HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

tomgp

1,599 karma · joined June 29, 2011

London based computer user. https://www.2x2.graphics
submissionscomments
tomgp··on How Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley Funded the Sudden Rise of JD Vance
https://archive.ph/1oVs2
tomgp··on NOAA Is in Danger
This would be an incredible act of vandalism. The hostility towards science, and specifically efforts to monitor and mitigate climate change, coming from the right of American politics is frankly terrifiying.
tomgp··on Import and Export Markdown in Google Docs
Thank you! This is going to make my life MUCH easier
tomgp··on Color Wheels Are Wrong (2011)
Obligatory XKCD "Evolution of my understanding of color over time" https://xkcd.com/1882/

I'd say this article is around a half of the way down the panel

tomgp··on Supreme Court overturns 40-year-old "Chevron deference" doctrine
That’s exactly the argument of this (exhaustive) Harvard law review piece from 2022, that the sole pattern of the supreme courts decision making is that it accrues power to itself at the expense of other branches of government

https://harvardlawreview.org/forum/vol-136/the-imperial-supr...

tomgp··on Show HN: I made first declaritive SVG,canvas framework
This looks interesting but I’m pretty sure it’s not the first declarative charting tool. (Eg Vega https://vega.github.io/vega/)
tomgp··on React 19 Breaks Async Composability
"Navigating to a new screen" is such a basic behaviour of the web the idea that we need to rely on a framework to manage this in some way is absolutely insane. At this point the complexity that React imposes on developers is out of all proportion to the benefits that it provides.

Yes there are cases where React is exactly what's needed but when each new version introduces new "best practices" based on how "bullish" Meta's developers feel about a given approach it removes a crucial advantage that helped these libraries become popular i.e. that it's easy to onboard new people on to a project because thewre's a consistent approach across code bases. Right now there's not a consistent approach across 2 or 3 years of React releases and that's before we come to the torrent of metaframeowrks designed to smooth over inconsitencies and deficiencies (state managment! styling!).

I don't know what the answer to this is but having spent a good portion of the last 7 years or so on and off React projects I would advise anyone to think carefully before investing time and /or money in the ecosystem. On balance the benefits aren't worth it the large majority of cases.

note: i've used library and framework carelessly and interchangably here, React has historically been keen to market itself as a library i.e. something you dip into when needed but in practice it bends the whole dev process around it so I feel framework is more apt

tomgp··on Minimalistic Beat Maker
Yeah, that's my experience too. It's a fun diversion but given the output is ostensibly precisely quantised it's irritatingly glitchy
tomgp··on The Moral Economy of the Shire
THough I agree there's no need for any of this to be plausible or realistic I di think that at lest for me, a reader brought up in the british isles in the later half ofthe 20th century those assumptions absolutely do hold. There's not muchI found surprising about the political economic settlement that the author describes in the article, it's more or less what I assumed whilst reading the book.
tomgp··on Sorry, iPads
Yeah that mirrors my experience. I have a 2016 iPad pro which I use all the time and which doesn't show any signs of not meeting my needs any time soon. Probably the best value piece of computing hardware i've ever owned on a price per minute basis.
tomgp··on Designing furniture using the CSS grid (2023)
When i was a kid i used to use Lotus 123 to make maps for DnD
tomgp··on The Bad Trip Detective
I think if I'd had a bad experience on acid i might not then choose my next engagement to be with one of the most profound psychadelic experiences there is half way round the world with a bunch of strangers. Perhaps start with a light dose of mushrooms at home with some friends?
tomgp··on No one buys books
OK, I haven't read the whole thing yet but this bit raised an eyebrow...

>These two market categories (celebrity books and repeat bestsellers from the backlist) make up the entirety of the publishing industry and even fund their vanity project: _publishing all the rest of the books we think about when we think about book publishing (which make no money at all and typically sell less than 1,000 copies)._

Why do we view this as a vanity project and not the purpose of the whole endeavour? The celebrity books are just to raw material that allow them to dot heir real job; to make books those fragments of human connection widely available to the people who might need them, a service to readers and to future generations that isn't just about making money.

tomgp··on Analyzing a Baking Recipe
The best cake baker I know weighs her eggs and scales all other ingredients accordingly.
tomgp··on Humane AI Pin review: not even close
I think there's something in this. Watching the video made me realise that my main irritations with my phone are born of the bit where I have to navigate through a minefield of distrations to add an item to my todo list, or check my calendar, or send a text message. All the "what bridge am I looking at stuff" is cute but feels like solving a problem I never really encounter. Anyway, I'm guess I'm going to try and use Siri more, ubnlock my phone less.
tomgp··on Women Came to Antarctica for Science. Then the Predators Emerged
The issue is that there should have been accountability, this isn't a few random people at the bottom of the world, this is a world of billion dollar govenrment contractors and academic institutions.
tomgp··on Pi Day
I mean now you mention it that might make more sense, but we're a simple people bound by our traditions.
tomgp··on Pi Day
As a Brit I celebrate it on the 3rd day of the 14th month
tomgp··on Ibis, a federated Wikipedia alternative
Wikipedia is the worst possible system for making an encyclopaedia, except for all the others.
tomgp··on No installation required: how WebAssembly is changing scientific computing
>How are you supposed to do professional stats work after university on a mobile phone?

Generally your employer or institution will supply you with a computer (or access to one in the case of students)? The test described was devised during the lockdown because people didn't have had access to the university's facilities.

tomgp··on The Best Essay
What a strange essay! To try to find out what makes a good (sorry "THE BEST") essay without any reference to any of the great essays that have actually been written? It feels a bit like the head of a university's English department setting out to discover "the best computer program" but without talking to or refering to the work of any of the thousands of people who've made it their life to study and practice the craft.
tomgp··on Interesting ideas in Observable Framework
:D I mean personally I prefer Observable becasue my interest is primarily in data presentation. I imagine if you're more on the analysis side of things (tidyverse etc) Jupyter would still be the way to go.
tomgp··on Interesting ideas in Observable Framework
I think the question is are you likely to be more productive with python and its attendant ecosystem or js and the packages it has available (most saliently D3 etc.)
tomgp··on All Aboard the Bureaucracy Train
This ignores the fact that European countries are able to complete infrastructure projects with better worker protections and tighter environmental controls for a fraction of the cost. I haven’t read the article in question but follow Alon’s blog where he provides ample examples of this… https://pedestrianobservations.com/
tomgp··on Review: Chris Dixon's Read Write Own
This is an excellent review of a thinly disguised sales brochure
tomgp··on Automate the creation of YouTube Shorts by providing a topic
Now we just need some software to automate the watching of youtube shorts and we'll be sorted
tomgp··on Brittany Pietsch, Account Executive at Cloudflare, records her layoff experience
Really impressed with her composure and resolve in a highly emotionally charged situation.
tomgp··on JSChronicle
Yeah I'm sorry I was so blunt - I fell for the temptation to make a smart remark rather than being constructive. I found difficulty navigating because the page edits my browser history and I found I couldn't see much of the content of the page unless I figured out where to click. My preference is that when the core of a page is about presenting information it should just be there, I don't want to play a guessing game. Having said that, I'm not everyone and I may not be the audience for the page.
tomgp··on JSChronicle
This site is an excellent argument against the overuse of Javascript.
tomgp··on Linda Yaccarino: no single authentic user saw this content alongside IBM's ads
Well I suppose that’s good news for marketing people who prefer their ads not to be seen by people
← PreviousPage 3 of 12Next →