Hacker News: yerushalayim

New comment by yerushalayim in "GitHub is down again"

yerushalayim — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 08:10:11 +0000

What's new?

The Details on Donut Lab's Solid State Battery

yerushalayim — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 17:09:49 +0000

Article URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbGxbII44eE

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46768300

Points: 1

# Comments: 1

New comment by yerushalayim in "Why is software still built like billions don't exist in 2026?"

yerushalayim — Fri, 23 Jan 2026 12:06:16 +0000

You’re absolutely right that even “Western‑adjacent” names break in systems that were never designed to handle anything beyond ASCII. It’s no surprise that entire writing systems fall through the cracks.

Same goes for Steve Jobs. One of his most underrated contributions was his insistence that typography, calligraphy, and the aesthetics of written language were not decorative extras but core to the human interface. Apple invested early in system‑wide text rendering that treated all scripts as first‑class citizens. It wasn’t perfect, but it showed what happens when leadership actually cares about the universality of writing and makes it systemic.

New comment by yerushalayim in "Why is software still built like billions don't exist in 2026?"

yerushalayim — Fri, 23 Jan 2026 11:13:01 +0000

You’re right that a lot of software comes out of Anglophone or Western contexts, but that’s exactly why these issues persist. The problem isn’t that RTL is “hard” — it’s that most text engines, layout systems, and PDF toolkits were originally architected with implicit LTR assumptions baked deep into the rendering pipeline.

Once those assumptions are embedded in things like glyph ordering, bidi resolution, cursor movement, hit‑testing, line breaking, and font fallback, fixing RTL becomes a retrofit instead of a design principle. By the time a team realizes the gap, the shaping and layout stack is so tightly coupled that adding proper bidi handling feels like a massive rewrite.

You see this pattern everywhere: PDFium (used by all Chromium browsers), various UI frameworks, and even some OS‑level text components still mishandle RTL in 2026. The symptoms are always the same — disappearing text, reversed glyph order, broken cursor navigation, or failure to commit text at all.

This isn’t a niche corner case. Hebrew, Arabic, Farsi, Urdu, and other RTL scripts represent hundreds of millions of daily users. The real issue is that global language support is still treated as optional rather than foundational, and the technical debt from those early assumptions keeps compounding.

Why is software still built like billions don't exist in 2026?

yerushalayim — Fri, 23 Jan 2026 10:53:23 +0000

I ran into a surprisingly fundamental problem while editing a PDF: typing a full line of right‑to‑left text (Farsi, Arabic, Hebrew, etc.) into a browser PDF editor looks fine while typing, but the moment you click outside the text box, the entire line disappears. Only tiny fragments survive.

What’s wild is that this isn’t limited to one browser — it happens across multiple Chromium‑based PDF editors because they all inherit the same underlying behavior. It’s 2026, and somehow the most widely used browser engine still can’t reliably commit a line of RTL text into a PDF.

This isn’t a niche corner case. Billions of people use non‑English scripts every day. Yet basic text handling in PDFs — one of the most common document formats on the planet — still breaks in ways that feel like the 1990s.

I know PDF internals are messy, but it’s still surprising that something this fundamental remains broken across so many tools. Anyone else run into this?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46730982

Points: 8

# Comments: 9

New comment by yerushalayim in "Roam 50GB is now Roam 100GB"

yerushalayim — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 06:12:24 +0000

Reader mode is nearly a must for me. Our eyes need a break.

HN in reader mode would be a such hugh blessing!

New comment by yerushalayim in "Slack has raised our charges by $195k per year"

yerushalayim — Thu, 18 Sep 2025 10:56:20 +0000

Oh, please!

New comment by yerushalayim in "[dead]"

yerushalayim — Thu, 18 Sep 2025 04:25:09 +0000

Skip to minute 13 for the start of the conversation, and please remember to keep an open mind.

New comment by yerushalayim in "[dead]"

yerushalayim — Thu, 18 Sep 2025 04:17:23 +0000

If you want to hear the truth about what's really going on with Israel, Gaza and much of the Middle East and even here, the US -- the following video is the most informative and accurate portrait from the ultimate, truth at all costs, insider, anywhere.

New comment by yerushalayim in "Where's the shovelware? Why AI coding claims don't add up"

yerushalayim — Sun, 07 Sep 2025 04:11:37 +0000

Working with AI may not save you time, but when used properly, it will almost assuredly get you better results.

New comment by yerushalayim in "Study mode"

yerushalayim — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 08:29:28 +0000

ChapGPT and company (currently) have an inherent disability dealing with mathematics as they are a language based models. So in a way, this is an unfair test.

New comment by yerushalayim in "The copilot delusion"

yerushalayim — Thu, 29 May 2025 04:43:23 +0000

This rebuttal of the rebuttal does feel earily AI. Perhaps an injection of cynicism?

New comment by yerushalayim in "Accountability Sinks"

yerushalayim — Wed, 07 May 2025 03:19:23 +0000

Not accurate. Factually, some are much worse than others. A few are good to great. Lumping them all together as "garbage" is unjust and is totally counterproductive. Why even try when your efforts are unappreciated?

New comment by yerushalayim in "Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding changes"

yerushalayim — Tue, 15 Apr 2025 11:20:12 +0000

The government's list of requests is reasonable, moral and necessary. It's the taxpayers' prerogative to demand a merit based system that, in conjunction, upholds the values and freedoms they hold dear.

The elitist and morally detached Harvard and its fellow privileged, largely useless, institutions can exercise their right to refuse the demands and the money.

No need to complicate it further.

New comment by yerushalayim in "I'm the Canadian who was detained by ICE for two weeks"

yerushalayim — Sun, 23 Mar 2025 04:37:38 +0000

Scary can be an effective deterrent against unsavory adversaries.

Netflix Prepares to Send Its Final Red Envelope

yerushalayim — Sat, 23 Sep 2023 18:36:36 +0000

Article URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/23/business/media/netflix-dvds.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37626045

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by yerushalayim in "To Be Happy, Marriage Matters More Than Career"

yerushalayim — Sun, 20 Aug 2023 16:33:14 +0000

It is a damn shame that relationship skills and knowledge based on well-established research aren't taught in school as a core subject. Our lives would have been much better for it.

Tropical Storm Hilary - Mexico and California Brace for Heavy Rains

yerushalayim — Sun, 20 Aug 2023 15:57:52 +0000

Article URL: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/08/20/us/hurricane-hilary-california-mexico

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37200341

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

To Be Happy, Marriage Matters More Than Career

yerushalayim — Sun, 20 Aug 2023 15:49:32 +0000

Article URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/17/opinion/marriage-happiness-career.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37200267

Points: 8

# Comments: 5