WebIdiot.Online

Living and writing in L.A.

Let me say up front, there are advantages for a screenwriter to live in or near Los Angeles. Here are a few key ones:You are where the action is. There’s no better way to keep track of the ebb and flow, ins and outs of the movie business than by living in L.A. as the film industry is a ubiquitous presence.You are where the players are. Agents, managers, producers, studio execs, talent, L.A. is the center of the film business. Your presence in Los Angeles puts you in proximity to these peo

TypeScript `Map` and `Set` Iteration in 2026: Why `downlevelIteration` Still Breaks Production Builds

TypeScript Map and Set Iteration in 2026: Why downlevelIteration Still Breaks Production BuildsThis article was written with the assistance of AI, under human supervision and review.TypeScript's downlevelIteration flag determines how the compiler transpiles Map, Set, and array iteration when targeting older JavaScript runtimes. Without it, production builds silently produce broken code that crashes on iterables at runtime. The default behavior downlevels for...of loops to index-based itera

Build an online code editor in React with a Run button (and keep your API key off the browser)

You've seen the demo: a code editor in the browser, a language menu, a Run button, and the program's output underneath. Most tutorials for it take one of two shortcuts. Some call Judge0 on RapidAPI straight from React, with the key in a REACT_APP_ variable. Others post the code to the public Piston API. Both break:A key in a REACT_APP_ or VITE_ variable is built into the JavaScript your visitors download. Anyone can copy it from the page and spend your runs.The public Piston API has been whiteli

I Finally Made Money From Something I Built ($0 to $152)

I've been building side projects on weekends next to my job for years. Until this week every single one of them made $0. Not anymore haha. What I builtDetent is a React component library. The components install with shadcn and take your theme, so they drop into an existing app without fighting your styles. Some are free, and there's one paid tier with full blocks like onboarding flows and a support inbox. What happenedI posted a 20 second video of the onboarding block on X with one lin

Building and Deploying a Document Change Workflow with React, NestJS, and PostgreSQL

A document update becomes more complicated when a team needs to explain who requested it, why it was necessary, who approved it, and what changed between versions.I recently led development of a company platform built around that workflow. I wrote the project documentation and implemented both the frontend and backend, with support from my team.The platform brings together project documentation, change tickets, review, publication, version comparison, attachments, and notifications.These are som

The Discount Field Refuses Silently: 22 Values Typed Into the Invoice Maker, 12 That Took Effect and 10 That Did Not

I work on OnePassApps, so this is our own product and our own build. Every number below was measured on the live Invoice Maker today, in the visible Chrome on our own machine, signed out, with no account.The Invoice Maker has two discount modes - Percent and Amount - and a field that takes a number in each. What I did not expect was what happens when the number is not one the app can use.There is no error, no warning and no red state. The value is simply not applied. What I typedOne invoice

Writing Tesla Light Show .fseq files from JavaScript, without xLights

Tesla's official way to make a custom light show is to install xLights, load their template project, sequence 48 channels by hand, and export. That's fine if you enjoy xLights. I wanted to generate shows from code instead, in the browser, so I read the format and wrote the file myself. It turned out to be about 60 lines. What the car acceptsTesla's light-show repo is strict about the file:FSEQ version 2.0, uncompressed. xLights can export compressed V2 too; the car won't play it.48 channels

Introducing Stepr: A Lightweight TypeScript Library for Guided Product Tours

Build interactive product tours with spotlights, tooltips, and step-by-step guidance — without being tied to a framework.I've just released Stepr v0.1.0, an open-source TypeScript library for building guided product tours.🔗 Live demo📦 npm💻 GitHub Why I built SteprGuided product tours can be a great way to introduce users to an application.Whether you're onboarding someone for the first time, introducing a new feature, or explaining a complicated interface, sometimes it's easier to show peop

Mock Your API Inside the Client: HTTP, SSE, NDJSON & WebSocket with tanstack-fetch

Build the whole frontend while the backend is still two weeks out — then swap in the real API one endpoint at a time, without touching a single component.Originally published on the tanstack-fetch blog.The design is approved, the sprint has started, and the backend is two weeks behind. Your usual options all have a cost:Hard-coded data in components skips the loading, error and retry paths — exactly the parts that break later.A separate mock server is one more process to run, and most stop at RE

On Writing

“Get the structure wrong and you blow up shortly after take off.”--David MitchellFor 100s more On Writing posts, go here.The Protagonist’s Journey: An Introduction to Character-Driven Screenwriting and Storytellingis a #1 Best Seller in Film and Television. Endorsed by over thirty professional screenwriters, novelists, and academics, you may purchase it here.

