> made a program you can actually run, on an apple ii, or an emulator, or the open-source adafruit fruit jam – mini rp2350 computer, which does this and so much more (this is where the hackersnews jerks will say this is an ad and that cloudflare is on our blog).

As I read that sentence, before reaching the parenthesis, I actually thought it was cool and smart marketing. It feels like the author misunderstands what is typically called an ad, which are those blog posts which read like “has this ever happened to you” infomercials, inventing a problem and then publicising their product as the exact solution at the end.

This, on the other hand, is just for fun and the joy of hacking, and HN typically enjoys those. Heck, you even listed alternative ways to run it before your own.

The only thing that bothers me about the article is the poor formatting and the insistence on lower case, both of which make it unpleasant to read for me.

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ptorrone 2 days ago | parent [-]

the aside was preemptive, not defensive. hackernews d00dz call anything touched by a company an ad, even when the project is reconstructing a 1975 atari curiosity for fun.

we listed multiple ways to run it because the goal was preservation and play, not funneling anyone anywhere.

the formatting and lowercase are deliberate, it's not meant to be modern content-optimized blog that hade ads or advertisers i need to make sure are happy. totally reasonable if that makes it unpleasant for you, but it is not accidental.

	▲	latexr 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		> the aside was preemptive, not defensive. I understood that. I still maintain it seems misdirected, since this is not the type of post HN typically criticises for being an ad, for the reasons I mentioned above and you yourself pointed out: > we listed multiple ways to run it because the goal was preservation and play, not funneling anyone anywhere. Exactly. It is clear what the goal was, which is why I think you wouldn’t get the criticism (or, I believe, such criticism would’ve been downvoted in this instance). > the formatting and lowercase are deliberate (…) it is not accidental. Again, I understand that. I don’t think you’d have done that and published it by mistake. > it's not meant to be modern content-optimized blog that hade ads or advertisers This I don’t get. Using proper letter cases isn’t being “modern content-optimized [for] ads”, it’s simply good writing and respecting readers. Letter cases serve a function, they help with readability, comprehension, disambiguation… As the joke goes: “capitalisation is the difference between helping your Uncle Jack off a horse, and helping your uncle jack off a horse”. And when I mention formatting I’m also referencing the seemingly random line breaks, the tiny headers, the lack of spacing between headers and text, the inconsistent spacing between paragraphs and lists… Everything is all over the place, inconsistent, hard to read and follow. A basic HTML page with no CSS has better formatting by default. Of course, you’re free to have it however you like, I don’t dispute that at all, but you’ll also lose serious readers because of it and that’s a shame.