Hacker News: Pensacola

New comment by Pensacola in "Simplify, then add delightness: On designing for children"

Pensacola — Tue, 29 Jul 2025 20:54:30 +0000

This actually captured my intended point, which was expressed poorly and hastily. It's not my intention to twist or neglect the good intentions of the OP in designing an app for his kids, merely pointing out that some of the language read more sinister.

New comment by Pensacola in "Simplify, then add delightness: On designing for children"

Pensacola — Mon, 28 Jul 2025 18:38:31 +0000

All of a sudden, this delightful article about a dad creating a toy for his kids now reads like a big-tobacco eyes-only internal memo: How to hook a kid on a screen when they should be interacting with real world physical objects.

New comment by Pensacola in "SPAs Were a Mistake"

Pensacola — Wed, 02 Mar 2022 23:30:05 +0000

> The problem is the mixing and matching of state management.

This. But IMHO the right solution is to make the back-end stateless and manage all client state on the client. Each request authenticates itself, and (if you're ReSTful about it) the back-end is simply a database connector/augmenter.

In this paradigm, the SPA is basically a desktop app that retrieves data from a server, built to run within a framework, which happens to be a web browser.

In case you're jumping to conclusions, know that I'm a late-comer to the SPA party, having resisted from its inception until about a year ago, for all the obvious reasons, including those bemoaned by the OP.

Why did I relent? SPA frameworks like React now handle pretty much all the heavy lifting for you. OP, you should check out React Router, which can render this post's examples irrelevant. I'm surprised that in 2022, someone writing to the web UI layer would bother to create code to manage the address bar when there are a thousand ways to not have to.

New comment by Pensacola in "Can a $310M startup avoid due diligence?"

Pensacola — Tue, 08 Feb 2022 20:39:31 +0000

There are no other articles by SV Gossip but this. While I don't dispute the content, it does feel like a very targeted hit.

New comment by Pensacola in "A Clever Web3 Pitch"

Pensacola — Tue, 01 Feb 2022 21:48:47 +0000

I am starting to allow that the skeptic in me might be wrong, and I'm just missing something that others can see when it comes to the crypto frenzy.

There are real irrefutable problems lurking in the technology as it exists now, but let's assume that those can be worked out. What I want to know is, does Braintrust really plan to hand over governance to its participants? How is that a good sell to the VCs? Because I assume that they don't in fact plan to hand over governance to the market participants, in which case the coins seem fairly useless. Convince me I'm wrong.

A Clever Web3 Pitch

Pensacola — Tue, 01 Feb 2022 21:43:10 +0000

Article URL: https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/signals/21461

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30169824

Points: 2

# Comments: 2

New comment by Pensacola in "5% of 666 Python repos had comma typo bugs (inc V8, TensorFlow and PyTorch)"

Pensacola — Fri, 07 Jan 2022 22:18:17 +0000

Why 666?

New comment by Pensacola in "Ask HN: What API Gateways do you use?"

Pensacola — Wed, 24 Nov 2021 17:49:03 +0000

In 2017, at a big-data ad tech company, we used to use nginx as an API gateway. Our experience with the tool was difficult enough that I'd strongly caution you to execute a deep-dive POC before committing to it. Our main problem at the time was the combination of scant documentation and poor technical support: we encountered many little issues with config file syntax that took way too long to solve: it took multiple days to figure out things that on the surface one might expect to resolve within an hour or two. And not everything was possible without turning to third party modules or writing our own plug-ins. Much can change in four years, however, so maybe they've ironed out some of those kinks. But talking about the tool of those days, I'd say plan on hiring an nginx expert to support it.

On the other hand, it's flipping fast, practically invisible.

New comment by Pensacola in "I would like closure, but I'll take honesty"

Pensacola — Thu, 18 Nov 2021 21:33:27 +0000

People might do good things or bad things, but people aren't good or bad. They're just people. Actions can be good or bad. It's fair to completely condemn the action, not the person. Since you can't get inside someone's head to know their motives, it's dishonest - or at best deluded - to totally condemn anyone. You can't fix a css problem by debugging the server code.

