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itsjustme2

150 karma · joined August 11, 2017

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itsjustme2··on A proposal to add signals to JavaScript
Am I the only one that thinks the vanilla js example is actually easier to read and work with?

- "The setup is noise and boilerplate heavy." Actually the signals example looks just as noisy and boilerplate heavy to me. And it introduces new boilerplate concepts which are hard for beginners to understand.

- "If the counter changes but parity does not (e.g. counter goes from 2 to 4), then we do unnecessary computation of the parity and unnecessary rendering." - Sounds like they want premature memoization.

- "What if another part of our UI just wants to render when the counter updates?" Then I agree the strawman example is probably not what you want. At that point you might want to handle the state using signals, event handling, central state store (e.g. redux-like tools), or some other method. I think this is also what they meant by "The counter state is tightly coupled to the rendering system."? Some of this document feels a little repetitive.

- "What if another part of our UI is dependent on isEven or parity alone?" Sure, you could change your entire approach because of this if that's a really central part of your app, but most often it's not. And "The render function, which is only dependent on parity must instead "know" that it actually needs to subscribe to counter." is often not an unreasonable obligation. I mean, that's one of the nice things about pure computed functions- it's easy to spot their inputs.

itsjustme2··on The Elon Musk interview that got Don Lemon's show canceled
I am not sure what the fuss is about, honestly. Elon didn't storm off the set, he answered all the questions asked, Don seemed to pick up on some negative vibes but of course he would since they're having an intense discussion where there were several points at which they had to simply disagree and move to the next subject.

Don irritated the guy who invited him into a partnership and then that partnership was rescinded. Don himself prefaces the clip by saying his show wasn't cancelled by X. Seems pretty in line with what Elon said in the interview about how everyone's free to post, but that doesn't mean X will promote it. X decided not to promote Don Lemon's show.

itsjustme2··on Ask HN: How many of you are consciously downsizing your devices/going retro?
When I shopped for a new watch two years ago, I was looking for a simple non-smart, easy to use, robust watch that didn't have a ton of features. I ended up getting a Freestyle watch and I have been very satisfied with it.

It tells the time and tells me time elapsed, the light isn't obnoxiously bright at night, I'm not fiddling with the interface, I'm not getting pinged, my data isn't being collected, I'm not afraid of breaking it or soaking it, I'm not charging it.

It just works.

itsjustme2··on Java 21 makes me like Java again
I agree, Java is wordy, ritualistic, and prone to overcomplication. Build/run/write loops are slow and painful, and frameworks and toolkits try to do so much that they inevitably get in the way.
itsjustme2··on [dead]
Well, it's written in the opinion section in newsweek. Also, there are quite a few links throughout the article, but they may be easy to miss because the only indication they are links are the red line underneath, otherwise it looks like regular text.

I personally thought it was well-written, and I find it relieving to hear someone admit the many flaws in the execution of the covid response.

itsjustme2··on Youth Cultures in East Germany 1985 / Stasi (East German Secret Police)
For those interested in some good history of the punk movement in East Berlin, I recommend the book Burning Down the Haus by Tom Mohr. Really gives a window into the courage, creativity, and motivation of the youth, and their oppression by the Stasi.
itsjustme2··on Innovation around houselessness fails so much
While I agree that's a big part of the problem that needs to be solved. I don't think any one thing is going to tackle such a complex multi-faceted issue. For example the book Evicted by Matthew Desmond was a good read and told the story of some families on the edge of homelessness, facing eviction due to various reasons such as drug addiction, low income, etc. These problems won't go away with addressing housing regulations, although more affordable housing availability could certainly help.
itsjustme2··on Innovation around houselessness fails so much
You can get a good grasp of the size and complexity of HMIS data by perusing the HUD's HMIS Data Dictionary [0]. It shows the business objects and their fields, allowing you to get a rough ERD-like idea of how the HUD views HMIS data. Many HMIS systems, from what I've heard and seen (I've only done a little work in the space), don't use this as a data model internally though or if they do it's not exposed that way through their APIs if they even have APIs that they're willing to let you use. Presumably though, they must have to report it that way to the HUD for funding.

