Hacker News: IneffablePigeon

New comment by IneffablePigeon in "NHS staff refusing to use FDP over Palantir ethical concerns"

IneffablePigeon — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 15:13:42 +0000

You can absolutely see a GP you’re not registered with if you are travelling and need to. I have done it multiple times. I have been offered it same or next day after calling 111.

New comment by IneffablePigeon in "Sodium-ion EV battery breakthrough delivers 11-min charging and 450 km range"

IneffablePigeon — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 21:13:29 +0000

This article is about a sodium-ion battery which is a different chemistry to the one BYD claimed those results on (that was LFP).

Sodium-ion is exciting because it has the potential to have less degradation over time, much less sensitivity to cold and less reliance on rare earth metals. Could also end up significantly cheaper. However it has struggled to reach the same energy densities and so hasn’t been practical thus far.

This seems like a big step towards it being a practical technology choice for certain models, if it bears out.

New comment by IneffablePigeon in "Mayor of Paris removed parking spaces, reduced the number of cars"

IneffablePigeon — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 14:57:25 +0000

This “nobody cycles in bad weather” is a tired myth. Yes, there’s some truth in it but cycling numbers past the traffic counters in my city in the UK (very similar climate) dip by 10-30% in winter months, and the higher end of those is mostly leisure routes not commuting ones. The Netherlands has a lot of rain and much more cycling than most other places.

New comment by IneffablePigeon in "Supply-chain attack using invisible code hits GitHub and other repositories"

IneffablePigeon — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 11:36:11 +0000

A linter that disallows any code that uses eval in any form seems like a good start to me.

New comment by IneffablePigeon in "Lock Scroll with a Vengeance"

IneffablePigeon — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 12:47:54 +0000

Except the other examples used to work like Apple’s and have switched to the scroll locked implementation.

I think I prefer that mode to be honest, because it leaves you in a consistent place for up/down to take you to instead of it potentially depending where your selection is in the row.

New comment by IneffablePigeon in "The first sodium-ion battery EV is a winter range monster"

IneffablePigeon — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 09:09:16 +0000

Because batteries are still expensive, this is a tough sell for most of the market. You would be removing lots of things that most buyers associate with more luxury cars, but not actually saving much of the cost and therefore not reducing the price that much.

I think (hope) this niche will start to make a comeback as the underlying tech continues to get cheaper. You are starting to see glimmers of it in the low low end with some micromobility cars in Europe just providing phone holders instead of screens.

New comment by IneffablePigeon in "Pretty soon, heat pumps will be able to store and distribute heat as needed"

IneffablePigeon — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 15:43:51 +0000

The legionella thing is a little overblown fwiw. 50 degrees is perfectly adequate, and you can go lower with very little risk if you set it to briefly bump up to 60 every week or two. Even that is not hugely necessary in a domestic setting.

https://www.heatgeek.com/articles/legionella-and-water-tempe...

New comment by IneffablePigeon in "Parasites plagued Roman soldiers at Hadrian's Wall"

IneffablePigeon — Fri, 26 Dec 2025 22:43:39 +0000

My partner researches one parasite named in this study (a type of whipworm) and they actually get their eggs for in vitro work from another researcher abroad who infected himself with the parasite because he finds it helps with his autoimmune disease. He harvests the eggs and distributes them to other teams.

New comment by IneffablePigeon in "What is the nicest thing a stranger has ever done for you?"

IneffablePigeon — Sat, 13 Dec 2025 20:58:20 +0000

Road bikes are reasonably standard. Tubes will generally fit some range of tyre sizes so in practice a single size will fit most road bikes.

New comment by IneffablePigeon in "LG TV's new software update installed MS Copilot, which cannot be deleted"

IneffablePigeon — Sat, 13 Dec 2025 16:48:53 +0000

I too am irritated by their software but they do make nice hardware. I’d have their headphones if I trusted their software, the hardware is perfect IMO. Open and upgradable is not really their forte though.

New comment by IneffablePigeon in "Creating an all-weather driver"

IneffablePigeon — Wed, 29 Oct 2025 09:20:57 +0000

What learnings? Google maps can’t even reliably tell me what lane to be in for the next junction, or what the speed limit of the current road is.

New comment by IneffablePigeon in "iOS 26.1 lets users control Liquid Glass transparency"

IneffablePigeon — Tue, 21 Oct 2025 07:28:19 +0000

I’ve found “Increase Contrast” to be a better setting. Still a little bit of transparency but most elements now have borders and much more readable text. Not too many rough edges.

New comment by IneffablePigeon in "Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image"

IneffablePigeon — Thu, 25 Sep 2025 06:39:46 +0000

Yeah I’ve just set any search starting with !m to redirect to google maps. It’s in the custom search settings somewhere.

I also find Kagi good in the UK - it wasn’t amazing when I first subscribed but got a lot better quite fast. I do occasionally add “uk” to a search when shopping but I did that on Google too.

New comment by IneffablePigeon in "How Britain built some of the world’s safest roads"

IneffablePigeon — Tue, 09 Sep 2025 06:58:03 +0000

A camera is no substitute for actual visibility, at best it’s a mediocre workaround to the problem. There is no evidence at all that I’ve seen that there are fewer pedestrian collisions in modern large vehicles - I would be interested if you have any such data.

Regardless, all of these “extreme measures” could be applied to a smaller car (or even just one with a smaller wall at the front) for the best of both worlds. And collisions will happen regardless, sensors and cameras are not a magic solution.

New comment by IneffablePigeon in "How Britain built some of the world’s safest roads"

IneffablePigeon — Tue, 09 Sep 2025 06:51:18 +0000

Not sure I completely agree (if the definition of vehicles is cars). That disregards miles travelled by cyclists and pedestrians etc. If 10% of the population switched from driving to cycling to work but the death numbers stayed the same, that metric would go up but really nothing would have changed, either mortality wise or in terms of number of people using the roads.

New comment by IneffablePigeon in "Electric bikes might just be the healthiest thing to ever happen to teenagers"

IneffablePigeon — Wed, 06 Aug 2025 13:44:57 +0000

There’s a lot of research that for the average person, getting an e-bike will result in more exercise than a normal bike. Not because you work harder on one but because you’ll use it more. My knee jerk reaction was the same as yours but I’ve changed my mind on it.

New comment by IneffablePigeon in "Volvo delivers 5,000th electric semi"

IneffablePigeon — Sun, 06 Jul 2025 07:02:17 +0000

Nobody is arguing these trucks can currently cover every single use case. The US long distance trucking industry is an outlier.

New comment by IneffablePigeon in "Reviving a modular cargo bike design from the 1930s"

IneffablePigeon — Mon, 12 May 2025 16:34:22 +0000

Did your read the article? It’s talking about a totally different design to a standard bakfiet.

New comment by IneffablePigeon in "Milwaukee M18 Battery Reverse Engineering"

IneffablePigeon — Fri, 18 Apr 2025 07:22:38 +0000

You have to be careful with the adapters because some brands have the circuitry that stops you running the battery too low in the tool and some in the battery. If you end up with a combo where that circuitry doesn’t exist you can over-deplete the battery.

Also: I want that regulation :)

New comment by IneffablePigeon in "US Administration announces 34% tariffs on China, 20% on EU"

IneffablePigeon — Thu, 03 Apr 2025 07:31:14 +0000

This may be true in your demographic (it is in mine) but as of 2015 there were 45 million driving licenses issued and at least 55 million adults.