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TonyStr

476 karma · joined May 13, 2023

https://tonystr.net
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TonyStr··on Japanese verb conjugation the simple hard way
Honestly, you don't need to "learn" or "understand" much grammar explicitly. I think it definitely helps get you off your feet, as you can "decode" sentences if you remember grammar rules, but eventually the grammar has to be internalized anyway. This happens when you are repeatedly exposed to the same patterns in context. I don't know how English or Norwegian grammar works, and I'm fluent in those. I skipped grammar in Japanese and focused on reading, yet I can understand most things and I can tell when something sounds wrong.
TonyStr··on I told them forced consent was unlawful. 5 years later it cost Elkjop €1.8M
Looking at the report from datatilsynet (Norwegian Data Protection Agency), they cite "multiple reports and tips" as the background. I suspect what happened here is that IMY concluded that this laid outside of their authority, submitted the complaint to datatilsynet and either closed the case and forgot to inform Hanff, or they may have never gotten any response from datatilsynet.
TonyStr··on .gitignore Isn't the only way to ignore files in Git
We are talking about npm here... Any framework like React, Vue, Angular, Svelte, etc. is going to pull in hundreds or thousands of packages. I just checked one of the smallest web projects I have (5 dependencies, no framework) and it has 265 packages In package-lock.json. My personal website (vite + nuxt) has 1171.
TonyStr··on Storied Colors – A catalogue of named colors
on `.home-hero__grain` there is a repeating dot-pattern that obscures the underlying color:

``` background-image: radial-gradient(circle at 23% 12%,rgba(255,255,255,.6) 0 1px,transparent 1.5px),radial-gradient(circle at 78% 41%,rgba(255,255,255,.5) 0 1px,transparent 1.5px),radial-gradient(circle at 12% 73%,rgba(0,0,0,.5) 0 1px,transparent 1.5px),radial-gradient(circle at 55% 88%,rgba(255,255,255,.5) 0 1px,transparent 1.5px),radial-gradient(circle at 88% 18%,rgba(0,0,0,.4) 0 1px,transparent 1.5px); background-size: 7px 7px,11px 11px,9px 9px,13px 13px,8px 8px; ```

TonyStr··on Storied Colors – A catalogue of named colors
Cool idea, but unfortunately low-effort AI slop. The colors are covered in vibe-coded patterns that obscure the actual color, much of the writing is wrong and soulless. The prompter writes on the site that he uses AI to support in writing, because as a man with a day job it would be "impossible" to write all this himself. I'd urge him to write in his own words, starting with a minimal subset of colors and slowly building up a library. It could be a "one entry per day" challenge, or even just "one entry per week". Why is everyone in such a rush?
TonyStr··on Ask HN: What has been bothering you lately?
I'm not so familiar with the revolutions of 1848, but it seems like most revolutions happen when a society is suffering from severe economic crisis as well as food shortage. It seems that the 1840s was referred to as "the Hungry Forties" due to severe food shortages. I don't think many people are willing to upend their lives to change a political system that isn't failing to deliver their personal basic needs. I'm also not sure if the revolutions of 1848 were primarily about wealth concentration - weren't they rather about concentration of power?
TonyStr··on OpenAI Losses Increased Nearly 8X in 2025, with Spending Hitting $34B
I don't think anyone believes the major AI providers are running at a profit? They are openly investing heavily into R&D and building out infrastructure, and according to these numbers way more than revenue. It wouldn't make sense for any of these companies to run at a profit right now as they're still aggressively expanding. The question is whether they will break even in the future, and capture a large enough market segment to sustain the business, allowing revenue to outgrow costs. If these numbers are real, revenue is already higher than COGS which is a really good signal for them.

I think the question is more about whether people believe this is a sound business in the long term, which imo isn't possible to tell based on these numbers yet.

TonyStr··on Write for One Person
I love reading articles that are written like this. Whenever I encounter a word/concept that I don't know, I can just look it up and myself decide how much in-depth I want to go to understand this topic before going back to the article. Whenever basic concepts are explained, I automatically get the feeling that someone very inexperienced wrote this, and that my time would be better spent reading other material.
TonyStr··on Windows 11 users are tired of MS account requirements creeping into everything
Interesting, this was definitely possible in windows 10. I do remember upgrading form 10 -> 11 and not being able to use a vertical task bar anymore, but that appears to be getting patched now with the next release.
TonyStr··on Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight
I remember doing this as a kid making my first website. I thought it looked more "professional"
TonyStr··on CSS: Unavoidable Bad Parts
Would you prefer that CSS never evolve, and our frustrations remain the same? Writing CSS today has gotten significantly easier with flexbox, variables and now nesting. BEM is not part of the CSS spec, that's just a design methodology.
TonyStr··on CSS: Unavoidable Bad Parts
This is true. I use increased font size on my phone, and so many websites are borderline unusable because of massive unnecessary padding. But I am also a culprit of using rem for everything. What is the alternative? Pixels?
TonyStr··on I'm Eric Ries, author of "The Lean Startup" and new book "Incorruptible" – AMA
I think what I liked the most about The Lean Startup was how he would reduce experiences into patterns, and then define them. You get a bunch of concrete ideas that look simple enough to add to a checklist. I do think the book dragged a bit toward the end, but I appreciated the humility of the writing.

