Hacker News: david422

New comment by david422 in "Microsoft hasn't had a coherent GUI strategy since Petzold"

david422 — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 13:15:25 +0000

Android has an option to enable these buttons on a toolbar at the bottom, I always turn it on.

Why change what works fine? Maybe that's the definition of being too old, can't be bothered to change to new things.

New comment by david422 in "Stop Sloppypasta"

david422 — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 17:10:05 +0000

Or they are like - here, can you check over this LLM design and see if it makes sense?

New comment by david422 in "Stop Sloppypasta"

david422 — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 16:57:00 +0000

My teammates hit the generate PR button. I'm not reading that, it's a summary of the changes that I am _already_ going to be looking at, wrapped in some flowery language about being "better architecture, cleaner code" etc.

So those PRs may as well not have a description at all as far as I'm concerned.

New comment by david422 in "What happens when US economic data becomes unreliable"

david422 — Sat, 14 Mar 2026 18:18:14 +0000

> so much easier to destroy things than it is to build them, so the builders are always at a distinct disadvantage

Tangentially related, there was a local property nearby that had these large, aesthetic trees in the yard. The house was sold, a developer cut them all and flipped the house for sale.

Probably took 50+ years to grow, gone in an hour.

New comment by david422 in "Nanny state discovers Linux, demands it check kids' IDs before booting"

david422 — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 22:45:52 +0000

Yes, I can see morons writing laws like this, and then it means that guys with guns can enforce it if they want to.

New comment by david422 in "I built Timeframe, our family e-paper dashboard"

david422 — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 17:06:18 +0000

> For example the washing machine. You dont need real time information because you know how long it takes since you've done it 1000s of times and it beeps. All these things are just managed in our heads subconsciously.

Actually, this is one example of home automation that works very well. My washer will remind me that wash is ready to move to the dryer, and stops reminding me once the washer door opens.

It means that a) I don't have to put it on my mental reminders, b) it works very well with anybody else in the family that does a wash and _they_ forget to move it to the dryer.

New comment by david422 in "LiftKit – UI where "everything derives from the golden ratio""

david422 — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 17:27:21 +0000

I turned this into a game. Which image do I think looks better? Now I try to figure out which image is supposedly supposed to look better.

New comment by david422 in "Anthropic is Down"

david422 — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 16:41:17 +0000

A long time ago I was taking flight lessons and I was going through the takeoff checklist. I was going through each item, but my instructor had to remind me that I am not just reading the checklist - I need understand/verify each checklist item before moving on. Always stuck with me.

New comment by david422 in "Try text scaling support in Chrome Canary"

david422 — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 00:23:03 +0000

> how do we get large text to scale at a lower rate than body text. It's great that the body text can scale up from 16px to 32px, but does heading text need to scale up from 32px to 64px? It's already huge. If you have any thoughts, please do let me know!

Android 14 has this in non-linear text scaling -

> To prevent large text elements on screen from scaling too large, the system applies a nonlinear scaling curve.

https://developer.android.com/about/versions/14/features#non...

New comment by david422 in "Everything as code: How we manage our company in one monorepo"

david422 — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 21:08:13 +0000

I do it naively. Maintain the backend and frontend separately. Roll out each change in a backwards compatible manner.

New comment by david422 in "Everything as code: How we manage our company in one monorepo"

david422 — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 21:02:37 +0000

> Rollout should be within a minute

And if it's not, it breaks everything. This is an assumption you can't make.

New comment by david422 in "Want to sway an election? Here’s how much fake online accounts cost"

david422 — Sat, 13 Dec 2025 23:57:27 +0000

No.

New comment by david422 in "Tell HN: Azure outage"

david422 — Wed, 29 Oct 2025 17:07:13 +0000

IIRC, the grocery chain I worked for used to have an offline mode to move customers out the door. But it meant that when the system came back online, if the customers card was denied, the customer got free groceries.

New comment by david422 in "Ask HN: How do you say “I don’t know, but I’ll get back to you” confidently?"

david422 — Thu, 02 Oct 2025 14:28:10 +0000

"That's a good question, let me do some research and I'll get back to you"

New comment by david422 in "Organize your Slack channels by "How Often", not "What""

david422 — Wed, 01 Oct 2025 01:21:10 +0000

I don't want to organize ... I just want a filter on the channel sidebar!

New comment by david422 in "Python developers are embracing type hints"

david422 — Sun, 28 Sep 2025 14:30:20 +0000

I used python on a large code base for quite a while. Many team members did not like type hints, and a codebase that doesn't maintain type hints makes it harder to use them.

However, if I had a choice, rather than use typehints in python, I would much rather just use a statically typed language. Short, tiny scripts in python? Sure. Anything that grows or lives a long time? Use something where the compiler helps you out.

New comment by david422 in "Python developers are embracing type hints"

david422 — Sun, 28 Sep 2025 14:24:17 +0000

Yes. It's not the type system that's broken, it's the design. Fix the design, and the type system works for you, not against you.

New comment by david422 in "Ask HN: What trick of the trade took you too long to learn?"

david422 — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 02:16:17 +0000

When you buy a house and get a mortgage, you are going to be paying MUCH more in interest (than expected). Over the course of the mortgage, you are going to be paying MUCH more than the sticker price. Between closing costs and taxes and fees maintenance, you will need more cash than you think.

My advice is look at the numbers very carefully and choose something that is (below) or fits your budget. Sudden financial issues like the loss of a job or new vehicle purchase can put a big strain on all this.

New comment by david422 in "The Ski Rental Problem"

david422 — Mon, 04 Aug 2025 18:51:22 +0000

That's actually the situation I was in though. When your electric mower breaks you're probably on your own. I would not want to go back, but going forward definitely has it's own issues.

New comment by david422 in "The Ski Rental Problem"

david422 — Mon, 04 Aug 2025 00:55:54 +0000

> I have the same issue every year with a ride on lawn mower. Do I just pay someone weekly or buy one outright and do it myself? In this case I loathe mowing,

I bought mine, ran great for 4 years, then ran into a bunch of trouble, which made me recognize the other hidden cost of ownership is simply just maintenance. A very expensive mower just sitting there, nearest potential repair shop far away, no idea how I'd even get it there let alone the cost. And if I decide I don't want it, I've got to pay to get rid of it now too.

Luckily I was able to watch a bunch of youtube videos and order myself some parts to get it up and running again, but definitely sunk quite a bit of time and energy into it.