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sjoedev

133 karma · joined June 19, 2024

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sjoedev··on Updated Google Maps shows destruction of the city of Rafah
I don’t use TikTok, but I’ll chip in and cite the United Nations [1], the International Association of Genocide Scholars [2], Physicians for Human Rights-Israel [3], Amnesty International [4], Human Rights Watch [5], and Doctors Without Borders [6] to get started.

While the genocide case brought against Israel hasn't concluded as of now, to say there's no reason to believe this is genocide is incorrect.

If you’d like to share some sources (rather than only telling others to), maybe we can compare.

[1] https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/09/israel-has-c...

[2] https://genocidescholars.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/IAGS...

[3] https://www.phr.org.il/en/genocide-in-gaza-eng/

[4] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/12/amnesty-inter...

[5] https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/12/19/israels-crime-exterminat...

[6] https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/latest/our-response-is...

sjoedev··on Field measurements of neighborhood-scale air temperature impacts of data centers
We’re building data centers in the U.S. at an unprecedented and increasing rate [1]. Is it so hard to imagine that something which was fine at one scale may begin to cause issues at some massively higher scale?

If I drink one glass of wine per day, it’s probably fine. If I drink three bottles per day, I’m gonna start having problems.

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/monthly-spending-data-cen...

sjoedev··on Ask HN: Is this the worst time to be human?
I likely align with you on most political and social issues since you seem to be in despair. However, this question is seriously misguided. This is by far the best time to have been a human in all of history.

You say AI is making our creative pursuits feel meaningless?

How many creative pursuits do you think the average person had throughout history when close to 50% of people died before age 5, fewer than 10% of people could read, women and minorities had close to zero rights, the average worker was impoverished and farmed sunup to sundown to barely eat and avoid famine, there was little treatment for diseases (infectious or otherwise), common people could be conscripted for war at a moment’s notice…I could go on.

You think the average person in history spent their time painting and writing? These are luxuries 99% of people who ever lived could have never dreamed of.

sjoedev··on When online commenters detect my art as AI
This is myopic “Silicon Valley” rhetoric and lacks understanding of art or why it’s appreciated.

We have video cameras and movies, yet stage actors on Broadway are celebrated like movie stars. People still read books. We have cameras and photoshop, yet a huge market still exists for oil on canvas. We have synthesizers, drum kits, and all the tools we need to make music on a computer, yet live concerts with guitars and drums sell millions of tickets annually. We have the technology to deliver payloads on another continent with millimeter precision, yet every few years, the whole world gathers to watch people who have trained a lifetime to run, jump, and throw stones.

“The old way is dead” doesn’t hold up in the arts like it does in the sciences. Technology moves on, but humans are the same. You can inspire and awe us today using the same tools and methods that were used hundreds or thousands of years ago.

sjoedev··on Removing React.js from the codebase and adapting Htmx for UI interactivity (2023)
> Next.js and TanStack Start don't send any JavaScript to the client if you decide to server-render everything.

AFAIK, this isn’t true. And you still get more JS per interactive element than with HTMX.

sjoedev··on Removing React.js from the codebase and adapting Htmx for UI interactivity (2023)
Sure. I personally think SPAs/React have better DX than HTMX. IMO, the most compelling reasons to use HTMX instead (for building dynamic/interactive web applications) are to reduce the amount of JavaScript sent to the client and make pages become interactive faster. These are UX concerns: how much the user has to download (waiting) and how long before the page becomes interactive (waiting).

With HTMX, you get these benefits regardless of what language you use on the server. These benefits could be reasons the parent commenter chose HTMX, and JavaScript is a perfectly good language to serve HTMX applications for the reasons I mentioned.

sjoedev··on Removing React.js from the codebase and adapting Htmx for UI interactivity (2023)
Adopting something like HTMX is primarily a UX choice, and the language you use to serve it is almost irrelevant to UX. JavaScript is a nice backend language. It’s fast, has a massive ecosystem, and many people know it well.
sjoedev··on A Love Letter to 'Girl Games'
There are no concrete numbers for Valorant that I know of, but the “Head of Esports Partnerships and Business Development for North America & Oceania Riot Games” Matthew Archambault was quoted saying the Valorant player base is 30-40% women [1]. That seems plausible to me based on my own experience playing Valorant.

[1] https://gamesbeat.com/how-riot-games-wants-to-ensure-that-va...

sjoedev··on Epic Games to cut more than 1k jobs as Fortnite usage falls
Do keep in mind: they also develop, maintain, support, and market Unreal Engine, which is possibly the most advanced and innovative game engine out there. It’s used by tons of other studios (including AAA) and is used in other industries like space flight, automotive, etc.
sjoedev··on Games with loot boxes to get minimum 16 age rating across Europe
I think online/digital gambling is worse because it follows you everywhere. I don’t like any form of gambling, but at least with casinos there’s some escape in not physically being there. It’s also harder to enforce age requirements online.
sjoedev··on Google DeepMind Staffers Ask Leaders to Keep Them 'Physically Safe' from ICE
Alex Pretti escalated the situation? Have you seen the video? Did you see how the ICE agent shoved that woman? That was not “law enforcement activity.” It was assault. Alex Pretti had every right to be there, and he tried to help a woman who was being physically and illegally assaulted.

