Hacker News: HeyImAlex

New comment by HeyImAlex in "Parse, Don't Validate – In a Language That Doesn't Want You To"

HeyImAlex — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 15:38:50 +0000

You can AOT typescript types from zod schemas if intellisense is your main complaint. I think it generally makes more sense to transform from more expressive => less expressive, and zod is more expressive than typescript (as evidenced by your need to add doc comment annotations to get similar behavior going the other way).

New comment by HeyImAlex in "Extreme Heat conference cancelled due to extreme heat warning"

HeyImAlex — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 06:37:26 +0000

They're talking about window units, not heat pump systems or central air. It's a complete AC that sits in your window. It can't cool a very large space (even in apartments people may have more than one), but it's cheap and easy to install (and equally easy to remove). It might be unsightly on a house, but a lot of that is probably just cultural norms. They're very common in NYC, where a lot of housing was built before central air became the default.

New comment by HeyImAlex in "Algebraic Effects for the Rest of Us"

HeyImAlex — Sat, 30 May 2026 07:07:40 +0000

Do effect systems actually avoid colored functions? Don’t most typed effect systems require the used effects in the signature?

New comment by HeyImAlex in "Austin’s surge of new housing construction drove down rents"

HeyImAlex — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 12:01:31 +0000

It seems like it would drive down housing prices, but (given limited zoning) drive up land prices?

New comment by HeyImAlex in "Life After Work"

HeyImAlex — Wed, 29 Oct 2025 15:53:47 +0000

In the times of the French Revolution that was enough, but I think technology is obsoleting us there too. If evil oligarch can make a bunker and ten million $100 kill bots, I don’t think the people are rising up unless existence is worse than death, and even then they might not win.

New comment by HeyImAlex in "Go subtleties"

HeyImAlex — Wed, 22 Oct 2025 15:30:56 +0000

Here’s my favorite post on the subject https://adam-p.ca/blog/2025/04/string-length/

New comment by HeyImAlex in "Diff Algorithms"

HeyImAlex — Tue, 30 Sep 2025 23:29:47 +0000

Another thing I’ve encountered with tree/structured diffs is a concept of identity. diff([{id:1,name:foo}],[{id:2,name:foo}] should show object w/ id:1 removed and id:2 added, not id changed from 1 to 2. Tough because then your diffing algo needs to be aware of the object structure (imo using convention and saying “no objects can contain this key” is pretty tough when you accept any user generated data).

New comment by HeyImAlex in "Ultrasonic Chef's Knife"

HeyImAlex — Sun, 21 Sep 2025 04:17:55 +0000

I think if this can keep a knife effectively sharper than the equivalent nice steel with less maintenance, then it’s going to find a market.

I’m a nerd, but Ive found that once I’ve mastered a hobby I eventually gravitate towards convenience, optimizing my time over absolute performance. I’ve built five PCs in my life, and now I only own a macbook. I spent loads of time optimizing my hifi setup, and now most of my apartment is sonos. And I have probably 1k worth of nice japanese knives + whetstones, that I would happily replace with a single knife that needs little to no upkeep.

New comment by HeyImAlex in "Imgur's community was in revolt"

HeyImAlex — Tue, 02 Sep 2025 15:53:00 +0000

Reddit’s eventual livelihood would be based on selling ads, so legality is not the line they were aiming for.

New comment by HeyImAlex in "Claude is the drug, Cursor is the dealer"

HeyImAlex — Mon, 11 Aug 2025 21:20:30 +0000

Hasn't the proliferation of streaming services shown that the content is the "drug"? To remain competitive, they had to start producing themselves.

New comment by HeyImAlex in "When flat rate movers won't answer your calls"

HeyImAlex — Sun, 04 May 2025 10:52:58 +0000

Check out design within reach. Fancy furniture can be incredibly expensive.

New comment by HeyImAlex in "The best – but not good – way to limit string length"

HeyImAlex — Wed, 30 Apr 2025 23:44:31 +0000

Thank you for writing this! It’s something I’ve always wanted a comprehensive guide on, now I have something to point to.

New comment by HeyImAlex in "How the U.S. became a science superpower"

HeyImAlex — Tue, 15 Apr 2025 23:00:38 +0000

Consensus is that the evidence supporting that is not strong.

New comment by HeyImAlex in "US Administration announces 34% tariffs on China, 20% on EU"

HeyImAlex — Thu, 03 Apr 2025 20:53:09 +0000

It seems insanely risky to attempt to fill a niche that only opened up because of these tariffs. If they’re removed, congrats you just spent a bunch of capital to make a factory that is suddenly no longer competitive.

New comment by HeyImAlex in "The Movement to Redirect Billions of Taxpayer Dollars to Private Schools"

HeyImAlex — Mon, 13 Jan 2025 20:38:20 +0000

Same deal with other industries with hybrid public/private, like the postal service or insurance. Arithmetic is based on serving some people at a loss but amortizing those losses against the wider public. Private entities come in and eat the winners while leaving the losers. Public option is left with only the clients that were never profitable, and private businesses have no obligation to serve them.

New comment by HeyImAlex in "The economy is going great, except for the housing market"

HeyImAlex — Fri, 01 Nov 2024 01:40:29 +0000

I feel like immigration is effectively unlimited from the perspective of big cities. There's friction moving states, and some things keep people anchored, but the market is nationwide. If you built enough in NYC to make rent comparable to other major cities, then significantly more people would want to move to NYC.

New comment by HeyImAlex in "All you need is Wide Events, not "Metrics, Logs and Traces""

HeyImAlex — Tue, 27 Feb 2024 22:43:26 +0000

I think all metrics can be reconstructed as “wide events” since they’re just a bunch of arbitrary data? Counts, gauges, and histograms at least seem pretty straight forward to me.

It seems like the main motivation for metrics is that sending + storing + querying wide events for everything is cost prohibitive and/or performance intensive. If you can afford it and it works well, wide events is definitely more flexible. A metric is kinda just a pre-aggregation on the event stream.

New comment by HeyImAlex in "Iowa man files lawsuit after being arrested twice for criticizing the police"

HeyImAlex — Tue, 17 Oct 2023 07:44:21 +0000

This is about a council rule that forbids “derogatory statements or comments about any individual.”

New comment by HeyImAlex in "Iowa man files lawsuit after being arrested twice for criticizing the police"

HeyImAlex — Tue, 17 Oct 2023 07:40:33 +0000

This is about a different man, Noah Petersen, who was reading a statement mentioning the linked encounter at a council meeting.

New comment by HeyImAlex in "South Korea has jailed a man for using AI to create sexual images of children"

HeyImAlex — Sat, 30 Sep 2023 18:54:44 +0000

There’s a difference between “approving of” something and thinking it shouldn’t be a crime. What’s your feeling on the first amendment? Do you approve of hate speech?