<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: zeras</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=zeras</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Mon, 27 Apr 2026 08:31:15 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=zeras" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by zeras in "Is Show HN dead? No, but it's drowning"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Every system can be gamed, but if it were me and I were looking for a simple filtering solution, I would do something like this ..<p>Set a policy of X comments required per submission in the last 30 days (not counting last 24 hours) for all submissions, not just "Show HN:" posts.<p>Meaning, users would need to post X comments before they could post a submission and by not counting the last 24 hours, someone couldn't join, post X comments and immediately post a submission.<p>It would limit new submission posts to people who are active in the community so they would be more familiar with the policies and etiquette of HN along with gaining an idea of what interests its members.<p>One thing I noticed recently while going through several of the Show HN submissions was that a lot of the accounts had been created the same day the submission was made.<p>My guess is HN has become featured on a large number of "Where do I promote/submit my _____?" lists in blogs, social media, etc. to the point that HN is treated like a public bulletin board more than a place to share things with each other in the community.<p>I love the Show HN section because so many interesting things get posted there but even I have cut back on checking it lately because there are simply too many things posted to check out.<p>I hope they do something to improve it.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 17 Feb 2026 20:08:53 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47052572</link><dc:creator>zeras</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47052572</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47052572</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by zeras in "Show HN: Dock – Slack minus the bloat, tax, and 90-day memory loss"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Disclaimer:  I'm developing a chat app/serivce as well, but it's not a Slack/Teams competitor.<p>I personally would love to see real alternatives to Slack and Teams.<p>Discord has Stoat (formerly "Revolt") and a newer app called "Root" but both of those have a long way to go to replace Discord.<p>Maybe I am atypical, but to me the biggest problem with Slack is not the 90-day retention (because I would assume any paid version should include message retention), but rather the per-user pricing.<p>Given your current pricing (at least what you show right now), it seems like your team-based pricing model is a much better selling point for your service over something like Slack or Teams which use per-user pricing, assuming you offer most of the features that typical Slack/Teams clients need.<p>The only issue I see with pricing is your free tier might ultimately undermine your revenue since the only differences between it and the first paid tier are 15 more users and priority support (which most people should never need).</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 18 Jan 2026 23:25:55 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46673271</link><dc:creator>zeras</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46673271</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46673271</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by zeras in "Apple picks Gemini to power Siri"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This is actually a smart and common sense move by Apple.<p>The non-hardware AI industry is currently in an R&D race to establish and maintain marketshare, but with Apple's existing iPhone, iPad and Mac ecosystem they already have a market share they control so they can wait until the AI market stabilizes before investing heavily in their own solutions.<p>For now, Apple can partner with solid AI providers to provide AI services and benefits to their customers in the short term and then later on they can acquire established AI companies to jumpstart their own AI platform once AI technology reaches more long term consistency and standardization.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 12 Jan 2026 16:53:13 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46591047</link><dc:creator>zeras</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46591047</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46591047</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by zeras in "Replacing a cache service with a database"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Caching is definitely a useful and even a key component to producing efficent and high performance applications and services.<p>I think the mistake is not using caching, but rather using it too soon in the development process.<p>There are times when caching is a requirement because there is simply no way to provide efficient performance without it, but I think too many times developers jump straight to caching without thinking because it solves potential problems for them before they happen.<p>The real problem comes later though at scale when caching can no long compensate for the development inefficiencies.<p>Now the developers have to start rewriting core code which will take time to thoroughly complete and test and/or the engineers have to figure out a way to throw more resources at the problem.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 31 Aug 2025 21:00:58 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45087043</link><dc:creator>zeras</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45087043</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45087043</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by zeras in "Replacing a cache service with a database"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I think a fundamental mistake I see many developers make is they use caching trying to solve problems rather than improve efficiency.<p>It's the equivalent of adding more RAM to fix poor memory management or adding more CPUs/servers to compensate for resource heavy and slow requests and complex queries.<p>If your application requires caching to function effectively then you have a core issue that needs to be resolved, and if you don't address that issue then caching will become the problem eventually as your application grows more complex and active.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 31 Aug 2025 16:49:53 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45084661</link><dc:creator>zeras</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45084661</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45084661</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by zeras in "EverQuest"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I remember playing Ultima Online and really enjoying that game when I heard about a new first-person MMORPG in development called EverQuest.<p>I ran a couple of popular game sites back then and had industry connections so I got early beta test access to try out EverQuest.<p>Unfortunately, I made a bad choice when I chose to make a Human character, which was night-blind.  