<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: alexdbird</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=alexdbird</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Wed, 27 May 2026 17:57:24 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=alexdbird" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by alexdbird in "We are Poles, so, of course, we print in Latin"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>You can't deny it, mass is much more stylish in Latin ;)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 27 May 2026 13:18:15 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48293872</link><dc:creator>alexdbird</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48293872</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48293872</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by alexdbird in "John Ternus to become Apple CEO"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>My experience studying 'Computing and Electronics' - a combined degree - was that we could get practically any extensions or leniency we wanted by blaming the other specialism. To each the other was mistrusted and magic.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 22 Apr 2026 09:06:15 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47860982</link><dc:creator>alexdbird</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47860982</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47860982</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by alexdbird in "MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>My work laptop is M3 and it needs to be because the security crapware makes some things literally 10x slower. Meanwhile my personal M1 is more than adequate for normal work.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 04 Mar 2026 10:00:27 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47245330</link><dc:creator>alexdbird</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47245330</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47245330</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by alexdbird in "Setting up phones is a nightmare"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This often tells you a key has been invalidated due to updated security logic.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 02 Mar 2026 10:09:28 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47215940</link><dc:creator>alexdbird</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47215940</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47215940</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by alexdbird in "Little Free Library"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Definitely don't make it too shallow either. People are forever jamming oversize books in ours and damaging the doors/hinges/catch.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 02 Mar 2026 09:03:03 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47215452</link><dc:creator>alexdbird</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47215452</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47215452</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by alexdbird in "The Windows 95 user interface: A case study in usability engineering (1996)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>In fact, the real crime of the Magic Mouse is how awkward it is to switch it between machines.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 01 Mar 2026 11:20:54 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47205731</link><dc:creator>alexdbird</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47205731</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47205731</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by alexdbird in "The Windows 95 user interface: A case study in usability engineering (1996)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It's called the Action icon, a generalisation of its original Share meaning. It's used throughout the Apple ecosystem so knowing that's where actions live is not a big expectation.<p>You've mangled the steps. You only press one Action icon in this sequence, then you select Print, then you need to select the printer and any other options, then you tap Print. Which of these steps do you think 'abstruse'?<p>Are you suggesting they should use a little icon of a printer, peripheral that takes many wildly different forms, instead of the word Print?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 01 Mar 2026 09:16:27 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47205069</link><dc:creator>alexdbird</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47205069</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47205069</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by alexdbird in "The Windows 95 user interface: A case study in usability engineering (1996)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Honestly, as a user of the mouse, I think the main reason people talk about the mouse is bike shedding. Charging isn't a problem in actual use, but everyone sure has an opinion on it.<p>There are plenty of contenders for 'worst ideas they ever had' and this just isn't up there.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 01 Mar 2026 09:05:19 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47205014</link><dc:creator>alexdbird</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47205014</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47205014</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by alexdbird in "EXIF orientation info in PNGs isn't used for image-orientation: from-image"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I personally like the status quo that PNGs don't encode orientation. I can dump PNGs when I'm debugging and I know I'm looking at the bits the same way up as the code is!</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 21 Nov 2025 15:13:19 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46005316</link><dc:creator>alexdbird</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46005316</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46005316</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by alexdbird in "I spent the day teaching seniors how to use an iPhone"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> Home and End are mapped to C-a and C-e literally everywhere in Cocoa.<p>Even in iOS, if you have a hardware keyboard attached! But Ctrl-a/e have come in with BSD, the more common Mac shortcuts are Cmd-left/right, which go to the beginning/end of the current line, whereas Ctrl-a/e follow wrapped text.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 05 Oct 2025 06:56:20 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45479420</link><dc:creator>alexdbird</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45479420</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45479420</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by alexdbird in "I spent the day teaching seniors how to use an iPhone"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Not having to think about it is just a nice little win every time. Abort is really very different from copy.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 05 Oct 2025 06:51:57 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45479398</link><dc:creator>alexdbird</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45479398</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45479398</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by alexdbird in "I spent the day teaching seniors how to use an iPhone"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Indeed they do, as they did 25 years, in OS 9.