Hacker News: IdiotSavage

New comment by IdiotSavage in "GUIs should be fully keyboard-driven"

IdiotSavage — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 09:02:21 +0000

> …and that means that users can input and navigate at light speed.

Oh yeah? I remember when they introduced these shitty animations that made everything feel extremely laggy.

From the article linked below:

"Microsoft Excel now animates certain actions as you work. For instance, when you move from one cell to another, it animates the move. When you paste copied information, it animates the paste. Or when you enter a formula, it animates the calculation."

https://www.adventuresincre.com/disable-animations-excel/

New comment by IdiotSavage in "Inception-style curved map for turn-by-turn directions"

IdiotSavage — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 14:05:06 +0000

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMjAxMzY3NjcxNF5BMl5B...

New comment by IdiotSavage in "Asahi Linux Progress Report: Linux 7.2"

IdiotSavage — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 12:19:27 +0000

> other than that all I really need is a web browser and Ghostty with good battery life.

Then why bother installing a different OS?

New comment by IdiotSavage in "About the security content of macOS Tahoe 26.6"

IdiotSavage — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 13:41:32 +0000

I hate the round corners. It's already too much on 15, but way worse on 26. It looks like "Baby's first OS", designed by Fisher-Price.

New comment by IdiotSavage in "A shell colon does nothing. Use it anyway"

IdiotSavage — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 13:30:55 +0000

> Another important feature of a tool like this is the ability to tolerate errors: I can't imagine a Linux today that would be able to even boot if the shell was extra pedantic about errors. A lot of mostly irrelevant things routinely fail on boot and during normal operation. Stamping them all out is an arduous...

You seem to be implying PowerShell aborts on any error. That's not the case:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/microsof...

New comment by IdiotSavage in "A shell colon does nothing. Use it anyway"

IdiotSavage — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 08:24:05 +0000

What if there was a less cryptic way to have mandatory arguments, something harder to get wrong, like

  param(
    [parameter(mandatory)] $name
  )

  "Hello, $name!"

And then:

  $ ./script.ps1 Dave
  Hello, Dave!

  $ ./script.ps1 -name Dave
  Hello, Dave!

  $ ./script.ps1
  cmdlet script.ps1 at command pipeline position 1
  Supply values for the following parameters:
  name:

Or non interactively:

  $ pwsh -nonint ./script.ps1
  script.ps1: Cannot process command because of one or more missing mandatory parameters: name.

New comment by IdiotSavage in "An old patent inspired the new "Y-zipper", a three-sided fastener"

IdiotSavage — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 09:07:47 +0000

Is any of MIT's stuff "open"?

Clicking around on news.mit.edu I see lots of cool ideas. Articles mention "the software allows users to...", yet I never see a link to actual software.

For example, I expected to be able to try that 3D-zipper generator they show in the video myself.

Edit: found something:

https://github.com/tichaesque/FabObscura

New comment by IdiotSavage in "It's getting harder to focus every day"

IdiotSavage — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 13:59:15 +0000

Meanwhile in Japan:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9FsQXYVgUE

New comment by IdiotSavage in "I wrote an bash enumerator because I was sick of xargs"

IdiotSavage — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 06:31:57 +0000

In this thread: bash experts with arcane knowledge, unintentionally demonstrating how awful bash is.

The obvious solution would be to use something more sane, like PowerShell or nushell, but instead old experts will always defend the skills they have honed for years, while criticizing anything that's different.

New comment by IdiotSavage in "If you're a button, you have one job"

IdiotSavage — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 06:43:33 +0000

Interestingly the "activate on release" logic was implemented in computer GUIs long before touchscreens were common, used purely by mouse-click (a physical button).

New comment by IdiotSavage in "If you're a button, you have one job"

IdiotSavage — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 06:36:00 +0000

My point was about user expectations / users not being aware when the button triggers. Your argument has nothing to do with that.

New comment by IdiotSavage in "Vancouver PD website features Quick Escape button that wipes itself from history"

IdiotSavage — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 06:32:16 +0000

Isn't this exactly why browsers implemented "private mode"?

Why don't they inform users about how to properly use private mode, which works with any website, instead of rolling their own solution, which the user has to learn just for that one website?

New comment by IdiotSavage in "If you're a button, you have one job"

IdiotSavage — Sun, 05 Jul 2026 12:57:41 +0000

> But a button that works like that in a GUI would feel wrong.

No, it doesn't. It feels way more responsive.

My pet peeve is "stopwatch apps" which trigger on release instead of on press. When timing something where fractions of a second matter, most people won't realize that it triggers on release and tap down when they want to start / stop, adding some arbitrary delay until they actually release the button.

New comment by IdiotSavage in "Bashblog – a single bash script to create blogs"

IdiotSavage — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 11:38:21 +0000

You're wrong.

"Users should vote and comment when they run across something they personally find interesting—not for promotion."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#:~:text=Use...

New comment by IdiotSavage in "Show HN: Brain Frog – Can you be random enough for 11 lines of JavaScript?"

IdiotSavage — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 06:32:26 +0000

If you want to see what a random distribution looks like:

  jot -r 100 0 1 | rs -t 10

I noticed my "fake randomness" is lacking long sequences of the same key. I feel like I'm "predictable" when I press the same key 5 times in a row, yet that happens a lot in a truly random distribution.

New comment by IdiotSavage in "Writing Postcards with a 3D Printer"

IdiotSavage — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 12:55:30 +0000

Only in theory. A 3D printer doesn't need to sustain lateral forces - a router does. It might not be built for this.

New comment by IdiotSavage in "Deno Desktop"

IdiotSavage — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 12:47:45 +0000

The docs say that's the default:

https://docs.deno.com/runtime/desktop/backends/#webview-(def...

New comment by IdiotSavage in "Sakana Fugu"

IdiotSavage — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 12:18:41 +0000

More fun facts:

Omitting those characters makes it good for generating passwords if they need to be typed in by hand.

Double-clicking a base58 string always selects the whole string and it doesn't wrap accidentally, thanks to missing / and +, so it's also convenient to copy and paste.

New comment by IdiotSavage in "GrapheneOS has been ported to Android 17"

IdiotSavage — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 06:30:44 +0000

Or the more recent memory of the F1 ad pushed via the wallet app.

New comment by IdiotSavage in "Are insecure code completions in PyCharm a vulnerability?"

IdiotSavage — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 09:06:40 +0000

This is just a continuation of common StackOverflow advice to "make it work", which the LLMs use as "knowledge":

https://stackoverflow.com/a/28002687

https://stackoverflow.com/a/32282390

https://stackoverflow.com/a/18062293

Naive users used to copy paste those things from StackOverflow, now they can use line completion in their editor.