Hacker News: DigitalSea

New comment by DigitalSea in "Do agents.md files help coding agents?"

DigitalSea — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 07:24:03 +0000

Yes

New comment by DigitalSea in "Show HN: Autoliner – write a bot to control a virtual airline"

DigitalSea — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 03:35:06 +0000

Martin, I just wanted to say you've built something awesome here. I'm the player Vheissu you might see who has been topping the leaderboard. I would love to help you expand upon the game and make it even better. I'm a bit addicted to it, but think being able to have other avenues to expand the mechanics would be awesome (think maintenance costs, fuel costs, market volatility around fuel, etc). If you're down for a collaborator, I'd love to get involved. It's got a lot of potential.

Show HN: Captura – free open source screenshot app and API

DigitalSea — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 06:40:49 +0000

I needed something for screenshots but with some of the same features that screenshotapi.net has and embarked on a journey to build something and open source it. It's pretty fully featured with support for proxies, removing ads, cookie banners, returning a webpage as a PDF, image and more. Might be some bugs and things I haven't tested lurking, but it seems to be working well and worked for my needs.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46791837

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

Show HN: I built a Q&A platform for bad advice

DigitalSea — Fri, 09 Jan 2026 04:16:20 +0000

I call it askbad. It originally started out as a satire of StackOverflow where the worse answers are voted up instead of the best ones (although you could debate the worse answers still get upvoted over there anyways). I wanted a fun project to build that wasn't AI for once, just a fun little app. It's a single page application with very few dependencies, Tailwind for the styling. I've been testing it with some friends for a while and it's a bit of fun.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46549977

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

Show HN: HTMS (write JavaScript using HTML)

DigitalSea — Fri, 29 Aug 2025 06:09:22 +0000

Don't ask me where this idea came from. But a couple of years ago I had this crazy idea of writing a HTML to Javascript compiler. I went off it for a bit, but just started hacking back on it again and have something that actually works (demos and all). It's inspired a little by the early days of my development career writing Coldfusion.

Would you use this to build production apps? You'd probably be as crazy as I am for making this if you did, but still.

A fun little crazy experiment.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45060750

Points: 3

# Comments: 1

New comment by DigitalSea in "ChatGPT's enterprise success against Copilot fuels OpenAI/Microsoft rivalry"

DigitalSea — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 10:19:35 +0000

The problem is Coilot is dumb. Allegedly using the same models ChatGPT does, but Microsoft seems to have done something to Copilot which lobotomises it so badly it's unusable for anything serious. Great for the MS ecosystem integration, but as a general purpose tool, it's nowhere near ChatGPT.

New comment by DigitalSea in "Ask HN: Would You Unionize for WFH?"

DigitalSea — Mon, 24 Mar 2025 12:44:39 +0000

Yay.

WFH autonomy isn’t trivial, it’s about reclaiming control of your time, environment, and productivity. If collective action focuses narrowly yet powerfully on securing that benefit, the leverage is clear. Companies resisting WFH often rely on isolated dissent; collective solidarity flips that script. Risky? Sure. But meaningful rights rarely arrive quietly. Worth the fight.

New comment by DigitalSea in "Ask HN: Would You Pay for an AI-Powered Speech Therapy App for Kids?"

DigitalSea — Mon, 24 Mar 2025 12:29:11 +0000

No.

Your app might gamify speech practice, but it overlooks crucial elements: nuanced human judgment, emotional rapport, and adaptive interpersonal communication. Speech therapists don’t just correct sounds; they navigate psychological nuances, adjust dynamically based on subtle cues, and foster genuine motivation through trust. AI might imitate, but can’t authentically replicate this.

Parents wary of therapy’s cost and engagement issues might initially bite, but sustained improvement demands personalised professional insight. Edtech and AI thrive as complements, not replacements.

Reframe your positioning clearly as a supplemental practice tool, not a replacement for professional therapy, or risk selling parents a mirage.

New comment by DigitalSea in "The subtle art of designing physical controls for cars"

DigitalSea — Tue, 11 Feb 2025 23:21:31 +0000

My 2004 5 series BMW had this (it was called iDrive). A command style knob that could move on an axis of sorts (up and down, left, right). You could also press it in. I absolutely hated it.

New comment by DigitalSea in "The subtle art of designing physical controls for cars"

DigitalSea — Tue, 11 Feb 2025 23:20:30 +0000

I learned this lesson the hard way with my early 2000s BMW 5 Series (a 2004 model). It had a single joystick-style knob (iDrive, if I remember correctly) controlling a screen that handled everything—climate, settings, and more. The problem? It was an all-in-one system, completely integrated with vehicle functions, which meant you couldn’t swap it out for a newer or better OEM system. You were stuck with aging tech, and once the screen or computer started acting up, there were no simple fixes. No cheap button replacement, no easy upgrades.

Compare that to an old LandCruiser or similar vehicle from the ’80s. Physical controls still work decades later, and worst-case scenario, you replace a button or a switch for pocket change. Meanwhile, modern cars are turning into disposable tech products, destined for obsolescence the moment their proprietary systems fail. It's for this reason when I bought a new car a couple of years ago, I opted for a Toyota LandCruiser, the use of physical buttons (despite coming with touchscreens now) makes a huge difference when you're driving and want to press a button to change music or turn the volume up/down.

