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mark_sz

25 karma · joined June 6, 2013

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mark_sz··on Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (July 2026)
https://vask.dev - websockets - Pusher alternative. It's Pusher compatible, but way cheaper and powered by Cloudflare.

https://tailstats.com - display data on almost any device (ios,android,macos).I've build this for myself so I don't have to build dashboards or mini-one-purpose-apps and clog menubar/workspace. It also works with AI agents via API and MCP so agents can create interactive cards.

mark_sz··on Poland is now among the 20 largest economies
But be fair: Poland had to rebuild after WWII and 40+ years of communism.

When Western countries got money via the Marshal Plan:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan

Poland had... "friendly" Soviets "supporting" their country for almost 44 years...

mark_sz··on Short-term rentals are hollowing out communities with loose restrictions
We live in the UK, in our own home, though we’re still paying off the mortgage. I’m a software developer working in a hybrid arrangement (part office, part home), and I live here with my partner and our daughter.

A few years ago, the family next door were evicted with just a few weeks’ notice after the landlord sold the property to an "investor"—it was his second house on our street. The investor spent 10 months renovating the house himself and turned it into a short-term rental. For us, those 10 months were a nightmare: drilling, hammering, and building noise from early mornings to midnight, seven days a week. Despite this, we didn’t complain, as we wanted to establish a good relationship with the new owner. He reassured us that the property would only be rented out to families.

But then the first guests arrived—on the night before New Year’s Eve. It was a group of people ready to party. That first night, they partied until 4am. We thought, “Alright, they’ll have their New Year’s Eve celebration and move on.” But no, the parties continued on New Year’s Eve and beyond. From then on, it’s been one group after another—loud, late-night parties and noisy families. We’ve lost countless nights of sleep. My partner, my daughter, and I were all constantly exhausted.

For eight months, we tried dealing with this directly with the owner. We asked him to soundproof the walls, even offering to soundproof ours to help. I spent my own money soundproofing one room in our house. But after I told him what we’d done, he refused to do anything on his side, saying that my soundproofing solved the issue—when it clearly hadn’t. We could still hear everything, especially as there’s a hot tub in the garden, which guests often use late into the night.

When it became clear that the owner wasn’t going to help, I filed a complaint with the council. I explained that the property was being run without proper planning permission and causing significant disruption to us and other neighbours. Unfortunately, the owner found out about the complaint and started sending us offensive messages, targeting both us and other neighbours.

Despite reporting this to the council, nothing has changed. Two years ago, we bought a campervan, and now, whenever we see a large group of people arriving next door, we leave and sleep in the campervan. Imagine that—being forced out of your own home just to get a proper night’s sleep. Even now, the council says they’ll “look into it,” but we’re still waiting for action.

We even left our house over Christmas this year just to get some peace and quiet.

This is what life is like living next to an unregulated short-term rental. For us, it’s not just about the noise—it’s about the mental and emotional toll it’s taken on our family. It’s hard to explain this to people who’ve never experienced it themselves, but I hope this sheds some light on the reality of these situations.

Investors and short-term lets are about more than money—they can have a devastating impact on the lives of the people around them.

mark_sz··on Show HN: HyperFast, a React Native starter kit. Idea to app store in a week.
This looks good, well done! Got a license, thanks!
mark_sz··on McDonalds Event Driven Architecture
Unfortunately McD app doesn't make a good impression. It's quite buggy (iOS and Android) and has some obvious usability issues.

So it doesn't matter what architecture is behind McD systems if customer facing software doesn't work correctly.

mark_sz··on Why don't websites offer a “low power mode”?
Why Google cares about website speed? Not only because of user experience but also because of energy usage/env impact.

If you have to crawl & render billions of pages on daily basis - costs are huge (CPU power & energy usage).

mark_sz··on Knuddels: Chat platform must pay after hacker attack fine
Reported to them that it's not a good idea.
mark_sz··on Knuddels: Chat platform must pay after hacker attack fine
Maybe https://www.plus.net/ should be next. Reported few times without any result.
mark_sz··on A Commodore hacker’s story
I do remember these days. I was part of C64/Amiga demoscene. I saw intros before cracked games on C64 and I wanted to build my own. That was the whole reason I got in to programming... And now, 28 years later... I can still write simple assembly code on C64:)
mark_sz··on Show HN: Sitemapbot.io – crawl and screenshot an entire website
Good idea!
mark_sz··on Show HN: Sitemapbot.io – crawl and screenshot an entire website
This is my weekend project, hope some people will find this useful. Any feedback is welcome.
mark_sz··on BMW's Apple CarPlay annual fee is next-level gouging
I'm guessing their next step will be to charge monthly for Bluetooth connectivity and probably Navigation.
mark_sz··on Show HN: Archive websites from the command line
ok, but does it archive whole website or just one page (given URL)?
mark_sz··on Show HN: Archive websites from the command line
Cool.

How does it work? What's under hood?

mark_sz··on Rails 5.1.0 Beta 1
In terms of integration with Javascript, RoR seems to be behind for example (PHP) Laravel.
mark_sz··on Betsy DeVos Confirmed as Education Secretary
devOS?
mark_sz··on MacBook Pro
Disappointing, almost boring event.

Almost, because it made me laugh when I heard someone saying "incredible" again and app called "TV" :)

mark_sz··on Microsoft, I Forgive You
how "harder" is it on Windows?
mark_sz··on Microsoft, I Forgive You
Tim Sweeney lives in the past.
mark_sz··on Microsoft, I Forgive You
I have MacBookPro with macOS - it applies updates every week that force me to restart...

And...?

mark_sz··on Dropbox handler on Amiga [video]
This is pretty cool!
mark_sz··on Show HN: Light Bootstrap Dashboard
Looks great!

Is this theme free for commercial use?

mark_sz··on Node v4.0.0
I remember when many people were complaining about PHP - lack of progress, inconsistency etc.

Now look what's happened to Node just in 6 years. And this is just the beginning.

mark_sz··on PostgREST – REST API from any PostgreSQL database
I'm guessing you are not developer, because that kind of comment wouldn't come from someone who's thinking logically.

We don't need another flame war here.

And yes, most of the web is build on Wordpress/PHP - but you don't need to be a developer to install Wordpress.

mark_sz··on Back to the future
Good post. I love this part:

"In my view this is as bad as hating someone from another country simply because they do not understand their environment or the context in which that other person is living, or because they believe the media image portrayed about other countries. So programmers and programming languages may have more in common with daily life and politics than you may think."

This is so true.

mark_sz··on Rubix – Dashboard template based on reactjs components
Any info about license/pricing etc.?
mark_sz··on Making Python 3 more attractive
I would like to learn Python to use it for web apps - what version would you recommend now to begin with?
mark_sz··on The 68000 Wars, Part 3: We Made Amiga, They Fucked It Up
Yeah, sometimes I like to daydream too: what would happen if Poland released to the public their 16bit computer built in early 70s:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-202

mark_sz··on Node.js vs. io.js: Why the fork?
We will see how long io.js will be maintained and how quickly will slow down
mark_sz··on Cryptanalysis of the Enigma
Of course Polish involvement was completely omitted in the latest movie.
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