Hacker News: ldjb

New comment by ldjb in "Every GitHub object has two IDs"

ldjb — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 08:14:11 +0000

The author may well have been aware of this. However, since the author didn't retrieve those database IDs or URLs in the first place, they would have had to make further requests to retrieve them, which they wanted to avoid doing.

"I was looking at either backfilling millions of records or migrating our entire database, and neither sounded fun."

New comment by ldjb in "Animated Cursors"

ldjb — Sat, 26 Jul 2025 08:36:19 +0000

Under the Animated Cursors heading. Here are direct links to the webms if you still can't find them:

https://tattoy.sh/assets/screenshots/cursor_smear_fade.webm

https://tattoy.sh/assets/screenshots/manga_slash.webm

New comment by ldjb in "A 14kb page can load much faster than a 15kb page (2022)"

ldjb — Sat, 19 Jul 2025 10:45:29 +0000

Please do share any evidence to the contrary, but it seems that the Tweet is not serious and is not from someone who worked on the Start Menu.

New comment by ldjb in "Why does target="_blank" have an underscore in front? (2024)"

ldjb — Mon, 24 Feb 2025 10:35:28 +0000

I was expecting this post to explain why it's an underscore specifically, as opposed to a dollar sign, an asterisk, a caret, a tilde or some other special character.

I can only assume it's a holdover of languages like C where the standard library has some reserved names that start with an underscore.

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20230109-00/?p=10...

New comment by ldjb in "iTerm2 critical security release"

ldjb — Fri, 03 Jan 2025 00:45:20 +0000

A terminal doesn't need SSH integration, but it's convenient if it does, to allow you to easily start and manage connections. Is there something inherently unsafe about such an integration?

New comment by ldjb in "The Bluesky Bubble: This is a relapse, not a fix"

ldjb — Sat, 16 Nov 2024 18:08:49 +0000

I feel like Facebook was often considered a MySpace clone in its early days, despite certain differences, and I certainly think it took its place.

New comment by ldjb in "What's inside the QR code menu at this cafe?"

ldjb — Mon, 23 Sep 2024 22:00:01 +0000

First thing I would do is look for a security.txt file or search to see if they operate some kind of bug bounty. Failing that, I would browse their website or search for contact details (or even just a contact form). WHOIS can be useful for this. Ideally you'd want some kind of security contact, or a technical contact, but other times you have to make do with the general contact email/form.

In this specific case, they have a general email address at the bottom of their privacy policy, so that's what I'd use.

I'd send them an email along the lines of "I found a security issue with your website; how would you like me to report it to you?". Then they'll hopefully put me in touch with the right person.

In terms of what I'd expect… If they operate a bug bounty (which they don't in this case) then I'd expect what's on offer. If not, it would depend. I often don't expect anything. There have been businesses I've disclosed security vulnerabilities to that are shady enough that I've refused the reward they offered. Sometimes I don't want anything to do with them.

New comment by ldjb in "Xkcd Game Theory Question"

ldjb — Thu, 22 Aug 2024 15:45:30 +0000

Suppose there are two students. Each has a 50% chance of drawing the short straw (by picking either 0 or 1). Therefore, there is a 25% chance that neither will draw the short straw, 25% chance that both will draw the short straw, and 50% chance that only one will draw the short straw.

New comment by ldjb in "Show HN: Iso20022.js – Create payments in 3 lines of code"

ldjb — Mon, 05 Aug 2024 21:57:07 +0000

It's the extensible nature of XML that gives it an advantage. You can add custom elements and attributes whilst conforming to the base schema.

Granted, XML isn't the only format where this is possible. You can sort of achieve it with JSON, though XML's namespace system helps deal with name collisions. Adding bank-specific messages wouldn't be possible (or would be difficult) with fixed-column formats, for example, unless they had been specifically designed to be extended.

New comment by ldjb in "How many High Streets are there in London?"

ldjb — Sun, 09 Jun 2024 09:35:23 +0000

Today's blog post is related:

London's shortest and longest High Streets

https://diamondgeezer.blogspot.com/2024/06/londons-shortest-...

New comment by ldjb in "Secret Hand Gestures in Paintings (2019)"

ldjb — Fri, 07 Jun 2024 23:56:31 +0000

400 years later, this mysterious hand gesture would resurface in the character designs of Capcom's Mega Man / Rockman series of video games.

https://themmnetwork.com/2010/03/18/the-great-mega-man-finge...

New comment by ldjb in "Notepad Tab"

ldjb — Mon, 27 May 2024 23:00:59 +0000

Happens for me in Firefox. I press 'Back' and it untypes the last character.

New comment by ldjb in "Deutsche Bahn introduces "MetaWindow""

ldjb — Thu, 16 May 2024 23:51:58 +0000

In a democratic society, if citizens are particularly concerned about the aesthetics of public property, they can make their views known to the relevant authorities and elected representatives, and it could even become an election issue. I think that's far better than citizens fighting with paint.

New comment by ldjb in "Deutsche Bahn introduces "MetaWindow""

ldjb — Thu, 16 May 2024 23:43:32 +0000

We're talking about public property here. Many authorities have a 'no tolerance' approach to graffiti. Even if it looks nice, it will be removed. There is a belief that removing graffiti quickly discourages it. If graffiti artists find that their work won't last long, they may be discouraged from doing it in the first place. Aesthetics doesn't really come into it.

New comment by ldjb in "Deutsche Bahn introduces "MetaWindow""

ldjb — Thu, 16 May 2024 23:08:48 +0000

The impact isn't merely aesthetic.

For one thing, it can be costly to remove graffiti. And when it's on publicly owned property, who pays for that removal? The public, of course.

If, for example, a train is the target of graffiti, it will often need to be taken out of service. This, then, results in a degraded service to the travelling public.

Furthermore, graffiti artists often put themselves in dangerous situations. Numerous people have been seriously injured or killed when doing graffiti. That not only sucks for them, but also has various knock-on effects.

Some graffiti art can look really nice, whereas others have little artistic value. Regardless, the negative impacts of graffiti should not be overlooked.

New comment by ldjb in "Nearly all Nintendo 64 games can now be recompiled into native PC ports"

ldjb — Wed, 15 May 2024 23:07:03 +0000

Note that this is not true in many jurisdictions.

New comment by ldjb in "Why does Windows use backslash as path separator? (2019)"

ldjb — Wed, 24 Apr 2024 23:23:24 +0000

Classic Mac OS used colon (:) as the path separator, so slashes were perfectly acceptable in file and directory names.

Even in modern versions of macOS, the GUI still allows you to create files and folders with slashes in their names; the slashes get recorded as colons in the filesystem.

New comment by ldjb in "Personal VPN services are snake oil"

ldjb — Sun, 14 Apr 2024 21:40:56 +0000

Piracy is also listed under the "When to use a personal VPN?" heading.

New comment by ldjb in "Browser Security Bugs That Aren't: JavaScript in PDF"

ldjb — Sat, 13 Apr 2024 08:57:45 +0000

There are restrictions, but SVG is an example of an image file type that can run JavaScript (again, there are legitimate use cases for this).

New comment by ldjb in "Guess my RGB"

ldjb — Sun, 31 Mar 2024 11:32:10 +0000

It's not linked to from the page, but here's the GitHub repo for anyone interested:

https://github.com/susam/myrgb