New comment by Pensacola in "NPM – "is-even", 160k weekly downloads"

Pensacola — Tue, 16 Nov 2021 19:54:55 +0000

Is this "regulatory arbitrage?"

New comment by Pensacola in "NPM – "is-even", 160k weekly downloads"

Pensacola — Tue, 16 Nov 2021 19:53:08 +0000

Funniest thing about this is that is-even requires as a dependency another node package written by the same author, called "is-odd." the is-even code just returns !is-odd. The "is-odd" package actually contains the logic for determining if a number is odd or even.

New comment by Pensacola in "I'm “still afraid to use spaces in file names” years old"

Pensacola — Thu, 11 Nov 2021 16:49:39 +0000

I'm newly afraid to use emojis in domain names: https://tinyprojects.dev/projects/mailoji

New comment by Pensacola in "How Industry Weaponizes Science and Sows Doubt to Serve Their Agenda"

Pensacola — Tue, 09 Nov 2021 16:12:28 +0000

> Of course most "paleo" nutritionists are scammers pushing cookbooks and dubious nutritional supplements.

You're right: most of the protein in the diets of our paleolithic ancestors came from insects and leftover carrion from the kills of more optimized carnivores. I've never seen these recommended in a Paleo diet.

New comment by Pensacola in "Goodbye, MIT"

Pensacola — Sun, 07 Nov 2021 06:26:28 +0000

I'd not call it a characterization but a fact. I was initially thinking of Western(ized) society, although a moment's reflection suggests to me that it's nearly all current human society. For starters, (nearly?) every nation offers free public education. Westernized nations offer food assistance or some form of welfare for low- or no-income families. There are countless other programs at just at this "systemic," nation-state level; then consider that the world abounds with private and religious charities, which although they mostly hail from wealthier nations, dispense educational and life support to children (and adults) around the world. A myriad of privately-sponsored orphanages in India. Whatever the Gates foundation is doing this week in Africa. Privately sponsored open-to-the-community schools and day cares in Harlem. The list is endless.

New comment by Pensacola in "Goodbye, MIT"

Pensacola — Sun, 07 Nov 2021 03:40:31 +0000

This was written by a non-parent.

New comment by Pensacola in "Goodbye, MIT"

Pensacola — Sat, 06 Nov 2021 23:48:23 +0000

All of these replies seem to co-mingle the concepts of equal opportunity and equal outcome. The foundation of a free society is personal responsibility. Personal outcomes in such a system are pretty much guaranteed not to be the same (equal), since different people will use their freedom in different ways. Sucks for kids of irresponsible parents, who truly don't have self-autonomy. But then again, our society is full of compassionate safety nets for such kids.

New comment by Pensacola in "WhatsApp scaled to 1B users with only 50 engineers"

Pensacola — Mon, 25 Oct 2021 16:16:08 +0000

Only? Sound like plenty.

New comment by Pensacola in "The Methods of Moral Panic Journalism"

Pensacola — Thu, 21 Oct 2021 19:35:18 +0000

Disingenuous and chock-full of the same type of moral panic (directed squarely at one side of the American political aisle) it claims to debunk. How did this partisan hackery make it to HN?

New comment by Pensacola in "Why I Hate Frameworks (2005)"

Pensacola — Tue, 19 Oct 2021 20:24:03 +0000

Use the Spring Framework. Within the context of your analogy, I'd not call it a "Universal Hammer," but rather a tool box that contains multiple hammers. For any construction job I've encountered, there's a tool in that toolbox that will handle it.

New comment by Pensacola in "Neural Networks from Scratch"

Pensacola — Mon, 11 Oct 2021 20:42:47 +0000

Hi, nice site! But since you asked, here's an issue: the little "Click to increase or decrease weights" feature doesn't work in Firefox.