Hacker News: jansanhttps://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jansanHacker News RSShttps://hnrss.org/hnrss v2.1.1Mon, 13 Apr 2026 08:35:44 +0000<![CDATA[New comment by jansan in "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (April 2026)"]]>A complex text shaping and rendering library in Javascript and no_std Rust that supports Ligatures, Bidi, Arabic, indic, CJK, Khmer, etc and is super small and memory efficient. JS version is <25 KB gripped, Rust version is aimed at approx. 130 KB compiled size. My plan is to show a demo of it running on an esp32 soon.

]]>Sun, 12 Apr 2026 22:30:12 +0000https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47745223jansanhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47745223https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47745223<![CDATA[New comment by jansan in "Revision Demoparty 2026: Razor1911 [video]"]]>That Dynamic Duo disk at the beginning reminded me of my friend who got his house raided in 1987 for exchanging (not selling) cracked computer games for the C64 at the age of 18 in super rural Germany. He still managed to get into the army as an officer.

]]>Wed, 08 Apr 2026 09:25:16 +0000https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47687571jansanhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47687571https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47687571<![CDATA[New comment by jansan in "CERN levels up with new superconducting karts"]]>When they later actually sold the t-shirt they had previously presented as an April Fools joke? That was pretty cool.

]]>Wed, 01 Apr 2026 09:46:10 +0000https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47598781jansanhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47598781https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47598781<![CDATA[New comment by jansan in "Show HN: Converter for legacy Paint Shop Pro files (.psp and .pspimage) to SVG"]]>This project has a very niche target audience — people sitting on a bunch of legacy Paint Shop Pro files from the late 90s / early 2000s. But for them, it solves a long-standing problem: there's been no good way to convert these files to a modern format (GIMP fails on vector layers). This tool handles them properly.

]]>Sat, 28 Mar 2026 12:30:37 +0000https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47553974jansanhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47553974https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47553974<![CDATA[Show HN: Converter for legacy Paint Shop Pro files (.psp and .pspimage) to SVG]]>Article URL: https://github.com/waruyama/psp-converter/tree/main

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47553899

Points: 3

# Comments: 1

]]>Sat, 28 Mar 2026 12:19:34 +0000https://github.com/waruyama/psp-converter/tree/mainjansanhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47553899https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47553899<![CDATA[New comment by jansan in "Ask HN: How is AI-assisted coding going for you professionally?"]]>It is great to solve "puzzle" problems and remove road blocks. In the past, whenever I got stuck, I often got frustrated and gave up. In so many cases AI hints to the corret solution and helps me continue. It's like a knowledgeable colleague that you can ask for help when you get stuck.

Another thing is auditing and code polishing. I asked Claude to polish a working, but still rough browser pluging, consisting of two simple Javascript files. It took ten iterations and a full day of highly intensive work to get the quality I wanted. I would say the result is good, but I could not do this process vey often without going insane. And I do not want to do this with a more complex project, yet.

So, yes, I am using it. For me it's a tool, knowledge resource, puzzle solver, code reviewer and source for inspiration. It's not a robot to write my code.

And never trust it blindly!

]]>Sun, 15 Mar 2026 22:01:52 +0000https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47392425jansanhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47392425https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47392425<![CDATA[New comment by jansan in "The engine of Germany's wealth is blocking its future"]]>It's both. Of course the massively shrinking share of the Chinese market is a big chunk of the problem. But the whole mindset here in Germany is completely delusional with the idea to be leaders in environmental technology and sustainability solutions.

My favorite example of this delusion is Porsche who somehow thought that selling their bread-and-butter model Macan exclusively as an EV was a good idea. I still cannot understand how they arrived at this decision.

]]>Mon, 09 Mar 2026 16:07:48 +0000https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47310916jansanhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47310916https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47310916<![CDATA[New comment by jansan in "From RGB to L*a*b* color space (2024)"]]>The problem is that this will only work in one direction. You can calculate the stimulation of the photoreceptors for a certain spectrum, but not the other way around. For example the eye cannot distinguish between purple light consisting of one specific wavelength and purble light mixed by red and blue wavelengths, because both give the same stimulation of the receptors. So there is an infinite number of possible spectra for any given stimulation of the photoreceptors. All we can do is take the stimulation values (X, Y and Z) and convert from there to all kinds of color models and back.

Your approach would make a lot of sense for sensors that are full spectrum analyzers, but the eye isn't one.

]]>Sun, 08 Mar 2026 10:20:36 +0000https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47296098jansanhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47296098https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47296098<![CDATA[New comment by jansan in "MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max"]]>The performance numbers are impressive, but I do not get the on-board AI spin. What is it used for?

