Hacker News: donbrae

New comment by donbrae in "Cambodia unveils statue to honour famous landmine-sniffing rat"

donbrae — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 21:33:38 +0000

What a hero. Rats are so smart. I previously asked what I think was an official account on Instagram and was relieved that the rats are apparently too light to set off the mines.

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

donbrae — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 07:10:16 +0000

I use ScreenFloat[0] in a similar way to catch differences between GUI settings, like the cPanel PHP extensions selector, which has tons of checkboxes. Position a screenshot of settings for site A over the settings for site B, adjust the transparency, and any differences will jump out.

[0] https://eternalstorms.at/ScreenFloat/

New comment by donbrae in "Native Linux VST plugin directory"

donbrae — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 21:52:41 +0000

I hope the CLAP plugin open standard[0] will lead to more VSTs being made available for Linux. My favourite synth, Diva[1], has already been ported over (its maker, u-he, co-developed CLAP.)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLever_Audio_Plug-in [1] https://u-he.com/products/diva/

New comment by donbrae in "Ask HN: Share your personal website"

donbrae — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 10:46:23 +0000

https://www.jamieonkeys.dev

Mostly posting about web development.

New comment by donbrae in "Eat Real Food"

donbrae — Thu, 08 Jan 2026 09:10:48 +0000

You can get all the nutrients you need, easily, from a vegan diet, with the exception of B12 (a cheap supplement will cover that).

Also, human ‘canines’ are pretty pathetic. They’ll do the job in getting meat off bones, sure, but are nothing compared with my dog’s teeth – he has proper canines. (He also doesn’t have to prepare and cook meat before tucking in. Humans are actually pretty lame meat eaters even in comparison to other omnivores like dogs, let alone carnivores like lions.)

New comment by donbrae in "Pig Video Arcades Critique Life in the Pen (1997)"

donbrae — Sat, 13 Dec 2025 23:36:19 +0000

Pigs are amazing animals: intelligent, sociable and empathetic. The way we treat them – confining pregnant sows and nursing mothers to weeks or months in gestation/farrowing crates, and gassing them underground in slaughterhouses – is truly appalling.

New comment by donbrae in "Rats Play DOOM"

donbrae — Sat, 13 Dec 2025 10:03:50 +0000

Also in the genre of animals playing video games: ‘Pigs can play video games with their snouts, scientists find’ https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56023720

New comment by donbrae in "Domains I Love"

donbrae — Mon, 09 Jun 2025 21:37:17 +0000

A few of my favourites: brr.fyi, sheep.horse, timeflies.buzz, pudding.cool and bad.coffee.

New comment by donbrae in "Better typography with text-wrap pretty"

donbrae — Wed, 09 Apr 2025 10:39:42 +0000

This is great. I’ve already been using `text-wrap: balance` on headlines. Before, I was concatenating certain words with ` ` to try to avoid bad wrapping at certain viewport widths. (Doing so is still a useful trick in edge cases.) `text-wrap: pretty` should fix similar ugliness in body text.

New comment by donbrae in "Show HN: I built a website for sharing drum patterns"

donbrae — Sun, 23 Mar 2025 16:40:01 +0000

Or as the developer you can play some silent audio in the background via an `` element: https://github.com/donbrae/onscreen-piano-keyboard/blob/main.... This will ensure the Web Audio API produces sound even with the ‘silent’ switch active.

New comment by donbrae in "The Frontend Treadmill"

donbrae — Thu, 20 Mar 2025 13:12:34 +0000

I wonder whether AI being the new and shiny thing will lead to a reduction in ‘innovation’ in front-end frameworks. Front-end dev seems to me to have been a solved problem for years now, yet there are still new ways of doing things for marginal gains. I personally just use vanilla JS (having never built anything Facebook-scale which would necessitate using a tool like React) and would be happy if instead of working on yet more front-end stuff, folk will otherwise build something AI-related, both because that is where the hype is but also because it’s genuinely exciting.

New comment by donbrae in "macOS Tips and Tricks (2022)"

donbrae — Fri, 28 Feb 2025 12:32:05 +0000

One of my favourite tips is to hold down Command while dragging important apps, files and folders to the Finder toolbar in order to ‘pin’ them. You can then drag files to ‘Open in…’ (eg, images to ImageOptim) or just launch apps.

First lab-grown meat for pets goes on sale

donbrae — Thu, 06 Feb 2025 12:58:13 +0000

Article URL: https://www.theverge.com/news/607310/meatly-lab-grown-meat-dog-food-treat-pets-at-home-uk

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42961892

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by donbrae in "Dolby Atmos for music streaming is a waste of time"

donbrae — Sun, 08 Dec 2024 22:50:40 +0000

If I’m on headphones (usually wired) I’ll choose the Dolby Atmos mix pretty much every time. As the article notes, it’s great for classical and jazz recordings. But I prefer the Atmos mixes for other genres and styles of music, too. The various instruments/parts seem to have more room to breathe in the mix, and I hear new things in familiar tracks.

New comment by donbrae in "I designed my website to look like a chat log"

donbrae — Wed, 20 Nov 2024 09:22:09 +0000

The background does give a slight dizzying effect on scroll. His logos are good, though, and I like his no-nonsense attitude.

New comment by donbrae in "Apple Maps on the web launches in beta"

donbrae — Thu, 25 Jul 2024 07:32:49 +0000

I normally find that stuff I build for the web just works in Chrome and Firefox and it’s Safari that requires hacks and workarounds, even when I’m using standard APIs that are widely supported. I’d have to go out of my way to have something work in Chrome but not Firefox.

New comment by donbrae in "The British Newspaper Archive"

donbrae — Mon, 10 Jun 2024 21:05:54 +0000

This is a great resource. Used it to research writing in the Scots language in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

New comment by donbrae in "Equinox.space"

donbrae — Mon, 22 Apr 2024 14:56:40 +0000

Ah, you also did the Transmit 3D truck for the Panic website. Nice work!

New comment by donbrae in "AI-generated sad girl with piano performs the text of the MIT License"

donbrae — Thu, 04 Apr 2024 14:38:37 +0000

The actual page at suno.ai: https://app.suno.ai/song/da6d4a83-1001-4694-8c28-648a6e8bad0....

New comment by donbrae in "AI-generated sad girl with piano performs the text of the MIT License"

donbrae — Thu, 04 Apr 2024 14:32:36 +0000

Impressive! Quite a nice song, too.