Hacker News: oftenwrong

New comment by oftenwrong in "Why are we still using Markdown?"

oftenwrong — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 13:36:36 +0000

I have long used underscores for _emphasis_, but I never made the connection that it was meant to resemble an underline until now.

New comment by oftenwrong in "Ninja is a small build system with a focus on speed"

oftenwrong — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 21:23:35 +0000

I might be missing your sarcasm, but this is a common approach for large scale builds. Virtual filesystems are used to provide a pre-computed tree hash as a xattr. In a more typical case, you can read the git tree hash.

New comment by oftenwrong in "Mayor of Paris removed parking spaces, reduced the number of cars"

oftenwrong — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 20:41:19 +0000

Surely the school streets are a great benefit for families, yes? That seems as pro-child as public space allocation could be.

Traffic safety improvements frequently die by popular vote

oftenwrong — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 01:49:32 +0000

Article URL: https://www.fastcompany.com/91505393/traffic-safety-improvements-frequently-die-popular-vote-time-stop-that

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47433779

Points: 5

# Comments: 1

Adding Up What Urban Highways Cost

oftenwrong — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 11:43:45 +0000

Article URL: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-03/mapping-the-economic-toll-of-downtown-freeways-in-us-cities

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47273789

Points: 1

# Comments: 1

New comment by oftenwrong in "1Password pricing increasing up to 33% in March"

oftenwrong — Sat, 28 Feb 2026 14:11:11 +0000

>The browser extension doesn’t work half the time. In addition to being frustrating, that makes it a less secure system, as one of the benefits is that it only fills the password on the specified domain. A lack of reliability of the extension leaves people more vulnerable to phishing, since they have to copy/paste passwords out of the app.

This is my main frustration with it as well. It is one of the main features in my mind, and it often does not work. It seems to work for many sites I use on desktop (Firefox on Linux, Mac), but doesn't work well at all on Android (Android app and Firefox). I can understand if this issue is outside of 1password's control because it possibly is due to specifics of Android's APIs, but I would prefer transparency in the matter.

New comment by oftenwrong in "Show HN: Unfucked - version all changes (by any tool) - local-first/source avail"

oftenwrong — Sat, 28 Feb 2026 13:40:07 +0000

I have used savevers.vim for many years as a way to recover old versions of files.

https://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=89

It is comparatively unsophisticated, but I need it so infrequently that it has been good enough.

I do like the idea of maintaining a complete snapshot of all history.

This is a good application for virtual filesystems. The virtual fs would capture every write in order to maintain a complete edit history. As I understand it, Google's CitC system and Meta's EdenFS work this way.

https://cacm.acm.org/research/why-google-stores-billions-of-...

https://github.com/facebook/sapling/blob/main/eden/fs/docs/O...

New comment by oftenwrong in "Gawk 5.4.0 is released, with replaced MinRX matcher"

oftenwrong — Sat, 28 Feb 2026 03:03:04 +0000

https://github.com/mikehaertel/minrx

New comment by oftenwrong in "I Don't Like Magic"

oftenwrong — Sun, 22 Feb 2026 04:39:43 +0000

    #!/usr/bin/env java --source 25
    void main() {
        IO.println("Hello, World!");
    }

New comment by oftenwrong in "Spotify Honk AI Agent"

oftenwrong — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 21:23:33 +0000

Seems that the Google-style approach would be a good fit: mostly one codebase with a well-defined dependency graph, and build/test infrastructure that supports fast and comprehensive validation. This would seem to obviate the need for the catalog system described, but probably requires more investment in the build system.

The NIMBY Buyout Plan (2025)

oftenwrong — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 17:52:38 +0000

Article URL: https://substack.com/@boydinstitute/p-181929360

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46963885

Points: 4

# Comments: 0

New comment by oftenwrong in "What functional programmers get wrong about systems"

oftenwrong — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 16:09:46 +0000

This is one of the main problems I have banging my head on for the past decade, and many of the things mentioned, like Buf, Unison, and more, I only stumbled upon randomly on my own. It's refreshing to read an article on this subject simply because it's so under-discussed. I also wonder to what degree these problems have been solved within the high walls of the tech giants like Google and Amazon.

New comment by oftenwrong in "Company as Code"

oftenwrong — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 17:54:29 +0000

This is perhaps a bit different, but Fossil supports storing more types of written company artifacts in the repo:

>One notable feature of Fossil is that it bundles bug tracking, wiki, forum, chat, and technotes with distributed version control to give you an all-in-one software project management system.

https://fossil-scm.org/home/doc/trunk/www/whyallinone.md

New comment by oftenwrong in "Modetc: Move your dotfiles from kernel space"

oftenwrong — Sat, 24 Jan 2026 15:19:04 +0000

I have been doing this for decades. My files are in a sub-directory of $HOME. It also makes it very obvious when a piece of software does not treat your $HOME with respect.

New comment by oftenwrong in "Install.md: A standard for LLM-executable installation"

oftenwrong — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 22:52:30 +0000

What is the benefit of having this be a standard? Can't an agent follow a guide just as easily in document with similar content in a different structure?

New comment by oftenwrong in "Lessons from 14 years at Google"

oftenwrong — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 09:05:04 +0000

I don't think it's meant to be a point against abstraction or a point against complexity. I think it's widely understood that abstraction is part of how advancement is made in our practice, as well as in other disciplines. I have taken this saying to be an observation that there is almost always possible failure beneath the façade provided by the abstraction. Therefore, yes, you avoid having to let that complexity enter your brain, but only when the abstraction is holding. Beyond that point, often after pages are sent, you will still have to engage with the underlying complexity. A proactive measure following from this idea would be to provide support in or alongside your abstractions for situations where one must look under the bonnet.

New comment by oftenwrong in "2026: The Year of Java in the Terminal?"

oftenwrong — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 19:59:00 +0000

You can do better now:

    #!/usr/bin/env java --source 25
    void main() {
        IO.println("Hello, World!");
    }

https://openjdk.org/jeps/330 https://openjdk.org/jeps/458 https://openjdk.org/jeps/512

I often combine these approaches with https://get-coursier.io/ when I need to fetch third-party dependencies.

New comment by oftenwrong in "A faster path to container images in Bazel"

oftenwrong — Thu, 25 Dec 2025 14:26:04 +0000

What you are describing is basically remote buildkitd. That allows all of your docker builds to share a big cache. The cache-to/cache-from approach is of limited usefulness.

Modeling Inclusionary Zoning's Impact on Housing Production in LA (2024) [pdf]

oftenwrong — Wed, 17 Dec 2025 12:10:43 +0000

Article URL: https://ternercenter.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Inclusionary-Zoning-Paper-April-2024-Final.pdf

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46301073

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by oftenwrong in "A video on the details of how Trunk-Based Development worked at MFT Energy"

oftenwrong — Thu, 11 Dec 2025 13:31:03 +0000

This is based on this write-up:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/wont-main-break-all-time-your...

archive copies:

https://archive.is/wI4b0

https://web.archive.org/web/20251211132753/https://www.linke...

https://ghostarchive.org/archive/bN17w