Hacker News: lelandfe

New comment by lelandfe in "New unsealed records reveal Amazon's price-fixing tactics, California AG claims"

lelandfe — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 23:19:37 +0000

If you've ever seen those "Click To Reveal Price" or "Price Only Revealed At Checkout" products online, this here is one reason why. They help businesses keep discounted prices hidden from Amazon's crawlers.

New comment by lelandfe in "Backblaze has stopped backing up OneDrive and Dropbox folders and maybe others"

lelandfe — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 16:25:59 +0000

Here in dense NYC, most apartments I've lived in have but a single ISP available. It's common to hunt for apartments by searching the address on service maps.

I'm pretty sure one landlord was cut in by his ISP, as he skipped town when I tried to ask about getting fiber, and his office locked their door and drew their shades when I went there with a technician on two occasions. The final time, we got there before they opened and the woman ran into the office and slammed the door on us.

New comment by lelandfe in "Backblaze has stopped backing up OneDrive and Dropbox folders and maybe others"

lelandfe — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 14:16:17 +0000

Our ISPs conspire to avoid competition (AKA "overbuilding") and so stuff like this just festers. It's truly a shame.

New comment by lelandfe in "Backblaze has stopped backing up OneDrive and Dropbox folders and maybe others"

lelandfe — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 11:07:37 +0000

Alas, "isn't so developed" applies to the US: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/06/cox-slows-intern...

My parents have gotten hit by this. Dad was downloading huge video files at one point on his WiFi and his ISP silently throttled him.

A common term is "data cap": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_cap

New comment by lelandfe in "Why AI Sucks at Front End"

lelandfe — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 14:40:12 +0000

Wow, it's got some issues on Chrome (dropped frames on scroll) but Safari is another level. Selecting text takes time. Looking at Activity Monitor, I see "Safari Graphics and Media" using 200% of my CPU even at rest.

A quick profile on Safari shows some layout recalc happening regularly, but surely that shouldn't cause this bad of perf...

The last time I found something like this, it was because of 100's of box-shadows.

Edit: Sure enough, this cures Safari:

    *, *::before, *::after { box-shadow: none !important; background: none !important }

It's a combination of box-shadows and gradients.

Edit 2: Ah, they're using shadow DOM for the img reflection, so we can't affect it. Good gravy is the shadow DOM stuff overwrought, it's 87 elements all told, just for one img.

New comment by lelandfe in "Show HN: Pardonned.com – A searchable database of US Pardons"

lelandfe — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 12:06:34 +0000

Preemptive meaning they hadn't yet been convicted. Nixon was pardoned by Ford in this manner (for "all offenses against the United States" between Jan. 20, 1969—Aug. 9, 1974). Carter preemptively mass-pardoned draft dodgers, etc.

New comment by lelandfe in "Claude mixes up who said what"

lelandfe — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 01:24:56 +0000

Yeah, the raw JSON (in my case) is the result of a failed tool call, it was trying to generate an image. With thinking models, you can observe the degeneration of its understanding of image tool calls over the lifetime of a chat. It eventually puzzles over where images are supposed to be emitted, how it's supposed to write text, if it's allowed to provide commentary - and eventually, it gets all of it wrong. This also happens with file cites (in projects) and web search calls.

New comment by lelandfe in "Show HN: I made a YouTube search form with advanced filters"

lelandfe — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 22:49:13 +0000

Given that that page describes quotes as "working," I'm not so sure how much effort was put into its testing.

New comment by lelandfe in "Claude mixes up who said what"

lelandfe — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 22:13:11 +0000

Yes, and with very long chats, you'll see it even forget how to do things like make tool calls - or even respond at all! I've had ChatGPT reply with raw JSON, regurgitate an earlier prompt, reply with a single newline, regurgitate information from a completely different chat, reply in a foreign language, and more.

Things get really wacky as it approaches decoherence.

New comment by lelandfe in "Claude mixes up who said what"

lelandfe — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 10:08:21 +0000

In chats that run long enough on ChatGPT, you'll see it begin to confuse prompts and responses, and eventually even confuse both for its system prompt. I suspect this sort of problem exists widely in AI.

New comment by lelandfe in "I won't download your app. The web version is a-ok"

lelandfe — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 20:05:34 +0000

I fully expect it to get retired in the wake of the forthcoming de-anonymization of the web. But I’m frankly shocked they haven’t already given how aggressively bad the “new” one has become.

New comment by lelandfe in "Show HN: I made a YouTube search form with advanced filters"

lelandfe — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 02:44:11 +0000

For instance, searching the quoted (random phrase) "pants butler" produces first page results like:

"pants,” Butler" and "pants...Butler" and "Pants - Butler's"

Second page loses it entirely, with results like "BUTLER SVC Green Back Country Cargo Pants" and another that seemingly lacks "butler" anywhere on the page.

New comment by lelandfe in "Music for Programming"

lelandfe — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 22:54:34 +0000

Flechte is a regular play of mine https://youtu.be/-3HUn6wotvg

New comment by lelandfe in "LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions"

lelandfe — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 13:07:47 +0000

Similarly, CSS font fallbacks are when websites break into your computer and steal your data, just because their font didn’t load!

New comment by lelandfe in "I am definitely missing the pre-AI writing era"

lelandfe — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 19:09:19 +0000

> I had to load this page four times. First initially, and then disabling JavaScript

Had to?

New comment by lelandfe in "ChatGPT won't let you type until Cloudflare reads your React state"

lelandfe — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 14:14:53 +0000

You get a couple requests in at a smarter model and then it prompts you to sign up, and from there uses an extremely dumb model.

New comment by lelandfe in "A Faster Alternative to Jq"

lelandfe — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 11:23:56 +0000

There are some really fast tools out there for compiling FE these days, and that's probably to what they refer. Testing is still a slog.

New comment by lelandfe in "Windows native app development is a mess"

lelandfe — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 22:59:14 +0000

There's a pretty simple settings window: https://github.com/domenic/display-blackout?tab=readme-ov-fi...

Would that UI be hard to accomplish?

New comment by lelandfe in "JPEG Compression"

lelandfe — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 15:19:08 +0000

Hear hear.

New comment by lelandfe in "Google details new 24-hour process to sideload unverified Android apps"

lelandfe — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 00:33:07 +0000

An actual example of this lives in the Gmail iOS app. Click a link in an email and every x days, a sheet appears: https://imgur.com/a/nlGS4Yk

1. Chrome

2. Google

3. Default browser app (w/unfamiliar generic logo)

They removed the option for Safari some time in the last two years; here's how it looked in 2024: https://imgur.com/1iBVFfc

And the cherry on top of dark UX patterns: an unchecked toggle rests at the bottom. "Ask me which app to use every time." You cannot stop getting these.