> I haven't heard of ICE hurting any actual immigrants in custody

https://www.aclu.org/news/immigrants-rights/detained-immigra...

sjoedev··on Unpopular Opinion: Bootstrap is a better front-end framework than Tailwind
I wouldn’t put them in the same category. Bootstrap has a much stronger opinion about how you write and structure CSS, while Tailwind is a framework for building a style system and writing arbitrary CSS that conforms to it. In practice, Tailwind is actually much closer to writing vanilla CSS. It does come with a widely used default (and very good, IMO) style system, but you ultimately apply arbitrary CSS rules just like vanilla.

Tailwind is certainly divisive. It’s better suited to component-based frameworks than templates or plain HTML, so a person’s background likely contributes to how they perceive it. Personally, I’ve worked a lot with vanilla CSS, opinionated libraries like Bootstrap, and Tailwind, and opinionated libraries are the only one I have no desire to use again. I generally want Tailwind in component-based projects and vanilla CSS in template-based projects.

At the end of the day, pick what you like and use it. They all get the job done.

sjoedev··on Grafana Labs made a Taylor Swift dashboard
> In the Swiftie-verse, an “Easter egg” refers to a hidden clue or detail that Taylor plants in her work …

I don’t see this as meaningfully different than, for example:

> In the computing world, “Java” refers to a programming language …

Which seems totally fine to me.

sjoedev··on I tried coding with AI, I became lazy and stupid
Code review has been an industry standard tool to ensure the correctness of software for decades.
sjoedev··on I tried coding with AI, I became lazy and stupid
My experience using LLMs is similar to my experience working with a team of junior developers. And LLMs are valuable in a similar way.

There are many problems where the solution would take me a few hours to derive from scratch myself, but looking at a solution and deciding “this is correct” or “this is incorrect” takes a few minutes or seconds.

So I don’t expect the junior or the LLM to produce a correct result every time, but it’s quick to verify the solution and provide feedback, thus I have saved time to think about more challenging problems where my experience and domain knowledge is more valuable.

sjoedev··on Fresh Tariff Games Are Leaving Small Businesses Dazed
> The distributors may or may not buy from China and Mexico.

They most certainly do. And they’re paying more. And, consequently, they’re raising prices. Which small, local business pay to operate.

You’re not making a strong argument here. Do you really think a price increase somewhere in the supply chain doesn’t affect everyone downstream?

sjoedev··on Toys/Lag: Jerk Monitor
I play video games at a decently high level (like top ~10% in a few competitive games). To support what you’re saying, I can tell the difference between 144hz and 240hz if I’m in control. For example, if I can shake the screen around.

If I’m just watching, I’m not sure I could even tell the difference between 60hz and 144hz.

sjoedev··on Rust and WASM for Form Validation
WASM does not need to access the DOM to be extremely useful. JS is already very effective and ridiculously fast for updating the DOM.

WASM is to offload computationally expensive workloads that JS is not so good for (perhaps some sort of computer vision, for example). It passes the result back to JS to update the DOM.

sjoedev··on Show HN: GetHooky – a language-agnostic Git hook manager
Since it’s hosted on GitHub, I snooped through the repo, and it appears to be created using VitePress [1]. [1] https://vitepress.dev/
sjoedev··on Inmates in ElSalvador tortured/strangled-hellish conditions in Bukele's prisons (2023)
Look around the world at how many “landslide” election victories are won in places that do not truly have elections. Those with authoritarian intent are notorious for controlling the narrative.

All around the world, we are seeing many examples of consolidation of power through populism. Yes, populism is popular by definition. But history is not usually kind to those who consolidate power.

sjoedev··on Why is Cloudflare Pages' bandwidth unlimited?
Cloudflare is not profitable [1]. I’m wary of what might happen when they need to become profitable. Could this be another case of a company offering an excellent, cheap product while being propped up by investors, only to later have an “enshittification” [2] phase where they aggressively cut corners and increase prices to make a profit?

[1] https://www.wsj.com/market-data/quotes/NET/financials/annual...

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification

sjoedev··on How economical is your local Taco Bell?
Taco Bell will never be the healthiest thing you can eat, but in terms of fast food, it’s not half bad. In my anecdotal experience, their quality has gone up across the board compared to years ago, and they’ve also added many healthier customization options (you have to ask for it, though).

This is from their marketing, but it’s pretty honest based on my experience: https://www.tacobell.com/nutrition

I pay some attention to nutrition, and I still eat Taco Bell sometimes even after cutting out most other fast food restaurants.

sjoedev··on Forest Service orders Arrowhead bottled water to shut down California pipeline
Related: Nestle pays $200 per year to bottle water near Flint, MI (2017) [1].

As a Michigan native who has family, friends, and coworkers affected by the Flint water crisis, very frustrating.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/29/nestle-pays-...