Hacker News: tejohnso

New comment by tejohnso in "10 years ago, someone wrote a test for Servo that included an expiry in 2026"

tejohnso — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 19:43:11 +0000

That's an interesting bit of detail. As you intended, it does not lessen the impact of the statement: "conditions never witnessed by us or our prehistoric relatives". It confirms it, with some additional context.

To me, it seems to make it even more significant. Because as you point out, Homo evolved under ice age conditions over millions of years. Well, here we are about to be thrust into uncharted territory, in an extremely short period of time. With very fragile global interdependencies, an overpopulated planet, and billions of people exposed to the consequences.

New comment by tejohnso in "10 years ago, someone wrote a test for Servo that included an expiry in 2026"

tejohnso — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 14:17:33 +0000

Yes, Y2K is a success story, similar to the alert and response related to ozone layer and CFCs.

Dissimilar to the global climate catastrophe, unfortunately.

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The 2024 state of the climate report: Perilous times on planet Earth

https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/74/12/812/780859...

"Tragically, we are failing to avoid serious impacts"

"We have now brought the planet into climatic conditions never witnessed by us or our prehistoric relatives within our genus, Homo"

"Despite six IPCC reports, 28 COP meetings, hundreds of other reports, and tens of thousands of scientific papers, the world has made only very minor headway on climate change"

"projections paint a bleak picture of the future, with many scientists envisioning widespread famines, conflicts, mass migration, and increasing extreme weather that will surpass anything witnessed thus far, posing catastrophic consequences for both humanity and the biosphere"

White House Investigating Wave of Missing or Dead Scientists

tejohnso — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 13:27:03 +0000

Article URL: https://www.newsweek.com/white-house-investigating-wave-mystery-dead-scientists-11836410

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47805698

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by tejohnso in "Do you even need a database?"

tejohnso — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 21:48:02 +0000

I remember reading a story from Robert C. Martin, if I recall correctly, about writing an application and trying to decide which DB to use. In the end, they put the DB access paths behind an abstraction and decided that they'd just use the file system to start with, and easily switch it out later. In the end, they shipped, and never did need to use a real DB.

New comment by tejohnso in "A truck driver spent 20 years making a scale model of every building in NYC"

tejohnso — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 19:53:19 +0000

Looking at the level of detail, and the thoroughness, I wouldn't have expected it to even be possible to complete it in 20 years. How much time does this guy spend driving truck? Amazing accomplishment and display of dedication and creativity.

New comment by tejohnso in "F-15E jet shot down over Iran"

tejohnso — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 23:42:32 +0000

There are places that has already begun.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/3/9/bangladesh-shuts-uni...

New comment by tejohnso in "F-15E jet shot down over Iran"

tejohnso — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 22:23:10 +0000

Impossible. Iran's army was already demolished weeks ago, and there's "nothing left". What did they take it down with, bb guns?

New comment by tejohnso in "Two pilots dead after plane and ground vehicle collide at LaGuardia"

tejohnso — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 20:54:11 +0000

Understaffing is no excuse at an airport that size with that kind of airspace. Somebody high up in the food chain with integrity and authority should be closing the runway if staffing is so low that it becomes unsafe. And I'm no expert, but having enough staff for separate air and ground control seems like a minimum safety requirement unless it's a tiny airport.

FBI Warns of 7 Steam Games Containing Hidden Malware

tejohnso — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 20:41:29 +0000

Article URL: https://www.bgr.com/2125332/fbi-warns-steam-games-contained-hidden-malware/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47494808

Points: 11

# Comments: 3

New comment by tejohnso in "Oregon school cell phone ban: 'Engaged students, joyful teachers'"

tejohnso — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 18:37:41 +0000

Not having distraction devices in a classroom is such a basic concept. I'm surprised it required government intervention. Every half decent school principal should've banned them in their school, and if the principal didn't, the individual teachers should have banned them from their classrooms. The first time a kid had to have a question repeated to them because they were looking at their phone should've been the last time phones were permitted in that class.