On top of that, it seemed like every time I logged in it was night time and the game was nearly unplayable away from lights, fires and torches for that character.<p>To make matters worse, I started in Freeport which had several invisible zone walls so on top of not being able to see, I constantly kept zoning which constantly interrupted the game.<p>As you can imagine, I lost interest rather quickly and went back to UO.  I gave my beta account to a gamer friend of mine, who had a much better experience than I had during beta.<p>When EverQuest eventually launched, several friends of mine bought it so I decided to buy it as well.  By then I had learned to make elven characters because they had infravision/ultravision that allowed them to see at night.<p>It was fun for a little while, but then bad game design concepts led to another problem.  They arbitrarily decided to assign some of the classes with experience penalties, including the one I played which had a 40% experience reduction, which was ridiculous.<p>The problem was that at that time, that information was not well known so I all I noticed was all of my friends were outleveling me because none of their classes had penalties.<p>Eventually by around level 12 (which took a while back then), I was too low to group with them, despite playing the same amount of time they did, and I could no longer gain experience in their groups.<p>Since EverQuest was heavily group-focused, I decided to go back to Ultimate Online.<p>A few months later, I decided to give it another try and made a bard.  Suddenly, everyone was inviting me to group and that made the game a lot more fun and led to a lot of great memories.<p>A few years ago I tried to go back and play it but, either due to age or having less free time, it was just too slow and difficult to play after all of these years.<p>While I don't play it any more, I am really glad that it is still online and even if it shuts down, there is another player-run (and licensed) rogue server available.<p>I met so many good friends in that game, including one of my best friends to this day, so I will always have fond memories of it.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 05 Jul 2025 06:04:15 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44470418</link><dc:creator>zeras</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44470418</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44470418</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by zeras in "Show HN: A breaking news and content search engine"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Developer here .. I wanted to share a free news and content search engine I have been developing called WhatSubject.<p>WhatSubject allows you to search for breaking news and content from thousands of sites using strings, words, topics and by specific sites.<p>WhatSubject also supports smart search URLs so you can just add what you want to search for after the WhatSubject URL.<p>Show recent content from TheVerge.com ..
<a href="https://whatsubject.com/theverge.com" rel="nofollow">https://whatsubject.com/theverge.com</a><p>Show recent content for the #linux topic ..
<a href="https://whatsubject.com/linux" rel="nofollow">https://whatsubject.com/linux</a><p>Show recent content for "ycombinator" string search ..
<a href="https://whatsubject.com/ycombinator" rel="nofollow">https://whatsubject.com/ycombinator</a><p>You can also combine searches ..
@theverge.com elon musk twitter<p>There are no user accounts on WhatSubject, but there are several settings you can change including the site theme and search result layout format.<p>You can also take advantage of several content filters including blocking known right-biased sources and/or left-biased sources, political content and paywalled sites.<p>Your latest searches are shown on the home page as the first entries in the tag cloud followed by other recent popular searches.<p>You can disable or delete your search history (it is stored using cookies) as well as delete all cookies.<p>Also, rather than !bangs, I added quick search buttons for other news and search engine sites to the bottom of search result pages.<p>I built WhatSubject because I wanted a way to find and read site content quickly by topics and sites using a clutter-free interface.<p>I hope some people enjoy it!<p>-Zeras</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 16 Jun 2022 15:18:45 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31767076</link><dc:creator>zeras</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31767076</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31767076</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Show HN: A breaking news and content search engine]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Article URL: <a href="https://whatsubject.com">https://whatsubject.com</a></p>
<p>Comments URL: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31767072">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31767072</a></p>
<p>Points: 2</p>
<p># Comments: 1</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 16 Jun 2022 15:18:32 +0000</pubDate><link>https://whatsubject.com</link><dc:creator>zeras</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31767072</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31767072</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by zeras in "Show HN: Quick and easy way to keep up with the latest Ukraine news"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Thank you!  It is a simple site that uses an API from another project am developing for the search results.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 24 Feb 2022 21:22:47 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30460481</link><dc:creator>zeras</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30460481</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30460481</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by zeras in "Show HN: Quick and easy way to keep up with the latest Ukraine news"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I will add filters to the search soon, but I prefer to let everyone decide which sources are valid or not valid themselves.<p>In the meantime, you can add "-site:domain.com" in the search box to block a site you do not want.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 24 Feb 2022 21:15:01 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30460387</link><dc:creator>zeras</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30460387</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30460387</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by zeras in "Show HN: Quick and easy way to keep up with the latest Ukraine news"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Given the situation in Ukraine, I created a quick and easy way to keep up with the latest news on Ukraine from a lot of sites.<p>You can also search for news and content on other topics as well, but there are not any features beyond the search.<p>This is just a very simple site that I mainly created for myself to keep up with what is going on in Ukraine.<p>Let me know if you find any bugs!</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 24 Feb 2022 20:13:40 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30459666</link><dc:creator>zeras</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30459666</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30459666</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Show HN: Quick and easy way to keep up with the latest Ukraine news]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Article URL: <a href="http://whatsubject.com/ukraine">http://whatsubject.com/ukraine</a></p>
