Hacker News: mattcasmith

New comment by mattcasmith in "Kobo can run apps now"

mattcasmith — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 21:13:28 +0000

I agree. One of the things I love about my Kindle is that it’s a single-use device, functionally equivalent to holding a paperback in my hands. There’s nothing to distract me or tempt me away from reading. Apps would risk breaking that spell.

We are witnessing the death of the games console

mattcasmith — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 10:55:47 +0000

Article URL: https://mattcasmith.net/2026/08/09/death-of-the-games-console

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49230285

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

Will the RAM crunch force a return to optimisation?

mattcasmith — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 11:09:34 +0000

Article URL: https://mattcasmith.net/2026/07/26/ram-crunch-optimisation

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49056876

Points: 4

# Comments: 1

Some features work in design meetings but fail in the real world

mattcasmith — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 10:56:05 +0000

Article URL: https://mattcasmith.net/2026/07/12/feature-design-testing

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48880091

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

Alternatives to the UK government's social media ban

mattcasmith — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 12:07:43 +0000

Article URL: https://mattcasmith.net/2026/06/21/uk-social-media-ban-alternatives

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48643720

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by mattcasmith in "Soccer Arcade Games Through the Years"

mattcasmith — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 08:45:33 +0000

I'm surprised there haven't been more releases along the lines of Konami's old WE/PES units, which essentially take a console football game and drop it in an arcade cabinet.

I'm not a basketball fan, but I've had some great fun playing arcadey NBA equivalents with friends and colleagues. It's a shame there aren't similar options for football.

New comment by mattcasmith in "A backdoor in a LinkedIn job offer"

mattcasmith — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 20:49:52 +0000

I’ve seen a few of these – malicious repos to clone, fake call links that prompt for “driver” downloads, and so on.

The only way around it is to be hyper-vigilant if anyone asks you to run any untrusted code on your computer.

New comment by mattcasmith in "Ask HN: What are you working on? (June 2026)"

mattcasmith — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 07:13:11 +0000

I’ve been going all-in on regular writing this year, and have published a blog post a week since December (https://mattcasmith.net/).

My most recent piece is about the privacy-impacting plans the UK government announced this week, but my favourite recent output is an essay titled Care About What You Do, which brings together a lot of small thoughts I’ve had for years into a consistent thread.

More technically, have found some time in recent weeks to work on my site design backlog - most recently re-implementing inline newsletter signups after the email platform’s embedded widget broke.

New comment by mattcasmith in "Web Browsers on Video Game Consoles"

mattcasmith — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 11:49:08 +0000

“Sharing malicious URLs, including those that may harm another player.”

The URL was google[.]com.

New comment by mattcasmith in "Web Browsers on Video Game Consoles"

mattcasmith — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 11:40:52 +0000

I was amazed recently by how locked down the hidden PlayStation 5 browser is.

You can’t access it as an app through the dashboard, but it appears if you click a URL from a message. So people were sending themselves “google[.]com”, clicking, and enjoying web access.

But it seems Sony have even clamped down on that. I sent a message to myself recently, the link wasn’t clickable, and I got a message to say my PlayStation Network account had received a warning and could be suspended if I did it again!

New comment by mattcasmith in "Surprise, pay $1000"

mattcasmith — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 07:18:33 +0000

Indeed. Have never used Blacksmith and maybe there’s a good reason why they do this, but it seems odd that in world where so much of the signup and onboarding process is fine tuned for optimal conversion, a business would take an approach to a free trial that risks leaving such a sour taste in a prospect’s mouth.

New comment by mattcasmith in "AI is slowing down"

mattcasmith — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 11:27:24 +0000

Have been thinking about this a lot recently. AI could be an absolute game changer for a small start-up rushing a product to market – you could quickly build an MVP that would take years and tens of hires before.

But how much ROI is there for large businesses with established products and huge development teams burning through tokens making subtle tweaks that can’t be directly tied to revenue?