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ssenssei

109 karma · joined August 8, 2025

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ssenssei··on Every novel is boring until it isn't
> “If you are bored with this novel after three pages, you shouldn’t read any further.”

The concept of DNF (“did not finish”) is pretty familiar to people who read regularly, but three pages seems far too early to make that call. The general rule of thumb I’ve encountered is closer to 100 - 150 pages.

Some of the most memorable works of literature I’ve read are books I didn’t particularly enjoy for the first hundred pages or more. I stuck with them mostly because I deliberately give books time to develop before deciding whether they’re for me.

My favorite example is A Tale of Two Cities. I didn’t enjoy it all that much until Book Three, Chapter 12. From there, it was smooth sailing. It’s now one of my favorite stories I’ve ever read, and I still think about it often, especially that entire final book.

That doesn’t mean every book takes that long for me. There are plenty I enjoy from the very beginning, particularly stories retold from a character’s perspective, adventure stories like Watership Down, and pretty much any Sherlock Holmes novel.

I understand the idea of putting a book down after a few pages if you don’t connect with it, and ultimately everyone should read however they want. But I do think that, by doing so, you risk missing out on some genuinely great books simply because they needed more time to become what made them worth reading.

Side note: My actual criteria for dropping a book are a little different. I tend to stop when reading it gives me a kind of vertigo or that strange feeling where your throat tightens and you start to feel sick.

ssenssei··on Ask HN: Who is using MCP in production?
I just HAD to use it today, I avoided them as much as I could. We have a figma design that's not really enterprise level with different components and not really coherent in some ways, and the management want the web pages to be the exact same as the figma designs.

Knowing the hell that awaits me in trying to be pixel perfect between about 40 pages, I set up the Figma MCP with my codex, and low and behold... it actually did what I needed, so that's one thing I'm grateful for.

For reference, feeding screenshots to the AI didn't do that well of a job at first.

ssenssei··on Ask HN: If I am 16 what should I learn? Which books should read?
best books I could recommend are fiction, they teach you much more than non-fiction, lessons learned in stories are better tha unordered lists of advice you'll forget in a few days.

Some of my favorites include: a moveable feast, watership down, 11.22.63

I remember how lost when I was 16, truly it was just a massive wave of depression and fear and loss. I encourage you to do what I did and explore as many facets as you can possibly imagine (coding, guitar practice, drawing, 3D modeling, pixel art, car tuning, botany, gardening, astronomy...) and if you find something you love and you find yourself doing it for months almost like second nature, you should follow that in whichever career direction it leads you or wherever it takes you with school and opportunities.

There's no one set path, and I did struggle with that as a 16 year old as some paths appear better than others. In my time, html, css, and js bootcamps were literally everywhere and now, look at the development space. you never know and you can never predict the future, but you can follow what you love and opportunity will present itself for you to shine and feel comfortable.

ssenssei··on Starring the Computer
Fun Fact: in king of queens, most of the pcs (for example airport episode with doug's parents) are just RCT tvs with paper printout of a screen taped over it.
ssenssei··on Half-Baked Product
my favorite blog post of all time... this should go in a museum
ssenssei··on Show HN: I wrote a C++ ray tracer from scratch without AI
_" Btw this was initially coded without AI, but I've used it for the recent clean up and features. "_

???

ssenssei··on Changing how we develop Ladybird
I think it's not the issue with the added PR count, but the fact they have to review them. 1 big PR review is the same as 5 small PR reviews if you have to look at how it holds, edge cases and what not...
ssenssei··on Going full AI engineer, not touching code anymore
You know any AI war heroes? You went full AI engineer, man. Never go full AI engineer. You don't buy that? Ask Roy Lee, 2025, "Cheat On Everything." Remember? Went full AI engineer, went home empty-handed.
ssenssei··on California bill would require patches or refunds when online games shut down
Imagine buying a TV. The TV works perfectly, but some of its features depend on the manufacturer’s servers.

Years later, the company decides those servers are no longer profitable to maintain. Instead of allowing users to keep using the product in a limited form, releasing server software, enabling community maintenance, or transferring support to another party, they remotely disable the functionality entirely.

Now imagine they could physically come to your house and take the TV back because they no longer want to support it. Most people would immediately recognize how unreasonable that sounds.

That is the core concern behind Stop Killing Games: consumers pay for a product, yet publishers can make it unusable after sale even when there are technically feasible alternatives that would preserve access without obligating indefinite support.

The argument is not “force companies to run servers forever.” It is: when official support ends, there should be a reasonable end-of-life path that leaves what people purchased in a functional state.

ssenssei··on California bill would require patches or refunds when online games shut down
why do you have to be negative?

currently there's a huge risk Marathon might get shut down like high guard or concord because of player numbers. If they shut it down, nobody could play it anymore.

If there's a system in place for us to be able to host our own servers, or... I don't know? OWN the game we bought and play it because we OWN it because we PAID for it. Then yeah, that's good and it's a good movement and I fully support it.

I genuinely don't understand the other side of this argument because it just feels like no for the sake of no.

ssenssei··on Ask HN: We just had an actual UUID v4 collision...
when it started going on about all the different cases in the second bullet point... yeah
ssenssei··on YouTube now world's largest media company, topping Disney
I actually currently run youtube out of firefox in mobile and web, and its pretty much amazing in both and doesn't feel janky.

