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taitems

1,968 karma · joined April 27, 2009

https://taitbrown.com | @taitems
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taitems··on We're training a Figma-fluent editing model
Anything would be better than their current embarrassing AI roll out. The only way you can get something halfway decent is to put Claude Code into Fable or some equally high intent window and make an animal sacrifice.

Then the whole thing is effectively useless because of server-side font licensing. Your expensive brand font cannot be used by the MCP so you then need an additional layer of client-side Figma plugins to replace the placeholder font with your real font.

taitems··on I built Timeframe, our family e-paper dashboard
Australia is the skin cancer capital of the world, with 2 in 3 of us diagnosed by age 70. The most used complication on my Apple Watch is the UV index, beating out weather temp, battery etc.
taitems··on Show HN: Rails UI
Did a quick search and no-one has flagged a11y/colour/contrast but the animating effect for the brand colour often had a colour contrast around the 1.0 range.
taitems··on Ask HN: Share your personal website
https://taitbrown.com -- I feel like it's "the mechanics car" or "the builders house". We're all too busy designing and building for other people, our own house looks like junk.
taitems··on Ask HN: What are you working on? (October 2025)
Would love to see the Red Cross partner with someone like you here in Australia. Not affiliated, just a donor. We're not financially incentivised like other countries but there's a big culture here about celebrating the free milkshake and/or sausage roll you get after donating.
taitems··on Rcyl – a recycled plastic urban bike
Their poor little servers aren't coping well with the attention. The worst is a 1,004kb image so it's not excessively large.
taitems··on The ChompSaw: A benchtop power tool that's safe for kids to use
Not sure why you've been downvoted so heavily. That seems like a misuse of the downvote purpose.

But yes, I kind of agree with other commenters here in that maybe teaching absolute respect of a knife/table saw/power tool and its power to maim is a really important lesson that this sidesteps?

taitems··on How I pwned a major New Zealand service provider
At least they cared. I found an enumeration attack on an Australian referral service where phone numbers were keys and it returned way too much personal information. Responsibly disclosed numerous times, LinkedIn contacted employees. Not even acknowledged and at last check, still open vulnerability.
taitems··on Chemists Create World's Thinnest Spaghetti
If CNT (Carbon Nanotubes) are displaying similar risk factors to asbestos, what is the scale difference between these? I've never felt so compelled to eat something that could kill me.
taitems··on Hyperworlds – Web Replacement Projects
We take photos of our kids to track and timestamp anaphylaxis or other medical reasons. Incredibly important at the time, and then when dynamic wallpapers start mixing them in to the roster you desperately want to forget them.
taitems··on World Food Atlas: Discover local dishes and ingredients
Unfortunately the hit targets are stacked poorly. If I mouse in from the top right the number turns red, otherwise the text turns red.
taitems··on Ask HN: How to handle user file uploads?
Ensure you have adequate cleanup procedures too. I heard from ex-employees of a major car reselling platform that CSAM was distributed by creating a draft car ad, never publishing it and the CSAM was now hosted and accessible via direct image URLs. The records were orphaned, not sure how they got the tip-off.
taitems··on Ask HN: Does it still matter to be in the Bay Area?
Did it ever really matter?
taitems··on Designer News is dead
"Design Twitter" is the only reason I haven't deleted my account yet. Yes, Twitter is full of toxicity and can easily become an echo chamber -- but if you actively set out to create one it can be a unique positive. Bear with me.

I follow a range of designers and front enders from the early Dribbble days and basically haven't added many people since. Yes it might be "polite" to follow back friends and colleagues who follow you, but it disrupts the balance. I don't even follow my own parents back because it introduces a bunch of off-topic content.

taitems··on Designer News is dead
There's a name I haven't heard in a while!

