chriswwweb

Hello Hacker News,

I recently rebuilt my blog https://chris.lu to be static first, easy to maintain, and provide a great developer experience. While doing so, I also wrote a tutorial that can be found in my https://chris.lu/web_development section. I covered all the steps from building a solid foundation using Next.js (14.x) and React (18.x) . Several chapters about adding MDX support (using @next/mdx) and several plugins to improve authoring tech articles, like a plugin for beautiful code blocks or another one to automatize the creation of a dynamic table of contents for each post. There are also chapters about improving linting so that ESLint does not just lint the code but also the MDX content, increasing security with CSP headers, optimizing loading times using @next/image and @next/fonts, and a few more.

As chris.lu is a side project, I've had the freedom to experiment with new technologies, such as WebGL, which I've used to build the header (click on 'PRESS START' to give it a try). I've also explored new CSS features, like the extended web color palette (display-p3), to create a neon 80s-style theme that fully utilizes the potential of modern screens. It's been exciting to see that for some UI elements, like a dialog or modal box, we no longer need to rely on jQuery plugins or React components. The native dialog HTML element now offers a viable solution, especially with good browser support if you can afford to not support IE 11. The source code for chris.lu is available on GitHub at https://github.com/chrisweb/chris.lu/.

Also, I'm currently for hire, serious offers are welcome. My areas of expertise are Javascript (Typescript) development, team building, and management. You can contact me on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisdotlu/ or look at my projects on GitHub at https://github.com/chrisweb.

good idea, thx, done

I like it, worked well for the few tests I did, however the main form needs some small UX improvements, I chose a start airport and destination airport but then the search button was disabled, leaving me clueless about what field was not filled out correctly, I quickly noticed it must be the date field, but still to me disabling a submit button of a form seems like a bad idea because if disable it you also remove the display of potential error messages related to the form failing validation, which to me is a UX no go (take my opinion with a grain of salt, I'm not a UX guy). The second thing that bothers me is that none of the form fields actually tells you which ones are mandatory and which ones are not

you: "Twitter is a tool of the US national security state", me: "stops reading"

you will not educate anyone or create a healthy discussion with anyone if you start your argumentation with sentences like this, which are without a doubt false affirmations, which is sad because your post might be full of good arguments that I would agree with if I would have read it all... the irony about this is that the article is about fighting misinformation and you try comment on that topic by doing exactly that, posting misleading and factually inaccurate information

I had similar thoughts, you don't need a permit to buy a gun but your kids need one if they want to fly their small toy drone, well that makes totally sense :D

I liked the humor in this piece a lot, I would not have read it until the end if it wasn't for the funny bits

Update 2 Fortnite is currently unavailable on Google Play. More information will be forthcoming soon.

Update 1 Apple has blocked your access to Fortnite on iOS devices! Take Action! #FreeFortnite

... well that answers a some of my questions ;)

EDIT: interesting, I just found this tweet (https://twitter.com/ballmatthew/status/1293903865557979136) that mentions other companies like McDonalds and Starbucks are also exempt

Indeed this is huge, well it will be huge if the app is still in the store by tomorrow ... I wonder what apple will do? I wonder if apple greenlighted this? If they didn’t get this greenlighted, I wonder how they bypassed the Apples app review process (in app updates instead of a store update?)?

I can’t wait to see how all of this unfolds, years ago I was part of a team that built a music app that got refused in the app store because we had included payments via a credit card processor, bypassing the 30% apple tax and today I’m in the process of building another app which is impacted by this … I also imagine companies like spotify are following this very closely

As far as I'm aware of, Microsoft is not even trying to put their own services forward. For example neither Github nor Azure are the defaults in VSCode. Go to the source control section and use what ever source control tool you want, VSCode does not even suggest you use Github. They also don't bundle extensions like LiveShare with VSCode, by including it into the VSCode installer they distribute on their own website.

This is why I disagree with your claim that Microsoft is giving away VSCode away for free to promote their own proprietary tools. You can shame Microsoft for trying to improve their image by making VSCode, Typescript, ... opensource. To me this is totally different from bundling your own Browser into an operating system to increase artificially your market share, you can't compare the two.

There is nothing bad about not blindly trusting a big corporation like Microsoft, but I dislike it when people are so desperate to blame Microsoft for mistakes it did in the past, that they write articles that are (deliberately?) misleading. In this case, by saying parts of VSCode are opensource when it is just some extensions. This is putting VSCode on a pedestal with Chrome, but the comparaison is all wrong, Chrome includes lots of proprietary parts, while chromium is the opensource variant you can build yourself, but for VSCode this is completely different as the version distributed on the Microsoft website doesn't include anything besides the opensource code from Github repository.

