HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

good-idea

335 karma · joined March 25, 2018

submissionscomments
good-idea··on An Alien Mind
yes, and, a masquerading blindness to the fact that humans cannot align on doing the right thing or what the right thing even is. so implicit in this omission is the sentiment "trust us to align on the right thing". an arms dealer positioning itself as the de facto authority on what "peace" is and how to achieve it
good-idea··on Thanks HN for 15 years of support and helping me find my life's work
when I did my batch, almost everyone I met was scrappy. it was tinkerers, artists, hacker types, drawn by curiosity and the RC community. most had been laid off, were making a career change, or simply weirdos not on the usual ladder.

I got a cheap bedroom sublet through a former recurser and sublet my own place back home.

not your comment, but some replies below make it sound like RC would be otherwise, full of rich kids or "retreat" types maybe, but it's the opposite.

leaving work, paying NYC rent, yes it's all expensive but places like RC that create free spaces like this are part of the solution

good-idea··on Tessera – a consent-gated tunnel that's blind to your traffic
This looks great. I've been building some local-first software and trying to think of low-lift ways for people to connect instances with each other - I look forward to trying this out
good-idea··on Ask HN: What are tools you have made for yourself since the advent of AI?
Best comment on the thread. Fellow potter & sculptor here, is your work online anywhere?
good-idea··on Ask HN: How did you land your first projects as a solo engineer/consultant?
Amazing list of resources, thank you
good-idea··on Improved Git Diffs with Delta, Fzf and a Little Shell Scripting
Related and a step beyond just viewing diffs - has anyone found a good TUI solution for a local equivalent of doing GitHub PR reviews?

I love the simplicity of using existing tools in this post. It would be nice to have something similar that would allow for adding online comment threads on a diff, and output it to a simple markdown file. Of course, I'm thinking about a local agent workflow here.

good-idea··on Interoperability Can Save the Open Web (2023)
Two advantages I see to files in folders are the ability to browse and the ability to easily read - by both LLMs and humans.

But I also agree that this has limitations. If I were to challenge you and say that Obsidian solves this, or gets close to solving it, what gaps would you say were left unfulfilled?

I am because I'm working on something in this space and your comment touches on my three main ingredients: text files, SQLite, and graphs.

good-idea··on Kotlin creator's new language: a formal way to talk to LLMs instead of English
Yep, you're right, I read this too fast - it's also breaking long lines into many and I read this in reverse. I just imagined how much I could reduce my own LOC by adjusting the print width on my prettier settings..
good-idea··on Kotlin creator's new language: a formal way to talk to LLMs instead of English
"Shrink your codebase 5-10x"

"[1] When computing LOC, we strip blank lines and break long lines into many"

good-idea··on Ask HN: How to be alone?
This is going to be a difficult time.. and that's OK. Great change is upon you.

One book I cannot recommend enough is Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life by James Hollis.

Listen deeply to yourself, be kind with yourself. It's so very hard but so very very rewarding.

good-idea··on Claws are now a new layer on top of LLM agents
I've been thinking about this (dishes vs creative work). I think it's because our high-production culture requires everyone to figure out their own way of providing value - otherwise you'll go hungry.

Getting a little meta here .

If we were to consider this with an economics-type lens, one could say that there is a finite-yet-unbounded field of possibility within which we can stake our ground to provide value. This field is finite in that we (as individuals, groups, or societies) only have so much knowledge and technology with which to explore the field. As we gain more in either category, the field expands.

Maybe an analogy for this would be terraforming an inhospitable planet such as Mars - our ability to extract value from it and support an increasing amount of actors is limited by how fast we can make it habitable.

the efficiency of industrialization results in less space in the field for people to create value. So the boundaries must be expanded. It's a different kind of work, and maybe this is the distinction between toil and creative work.

And we're in a world now where there is decreasing toil-work -- it's a resource that is becoming more and more scarce. So we must find creative, entrepreneurial ways to keep up.

Anyways, back to the kitchen sink -- doing our dishes is simply not as urgent as doing the creative thing that will help you stay afloat. With this anxious pressure in mind it makes sense to me that people reach for using AI to (attempt to) do the latter.

AI is great at toil-work, so we feel that it ought to be good at creative work too. The lines between the two are very blurry, and there is so much hype and things are moving so fast. But I think the ones who do figure out how to grow in this era will be those who learn to tell the distinction between the two, and resist the urge to let an LLM do the creative work for them. The kids in college right now who don't use AI to write for them, but use it to help gather research and so on.

Another planetary example comes to mind -- it's like there's a new Western gold rush frontier - but instead of it being open territory spanning beyind the horizon, it's slowly being revealed as the water recedes, and we are all already crowded at the shore.

good-idea··on Claws are now a new layer on top of LLM agents
Any chance you have a repo to share?
good-idea··on How far back in time can you understand English?
How far into the future is my concern
good-idea··on Show HN: I created a Mars colony RPG based on Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars books
Well, here we are!
good-idea··on Sheldon Brown's Bicycle Technical Info
a truly heartwarming website and discussion. I built my wheels the Sheldon Way as well, I'm looking at them right now. Such a rare combination of wisdom and generosity. Thank you, OP, for posting. Also, hey all, click that donate button!
good-idea··on Skills for organizations, partners, the ecosystem
I have been switching between OpenCode and Claude - one thing I like about OpenCode is the ability to define custom agents. These can be ones tailored to specific workflows like PR reviews or writing change logs. I haven't yet attempted the equivalent of this with skills in Claude.

