<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Hacker News: pbalau</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=pbalau</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Mon, 15 Jun 2026 09:08:37 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=pbalau" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pbalau in "Reading for pleasure is sharply down among schoolkids, report shows"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I disagree. I don't read because I like to read books, I don't listen to audiobooks because I like listening to audiobooks, I don't talk to people because I like talking with people, heck, I don't take pictures because I like taking pictures.<p>I like stories and all of the above are simply ways of hoarding more stories. The way I'm getting the story is not important, the story is.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 12 Jun 2026 15:58:24 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48505784</link><dc:creator>pbalau</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48505784</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48505784</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pbalau in "A new era for software testing"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Well, scenario contains the letters s, c and n, while behavior doesn't.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 12 Jun 2026 13:57:51 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48504144</link><dc:creator>pbalau</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48504144</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48504144</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pbalau in "Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The short and sad answer is that most people that work in web development do not understand how the web works or how web apps work.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 10 Jun 2026 20:34:00 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48482273</link><dc:creator>pbalau</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48482273</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48482273</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pbalau in "Nvidia is proposing a beast of a CPU system for Windows PCs"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>That's my understanding, or, maybe a better word would be "guess". The CPU telling the GPU: this is your memory now.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 06 Jun 2026 19:39:37 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48428248</link><dc:creator>pbalau</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48428248</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48428248</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pbalau in "Nvidia is proposing a beast of a CPU system for Windows PCs"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>What is the difference between unified memory and shared memory?<p>Shared memory existed since the first CPU with an embedded GPU came to market and you could set in BIOS how much memory goes to what component.<p>I do have an opinion about how unified memory could be different, but I want a proper explanation.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 06 Jun 2026 18:55:53 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48427829</link><dc:creator>pbalau</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48427829</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48427829</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pbalau in "Dropbox CEO Drew Houston to step down"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Story time.<p>Around 2005, I was hired by a company that was building software for USB drives, to build a porn site.<p>Turns out, they wanted me to build a poc for an authentication solution: some USB drives would have a fingerprint reader and they wanted to build this auth system based on that.<p>So I built that, but "perplexingly", they didn't get any finance or enough prospect customers, so the project got shelved.<p>Then, I was handed another project they had on the back burner, a sort of firewall for devices, meant to prevent exfiltration of company documents on unapproved USB drives.<p>I built the single user version, eg you had to be admin to allow devices and the product sold quite well, even winning some prizes iirc.<p>We started getting requests to have a centralized admin interface and a way to allow/disallow copying some file types. I started working on the centralized admin and the company hired a very talented engineer to build the file filtering thing. This last thing was based on a windows API that allowed for virtual file systems. Things were ticking along nicely and the company even hired a business manager to try to come up with other products we can build with our existing tech.<p>One afternoon, over a bunch of cold beers, to link with the hell on earth that happens right now in London, me and this person came up with a cunning plan! What if you sell an 1GB USB drive with an extra 1GB of space?<p>The plan was simple: plug in the device, you get a drive that's the regular USB drive, but also another drive, backed by the virtual file system thing and a version of my http auth thing, and you would read/write from a server on the Internet.<p>Big boss liked the idea and I started researching how to get servers and the like, while a third engineer was tasked to build the desktop app needed.<p>It all came crashing down, days later, when this engineer declared that is not possible to have a windows app minimize to sys tray and the project got cancelled. I left the company not long after that .<p>This was the story on how a small German-Romanian company could have beat Dropbox.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 26 May 2026 20:23:29 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48285482</link><dc:creator>pbalau</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48285482</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48285482</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pbalau in "Don't put aria-label on generic elements like divs"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Android<p><a href="https://imgbox.com/EiovsE5b" rel="nofollow">https://imgbox.com/EiovsE5b</a>
<a href="https://imgbox.com/A4Fl9lE9" rel="nofollow">https://imgbox.com/A4Fl9lE9</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 26 May 2026 15:22:56 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48281057</link><dc:creator>pbalau</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48281057</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48281057</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pbalau in "Don't put aria-label on generic elements like divs"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>For some reason I though the GP was talking about browsing on mobile, where I have the issue:<p><a href="https://imgbox.com/EiovsE5b" rel="nofollow">https://imgbox.com/EiovsE5b</a>
<a href="https://imgbox.com/A4Fl9lE9" rel="nofollow">https://imgbox.com/A4Fl9lE9</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 26 May 2026 15:21:46 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48281043</link><dc:creator>pbalau</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48281043</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48281043</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pbalau in "Don't put aria-label on generic elements like divs"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>For some reason I though the GP was talking about browsing on mobile, where I have the issue:<p><a href="https://imgbox.com/EiovsE5b" rel="nofollow">https://imgbox.com/EiovsE5b</a>
