Hacker News: hashkb

New comment by hashkb in "Going Full Time on Open Source"

hashkb — Wed, 06 May 2026 19:42:06 +0000

I had the pleasure of working with Jeff in ... I want to say 2012 - he taught me so much, is a fabulous developer and teammate, and we had some great times together.

Edit: mise rocks.

New comment by hashkb in "What Is Vim?"

hashkb — Sun, 15 Dec 2024 03:09:50 +0000

But why? The best thing about vim is normal mode. Emacs with evil-mode is so cool.

New comment by hashkb in "What Is Vim?"

hashkb — Sun, 15 Dec 2024 03:09:09 +0000

I love this take. I was a die-hard Vim/Neovim zealot... but these days I absolutely love the ecosystem of tools that support normal mode. For so long hand-cramping emacs keybindings were sort-of-standard-in-a-few-places.

If you're not convinced vimming is the best way to interact with your editor, you probably haven't seen a really proficient vimmer.

New comment by hashkb in "Wi Flag (2002)"

hashkb — Fri, 10 Feb 2023 17:59:46 +0000

You can mock the RNG. You don’t need to test/prove it’s random, you need to test your code which is not random.

New comment by hashkb in "Adafruit requires 2FA to prevent bots buying out Raspberry Pi"

hashkb — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 15:46:06 +0000

You'd have a lot more time to find and boot them prior to running the lottery. Assuming you didn't/couldn't detect them, at least you spare your users the anxiety and inconvenience of the on-sale while they get screwed.

New comment by hashkb in "Adafruit requires 2FA to prevent bots buying out Raspberry Pi"

hashkb — Tue, 22 Mar 2022 21:24:20 +0000

I don't understand what's so hard about this problem - if you have a platform that's impacted by bots and scalpers, and if you want to do the right thing, or give the appearance of doing the right thing with almost no cost to yourself or your business, you should release your product in a fair lottery with reasonable purchase limits.

You have plenty of time before the product is released to register and verify everyone. You completely avoid traffic issues. Accounting is easy - you'll sell out when you run the lottery. You'll build a reputation for releasing inventory fairly and without causing undue stress on your customers, and avoid the suspicion that you're in cahoots with the scalpers (looking at you, Ticketmaster).

I'm accustomed to stressing out over concert tickets and struggling to get gaming consoles, and have a deep hatred of scalpers and the platforms that enable them, but I had no idea that scalpers were ruining the educational/hobby markets too. That seems really low.

New comment by hashkb in "Esbuild – An extremely fast JavaScript bundler"

hashkb — Thu, 14 Oct 2021 14:44:54 +0000

You can build very fast reloading yourself, easily. If I'm smart with persisting state on the client, I find I don't really miss "hot" reloading.

New comment by hashkb in "Esbuild – An extremely fast JavaScript bundler"

hashkb — Thu, 14 Oct 2021 14:40:29 +0000

Or easily write your own dev server. Once you use the API instead of the CLI, if you have any experience with Express or Connect it's trivial.

New comment by hashkb in "Ask HN: What do engineers never talk to their bosses about, but should?"

hashkb — Tue, 05 Oct 2021 03:55:29 +0000

I'm trying to improve discourse by fighting against the downvote. It's my opinion it harms discourse significantly. It's low signal, and not constructive. It has an obvious chilling effect on dissent. Nothing upholds echo chambers more than the downvote.

New comment by hashkb in "Ask HN: What do engineers never talk to their bosses about, but should?"

hashkb — Tue, 05 Oct 2021 03:52:41 +0000

You could try. I'd assume it was downvoted by folks who perpetuate said double-talk. If there was a defense, they'd have articulated it. But, since anonymous downvoting is easier and less risky, that's what happens. Silencing the discussion about downvotes is a meta downvote that we shouldn't accept just because it's in the guidelines.

New comment by hashkb in "Ask HN: What do engineers never talk to their bosses about, but should?"

hashkb — Mon, 04 Oct 2021 14:15:44 +0000

Management often already got a deal or has worked their tech choice into a financial projection.

Sometimes, they are even right. And "I told you so" rolls downhill.

New comment by hashkb in "Ask HN: What do engineers never talk to their bosses about, but should?"

hashkb — Mon, 04 Oct 2021 14:13:33 +0000

Screw the site guidelines - drive-by downvoting this comment is highly suspicious, and cowardly.

New comment by hashkb in "Excel as Code"

hashkb — Mon, 20 Sep 2021 21:45:59 +0000

I think you're in a tiny minority but I'd love to hear more about how it impedes you.

New comment by hashkb in "Excel as Code"

hashkb — Mon, 20 Sep 2021 19:19:39 +0000

Just to add on to this - remember the first time you saw syntax highlighting? And before that, the code was all in one color? You didn't know you needed it before, but you didn't go back, did you?

New comment by hashkb in "Ledger of Harms"

hashkb — Thu, 16 Sep 2021 20:11:02 +0000

I started smoking for this reason and considered it a benefit at the time. But after quitting you come to realize that the camaraderie is covering up the fact that you're all out there killing yourselves instead of doing something better with your time; and you need to find other smokers because everyone else can't stand the way you smell.

Replace that spot where you go to smoke with a foursquare court and dare your boss to tell you you can't take as many foursquare breaks as the smokers get. Foursquare is fun and you and your group will invent your own rules and it'll turn into your own game that's way more fun than smoking cigarettes. Most places now, you can smoke a joint or a weed pen if you really need the physical act.

There's this idea that if you smoke you get extra breaks - bring it up in a reasonable way with any manager and you can have those breaks, too. And thank the few folks sacrificing themselves so that the rest of us can say we get as many breaks as they do.

Edit: a benefit I miss is excusing myself from an uncomfortable situation because I "need" a cigarette. But, without that crutch, I developed better GTFO strategies.

New comment by hashkb in "Ledger of Harms"

hashkb — Thu, 16 Sep 2021 11:31:41 +0000

> There’s obviously good things provided by tech (otherwise folks wouldn’t have started using it)

The "good" doesn't have to be significant for us to become addicted. There are some upsides to smoking cigarettes and other self-destructive behaviors, I'm sure.

New comment by hashkb in "O.mg Cable"

hashkb — Tue, 07 Sep 2021 14:58:13 +0000

Me too! Thanks.

New comment by hashkb in "O.mg Cable"

hashkb — Tue, 07 Sep 2021 14:53:08 +0000

I don't agree that society functions well, and I see people mess with each other almost constantly. Your reality seems nice.

New comment by hashkb in "O.mg Cable"

hashkb — Tue, 07 Sep 2021 14:52:02 +0000

Yes. I'm not saying we choose to be bad. I'm saying we sort of have to, and billionaires get the choice, and still choose to generally do more damage than than any of us will ever have the opportunity to attempt.

New comment by hashkb in "O.mg Cable"

hashkb — Tue, 07 Sep 2021 14:50:33 +0000

This is false, too. Those bowls were always empty by the time I got to them.

Edit: ever been at a long line for the bathroom at a big concert or sporting event? Or driven on the roads? There's always someone cheating, often making it more dangerous or painful to be that median person.