Hacker News: alasdairking

New comment by alasdairking in "Only 2.6% of the most visited websites have fully valid HTML"

alasdairking — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 15:26:47 +0000

It never mattered. It only mattered that your site worked in the big browsers. Internet Explorer then, Chrome and iOS Safari now.

Developers would write their standards-compliant code, boast about it on Slashdot, then put in the hacks and weirdnesses to make it work on IE6. They could have skipped the standards step.

I don't say this is a good thing: I probably have XHTML pages on one of my old, private sites, and I ran them through validators.

But it was a waste of time, just like, I dunno, using WinUI instead of Electron is now, or not using React. Go with reality.

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

alasdairking — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 16:06:40 +0000

No, my Microsoft Azure 2FA sends codes to WhatsApp, not SMS.

UK, where WhatsApp is absolutely mandatory.

New comment by alasdairking in "The curious case of the disappearing Polish S (2015)"

alasdairking — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 06:22:44 +0000

This bug comes from a programmer trying to fix one problem - users press Control S and get a save dialog - by altering some fundamental and bug-prone behaviour.

Imagine the damage programmers could do if they had more options to meddle easily! They have low-level APIs if they need them to hook keys. Best leave it at that.

Meanwhile, there is the accesskey attribute in HTML to let you customise shortcut keys: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Reference/...

New comment by alasdairking in "Digging into Drama at the Document Foundation"

alasdairking — Fri, 08 May 2026 13:37:28 +0000

Clicked the link, "oooh, semantic document structure for scripts? Layout templates for libretti? Spellcheck rules for handling character names?" Oh well.

New comment by alasdairking in "I Love Board Games: A Personal Obsession Explained by Psychology"

alasdairking — Mon, 16 Feb 2026 22:25:02 +0000

You should play at a games cafe or ask around for:

Pandemic. Ticket to Ride.

Modern classics, great fun, easy to get into.

For meatier games I really like Scythe: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/169786/scythe

New comment by alasdairking in "Sins of the Children"

alasdairking — Sun, 18 Jan 2026 22:00:57 +0000

Reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Legacy_of_Heorot

New comment by alasdairking in "Parental controls aren't for parents"

alasdairking — Fri, 02 Jan 2026 15:09:09 +0000

Try the XBox app on your phone, I managed to find settings there once that unlocked Minecraft.

I'd like a flag for messaging apps called "turn off images and video". Sure, my kid might get called nasty names in plain text, but would not get beheading or bestiality videos or underage schoolmate pics.

New comment by alasdairking in ".NET MAUI is coming to Linux and the browser"

alasdairking — Wed, 12 Nov 2025 07:58:34 +0000

On Windows, with common messages boxes, you can just do Ctrl+C for copy and you get the message box text in the clipboard.

Don't know if that helps you particularly, but it is great when it works and little-known.

New comment by alasdairking in "60k kids have avoided peanut allergies due to 2015 advice, study finds"

alasdairking — Tue, 21 Oct 2025 06:28:47 +0000

Running experiments is really really hard due to regulations. Difficult to blame doctors for that.

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-from-oversight-...

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

alasdairking — Thu, 25 Sep 2025 06:37:09 +0000

Absolutely this. It is so disappointing that the big tech companies provide ANOTHER opportunity for less-skilled users to make a mistake.

And a mistake that might hurt them with security and certainly cost and functionality.

And in a core, security-sensitive function like "what third party apps should I have on my personal device?" This is not searching for fun memes on Reddit!

New comment by alasdairking in "Voting age to be lowered to 16 by next general election"

alasdairking — Thu, 17 Jul 2025 20:07:14 +0000

You can become a "junior soldier", which means you go to college in Harrogate until you are 18 and actually become a soldier.

https://jobs.army.mod.uk/regular-army/entry-options/soldier/

New comment by alasdairking in "Voting age to be lowered to 16 by next general election"

alasdairking — Thu, 17 Jul 2025 13:16:02 +0000

You now have to 18 to marry. The age of consent remains sixteen. So having a baby is fine, but so long as you are not married.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/legal-age-of-marriage-in-...

New comment by alasdairking in "Tips for using Gemini 2.0 for PDF ingestion"

alasdairking — Tue, 04 Mar 2025 20:40:15 +0000

Totally agree. Great product. I wish I could feed in internal company meeting recordings though.

New comment by alasdairking in "Games Workshop and the big ambition of a miniatures business"

alasdairking — Sun, 19 Jan 2025 06:20:14 +0000

Because it is blessed by the Emperor of Mankind. Glory to the Emperor!

It's great fun, smile.

New comment by alasdairking in "LLM based agents as Dungeon Masters"

alasdairking — Tue, 14 Jan 2025 21:07:09 +0000

A good use for this is people wanting to try an RPG, but not having a bunch of people to do that with. A parent wanting to try out this D&D thing so he or she can run it with the kids, for example.

New comment by alasdairking in "The Battle Line at Louvain"

alasdairking — Sun, 17 Nov 2024 11:07:55 +0000

It was only officially renamed in 1930.

New comment by alasdairking in "Ask HN: What's your "it's not stupid if it works" story?"

alasdairking — Sat, 23 Dec 2023 00:01:00 +0000

ZX Spectrum BASIC. Numbers could only be 8 digits, needed more for a Spacemaster RPG ship designer program I wrote for my friends. Came up with storing values as strings and splitting/manipulating them as numbers when required. About fifteen years old. Probably the smartest thing I have ever written, grin.

New comment by alasdairking in "Alcohol without the hangover – scientists are finding ways"

alasdairking — Sat, 29 Jul 2023 19:44:38 +0000

Yeah, this is like "pints of mild" in 1980s old man pubs in the North. I am skeptical such beers exist now in any mainstream pub or bar.

New comment by alasdairking in "[dead]"

alasdairking — Tue, 11 Jul 2023 07:11:28 +0000

This is vital for accessibility tools, like screen readers for blind people. Also for as-you-type word prediction tools, autocorrection that works globally.

More generally power like this lets you turn Windows machines into A Thing That Does Just What You Want, rather than a locked-down thing like an iPad. Which are also great, but a different use case. For example, you could use this for exam proctoring, or kiosks, or remapping Windows keys to particular functions in your video game or Android emulator.

New comment by alasdairking in "The web’s most important decision"

alasdairking — Mon, 01 May 2023 18:23:15 +0000

Nah. Adding the IMG tag. Without that, it is text only, and destined for limited uptake like Prestel or CEEFAX.