I thought the same, the article title is (deliberately) misleading by using the word "parts" instead of being clear and stating that some extensions that you can get from the store might not be opensource ... I had never heard of LiveShare before and have no need for it, I have lots of extensions installed and don't think any of them is proprietary

Haha :)

I'm a bit late to the party ... just wanted to say that his account seems to be back (don't know why):

https://github.com/catamphetamine?tab=repositories

I wish more people would actually use this to wrap their 5'000 lines of console output that they copy paste into a ticket when reporting a bug instead of using markdown "format as code"

Also yes it is a "hack" and not official markdown, but for the use case I mention it has the huge advantage to not make tickets including all the comments excessively long

Let me return the question, are you are basically saying "if I can't taste it, it can't be bad"? ;)

You realize how small the UK market actually is? (not just compared to europe)

But it would be labelled as chicken coming from the US, this makes it easy enough to avoid!?

Already today, I always read on the label to find out from what country the meat I'm about to buy comes, I always prefer local over imported as I think it is something little I can do to reduce unnecessary emissions and would hence anyway not buy meat that comes from another continent, just to get it few cents cheaper

It is however often not possible when eating meat at restaurant for example :(

Oh wow a lego story makes it to the frontpage of HN :)

Not my fav lego set, but I guess some people really like it

I'm more excited about the upcoming LEGO Ideas pirate creek set

We looked at both solutions, shorter days of lets say 6 hours or less days. For me personally fewer days is better, because I have a pretty long ride to work, so working a day less also removes two long travels.

Also in my opinion no solution reducing the amount of working hours should have disadvantages over the conventional 5 days / 40 hours weeks, or there will be no produtivity / motivation gain. So just saying we still work 40 hours but do this on 4 days a week is obviously bad. Also working 32 hours and being paid less is bad and so on...

Something else that had a huge impact for me, is that our working hours are much more flexible now. We have four so called "core hours" from 10 in the morning to 15 in the afternoon where everyone has to be in the office, the rest is flexible. So you are allowed to work 7 hours one day and 9 the next day. Also you can include two one hour pauses as long as the minimum amount per week is not lower than 32 hours. For me this is great because it allows me to drive to work and from work when the traffic on the streets is much lower than at peak times where all the other workers commute.

The startup I work for does this, I work 4 days a week, get paid 5. I love it, makes such a huge difference to have a 3 days weekend, lets you detach a lot more from work.

I'm the CTO and have set up alerts that I get on my phone when I'm not in the office, so even if something critical happens over the weekend it's not like I won't fix it for 3 days.

I noticed that I'm more motivated during the 4 days to do a maximum of stuff, I take less smoking pauses during the day, which increases my productivity and is better for my health ;). I also have no problem to stay one or two hours longer on thursday evening if something needs to be done before the long weekend because I know I will have plenty of time to recover afterwards anyway.

Yes I'm riding the automation wave, but only because after working for 20 years as a developer I was finally able to afford buying an apartment and wanted to try to push automation to it's limits. I haven't done it all and could go even further, which is why I like KNX, it's not closed or bound to a single company so I can buy add even more stuff from a lot of providers (see some example of companies in my other comment).

The alexa bridge is not perfect, sometimes it has hald a second of delay. Twice a year the servers are down and it doesn't respond for few hours, but besides that I'm very happy with it. B.t.w. I used this server from PRO KNX to connect my Alexa(s) to the KNX server: https://proknx.com/en/news/2017/realknx-2-0-voice-control-al... (it is also compatible with Google Home as well as Apple Homekit).

Thx for the clarifications about the differences. I don't know much about the KNX standard. I fiddle around a lot with NodeRed (nodejs / javascript) and use some Alexa routines but I never tried to implement the standard myself. As far as I understand it, KNX is also using IP Networks, because all my devices have IP addresses and my servers are open on different ports.

I hope the Google, Apple, ... alliance decided to do create a new standard for good reasons, but I have doubts as I can't find someone that explains me what is so bad about the existing standard. Why Apple, Google and the others don't just join the KNX foundation and why this already open and royalty free KNX standard can be built upon!?

