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pawptarton Show HN: An 8-bit live gamecast for baseball

Always love to see new baseball visualizations. Not necessarily a big fan of AI art, but it's cool how dynamic it is. Some constructive criticism: I think using a real pixel font and maybe writing a deterministic downsampling algo for the images instead of relying on AI would go a long way to make this look better.

Not to hijack your thread but in case anyone's interested in a physical scoreboard built on top of the same APIs using Raspberry Pis, I have a project as well. We also support software emulation if you don't want to buy parts.

https://github.com/MLB-LED-Scoreboard/mlb-led-scoreboard

You can see it in action here:

https://mlb-led-scoreboard.dev/

pawptarton Advent of Code 2024 in pure SQL

I was crazy enough to try this as well this year. It would be an extreme stretch to consider me a SQL expert, but I did make it to Day 14.

I agree with all the points in the post. It's really not that bad. If I had more time to devote to it, I think I could have reasonably completed more.

Here's my writeup, contains a link to the repo if you want to see some of the soutions.

https://github.com/ty-porter/advent-of-code/tree/master/2024...

pawptarton Toyota to invest $1.3B in Kentucky factory to build battery packs and new EV

As someone who lives a few miles from Georgetown, KY, it's important to note that this factory already exists and sounds like they are (partially) re-tooling it to begin EV production. So that might explain the dollar figure.

pawptarton Ask HN: What was the outcome of Reddit blackout?

No, and in fact, it's almost certainly the cause given the huge disclaimer on the linked page.

pawptarton Alan Wake 2 is an unexpected visual marvel even on older GPUs

Ah I remember Xfire, pretty sure the biggest draw for me was the FPS counter it gave you.

I doubt this is related to the current domain, though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xfire#Video_game_and_pop_cultu...

pawptarton Microsoft might want to be making Windows 12 a subscription OS, suggests leak

I think you forgot an 8 there.

pawptarton Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?

I 3D printed an ABENICS mechanism. I don't have much of a mechanical engineering background so it was very cool to learn how to do this.

https://blog.ty-porter.dev/3d%20printing/mechanical%20engine...

pawptarton YouTube is testing a three-strikes policy for ad blocking

That works both ways, though. Content that is high quality but is lacking broad appeal will go away as well.

Full disclosure,I don't know what the right answer is here but it certainly isn't as black-and-white as this.

pawptarton Ask HN: Could you share your personal blog here?

https://blog.ty-porter.dev/

Random stuff, mostly software with a little bit of 3D printing. My latest physical project (an ABENICS clone -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHUv9Zda_48) has been getting a bit of traffic from the 3D printing community.

pawptarton Reddit’s blackout protest is set to continue indefinitely

> I think the majority of users don’t really care about the API or subreddits going private as they primarily just lurk.

I agree. These protests have missed the point. There is a (very) loud minority raising hell right now, but spez is right, it's just noise. The silent majority is still hanging around.

pawptarton Reddit Strike Has Started

Right? That's what I've never understood. Putting ads in the API is irrelevant, since the 3rd party clients will just ignore them.

The Reddit that the loud minority wants is never, ever coming back. These protests are just a blip -- if you don't like what Reddit has become, your only recourse is to leave.

pawptarton Ask HN: Most interesting tech you built for just yourself?

I built an emulator for HUB75 LED matrix panels. https://github.com/ty-porter/RGBMatrixEmulator

One of the side projects I work on is a scoreboard that displays MLB scores. It's highly configurable -- you buy the size panel you want and a Raspberry Pi, install the software, and you can configure it to display games, standings, and news headlines for your favorite team or division.

The problem is that the hardware is purchased by the end user, so it can come in many different sizes. I think we officially support 6 or 7 sizes right now, and each panel can be a chunk of change if you get a nice one. If we wanted to test on every device that means I need to shell out 50 bucks x 7 sizes, plus Raspberry Pi and wiring adapter, so not insignificant for a hobby project. Instead, I wrote a drop-in replacement emulator that makes it super simple to emulate any size panel across a variety of display types.

The most advanced display adapter spins up a minimal webserver and serves emulated images over a websocket, meaning you can display your panel over the network on pretty much any device with a web browser.

I write about it quite a bit, if further interested: https://blog.ty-porter.dev/categories.html#emulation-ref

pawptarton Ask HN: Where do you post your writing?

I'm probably like most people and just use Github pages:

Blog is built with Jekyll. Treating GH as a CMS means I have a diff built-in to my platform. I also have a GH action that can schedule merges for post PRs. No one really cares to look through the blog source code but I have GH premium so that the pages repo can be private -- coupled with the merge scheduler this means no one can see the post before it goes live on my blog.

Other than that I have a static site landing page hosted on Netlify, also a private repo. Both sites are under the same domain:

https://ty-porter.dev/ https://blog.ty-porter.dev/

pawptarton Bicycle Recommendations

> Carbon bike frames are designed only for the loads in “normal riding” but not really for all the random things you might do by accident while owning a bike, like bumping it into walls, over-tightening the seat post, etc

I wish this myth would stop being perpetuated. Yes, aluminum frames typically crack or dent rather than splinter and become immediately hazardous, but if you hit something hard enough to break a carbon frame, you'll have done even more damage to an aluminum one. If you hit the deck that hard, you're best off getting the frame professionally inspected and replaced if necessary.

I think this fear stems from a gut feeling that metal is more ductile and durable than "plastic", but what you're dealing with is far, far stronger than plastic.

I always like to show these videos to illustrate:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5eMMf11uhM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfjjiHGuHoc

pawptarton The Future of E-Bikes

Not as common on road bikes but backpedaling is used sometimes to set up cornering position/reduce pedal strikes on mountain bikes.

E-bikes are still road bikes, and the last thing you would want is the fundamental behavior of an e-bike to be drastically different from a normal road bike. Unexpected braking is just as dangerous as going fast.

Honestly, from this point alone it makes me think the author isn't very experienced with the mechanics of higher end road bicycles. This behavior is normal and expected for kids and big box store bikes, but on a road bike at speed, this would not be considered normal operation.

pawptarton I think I know why you can't hire engineers right now

Enjoyed it, I just jumped ship 6 months ago for basically all the reasons you specified.

Only thing I can add is that due to the difficulty hiring, you can attract mid-level talent with more money (they're more likely to be underpaid). I'm sure the efficacy of that approach is diminishing as steady-state is reached by people in that experience level.

pawptarton Why don't I have a blog?

I wouldn't say I have a "stride" now. I don't write unless I personally feel the topic is interesting so it's tough to call my writing scheduled or disciplined.

Most of my posts go almost completely unread -- that's fine by me.

pawptarton Why don't I have a blog?

I think you have plenty of interesting things to say.

I'm in the same boat as you are, but I think if you put yourself out there you'd be surprised how much interest there is in the things you write.

I had a blog post featured in a Ruby newsletter because I shared it on Reddit:

https://blog.ty-porter.dev/

pawptarton Show HN: I Ported Rocket League to the GameBoy (Pocket)

I was inspired by the new Rocket League: Sideswipe coming to mobile. Someone cracked the joke that they should have called it Pocket League, and then this was born.

It's actually very entertaining even on a real GameBoy!