New comment by DigitalSea in "Introducing deep research"

DigitalSea — Mon, 03 Feb 2025 00:27:54 +0000

Not sure if people picked up on it, but this is being powered by the unreleased o3 model. Which might explain why it leaps ahead in benchmarks considerably and aligns with the claims o3 is too expensive to release publicly. Seems to be quite an impressive model and the leading out of Google, DeepSeek and Perplexity.

New comment by DigitalSea in "I still like Sublime Text"

DigitalSea — Thu, 30 Jan 2025 03:24:14 +0000

I love Sublime Text editor. Have been using it for 15 years now and despite the fact most of my development is done inside of VSCode or other editors, I still use ST for large files and notes. I can confidently open up a 1gb SQL dump in ST and it won't break a sweat, try that in VSCode and you can see it freeze up for a bit and that's on a decent machine too.

New comment by DigitalSea in "I trusted an LLM, now I'm on day 4 of an afternoon project"

DigitalSea — Mon, 27 Jan 2025 23:51:55 +0000

This is like watching a carpenter blame their hammer because they didn’t measure twice. AI is a tool, it's like a power tool for a tradesperson: it'll amplify your skills, but if you let it steer the whole project? You’ll end up with a pile of bent nails.

LLMs are jittery apprentices. They'll hallucinate measurements, over-sand perfectly good code, or spin you in circles for hours. I’ve been there back in the GPT-4 days especially, nothing stings like realising you wasted a day debugging AI’s creative solution to a problem you could've solved in 20 minutes.

When you treat AI like a toolbelt, not a replacement for your own brain? Magic. It’s killer at grunt work like; explaining regex, scaffolding boilerplate, or untangling JWT auth spaghetti. You still gotta hold the blueprint. AI ain't some magic wand: it’s a nail gun. Point it wrong, and you’ll spend four days prying out mistakes.

Sucks it cost you time, but hey, now you know to never let the tool work you. It's hopefully a lesson OP learns once and doesn't let it sour their experience with AI, because when utilised properly, you can really get things done, even if it's just the tedious/boring stuff or things you'd spend time Google bashing, reading docs or finding on StackOverflow.

Show HN: Santashuffle

DigitalSea — Thu, 19 Dec 2024 06:05:33 +0000

Out of the need for a secret Santa generator that didn't make you sign up or had millions of ads on it, I created this client-side Secret Santa app. One requirement I needed was generating pairings for a family secret Santa that ensured partners didn't get each other.

Thought I would share for others who do family secret santas or need name pairings.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42458854

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by DigitalSea in "OpenAI board lied about reasons behind Altman's firing"

DigitalSea — Wed, 22 Nov 2023 12:54:37 +0000

So apparently, Sam Altman is so skilled he can cast magic spells on people? This just all adds credence to the fact he was fired because of a coup.

New comment by DigitalSea in "Sam Altman, OpenAI board open talks to negotiate his possible return"

DigitalSea — Tue, 21 Nov 2023 22:31:15 +0000

The fact the new CEO can't even get answers from the board is quite telling. Looks like the OpenAI board wants those investor lawsuits. And allegedly the Quora guy Adam D'Angelo is the ringleader of all this?

New comment by DigitalSea in "Things I wish I knew before moving 50K lines of code to React Server Components"

DigitalSea — Mon, 04 Sep 2023 00:28:18 +0000

I have Aurelia 1 apps that have been in production since 2015. They don't need to be really touched. But, when they do, they're really easy to modify. I am currently using Aurelia 2 and will have similar scalable apps that will be in production for years to come too.

New comment by DigitalSea in "Things I wish I knew before moving 50K lines of code to React Server Components"

DigitalSea — Sun, 03 Sep 2023 23:18:44 +0000

I am not saying HTMX is terrible or anything. What you've built is cool and I've built something with it. The point I was making wasn't made very well. What I meant was good options are often left out of the conversation because of React, Vue and for a while there, Svelte. There are a lot of great libraries and frameworks that nobody talks about, HTMX included. I just feel like HTMX isn't being hyped because it's good, but because of the memes/marketing aspect. I think it's a disservice to your work, which deserves to be assessed on its merits. It's a sad indictment on front-end that building something good is no longer good enough to get recognition.

New comment by DigitalSea in "Things I wish I knew before moving 50K lines of code to React Server Components"

DigitalSea — Fri, 01 Sep 2023 12:08:36 +0000

HTMX is cool, but it's honestly only in the conversation because the developer has leveraged memes and garnered popularity on Twitter.

New comment by DigitalSea in "Things I wish I knew before moving 50K lines of code to React Server Components"

DigitalSea — Fri, 01 Sep 2023 12:02:35 +0000

I'm old enough to remember when servers rendered everything and you used CSS and Javascript to enhance the pages after they were rendered. The web is in such a dark and overengineered place. It's almost unbelievable. It's why my approach to building apps is server-rendered first and then enhanced after the fact.