and all the nice features only go into the $10k/yr+ commercial version sucks.

Features like the memory governer [0], because trying to predict how much memory (open-source) Varnish will use is an absolute PITA and a sure-fire way to run out of memory if you're not careful.

My clients can't justify the commercial license costs (as a sibling comment says, CDNs eat Varnish's lunch in that market) and yet what I can do with Varnish and the power it gives me makes it real magic.

It would be nice to see a modern reimplementation of Varnish, open-sourced, but I doubt that would ever happen.

0. https://info.varnish-software.com/blog/two-minute-tech-tuesd...

pbowyer··on Show HN: Aqua Voice 2 – Fast Voice Input for Mac and Windows
I've been using Superwhisperapp for over a year and I get nothing like the error level your comparison table suggests. Which model were you using with it?

Aqua looks good and I will be testing it, but I do like that with superwhisper nothing leaves my computer unless I add AI integrations.

pbowyer··on European Cloud Computing Platforms
UpCloud are good, and I've used them for over 5 years. They aren't cheap compared to DigitalOcean/Linode (everything is extra €€€) but when I benchmarked the providers before picking them their CPU and disk IO was faster than the other cloud platforms. The internal network has been more reliable than every time I've used DigitalOcean's.

All this is for London data centres. It'd be interesting to re-benchmark them against other providers.

pbowyer··on Passing the Buck: The story of the 2022 Wings Over Dallas air show collision
DeArrow [1] or Clickbait Remover for Youtube [2] would help with that.

1. https://dearrow.ajay.app/

2. https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/clickbait-remover-f... would help

pbowyer··on Umami is a simple, fast, privacy-focused alternative to Google Analytics
> you're allowed to fingerprint a unique user and track data with that fingerprint as the sole unique identifier without any PII legislation (GDPR, CCPA, etc.) compliance issues.

That is not true. E.g.

1. https://ico.org.uk/about-the-ico/media-centre/news-and-blogs...

2. https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/direct-marketing-and-pr... specifically https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/direct-marketing-and-pr...

This is for the UK, I am not up to date with other European regulators.

pbowyer··on Caddy – The Ultimate Server with Automatic HTTPS
h2o is also one of the few servers to get resource prioritization correct for HTTP/2 and HTTP/3.

If resource prioritisation is new, a few references: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MV034VqHv5Q https://calendar.perfplanet.com/2022/http-3-prioritization-d... https://github.com/andydavies/http2-prioritization-issues

pbowyer··on Higher potassium intake at dinner linked to fewer sleep disturbances – study
I have a subset of these symptoms. How much potassium do you take?
pbowyer··on Ask HN: Programmers who don't use autocomplete/LSP, how do you do it?
> While I do have a fantastic memory, I don't feel like it makes a huge difference?

I'd say it does. Particulary for names based on English words with synonyms, if I recall the wrong synonym for this particular library, at least autocomplete is faster than searching the docs for all the synonyms. But not as fast as scanning the method/function list should the docs have that (and far too many miss it out).

If you can remember which word for the concept the method you're after uses, then you don't need autocomplete.

BTW only Jetbrains (and other heavy Java IDEs?) get autocomplete right IMO. The basic form in VSCode doesn't cut it in my experience, and gets in the way.

pbowyer··on A new JSON data type for ClickHouse
> but every time I try to use it, I get stuck on "how do I get data into it reliably"

That's the same stage I get stuck every time.

I have data emitters (in this example let's say my household IoT devices, feeding a MQTT broker then HomeAssistant).

I have where I want the data to end up (Clickhouse, Database, S3, whatever).

How do I get the data from A to B, so there are no duplicate rows (if the ACK for an upload isn't received when the upload succeeded), no missing rows (the data is retried if an upload fails), and some protection if the local system goes down (data isn't ephemeral)?

The easiest I've found is writing data locally to files (JSON, parquet, whatever), new file every 5 minutes and sync the older files to S3.

But then I'm stuck again. How do I continually load new files from S3 without any repetition or edge cases? And did I really need the intermediate files?

pbowyer··on Svelte 5 Released
I've used 11ty on and off since pre-1.0. The documentation remains awfully confusing and doesn't cover common use-cases. The system has been pulled together but not thought out as a whole.

Lume (from Deno) is my preferred 11ty alternative.

pbowyer··on WordPress Alternatives
More the problem with Kirby is the admin still using Vue 2, so if you use Vue 3 for everything else and want to make a plugin, you have to go back to how you used to write Vue and no longer do.
pbowyer··on WordPress Plugin Mirror Downloader (Proof of Concept)
If WordPress users are going to start using mirrors then WordPress needs to add and support package signing. Otherwise we've added another way to backdoor WordPress sites, using a malicious mirror.
pbowyer··on Filed: WP Engine Inc. v Automattic Inc. and Matthew Charles Mullenweg [pdf]
Isn't it just! Karma comes around.
pbowyer··on WP Engine is not WordPress
> I would agree if revisions were enabled by default just for posts and pages.

And if you could say "Keep revisions for 30 days" and/or "Keep the last 10 revisions for every post". Why that hasn't been implemented...

pbowyer··on Pivotal Tracker will shut down
Linear is the one I've settled on, it stays out of my way.

For now. Looking at the competition it's only a matter of time before it becomes bloated to justify valuations.

https://linear.app/

pbowyer··on Ruby in Jupyter Notebook
The Livebook UI is lovely. I'd like to see Jupyter get some love in this area.
pbowyer··on Speeding Up Your Website Using Cloudflare Cache
Fastly's product is not trash.

Fastly's ability to sensibly price their product, market their product, and stop losing money hand over fist is trash.

And I write this as someone who has been snubbed by Fastly multiple times.

Squashed between Akamai and Cloudflare, I will be sorry to see them go.

pbowyer··on Speeding Up Your Website Using Cloudflare Cache
> Serve Stale Content While Revalidating (Not Working as Expected)

> This is the only thing that I was not able to figure out.

For good reason, because (at the last time I tried this earlier this year) Cloudflare documents stale-while-revalidate as if it's supported [1], but it isn't [2], [3].

Cloudflare instead has a different behaviour [4], [5] which helps in some circumstances but not all.

I use Fastly's free CDN plan to get round this.

1. https://developers.cloudflare.com/cache/concepts/revalidatio...

2. https://community.cloudflare.com/t/support-for-stale-while-r...

3. https://community.cloudflare.com/t/when-will-cloudflare-full...

4. https://kerkour.com/cloudflare-stale-while-revalidate

5. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/48124415/does-cloudflare...

pbowyer··on Study: Air purifier use at daycare centres cut kids' sick days by a third (2023)
With the mention of "radioactive dust" are you sure it's radon, as that should not produce dust, and not some other source of radiation in the attic? Like I don't kow what, a lot of old gas mantle filaments.

Any notion of whether it's β or ɣ radiation you're detecting?

Demolition is going to need careful monitoring to ensure you don't contaminate the entire site.

pbowyer··on Ask HN: Imagine a world with 1Tb/s internet. What would change?
I'm on 45Mbps/11Mbps in a suburban area in the UK. We might get 1Gbps next year. A cable provider (Trooli) previously installed down our road in 2023 and left out two houses. The one I own is one of them.

At this point the main thing that would change is I'd be able to do online backups for TB of data. With 1Tb/s internet I would save a lot less on my hard drive and download ML models and more whenever I needed them. But I just know the remote server I'm downloading from would still throttle me to Mbps to guard their bandwidth.

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