These two solutions look feel and smell like the same thing. Are they the same thing?

Any OpenCode users out there have any hot or nuanced takes?

good-idea··on Ask HN: What are you working on? (October 2025)
Aider builds something it calls a "repo map" that I believe is for a similar purpose. Might be worth taking a look!

I haven't used Claude Code, but recently switched to OpenCode. My token usage and cost is a lot higher, I'm not sure why yet, but I suspect Aider's approach is much more lean.

good-idea··on Mergers ruin everything
I don't have any good resources off-hand (other than what shows up in a quick search), but my "best practices" are to always squash and keep PRs as small as possible.

When a working branch falls behind main, I prefer to rebase it instead of merging from main to keep it up to date. However, if you've already pushed your working branch to a repo, after rebasing you need to `git push --force` - which is a problem if there are others who have previously cloned the working branch.

good-idea··on Mergers ruin everything
Should they be squashing instead?
good-idea··on Show HN: Our open source 2020 Profit and Loss
This is great. It's amazing to be able to get more insight into how companies work -- I imagine that at most companies, many employees don't even have this kind of knowledge around what is happening in their own business
good-idea··on Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (May 2020)
SEEKING WORK - Los Angeles, CA - Remote

Full-stack javascript & typescript developer

Skills: React, Redux, GraphQL, Node, TDD, Headless CMSs

I've been working for 8 years as a freelance full-stack developer. I have extensive experience creating boutique UX and working with clients in the creative media industries (artists, designers, musicians, a record label), startups looking building an MVP (e-commerce marketplace, social, education), and e-commerce (stripe, shopify, and more).

I maintain several open-source packages, have managed teams of developers, consult with designers, and have taught beginner to intermediate React courses through General Assembly.

Website: https://www.good-idea.studio

Email: joseph@good-idea.studio

Github: https://www.github.com/good-idea

Twitter: https://twitter.com/typeof_goodidea

good-idea··on Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking Freelancer? (February 2020)
SEEKING WORK

   Location: Los Angeles
   Remote: yes!
   Technologies: Node.js, typescript, graphql, React, PostgreSQL, graph databases, web sockets.
   Résumé/CV: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QZFT_miF9MGO42JnS1P43Kra9DKwjRKY23HpxkYhQIk/edit?usp=drivesdk
   Website: https://www.good-idea.studio
   Email: joseph@good-idea.studio
Full-stack web developer with 8 years experience. I've built websites, MVP-level apps, content management systems and other full-stack, high-volume systems.
good-idea··on Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (February 2020)

   Location: Los Angeles
   Remote: yes!
   Willing to relocate: no
   Technologies: Node.js, typescript, graphql, React, PostgreSQL, graph databases, web sockets.
   Résumé/CV: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QZFT_miF9MGO42JnS1P43Kra9DKwjRKY23HpxkYhQIk/edit?usp=drivesdk
   Website: https://www.good-idea.studio
   Email: joseph@good-idea.studio
Full-stack web developer with 8 years experience. I have taught beginners, led small teams, and worked with a variety of clients. Looking for a role with a collaborative, small to medium sized team that values thinking things through and working at a healthy pace.
good-idea··on Ask HN: How Do You Read?
In school, I would, chapter-by-chapter: - Underline & make notes in the margins - After finishing, write a "précis" of that chapter on an index card - Below the précis, go through the chapter again and copy over underlined passages, notes I had made and questions I had come up with while reading

Then, I'd end up with a stack of index cards for each book, which I'd keep for reference. I rarely looked back at these notes, but the 'chore' of doing this for every chapter really helped the complicated stuff sink in.

good-idea··on Teaching Tech Together
This is an amazing resource. Thank you!
good-idea··on Show HN: Listmonk – Fast self-hosted newsletter and mailing list manager
This looks great and is maybe exactly what I'm looking for! I have a couple questions:

I don't see anything in the docs about supplying an unsubscribe link. I don't see an endpoint in the API that could be used with an anchor tag in the footer of the email. Is this something that is supported?

And: my client is concerned about email/spam regulations, which I'm very unfamiliar with. Is there anything I'd need to look out for in this regard?

good-idea··on How to Do Nothing (2017)
It should be noted that she published a book of the same name earlier this year: https://www.amazon.com/How-Do-Nothing-Resisting-Attention/dp...
good-idea··on Ask HN: How can I automatically scan and catalog a mountain of books?
A lot of people are suggesting querying Amazon for ISBN data - another option is the ISBNdb API: https://isbndb.com/ There's also the OpenLibrary API (from the Internet Archive) which may include some more info https://openlibrary.org/
good-idea··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (April 2019)
I don't see any info about jobs on the about page! Am I missing something?
good-idea··on Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking Freelancer? (March 2019)
SEEKING WORK

Location: Los Angeles, CA or Remote

Full-stack javascript web developer. I work with small businesses and early-stage startups to:

- Build Web Apps and MVPs

- Improve project management, from design-to-development workflows and development sprints

- Consult on product management (UX, technical feasibility)

- Work with in-house developers to improve code architecture, test coverage, security, Git workflows, CI and best practices.

Tech and other terms you might be searching for: React, Vue, Typescript, GraphQL, Redux, AWS, TDD, CI, Python

contact: joseph@good-idea.studio

https://www.good-idea.studio

Page 1 of 2Next →