Hacker News: arethuza

New comment by arethuza in "Investors get real-time view of UK bond market activity for the first time"

arethuza — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 16:39:07 +0000

UK debt to GDP ratio is quite a bit less than that of the US?

New comment by arethuza in "Investors get real-time view of UK bond market activity for the first time"

arethuza — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 16:35:04 +0000

A lot of social housing in the UK (about 45%) isn't owned by councils so can't really be sold off by the state?

New comment by arethuza in "Investors get real-time view of UK bond market activity for the first time"

arethuza — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 14:06:08 +0000

A rough calculation: £8,580 funding per child at state school, ~90,000 less in private schools and in state schools so about £770 million more required for state school funding and this measure is supposed to bring in about £1.7 billion a year...

So it looks like it would pay for itself?

Edit: We don't charge VAT on private healthcare - so charging it on private education looks a bit inconsistent to me.

New comment by arethuza in "Did my old job only exist because of fraud?"

arethuza — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 07:57:57 +0000

Senior leaders in large companies I've worked at always had a fairly high turnover just because they all tend to be hyper competitive and engaged in their own Game of Thrones type competitions - which someone has to lose.

New comment by arethuza in "Show HN: Are You in the Weights?"

arethuza — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 11:29:06 +0000

Reminds me of the scene from Devs:

"The box contains us, the box contains everything and inside the box there's another box"

New comment by arethuza in "The 2-Year Apartment Rule"

arethuza — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 10:18:53 +0000

"Even though the house is really old"

Apart from a brief spell when I was very young and my family lived in a 1950s council house I've never lived in a building as new as that... and I'm 60 and have lived in 11 different properties. But that's the UK and Edinburgh for you...

Edit: Never had any mould problems but then again most of the places I lived had draughty sash windows...

New comment by arethuza in "The Australian Government to Require SMS/MMS Sender ID Registraion"

arethuza — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 08:50:35 +0000

Is that to restart the call to the same person or a case id that gives details of your request and that could be passed to anyone?

New comment by arethuza in "The Australian Government to Require SMS/MMS Sender ID Registraion"

arethuza — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 08:34:45 +0000

Yes, was just relating my experience - it's just go the the point where I personally opt to play safe. Like everyone I do get calls from people who aren't in my contact list but it was getting silly so I've defaulted to ignoring them and it works for me. Anyone serious is going to be happy leaving a message - which suits me anyway as I spend a large part of my work day in Teams calls.

New comment by arethuza in "The Australian Government to Require SMS/MMS Sender ID Registraion"

arethuza — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 07:56:35 +0000

Just looking at my incoming call list on my phone for yesterday: "Suspected Spam", "Suspected Spam", "Suspected Spam", "Potential Fraud", "Suspected Spam", "Suspected Spam", a real call, "Suspected Spam", "Suspected Spam"...

Phone is set to only notify me for numbers for known contacts - does mean that I occasionally miss calls from other people, but I can live with that.

New comment by arethuza in "Has AI already killed self-help nonfiction books?"

arethuza — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 07:26:48 +0000

"It’s just a network of individuals selling products, promoting each other’s products, and creating new avenues to sell more products"

That's hardly unique to the self-help world - doesn't a lot of tech also fall into that category?

New comment by arethuza in "'Wow, it really worked ': 70s TV show causing worldwide panic today"

arethuza — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 14:31:27 +0000

I'm pretty sure I watched this when it was broadcast - when I was 12. It was fairly clear to me at the time it wasn't a real documentary.

New comment by arethuza in "Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible"

arethuza — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 12:57:30 +0000

Probably sublime... who knows!

New comment by arethuza in "Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible"

arethuza — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 08:25:59 +0000

I can see why you might think that - but people and machines and groups are free to leave if they want - at least one of the Culture stories is based on this: e.g. "A Gift from the Culture".

New comment by arethuza in "CrankGPT"

arethuza — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 15:36:22 +0000

I now have visions of an Apple Extended Extended Keyboard that comes with a crank...

New comment by arethuza in "A short history of Cerro Torre, the most controversial mountain (2012)"

arethuza — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 08:21:21 +0000

I don't think it's just a matter of ethics - some legal entity owns these mountains (park authority of some kind?) and drilling holes and placing bolts done without the permission of the owner sounds like vandalism to me.

New comment by arethuza in "European sentiments towards the US hit an all-time low"

arethuza — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 10:47:34 +0000

And I think even before 1950 there was a feeling, particularly in the US, that it was good to have the Germans on-side in a military conflict due to their recent experience fighting the Soviets.

New comment by arethuza in "European sentiments towards the US hit an all-time low"

arethuza — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 10:43:46 +0000

The long term viability of the UK nukes does rather depend on support from the US though - they use our own fissile material, but the warhead designs are believed to largely be based on the US W76 and the actual Trident missiles come from a pool controlled by the US.

New comment by arethuza in "Mercedes‑Benz starts large‑scale production of electric axial flux motor"

arethuza — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 10:38:16 +0000

I'd like a 600 HP 1.5l supercharged V16 - doesn't even need to be in a car, mainly just to listen to!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Racing_Motors_V16

New comment by arethuza in "Surveillance is not safety: A statement on the UK's latest threat to privacy [pdf]"

arethuza — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 08:00:10 +0000

Won't they have monitored their slaves quite closely?

New comment by arethuza in "Algorithmic Monocultures in Hiring"

arethuza — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 09:54:57 +0000

One thing I discovered years ago was that even if you are pretty good at soft-skills type stuff and also pretty good at technical stuff what I couldn't do is context switch between an hour or so of doing "soft" stuff to a technical question - even though it was a trivial question. I lost a CTO position over that - mind you I think they went out of business a couple of years later...