jacobyoder (u/jacobyoder)

jacobyoder commented on Do you know that there is an HTML tables API? christianheilmann.com/202... · Posted by u/begoon

I see new frontend developers using <div> for building buttons, and I've even seen people using <div> for doing titles! Us greybeards don't know how much apparent knowledge we're sitting on, it seems.

jacobyoder · 2 months ago

In 2004 I was at a company that dedicated a team of people to rebuilding a bunch of tables (lots of financial data) in to styled divs because... "tables are depreciated". The fact that they couldn't pronounce or understand the word "deprecated" should have been enough of a clue to ignore this person, but they were the 'lead' on the web team, and... had been there longer than other people. Obviously they must know what they're talking about. Weeks later after having converted dozens of spreadsheets to divs (instead of just using tables) they were 'done', but it was a tremendous waste of time that ignored all the semantics of tables. I was asked to 'help out' on that project to meet the deadline and refused, citing that it was not just stupid, but a big waste of time and against web semantics.

"table" was never deprecated in HTML at all, but was discouraged for general layout (we were aware of this even in the early 2000s). But for representing tabular data - like... data in rows/columns from spreadsheets (with column headers and such)... HTML tables were absolutely the right (only?) way to present this.

I was at that company less than a year...

jacobyoder commented on The BLS can't be replaced by the private sector bloomberg.com/opinion/art... · Posted by u/petethomas

freedomben · 4 months ago

> but it all feels like we're sane washing this administration

This is not a defense of the admin or their actions, but if there's something we should have learned well over the past 100+ years of history, it's not to assume insanity on the part of people who disagree with you. It feels good to assume that we are so correct that anyone disagreeing with us must be insane, but it's a deeply unproductive (and often counter-productive) way to interact with people.

Personally, I think they think that places like the BLS are stacked with "deep state" people that are trying to sabotage the current administration. I think that's mostly absurd, but they don't, and without evidence either way it's a matter of opinion (I personally lean heavily on things like Hanlon's Razor and trying to gauge "likeliness" rather than assuming the best or worst). If you believe as they do, then cleaning house is not only good but necessary, so the actions aren't insane. If we don't try to (in good faith) understand their beliefs/motivations, and just assume they are just randomly pulling triggers, not only will we only further entrench partisan divides (nothing alienates somebody more than feeling they aren't being properly understood), but we hinder our own ability to predict and prepare for the future.

jacobyoder · 4 months ago

> and without evidence either way it's a matter of opinion

The absence of evidence is used as evidence of the thing (hostile deep state actors) existing, because they're so good they can hide their tracks so well that they can't be found. They must be stopped.

When lack of evidence is the proof... I'm not sure there's much room for rational discussion.

"...and just assume they are just randomly pulling triggers...hinder our own ability to predict and prepare for the future."

Speaking about the current politics and US administration, much of what's coming doesn't need to be 'predicted' - it's unfolding from the project2025 document. Not everything happening is from there, but quite a lot is.

jacobyoder commented on This website is for humans localghost.dev/blog/this-... · Posted by u/charles_f

oooyay · 4 months ago

https://localghost.dev/about/

The theme also changes the background of her profile picture. The attention to detail is commendable.

jacobyoder · 4 months ago

Hovering over the netscape link renders it slowly, line by line, like images used to come down...

jacobyoder commented on The BLS can't be replaced by the private sector bloomberg.com/opinion/art... · Posted by u/petethomas

jacobyoder · 4 months ago

> Instead of firing the commissioner, the president should be giving the agency a raise in the form of a bigger budget. The goal should be to restore public trust in government statistics, not undermine it.

When you believe that government should not be providing many services, or doing most of what it currently does overall, why would you want to bolster trust in government statistics? Those statistics might contradict the administration, which is not a goal of the administration and its backers.

jacobyoder commented on The BLS can't be replaced by the private sector bloomberg.com/opinion/art... · Posted by u/petethomas

jacobyoder · 4 months ago

https://archive.ph/el7mM

jacobyoder commented on Thunderbird: Fluent Windows 11 Design github.com/Deathbyteacup/... · Posted by u/skipnup

pbmonster · 5 months ago

> Having a widescreen monitor is irrelevant to me unless I fullscreen my browser (which I don't and I assume most don't).

Are you kidding? I'm willing to bet 99% of users run their browsers fullscreen.

