Hacker News: TomK32

New comment by TomK32 in "Italian parliament votes for return to nuclear energy"

TomK32 — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 11:57:10 +0000

Neither nuclear nor gas or coal will matter any more in a few years. It took California only six years to install 41% of the battery capacity goal it has for 2045[1]. As batteries are becoming part for new solar and wind installations, they will push nuclear and gas out simply by being cheaper and more predictable as an investment.

[1] https://www.emi-bg.com/en/battery-storage-in-california-has-...

New comment by TomK32 in "BYD Slashes Price of Electric Car and Becomes Cheapest in Australia [video]"

TomK32 — Sun, 20 Sep 2026 06:20:32 +0000

All infrastructure for cars and the fallout from their pollution (don't forget the tyres) is heavily subsidized by the tax payer and not as cost effective as a tram or railway.

New comment by TomK32 in "BYD Slashes Price of Electric Car and Becomes Cheapest in Australia [video]"

TomK32 — Sun, 20 Sep 2026 06:18:29 +0000

Australia is one of the most urbanized countries in the world with 87% of its population living in cities and suburbs. Being car dependent is a political choice pushed by the car industry for decades. Getting people into public transports, onto bicycles or their two feet requires reducing the vast space cities waste on privately owned cars. Super blocks that focus on active travel, less surface parking space and slower speeds are what is needed.

New comment by TomK32 in "4,400-Year-Old Tomb of Egyptian Judge Found at Saqqara with Colors on Walls"

TomK32 — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 05:06:02 +0000

Just put "Don't use emojis" into the prompt.

New comment by TomK32 in "4,400-Year-Old Tomb of Egyptian Judge Found at Saqqara with Colors on Walls"

TomK32 — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 05:05:11 +0000

Ran it through several testes, only one flagged a few sentences as AI, including the one you mention. Fair enough, it's unlikely that English is the (turkish in this case?) author's first language and a little AI help can't hurt here.

I learned a great lesson for a gamedev youtuber this summer: Use AI to give you a summary what you have to implement, what functions you'll need, what edge case you missed and then write it yourself. Putting this into practice helps me to refine the ticket I'm working on. With the last ticket I had to persuade the AI (Atlassian's Rovo in my case) that a new data model wasn't necessary and we can do it more elegantly with less code.

Many of us still have to figure out how AI fits into our workflow, letting it do all the work isn't it but asking AI to point you towards the goal and let it review/refine your work sounds a lot more acceptable to me.

New comment by TomK32 in "AI companies destroy physical books – let's scan rare books before it's too late"

TomK32 — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 06:16:50 +0000

Books have been declared dead several times of the last quarter century, yet in the EU alone it's still half a million new titles every year and a 40 billion Euro market.

New comment by TomK32 in "AI companies destroy physical books – let's scan rare books before it's too late"

TomK32 — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 06:06:41 +0000

I've read a few of those articles in recent months, both in English and German, and I did read any book title that was rare. The Rare Book & Special Collection Div at the Library Congress considers books published before 1801 as rare. Searching for old books on abebooks is surprisingly hard but I didn't find any for less than 10 Euro and nothing in those articles suggested they were buying up anything but cheap books.

New comment by TomK32 in "Why some people mow a lawn better than others"

TomK32 — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 21:16:54 +0000

I had a neighbour once who was quite unhappy about how short their lawnmower cut the grass, I did show them the two adjustment screws to raise the ground clearance...

New comment by TomK32 in "It's a shame what's happened to radio"

TomK32 — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 15:21:11 +0000

bbc.co.uk still allows listening to all stations live and yt-dlp has no problem to download shows, you just got to find your way to the correct page that doesn't trigger a redict to bbc.com e.g. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001qng7/episodes/player

New comment by TomK32 in "It's a shame what's happened to radio"

TomK32 — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 15:17:28 +0000

BBC 6music has a lot of great DJs, Chris Hawkins being my favourite with plenty of banter for a 5am show. While it's just a Friday late night show: Ashley Storrie on BBC Radio Scotland and don't be surprised if you hear the same listeners sending in messages on both stations. But then, they aren't commercial stations with less pressure. Whenever I have to listen to an Austrian (where I live) station I get bored. Even the public funded stations have commercials or, even more annoying, un-labeled advertising for the lottery.

New comment by TomK32 in "Qwen 3.8"

TomK32 — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 13:35:57 +0000

You might want to ignore politics all day long, but rather sooner than later it's politics that will creep into your life and take an interest in whatever things that politicians mis-understand about your little niche.

New comment by TomK32 in "Qwen 3.8"

TomK32 — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 13:32:30 +0000

[flagged]

New comment by TomK32 in "America pays workers just 27% of what its wealth allows – the worst in the OECD"

TomK32 — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 19:09:57 +0000

Oh sorry, I missed that CA over-cautious warning label nonsense.

New comment by TomK32 in "The Three-Second Theft: Why AI Voice Fraud Outruns Every Defence"

TomK32 — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 14:57:57 +0000

I'm getting a lot of calls recently and don't give them more than a Hello and whatever music, radio show or Tour de France broadcast I'm listening to. Sometimes they hang in there for half a minute.

New comment by TomK32 in "I tricked Claude into leaking your deepest, darkest secrets"

TomK32 — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 11:44:46 +0000

They only do if you give your container that file system as a volume.

New comment by TomK32 in "America pays workers just 27% of what its wealth allows – the worst in the OECD"

TomK32 — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 10:45:33 +0000

The DOT has a list of interesting studies on the active transportation in the form of walking and cycling https://www.transportation.gov/mission/health/active-transpo...

You can also search for studies that compare the societal cost/benefit of using a car vs a bicycle. The generally accepted conclusion is that cars have a cost while cycling has a benefit for society.

New comment by TomK32 in "Count Binface"

TomK32 — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 07:45:02 +0000

> If he goes into the parliament building without his costume

If the people vote for a man in a bin costume then he should have the right to represent them in that very same costume. On the other hand, to satisfy both his desire for a costumes as well as parliament's rules that basically allow its members to look at each other eye to eye, he might switch to a transparent bin. Something that would benefit the whole country as transparent bins allow its users as well as the bin (wo)men to identify bins that have been filled with the wrong waste.

New comment by TomK32 in "Count Binface"

TomK32 — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 07:41:02 +0000

He was re-elected once more in 2009 and because the English have a really weird political system, the direct election of mayor was abolished by a vote in 2012 making him the first, last and only directly elected mayor the town ever had.

New comment by TomK32 in "Count Binface"

TomK32 — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 07:30:27 +0000

Other interested candidates can submit their nomination from tomorrow to Friday and I think one needs the support of only 10 constituents and a hundred quid

More info should follow here today:

https://www.tendringdc.gov.uk/content/13-august-2026-electio...

New comment by TomK32 in "EU Parliament greenlights Chat Control 1.0"

TomK32 — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 18:10:45 +0000

Wouldn't it be fun if those who are in favour of such measures were the first to behave their messages scanned?