Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | mrzimmerman's comments login

There are still great use cases for using JS to handle animations instead of CSS, such as creating novel, dynamic images or 3D models in a canvas element (particularly when you want it to be interactive in anyway) or to animate SVGs.

My understanding of CSS animations is that they are particularly optimized to run more efficiently and it’s also helpful that it runs outside of the JS runtime, which frees it from any errors in the JS or it adding to the CPU load that may already be chugging along on the page.

Additionally (and this is old info so it may be outdated), using things like `translate3D()` instead of just `translate()` in your CSS will engage the GPU to handle whatever your instructions are, making everything smoother and further unburdening the CPU. This is from my own memory of things I read more than 10 years ago, so it’s possible that even more CSS functions use the GPU at this point, but I’ve not looked it up since.

Anyway, tl;dr: there are performance benefits to using CSS instead of JS for animations.


I haven’t had my phone make noise in probably the last two decades. It’s always obtrusive to me and my phone is so often in my pocket anyway I can feel it vibrate or still hear it if it’s set on my desk.

I was diagnosed with ADHD recently and my doctor suggested turning of virtually all notifications on my phone, which has been life changing. I didn’t realize how many I just had going and how distracting they are. Some I’ve allowed to continue but set to silent so I can look through them later if I want to, but it’s nice to have the mental silence.


One of the best things about getting a smart watch was the vibration is always right there, no more worrying I left my phone in another room and could miss a call or it was sitting on something to soft to easily notice. One light vibration on the wrist for important notifications, small sets for an incoming call. All other noises/dings/buzzes off.


I had the original Apple Watch on pre-order and have worn Apple Watches ever since. I have found them to be completely life-changing when it comes to managing notifications without being forced to just turn all of them off.

Beforehand I found that by the time I’d taken my phone out of my pocket in response to a sound or vibration, the battle was already lost and I was distracted. The urge to unlock and investigate a notification when it’s already right there in your hand is difficult to resist, not to mention that it’s super easy to start just flicking through other things or diving into other apps just because they are there.

On the other hand, the watch is far more subtle, it’s more glanceable, it doesn’t require me to stop what I’m doing to look at it, I can decide in an instant whether I want or need to take action on something and I spend considerably less time with my phone in my hand as a result.


For me and my family, we only use AirBnbs when we’re traveling with another family or friends and we all want to stay in the same place so we can hang out and carpool easily. It can be cheaper compared to getting separate hotel rooms and if we’re traveling with another family with kids we’re much more likely to eat at the house 1-2 times a day.

If it’s just me or just me and the family, we’ll typically just get a hotel for all the reasons you mentioned. Less hassle about cleaning, points and such, no dealing with wacky policies from an over zealous host telling you how to use the A/C unit or something like that.

As far as the toilet brush, I think that maybe more a region or cultural thing, but I’m only kind of guessing. I saw a Reddit thread asking Americans why there aren’t toilet brushes in public restrooms (I believe the OP was Spanish) and they said it’s common courtesy to scrub away anything that may not have been flushed away. Again, only a guess.


Wait...in the USA you just leave waste at the base of the toilet bowl? Even if you're sharing a toilet with friends and family?


Most toilets in the US, especially commercial ones, flush with sufficient water and power to remove any residuals from the bowl. Depending on circumstances, a second flush is occasionally necessary. I have monstrous digestion and have never needed a brush to finish the job; toilet brushes here are just used for periodic maintenance, to keep things shiny.


Interesting! This article confirms what you're saying: toilets in the USA generally use higher water pressure, making residual less of an issue. The more you know...

[1] https://newyork.forumdaily.com/en/pochemu-amerikancy-ne-polz...


And likewise, your comment about toilet brushes was bizarre until now. TIL, indeed. :-)


Yea I'm mow super confused as to Why there is a difference.... it seems so illogical to have a toilet that can't empty itself completely when flushed...


Definitely. I thought this was going to be a single, semantically correct table that had some fancy use of the display property across the different elements to make them align differently (though that would help with the table headers).

I actually think this is probably the more practical approach, though I wonder what screen readers make of the mobile version compared to traversing a normal table structure.


Yeah, my assumption was that something in some layer of their application isn’t well optimized when asked to return posts from a subreddit that has “gone dark” in whatever fashions the mods chose to do that.

