Hacker News: ctenb

New comment by ctenb in "Flipper One – we need your help"

ctenb — Thu, 21 May 2026 12:18:37 +0000

I was hesitant to post my comment. It's the first time I've complained about this on HN I think. And it's not only about the flow of the words at all, it's more about reading something that no one wrote. Especially if it's about a project that seems interesting, having AI written text tells me it's maybe not the passion project I otherwise would think it was.

New comment by ctenb in "Flipper One – we need your help"

ctenb — Thu, 21 May 2026 11:59:13 +0000

Most articles I click on in the HN homepage turn out to be written by AI, judging from the phrasing. I'm weirded out by the fact that people don't seem to find it important to write their own thoughts down. The writing in TFA is clearly supervised by a human, but still, the wording is not human at all.

New comment by ctenb in "Building ML framework with Rust and Category Theory"

ctenb — Fri, 15 May 2026 08:44:34 +0000

Maybe expand ML to Machine Learning to avoid confusing with the programming language

New comment by ctenb in "Mercedes-Benz commits to bringing back physical buttons"

ctenb — Sun, 03 May 2026 16:11:26 +0000

Have you tried that, or is it just a random thought?

New comment by ctenb in "I wrote a CHIP-8 emulator in my own programming language"

ctenb — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 08:11:43 +0000

Tangentially related, this post git me reading about the spectre language. In the spectre docs you write: "There is a notable lack of contract based programming languages that enforce correctness at a low level.". What is the difference between a function checking arguments and throwing exceptions and contract-based functions, apart from perhaps a more concise syntax to specify it?

New comment by ctenb in "The bridge to wealth is being pulled up with AI"

ctenb — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 15:31:15 +0000

While the message is valid, it's ironic that this was clearly written by AI.

New comment by ctenb in "Helix: A post-modern text editor"

ctenb — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 10:18:58 +0000

Worth noting: the plugin system is steadily approaching maturity and will probably be integrated and released soonish™ https://github.com/helix-editor/helix/pull/8675

New comment by ctenb in "Make.ts"

ctenb — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 10:49:31 +0000

"Just" is exactly made for this, and it is amazing. You write a justfile that is somewhat similar to a makefile but without the painpoints and it provides a CLI interface of commands you want to run

New comment by ctenb in "An Elizabethan mansion's secrets for staying warm"

ctenb — Sat, 17 Jan 2026 19:07:18 +0000

This has not been true for at least a decade for dutch buildings: there are strict regulations requiring decent insulation for new buildings. Renovating and insulating old buildings is also encouraged, but not required by law.

New comment by ctenb in "I rebooted my social life"

ctenb — Fri, 02 Jan 2026 16:38:56 +0000

I agree to some extent, but in my experience it differs a lot between kids how doable having a conversation is

New comment by ctenb in "2025 Was Another Exceptionally Hot Year"

ctenb — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 17:00:45 +0000

Care to paraphrase the relevant explanation?

New comment by ctenb in "Show HN: Minimalist editor that lives in browser, stores everything in the URL"

ctenb — Wed, 24 Dec 2025 20:21:59 +0000

I made something similar once, specifically targetted for guitar tablature https://tabviewer.app/ To make links shorter for sharing with others, I use a shortlink service. Pasting URLs of thousands of characters long can be problematic

New comment by ctenb in "Rats Play DOOM"

ctenb — Sat, 13 Dec 2025 13:30:06 +0000

What about work horses?

New comment by ctenb in "Estimates are difficult for developers and product owners"

ctenb — Mon, 08 Dec 2025 07:11:23 +0000

Can you give an actual counterargument?

New comment by ctenb in "Ask HN: What do luxurious things that should have in prison/Detention Center?"

ctenb — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 07:31:23 +0000

This doesn't seem like a topic to ask about on hacker news. Also, your grammar is confusing to the point I don't exactly know what the question is.

New comment by ctenb in "AI has a deep understanding of how this code works"

ctenb — Tue, 25 Nov 2025 10:31:43 +0000

That is true, but it doesn't help for new languages, frameworks, etc

New comment by ctenb in "AI has a deep understanding of how this code works"

ctenb — Tue, 25 Nov 2025 08:37:05 +0000

I agree. It would also work out like a long term supervised learning process though. Humans showing how it's really done, and AI companies taking that as a gold standard for training and development of AI.

New comment by ctenb in "Cool-retro-term: terminal emulator which mimics look and feel of CRTs"

ctenb — Mon, 24 Nov 2025 18:33:58 +0000

2023: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36798774

2022: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30734137

2018: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17413911

2015: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9093545

2014: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8399461

New comment by ctenb in "Markdown is holding you back"

ctenb — Sun, 23 Nov 2025 16:59:33 +0000

I'm surprised Pandoc markdown is not mentioned. You can make that semi structured quite easily, and write your own transformations using lua. It's powerful enough to write math papers and export into both pdf and html.

New comment by ctenb in "AsciiMath"

ctenb — Wed, 19 Nov 2025 12:25:31 +0000

Regarding typing latex vs unicode, I use WinCompose/XCompose with a list of bindings that include most latex symbols. So instead of \cup I'd type cup

For reference, here is my personal (still evolving) .XCompose https://github.com/chtenb/dotfiles/blob/master/.XCompose