Hacker News: TheGRS

New comment by TheGRS in "Show HN: Files.md – Open-source alternative to Obsidian"

TheGRS — Mon, 18 May 2026 15:17:49 +0000

I don't think that was my impression, but their API is pretty open for creating plugins. In support of the Obsidian model, its a dedicated engineering team, a free tool, notes are stored as .md and not something proprietary, and if you want you can pay them for their sync tool which I find both pretty reasonable and a nice way to support their efforts. Also they keep on improving the product in interesting ways, the new plugin marketplace with all of its verification policies is really nicely done, aspirational even.

But in any case, this is also a nice project, but I guess I'm also an Obsidian evangelist.

New comment by TheGRS in "UCLA discovers first stroke rehabilitation drug to repair brain damage (2025)"

TheGRS — Mon, 11 May 2026 21:41:42 +0000

I just read this a few months ago and it was my first thought as well! Like Flowers for Algernon taken to its extremes.

New comment by TheGRS in "Grand Theft Oil Futures: Insider traders keep making a killing at our expense"

TheGRS — Thu, 07 May 2026 18:43:40 +0000

People in the US have been bemoaning the ceding of power of Congress to the Executive branch for a long time. I think what's happening now is validating that rights laws are all subject to the whims of the people in power. There is nothing keeping Congress from reasserting their power and getting a grip over things, but they won't for the political risks involved. Heads would roll, nobody wants to be one of them.

New comment by TheGRS in "Motherboard sales 'collapse' amid unprecedented shortages fueled by AI"

TheGRS — Thu, 07 May 2026 18:21:19 +0000

I'm thinking about how I jumped on getting a new PC a little over a year ago anticipating tariffs would balloon prices. Turns out I made the right choice but for the wrong reasons (not like the tariffs are helping either, but just wasn't as big of a factor).

New comment by TheGRS in "California leaders report four to six weeks worth of gasoline and diesel supply"

TheGRS — Thu, 07 May 2026 17:49:26 +0000

This is way outside of my area of expertise, but I thought US export oil was not fungible with what we consume.

New comment by TheGRS in "Show HN: Agent-skills-eval – Test whether Agent Skills improve outputs"

TheGRS — Thu, 07 May 2026 17:29:55 +0000

This is all still really early stuff, but there was a blog yesterday that got me thinking we need a way to send telemetry data for work being done by agents out to a central agent the org controls. It would be responsible for creating skills based on the work people are doing - or in other words the stuff they're correcting the agents on. And then you could develop skills for an entire department (customer service, engineering, marketing, etc).

This tool has me thinking there's some merit to setting that up. My only real qualm is that I'm not super convinced skills are that great yet. I'm trying to get better at developing them in my workflow, but still get a lot of results where they are ignored even after spending time trying to tighten them up.

New comment by TheGRS in "Ted Turner has died"

TheGRS — Wed, 06 May 2026 17:53:33 +0000

I might have to steal that idea!

New comment by TheGRS in "GameStop makes $55.5B takeover offer for eBay"

TheGRS — Mon, 04 May 2026 22:55:26 +0000

I think the value is in not having to mess with scammers and people who make eBay difficult to interact with (i.e. those who game the system).

New comment by TheGRS in "GameStop makes $55.5B takeover offer for eBay"

TheGRS — Mon, 04 May 2026 22:53:43 +0000

Not to be harsh on people who like this stuff, but reminds me of whenever people bring up how big vinyl record sales are now. Which is like, yea they're "big" just because it was a tiny market for the last decade and they're profiting mostly on nostalgia. Vinyl's not making some huge comeback, but it will probably sustain some niche resellers for a long time.

New comment by TheGRS in "GameStop makes $55.5B takeover offer for eBay"

TheGRS — Mon, 04 May 2026 22:49:30 +0000

I interviewed at a place that had their own collectible card market, I think they partnered with eBay. But the whole service was that you would yield your valuable cards over to them and they would store them in a repurposed bank vault for safe keeping or to act as a seller. Cards that were like $1k or more.

They seemed to be doing really well esp with all the pokemon and MTG card crazes going on.

