Hacker News: spiffytech

New comment by spiffytech in "The perils of UUID primary keys in SQLite"

spiffytech — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 02:52:21 +0000

Fortunately we're seeing more JS DB libraries offering to read large numbers as the BigInt type.

New comment by spiffytech in "Someone Shared a Real Monet Painting as AI and Asked for Critiques"

spiffytech — Sat, 16 May 2026 20:19:06 +0000

I once lucked into a private tour of a Monet gallery. I asked the curator, "these paintings just don't look great, why should I be impressed?"

The curator responded that Monet, and impressionism in general, were a reaction to the then-new invention of paint sold in tubes. Previously a painter had to mix pigment powder right when they painted. So they usually couldn't paint outdoors where the wind would blow the powder, and they couldn't capture rapidly-evolving scenes.

Tube paint changed that. Impressionists started painting things in motion, or in shifting lighting like dawn. Their paintings were designed not to look good close up, but to be viewed at a distance, where the "pixelation" (so to speak) resolved into a coherent picture. They skipped on fine detail to capture something as fast as they could, because they could never do that before.

I still don't care for impressionism on an aesthetic level, but I learned something that day about art history and why some people appreciate art that I don't.

New comment by spiffytech in "Pope Leo called his bank's customer service line. They hung up on him"

spiffytech — Thu, 07 May 2026 02:10:13 +0000

My mom works at a credit union and the staff are constantly saving people from scams just because the customer came in and the staff had a chance to notice something fishy happening.

New comment by spiffytech in "Are We Idiocracy Yet?"

spiffytech — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 11:58:40 +0000

That'd leave even more room for drama. I'm imagining Gavin hiring thousands of cheap, unskilled laborers ("Hooli's industry-leading AI research team") to mash keys until they rediscover the prompt that generated middle-out compression with a patent-free clean room process. He never reproduces it because Gilfoyle's self-hosted LLM improved its own memory efficiency when when Dinesh got upset and started unplugging GPUs.

New comment by spiffytech in "Modern SQLite: Features You Didn't Know It Had"

spiffytech — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 01:51:34 +0000

I remember an ORM that uses fake column types like `boolean` and `datetime` because SQLite doesn't enforce anything. That way the ORM knows how to deserialize the data. Strict mode prohibits this by only accepting column types SQLite recognizes.

My preference would be for SQLite to actually support commonplace data types. But as long as it doesn't, I can see the appeal in using the schema to specify what data you're storing in your database.

New comment by spiffytech in "Claude struggles to cope with ChatGPT exodus"

spiffytech — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 19:19:36 +0000

Unfortunately this is why Anthropic is so aggressive about preventing Claude subscriptions from being used with other tools.

New comment by spiffytech in "How do I cancel my ChatGPT subscription?"

spiffytech — Sat, 28 Feb 2026 12:49:57 +0000

I use Ollama Cloud. $20/mo and I never come close to hitting quota (YMMV obviously).

They don't log anything, and they use US datacenters.

Palm OS User Interface Guidelines (2003) [pdf]

spiffytech — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 17:01:05 +0000

Article URL: https://cs.uml.edu/~fredm/courses/91.308-spr05/files/palmdocs/uiguidelines.pdf

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47168726

Points: 203

# Comments: 107

New comment by spiffytech in "Exercise has 'similar effect' to therapy, study on depression shows"

spiffytech — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 13:55:59 +0000

And while they affect a similar percentage of people, they don't necessarily affect the same individuals. Same for therapy modalities, which often show similar efficacy in studies, but different efficacy for any given person.

So you've got to try different things and figure out what works for you.

New comment by spiffytech in "An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – The Operator Came Forward"

spiffytech — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 12:34:42 +0000

Oh for sure, the operator choosing not to apologize or reflect on their behavior speaks volumes.

New comment by spiffytech in "An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – The Operator Came Forward"

spiffytech — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 12:00:12 +0000

I've seen the internet mob in action many times. I'm sympathetic to the operator not outing themself, especially given how far this story spread. A hundred thousand angry strangers with pitchforks isn't the accountability we're looking for.

I found the book So You've Been Publicly Shamed enlightening on this topic.

New comment by spiffytech in "htmx: Server Sent Event (SSE) Extension"

spiffytech — Sat, 31 Jan 2026 20:25:04 +0000

The part that really sets Datastar apart for me is it holds client-side variables which are included in all requests. So I no longer have to think about piping & preserving view state when the DOM gets patched.

It's also neat how they use SSE for short-lived streams. Need a response to delete + add something? That's just two SSE events and then the stream closes. It's not a special case, it's a first-class mechanism.

Very happy with Datastar so far.

New comment by spiffytech in "Why do RSS readers look like email clients?"

spiffytech — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 12:59:47 +0000

Part of the reason I use RSS instead of getting my links through social media is because when I like something enough to subscribe, I want to read all of it. Not to "dip in". A paradigm where I sample articles means RSS isn't as valuable for me anymore.

I do feel a little urgency to keep up since some me my feeds cover stuff happening in the world, and lose value if not read promptly.

I've seen takes similar to the author's before and they don't resonate with me. Maybe we just have different relationships with technology. The same way a watch telling me to complete my rings has no power over me because that's not a goal I chose for myself. The watch serves me, not the other way around.

New comment by spiffytech in "Make.ts"

spiffytech — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 12:42:18 +0000

I can't believe how long I was sleeping on fd and zoxide. zoxide is now one of my top commands, and fd feels like when I switched to ripgrep. So fast and easy there's no reason not to run it.

New comment by spiffytech in "Nova Launcher added Facebook and Google Ads tracking"

spiffytech — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 12:24:43 +0000

I get the error if I try dragging the icon to the home screen. But it works if I click "add to home screen" so it auto-places, then move the icon afterward.

I've got a bunch of web pages on my Lawnchair home screen.

New comment by spiffytech in "Show HN: Tiny FOSS Compass and Navigation App (<2MB)"

spiffytech — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 12:36:56 +0000

I found MB Compass a few weeks ago and it's been very helpful for everyday things. For example, I just moved to a new apartment and I used the app to identify which room would get the best sunlight for my office. Works great!

New comment by spiffytech in "I'd tell you a UDP joke…"

spiffytech — Mon, 12 Jan 2026 03:34:57 +0000

I used this during a "geeky jokes" icebreaker at work. No one got the joke so I just sounded condescending. Lesson learned.

New comment by spiffytech in "Pebble Round 2"

spiffytech — Tue, 06 Jan 2026 02:40:32 +0000

That's what Pebble is doing.

New comment by spiffytech in "Anyone building software for wearable tech?"

spiffytech — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 21:16:10 +0000

Their operating system and phone bridge are also open-source. libpebble drives their wearable ring, so it's not just watches.

New comment by spiffytech in "Microsoft Office renamed to “Microsoft 365 Copilot app”"

spiffytech — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 12:35:24 +0000

HBO Max was renamed to just Max. They've now changed it back.