Using the drag-and-drop feature that splits the screen between two GUIs already marks the office power user, a third windows on a single screen brings us into the territory of the hardcore nerds running tiling window managers.

jacobyoder · 5 months ago

> I'm willing to bet 99% of users run their browsers fullscreen.

99% of the folks I interact with usually just use whatever size the browser opens in initially, then maybe resize it if they're reading for a while, or need to see more info. If half a pic shows up, they might try to fumble to grab a handle to resize to see more of the pic; sometimes it works, sometimes they end up giving up.

Going 'full screen' may be different than just 'as wide and tall as the monitor', because 'full screen' mode gets rid of the window chrome, which causes confusion.

The only folks I know who consistently use browsers 'full screen' are on mobile devices where that's generally the only option.

jacobyoder commented on High tariffs become 'real' with our first $36K bill blog.adafruit.com/2025/05... · Posted by u/ptorrone

haswell · 7 months ago

I think the total reliance is a legitimate concern that needs to be addressed.

I still think this approach to addressing that issue is complete madness.

Not only is there no coherent plan for how that reliance will be reduced, but we’ve now crippled ourselves in the meantime.

jacobyoder · 7 months ago

> I think the total reliance is a legitimate concern that needs to be addressed.

> I still think this approach to addressing that issue is complete madness.

You're assuming the 'total reliance' argument and corresponding actions are being done in good faith. The original 'emergency' declarations justifying large initial tariffs in February were because of a 'fentanyl crisis'. Which then morphed in to 'well, we should be manufacturing here for defense purposes' and assorted other arguments along the way ("we're getting ripped off!", etc).

There's a danger in being cynical about this, but also danger in taking everything at face value. There's been no coherent communicated policy with justifications and expected outcomes or timelines ever put forward the same way twice from this administration.

jacobyoder commented on High tariffs become 'real' with our first $36K bill blog.adafruit.com/2025/05... · Posted by u/ptorrone

iancmceachern · 7 months ago

And where is this money going? Is it going to be used to directly help companies like Adafruit which are being directly harmed?

jacobyoder · 7 months ago

Going directly in to the Treasury.

https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/static-data/published-report...

$252 million was collected from excise tariffs on May 6. You can look at this PDF day to day.

EDIT: adding on to this... most days are between $150m and $300m. There's been a few days north of $300m this calendar year. There was also one day - April 16? 17th? - with $11.5b coming in. Under 'excise taxes'. I have to assume that was something to do with early April tariff announcements? But haven't seen anything remotely similar since.

So this "billions of dollars are pouring in from tariffs!" is... simply not true. There's not been a huge shift one way or the other yet.

EDIT 2 - April 22 - https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/static-data/published-report.... $11b in excise taxes deposited.

jacobyoder commented on High tariffs become 'real' with our first $36K bill blog.adafruit.com/2025/05... · Posted by u/ptorrone

tantalor · 7 months ago

I don't understand how they can say its hostile to list tariffs when plenty of merchants will advertise "made in America" as a selling point. It's the same thing!

jacobyoder · 7 months ago

More to the point, if high tariffs are GOOD, we should be embracing them and the WH should be working to promote 'pride in tariffs!' messaging. Show how much you love your country and leader by how much in tariffs you pay! It'll be great, because you won't have to pay $3k income tax, just... an extra $5k in cost of living every year. Forever. Even when you stop working.

jacobyoder commented on High tariffs become 'real' with our first $36K bill blog.adafruit.com/2025/05... · Posted by u/ptorrone

tlogan · 7 months ago

> products we couldn’t manufacture ourselves even if we wanted to, since the vendor has well-deserved IP protections

Tariffs are working as intended: if somebody can manufacture similar things here they will be in advantage.

This isn’t an endorsement of tariffs, just an observation: their goal is to give domestic manufacturers an edge when similar goods can be made locally. In that sense, they’re functioning exactly as intended.

jacobyoder · 7 months ago

And for things that can not be manufactured or grown here... we just suck it up and pay the extra 10-20-30% anyway?

If the 'intent' was to spur manufacturing, you'd enact laws with long term financial stability planned in. Few are going to commit to spending millions equipping factories when the 'tariff moat' that might make those factories sustainable will go away if Trump sees a movie in six weeks that says tariffs are bad.

The 'intent' seems to be to create financial instability and chaos, to allow Trump to position himself as the financial savior, and we are concentrating huge amounts of economic power in the hands of a single person.