I agree, it would be great to have a fresh, pragmatic take on this data, and I'll be reading more about that Built for Zero framework.

One Center of Care (CoC) I talked to talked about their old HMIS system from a private company who charged something like $70K/yr (iirc) to keep using their software. That seemed excessive to me, but they didn't seem to mind too much. Migrating off would have been extremely difficult anyway. Their bigger stated need was the ability to easily send data from their system to other CoC systems in the area as the people they were helping moved around or were transferred to more relevant services. Each time those people encountered another CoC, basically the intake process would have to be started over again at the new location, which was a drain on both the receivers and givers of services.

We tried a couple attempts at making a sort of hub for pulling and pushing data to the various systems, but only one entry system company was very supportive, while we had to tread carefully around some of the HMIS system makers who seemed very protective and unwilling to expose or share their APIs if they had any. One big challenge was finding a single unique identifier for each person across systems, which is why a local by-name list like the article mentions is very intriguing.

[0] https://files.hudexchange.info/resources/documents/FY-2022-H...

itsjustme2··on Google Search Is Dying
"The latest conditions on mountain bike and hiking trails are being shared inside communities like Reddit but not on the web."

I just wanted to mention that a friend of mine made an app for user-reported trail conditions that might be worth taking a look at: https://trekko.app/

itsjustme2··on Lon Lat Lon Lat
I wonder how much time has been wasted by devs who get the order wrong. I know I've been guilty of it so many times. It's really frustrating, but I like that someone took the time to write down which order goes for which software- this is a nice reference.
itsjustme2··on Six dead after tornadoes destroy Amazon warehouse near St Louis
We stayed in the basement after the sirens started, and followed it on the weather radar. We got notifications on the phone, and kids were dismissed from evening activities early. Pretty rare to get this type of weather this time of year.
itsjustme2··on The Decline of Heroku
I use it pretty heavily for node.js apps. Every time I see the newest Rube Goldberg contraption for deploying code, my first thought is trying to figure out why they didn't do something simpler, like Heroku. Being comfortable with complexity isn't a good excuse for making things more complex than they need to be.
itsjustme2··on Show HN: Capsule – Make “video” recordings of any website, but as pure HTML/JS
This is really neat! It's like having a video with selectable, inspectable text/markup. I also love how there's no sign-up needed. Thanks for making this freely available.
itsjustme2··on Show HN: Poetry Link, a website for writing poetry collaboratively
This is the kind of thing that I love about the internet: it opens up new opportunities for open, collaborative, creative expression.

This looks like it's well-executed too. I like the minimal, elegant design. Good idea on the links as unobtrusive arrows that are still informative as to whether it's linked from/to.

itsjustme2··on Flash Game History
Really great work here. I love the way the visualizations are laid out, and the subject is near and dear to me. I often think about getting back into making games/movies and/or creating a Macromedia Flash 8 clone in the browser. I loved how there were just a few simple concepts such as frames, tweens, movie clips, and an asset library that you could tie together with js-like code to make whatever you wish.
itsjustme2··on Video Games Are the Future of Education
My kids go to a fairly highly-rated public elementary school in the midwest U.S., and in addition to live math instruction, they also have time allotted within their class to play www.prodigygame.com

This is basically a turn-based RPG, but to make each turn successful, you solve a math problem whose difficulty has been selected based on your past performance. They also play it at home, and I believe it has strengthened their math skills and given them a way to go at their own pace rather than that of the classroom. They earn levels, avatar mods, pets, and many other things to keep them coming back.

They also occasionally play chesskid.com at home as recommended by their chess teacher.

One thing I worry about is whether exposing them to such addictive games so early in their development will cause behavioral or even neurological side effects. I have heard about similar studies of teenagers revolving around drug use [1] but I don't know of any studies around video games (which also can cause addictive behaviors) and/or around children younger than teenagers. I would love to hear from others on HN about this.

