Hacker News Reader

jamessbon Neijuan

For context, this article has probably been posted as it is linked to by the "Astra for Coding: Why Are We Doing This Again?" blog post [1] currently being discussed [2].

[1]: https://lucumr.pocoo.org/2026/9/7/astra-why/

[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49654229

jamessbon Bending Spoons makes first post-IPO acquisition with $1.3B Airtable deal

Possibly grist https://www.getgrist.com/blog/grist-v-airtable/ ?

jamessbon What we learned when a user tried to load a 1 GB GML file in a browser

I agree that the text is unpleasant to read.

I also dislike the title ("What we learned when a user tried to load a massive GML file in a browser") - it's hard to imagine that someone who had tried to build a viewer for geospatial data would not already know the answer (paraphrasing, "tiling the data will be necessary to achieve acceptable performance, and there are standard methods to do this")

jamessbon Show HN: PDFMergely – In-browser PDF tools that never upload your files

This one's website (and a dead comment replying to you) suggests that processing the PDF in the browser, rather than uploading to a server, is a point of differentiation.

However, there are older tools that do this, such as BentoPDF (which is also open source) [1].

[1]: https://www.bentopdf.com/

jamessbon 5k menus from the New York Public Library’s Buttolph Collection (1880-1920)

It makes API requests to api.soot.com (and the rendered page includes a div with id "soot-publication").

The soot site is a bit vague about their product: https://spiral.soot.com/

I've previously encountered a similar product with much clearer marketing and documentation pages called Zegami: https://zegami.com/

jamessbon 5k menus from the New York Public Library’s Buttolph Collection (1880-1920)

I was about to link to the same "What's on the Menu" site, which I remembered being an impressive site for library digitization project years ago, but it was apparently retired in January 2025.

Now [1] redirects to [2], essentially an About page with links to the data.

[1]: https://menus.nypl.org

[2]: https://www.nypl.org/research/support/whats-on-the-menu

[3]: https://web.archive.org/web/20241222134751/https://menus.nyp...

jamessbon PostgreSQL is enough (2024)

I think this is a joke referencing Franz Kafka's short story The Metamorphosis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Metamorphosis

jamessbon Plotnine

> a new python plotting library

Whilst it's still not yet at 1.0.0, it's not that new: the first (0.1.0) release was in 2017: https://pypi.org/project/plotnine/#history

jamessbon Plotnine

Plotnine is heavily inspired by the ggplot2 library, which uses the + operator in the same way: https://ggplot2.tidyverse.org/#usage

jamessbon Loupe – A iOS app that raises awareness about what native apps can see

A photo/video editor may include the ability to upload images to a sharing service/social media.

PDF viewers (like GoodReader) can download a PDF from a URL, or read it from a network drive.

Obsidian has functions that need internet access (e.g., connecting to the Obsidian sync servers, installing community plugins).

Password managers often have a sync feature.

A video player may be able to play files hosted on remote servers or network drives.

They should be useable without an internet connection, but it's entirely reasonable for them to request permissions for network access.

jamessbon Map Clustering Is Not My Favorite

In such cases I generally prefer displaying counts of points in defined areas, rather than using clustering (e.g., when zoomed out, show counts per country, and when zoomed in more show counts for states or equivalent sub-national areas).

jamessbon Show HN: I Derived a Pancake

Similarly, the kite article [1] states that:

> The angle of attack, α, is the angle between the kite’s sail and the incoming wind. As α increases from zero, C_L increases approximately linearly until a critical angle (typically 12–18 degrees for flat surfaces), beyond which the airflow separates from the upper surface and the kite stalls (DT Online, 2024).

The supporting reference is [2]; this doesn't refer to a linear releationship or a critical angle, but does say that the angle of attack is typically 20 to 30 degrees (contradicting the claim that a kite would stall if the angle is above 12-18 degrees).

So I agree that this website does not seem trustworthy. Specific claims may or may not be correct, but they're not supported by the presented references.

[1]: https://www.absurdlyoptimized.com/outdoors/kids-kite/#ref-7

[2]: https://wiki.dtonline.org/index.php/Kite_Design_Basics

jamessbon Show HN: I Derived a Pancake

> it reads like Claude output

Yep. From the site's about page:

> This site is produced with substantial help from large language models: they assist with the literature search, the drafting, and the arithmetic.

https://www.absurdlyoptimized.com/about/

> how much scrutiny did this get for accuracy?

The inclusion of references without hyperlinks suggests it wasn't thoroughly checked: they were probably put there by Claude, and as they aren't links the author probably hasn't read them (they could possibly have read them in hard-copy at a library, but given the rate at which articles were produced this seems very unlikely).

