Hacker News: RattlesnakeJake

New comment by RattlesnakeJake in "Most Affordable Cities to Buy a Home"

RattlesnakeJake — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 13:30:40 +0000

I giggled a bit on seeing that Flint is the cheapest. Their reputational damage is going to last for decades, isn't it?

New comment by RattlesnakeJake in "I Bought a 2004 iPod in 2026"

RattlesnakeJake — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 20:59:17 +0000

I just restored a 4th-gen monochrome this year, adding a new battery and a SD card adapter to replace the dead hard drive.

It still amazes me how delightfully simple it is. It isn't trying to do anything besides play music well.

New comment by RattlesnakeJake in "Don't Blame Plunging Birthrates on Phones"

RattlesnakeJake — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 00:52:40 +0000

https://xkcd.com/1138/

New comment by RattlesnakeJake in "I switched to light mode and I haven't been happier"

RattlesnakeJake — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 20:18:17 +0000

On my work computer, my theme preference follows my mood:

When I'm feeling happy and engaged, dark mode is great. But when I'm feeling down (often in the dark days of January or February), I get a decent lift out of switching back to light mode and adding as much color to the app themes as I can.

Android verification coming: Google confirms timeline and supported app stores

RattlesnakeJake — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 20:13:54 +0000

Article URL: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/06/google-shares-updated-timeline-for-rolling-out-android-developer-verification/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48590890

Points: 7

# Comments: 1

New comment by RattlesnakeJake in "A website that lists websites to submit your website to"

RattlesnakeJake — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 17:19:50 +0000

It could be a cousin to Wikipedia's List of Lists of Lists:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lists_of_lists

New comment by RattlesnakeJake in "ReactOS (FOSS "Windows") achieves 3D-accelerated Half-Life on real hardware"

RattlesnakeJake — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 12:35:31 +0000

> It’s getting into Sagrada Familia territory.

Or "A million monkeys with a million typewriters writing Shakespeare" territory

New comment by RattlesnakeJake in "Reading for pleasure is sharply down among schoolkids, report shows"

RattlesnakeJake — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 01:47:34 +0000

> ...someone cute might see me reading and become interested in me.

Did it work? :)

New comment by RattlesnakeJake in "Ask HN: What are the best unknown books you have read?"

RattlesnakeJake — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 14:07:57 +0000

"The Adventures of a Free Lunch Junkie" by Earl Bronsteen:

https://a.co/d/0b7sZ26V

It's an old guy writing about accepting every "Sit through our seminar and get a free lunch" offer that came his way. I found it hilarious.

New comment by RattlesnakeJake in "Changing how we develop Ladybird"

RattlesnakeJake — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 13:00:49 +0000

"Guild" might have been a better choice :)

New comment by RattlesnakeJake in "The placeholder name for the Windows 8 experience was "modern""

RattlesnakeJake — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 14:42:43 +0000

I had a Lumia with 512MB of RAM. The OS ran great, but the web outpaced it. I couldn't open a lot of JS-heavy sites without Internet Explorer crashing.

New comment by RattlesnakeJake in "Amazon joins Microsoft in sending message to employees"

RattlesnakeJake — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 17:56:20 +0000

> What happened next was predictable in hindsight. Employees began inflating their scores through tokenmaxxing: running meaningless tasks through AI agents to consume tokens and climb the rankings.

That was predictable in foresight.

New comment by RattlesnakeJake in "I'm So Tired of Ads"

RattlesnakeJake — Sun, 31 May 2026 19:09:15 +0000

That's where I've landed as well.

The current state of things is entirely the fault of the advertising industry. They've acted like users' banner blindness is an obstacle to be defeated, rather than a constraint to build around. Faced with something the users cannot change, they continue to pile up increasingly hostile techniques that only work for a short while before users start to automatically ignore them.

I'm curious where the one-sided arms race ends. Probably a return to subscriptions that frustrate users but are at least sustainably funded.

New comment by RattlesnakeJake in "Blue Origin's New Glenn blows up during static fire test"

RattlesnakeJake — Fri, 29 May 2026 02:03:20 +0000

NSF is also reporting that it took out one of the lightning rod towers. It'll be interesting to see how much damage the pad and ground equipment sustained.

New comment by RattlesnakeJake in "Omarchy Is Not A Distro"

RattlesnakeJake — Sun, 24 May 2026 17:04:28 +0000

He built it for himself first, posting frequently about it on X. Once it reached a point of stability, he announced that Basecamp was starting to transition it's employees from macOS to it.

New comment by RattlesnakeJake in "Visual Studio Code for Education roadmap update"

RattlesnakeJake — Tue, 19 May 2026 00:24:55 +0000

Sounds like the "Organizational Update" meeting that meant I was getting laid off :)

New comment by RattlesnakeJake in "Project Gutenberg – keeps getting better"

RattlesnakeJake — Fri, 15 May 2026 19:59:09 +0000

I'd call it one of those middle-ground things:

• On the one hand, E Ink devices have a fairly known set of limitations, and it would be ridiculous for me to expect them to render the whole web well.

• On the other hand, it's good for website designs to consider the kind of devices employed by their users. Using a Kindle to access Gutenberg is likely less of an edge case than it would be for other sites, so it's worth the extra design work.

(Keep in mind that -- given my sibling comment -- this is all theoretical. The latest iteration of Gutenberg's site is much better than the previous version)

New comment by RattlesnakeJake in "Project Gutenberg – keeps getting better"

RattlesnakeJake — Fri, 15 May 2026 17:24:41 +0000

And now it's time to put my foot in my mouth. I haven't used it in a while because it was frustrating, but you guys seem to have already fixed it :)

The previous version of the site had two major flaws:

1. The search bar had been removed from the top of the page, and hidden behind a "Click here to search" (or similar) link partway down the page

2. Once you opened that page, the coloring of the site was so washed out on e-ink that the text input was hard to find.

Thanks for fixing it!

New comment by RattlesnakeJake in "Project Gutenberg – keeps getting better"

RattlesnakeJake — Fri, 15 May 2026 17:04:59 +0000

Check out Standard eBooks. They take the text from Gutenberg and add a level of polish to the ePubs.

New comment by RattlesnakeJake in "Project Gutenberg – keeps getting better"

RattlesnakeJake — Fri, 15 May 2026 17:04:02 +0000

As a Kindle user, I still miss the old version of the site. The new one looks great on normal desktop, but the old one was simple enough to load and directly download books on the device's built-in browser.