For example, maybe it causes reads from the database take a lot longer than they normally would, locking up the database or causing the process the crash (again, that’s just pure speculation).


one I've been wondering about is user overview pages. People use those a lot (it's actually my bookmark for getting onto reddit) and yesterday I noticed that a post I made wasn't in my overview, and it's because that sub had gone dark early.

What happens when a user has 99% of their posting in subs that are now hidden, and the API is programmed to produce a fixed 30 comments of history on the overview page? The answer is extremely deep database pulls... you might pull a year of comment history to get 30 comments that aren't hidden. And depending on how they do that, it may actually pull the whole comment history for that timespan, since most of the time posts aren't hidden like this.

I worked at a backend team at work with some very overburdened legacy tables in mongo, and this is the kind of thing we'd think about. Yeah you can use an index, but then you have to maintain the index for every record, and change it every time a sub goes private/public (and we literally were hitting practical limits on how many indexes we could keep, we finally instituted a 1-in-1-out rule). And how often does that happen? Even deleted comments are overall probably a minority such that indexes don't matter, but, this is relational data, you have to know which subreddits are closed before you can filter their results, and mongo sucks at joins. And the mongo instance can become a hotspot, so, just filter it in the application instead for those "rare" instances. Even if they are doing it in mongo, the index/collection they're joining may suddenly be 100x the size, which could blow stuff up anyway.

edit: for me, one overview page is now taking me back one month in comment history. And I comment a lot on subs that are currently closed, so it could easily be throwing away 5-10 comments for every comment it displays.


I'm guessing hit on the open subreddit mostly goes directly out of caching layer while hit on private one incurs DB hit to check whether user belongs there



That’s technically true of most domain names. Bing would be more accurately named “bingsearchengine.com”, Apple would be “applecomputers.com”, etc.

That said, Native Seed Search is a non-profit here in AZ (Tucson, specifically) that works to maintain a seed bank for native plants from the Southwestern US:

> Native Seeds/SEARCH (NS/S) is a nonprofit seed conservation organization based in Tucson, Arizona. Our mission is to conserve and promote the arid-adapted crop diversity of the Southwest in support of sustainable farming and food security. Native Seeds/SEARCH seeks to find, protect and preserve the seeds of the people of the Greater Southwest so that these arid adapted crops may benefit all peoples and nourish a changing world.

You’re not wrong that the domain or group name could be more specific, but at the same time the context is understood when you’re down at their brick and mortar location or buying seeds from them as myself and my family do.


> That’s technically true of most domain names. Bing would be more accurately named “bingsearchengine.com”, Apple would be “applecomputers.com”, etc.

I don't think that really holds true. Native is an association with a specific location, if you don't have the location in there it means basically nothing when exposed to a global audience. It's certainly true that if this was only exposed to US audiences (as it clearly is when shown in person as has been your experience) that it wouldn't be of any use to include a more specific location in there, but the web is global


The "Native" part of the site name refers to the fact that they are a source for seeds traditionally grown by Native American farmers and passed down as seed stock. They are effectively heirloom varieties with specific traits that allow them to grow in the environment where the tribal suppliers live.

If you read any of the seed descriptions you can tell that most seeds are sourced from plant varieties developed by specific tribes.

I'm not sure why they should be expected to include "American", "US", "Arizona", or "USA" in their domain name when discovering this fact is as easy as loading a web page.

Just think about all the other web sites out there with domain names that give no indication of where they might be located and the gibberish names they bought for themselves.


>That’s technically true of most domain names. Bing would be more accurately named “bingsearchengine.com”, Apple would be “applecomputers.com”, etc.

and who can forget "shitposting.ycombinator.com"


That’s definitely true but I don’t think it’s that simple. I love some of the apps that are iOS native and how their preferential treatment makes everything work with security I trust.

BUT, I still prefer Google Maps, non-Safari browsers, Spotify over Apple Music, Feedly/my browser over Apple News.

I agree that it’s problematic that apps made by the OS developer receive preferential treatment, but I haven’t personally found that to mean that the experience is better than third party apps.


I’m guessing it’s a thinly veiled reference to the fictional idea that if you steal less then $1,000 worth of valuables in CA you won’t be prosecuted. It’s constantly brought up by people like Charlie Kirk (who tweeted it as early as three days ago.)

