Hacker News: bze12

New comment by bze12 in "Free the Icons"

bze12 — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 00:06:50 +0000

I mostly lament the simplification of app icons as an artistic loss, not as a usability loss. Shameless plug, but I made a project based on the idea of icons as pure art with no utility https://www.benedelste.in/post/__001

New comment by bze12 in "Free the Icons"

bze12 — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 00:01:17 +0000

They've gone too far on enforcing uniformity of icons and abusing liquid glass, but I disagree that arbitrary shapes were better. All the random icon shapes looked cool in isolation, but were harder to scan at a glance. The uniform squircle is a useful constraint.

I wouldn't mind if they allowed something similar to that audio hijack icon, where you require the rounded rect as the guiding frame but are allowed to have some elements protruding out of it. But completely arbitrary shapes are too jarring imo.

New comment by bze12 in "The minimum viable unit of saleable software"

bze12 — Sun, 21 Jun 2026 20:41:19 +0000

“Build vs buy” assumes that there are only two parties. If it’s easier to build internally, then it’s easier for a 3rd party competitor to enter the market and bid the price down. I think the "zone of viability" is real, it just narrows and shifts downward.

The author hints at this in a footnote: > It does, however, pencil out to use a different product instead. In this particular case, it’s easy: use Linear instead of Jira.

New comment by bze12 in "Harness engineering: Leveraging Codex in an agent-first world"

bze12 — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 07:39:34 +0000

I agree. I followed this article for a repo I'm working on, and I had a very hard time inferring how, specifically, they implemented "providers" and enforced import layers. A sample repo would've been nice.

New comment by bze12 in "SQLite is all you need for durable workflows"

bze12 — Fri, 29 May 2026 19:33:13 +0000

Isn’t this very similar to cloudflare durable objects & workflows?

New comment by bze12 in "Is AI Profitable Yet?"

bze12 — Sat, 23 May 2026 03:45:59 +0000

Comparing fixed costs to revenue? Even if it’s cumulative this seems like a disingenuous framing

New comment by bze12 in "Codex for almost everything"

bze12 — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 21:38:10 +0000

It mostly feels like they’re just converging on each other. The latest Claude Mac app release pushed a new UI that looks almost exactly like Codex’s.

New comment by bze12 in "The gold standard of optimization: A look under the hood of RollerCoaster Tycoon"

bze12 — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 08:21:14 +0000

> This part is especially fascinating to me, since it turns an optimization done out of technical necessity into a gameplay feature.

Reminds me of blood moons in Zelda https://www.polygon.com/legend-zelda-tears-kingdom/23834440/...

New comment by bze12 in "I pitched a roller coaster to Disneyland at age 10 in 1978"

bze12 — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 15:30:48 +0000

It doesn’t even go upside down once, let alone 4 times

New comment by bze12 in "If you put Apple icons in reverse it looks like someone getting good at design"

bze12 — Sun, 18 Jan 2026 02:05:53 +0000

Apple mostly cares about legibility and consistency in icons now, not art. All the new iOS features like tints and liquid glass don't lend themselves well to intricate designs. It's disappointing, but I tend to agree that the skeuomorphic icons are harder to read.

From their icon guidelines: "Embrace simplicity in your icon design. Simple icons tend to be easiest for people to understand and recognize. An icon with fine visual features might look busy when rendered with system-provided shadows and highlights..." https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline...

Self plug, but I made an app related to this - it's a conceptual art gallery for app icons. I thought it would be an interesting experiment to remove the functional premise and just let an icon be a decorative symbol. It's called 001 (https://001.graphics)

New comment by bze12 in "Epic celebrates "the end of the Apple Tax" after court win in iOS payments case"

bze12 — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 16:55:43 +0000

I don’t feel great about this ruling. Whatever a “reasonable” fee is supposed to mean, Apple will interpret it to some ridiculous amount. Before the ban, they tried to charge 27%

New comment by bze12 in "Ask HN: What are you working on? (October 2025)"

bze12 — Thu, 16 Oct 2025 05:24:03 +0000

Yes exactly. Not nfts, just collectibles within the app.

New comment by bze12 in "Ask HN: What are you working on? (October 2025)"

bze12 — Mon, 13 Oct 2025 05:22:28 +0000

I’m working on a concept art gallery for app icons: https://001.graphics

I think app icons are an underrated artistic format, but they’ve only been used for product logos. I made 001 to explore the idea of turning them into an open-ended creative canvas. There are 99 “exhibit spaces” in the gallery, and artists can claim an exhibit to install art within. Visitors purchase limited-edition copies of pieces to display as the app’s icon, the art’s native format.

It’s a real-money marketplace too - the app makes money by taking commission of sales (Not crypto). I like economic simulation games and I think the constraints here could be interesting.

I’m currently looking for artists to exhibit in the gallery, if anyone is interested, or knows someone who may be, please let me know!

New comment by bze12 in "The RAG Obituary: Killed by agents, buried by context windows"

bze12 — Thu, 02 Oct 2025 16:08:57 +0000

This post was definitely written by an llm.

New comment by bze12 in "PayPal to support Ethereum and Bitcoin"

bze12 — Mon, 15 Sep 2025 21:45:50 +0000

Nonprofits are major targets of card testing fraud, I wonder if that is related

New comment by bze12 in "Christie's Deletes Digital Art Department"

bze12 — Wed, 10 Sep 2025 22:50:52 +0000

They’re folding the nft department into contemporary art. But I wouldn’t say the first interpretation is invalid either.

New comment by bze12 in "Type-safe and user-friendly error handling in Swift 6"

bze12 — Sat, 06 Sep 2025 05:23:35 +0000

Oh I see, the original article didn’t use this syntax.

New comment by bze12 in "Purposeful animations"

bze12 — Sat, 06 Sep 2025 05:18:34 +0000

iOS default animation speed is 350 ms, at least for SwiftUI. This has always felt a bit too slow. And recent system animation changes felt gratuitous to me (opening the action bar on iMessage for example).

OTOH this article is basically downstream of Apple’s interface design philosophy.

New comment by bze12 in "Type-safe and user-friendly error handling in Swift 6"

bze12 — Fri, 05 Sep 2025 07:09:08 +0000

Why do we still have to write `catch let error as SystemError`? Why can't the error be inferred to have the type thrown by the function? I've always found swift's error handling syntax to be awkward

New comment by bze12 in "Shamelessness as a strategy (2019)"

bze12 — Tue, 19 Aug 2025 01:36:39 +0000

This video gives a good overview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xEi8qg266g