The upside of that is that if you add the correct script to the ad blocker extension, you'll never see a youtube reel for the rest of your life, which HEAVILY improves the experience on youtube.

this is the filter list I use: https://github.com/i5heu/ublock-hide-yt-shorts

ssenssei··on YouTube now world's largest media company, topping Disney
you know what... besides everything, good for them.

I don't know if many of you remember the olden days of Youtube, when it wasn't lead by corporate greed, and before it was infested by greedy abysmal shitty people - When profits weren't the driving force behind content creation.

Whenever I see content creators like that on Youtube right now I just wish them the best, and if they have a platform currently that supports them financially, well good for them. I still remember the 2018 fiasco when the Ads bubble burst because of the bridge incident, and lots of them didn't know what to do cause the revenue was very shit for years and the future looked bleak.

My favorite channels thread: - Watch Wes Work: Car Mechanic but super funny - Super EyePatch Wolf and Worm Girl: Niche Horror Video Games and Topics. - Lots of Japanese Drawing Channels - Devaslife: Japanese Developer and Creator of Inkdrop - Miziziziz and countless game developers that want to show their games and tutorials. - Acerola: Best Youtube Content on Graphics Development - jdh: game development in C and super amazing content truly - Ethoslab: He'll always have a spot on my youtube world

ssenssei··on Show HN: boringBar – a taskbar-style dock replacement for macOS
it looks great, looks clean, seems like people want it.

nobody's paying a subscription for a taskbar. The business model here is a one time sale.

ssenssei··on Show HN: Brutalist Concrete Laptop Stand (2024)
Is it just me or can you all hear the sound of the metal/aluminum scratching against the concrete?

Loved the brutalist movie, this actually seems quite nice assthetically.

ssenssei··on Good software knows when to stop
I built a spotify music extractor called harmoni that helps you download your playlists and I feel I'm done. It does its job and it caters to both non-technicals and technical people alike.
ssenssei··on My eighth year as a bootstrapped founder
this feels a lot like an ad or promotion, but the core idea is something I have never thought about.
ssenssei··on Ask HN: What are you working on? (February 2026)
https://sept-marriane.com

An all-in-one operations workspace that starts with forms but doesn’t stop there.

teams (especially HR and ops in small/medium companies) need to launch and operate fast, but the moment data comes in, everything falls apart into spreadsheets, emails, and half-used tools. the real work starts after collecting data.

What we’re building:

Form & workflow engine, and backoffice layer on top of submissions: tasks, assignments, reminders, budgets, client/contact directories, inventories, meetings, internal knowledge base.

Operational add-ons: quizzes & assessments, certificate generation, invoicing, document repository, reusable email templates, Anomalies module.

It’s less “Typeform competitor” and more “what happens after the form”, for HR teams, marketing teams, and SMEs that want one calm, predictable system instead of a tool stack.

(we’re Morocco/EU-oriented).

Still super early (one month), shipping steadily.

ssenssei··on Wall Street just lost $285B because of 13 Markdown files
this is the one and only argument I have.
ssenssei··on Show HN: Craftplan – I built my wife a production management tool for her bakery
omg its built with elixir... Everytime I see my favorite language pop up I'm a little happier.
ssenssei··on List animals until failure
This was actually really nice. I loved the concept and I was hopping for 100 but couldn't get to it.

60 animals listed 𓃬𓃸𓃱 ⬛ ⬛𓆏

ssenssei··on Track Your Routine – Open-source app for task management
I'm happy for you building this app, it's tremendous effort to build a flutter application, and this should feel like an achievement for you.

However, task management apps are so unbelievably common nowadays. Nothing that can't be solved by notepad on PC, or the clock/calendar app on my phone / and if I really need a task app, I'll use google's or build my own.

Your next step should be to take what you have learned from building this app, and focus on fixing a real problem that people around you face.

ssenssei··on How Warhammer became one of Britain’s biggest companies
The thing about Warhammer is there are so many ways to experience it and an unbelieveable amount of content. I've never set hands on the codex (guide books) nor the actual miniatures (too expensive) but I've read so many books from the dark library, and engaged most of its community through its lore. I've spent the last 3 years just within the circle of the Horus Heresy, I don't know anything about the Tau nor the Orks... The game has so much to offer its actually incredible.
ssenssei··on Tell HN: 2 years building a kids audio app as a solo dev – lessons learned
"Finally feels like the app helps you instead of just waiting for input."

I've noticed a trend that most popular apps nowadays are the ones that serve this model.

ssenssei··on Ask HN: What did you read in 2025?
My favorite book this year has to be The Divine Farce, I haven't been gripped by a story like that in years. A short stay in hell falls in the same category. I'm still reading a book by Barbara Kingsolver: Demon Copperhead. It's really good and I like the story, but I have not finished it yet since I can't seem to find the time for it. Some other short stories like an inhabitant of Carcossa...
ssenssei··on Android and iPhone users can now share files, starting with the Pixel 10
I use this app called LocalSend between my Mac, my phone, and my Windows. It's genuinely a godsend, and I hope whoever reads it tries it
ssenssei··on Downloadable movie posters from the 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s
I was looking to add a few posters to my room, and this came at the right time. The only one that interested me was: Colossus: The Forbin Project, as I love Michael Colombier's OST in that. Other than that, it's hard for me as a 23-year-old to find movies I've seen here. The earliest I can think of is Indiana Jones, and The Rocketeer, and those are in the 90s.