For the record, that isn’t true, it’s where they set the threshold for a crime being treated as a high class of misdemeanor or felony (I can’t remember which) and how stiff the sentence is. I live in AZ and our dollar amount threshold for the same types of crime are actually higher than California’s but no one tries to say that you can “walk out of a CVS with $X and there’s no penalty” because some people are just looking to tear down CA, not actually discuss policy and it’s impacts.


The difference is where you live in Arizona, misdemeanors will actually be prosecuted.

In most of CA misdemeanors are ignored, because of other laws and practices. So yes, it really does mean you can walk out with $950 and literally nothing will happen to you - unless you do it in front of a police officer or something. This is why Apple stores here pay police officers to hang out at the entrance.


Is this based on anything? According to FBI data cities in AZ have atrocious clearance rates for larceny, same as anywhere else.


The problem with clearance rates is that the denominator relies on larceny being reported. They don't get reported in SF. They do everywhere else. Percentages can make anything look good.


> They don't get reported in SF.

Again, supported statements are more convincing.


not that this is real "data" or anything, but I have lived in San Francisco (in various parts of the Mission and Soma) since 2018. My vehicles have been stolen 4 times, and recovered all four times. In all cases there was some kind of police report, but no person was ever charged with a crime. In 3 cases they actually had the person in custody and let them go (one time he ran away while being questioned in the stolen vehicle, so maybe that doesn't count, but they told me they couldn't have prosecuted anyway because he was just "in the vehicle, that doens't prove he stole it)

Separately, I have personally witnessed 3 instances of store shoplifting (like filling a whole bag with anything that you can and just walking out) where the police weren't even called because it was useless. They were just yelled at until they casually walked away.

I have watched a car window get smashed and a bag stolen from the car on Haight St. near Ameoba at 1PM on a Saturday. Everyone just watched, no one called the cops from what I could see (I didn't).

Last night I watched two guys use an angle grinder to cut a bike lock and steal a bike on Mission st. I didn't call the police.

I'm probably part of the problem now since I don't even call the cops anymore like I used to, but its hard to feel like you can do anything about it when I have seen them just let people go time and time again.


When the city is incentivized to hide it, the stats are hard to come by as they are the only ones able to keep stats.

Talk to literally anyone who lived there for more than a few years and you'll heard endless stories of crimes against them or their friends that go unreported. I can give you a handful of them myself, and seems like basically everyone I knew who lived there had their own.

Over the years I've read story after story of horrific crimes committed there by 10, 20, 30-time repeat offenders. You can look no further than Boudin's own words and actions.

To try and claim otherwise is basically politically motivated gaslighting. Walk down any number of streets, talk to locals, it's clear as day to anyone with a brain and eyes that there's something uniquely wrong with that city.


So, it's a conspiracy theory.

Talking to multiple individuals is not statistics.


> Talking to multiple individuals is not statistics.

Poll, noun, …


Target gets access to easier reporting for a month, and they report a lot of crime.

Then they have to go back to reporting by filling forms, and they report a lot less.

What does that tell you about the accuracy of "the statistics"?


I think the difference there is that you can model a cargo ship to show that it will float, how it will do it, what configurations float and which don’t, etc. With LLMs like GPT we know how they work, but it’s hard to know that when it’s actually running and doing things, making it hard to predict what the outcome will be or perfectly understand how it came to the result it did (disclaimer: I am not an AI/ML engineer and this is just my personal understanding which could be wrong).

I think a lot of the annoyance felt around here is the tendency to apply human attributes to LLMs. It’s not to say that Chat GPT isn’t fulfilling the definition of “reasoning” on some level, even if it was found to fully meeting definition. I think it’s more the leap to the conclusion and that a lot of Hacker News readers are rankled by the leap lacking research and facts to back it up.

Anyway, it’s all really a philosophical discussion anyway since the definition of “intelligence” and “reason” are soft terms even when applied to human beings. We can usually hand wave it away as “intelligence is when humans do it the way humans do it”. Now that we’re on the cusp of creating actual artificial intelligence, I think we’re all finding those soft definitions cumbersome and are struggling to refine them as a society, which I think is a good thing. I also sometimes get rankled at someone asserting that some AI example has some human attribute, but mostly I think it’s an important part of that larger discourse about how we define these things, and that is a good thing in my mind.


And that isn’t being said here. Frustration with a person’s family is one comment, discussions of the cultural problems on the south in another (denial/defiance), but regardless of someone’s tone thousands of miles away the problem is still there and the source of it is not the tone or words used by individuals from far away.


Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: