Hacker News: pkamb

New comment by pkamb in "How we built the v0 iOS app"

pkamb — Mon, 01 Dec 2025 19:24:00 +0000

> Our goal was to build an app worthy of an Apple Design Award [...] After weeks of experimentation, we landed on React Native with Expo to achieve this.

Has a non-native app ever won an ADA?

New comment by pkamb in "Launch HN: Tweeks (YC W25) – Browser extension to deshittify the web"

pkamb — Fri, 14 Nov 2025 06:39:02 +0000

The extension I've always wanted is a one that makes every link to a modern story on the New York Times, CNN, ESPN, etc. load using their same websites from like 2004.

https://web.archive.org/web/20041207071752/http://www.cnn.co...

Make every new page I load look like this, or a slightly cleaned up or mobile-specific version.

New comment by pkamb in "Anna's Archive: An Update from the Team"

pkamb — Tue, 19 Aug 2025 23:25:04 +0000

It just feels like the complete public domain New York Times should be a big deal. Why is it only available via individual issues in the Internet archive? Why hasn't every single story been cut out individually, fully OCR'd, so that it shows up as a top hit on Google? And do that for every public domain newspaper around the country, too.

New comment by pkamb in "Anna's Archive: An Update from the Team"

pkamb — Mon, 18 Aug 2025 20:03:54 +0000

Does Anna's Archive or a similar site host, say, the complete New York Times (pre-1930) as a full PDF download set? And every other newspaper too?

Tons of public domain sources are locked into websites like Newspapers.com or the nearly-dead and now completely unsearchable old Google News / Newspaper.

It would be nice if the massive pursuit of AI training data resulted in some fully-legal open source alternatives to these proprietary, outdated, or abandoned sites. I know some of it is available via the Internet Archive, etc., but something new with an AI-powered search and finding aid sounds so useful.

New comment by pkamb in "Study: Social media probably can't be fixed"

pkamb — Thu, 14 Aug 2025 08:06:43 +0000

Maybe the TikTok algorithm is better, but the "I don't like this" action on Meta properties just blatantly does not work. I still get the same type of clickbait content no matter how many times I try to get rid of it. Maybe watching other types of Reels would do it, but no thanks.

New comment by pkamb in "Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood"

pkamb — Tue, 25 Mar 2025 19:06:18 +0000

Air conditioning and TVs are the answer to this unfortunate problem.

New comment by pkamb in "Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood"

pkamb — Tue, 25 Mar 2025 18:46:17 +0000

It's not about monetizing friendship, it's about providing comfortable places where events like this can happen all over the city/country. People want this community but it kinda sucks to do (and mostly won't happen) if you're meeting up monthly on chairs in a city street. If small neighborhood pubs and coffee shops were legal to build...

New comment by pkamb in "Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood"

pkamb — Tue, 25 Mar 2025 18:42:54 +0000

No? Small businesses like that are what make cities great.

New comment by pkamb in "Stoop Coffee: A simple idea transformed my neighborhood"

pkamb — Tue, 25 Mar 2025 18:17:20 +0000

Now, even better, allow any neighbor to open a legitimate (yet small-scale and cheap) coffee shop or wine bar by-right in the garage space under their SF home.

New comment by pkamb in "YouTube Premium Lite: Ad-Free Viewing for $7.99/Month"

pkamb — Wed, 05 Mar 2025 17:33:08 +0000

Can you use that app for any/all YouTube videos? I want to listen to long-form video interviews and such, not just listen to music and 'actual' podcasts.

New comment by pkamb in "YouTube Premium Lite: Ad-Free Viewing for $7.99/Month"

pkamb — Wed, 05 Mar 2025 17:00:21 +0000

I might actually use "Downloads and background play" (for which you need the higher $$$ tier) if the YouTube app gave "Skip back 15 seconds" controls on the phone lock screen. Insane to use YouTube as a "podcast" player when the only control you have is skipping to the previous/next video.

New comment by pkamb in "The New York Times Has Spent $10.8M in Its Legal Battle with OpenAI So Far"

pkamb — Wed, 05 Feb 2025 20:03:19 +0000

Newspapers have nearly identical newswire columns printed in 100+ newspapers, but with slightly different headlines and content. Or OCR breaking due to words being physically next to each other but in separate stories. The Newspapers.com search has fine OCR but is difficult and time consuming to use because of those issues. Seems like something "AI" could solve easily.

New comment by pkamb in "The New York Times Has Spent $10.8M in Its Legal Battle with OpenAI So Far"

pkamb — Wed, 05 Feb 2025 18:35:41 +0000

Is anyone building a public domain repository / AI training ground for old newspapers? Anything before 1930 has no restrictions. Newspapers.com has pretty good content but the interface and search is extremely lacking. Google News was abandoned a decade ago. This seems like something where AI could really help, for once. Not in training chatbots or whatever but actually just providing great search for articles in books, newspapers, and magazines.

New comment by pkamb in "Apple Invites"

pkamb — Wed, 05 Feb 2025 17:23:52 +0000

This is potentially true; I've noticed green-bubble chats are much less annoying in the last year. Do they send over Wifi now? That was also a killer iMessage feature on trips with bad cell coverage.

New comment by pkamb in "Apple Invites"

pkamb — Wed, 05 Feb 2025 05:41:48 +0000

iMessage/SMS is just one of the many sending options in the share sheet. WhatsApp or whatever your country uses will be there too.

New comment by pkamb in "Apple Invites"

pkamb — Tue, 04 Feb 2025 22:33:18 +0000

By "use SMS" you surely mean "use iMessage" much of the time.

New comment by pkamb in "Apple Invites"

pkamb — Tue, 04 Feb 2025 22:31:43 +0000

In the USA, someone insisting on using an Android when everyone else in their social circle has an iPhone (and they do!) is what's seen as anti-social. No one wants to use the degraded green bubble SMS experience so they simply exclude the Android user and continue using blue bubble iMessage.

New comment by pkamb in "Apple Invites"

pkamb — Tue, 04 Feb 2025 21:56:06 +0000

As I understand it, many Americans (and all iPhones?) had unlimited-SMS phone plans circa 2009. So the pay-per-message economic conditions that caused many Europeans, etc., to switch to WhatsApp back in the day didn't do anything in the USA.

Then when the same iPhone app seamlessly started sending iMessages (blue bubbles) to other iPhones rather than SMS (green bubbles), people just kept using that.

New comment by pkamb in "Apple Invites"

pkamb — Tue, 04 Feb 2025 21:29:22 +0000

For a long time they were heavily promoting "Ships to You" non-local goods. Annoying. Lots of dropshipper type stuff rather than a local unique items. Marketplace seems to have backed off that in the last year(s) though, my feed seems very local, one-off, and "real.

New comment by pkamb in "Apple Invites"

pkamb — Tue, 04 Feb 2025 21:26:02 +0000

I think Apple already has claimed the "friends and family network" via iMessage. Did Facebook go to a groups/influencer algorithm by choice or is it the result of IRL friend posters all moving to private chats once everyone got iPhones?