Hacker News: alastairr

MiniDisc, the Forgotten Format (2012)

alastairr — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 08:27:29 +0000

Article URL: https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2012/sep/24/sony-minidisc-20-years

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47899726

Points: 2

# Comments: 1

New comment by alastairr in "What if the browser built the UI for you?"

alastairr — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 06:44:04 +0000

"and honestly, ..." "heres the thing ..." [em dash every paragraph]

Smells like default Claude voice. I like the ideas, but if someone can't be bothered to proof read their own article, then I don't know why we should trust that any of it was human generated.

Ask HN: Tools for searching ArXiv by relevance and quality?

alastairr — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 07:22:23 +0000

I know there are a lot of tools out there for searching ArXiv for relevance, but given the volumes on ArXiv now, relevance is rarely enough.

Does anyone know or use any tools that use any types of impact / authority / quality metrics to filter out weak or derivative works that might otherwise have flooded a relevance-only search?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47422595

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by alastairr in "Have a fucking website"

alastairr — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 06:38:08 +0000

Couldn't agree more. Worth pointing out that sites owned by Meta and Twitter in particular have become much more hostile to signed out users - often impossible to view a business' listing without a signed in account. Walled gardens are going to wall, of course. But I'm not sure how much small business owners realise that a proportion of traffic / interest has much more difficulty in finding them.

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

alastairr — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 14:26:54 +0000

You are right that Taiwan doesn't. But it has consequences, Taipower is forced to undercharge against market prices, but is backstopped by the government.

At the end of the day, it's a global market, and if you want it 'cheap' someone has to pick up the tab. Either it's taxpayers now, taxpayers in the future or consumers now.

https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2025/03/23/2...

New comment by alastairr in "The death of social media is the renaissance of RSS (2025)"

alastairr — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 09:18:12 +0000

I'm no longer keeping it updated with new content, but I curated and made searchable about 40k feeds over the years https://blognerd.app/

New comment by alastairr in "Ask HN: What causes Claude's '[mistake] – wait, no [correction]' pattern?"

alastairr — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 14:21:46 +0000

Not sure I agree with you. For lower ability models, yes. Claude Opus 4.6 is incredibly capable, so it's odd to me it has this residual 'misspeak' behaviour.

Ask HN: What causes Claude's '[mistake] – wait, no [correction]' pattern?

alastairr — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 14:13:35 +0000

I've noticed this more and more recently, especially with Opus 4.6. Not super frequently, but enough that it stands out given how capable 4.6 is. Has anyone else seen this? Any theories as to what causes it?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47166365

Points: 2

# Comments: 4

New comment by alastairr in "Ask HN: AI tools for learning and spaced repetition"

alastairr — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 10:49:31 +0000

sounds cool. I guess you built this? Is there any way to learn more about how it works before signing in? The homepage doesn't give much away :)

Ask HN: AI tools for learning and spaced repetition

alastairr — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 10:38:00 +0000

I'm looking for any products for learning new topics and that are designed for helping users retain new knowledge - eg. with spaced repetition or smart use of follow-up questions.

I can almost get chatgpt to do this, and their voice mode is great for question / answer, but it's not really setup to understand / track what you know and what your learning objectives are.

Curious to find out any positive experiences of any new tools out there.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46822786

Points: 1

# Comments: 3

New comment by alastairr in "Vitamin D and Omega-3 have a larger effect on depression than antidepressants"

alastairr — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 12:14:37 +0000

While I agree with the general point

Vitamin D is toxic (and ultimately fatal) at high doses, which is why the 'suggested' dosages of between 400IU and 1000IU are so conservative. You may need more, but you should get a blood test.

New comment by alastairr in "Why DuckDB is my first choice for data processing"

alastairr — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 19:00:34 +0000

I'm running duckdb over 500gb of parquet on a largish desktop (50gb ram) and it's been smooth & fast. I guess OOM issues will matter at some point, but I think it's going to be in the top 1% of real world use cases.

New comment by alastairr in "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (December 2025)"

alastairr — Sun, 14 Dec 2025 23:10:32 +0000

This is very cool! I built something a little similar https://blognerd.app. I'm really interested in the RSS remixing idea, though I didn't quite crack it. I'll be interested to see how you get on

How much AI do we need, really?

alastairr — Sat, 13 Dec 2025 09:38:42 +0000

Article URL: https://newsletter.alastairrushworth.com/p/how-much-ai-do-we-need-really

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46253318

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by alastairr in "Guided Meditation Podcast Aggregator"

alastairr — Thu, 27 Nov 2025 16:04:36 +0000

Just a list of links to some wonderful dharma podcast meditation episodes. I made it for myself, but maybe some others here will find it useful!

Guided Meditation Podcast Aggregator

alastairr — Thu, 27 Nov 2025 16:04:36 +0000

Article URL: https://meditation.alastairrushworth.com/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46070514

Points: 2

# Comments: 1

New comment by alastairr in "Claude outage"

alastairr — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 09:27:58 +0000

yep, same for me and unable to use the API either

Blogfeeds.net Aggregator

alastairr — Thu, 30 Oct 2025 08:48:45 +0000

Article URL: https://bearblog.stevedylan.dev/introducing-blogfeedsnet-aggregator/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45757735

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Curating and Filtering RSS Feeds

alastairr — Thu, 30 Oct 2025 08:46:43 +0000

Article URL: https://blog.balthazar-rouberol.com/curating-and-filtering-rss-feeds

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45757729

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by alastairr in "Life After Work"

alastairr — Wed, 29 Oct 2025 16:02:02 +0000

I agree, though it's hard to tell what people outside the tech sphere are signalling about what they think about the tech - many seem to be pretty positive about chatgpt.

What concerns me is that I don't think it's widely understood enough that there's a frantic, cultish mindset around the tech in SV and tech circles - a mindset that wants to see society upended in search of justifying the investments being made.