Tin Can, a 'landline' for kids

tejohnso — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 14:02:14 +0000

Article URL: https://www.businessinsider.com/tin-can-landline-kids-cellphone-cell-alternative-how-2025-9

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47454647

Points: 311

# Comments: 252

New comment by tejohnso in "I haven't used a mouse for 14 years"

tejohnso — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 18:19:29 +0000

I haven't used a mouse in ages, but I haven't used a trackpad - ever. I've never found one that matches the accuracy, speed, and overall joy of using TrackPoint to move the mouse cursor.

New comment by tejohnso in "GIMP 3.2 released"

tejohnso — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 03:48:46 +0000

Sorry, I don't have to do it in sufficient quantity of frequency to encourage scripting. And while doing it manually, I notice that the required tweaking of levels changes depending on the content of the page and how poor the scan is. I'm not sure an automated solution would provide satisfactory results consistently.

New comment by tejohnso in "GIMP 3.2 released"

tejohnso — Sat, 14 Mar 2026 20:29:11 +0000

Love GIMP. Always capable of doing anything I need done with raster images or even PDFs. Lately I've been opening PDFs and lightening the pages so that they can be printed without wasting a bunch of toner on backgrounds that are meant to be white but were scanned in as a light grey.

New comment by tejohnso in "I beg you to follow Crocker's Rules, even if you will be rude to me"

tejohnso — Sat, 14 Mar 2026 12:58:48 +0000

> Anyone is allowed to call you a moron and claim to be doing you a favor. (Which, in point of fact, they would be. One of the big problems with this culture is that everyone's afraid to tell you you're wrong

Absurd. You can point out how and why someone is wrong without insulting them by calling them a moron. Telling someone they're a moron is only stating your personal opinion in an offensive way, without any useful proof.

New comment by tejohnso in "John Carmack about open source and anti-AI activists"

tejohnso — Sat, 14 Mar 2026 04:13:14 +0000

> profiting for having done it.

Isn't that permitted by some of the more popular licences? If you care about others profiting from your work you'd choose an appropriate licence. And then you'd temper your expectations and hope for the best because you know there will be less than perfect compliance. It's like lending money to family or friends. You can hope they pay you back, but better to consider it a gift because there's a good chance they won't.

Is it worse because it's AI for some reason? I'm having trouble pinning down exactly what the gripe is. Is it license compliance? Is it AI specific? Is it some notion about uncool behavior in what some people see as a community?

New comment by tejohnso in "Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans"

tejohnso — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 21:23:43 +0000

Yes but the guideline states that AI-edited comments should not be posted. It doesn't say it's okay as long as it's "human sourced" or "human-originated".

So if your layer of cleanup is AI assisted, then it's in violation.

Part of the problem I was getting at is that the requirement of "Don't post AI edited ..." is stricter than necessary to ensure the outcome that "HN is for conversation between humans" because an AI edited post is still a human post.

Anyway, I suspect a lot of people are going to ignore that guideline and will feel free to use their "layer of cleanup" whether it's a basic spellchecker or an LLM, or whatever else they choose, and most people aren't going to be able to tell anyway. The guideline is unnecessarily strict in my opinion, but it doesn't matter in the end.

New comment by tejohnso in "Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans"

tejohnso — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 20:14:00 +0000

I don't get it. We use tools to assist in written communication all the time. If someone wants to ask an LLM to check their grammar or edit for clarity or change the tone, it's still a conversation between humans. Everyone now has access to a real time editor or scribe who can craft their message the way they want it to sound before sending it off. Great.

New comment by tejohnso in "What if the Hormuz closure will not be brief?"

tejohnso — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 04:57:36 +0000

> Trump could make up with Canada so those oil imports restart.

Sounds like Trump hubris. Probably just what he'd expect. And then he'd accuse Canada of "behaving terribly" if things didn't go his way, and he'd reach for his tariff paddle.

New comment by tejohnso in "Stop using grey text (2025)"

tejohnso — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 02:53:13 +0000

Isn't most of the text on the page grey? It's not white, it's rgb(215,215,216). And the background is not black. Some worse examples are shown, but then the message comes across as "don't use grey unless you know what you're doing, like I do, because I'm using grey while I tell you not to use grey, but mine is okay."

Maybe aside from the unset option, something more specific about a minimum contrast threshold would be useful. Ideally the author wouldn't be breaking below that threshold themselves while explaining it.