(One such reference is 17 - "Weijers, M. et al. “Heat-induced denaturation and aggregation of ovalbumin at neutral pH described by irreversible first-order kinetics.” Protein Science 12(12): 2693–2703, 2003")

jamessbon PyTorch Landscape

Rather than forking PyTorch (which has issues like continually needing updates), could you create a set of linter rules instead?

jamessbon Polypad

> Amplify (neé Desmos)

It looks like "Amplify Education, Inc" and "Desmos Studio" (Public Benefit Corporation) are separate entities.

The desmos website still shows that most of the Desmos "math tools" still exist under the Desmos name (graphing calculator, scientific calculator, four function, matrix, geometry, 3D), but that "Desmos Classroom" specifically has been renamed to "Amplify Classroom" [1].

The amplify usage guidelines [2] say that "Amplify does not own but partners with Desmos Studio, the maker of a suite of free math tools, including a graphing calculator used by over 75 million people around the world. (See desmos.com for more information.)"

[1]: https://www.desmos.com/

[2]: https://amplify.com/ac-usage-guidelines/

jamessbon Ask HN: Is there a term for feeling sad about forced AI adoption?

Deep Blue? https://simonwillison.net/2026/Feb/15/deep-blue/

jamessbon Canonical/Ubuntu have been under DDoS

Yes, but I can currently only load the page about them via the Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20260430191621/https://ubuntu.co...

jamessbon What Claude Code chooses

Apparently the "API Layer" is "competitive", with TanStack Query and FastAPI as the leading options [1]. These are not at all alternatives to each other.

[1]: https://www.england.nhs.uk/publication/decision-support-tool...

jamessbon MapLibre Tile: a modern and efficient vector tile format

PMtiles is often used with MVT tiles, but it can encapsulate a variety of tile types: the current spec [1] has defined tile types for MVT, PNG, JPEG, WebP and AVIF (plus "Unknown/Other").

[1]: https://github.com/protomaps/PMTiles/blob/main/spec/v3/spec....

jamessbon Harvard legal scholars debate the state of the U.S. constitution (2025)

> I think this phrasing alone says a lot more about you than anything you typed.

I'm not sure it says anything about them: "inferior court" is the term of art for any court whose decisions can be appealed to a higher court [1]. It's not a derogatory term; 'inferior' is just the Latin for 'lower'.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lower_court

jamessbon ISBN Visualization

The blog post announcing the winners of the ISBN visualization bounty was posted previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43168838

And a blog post describing the creation of this visualization was posted too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42897120

jamessbon Ask HN: Can someone explain why OpenAI credits expire?

> - Skirts credit speculation and arbitrage

> - Provides stable pricing in shorter term while accommodating price changes over longer term

How? If you pre-pay $5, your account is credited by $5, and when you make an API request you get charged at whatever the rate is for the model you called at the time you used it. You aren't buying some virtual currency or locking in a specific price.

> - Excites engagement

More accurately, irritates customers by keeping their money without providing any service in return.

jamessbon Show HN: Onlyrecipe 2.0 – I added all features HN requested – 4 years later

> why when you're measuring really small things and want to be precise, you usually have a little glass/plastic cube around the entire thing too.

These weighing instruments with draft shields are usually called analytical balances: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytical_balance

jamessbon The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

The comments I've seen from police are normally specific suggestions that designs be amended to follow the Secured by Design [1] guidelines, rather than blanket objections to building something.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secured_by_Design

jamessbon How can England possibly be running out of water?

The Oxford Clarion has had several posts about the proposed Abingdon damn:

https://oxfordclarion.uk/water-why-abingdons-mega-reservoir-...

https://oxfordclarion.uk/abingdon-reservoir-is-there-an-alte...

https://oxfordclarion.uk/abingdon-reservoir-what-are-the-ris...

https://oxfordclarion.uk/abingdon-reservoir-how-much-will-it...

jamessbon Ask HN: I can't remember the name of a AI CLI tool I saw a few weeks ago

I think they mean Octofriend (https://github.com/synthetic-lab/octofriend) from Syntethci Lab (https://synthetic.new/landing/home).

jamessbon Wild pigs' flesh turning neon blue in California

> there is no blue food

Have you eveer seen a blueberry? Or a Concord grape? Or a damson plum?

jamessbon 3-JSON

Nor have I; I think it is just what the developer of tree has chosen to call file descriptor 3, rather than being a wider convention or standard thing provided by the environment.

> As of version 2.0.0, in Linux, tree will attempt to automatically output a compact JSON tree on file descriptor 3 (what I call stddata,) if present

https://github.com/Old-Man-Programmer/tree/blob/d501b58ff9cb...