Hacker News: paularmstrong

New comment by paularmstrong in "Don't Roll Your Own"

paularmstrong — Sat, 23 May 2026 23:06:26 +0000

I agree with a caveat: Default date pickers on mobile devices are very good. But on desktop browsers they are terrible. They break design continuity in a very ugly way and have quirks between browsers and systems. And personally, the popup calendar they provide just too small. If the system took over the date picker on desktop like it does on mobile devices instead of forcing the browser to handle it, I feel like we could get somewhere better.

New comment by paularmstrong in "I'm a Normie. Can Normies Vibe Code?"

paularmstrong — Mon, 18 May 2026 15:41:31 +0000

> Having needled her repeatedly over the past couple years about AI’s environmental, political, and economic implications, I brushed all that aside on a recent Sunday and drove to her house. After a little tibia talk, I opened her computer and began emitting vibes.

So the author had a moral, environmental, political and economic stance and then just threw them all in the bin.

This is sad to me because I have all of these stances and more. I just cannot bring myself to give in and use a technology wrought with so many systemic problems. And I cannot understand how anyone could feel so strongly about anything to the point of preaching it to others, only to just sort of … ignore them(?).

New comment by paularmstrong in "Out with the JavaScript, in with the HTML"

paularmstrong — Mon, 11 May 2026 20:26:18 +0000

The images will always need a network request, but the non-JS version requires another request for the new HTML source.

And with the previous implementation, all users would get the progressive enhancement, not just non-Firefox users.

New comment by paularmstrong in "Out with the JavaScript, in with the HTML"

paularmstrong — Mon, 11 May 2026 15:03:19 +0000

This is a weirdly unpopular opinion here when it comes to HTML & JS, but there's a time and place for everything. This is a neat small example, but hardly worth the effort of changing something that was already working fine.

With the change, I now need another roundtrip network request to get new sizes of the same content on the current page that would have been able to be done in just a couple hundred bytes of JavaScript.

Edit: also there is still no view-transition support on Firefox.

New comment by paularmstrong in "Breaking up with WordPress after two decades"

paularmstrong — Sun, 03 May 2026 15:50:52 +0000

Seems like they went through a bunch of vibe coding only to come up with a half-baked copy of Astro. And why not just use Astro? It's got the exact features that they've built, many more, and a large and bustling community.

New comment by paularmstrong in "ZomboCom stolen by a hacker, sold, now replaced with AI-generated makeover"

paularmstrong — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:50:28 +0000

html5 zombocom still exists, for your viewing pleasure. you can do anything at zombocom. anything at all. the only limit is yourself.

[1]: https://html5zombo.com/

New comment by paularmstrong in "Updates to GitHub Copilot interaction data usage policy"

paularmstrong — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 19:51:14 +0000

I'm in the US and it's off for me. I believe I've previously opted out of everything copilot related in the past if there was anything.

New comment by paularmstrong in "Mouser: An open source alternative to Logi-Plus mouse software"

paularmstrong — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 22:19:37 +0000

Thanks for pointing this out. I had no idea it existed. The other options in the comments just didn't quite work the way I would like.

- The main topic requires me to pull python dependencies, build, run manually on Mac - All others can't reassign the button below the scroll wheel on the MX Master 3/4

New comment by paularmstrong in "Discord/Twitch/Snapchat age verification bypass"

paularmstrong — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 01:37:09 +0000

I got this, but then refreshing that page made it work for me

New comment by paularmstrong in "Downtown Denver's office vacancy rate grows to 38.2%"

paularmstrong — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 17:27:02 +0000

I assume it's because they would need to re-wire electrical and retrofit plumbing on a massive scale to accommodate kitchens and bathrooms for separate units. They end up needing to gut the entire building and cut through floors and ceilings without damaging any structural and load-bearing parts. It doesn't sound easy nor cheap.

New comment by paularmstrong in "JPEG XL Test Page"

paularmstrong — Wed, 21 Jan 2026 17:17:34 +0000

Same for me, Zen 1.17.15b on Mac

New comment by paularmstrong in "There is no comfortable reading position"

paularmstrong — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 22:04:23 +0000

Ah yes, I too have $2,000 to spend on a chair for reading in. /s

New comment by paularmstrong in "Lotusbail npm package found to be harvesting WhatsApp messages and contacts"

paularmstrong — Mon, 22 Dec 2025 23:59:34 +0000

This has nothing to do with NodeJS or NPM. The code is freely distributed, just like any open source repo or package manager may provide. The onus is on those who use it to audit what it actually does.

New comment by paularmstrong in "Lotusbail npm package found to be harvesting WhatsApp messages and contacts"

paularmstrong — Mon, 22 Dec 2025 23:09:38 +0000

The code is literally right there for you. It doesn't matter what ecosystem or package manager. Someone could distribute the same thing anywhere — it's up to those pulling it in to actually start auditing what they're accepting.

New comment by paularmstrong in "An SVG is all you need"

paularmstrong — Thu, 11 Dec 2025 22:18:36 +0000

> I use ChatGPT to compress SVGs, in particular QR codes

Why? svgomg.net exists, uses far fewer resources, and is going to give you much better results.

New comment by paularmstrong in "RCE Vulnerability in React and Next.js"

paularmstrong — Wed, 03 Dec 2025 19:54:50 +0000

> What does server components do so much better than SSR? What minute performance gain is achieved more than client side rendering?

RSC is their solution to not being able to figure out how to make SSR faster and an attempt to reduce client-side bloat (which also failed)

New comment by paularmstrong in "Why Nextcloud feels slow to use"

paularmstrong — Mon, 03 Nov 2025 16:12:15 +0000

I gave up updating Nextcloud. It works for what I use it for and I don't feel like I'm missing anything. I'd rather not spend 4+ hours updating and fixing confusing issues without any tangible benefit.

New comment by paularmstrong in "Intent to Deprecate and Remove XSLT"

paularmstrong — Sat, 01 Nov 2025 21:00:46 +0000

Parsing the XSLT file fails in Firefox :)

New comment by paularmstrong in "Fast TypeScript (Code Complexity) Analyzer"

paularmstrong — Sat, 25 Oct 2025 18:53:56 +0000

I definitely did pay attention to the description and the playground. The "full metrics" give more information, but they're still just numbers and don't explain to someone _what_ they should do to make something “better”. Again, they're just numbers, not recommendations. Most people could probably just gamify the whole thing by making every file as small as possible. Single functions with as few lines as possible. That doesn't make code less complex, it just masks it.

New comment by paularmstrong in "Fast TypeScript (Code Complexity) Analyzer"

paularmstrong — Sat, 25 Oct 2025 15:33:05 +0000

This is a bit underwhelming because it gives a score and says, "Needs improvement", but has no real indication of what it considers problematic about a file. Maybe as a very senior TypeScript developer it could be obvious how to fix some things, but this isn't going to help anyone more junior on the team be able to make things better.