KNX is a standard not a brand, hence you can just say KNX costs 10 euro or 1000 euro. KNX via an adapter can control regular lights, at least on/off not sure about dimming. But KNX is best used with compatible lights, which means you need special lights and different cables. I think in my appartment there are two cables, I assume one is for control and the second is the regular power source. For example some companies that in my opinion have good products are BAP Tech (https://www.bab-tec.de/), Gira (https://www.gira.com/en/gebaeudetechnik/systeme/knx-eib_syst...), Jung (https://www.jung.de/en/820/products/technology/knx-system/) ... to find companies near you I would recommend using the official KNX website: https://www.knx.org/knx-en/for-professionals/community/manuf.... the system for the lights is called DALI (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Addressable_Lighting_I...), for example OSRAM has a Dali/KNX website here with more information: https://www.osram.com/ds/highlights/knx/index.jsp ... to find prices I would recommend using a website like https://www.eibmarkt.com/ (set the country to United States and the currency to US Dollar)

LOL ... there has been a standard for years for smart home devices, it is called KNX (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KNX_(standard)) ... what is wrong with KNX? Hundreds of companies already support it, so why not join them instead of re-inventing the wheel?

I think I know what im talking about, because my (smart) home automation is based on KNX, I use Alexa voice commands or a KNX app on my mobile devices to controll all my KNX compatible devices, a server gets the commands and allows me to control the lights (on/off/dimming), to inquire an set the temperature in each room, to control the inner blinds as well as the outer shutters (open/close), to get data of water consumption, electricity consumption from many devices like the cooking plate, the owen, the lights, the AC, ... to get values from my weather station like wind speed, wind direction, sun intensity and much more ... I also have fire detection sensors, movement sensors, air pollution and water leak sensors which can trigger alarms... I can inquire on my phone if I forgot to turn off the owen in the kitchen, if the main door is being or has been left opened. Through Alexa I have also connected my Roomba as well as my TV and all the media devices connected to it (using the Logitech Harmony hub) but those two things are not KNX, everything else is.

Being able to control all this through Alexa is super fun. When I go to bed I just need say "Alexa good night" and Alexa tells my KNX shutters to move down to 100%, all my lights in any room to 0%. When I leave the house I say "Alexa, good bye" and Alexa checks if my appliences are turned off, turns the lights off and lowers the heating in all the rooms a bit. Also as im super lazy, if I finish cooking and throw myself on the couch but forgot to turn of the kitchen lights I just need to say "Alexa turn of the kitchen lights and turn on netflix".

What is also nice is that I can program (control and combine) everything myself. I currently use NodeRed (https://nodered.org/). So I can program routines, like "if the time is > this and the front door gets opened send me an email or SMS", if the wind speed is above a certain threshold open the shutters to avoid damage, ...

I have the feeling NASA is finding water on Mars every month ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I didn't downvote you ... but your post mentions a misterious state that publishes personal information, you don't say what state, you don't show an example and you don't describe what kind of information is being shared ... I think you just got downvoted for not showing any proof / real example of what you describe and the person that downvoted you has doubts what you say is really a thing

I agree, the big difference between music streaming services and TV series or movies streaming services is that on every music streaming service you can find almost all the western mainstream songs by all the artists.

For TV series/movies it's very different, lots of shows, series and movies are exclusive to one streaming service and lots of shows, series and movies can't be found on any of them.

But still I don't think a majority of potential customers will be enough annoyed by the current content fragmentation to go back to piracy. Also because the piracy tools have become less and because it's still hard to find what you really want, even when using some simple as popcorn time. I just think customers will start to own more than just one subscription and will probably switch from time to time from one subscription to another to get access to the content that is exclusive to one of the streaming services that are available. The loser here is clearly the customer that will pay more for less, but it won't hurt enough to make piracy popular again.

they dont!

Yes I assume it is like you just said ... but what scares me, are those consequences the editing might have in a far future, yes we cured cancer by editing a gene, but now we created another problem XY and we are fucked because we can not edit it back, something like that ... you know like oh we have a problem that plants are infested by lice, so lets import frogs from another country, oh but now we have an overpopulation of frogs and they have created a new problem

true, that makes sense ... I'm not a gene or biology specialist, but if you change the gene of a human and he has kids, the kids will inherit the modification, right? so my problem with all these gene manipulations is that the more we do and the more it will impact future generations and who knows what the impact on those will be? So for me having the adult consent is not enough as the impact is not just on him but potentially much greater.

Oh wow this reminds me so much about that article I read some time ago about a chinese scientist who had edited genes of babies (he actually altered a gene in IVF embryos): https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/08/untold-story-circle-...

So editing genes of adults is ok but babies is not? This article sounds so positive and supportive of the act ... I'm a bit confused.

Not if you have negative interest rates. I heard on the radio that some European banks want to introduce this.