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I always think the worst thing that can happen to a (mild) hoarder like myself is that one of the things I'm hoarding comes in handy. Using one hoarded thing justifies years' worth of more hoarding.

I had an interesting experience after I stopped reading HN comments for two weeks. I think it had to do with not reading the doom and gloom on here, which I tend to agree with. But after two weeks of reading neither the hype nor the doom about LLMs, I realized how amazing (though not perfect) this tool is. My point isn't whether LLMs are good or bad, but just how I didn't realize how much my consumption of other people's opinions infected my own outlook. It was like the opposite of rose-colored glasses.

BTW, the tool I used to block HN is called Foqos, which, of course, I heard about right here on HN. Based on my screen time reports, I got back about 2 hours per day average after blocking all my favorite sites.

Such a funny coincidence. I opened HN in this new, 100%-rust browser[1] I'm working on to actually test some keyboard fixes I did last night.

Every action was keyboard first and only got mouse access later. Browsing by keyboard is not the browser's specific goal, but it was a feature from day 1!

[1] https://github.com/tayler/hww

I admit it was a bit ridiculous. However, if Microsoft is going to brag about how much AI code they are using but not also brag about how good the code is, then we are left to speculate. The two outages in two weeks are _possible_ data points and all we have to go on unless they start providing data.

Obviously just speculation, but maybe don't let AI write your code...

Microsoft CEO says up to 30% of the company’s code was written by AI https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/29/microsoft-ceo-says-up-to-3...

I am trying out something along those lines with friendlyfriends.community (nod to Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep). Still pretty basic though, but feel free to give it a try.

Edit: I'm exploring the idea that social media is not really social. How much different is it to interact with a human intermediated by social media sites than it is to interact with chatbots?

https://flexbox.help/ I get a lot of people saying it was very useful.

Here's an alternative I recently came across. In Firefox on the network tab of the dev console, right click on an XHR request. You'll have two relevant options: "Resend" and "Edit and Resend". Edit and Resend doesn't give you all the features of Postman, but it is useful and a lot easier. I have spent a lot of time in Postman just putting in all the headers and POST body to set up the API call. With this method in Firefox, all parameters are already set because it's an exact copy of the request you already sent. You can change params or just hit send when you're ready to retest something you're doing on the backend.

I use these additional parameters: `&gsrlimit=25&prop=imageinfo|pageimages&iiprop=url|size`. I think it just changes how much and what type of data is returned, but maybe that could be the difference?

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&generat... search term here>&format=json

(see https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=help&modules=query for reference)

edit: formatting

I made canweimage.com. It can't replace all the features of Google, but it can fit the bill if you just need a basic search of Creative Commons.

Depending on the time of year you go, make sure you get a reservation: https://www.nps.gov/arch/planyourvisit/permitsandreservation...

Totally had no idea. Thanks for the tip. I guess tomdn.com is for non-ddg users only.

Valid questions. I just think it's faster. One action on tomdn.com instead of 1. DDG "array.map mdn", 2. Find MDN result (usually first), 3. Click result, 4. See docs.

Bangs are great, just shorter again to use tomdn.com: - `!mdn array.map` leads me to https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/search?q=array.map, which I have to scan the results and click on. - tomdn.com?array.map leads me to the exact page in the docs. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Javascript/Refe...

This may or may not be valuable, but I like saving the extra steps for something I do many times a week. Basically this calculation (https://xkcd.com/1205/) works out for me + the fun of working on a new project.

edit: >I don't have to run my searches through an unknown third party

Very sympathetic to this concern. Feel free to host yourself -- it's a single html file. https://github.com/tayler/tomdn

Check out tomdn.com. I created it to make it easier to get to MDN. E.g., instead of googling array.map, just type tomdn.com?array.map. It will take you straight to MDN docs on Array.prototype.map. Other things work as well, like tomdn.com?object.keys, tomdn.com?css.color, tomdn.com?htmlel.button, etc.

If there is a pattern it doesn't recognize, you end up on the MDN search results page.

edit: More info. about how it works is available here: https://github.com/tayler/tomdn

One of the first things I do when looking at a new show to watch is try to find out if the show ends and was cancelled on a cliffhanger. Wikipedia is okay for this, but I've been wishing for a dedicated website with that info.

I'm interested in the use case for people who use tools like this. Do you have a lot of bank accounts/credit cards so that logging into each bank site is a pain?

I tried to get into finance tracking along these lines (YNAB), and it was a lot of work. I don't care where every penny goes because it became clear that most of my pennies go to the same place every month (housing, utilities, etc.). I just want to spend less money on the every day things I have control over.

I'm trying out a system for that specific purpose over at spendweek.com. I've realized that some people just love to see all the data, which is great. Others of us just want a simple tool to curb bad spending habits.

What are your favorite alternatives to Amazon? E.g., I go to monoprice for cables. Are there other niche options that you like for different products where you can expect quality?

If you're looking for a decent replacement to images.google.com, I run https://canweimage.com. It gets results from Wikimedia Commons. There's also just https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page. I built canweimage because Wikimedia Commons used to be harder to navigate (once you searched, you then had to click through categories and subcategories to see image results). Looking at it just now, and that doesn't seem to be the case anymore!

>The trick is doing a manual entry for each transaction.

I would second this for anyone whose goal is to spend less money. I think some people keep track of purchases just to see all spending and may not care about reducing spending. In that case, importing data can save time.

This article also agrees with your suggestion. She suggests it's th that knowing you are going to have to write down your purchase helps you think before automatically spending: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/28/smarter-living/budget-mon...

The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy. Don't know how, but his words just made my brain buzz.

Yes! This is awesome. Looking at all the budget software that uses monthly time frames, I was wondering why no one uses weekly. This quote is a great way to say it, "Even though most bills are paid monthly, discretionary spending is more naturally tracked on a weekly basis."

I felt the same way, and it's part of why I made spendweek.com (a privacy-first, easy-to-use competitor to Lunch Money, YNAB with a single focus on saving money instead of keeping track of all your accounts). I am sort of proud of my privacy policy, so it's a link right at the top of the home page.

Here's the basic manifesto of the SpendWeek framework in case anyone's interested: https://www.spendweek.com/blog/you-need-a-different-budget/

Hello. I'd be very interested to hear your advice on this spend-tracking system. My goal was not to build something that keeps track of your assets and bank balances (YNAB) but to just spend less money. Thanks for taking a look!

Yes, I can look into that.

That's a great suggestion. Thanks for chiming in.

I hadn't looked into any other image sources. I'll check out Flickr too though.

Oh, cool. They have a search API. I'll plan to add this as a source to canweimage.com.

Just a shot in the dark, but if you use Cloudflare already, their stats include view counts. It's also probably more accurate than relying on JS tracking tools because they can count the actual requests to your site.

I have fun looking at these stats (sites with Google tracking vs. sites without) in a Firefox addon I made: https://bitbucket.org/tayler/google-spy/src/master/, https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/googley-eyes/