Incorruptible sounds interesting - I've long thought about how much companies and their output are defined by their social structures. Microslop doesn't produce broken software because they hire stupid or evil people for example.

TonyStr··on Cleaning up after AI rockstar developers
Well, how hard should you beat yourself up over a mistake like that? If I forgot my groceries in the car, I'd just laugh about it being a silly one-time mistake. But if it happened twice I'd take it more seriously, and maybe make a note or something to remind me. I'm sure everyone has made some silly mistake like forgetting a jacket at a party or leaving a phone at home sometime. I think we should be a little extra forgiving toward others, because we'd so easily forgive our own mistakes
TonyStr··on Cleaning up after AI rockstar developers
>video on youtube, of someone absolutely struggling at a task that had a built-in checklist

This sounds like Bog who records himself setting up Linux distros or configuring software

TonyStr··on Cleaning up after AI rockstar developers
Some people are very good at working with complex abstract ideas, but are terrible at signaling that intelligence to others. And some are fantastic at signaling intelligence and steering conversation toward domains of knowledge that they've studied (many political commentators come to mind), but don't seem to have processed those ideas very deeply.
TonyStr··on Cleaning up after AI rockstar developers
You are right, but at the same time, if no UX designer is involved in the loop, what happens when they've prompted a prototype that looks good - and therefore eludes them to think it's designed good as well? How do we convince them that we need to involve a UX designer to fix the application flow?
TonyStr··on Cleaning up after AI rockstar developers
This is such a great mental model.
TonyStr··on It's death
The first three are the same, and the latter three are in no way related to the passage.
TonyStr··on Gmail thinks I'm stupid, so I left
When people make statements like this, I always wonder if you're thinking of someone specific, or if you're conflating the group with the individual
TonyStr··on The Current Crisis: What's Happening to Science in America
Yeah, this read more like a long twitter rant than anything I'd expect to find on science.org. With posts like these, I always wonder what the intent is? I'm an outsider, so to convince me of anything you'd have to give more context to your claims (linking to a few publications and using their titles as a priori fact isn't convincing). If you want to convince someone who has enough context to understand each claim, wouldn't their opinions already be too entrenched to sway from a post like this?
TonyStr··on DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode
It certainly struggles a lot more with non-English queries. Been using it since 2019
TonyStr··on Cate v1.0 is out: The Infinite canvas workspace for developers
Why use this instead of a native window manager? GNOME, KDE, Windows, MacOS, i3 all support virtual desktops where your window layouts are preserved
TonyStr··on Does anybody like React?
Most decision-makers make decisions based on what they already know. Most of my colleagues only know React, because they've only been exposed to React. Why do you think Java dominates the market still? React solved a huge problem when it was new, and it still solves that problem fine (change detection - the reactivity model). There are better alternatives available now (Vue - signals), but the difference isn't big enough to create a new monoculture. Sure there are peripheral concerns like how mature the ecosystem is or the particular ergonomics of a framework, but these are mostly fluff.
TonyStr··on Does anybody like React?
Maybe you would prefer React's class-based syntax. It's still there if you want to use it
TonyStr··on Does anybody like React?
How long have you used Vue? I had a similar opinion on Vue a few years ago, coming from a background of React as well. But now I prefer it over React, and reach for it in both personal and professional projects. The ergonomics are a bit different; there are things that are easier to do in React, and things that are easier to do in Vue, but the fact that it uses signals is a huge plus for me.
TonyStr··on Does anybody like React?
I skimmed through it, and I think the only thing that is out of date is the section on `zone` in Angular. In october 2025, they changed to `zoneless` by default, which uses signals just like Vue. This was a long time coming imo, as the major criticism of Angular was how poorly update management was handled. Also Svelte runes aren't mentioned, as that came out three months after this post. Runes are essentially also signals.

Basically every framework now has a concept of * State - change this and the framework automatically updates UI and triggers effects * Effects - functions that run when parts of state change (or triggered by signals)

And almost everyone solves this with signals except for React.

TonyStr··on I believe there are entire companies right now under AI psychosis
> "In psychopathology, psychosis is the inability to distinguish what is or is not real. Examples of psychotic symptoms are delusions, hallucinations, and disorganized or incoherent thoughts or speech."

I think the use of the word here is meant to invoke the vision of someone under heavy delusions or hallucinations, such as (what Hashimoto percieves as) the delusion that shipping more bugs is fine if AI can resolve them faster. To what extent this counts as delusion (and thereby psychosis) would depend on how deeply you believe that this and related opinions are wrong.

TonyStr··on Zed Editor Theme-Builder
I don't use zed or svelte, but this looks like the zed picture is missing a treesitter parser for svelte. Many editors have basic regex-based highlighting for many languages, and optional, more advanced, highlighting available through extensions. You may also get some semantic highlights provided by a language server if your editor uses the Language Server Protocol as well.

I found one extension from a web search. Did you try this? https://zed.dev/extensions/svelte

TonyStr··on Komai: a fine Matrix chat app you can get to love
> midway through reading something

Maybe it's because I scrolled down before reading, but I could instantly tell this entire text was AI slop from the massive overuse of emojis and bullet points.

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