DN was fun for a very brief moment. But really, it died so long ago I think someone flat out forgot to tell it.

taitems··on Show HN: Twogether AI – Multi-Person Photo Generation API
This is simply region prompting isn't it? Person A in left 50%, Person B in right 50%?
taitems··on Apple hunter Tom Brown finds and saves rare apple varieties
The Ripponlea Estate in Melbourne has previously hosted heritage apple sales. We grow a Devonshire Quarrenden now and my parents (with more land) took away a bunch of different varieties.
taitems··on TimeGuessr: Guess what year a photograph was taken
It took me 4 rounds to realise the time input was a slider, as you couldn't click to type. It needs some work.
taitems··on Growing food in hard clay
This is the lasagne method of no till gardening, which is also fantastic at smothering weeds. Ultimately this did nothing to break up the authors clay bed.
taitems··on Parcel v2
I was put onto the incredibly fast esbuild[1] by a colleague and have used it here and there for open source packages. I'd been keen to understand which release of Parcel v2 they benchmarked against as they claim 0.37s to 39.28s on their home page?

[1] https://esbuild.github.io/

taitems··on Australians ‘complacent’ to rapid growth in digital surveillance
That's all good, it's why I asked what you meant. I think we've done a fantastic job of flattening the curve here compared to places like the US/UK. As long as we can continue to be on the right side of an ICU tipping point we should continue to ride this out.
taitems··on Australians ‘complacent’ to rapid growth in digital surveillance
I'm not sure I understand what you mean but the Florida 50x metric not standing the test of time?

Even if you were to look at it on a national level, the US death rate per million is 2,142, the Australian death rate per million is... 56. That's a 38x rate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_death_rates_...

taitems··on Australians ‘complacent’ to rapid growth in digital surveillance
Cries of "Tyranny!" and "Give me liberty or give me death" are imported concepts that don't resonate quite as well here in Australia. The pearl clutching "Save Australia" protests were good for a chuckle[1], but are also accompanied by people advocating we rise up and murder our police[2]? When Florida has 50x the per capita death rate than that of Australia, it's pretty clear that the US chose liberty AND death[3].

Lockdown is hard, police have overstepped here and there -- but my family is safe and healthy, and my parents are alive.

[1] https://www.news.com.au/world/coronavirus/global/australians... [2] https://youtu.be/FUKqliBYIvM [3] https://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/florida-s-per-capita-covi...

taitems··on Earthquake in Melbourne, Australia (9.15 AM 22nd Sep 21, AEST)
Fascinating replies from both of you, thanks.
taitems··on Earthquake in Melbourne, Australia (9.15 AM 22nd Sep 21, AEST)
From memory the opening of a military technology to the general public forbid using it to this level of accuracy? Maybe it was only sub metre accuracy?
taitems··on Receiving FLEXlm Error -88,309: System Clock Has Been Set Back (2020)
That sounds like the steps I saw to get a free version of the original version of Little Snitch. Simply use Little Snitch to stop Little Snitch from phoning home.
taitems··on Tell HN: Coming soon – “Meet the Batch” threads for parallel Launch HNs
For the rest of us punters:

- "Show HN: "

- "Ask HN: "

- "Tell HN: "

taitems··on DeLorean considering all-electric reboot
I see the skateboard as a stopgap measure for companies playing catch-up. Not everyone wants to dethrone Tesla, and even fewer are resourced to do so. VW has spent billions upon billions, in part as a mea culpa for dieselgate. How many others are willing (or even able) to invest in these massive battery factories, retrain ICE teams vs. making the pragmatic choice to slap your chassis on a licensed skateboard?

I guess there are further software parallels in the build vs buy debate.

taitems··on DeLorean considering all-electric reboot
Lots of EV manufacturers are investigating the "skateboard" model where you drop a chassis on a unified battery platform.

VW has invested monumental amounts in this but I imagine will keep it all locked down to the VAG family. Perhaps they're open to licensing opportunities. Canoo ($GOEV) on the other hand is in the news for their skateboard platform being adopted by Hyundai/Kia and potentially being the base of the new Apple car.

In theory DMC could build upon a Canoo skateboard, or license another EV startups skateboard.

taitems··on A physical breach is a nightmare scenario for Capitol IT
I would counter and say that those who reacted most fervently to COVID were the quickest to recover and those who were most blasé and dismissive are paying the price. New Zealand went immediately to stage 4 “where you sleep tonight is where you must stay” and their efforts have been admired.
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