Hacker News: arrowsmith

New comment by arrowsmith in "X Once Again Marks the Spot"

arrowsmith — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 05:26:50 +0000

"The only network that compares to X, size-wise, is Threads"

I'm astonished by this if it's true. People actually use Threads?

New comment by arrowsmith in "CAPTCHAs don't prove you're human – they prove you're American (2017)"

arrowsmith — Sun, 27 Sep 2026 10:12:06 +0000

The modern folklore (comes down the chimney, rides reindeer etc) is an American invention that came to Britain in the 19th Century. “Father Christmas” was an older British folk figure who got merged into the American tradition.

New comment by arrowsmith in "CAPTCHAs don't prove you're human – they prove you're American (2017)"

arrowsmith — Sun, 27 Sep 2026 09:03:08 +0000

Interesting — so Belisha beacons were like the 1930s equivalent of Boris bikes.

“Bobby” and (in Northern Ireland) “peeler” as slang terms for a policeman are two more examples of things named after a politician.

New comment by arrowsmith in "CAPTCHAs don't prove you're human – they prove you're American"

arrowsmith — Sat, 26 Sep 2026 09:13:46 +0000

I've noticed that "Santa" is really starting to displace "Father Christmas" in British English. When I was a kid if you said "Santa" you'd have been scolded for using the American name, but listening to kids now I hear them say "Santa" all the time. I blame TV.

"Crosswalk" sounds extremely American to me and I've never heard anyone say it in Britain, but maybe I'm just getting old.

New comment by arrowsmith in "CAPTCHAs don't prove you're human – they prove you're American"

arrowsmith — Sat, 26 Sep 2026 09:08:44 +0000

I'm British and I never knew that those yellow-ball-on-black-and-white-pole-by-pedestrian-crossing things had a name. TIL

New comment by arrowsmith in "Plan mode is dead"

arrowsmith — Sat, 26 Sep 2026 09:00:37 +0000

All of those things are trivially possible without an explicit 'plan mode' built into the harness.

New comment by arrowsmith in "Claude Code reads AGENTS.md only when telemetry is on [fixed]"

arrowsmith — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 13:00:46 +0000

Claude Code also doesn't read AGENTS.md by default if there's a CLAUDE.md it can read instead. This isn't limited to your repo, e.g. if you have a ~/CLAUDE.md then no AGENTS.md will be read.

To always read both, you have to switch the 'Project instructions' setting to the non-default `claude-md-and-agents-md`.

Just in case anyone is wondering why their AGENTS.md still isn't being read.

New comment by arrowsmith in "Can gzip be a language model?"

arrowsmith — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 10:57:14 +0000

3Blue1Brown has a good video about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6DKRf-fAAM

New comment by arrowsmith in "XCancel service is suspended until further notice"

arrowsmith — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 12:28:41 +0000

Thank God there aren't any other media companies like that

New comment by arrowsmith in "XCancel service is suspended until further notice"

arrowsmith — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 12:44:07 +0000

What does proxying someone else's content have to do with free speech?

New comment by arrowsmith in "I fixed a tractor using John Deere's self-repair service. Farmers aren't sold"

arrowsmith — Sat, 12 Sep 2026 13:35:10 +0000

If all manufacturers except one were altruistic good guys, the one malevolent bad guy would undercut the altruists and drive them out of business.

Regulation is the solution to this prisoner’s dilemma.

New comment by arrowsmith in "iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max"

arrowsmith — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 10:01:15 +0000

I'm still on an iPhone 11 that I bought second-hand a few years ago when the iPhone 15 was the newest. The battery life isn't great which is the only thing tempting me to upgrade, but I'll still put that off as long as possible.

Other than the battery I have no complaints. It's a phone. I can make calls, send texts, browse the web, check maps, take photos. What more do I need? Why waste money?

I can't even tell the difference between newer iPhone models. Why do people upgrade every year? What's the point?

New comment by arrowsmith in "Brits would quite like their private messages to stay private"

arrowsmith — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 15:10:57 +0000

"We lost, let's change the rules"

New comment by arrowsmith in "Tim Curry has died"

arrowsmith — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 18:45:29 +0000

I watched that movie so many times as a child I could probably still recite every line.

RIP Long John Silver!

New comment by arrowsmith in "Nitter and XCancel receive cease and desist notices"

arrowsmith — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 18:38:02 +0000

So it was never about principles, it was only about who was in charge.

Colour me shocked.

New comment by arrowsmith in "Nitter and XCancel receive cease and desist notices"

arrowsmith — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 18:35:20 +0000

I hadn't, but don't pretend there's not huge overlap between the people who were saying that then and the people who are saying this now.

New comment by arrowsmith in "Nitter and XCancel receive cease and desist notices"

arrowsmith — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 12:55:09 +0000

Whatever happened to "Twitter can do what it wants, it's a private platform"?

New comment by arrowsmith in "Omarchy development practices lead to predictable security issues"

arrowsmith — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 12:53:23 +0000

They just announced the new "Omacom foundation" last Friday, with $8 million of funding from prominent tech people. That's why it's getting current flurry of attention

New comment by arrowsmith in "Omarchy development practices lead to predictable security issues"

arrowsmith — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 12:50:54 +0000

"all software is political" is a textbook deepity: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Deepity

Internet freedom is fading in the new era of social control

arrowsmith — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 15:28:22 +0000

Article URL: https://bigthink.com/the-present/internet-freedom-is-fading-in-the-new-era-of-social-control/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48881905

Points: 11

# Comments: 1