[1] https://grantome.com/grant/NIH/R01-MH105488-01A1

itsjustme2··on Show HN: Headless Chrome Crawler
Looks like this is actually built on top of puppeteer. See the "Note" under "Installation": https://github.com/yujiosaka/headless-chrome-crawler/blob/ma...
itsjustme2··on The Shape of Ancient Dice Suggests Shifting Beliefs in Fate and Chance
I agree. And I don't think you need to understand probability to see that a flattened cube will fall on the top and bottom more often than the edges. Another possibility in addition to what you mentioned is that the games the dice were used in took into account that some sides were more probable than others and people trial-and-errored until more-or-less appropriate payoffs/penalties emerged.
itsjustme2··on Japanese 'Prince' Switched at Birth Was Raised a Pauper
because in an aristocracy or caste system you're truly stuck and your descendants are as well. Not so in the society we live in.
itsjustme2··on Japanese 'Prince' Switched at Birth Was Raised a Pauper
Calling multi-generational meritocracy the same as aristocracy is a misunderstanding of what these two words mean. Yes, societies are messy, and what happens in one societal structure can sometimes happen in another, but that does not mean that the underlying rules defining the two are equivalent.
itsjustme2··on Japanese 'Prince' Switched at Birth Was Raised a Pauper
You may be stuck, but in many such societies you can do things to give your children a chance to get unstuck.
itsjustme2··on Japanese 'Prince' Switched at Birth Was Raised a Pauper
So instead of a multi-generational meritocracy, you want everyone in the same generation to have the same resources starting out? How do we determine the best resources for each generation? How do we distribute the wealth? How do we keep parents motivated to work when their main motivation is to provide a better life for their children?
itsjustme2··on Japanese 'Prince' Switched at Birth Was Raised a Pauper
It seems pretty obvious that it usually takes more than one generation's effort to gain certain things in this world. My wife and I work very hard so we can afford to optimize the development of our children as best we can so they can eventually do better than we did. My parents did the same. My parent's parents did the same. If people struggle raising their children, then their children will be at a disadvantage. I guess you could say it's a kind of multi-generational meritocracy. Some people seem to imply that this reveals a flaw in our society, but I am having trouble seeing better systemic alternatives. Can someone please help me understand?
itsjustme2··on Wine 3.0 Released
Wine's AppDB is a great resource for these kinds of questions, and a really easy way to contribute back to the community through posting your own experiences. Here's a link to the Illustrator CS6 page: https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iI... According to that, Illustrator CS6 is working in Wine 2, but not extensively tested yet. If you have Illustrator and are willing to try it on Wine 3, you could do the community a huge favor and update this page.
itsjustme2··on Jsonb: Stories about performance
I'm curious whether the parent poster knows about the most recent HA features in Postgres, such as those introduced in v10, and if so, what is still missing for comparable HA. Here's a link to the HA docs for out-of-the-box postgres: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/10/static/high-availability....

As for scaling, it certainly scales out of the box with partitioning, but admittedly a partitioned table doesn't offer all the features that a non-partitioned sql table offers. A great assessment of the current state of postgres scaling can be found here: https://blog.timescale.com/scaling-partitioning-data-postgre...

itsjustme2··on Why Is Anime Obsessed With Power Lines?
I don't see how this is much different from the establishing shots, panoramic shots, still life shots, etc. that exist in other genres as well. That being said, I do see these types of shots less often in modern non-anime film and I appreciate how anime has been carrying this tradition. Lots of classic films also have a taste for the scenic and contemplative, and it's one of the things I love about them.
itsjustme2··on The Icelandic translation of Dracula is actually a different book
"Shorter and punchier" makes sense if it was originally intended to be published in serial form.
itsjustme2··on A repository of 300 Engineering Management stories
I enjoyed hearing the firsthand stories from various managers. I like that they are organized into a template of problem statement, lessons learned etc. with summaries and are very concise and to the point. I like that they are filterable too. Reminds me of the old antipatterns catalog http://wiki.c2.com/?AntiPatternsCatalog