<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Hacker News: b_e_n_t_o_n</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=b_e_n_t_o_n</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Thu, 30 Jul 2026 09:44:32 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=b_e_n_t_o_n" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by b_e_n_t_o_n in "Everyone in Seattle hates AI"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>There just isn't much friction between having a few tabs open (maps, booking site, airplane site, google search) and a notepad. The friction of searching for an app, downloading it, and then learning how to use it is just higher.<p>So many products are like this - it sounds good on paper to consolidate a bunch of tasks in one place but it's not without costs and the benefit is just not very high.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 03 Dec 2025 23:36:07 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46141811</link><dc:creator>b_e_n_t_o_n</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46141811</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46141811</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by b_e_n_t_o_n in "Maybe you’re not trying"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>"I can't do this"<p>"Are you sure you aren't just having trouble?"<p>Similar concept imo.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 16 Nov 2025 22:11:11 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45948899</link><dc:creator>b_e_n_t_o_n</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45948899</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45948899</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by b_e_n_t_o_n in "Laptops with Stickers"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This makes me wanna go buy some stickers...</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 11 Nov 2025 22:19:34 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45893662</link><dc:creator>b_e_n_t_o_n</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45893662</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45893662</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by b_e_n_t_o_n in "How I fell in love with Erlang"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Thank you for this, I'm unlikely to ever touch Erlang but looks like a fascinating read nonetheless.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 11 Nov 2025 22:06:35 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45893539</link><dc:creator>b_e_n_t_o_n</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45893539</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45893539</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by b_e_n_t_o_n in "Games Preservation Is Hard and Sometimes Involves Private Detectives"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Not just Steam Input, they maintain SDL and strongly encourage everyone to dynamically link it in order to keep older games going.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 10 Nov 2025 20:14:15 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45880368</link><dc:creator>b_e_n_t_o_n</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45880368</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45880368</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by b_e_n_t_o_n in "How to maintain good vision amidst the myopia epidemic"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Definitely a genetic component as well!</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 10 Nov 2025 04:20:17 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45872390</link><dc:creator>b_e_n_t_o_n</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45872390</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45872390</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by b_e_n_t_o_n in "How to maintain good vision amidst the myopia epidemic"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I don't think that's true at all. I had prefect vision up until I graduated college and started spending 10hr a day behind a screen - within two years I ended up getting glasses, although they are a mild prescription and I don't really need them other than driving at night. My friend was in a similar position and they also ended up getting almost the same prescription.<p>My eye doctor said it was my eyes optimizing for what they do the most. And that makes sense, I have no eye strain using a computer.<p>Interestingly my vision is better in the summer, and when I take holidays during the summer and spent time away from the computer my eyes essentially fix themselves. It takes a couple months back behind a screen to need my glasses again.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 10 Nov 2025 03:56:25 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45872253</link><dc:creator>b_e_n_t_o_n</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45872253</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45872253</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by b_e_n_t_o_n in "Show HN: Geofenced chat communities anyone can create"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Not AI moderation? I'd assume the more scalable option is having an LLM parse messages when reported.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 09 Nov 2025 07:32:04 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45863656</link><dc:creator>b_e_n_t_o_n</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45863656</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45863656</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by b_e_n_t_o_n in "Show HN: Geofenced chat communities anyone can create"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This is really great, the only problem for me is that there is nobody around me! I can see it working way better for stuff like universities though.<p>I wonder if there could be a variant for Drop which is world wide - imagine being able to join a chat in a foreign country (hopefully you speak the language!) and chat with the locals. I imagine moderation would be a big pain but I could see it being fun and sort of in the spirit of the old web.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 09 Nov 2025 07:14:03 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45863571</link><dc:creator>b_e_n_t_o_n</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45863571</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45863571</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by b_e_n_t_o_n in "Analyzing the Performance of WebAssembly vs. Native Code"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Getting an end user to set up and run docker to run an app is a non starter for most things.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 05 Nov 2025 01:56:03 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45818151</link><dc:creator>b_e_n_t_o_n</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45818151</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45818151</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by b_e_n_t_o_n in "Analyzing the Performance of WebAssembly vs. Native Code"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>45% slower seems pretty decent considering they use a wasm kernel they developed to mimic the unix kernel so they can run non-modified unix programs inside the browser. It's actually pretty impressive that they did this, and even more impressive that it works and like another commentator said, is not even an order of magnitude slower.<p>I'm more interested in 1) usages of wasm in the browser that don't involve running unmodified unix programs and 2) wasm <i>outside</i> the browser for compile-once-run-anywhere usecases with sandboxing / security guarantees. Could it be the future for writing native applications?<p>Languages like Kotlin, C#, Rust, as well as C/C++ etc support wasm quite well. Could we see that be a legitimate target for applications in the future, if the performance gap was closer to 10%-ish? I would personally prefer running wasm binaries with guaranteed (as much as possible ofc) sandboxing compared to raw binaries.<p>edit: it's from 2019, there have been significant improvements made to wasm since then.