Hacker News: Fred27

New comment by Fred27 in "Photon-Emission-Guided Laser Fault Injection Enables RP2350 Secure Debug"

Fred27 — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 17:31:25 +0000

There's always an XKCD... https://xkcd.com/538/

New comment by Fred27 in "[dead]"

Fred27 — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 14:03:08 +0000

It's bizarre, isn't it? I remember seeing what happened on 7th October and thought there's just absolutely no way anyone can convince themselves that that didn't happen, was justified, or that these were in fact the good guys. And yet somehow people manage it.

New comment by Fred27 in "Romania soccer introduces black card to 'combat abusive behaviour' from parents"

Fred27 — Sun, 13 Sep 2026 17:58:39 +0000

If it's anything like the UK then it's likely the games are played in a public space like a park, so it might not be possible to eject the parent.

New comment by Fred27 in "Mom gets 6-month suspended sentence for letting 5-year-old walk to the pond"

Fred27 — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 15:58:25 +0000

I agree. The word "pond" is what immediately got my attention.

New comment by Fred27 in "Can your AI rewrite your code in assembly?"

Fred27 — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 07:51:26 +0000

I did read it. A compiler converts your code into assembly. They usually have varying levels of optimisation depending on what you're doing.

The article boils down to "could AI be a good compiler" and I'd say that consistency and repeatability are far more important than a one-off optimisation of a particular section of code. If you've got to the point where a section of code is worth writing some hand-crafted assembly then it's probably worth your time to really understand what's happening with it. Having it "vibe compiled" for you would be a bad idea.

New comment by Fred27 in "Can your AI rewrite your code in assembly?"

Fred27 — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 10:34:43 +0000

Doesn't the compiler rewrite your code in assembly?

New comment by Fred27 in "Playdate’s handheld changed how Duke University teaches game design"

Fred27 — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 15:07:01 +0000

My boys (then 10 and 8) loved MakeCode Arcade. I promised that if they wrote an original game - rather than following the great tutorials - then I'd make them a physical setup with a Pi Zero and some classic arcade buttons. They were very motivated and learned a lot.

New comment by Fred27 in "C# in Unity 2026: Writing more modern code"

Fred27 — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 17:33:28 +0000

I agree. I came to Unreal with only a basic level of C++. Having Unreal handle memory management for you was useful, but I can imagine the chaos an Unreal-only C++ developer might cause when unleashed on another C++ codebase.

New comment by Fred27 in "C# in Unity 2026: Writing more modern code"

Fred27 — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 15:56:26 +0000

As a primarily C# developer who has done some game engine work, I recently gave Godot a go for licensing reasons. Apart from some quirkiness I'm fairly impressed. Much nicer C# support compared to Unity. I've done a fair bit of Unreal C++ but to be honest unless you really need the performance that's just too much hard work.

Having said that getting the code working properly with a nice 3D UI is my priority, not having a slick game with some code doing some mundane stuff in the background.

New comment by Fred27 in "Londoners are sick of viral videos telling lies about their city"

Fred27 — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 14:16:59 +0000

I was born in London, lived in London until about 15 years ago and still go there a few times a year. It really has become as bad as people make out.

One thing that brought it home to me was recently re-watching 28 Days Later. As the main character comes out of hospital and walks over a Zombie-apocalyse London Bridge, I thought "Wow. That looks nice." London in 2026 is worse that Zombie-apocalyse London from 2002.

New comment by Fred27 in "I built Timeframe, our family e-paper dashboard"

Fred27 — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 09:20:49 +0000

I found some of these Visionect displays cheap on eBay and was planning to do the same. I found the backend Docker conatiner was unstable and kept crashing so I parked the project. Maybe I'll have to look at it again.

New comment by Fred27 in "The 7-Year Bug That Took 3 Minutes to Fix"

Fred27 — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 20:11:56 +0000

I once fixed a bug with a similar timeframe. Many attempts by many people over the years. One day I finally fixed it and thought I'd let the user who'd raised it know that it was finally resolved. Unfortunately he'd died of natural causes in the meantime. That really hit home how long it'd taken.

New comment by Fred27 in "Ask HN: How do you find the "why" behind old code decisions?"

Fred27 — Fri, 23 Jan 2026 14:02:52 +0000

Anything that has a "why" _should_ have a comment. I know people like to structure code so that it doesn't need comments. However, nice clean well structured code can describe the _what_ without comments but never the _why_.

New comment by Fred27 in "Donut Lab’s all-solid-state battery delivers 400 Wh/kg of energy density"

Fred27 — Tue, 06 Jan 2026 09:54:20 +0000

I'm not sure the test rides are for the version of the bike with this battery. The bike already exists with a more conventional battery pack.

I've had a brief test ride on a pre-production version of the Verge TS. All seemed OK but I thought the handling seemed weird - maybe due to the rear tyre size and geometry.

New comment by Fred27 in "Engineers who dismiss AI"

Fred27 — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 13:40:22 +0000

I just don't find it interesting. The only thing less interesting is the constant evangelism about it.

I also find that the actual coding is important. The typing may not be the most ineresting bit, but it's one of the steps that helps refine the architecture I had in my head.

New comment by Fred27 in "How can I deal with a team member who is always complaining?"

Fred27 — Mon, 08 Sep 2025 15:45:05 +0000

I scanned the article to see if "check whether any of their compaints are valid" but didn't see it anywhere. Sometimes maybe the person complaining might be right..

New comment by Fred27 in "Eliza: The doll that teaches girls to code"

Fred27 — Fri, 20 Jun 2025 08:02:23 +0000

It's a doll, a microbit (with MakeCode) and some double-sided tape.

New comment by Fred27 in "Tailwind CSS v4.0"

Fred27 — Thu, 23 Jan 2025 11:41:27 +0000

Tailwind suits the kind of developers who hack things together and build up technical debt and spaghetti code rather thinking about things first and designing things properly.

New comment by Fred27 in "Norwich restaurant charges £100 ($122) for a pineapple pizza"

Fred27 — Tue, 14 Jan 2025 12:13:18 +0000

There's a pizza place in Munich that does the same. It would have been funny if I hadn't been trying to find somewhere my two tired and grumpy kids would agree on for food. One of them was happy to see his favourite pizza on the menu but not happy when he realised the joke.

New comment by Fred27 in "U2's Larry Mullen Jr: my dyscalculia makes 'counting like climbing Everest'"

Fred27 — Tue, 17 Dec 2024 09:53:59 +0000

Now _that's_ what I came to the comments to either see, or say myself.