]]>Tue, 03 Mar 2026 14:12:44 +0000https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47232618jansanhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47232618https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47232618<![CDATA[New comment by jansan in "Martial arts robots at 2026 Spring Festival Gala [video]"]]>Of course the robots have been pre-trained and the movements are scripted, and nobody is claiming otherwise. But there must be a lot of autonomous balancing taking place. At one point you can see the robots adjusting their feet slightly different although they are all in sync, and that catapult does not look like its movement is exactly the same every time. It is just super impressive.

Does anyone remember when Honda's Asimo robot clumsily fell down the stairs during a demonstration[1] and we thought we were safe from a robot invasion by just moving to the upper floor? That was about 20 years ago.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mx6paHrnIE

]]>Thu, 19 Feb 2026 08:36:38 +0000https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47071391jansanhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47071391https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47071391<![CDATA[New comment by jansan in "Is Show HN dead? No, but it's drowning"]]>So the affiliates obviously get 25%.

]]>Tue, 17 Feb 2026 11:04:01 +0000https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47046090jansanhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47046090https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47046090<![CDATA[New comment by jansan in "I want to wash my car. The car wash is 50 meters away. Should I walk or drive?"]]>> I can feel the AGI on this one :)

This was probably meant in a sarcastic way, but isn't it impressive how you cannot push Gemini off track? I tried another prompt with claiming that one of my cups does not work, because it is closed at the top and open at the bottom, and it kind of played with me, giving me a funny technical explanation on how to solve that problem and finally asking me if that was a trick question.

In this case I can feel the AGI indeed.

]]>Mon, 16 Feb 2026 15:30:06 +0000https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47036239jansanhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47036239https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47036239<![CDATA[New comment by jansan in "I was insulted today – AI style"]]>Good story. I hope it wasn't written by AI.

]]>Thu, 12 Feb 2026 21:09:56 +0000https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46995209jansanhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46995209https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46995209<![CDATA[AskHN: Is Auth0 Down Again?]]>Their status page claims that everything is running (if it loads), but I cannot login anywhere.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46951336

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

]]>Mon, 09 Feb 2026 21:07:41 +0000https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46951336jansanhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46951336https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46951336<![CDATA[New comment by jansan in "Antirender: remove the glossy shine on architectural renderings"]]>That may be quite close to the truth. Here are pictures from some abandones pavilions from the 2000 World Expo in Hannover. Sad to see this, as I lived in Hannover at that time and had a really good time at the Expo.

https://vergesseneorte.com/die-expo2000-in-hannover/

]]>Sat, 31 Jan 2026 10:31:36 +0000https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46835323jansanhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46835323https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46835323<![CDATA[New comment by jansan in "Norway EV Push Nears 100 Percent: What's Next?"]]>If you compare Norway to other countries, you should always keep in mind that Norway is just blessed with energy. They have more hydropower than they consume, so electrifying everything just makes sense, even if you ignore consequences for climate and environment. They also have their own oil, and electrification will also allow them to sell more of it abroad or keep in the ground for future generations.

However, it also helps that they are good at long term planning.

]]>Fri, 30 Jan 2026 14:00:17 +0000https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46824458jansanhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46824458https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46824458<![CDATA[New comment by jansan in "Microsoft's Azure Linux"]]>The strategy "Embrace, extend and extinguish" by Microsoft even has its own Wikipedia page.

]]>Thu, 29 Jan 2026 06:07:50 +0000https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46806402jansanhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46806402https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46806402<![CDATA[New comment by jansan in "Amazon cuts 16k jobs"]]>They actually still have 1,5 million employees. The number has been approximately the same since 2021, and those 16,000 won't make a dent.

]]>Wed, 28 Jan 2026 16:20:48 +0000https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46797393jansanhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46797393https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46797393<![CDATA[New comment by jansan in "ASML staffing changes could result in a net reduction of around 1700 positions"]]>It was a government guarantee in November 2023, which was never used, but allowed them to borrow money from banks for new projects. Demand was never a problem, but they were on the brink of collapse due to hidden quality problems at their subsidiary Gamesa. Somehow they seem to have solved this.

]]>Wed, 28 Jan 2026 15:21:37 +0000https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46796503jansanhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46796503https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46796503<![CDATA[New comment by jansan in "ASML staffing changes could result in a net reduction of around 1700 positions"]]>Siemens Energy (which meanwhile is completely separated from Siemens) did a massive cleanup of their management overhead two or three years ago. They cut several layers and a lot of managers got downgraded or let go. Looking at their stock performance it seems they did the right thing.

I really hope that other German enterprises will use this as an example.

]]>Wed, 28 Jan 2026 10:11:55 +0000https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46793385jansanhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46793385https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46793385