Hacker News: TomWhitwell

New comment by TomWhitwell in "When the cheap one is the cool one"

TomWhitwell — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 08:00:33 +0000

https://www.alexandercowan.com/yellow-walkman-data-art-of-cu...

New comment by TomWhitwell in "Show HN: Sol LeWitt-style instruction-based drawings in the browser"

TomWhitwell — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 10:52:14 +0000

Love it, could you do Harold Cohen next?

New comment by TomWhitwell in "Brutalist Southbank Centre Listed"

TomWhitwell — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 10:04:31 +0000

It’s not an exaggeration to say that every day of the year, from maybe noon to midnight, these buildings are surrounded by people enjoying the city - walking along the river, going to arts events, eating out, walking between offices. It’s a hugely popular free public resource that is a massive good for Londoners. Previously (not here but at other points on the river) the water front was private - accessible only to people inside buildings - or derelict, like the areas around Tate Modern and Tower Bridge. This is one of the most human and whatever the opposite of alienating spaces in London today.

New comment by TomWhitwell in "Brutalist Southbank Centre Listed"

TomWhitwell — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 09:57:52 +0000

> lived locally for 10 years and visited only a handful of times

That was a mistake

New comment by TomWhitwell in "Show HN: Hacker News, but every headline is hysterical clickbait"

TomWhitwell — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 12:56:11 +0000

This is exactly what Upworthy did - they invented some of the clickbait headline formats that are still used today (for less positive news) https://web.archive.org/web/20231114181702/https://www.fastc...

Operation Northwoods

TomWhitwell — Sun, 30 Nov 2025 15:43:08 +0000

Article URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46097530

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by TomWhitwell in "Paris had a moving sidewalk in 1900, and a Thomas Edison film captured it (2020)"

TomWhitwell — Mon, 03 Nov 2025 08:21:51 +0000

In Hong Kong, public outdoor escalators like the Central–Mid-Levels Escalator are a big part of public transport. They go one way - down from 6am-10am, otherwise up. They’ve regenerated/gentrified a whole area of town that was previously hard to get to. Few cars = people travel differently.

New comment by TomWhitwell in "NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission"

TomWhitwell — Wed, 22 Oct 2025 09:37:18 +0000

Underrated comment

New comment by TomWhitwell in "Do things that don't scale, and then don't scale"

TomWhitwell — Sat, 16 Aug 2025 19:20:06 +0000

An app can be a home‑cooked meal, by Robin Sloan: https://www.robinsloan.com/notes/home-cooked-app/

New comment by TomWhitwell in "So what's the difference between plotted and printed artwork?"

TomWhitwell — Thu, 14 Aug 2025 06:46:20 +0000

Harold Cohen was a British painter in the ‘60s who ended up in the Stanford AI lab in 1971, using plotters (and initially turtle robots) to draw images created by a chunk of code he called AARON. There are some bits of that code - particularly the ‘freehand line algorithm’ and its collision detection allowing lines to meet without crossing - that I can’t really understand how they worked on such primitive hardware & software: https://www.katevassgalerie.com/blog/harold-cohen-aaron-comp...

New comment by TomWhitwell in "It's a DE9, not a DB9 (but we know what you mean)"

TomWhitwell — Fri, 25 Jul 2025 20:20:12 +0000

A favourite paper: “ A Microfluidic D-subminiature Connector” “ Standardized, affordable, user-friendly world-to-chip interfaces represent one of the major barriers to the adoption of microfluidics. We present a connector system for plug-and-play interfacing of microfluidic devices to multiple input and output lines.” https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3786702/ Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32886596

Little analogue modular synth with RP2040 program cards [video]

TomWhitwell — Tue, 24 Jun 2025 22:09:58 +0000

Article URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABbWmZOtmig

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44371585

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by TomWhitwell in "InventWood is about to mass-produce wood that's stronger than steel"

TomWhitwell — Mon, 19 May 2025 07:56:29 +0000

Seems like a larger format version of Lignilock wooden nails https://www.beck-fastening.com/en/innovation/lignoloc

10k Drum Machines

TomWhitwell — Sat, 10 May 2025 10:24:32 +0000

Article URL: https://10kdrummachines.com/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43944552

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

Meteor Burst Communications

TomWhitwell — Sun, 20 Apr 2025 06:49:13 +0000

Article URL: https://ronaldelliott.com/mbc.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43741987

Points: 18

# Comments: 2

New comment by TomWhitwell in "The cultural evolution of distortion in music"

TomWhitwell — Wed, 09 Apr 2025 08:07:27 +0000

I liked the way I could download the PDF without accepting cookies. Not sure if that was a bug or a feature but I liked it.

New comment by TomWhitwell in "Yoko: A Biography"

TomWhitwell — Fri, 04 Apr 2025 20:30:44 +0000

I saw and enjoyed bag piece at the recent Tate retrospective- pretty much as she describes it the contrast between the experience of the people inside the bag (giggling, wriggling) and the people standing round watching int the gallery was interesting & memorable. And as for cut piece - obviously related to the later Rhythm 0 by Marina Abramovic - unless you think there’s no possible value in performance art, this seems to me like pretty remarkable work.

New comment by TomWhitwell in "Yoko: A Biography"

TomWhitwell — Fri, 04 Apr 2025 19:51:11 +0000

Her loft series in 1960 was an amazing moment in time - La Monte Young, John Cage, Marcel Duchamp etc https://press.moma.org/wp-content/files_mf/yoko_sectiontext_...

New comment by TomWhitwell in "Vietnamese Graphic Design"

TomWhitwell — Sun, 23 Feb 2025 18:14:29 +0000

Such a wild take after looking at, for example, a propaganda poster captioned “Work together to develop pig breeding and new varieties of rice” where the artist has decided to make the pigs in question bright purple with yin-yang signs on their backs.

New comment by TomWhitwell in "Kirin demos "electric salt spoon" at CES"

TomWhitwell — Sat, 11 Jan 2025 09:48:27 +0000

This idea has been around for a long time: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22429935-000-food-bla...