The slightly strange parts of job market news

Ever think to yourself, "I know I need to change jobs, so why can't I make a move?" 🤔I was looking at news about the job market yesterday, and I felt a bit puzzled. Because even though it says, "It's a seller's market, the job opening-to-applicant ratio is up, and wage increases are continuing,

Checking Market Value Through Job Hunting | Aiming for Career Advancement [#MyFirstNote] [Part 1]

Three years ago, one night.In my company housing, I registered my resume on a job change site.It wasn't that I wanted to quit.I just wanted to know.Without a Toyota business card, would I be able to make it outside the company?This time, I will share the story of how I started job hunting while

Show HN: Personaforge – Make your portfolio out of your resume in 3 minutes

Personaforge is an instant resume to portfolio generator. It convert a resume into a live portfolio and also provides with deployment option, along with natural language editing. Personaforge is still under development, and so you might face a 500/503 error which I am dealing with but would love to know your views on such an application? Is it worth it ?

Ask HN: How are companies hiring developers nowadays?

Hi, using a throwaway for obvious reasons. I'm currently in a situation where I'll have to both create a hiring process to hire a couple of programmers at a startup where I'm working at, but at the same time I'm also starting to think about looking around and start sending out job applications.Since it's been a while from my last job interview I'm wondering how companies are hiring programmers nowadays. Do they still require leetcode exercises? What about take-home

Show HN: Jev vs. OpenAI Decision vs. Small Financial World Models: FinBench [video]

Guys - OpenAI Decisions, Jev, World Models are interesting.We ran some tests for the C-suite to decide between OpenAI Decisions vs. their own existing models vs. training their proprietary Financial World Model. Sharing the results of our sample tests.If you like a walkthrough with video of results - see this video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UN1LIF01uHQWe are also trying to reach OpenAI team & community to collaborate on running various tests to help the C-suite to make

This is what happens when you skip the router and connect your NAS directly to your PC

I figured plugging my NAS straight into my PC would be the fastest way to move files. I did not think I really needed a router in the middle to act as an extra hop. I had thought just one cable meant full speed. The idea is common enough that plenty of people try it. I didn't expect the router to be doing so much in the background.

These 3 community plugins fix Obsidian’s most annoying missing features

Obsidian is, in my opinion, incredibly powerful because it keeps its core feature set intentionally lean. It’s designed to be customizable, and the community plugins are what fill those gaps. But sometimes, those plugins don't just add cool features—they fix fundamental problems that, honestly, feel like things the app should have out of the box. Here are the three

“Don’t think… feel”

With writing, there are times to think… and times to feel.“I’ve had a sign over my typewriter for over 25 years now, which reads ‘Don’t think!’ You must never think at the typewriter — you must feel. Your intellect is always buried in that feeling anyway.”— Ray BradburyI do a lot of thinking about the craft of screenwriting. I come by it honestly. I never went to film school or had any formal training before I broke int

Feedback requested on possible scam employer

I've spent the last year thinking, with growing concern, that my current company is some sort of scam. They're owned by private equity and behave in a very anti-consumer and anti-employee way. The quality of their product has deteriorated greatly, yet senior management show no signs of caring. There appears to be a plan in motion that negates all of this. Their 'technical issues' cause problems with payment providers constantly, to the point where Stripe and Mastercard may bl

How I prevent double bookings in Postgres (advisory locks + Supabase)

I built a booking app for gyms with React, TanStack Start and Supabase. The part that looked easy and wasn't: two people booking the same slot at the same moment.This post explains the approach I ended up with, with a simplified version of the code.The problemA client opens the booking page, picks a service, a date and a time slot. Two clients can do this for the same trainer and the same slot within milliseconds of each other.If your app does this in two steps:SELECT to check the slot is freeIN