Hacker News: herbturbo

New comment by herbturbo in "What I Learned After Building 3 TV Apps Coming from Mobile"

herbturbo — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 16:38:17 +0000

Never understood this about Amazon. Alexa is a perfect example. When the Echo devices came out around 10 years ago they blew people away with voice UI, and yet the Alexa app was and is a poorly made web wrapper with car infotainment levels of menu-driven UX. Any chance they had of making Alexa a real consumer product died with that piss poor app and the clumsy way they implemented Skills.

New comment by herbturbo in "Anthropic officially bans using subscription auth for third party use"

herbturbo — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 04:28:15 +0000

>> there’s a million small scale AI apps that just aren’t worth building because there’s no way to do the billing that makes sense

Maybe they are not worth building at all then. Like MoviePass wasn’t.

New comment by herbturbo in "Anthropic officially bans using subscription auth for third party use"

herbturbo — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 04:22:10 +0000

I think they are smart making a distinction between a D2C subscription which they control the interface to and eat the losses for vs B2B use where they pay for what they use.

Allows them to optimize their clients and use private APIs for exclusive features etc. and there’s really no reason to bootstrap other wannabe AI companies who just stick a facade experience in front of Anthropic’s paying customer.

New comment by herbturbo in "Jony Ive Designed Ferrari Luce EV Interior"

herbturbo — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 16:23:48 +0000

Unsolving the problem of human vehicle interaction.

New comment by herbturbo in "Jony Ive Designed Ferrari Luce EV Interior"

herbturbo — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 16:21:42 +0000

Looks like a sim racers rig or something Logitech designed. This bland tech aesthetic and cost cutting mindset has already ruined Porsche and I guess now it’s Ferrari’s turn.

New comment by herbturbo in "Tesla ending Models S and X production"

herbturbo — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 18:27:42 +0000

Tesla is good at building big factories. The Cybertruck (total sales ~46k) factory was designed to build 250k units a year and later 125k. Meanwhile BYD outsells Tesla in China and globally.

New comment by herbturbo in "AI generated music barred from Bandcamp"

herbturbo — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 18:54:10 +0000

That’s what the sites that generate the music are for. Bandcamp is for musicians.

New comment by herbturbo in "Shipmap.org"

herbturbo — Wed, 07 Jan 2026 16:15:25 +0000

Used this when I moved internationally. Cool to watch your stuff moving around the world!

New comment by herbturbo in "We might have been slower to abandon StackOverflow if it wasn't a toxic hellhole"

herbturbo — Wed, 07 Jan 2026 16:03:50 +0000

You must have been using SO different to me then. For me it was more like a Wikipedia for specific language errors, compiler/IDE issues etc.

Never once saw anyone discussing how to implement CRUD or claiming one framework was better than another. That was the point - concrete answers not opinions.

New comment by herbturbo in "VW is bringing physical buttons back to the dashboard with the ID. Polo EV"

herbturbo — Tue, 06 Jan 2026 21:55:49 +0000

First they put screens in for navigation because people were using dash mounted ones. Guess it felt logical to move the entertainment and info in there too (infotainment) and then came the EVs and the goofy tech era of cars. Late 2010s was peak automotive - most modern cars are like tacky appliances inside now.

New comment by herbturbo in "VW is bringing physical buttons back to the dashboard with the ID. Polo EV"

herbturbo — Tue, 06 Jan 2026 21:50:38 +0000

It’s also a lot easier on the production line if you don’t need a new set of control knobs and blanks for each vehicle that comes by based on how it’s been spec’d.

But that’s the issue. Grey suits in boardrooms with no passion for driving making decisions based on cost and homogenizing manufacturing amongst the car lines.

For example someone at VWAG thought it was a good idea to replace the 911 key with a button, and dials with a screen. Why? Cost and stupid tech fantasies fueled by EV manufacturers and Apples next-gen CarPlay nonsense.

New comment by herbturbo in "It's hard to justify Tahoe icons"

herbturbo — Tue, 06 Jan 2026 21:41:03 +0000

The golden rule from Apple in 2007 when they changed to flat design was icon or text - never both together.

Apple abandoned enforcing HIG for app developers around 2012 (Facebook tiled menu, modal abuse, and hamburger) but now seems to have given up on standards entirely.

The wall to wall interaction pattern is terrible too. Every time my hand brushes my phone some unexpected (and sometimes unknown) interaction occurs. Classic example is changing orientation while watching YT where accidental contact with the bottom-left (becoming top-right) part of the screen as you move the phone selects a new video. It’s becoming slop.

New comment by herbturbo in "It's hard to justify Tahoe icons"

herbturbo — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 22:47:24 +0000

Nielsen Norman used to be quoted constantly during UX discussions at various places I worked. Seems like UX folks and Information Architects have slowly been replaced by a general purpose “designer”

New comment by herbturbo in "The Walt Disney Company and OpenAI Partner on Sora"

herbturbo — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 13:04:26 +0000

This sounds like old TV exec logic. Disney IP is not “premium” any more thanks to relentless overuse in their garbage movies and shows.

My teenage kids watch YT and TikTok (which gets highly relevant UGC daily) and couldn’t care less about Mickey Mouse or Kylo Ren.

New comment by herbturbo in "iPhone Typos? It's Not Just You – The iOS Keyboard Is Broken [video]"

herbturbo — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 12:48:18 +0000

Because they are too busy coming up with new “features” that nobody needs or wants so they can talk about delivering value in a yearly review.

Fixing broken UX is not a priority at Apple any more. They stopped enforcing HIGs for 3rd party apps a long time ago, and their own apps violate many principles that used to matter. Music app on iOS is a great example of slop UI.

New comment by herbturbo in "Rivian Unveils Custom Silicon, R2 Lidar Roadmap, and Universal Hands Free"

herbturbo — Thu, 11 Dec 2025 21:51:44 +0000

That all sounds great but with CARIAD now being involved at Rivian I won’t hold my breath on that roadmap being executed.

New comment by herbturbo in "iPhone Typos? It's Not Just You – The iOS Keyboard Is Broken [video]"

herbturbo — Thu, 11 Dec 2025 16:47:59 +0000

I assumed it was just me getting worse at typing but combined with aggressively wrong autocorrect and mysterious blue lines under everything I type they seem to have ruined yet another perfectly good UX.

New comment by herbturbo in "The Walt Disney Company and OpenAI Partner on Sora"

herbturbo — Thu, 11 Dec 2025 16:41:15 +0000

To be fair the humans working at Disney had their chance and blew it.

New comment by herbturbo in "The Walt Disney Company and OpenAI Partner on Sora"

herbturbo — Thu, 11 Dec 2025 15:26:51 +0000

A moat is a permanent feature protecting a castle against attack. That’s the metaphor. If it’s not their own device intrinsically protecting them then it’s not a moat in my book.

New comment by herbturbo in "The Walt Disney Company and OpenAI Partner on Sora"

herbturbo — Thu, 11 Dec 2025 15:07:28 +0000

Well that’s the thing with moats - they don’t just disappear one day.