Hacker News: IrishTechie

New comment by IrishTechie in "The largest electric aircraft just flew [video]"

IrishTechie — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 06:11:46 +0000

Do current aircraft have a backup in-case their fuel tanks run dry?

New comment by IrishTechie in "Could we dredge the Netherlands without fossil fuels? (2018)"

IrishTechie — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 18:04:55 +0000

The savings in CO2 emissions for the likes of rapeseed, sunflower etc per MJ of energy is only around 50% compared to diesel. You have to release a lot of CO2 to grow these crops intensively. And that’s before you even consider where the land for these crops come from, potentially chopping down CO2 absorbing rainforests in many sorts of the world.

Biofuel from Used Cooking Oil is worthy considering for sure, but the quantities possible are tiny compared to the petrol/diesel we use.

New comment by IrishTechie in "Canada will match US tariffs 'dollar for dollar' as trade talks break down"

IrishTechie — Sat, 22 Aug 2026 20:26:58 +0000

> The DSA wants to abolish the existing US democratic process.

That reads as though you’re saying they want to abolish the democratic process, but as somebody living in a country with many of the democratic processes they’re proposing, looking in on what seems like a very dysfunctional democratic process in the US, it seems to be that they want to replace it with a much better version of itself.

New comment by IrishTechie in "Children's stunted lungs show recovery in ultra low emission zone"

IrishTechie — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 08:24:43 +0000

The localisation of it struck me when I read an Irish EPA report on traffic-related air pollution a few years ago that recommended carrying your child if you were walking regularly near heavy traffic. The air at 0.8m (their breathing height) has 5-15% more NOx in it than the air at 2m (the height they would breath at being carried by you).

New comment by IrishTechie in "Increasing the lifespan of a bulb makes it worse in every other way"

IrishTechie — Sat, 01 Aug 2026 12:58:36 +0000

I moved into a house with an obscene number of GU10 LED downlighters. The bulbs were all mid market (I think) brands like Energizer etc. I’d guess they’re coming up to 7-8 years old and I have now had to replace most of them, probably 30-40 bulbs from a couple of manufacturers that all just started to fail over about 12 months.

I also have quite a few Philips Hue bulbs, I’ve had 1 fail out of 20-30 and I think that was not the LED itself but some control board. Some are going on 10 years old.

New comment by IrishTechie in "German Peasants' War"

IrishTechie — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 12:58:44 +0000

I know there are some criticisms of Capital in the 21st Century and Picketty himself, but the book changed how I see the world profoundly, I cannot recommend it highly enough to anybody interested in these topics. The audiobook is a good way to digest it for the average person.

New comment by IrishTechie in "So Reddit has decided that plain HTML is unsafe"

IrishTechie — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 13:11:32 +0000

You can still use old.reddit, you just need to be logged in. That said, if old.reddit ever went away altogether I would stop using it too.

New comment by IrishTechie in "My dad helped build North America's oat supply chain: Can it be remade?"

IrishTechie — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 19:28:32 +0000

I drink milk because a) I prefer flat whites to espressos and b) to make my cornflakes wet. In both cases I prefer oat milk and in neither cases do I care about nutrition. I’m guessing that’s the reason.

New comment by IrishTechie in "Since Linux 6.9, LUKS suspend stopped wiping disk-encryption keys from memory"

IrishTechie — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 18:26:46 +0000

We have more issues with FileVault than we do with BitLocker, the latter being a fleet 5 times larger than the former. I find both “fine” for enterprise.

New comment by IrishTechie in "Mercedes‑Benz starts large‑scale production of electric axial flux motor"

IrishTechie — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 19:04:22 +0000

Also found it fascinating, although on the discussion about brakes I thought about how regen braking turns off in my EV when the battery is full, because there is no where to put the power. So you either keep some of the battery always available to soak up braking energy (and hope people never charge to full at the top of a mountain and exhaust the buffer) or you include a set of normal brakes for when regen is not possible, both options negating the weight savings. Right?

New comment by IrishTechie in "Anthropic confidentially submits draft S-1 to the SEC"

IrishTechie — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 19:56:24 +0000

I recall thinking the same thing when Apple and Microsoft hit $1tn. Here we are less than a decade later and they’re up 3-400%.

New comment by IrishTechie in "Japan is gripped by mass allergies. A 1950s project is to blame"

IrishTechie — Wed, 20 May 2026 13:08:23 +0000

I guess they meant 'by nature', but maybe not, which will be fun to hear!

New comment by IrishTechie in "How Pizza Tycoon simulated traffic on a 25 MHz CPU"

IrishTechie — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 13:33:51 +0000

I was looking for this game on GOG only an hour ago having regaled a teenager with how great it was! It’s not on GOG unfortunately.

New comment by IrishTechie in "Sam Altman may control our future – can he be trusted?"

IrishTechie — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 21:34:05 +0000

I’ve often thought about a model like this and would love to see a few news outlets run it as a pilot and see how it stacks up.

New comment by IrishTechie in "EmDash – A spiritual successor to WordPress that solves plugin security"

IrishTechie — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 20:46:21 +0000

I had a similar realisation in IT support - I regularly discover the answers I get from junior-to mid-level engineers need to be verified, are based on false assumption or are wildly wrong, so why am I being so critical of LLM responses. Hopefully some day they’ll make it to senior engineer levels of reasoning, but in the meantime they’re just as good as many on the teams I work with and so have their place.

New comment by IrishTechie in "Apple Business"

IrishTechie — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 19:57:55 +0000

The baffling thing is that iOS+MDM has been fantastic over the years. macOS is a completely different beast though.

New comment by IrishTechie in "Apple Business"

IrishTechie — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 19:55:46 +0000

It can be done that way, but it is definitely not the norm. Businesses will generally “purchase” (many for €0) apps in ABM that are to be used for business purposes and push those to devices, the user can then use an Apple ID to download any other apps they want for personal use.

New comment by IrishTechie in "Honda is killing its EVs"

IrishTechie — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 07:54:26 +0000

€1500 or so for Tesla to replace the screen, cheaper in many other cars.

New comment by IrishTechie in "Ireland shuts last coal plant, becomes 15th coal-free country in Europe (2025)"

IrishTechie — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 14:34:20 +0000

Energy ≠ electricity

New comment by IrishTechie in "World-first gigabit laser link between aircraft and geostationary satellite"

IrishTechie — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 13:18:17 +0000

I guess if your goal is just to stream aircraft telemetry and black box like recordings then latency may not be high on the agenda.