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 05 Nov 2025 00:05:06 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45817402</link><dc:creator>b_e_n_t_o_n</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45817402</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45817402</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by b_e_n_t_o_n in "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (November 2025)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Location: Canada<p>Remote: Preferred<p>Willing to relocate: Yes<p>Technologies: Typescript, Go, Kotlin, React, Next.js, Svelte, Vue, Postgres etc.<p>Website: <a href="https://benten.ca" rel="nofollow">https://benten.ca</a><p>Résumé/CV: <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/bentonbc/" rel="nofollow">https://www.linkedin.com/in/bentonbc/</a><p>Email: on website<p>I've been working as a software developer for the last four years, majority of which has been full stack. I have a kinesiology degree and I'm primarily looking to integrate my education with my professional experience, so companies in the health/fitness field basically, but I'm open to all interesting positions. Please check out my site at <a href="https://benton.ca" rel="nofollow">https://benton.ca</a>, it goes into detail on some of the recent works that I have shipped. Cheers :)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 04 Nov 2025 02:35:21 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45806894</link><dc:creator>b_e_n_t_o_n</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45806894</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45806894</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by b_e_n_t_o_n in "URLs are state containers"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I'm going to provide a dissenting opinion here. I think the URL is for <i>location</i>, not state. I believe that using the URL as a state container leads to unexpected and unwanted behaviour.<p>First, I think it's a fact that the average user does not consider a URL to be a state container. The fact that developers in this thread lament the "new school" React developers who don't use the URL as a state container is proof of this. If it follows that a React developer, no matter how inexperienced, is at least <i>as</i> knowledgeable if not more about URLs than the average person, if they don't even consider the URL to be a valid container for state than neither does the average person.<p>Putting state in the URL breaks a fundamental expectation of the user that refreshing a page resets its state. If I put a page into an unwanted state, or god forbid there is a bug that places it in an impossible state, I expect a refresh of the page to reset the state back. Putting state in the URL violates this principle.<p>Secondly, putting state in a URL breaks the expectation of the user for sharing locations. When I receive Youtube links from friends, half of the time the "t" parameter is set to somewhere in the video and I don't know if my friend explicitly wanted to provide a timestamp. The general user has no idea what ?t=294833289 means in a URL. It would be better to store that state somewhere else and have the user explicitly create a link a timestamp parameter if the desired outcome was to link to an explicit point in the video. As it stands now, when I send YouTube links to friends I have to remember to clear the ?=t parameter before sharing. This is not good UX.<p>There are other reasons why I think its a bad idea but I don't want this comment to be too long.<p>That doesn't mean not to use search parameters though. Consider a page for a t-shirt, with options for color and size. This is a valid use case for putting the color and size in the URL because it's a <i>location</i> property - the resource for a blue XL shirt is different from a red SM shirt, and that <i>should</i> be reflected in the URL.<p>That's not to say that state should <i>never</i> be put in the URL - in some cases it makes sense. But that's a judgement call that the developer should make by considering what behaviour the user expects, and how the link will most likely be used. For a trivial example, it's unlikely that a user wants to share their scroll position or if a dropdown is open when sharing a page. But they probably want to share the location they've navigated to on a map, as it's unlikely they're sharing a link to `maps.google.com` with others (although debatably that's not state, but rather a location property).</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 03 Nov 2025 01:43:47 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45795105</link><dc:creator>b_e_n_t_o_n</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45795105</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45795105</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by b_e_n_t_o_n in "John Carmack on mutable variables"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I mean, it's probably pretty clear when you look at result's initial assignment...</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 31 Oct 2025 19:53:38 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45776019</link><dc:creator>b_e_n_t_o_n</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45776019</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45776019</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by b_e_n_t_o_n in "John Carmack on mutable variables"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>State exists in time, a variable is usually valid at the point it's created but it might not be valid in the future. Thus if part of your program accesses a variable expecting it to be from a certain point in time but it's actually from another point in time (was mutated) that can cause issues.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 31 Oct 2025 19:46:58 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45775956</link><dc:creator>b_e_n_t_o_n</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45775956</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45775956</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by b_e_n_t_o_n in "A Defense of Philosophical Intuitions"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I think we heavily overestimate our ability to reason morally though - our thinking just becomes an ad hoc justification for our own intuitions.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 31 Oct 2025 01:31:22 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45767411</link><dc:creator>b_e_n_t_o_n</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45767411</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45767411</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by b_e_n_t_o_n in "Show HN: In a single HTML file, an app to encourage my children to invest"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Why apologize and do it instead of not do it and no apologize?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 30 Oct 2025 20:40:36 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45765051</link><dc:creator>b_e_n_t_o_n</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45765051</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45765051</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by b_e_n_t_o_n in "Show HN: In a single HTML file, an app to encourage my children to invest"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>No it doesn't</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 30 Oct 2025 19:45:58 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45764450</link><dc:creator>b_e_n_t_o_n</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45764450</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45764450</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by b_e_n_t_o_n in "Boring is what we wanted"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>And even for gaming, depending on what you play it's perfectly serviceable.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 28 Oct 2025 22:05:20 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45739849</link><dc:creator>b_e_n_t_o_n</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45739849</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45739849</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by b_e_n_t_o_n in "When 'perfect' code fails"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The problem was the framework's bundler was transforming those functions to return promises, a linter would need to understand next.js's specific transforms to catch this.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 28 Oct 2025 00:07:37 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45727880</link><dc:creator>b_e_n_t_o_n</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45727880</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45727880</guid></item></channel></rss>