Hacker News

Top stories

Live mirror
30 storiesupdated just nowView source snapshot
  1. OpenJev(openjev.com ↗)
    15comments
  2. Jemalloc 5.4.0(github.com/jemalloc ↗)
    45comments
  3. The scourge of x86 emulation(fex-emu.com ↗)
    27comments
  4. Astra for Law(openai.com ↗)
    578comments
  5. Bonsai 2 27B: Near-Lossless Compression in a 9x Smaller Footprint(prismml.com ↗)
    135comments
  6. Bend – A language that blocks AI mistakes via proof, on CPU and GPU(bend-lang.com ↗)
    222comments
  7. Qwen 3.8 Omni Flash(qwen.ai ↗)
    82comments
  8. Hister: A private search engine for the pages you visit and the files you keep(github.com/asciimoo ↗)
    170comments
  9. Replacing Pull Requests with Delta(zed.dev ↗)
    4comments
  10. Pre-Greek: The lost language hidden within Ancient Greek(linguisticdiscovery.com ↗)
    38comments
  11. Wax motor(wikipedia.org ↗)
    70comments
  12. Fujitsu launches made-in-Japan next-generation CPU FUJITSU-MONAKA(global.fujitsu ↗)
    234comments
  13. When the fractional part of a float fixes your shader(crocidb.com ↗)
    1comments
  14. Microsoft exec called AI scraping 'the largest theft of labor in human history'(techcrunch.com ↗)
    12comments
  15. A heap overflow and SSO misconfiguration to compromise OpenAI internal repos(hacktron.ai ↗)
    155comments
  16. Shapelearn Qwen 3.8 27B (13.1 GB VRAM)(byteshape.com ↗)
    11comments
  17. How to Write with an LLM(sockpuppet.org ↗)
    104comments
  18. Ask A Monk – A digital wilderness for thoughts with no immediate answer(askamonk.online ↗)
    24comments
  19. Flet 1.0 – Build cross-platform apps in Python(flet.dev ↗)
    59comments
  20. Telstra outage: The night a network decided the year was 2006(netnod.se ↗)
    27comments
  21. Why Does the Universe Expand?(cosmicave.org ↗)
    57comments
  22. Speeding up gearhash on ARM64(sam.dev ↗)
    discuss
  23. Diplodocus, Long Thought Exclusively American, Turns Up in Spain(sci.news ↗)
    42comments
  24. Why I didn’t sign the Fields medallists’ letter(gowers.wordpress.com ↗)
    370comments
  25. Apple detectives solved mystery of ancient tree and rewrote the history of fruit(scientificamerican.com ↗)
    12comments
  26. How do we prevent mathemathics from devolving into the Medieval Era of secrecy?(mathoverflow.net ↗)
    108comments
  27. The most important product decision is what you don't build(liamnugent.me ↗)
    39comments
  28. CrowdSec Source Code Leak(crowdsec.net ↗)
    49comments
  29. How Uber Protects Against Retry Storms(uber.com ↗)
    44comments
  30. Show HN: Snapdrop: Instantly share files between devices. No setup, no signup(snapdrop.me ↗)
    37comments

How simple features become complicated

12 pointsby 17y agorc3.org
4 comments
17y agoHN ↗

"This is why I generally forbid the use of the word 'just' when people are making feature requests."

Agreed! Keeping "just" out of conversations involving feature requests is amazingly hard to do, but in my experience it works.

Laying down that rule does a surprisingly good job of making people aware of when they're getting ahead of themselves, and jumping out of their area of expertise when asking you to do something. "Can't you just ..." teeth grate

17y agoHN ↗

Seconded; I've liked that idea and become sensitized to my and others use of Just and Simply, since reading c2.com's wiki - I think the page is "JustIsADangerousWord".

17y agoHN ↗

Weinberg in one of his consulting books suggested replacing "just" with "have a lot of trouble" (as in, "we'll just add this feature" with "we'll have a lot of trouble adding this feature") and "should" with "isn't" (as in, "that information should be kept here" with "that information isn't kept here"). It's surprisingly effective. I think there was another such magic word or two on his list, but don't remember what they were.