<p>Comments URL: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30459662">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30459662</a></p>
<p>Points: 4</p>
<p># Comments: 5</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 24 Feb 2022 20:13:18 +0000</pubDate><link>http://whatsubject.com/ukraine</link><dc:creator>zeras</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30459662</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30459662</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by zeras in "Show HN: An alternative RSS reader and search engine for news and content"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The index rate for each source automatically adapts based on the frequency of new content while maintaining a reasonable minimum frequency for sporadic sources.<p>The goal is to index content as quickly as possible without impacting each site's performance or causing automated defense systems to block the requests.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 01 Aug 2020 02:54:53 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24016962</link><dc:creator>zeras</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24016962</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24016962</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by zeras in "Show HN: An alternative RSS reader and search engine for news and content"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The Settings page requires that you login, which only requires an email address.<p>The quick action bar on the search results page also has a smaller cog icon and other icons on it that will allow you to change several settings without logging in, but you must have javascript enabled to access them.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 31 Jul 2020 11:44:19 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24007735</link><dc:creator>zeras</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24007735</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24007735</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by zeras in "Show HN: An alternative RSS reader and search engine for news and content"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Upgraded accounts gain access to a global filter that can filter unwanted sources from search results.<p>Non-upgraded accounts can include one exclusion source in searches as well by adding ..<p><pre><code>  -@domain.com</code></pre></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 31 Jul 2020 03:06:12 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24005249</link><dc:creator>zeras</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24005249</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24005249</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by zeras in "Show HN: An alternative RSS reader and search engine for news and content"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Thank you for pointing out the typo.  I fixed it in a couple of places.<p>I also added the spam folder check message to the login link emailed page.<p>I agree the search page needs to be rewritten and also simplified.<p>While there is a max sources limit per search, you can include multiple sources in a single search ..<p>@gizmodo.com @npr.org</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 31 Jul 2020 02:21:25 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24005064</link><dc:creator>zeras</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24005064</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24005064</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by zeras in "Show HN: An alternative RSS reader and search engine for news and content"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The problem is not really the methodology or implementation but the perception caused by it.  If you can tell a user "we know you read this" then that implies you are tracking what they read which is something I try to avoid.<p>I plan to work on a solution, but if I do, users will be able to opt-in or opt-out depending on the implementation.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 31 Jul 2020 00:43:25 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24004475</link><dc:creator>zeras</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24004475</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24004475</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by zeras in "Show HN: An alternative RSS reader and search engine for news and content"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I really try to avoid using local storage because it delves into potential user privacy issues.  I will look more into it as well as other options as I know having a list of already viewed results would be helpful for users.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 31 Jul 2020 00:36:09 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24004436</link><dc:creator>zeras</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24004436</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24004436</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by zeras in "Show HN: An alternative RSS reader and search engine for news and content"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Thank you for the suggestion! I am familiar with the lang attribute but did not think to use it. It should be live now.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 31 Jul 2020 00:31:13 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24004402</link><dc:creator>zeras</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24004402</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24004402</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by zeras in "Show HN: An alternative RSS reader and search engine for news and content"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I posted it in the beta notes on the site, but forgot to add it to my comments here.<p>The Popular search results are currently supplemented by a variety of hand-picked source feeds because the site is new and there is not yet enough traffic history to generate an accurate list of popular content, but that will change once more people start using the site.<p>Of course people will not be happy with some of the sites selected if the target site has a political bias that they disagree with, but it is only temporary until traffic starts to grow more on the site.<p>I already have it built into the engine to ignore the supplemental sources once the activity level hits a certain level.<p>That said, it will still come down to the users.  If a lot of users are viewing specific content, it will likely find its way to the home page.<p>On a side note, you can change your default home page via the Settings page to avoid the popular search results.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 30 Jul 2020 22:05:05 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24003366</link><dc:creator>zeras</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24003366</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24003366</guid></item></channel></rss>