<p>And they have F1-12, though you need Fn to use them unless you invert their function in settings. And they have a numerical keypad, as well as pageup/pagedown/home/end/delete - on a full size keyboard. And you can type all those things easily using the meta keys and cursors on the bottom row anyway. And why would screenshot need its own meta key in 2025, with so many ways to screenshot or record. But I digress.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 05 Oct 2025 06:46:33 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45479372</link><dc:creator>alexdbird</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45479372</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45479372</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by alexdbird in "I spent the day teaching seniors how to use an iPhone"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Well, I won't cover all the same things the replies do there!<p>I can empathise, as I always used a full size keyboard on Windows/Linux, and I chose Thinkpads and decent Dells where the extended key layout wasn't completely bastardised.<p>I insisted on a full size Mac keyboard for nearly a decade afterwards. Then I realised that, barring the niceness of full height cursor keys, it was a useless appendix that meant I had to move my hand ~8 inches more every single time I needed the mouse/trackpad.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 05 Oct 2025 06:34:21 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45479312</link><dc:creator>alexdbird</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45479312</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45479312</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by alexdbird in "I spent the day teaching seniors how to use an iPhone"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> reduced key availability<p>Genuine question, what do you think is missing?<p>I wish it was slightly easier to type a #. But OTOH it's /way/ easier to type accented characters (in either the fast way for regular use or the slow way that's much more discoverable) or different types of punctuation. Without memorising numerical codes, which is what I remember from Windows.<p>I certainly don't miss all the extra navigation keys, when I have the meta-keys and cursors right under my fingers, exactly the same on any Mac I use.<p>I'm struggling to remember more than minor differences from a PC keyboard. N.B. I'm in the UK so that might make a difference.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 03 Oct 2025 21:53:33 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45468244</link><dc:creator>alexdbird</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45468244</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45468244</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by alexdbird in "I spent the day teaching seniors how to use an iPhone"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>When I see someone calling the keyboard things like 'inane' I read 'not what I'm used to'.<p>Personally I found the keyboard a breath of fresh air when I switched from Windows/Linux. The whole text editing experience is gloriously consistent and logical, though marred by a growing number of cross-platform apps that don't behave correctly.<p>What I think of as inane is Linux's having a slightly different key combo for copy depending on what context you're in. Or all the mad extended keyboard keys I used to use that were in a different place on every laptop.<p>[the keyboard experience is much less well thought out on non-English keyboards though, as another comment points out, come on Apple sort it out]</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 03 Oct 2025 09:08:30 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45460746</link><dc:creator>alexdbird</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45460746</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45460746</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by alexdbird in "The Asus gaming laptop ACPI firmware bug"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>We had dozens of 2013 MBP with discrete GPU mux where I worked. I bought one afterwards and used it until the M1 laptops came out, for pretty much everything you can use a laptop for. Never had or saw this problem in any of them, FWIW!</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 17 Sep 2025 10:52:47 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45274171</link><dc:creator>alexdbird</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45274171</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45274171</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by alexdbird in "Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This list isn't really selling it to me! Mmm, aluminium, yummy propylene glycol.<p>The things you need from that list are Wheat flour (white), corn flour (starch), Sugar, Cocoa, Baking powder, Salt, Vanilla. I doubt carob adds anything that a spoonful of instant coffee wouldn't.<p>Now I get your point that it wouldn't produce the same result, but I'd be surprised if it produced a <i>worse</i> result.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 15 Sep 2025 09:58:11 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45247964</link><dc:creator>alexdbird</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45247964</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45247964</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by alexdbird in "A qualitative analysis of pig-butchering scams"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>We are all vulnerable at some point. I'd even go as far as saying we all fall for something at some point. Even if it's something small the psychological effect can be large, and there can be a lot of shame, so many do not share their experience.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 15 Sep 2025 09:35:00 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45247814</link><dc:creator>alexdbird</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45247814</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45247814</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by alexdbird in "I didn't bring my son to a museum to look at screens"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>To be fair, we had a keyboard setup like that at school in the nineties. I can’t remember using it more than a handful of times though.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 11 Sep 2025 03:00:06 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45207215</link><dc:creator>alexdbird</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45207215</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45207215</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by alexdbird in "1981 Sony Trinitron KV-3000R: The Most Luxurious Trinitron [video]"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I had a couple of these over the years. I ended up using specialist graphics cards to use them with a PC. The crude scaling built into the cards made old PC games and NES games gloriously blocky, on top of the gorgeous colours and blacks.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 25 Aug 2025 07:51:12 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45011362</link><dc:creator>alexdbird</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45011362</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45011362</guid></item></channel></rss>