Hacker News: TrevorFSmith

New comment by TrevorFSmith in "Show HN: PhreshOS – OS for Web Apps"

TrevorFSmith — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 22:10:00 +0000

How tightly is the system tied to React? Can it be run with no React at all?

New comment by TrevorFSmith in "Show HN: Fortress – a stealth Chromium so your agents stop getting blocked"

TrevorFSmith — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 01:31:10 +0000

Is it ethical to scrape when a site has explicitly blocked bots? I know a fair number of people who run small sites who are already considering closing them down because the bots are relentlessly hammering their sites and driving up hosting costs.

New comment by TrevorFSmith in "I Won't Buy You a Coffee"

TrevorFSmith — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 20:57:25 +0000

Blogging is cheap if the writer values neither their nor your time.

Blogging is also cheap only for writers who don't spend time and money to gain experience, validate information, and maintain relationships in order to writing interesting words.

Blogging only costs a few euro per year if we ignore the resources that go into servers, electricity, IT folks, laptops, and the luxury of time and safety to write.

New comment by TrevorFSmith in "Dogma 25 – Vow of Chastity (2025)"

TrevorFSmith — Mon, 18 May 2026 18:33:28 +0000

I maybe shouldn't judge their ideas about film by their choice of illegible background and text colors, but I do.

New comment by TrevorFSmith in "Setting up a free *.city.state.us locality domain (2025)"

TrevorFSmith — Wed, 13 May 2026 15:40:08 +0000

Definitely keep in mind that right or wrong, these hosts are unusual as far as most commercial services are concerned and it can reveal annoying edge cases in their software.

New comment by TrevorFSmith in "Permacomputing Principles"

TrevorFSmith — Thu, 07 May 2026 16:24:59 +0000

Every effort doesn't need to address every problem, I think. You're right that individual effort isn't sufficient and many of the permacomputing folks are also activists of varying sorts but I think it's ok to separate concerns as most people understand that there's no single and complete solution.

New comment by TrevorFSmith in "The AI industry is discovering that the public hates it"

TrevorFSmith — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 23:39:21 +0000

I think you're missing one of the major reasons people are against "AI": the jerks at the top. When obviously nefarious people are lining their pockets and not bothering to even pretend to care about the people around them, it's no surprise they're hated.

New comment by TrevorFSmith in "TUI Studio – visual terminal UI design tool"

TrevorFSmith — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 15:07:42 +0000

This is a vibe coded app and isn't what I'd want but still, it's interesting to consider what a good implementation of "Figma for TUIs" could be, especially if it avoids the trap of simply treating the console as a crude raster instead of taking advantage of text and keyboards. IMO we don't need WIMP GUI shoved into terminal emulators.

New comment by TrevorFSmith in "Don't host email yourself – your reminder in 2026"

TrevorFSmith — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 18:11:22 +0000

The correct title is "Don't host your own transactional business email, use a transactional email provider."

Hosting your own personal mail isn't for everyone but it's not impossible. It is, however, something you'll need to maintain so be ready to pick up a new hobby.

New comment by TrevorFSmith in "Vim-pencil: Rethinking Vim as a tool for writing"

TrevorFSmith — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 00:04:23 +0000

I saw this headline and excitedly clicked through expecting to find an attempt to make a modal drawing canvas made using lessons from and the ethos of vim. It isn't that. It's a vim plugin for writers. Which is fine, just not what I hoped for.

New comment by TrevorFSmith in "Oat – Ultra-lightweight, zero dependency, semantic HTML, CSS, JS UI library"

TrevorFSmith — Sun, 15 Feb 2026 12:49:23 +0000

If nothing else, it's refreshing to see nicely modern CSS and JS formatted and laid out in a legible manner. https://github.com/knadh/oat/tree/master/src

New comment by TrevorFSmith in "All my new code will be closed-source from now on"

TrevorFSmith — Sat, 10 Jan 2026 15:07:34 +0000

The essence of free software is and always has been charity. Some people attempt to interface with capitalism via "open source" but that game is rigged to make previous winners continue to win so you missed the boat. It's a mistake to link coding to how you get food, shelter, safety, etc. Do it for fun or not at all.

New comment by TrevorFSmith in "The year of the 3D printed miniature and other lies we tell ourselves"

TrevorFSmith — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 00:10:11 +0000

I 3D print items that aren't mass produced, either because I'm one of few people who wants them so there's no market or I'm the only person who wants them because they're customized for me. Most reasonable 3D printer users don't believe they'll replace mass production. They use them for parts you can't buy.

New comment by TrevorFSmith in "The entire New Yorker archive is now digitized"

TrevorFSmith — Thu, 25 Dec 2025 19:23:12 +0000

I am a subscriber but still would love a tarball of PDFs of each issue.

New comment by TrevorFSmith in "Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo"

TrevorFSmith — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 17:14:20 +0000

If AI feature are on by default then no thanks!

This is how to burn what little trust remains: "AI should always be a choice — something people can easily turn off."

It has to be opt-in or you're not worthy of trust.

New comment by TrevorFSmith in "Ford kills the All-Electric F-150"

TrevorFSmith — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 23:46:48 +0000

It's a shame they didn't ship an EV that fit the uses the F-150 serves. The Lightening is a luxury item. The F-150 is a tool, regardless of whether it's ICE or EV. I hope this puts more people in the market for the Slate truck. It won't serve everyone with an ICE F-150 but I suspect a bunch of farm and ranch vehicles that don't do many highway miles could be Slates.

New comment by TrevorFSmith in "Orion 1.0"

TrevorFSmith — Tue, 25 Nov 2025 23:47:49 +0000

I'm a happy Kagi subscriber and look forward to Orion on Linux. Every well supported browser other than Chrome is a win. I'd love Kagi to fund people working full time on web standards in the W3C and WHATNG, too.

New comment by TrevorFSmith in "Show HN: Forty.News – Daily news, but on a 40-year delay"

TrevorFSmith — Sat, 22 Nov 2025 21:36:43 +0000

A similar result can be found by reading coverage of events you witnessed or topics you know well.

New comment by TrevorFSmith in "Show HN: Glide, an extensible, keyboard-focused web browser"

TrevorFSmith — Wed, 01 Oct 2025 22:32:21 +0000

That's a sweet idea and I'm glad to see your comment about maintaining it as a patch on top of Firefox sources so you can roll in their security fixes.

New comment by TrevorFSmith in "Samsung confirms its smart fridges will start showing you ads"

TrevorFSmith — Fri, 19 Sep 2025 00:05:09 +0000

This reminds me of gas station pumps that play ads on sub-par displays and tiny crackly speakers. I'm already paying for gas and now you think you can force crap ads on me? If an ad starts I immediately stop pumping and go to a different gas station. The fridges in people's homes. Expensive fridges! That's a hard pass.