<a href="https://imgbox.com/A4Fl9lE9" rel="nofollow">https://imgbox.com/A4Fl9lE9</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 26 May 2026 15:21:22 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48281038</link><dc:creator>pbalau</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48281038</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48281038</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pbalau in "Don't put aria-label on generic elements like divs"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> I’d say perhaps once per day I’ll encounter a website that has never had zoom in/out (ctl +/-) tested because if you zoom up even one level from 100%, everything breaks<p>Just tested, hn breaks if you zoom >110%.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 26 May 2026 12:44:16 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48279016</link><dc:creator>pbalau</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48279016</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48279016</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pbalau in "Ferrari Luce"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> this thing is never seeing seawater anyway<p>I can definitely see these used as lighting devices on luxury boats.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 26 May 2026 09:59:21 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48277473</link><dc:creator>pbalau</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48277473</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48277473</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pbalau in "No way to parse integers in C (2022)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>How do you know where the first string ends and the second starts? Did you miss the "stdin" part?<p>This is not<p><pre><code>    ./program first_number second_number</code></pre></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 20 May 2026 19:25:08 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48212761</link><dc:creator>pbalau</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48212761</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48212761</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pbalau in "Photo GIMP – A Patch for GIMP 3 for Photoshop Users"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Gimp will never be able to pull a Blender because they are operating on hugely different conditions.<p>Blender never had to play catch up with a proprietary file format. In Blender's world, fbx and any of the video formats are the way to interop with other studios.<p>In the Photoshop/Gimp world, the interop format is psd. Under full control of Adobe.<p>There is also the matter of price. Maya and 3dStudioMax are eye watering expensive, while Photoshop is dirt cheap. As a professional photographer, I can get the 300 GBP it costs me to have Lightroom and Photoshop for one year, in an afternoon.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 19 May 2026 20:31:49 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48199136</link><dc:creator>pbalau</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48199136</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48199136</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pbalau in "Where Are the Vibecoded Photoshops?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Why do you need the AI to write a script? Why not have the AI do the work without a "script"?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 18 May 2026 12:14:37 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48178625</link><dc:creator>pbalau</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48178625</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48178625</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pbalau in "From Supabase to Clerk to Better Auth"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>You are not supposed to offload your users table, you are supposed to offload your password field.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 06 May 2026 21:01:43 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48041781</link><dc:creator>pbalau</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48041781</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48041781</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pbalau in "Emperor penguin and Antarctic fur seal now endangered"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>While not related to penguins, [0] is the saddest thing I ever saw.<p>[0] <a href="https://youtu.be/qVJzQc9ELTE?si=R8K7ow2cuSuAOfex" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/qVJzQc9ELTE?si=R8K7ow2cuSuAOfex</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 09 Apr 2026 16:53:56 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47706061</link><dc:creator>pbalau</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47706061</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47706061</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pbalau in "Gitana 18: the new flying Ultim trimaran"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> while the customers were still asking for 1880's style 'brown' cloth sails for the traditional Dutch fleet<p>That is missing the point a bit. For quite a lot of fleets, keeping the tradition alive is a very important aspect of sailing/racing said boats. The other aspect is that for these "one design" classes, the rules, including what the material of the sail is, are meant to keep the old boats competitive and, probably the most important aspect, not end up with pay-to-win situations.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 17 Mar 2026 13:02:14 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47412072</link><dc:creator>pbalau</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47412072</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47412072</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pbalau in "Show HN: Arcmark – macOS bookmark manager that attaches to browser as sidebar"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I am planning to use the extension route to... bypass the imgur UK block. Just need to use imgur for more than once in a while.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 14 Feb 2026 21:51:24 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47018736</link><dc:creator>pbalau</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47018736</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47018736</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pbalau in "11.8M EU citizens pay taxes to governments they cannot vote for"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Sorry, but this is horse droppings, there seem to be 9 countries doing this.<p><a href="https://bestcitizens.com/2024/11/08/list-of-eu-countries-prohibit-dual-nationality-for-naturalization/" rel="nofollow">https://bestcitizens.com/2024/11/08/list-of-eu-countries-pro...</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 13 Feb 2026 21:05:14 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47007810</link><dc:creator>pbalau</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47007810</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47007810</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pbalau in "11.8M EU citizens pay taxes to governments they cannot vote for"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I can vote in local elections, eg for people that spend my council tax.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 13 Feb 2026 21:01:09 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47007769</link><dc:creator>pbalau</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47007769</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47007769</guid></item></channel></rss>