Hacker News: conesus

New comment by conesus in "Show HN: Hacker Smacker – Spot great (and terrible) HN commenters at a glance"

conesus — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 17:52:54 +0000

It wasn't actually down from overuse, the node.js server hit an unhandled error and fell over. And because this is the first time I was seeing real usage, I didn't have a supervisor in place to restart it automatically. That's handled now, of course.

New comment by conesus in "The View from RSS"

conesus — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 00:45:54 +0000

I was a NNW user for years and it's why I eventually built my own news reader. NNW had a lot of great features and I wanted to mostly keep them. You might find that NewsBlur takes a similar path but with a different set of opinions.

New comment by conesus in "The View from RSS"

conesus — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 00:44:27 +0000

Seriously. I've been updating NewsBlur with all the pet features people have wanted for years and I'm finding that it's even more enjoyable now with all those AI features built in. Daily briefing, ask AI, story clustering, all of these are AI-flavored improvements to RSS and it's so relaxing to open up my river of news and scroll through all the good stuff without feeling a gross algorithm surfacing endless outrage.

I read plenty of X as well as scroll through various social media apps and nothing comes close to how great RSS feels to read.

New comment by conesus in "Apple Studio Display and Studio Display XDR"

conesus — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 15:36:37 +0000

VESA mounts are only a few bucks and give you even better height and tilt adjustment. You also get desk space back. I have a shorter desk (24" vs typical 30" depth) and I have two monitors and a laptop mounted on 3 VESAs and I can extend them so that the monitor edge is inline with the desk edge, giving me the same 24" that a 30" desk would have with a monitor stand.

New comment by conesus in "Show HN: Hacker Smacker – Spot great (and terrible) HN commenters at a glance"

conesus — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 16:25:50 +0000

HN caches the profile, sometimes it takes a few minutes for Hacker Smacker to get the latest data. It keeps checking until it works.

New comment by conesus in "Show HN: Hacker Smacker – Spot great (and terrible) HN commenters at a glance"

conesus — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 11:08:18 +0000

That was the toughest lift of all! Firefox and Chrome extensions were easy, just had to go through a quick review. Apple rejected the safari extension 4-5 times and wanted me to make changes to the metadata and even questioned the extension itself. Took a lot of back and forth to get the safari extension approved.

New comment by conesus in "Show HN: Hacker Smacker – Spot great (and terrible) HN commenters at a glance"

conesus — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 06:21:04 +0000

Hacker Smacker doesn't mean you ignore your foes. Their comments are now labeled with the tiny red orb, giving you acknowledgement of how you've felt about them in the past.

I've used this extension for the past 15 years and I can say that I love seeing foes show up in threads. I still read their comments, but I know going into it that I can probably skip it after the first sentence if I recognize that it's more of what I disliked about them in the first place.

This is a time saving browser extension, freeing me up to scan more HN threads. I now often scan a thread to see if there's any friends, foes, or FoaFs inside.

New comment by conesus in "Show HN: Hacker Smacker – Spot great (and terrible) HN commenters at a glance"

conesus — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 06:13:16 +0000

I have not found that to be the case. I have over 150 commenters on my Hacker Smacker foe list and I have only found once or twice that somebody who goes into the red bucket deserves to go into the green bucket.

Now the way I use the friend/foe system of labeling may be different than others, and it's a personal decision for how you choose to label commenters. But the way I do it, if somebody has an opinion that puts them on my red list, that's great to know, because when I see them comment elsewhere I now have the context for why I feel the way I do about them.

New comment by conesus in "Show HN: Hacker Smacker – Spot great (and terrible) HN commenters at a glance"

conesus — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 06:10:18 +0000

I made some changes and the extension now recognizes if you can't hover and will allow you to tap to show the orbs before selecting one. It now works on mobile browsers with extensions.

New comment by conesus in "Show HN: Hacker Smacker – Spot great (and terrible) HN commenters at a glance"

conesus — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 06:05:50 +0000

Hah, at least I'm consistent.

New comment by conesus in "Show HN: Hacker Smacker – Spot great (and terrible) HN commenters at a glance"

conesus — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 04:45:49 +0000

You don't avoid anything, this simply helps highlight commenters in a long thread.

New comment by conesus in "Show HN: Hacker Smacker – Spot great (and terrible) HN commenters at a glance"

conesus — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 04:22:53 +0000

I mean the entire extension is about this, but I can quickly scan this thread (or others) and spot my favored commenters.

New comment by conesus in "Show HN: Hacker Smacker – Spot great (and terrible) HN commenters at a glance"

conesus — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 02:54:17 +0000

There's na open issue to address this exact need. I haven't figured out a good compromise yet, but an option to include symbols would be good.

https://github.com/samuelclay/hackersmacker/issues/3

New comment by conesus in "Show HN: Hacker Smacker – Spot great (and terrible) HN commenters at a glance"

conesus — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 02:25:31 +0000

The layout doesn't shift down. It only moves the meta information to the right of the user name over a little bit.

New comment by conesus in "Show HN: Hacker Smacker – Spot great (and terrible) HN commenters at a glance"

conesus — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 01:59:42 +0000

Ahh, I have you green orbed, and I recognize your username from NB. The system works!

New comment by conesus in "Show HN: Hacker Smacker – Spot great (and terrible) HN commenters at a glance"

conesus — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 01:56:39 +0000

Thanks to the HN moderators for re-posting this after I posted this a few days ago. I only notice now that it's on the front page.

Happy to answer any questions. Let me tell you, I've really enjoyed having those writers that I like highlighted on this comment thread because it makes it very easy to scan it.

I think it's important to remember that this is not about hiding writers you disagree with. It's simply about making it so that you can read more Hacker News threads and quickly scanning the comments, teasing out those writers that you agree with. It's also fun to read the writers you disagree with, if anything, to reinforce your opinion of them.

New comment by conesus in "Show HN: Hacker Smacker – Spot great (and terrible) HN commenters at a glance"

conesus — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 01:54:56 +0000

There's nothing about this that's horse blinders. It's literally a way to highlight riders that you both agree and disagree with. It actually makes it more likely that you're going to engage with the ones you disagree with, because now they have a red orb.

New comment by conesus in "Show HN: Hacker Smacker – Spot great (and terrible) HN commenters at a glance"

conesus — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 01:53:52 +0000

That's absolutely correct. I started programming at eight in 1993, so I have a soft spot for those types of icons.

New comment by conesus in "Show HN: Hacker Smacker – Spot great (and terrible) HN commenters at a glance"

conesus — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 01:53:20 +0000

The reason I have this extension is because I don't want to hide those comments. I want to be able to read them when I quickly scroll a thread. Oftentimes, I'm reading so many Hacker News threads that I want to be able to pull out the commenters that I like. I even like reading the comments from commenters that I dislike in the hopes that I see if I still disagree with them.

I'm not hiding anybody. I'm just making it more apparent when they're commenting

New comment by conesus in "Show HN: Hacker Smacker – Spot great (and terrible) HN commenters at a glance"

conesus — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 01:47:16 +0000

Oh man, I had no idea this got reposted and I just discovered now, 8 hours later. Anyway, I kicked the server and its back up.