Hacker News: jsmailes

New comment by jsmailes in "Windows 11's Patch Tuesday nightmare gets worse"

jsmailes — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 14:12:38 +0000

Unrelated to the article itself, but I'm really not a fan of websites like this one hijacking the back button to show more articles. It feels like a mistake to have ever allowed websites to modify behaviour of the back button like that, although I'm sure it leads to some usability improvements elsewhere.

New comment by jsmailes in "Show HN: ChartGPU – WebGPU-powered charting library (1M points at 60fps)"

jsmailes — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 08:34:18 +0000

That digital phosphor effect is fascinating! As someone who works frequently with DSP and occasionally with analogue signals, it's incredible to see how you can pull out the carrier/modulation just by looking at (effectively) a moving average. It's also interesting to see just how much they have to do behind the scenes to emulate a fairly simple physical effect.

New comment by jsmailes in "Sugar industry influenced researchers and blamed fat for CVD (2016)"

jsmailes — Wed, 07 Jan 2026 16:21:55 +0000

For those like myself who didn't know, CVD = cardiovascular disease.

New comment by jsmailes in "Nokia N900 Necromancy"

jsmailes — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 09:09:39 +0000

Fascinating, thanks for explaining! I had assumed it was just that capacitors were easier to get hold of than batteries, and that the author was just putting up with a reduced "battery" life as a result. It makes sense to replace with capacitors if they're just using it for always-powered static applications -- probably with much lower fire risk to boot.

New comment by jsmailes in "Modern Walkmans"

jsmailes — Tue, 09 Dec 2025 08:40:10 +0000

I love the aesthetic of cassette tapes and players -- there's just something really satisfying about the size and tactility of putting in a cassette. Beyond that, it feels better to choose to listen to a particular album rather than putting endless playlists on shuffle.

There's definitely space for tape to persist as a medium, even if quality and longevity is lower -- not everything has to be audiophile level, and the listening experience is far more than just sound quality.

New comment by jsmailes in "CSS now has an if() conditional function"

jsmailes — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 08:48:22 +0000

If I'm reading this correctly, Opera added support in an earlier version then took it away again. Any idea why they might have done it? Maybe a browser engine change under the hood?

New comment by jsmailes in "Valve is about to win the console generation"

jsmailes — Thu, 13 Nov 2025 10:29:04 +0000

For me, the big killer feature would be if this device is approved for modern media DRM. As much as I'm tired of streaming and its level of control over how I watch TV, it's still a decent part of my media consumption, but any Linux mini-PC I connect to the TV can only do low-resolution streaming from most providers. If the steam machine is approved for high-resolution streaming, it could totally replace the smart TV stack in most homes.

New comment by jsmailes in "By the Power of Grayscale"

jsmailes — Wed, 05 Nov 2025 14:12:47 +0000

The blob-finding algorithm makes me think of the "advent of code" problems - I wouldn't have thought to do a two-pass approach, but now that I see it set out in front of me it's obviously a great idea. Seems like this technique could quite easily be generalised to work with a range of problems.

New comment by jsmailes in "Canva’s affinity strategy: Normies over power users"

jsmailes — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 14:00:57 +0000

I've been using and loving the Affinity v2 suite for the last 3 years or so, and will continue to use v2 of the suite for the time being. I know how it works, I know it won't change drastically, and it already does all the things I need it to. I know new users won't have the luxury of staying behind on the old version, but it seems wise to give them a year or two to get some legs and see if they'll stand behind this "base product free" strategy, or if they'll start locking more features behind a paywall if it doesn't make money quickly enough.

New comment by jsmailes in "3D solar tower increases capacity factor 50%, triples solar surface area"

jsmailes — Thu, 30 Oct 2025 13:57:05 +0000

Is the photo in the article relevant? Unless they have some new tech that isn't pictured in the article, it looks like all they're doing is installing solar panels facing multiple different angles with motorised mounts. Potentially increases efficiency a bit, but surely nothing groundbreaking?

New comment by jsmailes in "IRCd service (2024)"

jsmailes — Thu, 30 Oct 2025 08:24:53 +0000

Seeing hexchat always gives me a pang of nostalgia for hours spent as a teen on various IRC channels. I know that even if I went back to some of those servers I wouldn't be able to recapture the same "magic" since it was primarily the people there (and besides, those people are largely reachable on slightly more modern services these days), but I do miss the simplicity of IRC as a protocol and the massive variety of clients and interfaces.

Maybe matrix will recapture some of that platform-agnosticism? I haven't used it in a while and the general sentiment around the protocol seems vaguely negative these days (at least in channels like HN).

New comment by jsmailes in "From VS Code to Helix"

jsmailes — Wed, 29 Oct 2025 13:36:47 +0000

Helix and other new editors (kakoune comes to mind) always appealed to me because they seemed to have slightly more intuitive approaches to editing than vim, but I just don't think I can ever switch, purely because vim just exists everywhere I need it. It (or vi) is installed on practically every system I ever touch by default, and almost every IDE/editor under the sun supports vim keybinds either natively or via well-maintained plugins.

It's the same problem with keyboard layouts: I'm sure I could learn to be slightly faster on dvorak/colemak, but nothing beats the convenience of always having guaranteed access to qwerty, everywhere I go.

New comment by jsmailes in "Project Shadowglass"

jsmailes — Wed, 29 Oct 2025 09:01:38 +0000

Fun art style and I'm sure there's some interesting tech behind the renderer/shader - to my eye it looks like the pixels don't shift much as the camera pans, which would naturally happen a fair bit if you're simply doing nearest-neighbour sampling. I'd like to see some gameplay though; so far it's just a tech demo, albeit a very pretty one.

New comment by jsmailes in "Show HN: Bash Screensavers"

jsmailes — Tue, 28 Oct 2025 15:27:48 +0000

I like how all the tests seem to be contained within a "jury" folder which judges the merit of your code, made me smile - It's always nice for open-source/FOSS projects to retain a bit of whimsy and joy.

New comment by jsmailes in "Internet's biggest annoyance: Cookie laws should target browsers, not websites"

jsmailes — Wed, 22 Oct 2025 12:29:54 +0000

I believe this is already starting to be solved via Global Privacy Control (GPC) [1], and has already been implemented in Firefox to replace Do Not Track [2]. All that remains is to see if lawmakers will catch up and make it a legal requirement to follow...

[1] https://globalprivacycontrol.org/

[2] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/global-privacy-control