<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Hacker News: TheGrumpyBrit</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=TheGrumpyBrit</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Thu, 30 Apr 2026 07:09:36 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=TheGrumpyBrit" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by TheGrumpyBrit in "Working on databases from prison"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>You can make the exact same argument about employers paying different rates depending on the country the employee is based in, and for all the same reasons.<p>Is there a good reason why a developer in Thailand or India should be paid less than their colleague who works on the same team, but is based in the US? Many companies believe so - there's a significant difference in the cost of living between those two employees, and employers believe it is fair to adjust the salary to provide a similar quality of life to both.<p>Equally, a person incarcerated in New York City doesn't have the same living costs as a person who has to live in New York City, so you could reasonably argue that any "Cost of living premium" that a company offers to NYC based employees doesn't need to apply to a person who doesn't experience those higher costs.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 16 Jun 2025 14:03:52 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44289600</link><dc:creator>TheGrumpyBrit</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44289600</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44289600</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by TheGrumpyBrit in "Ask HN: LinkedIn sent me a cease and desist for my Chrome extension. Help?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I'd disagree. The users of OPs tool certainly are, but it doesn't seem like that's the responsibility of the developer.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 31 Jan 2023 14:24:43 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34595331</link><dc:creator>TheGrumpyBrit</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34595331</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34595331</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by TheGrumpyBrit in "Show HN: eInk Android Phone, I’m using it as a shipping label"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>UK here, and we don't print return labels for Amazon. We just take the package to the local store, and they scan the returns barcode on my phone which then prints a shipping label right there, and also doubles as an electronic receipt of where I handed over the parcel.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 13 Sep 2022 15:27:30 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32825554</link><dc:creator>TheGrumpyBrit</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32825554</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32825554</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by TheGrumpyBrit in "Ask HN: Why do many people hate Pocket?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Dislike of a particular aspect of a product doesn't need to be concrete/provable - a vague feeling of "I don't like this so I won't use it" is all it takes.<p>With Pocket in particular, the bundling with Firefox moved my impression of it from "this is a potentially useful tool" to "this company feels like they need to force their product down my throat by bundling it with a browser - I don't know why they're doing that but it makes me not want to keep any data with them"</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 14 Mar 2022 15:41:38 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30673747</link><dc:creator>TheGrumpyBrit</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30673747</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30673747</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by TheGrumpyBrit in "Why soda bottles have gaps in their threads (2000)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>In the early 00s there were a number of text services providing the same function. I got banned from one for the questions "What is the collective noun for a clitoris?" and "What is the resonant frequency of a clitoris?"<p>I imagine they were a fun place to work at 2am.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 19 Oct 2021 09:38:55 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28916382</link><dc:creator>TheGrumpyBrit</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28916382</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28916382</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by TheGrumpyBrit in "Drones Raining from the Sky in Zhengzhou"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>A net?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 05 Oct 2021 09:35:19 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28757130</link><dc:creator>TheGrumpyBrit</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28757130</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28757130</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by TheGrumpyBrit in "Can you IoT an Airwick air freshener? (2020)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Great write up! While this one probably isn't for me, it's planted the seed of an idea. I have a new kitten who we've just started allowing free roam of the house at night, which is fine until dawn when she thinks we all need to be awake and starts running around like a mad thing at half past stupid in the morning.<p>If I can make one of her noisier toys smart, maybe I can get Alexa to call her downstairs by turning it on, thereby giving us some peace without locking her away all night.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 12 May 2021 14:36:59 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27130815</link><dc:creator>TheGrumpyBrit</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27130815</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27130815</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by TheGrumpyBrit in "Brexit deal mentions Netscape browser and Mozilla Mail"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>...over multiple decades</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 29 Dec 2020 15:29:13 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25570619</link><dc:creator>TheGrumpyBrit</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25570619</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25570619</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by TheGrumpyBrit in "Expensify.cash"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Their long term product vision is based on an incorrect core belief.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 23 Dec 2020 12:58:20 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25517112</link><dc:creator>TheGrumpyBrit</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25517112</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25517112</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by TheGrumpyBrit in "Expensify.cash"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This seems pointless. The fact that it's not primarily a chat app means nobody is going to use it for day-to-day messaging - you already have to have payments in mind before you start a conversation. So if you want to use it to request payments for an existing group chat, you've got to switch context and invite everyone into this separate chat app just to allow payments.<p>Or you can just drop a paypal.me link into the chat you're already having.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 23 Dec 2020 12:57:24 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25517101</link><dc:creator>TheGrumpyBrit</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25517101</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25517101</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by TheGrumpyBrit in "Ask HN: Alternatives to Ghost for Blogging?