New comment by TheGRS in "Does Employment Slow Cognitive Decline? Evidence from Labor Market Shocks"

TheGRS — Mon, 04 May 2026 18:36:56 +0000

I know I interact with people on the daily with my remote job, but would love to know if that's potentially an issue too. Decent reason to get back in the office. I also miss my daily office bike rides to a certain extent, at least it was healthy for me, now I do exercise by choice and I don't always keep up with it.

New comment by TheGRS in "Your website is not for you"

TheGRS — Fri, 01 May 2026 22:21:27 +0000

Yea I mean the first reaction I had to the blog was "yes, but have you met the same designers I have?" And to be clear I've worked with great designers who understood their limitations and blind spots, but its pretty common to see ones who charge ahead and ignore valuable developer feedback.

New comment by TheGRS in "Your website is not for you"

TheGRS — Fri, 01 May 2026 22:13:59 +0000

Another pretty bad trend I see is designers who don't make pragmatic tradeoffs for the underlying technology. Not incorporating reusable components, not considering rendering times, not considering the design language already established. Sometimes designers decide they know better and that usually rubs me the wrong way.

Worse still are designers who don't use established patterns, not just within the company, but like throughout the web. They want to make something truly unique that would completely ostracize the user, not to mention make it waaaay more time-consuming to develop. Get a grip, this isn't your art thesis, its a business.

New comment by TheGRS in "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (May 2026)"

TheGRS — Fri, 01 May 2026 16:31:42 +0000

  Location: Seattle, WA
  Remote: Yes
  Willing to relocate: No
  Technologies: Python, TypeScript, WebRTC, React, Node, Terraform, Kubernetes, Docker
  Résumé/CV: https://rsaul.com/resume/
  Email: contact@rsaul.com
  Looking for: Engineering Manager role

Hello, I'm an experienced Engineering manager of 9 years with 16 years in the industry. I've led frontend and backend teams, I've also established CI/CD pipelines and IaC at companies without established processes. I'm looking for a new full-time role on an engineering team. Open to IC roles.

New comment by TheGRS in "Alphabet Announces First Quarter 2026 Results"

TheGRS — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 21:33:17 +0000

That's already half of the threads I see on reddit lately.

New comment by TheGRS in "California high-speed rail price tag jumps to $231B, nearly 7x 2008 estimate"

TheGRS — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 21:10:46 +0000

Yea I would definitely like to know what the response is to eminent domain in other countries where its working better. I've never been in that situation and I can totally understand the resistance to losing your property, but I can't see American's being particularly unique in that feeling. Maybe the laws are just more permissive in the US for contesting the government.

New comment by TheGRS in "Maryland becomes first state to ban surveillance pricing in grocery stores"

TheGRS — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 21:04:14 +0000

Its probably easier these days for a customer to fight the checkout price than it would be for the store to implement surge pricing or whatever they want to do. Just take a timestamped photo of the price when you pluck the product off the shelf and compare it at the register. We could probably make an app that does all the calculating for you to verify and the only thing one would need to do is take a bunch of pictures as they shop, which is fairly trivial.

New comment by TheGRS in "Cursor Camp"

TheGRS — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 20:15:40 +0000

Well this is one of the most adorable things I've seen in a while. Thank you for sharing a little joy. So many little details I love, falling off the waterfall, the cursor size fading into the background, the flashlight in the cave. Haven't explored it all but going to share this right away.

New comment by TheGRS in "Waymo in Portland"

TheGRS — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 20:29:14 +0000

I'm a little sad to see this because I'm moving northward to Seattle next month, I've lived in Portland proper for over 16 years, and Seattle doesn't have Waymo yet. Great timing lol.

Portland will probably be a great testing ground for them because generally speaking you have a lot of tech curious and tech averse people here living together. When we got electric scooters there were both tons of people using them and a lot of people throwing them in the Willamette. Pretty big artistic community that doesn't look kindly on AI right now. This has no real bearing on Waymo's success, but I'll be interested to see how they navigate the PR part of it.

New comment by TheGRS in "Men who stare at walls"

TheGRS — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 21:57:50 +0000

Kind of just an unstructured meditation routine no?

And I should really meditate more.