Hacker News: jameshart

New comment by jameshart in "I Found Ultra-Pure Quantum Crystals in an Abandoned Mine in the Atacama Desert"

jameshart — Tue, 19 May 2026 11:16:30 +0000

They were in fact discovered 54 years ago. The quantum properties weren’t recognized until 2012.

New comment by jameshart in "AI subscriptions are a ticking time bomb for enterprise"

jameshart — Sun, 17 May 2026 17:15:58 +0000

I hate it. This article starts off well! There is data and it seems well argued, but then halfway through, there it is: example of trend. Another example. Third example. It’s not just X – it’s Y.

It’s as jarring as getting halfway into a well written article, clicking a link to a source, and getting rickrolled.

It’s all you can do to not let it distract you from the fact that in 1998, The Undertaker threw Mankind off Hell In A Cell, and plummeted 16 ft through an announcer's table.

New comment by jameshart in "I believe there are entire companies right now under AI psychosis"

jameshart — Fri, 15 May 2026 23:01:15 +0000

I mean, the stories about how stuff was getting built in the late 90s/early 2000s aren’t much worse.

New comment by jameshart in "Steve Jobs in Exile – New book on Steve Jobs’s years at NeXT Computer"

jameshart — Fri, 15 May 2026 13:44:51 +0000

I’m so confused. Your complaint is that Apple don’t make a mouse that you like?

Are you in some situation where you are being forced to use a Magic Mouse?

Other manufacturers make mice in every form factor you can imagine. I don’t believe any apple product comes with a Magic Mouse bundled - you’re not forced in any way to buy one.

Apple don’t make any headphones that I like. I don’t feel like this is a failing on Apple’s part?

New comment by jameshart in "How to make your text look futuristic (2016)"

jameshart — Tue, 12 May 2026 23:54:42 +0000

I think the author is aware: https://typesetinthefuture.com/2014/11/29/fontspots-eurostil...

New comment by jameshart in "Learning Software Architecture"

jameshart — Tue, 12 May 2026 11:27:11 +0000

I’m not sure what part of the article this is attempting to critique.

But I would say that just because your preferred mental model is an abstract algebraic one where you build an abstract model that can apply to multiple situations doesn’t mean that such an architecture is best for every situation.

The article talks very clearly about the system and social constraints that it is optimizing for architecturally and ‘turning everything into a fold’ doesn’t immediately strike me as helping to meet the fast-build-feedback needs of the deep contributors and easy-and-safe-to-hack-in-modules needs of the weekend warrriors, which is what are described as the goals of the architecture.

But it also doesn’t strike me as very clearly not the case that the architecture has some of the features you’re describing.

It feels rather like you have a pet mental model which you think all architecture should subscribe to, and… I’m sorry but that seems naive.

New comment by jameshart in "Guitar tuner that uses phone accelerometer"

jameshart — Mon, 11 May 2026 12:48:13 +0000

Pack it up folks, nubinetwork has exposed the scam that is the guitar tuner industry. You don’t need a guitar tuner if you have ears; all the guitar techs and musicians who use them have bought into a lie. And obviously since guitar tuners are a waste of time, a tech demo showing that you can use the accelerometer in a commodity handheld device to pick up minute vibrations with sufficient accuracy to detect guitar tuning from a web page is just feeding into the hands of Big Tuner.

Seriously, this is the very definition of a shallow dismissal.

New comment by jameshart in "Using Claude Code: The unreasonable effectiveness of HTML"

jameshart — Sun, 10 May 2026 00:58:43 +0000

HTML was invented for physicists to be able to write papers. It's not something that's beyond anyone without frontend dev experience.

CSS, on the other hand...

New comment by jameshart in "The ROKR wooden typewriter: a closer look"

jameshart — Sat, 09 May 2026 22:08:16 +0000

If you’re interested in how the inner mechanics of an Underwood typewriter work, Animagraff’s cutaway 3D animations are an excellent exploration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKpIwi1UUIk

All of Jacob O’Neal’s videos in the series are excellent, like the pages from a Popular Mechanics cutaway brought to life.

New comment by jameshart in "I’ve banned query strings"

jameshart — Sat, 09 May 2026 22:00:31 +0000

Crafting outbound links with your own additions and handing them out to visitors to your site is similar to the practice of writing someone’s phone number on the door of a bathroom cubicle with ‘for a good time call:’ written above it.

You’re handing out someone elses’s contact details, but giving the person you hand them to a completely fabricated expectation for how the interaction will go.

New comment by jameshart in "I’ve banned query strings"

jameshart — Sat, 09 May 2026 21:57:01 +0000

Use #fragment identifiers then

New comment by jameshart in "Distributing Mac software is increasing my cortisol levels"

jameshart — Sat, 09 May 2026 21:15:24 +0000

Publishing a tip jar link is going to be possible no matter how you distribute. The desire to use itch is about wanting to sell.

New comment by jameshart in "I’ve banned query strings"

jameshart — Sat, 09 May 2026 21:13:22 +0000

There’s nothing ruder in hypertext etiquette than giving someone a link to navigate to someone else’s HTTP server, where you have manipulated that URL in some way unsanctioned by the server you are sending them to.

You can’t just send arbitrary query string parameters to a server and assume they will just ignore them. Just like you can’t just remove query string parameters and assume the URL will work.

New comment by jameshart in "Distributing Mac software is increasing my cortisol levels"

jameshart — Sat, 09 May 2026 20:52:53 +0000

Making it take some pain for developers is precisely what makes it valuable. If you could automate signing up for a developer account and didn’t have to put up some cash it would lose all value as a trust signal.

New comment by jameshart in "Distributing Mac software is increasing my cortisol levels"

jameshart — Sat, 09 May 2026 20:51:55 +0000

Maybe the PDFs were malware?

New comment by jameshart in "Distributing Mac software is increasing my cortisol levels"

jameshart — Sat, 09 May 2026 20:51:20 +0000

Okay, but then the argument that Apple is charging them to certify their software and that is excluding hobbyists falls away doesn’t it? Now you’re not a hobbyist.

New comment by jameshart in "Let’s Encrypt: Stopping Issuance for Potential Incident – Resolved"

jameshart — Fri, 08 May 2026 20:10:49 +0000

Useful context: https://letsencrypt.org/2026/01/15/6day-and-ip-general-avail...

New comment by jameshart in "A web page that shows you everything the browser told it without asking"

jameshart — Fri, 08 May 2026 17:16:37 +0000

> Your device carries these typefaces, of the seventeen commonly probed by fingerprinting checks. The specific combination of fonts on your device is nearly unique

The set of fonts available in stock iOS is hardly going to be unique now is it?

That it is even possible to install fonts onto iOS would be news to most users.

New comment by jameshart in "Canvas is down as ShinyHunters threatens to leak schools’ data"

jameshart — Fri, 08 May 2026 14:40:24 +0000

Some liability, sure. Civil, not criminal, though, right?

But the post I was responding to said it should be a crime to have unsecured systems.

That is equivalent to saying it should be a crime to leave your door unlocked.

New comment by jameshart in "Canvas online again as ShinyHunters threatens to leak schools’ data"

jameshart — Fri, 08 May 2026 14:35:27 +0000

Sorry, I wasn’t trying to defend Canvas, so much as give general advice that ‘I could build this in a weekend’ is rarely a wise claim. The specific ways in which Canvas could not be built in a weekend do not need to be the ones I identified.