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>For me, it's become too clunky for a basic blog, and the fact that it stores your content in a database makes managing it a pain. It ties me to Wordpress and only Wordpress - anything I want to do requires logging in and navigating the admin interface, which I'm not a fan of.<p>By comparison, flat-file CMS's allow me to edit, search and process my content using whatever tool I like. I can update my blog directly in the terminal, or in Github from work and have the changes pushed out automatically by CI. They're not making hundreds of database calls every time I want a page, so they're blazing fast. I can have simple scripts output to a text file and have it rendered as a status page. And if I want to migrate to another solution, my content is literally a bunch of text files that I can just copy to whatever shiny new thing just caught my eye.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 21 Oct 2020 13:30:17 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24847674</link><dc:creator>TheGrumpyBrit</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24847674</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24847674</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by TheGrumpyBrit in "Ask HN: Alternatives to Ghost for Blogging?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I'm quite liking <a href="https://getgrav.org" rel="nofollow">https://getgrav.org</a>. With the admin plugin it's a neat combo of flat file and actual CMS.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 21 Oct 2020 13:19:22 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24847547</link><dc:creator>TheGrumpyBrit</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24847547</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24847547</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by TheGrumpyBrit in "Proprietary Grapes Come with Draconian End User License Agreement"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Also, they're seedless grapes. Planting them would be kind of pointless.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 16 Oct 2020 07:55:38 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24798629</link><dc:creator>TheGrumpyBrit</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24798629</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24798629</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by TheGrumpyBrit in "Police told not to download NHS Covid-19 app"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Because there's a global pandemic in progress and it helps with contact tracing. Privacy concerns and public good are not mutually exclusive.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 29 Sep 2020 08:46:28 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24625381</link><dc:creator>TheGrumpyBrit</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24625381</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24625381</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by TheGrumpyBrit in "Ask HN: So I Hired a Homeless Guy"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Sure, and when the entire business has the lease terminated because they failed to deal with this, they can all claim that society failed them.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 25 Sep 2020 15:36:23 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24590915</link><dc:creator>TheGrumpyBrit</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24590915</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24590915</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by TheGrumpyBrit in "DIY Stream Deck for broke people"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Doesn't this effectively make all your number keys unusable, since they're now mapped to other functions?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 06 Aug 2020 11:41:49 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24070066</link><dc:creator>TheGrumpyBrit</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24070066</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24070066</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by TheGrumpyBrit in "Ask HN: What would happen if a tech giant like Alphabet Inc decided to shutdown?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>If Alphabet just "decided" to shut down - i.e. they didn't go bust, they weren't attacked, they just woke up one day and said "We're ceasing trading with immediate effect"?<p>In all likelihood, the internet as we know it would immediately cease to exist. Huge chunks of infrastructure would immediately go down because they're hosted on GCP. DNS servers which use Google as their root would stop updating. The other FAANG companies would most likely go down too due to various codependent services.<p>In other news, the stock market would collapse, cable and broadcast services would go off the air, and we'd very quickly discover just how incredibly reliant we are on this stuff. I don't think it would be a stretch to say that governments would fall.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 21 Jul 2020 10:42:29 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23905796</link><dc:creator>TheGrumpyBrit</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23905796</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23905796</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by TheGrumpyBrit in "Ask HN: Is There a Manual for Babies?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Hayne's manuals are always a traditional go-to: <a href="https://haynes.com/en-gb/baby-manual-3rd-edition" rel="nofollow">https://haynes.com/en-gb/baby-manual-3rd-edition</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 21 Jul 2020 09:55:31 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23905621</link><dc:creator>TheGrumpyBrit</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23905621</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23905621</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by TheGrumpyBrit in "Ask HN: Are we overreacting to coronavirus?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The problem is, we're not testing people until they're already in hospital. So that 4% mortality rate is very much skewed. The vast majority of people who show symptoms are just self isolating and getting better without ever being tested. We have no clue how many of those people actual had COVID-19 and how many had something else, although the spread we have observed would suggest that it's probably on the higher side.<p>Given the lack of availability of testing, and the fact the the available testing is (rightly) being reserved for those most in need, I don't believe we can rely on the current mortality figures as any measure of accuracy. They're probably more like 0.5% at best.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 20 Mar 2020 15:55:44 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22638593</link><dc:creator>TheGrumpyBrit</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22638593</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22638593</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by TheGrumpyBrit in "Ask HN: A major USA bank is storing passwords in cleartext – what to do?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> As someone who works in finance/banking, I can assure you that this is not uncommon.<p>Your assurance is not reassuring.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 18 Feb 2020 16:18:32 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22357089</link><dc:creator>TheGrumpyBrit</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22357089</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22357089</guid></item></channel></rss>