Hacker News: batiudrami

New comment by batiudrami in "Tesla Solar Roof is on life support as it pivot to panels"

batiudrami — Mon, 18 May 2026 00:13:52 +0000

Similarly the real eyesore in neighbourhoods is all the cars and the assorted infrastructure dedicated to them.

40% of Australian households have rooftop solar. You get used to the look very quickly, and well-installed ones look perfectly fine.

New comment by batiudrami in "Ads on Apple Maps"

batiudrami — Thu, 07 May 2026 04:22:38 +0000

Good for navigation, terrible for up to date business information (opening hours) and reviews.

Google maps’ reviews aren’t great - everything is a 4.3 because they incentivised users to review business interactions they didn’t care about by paying them pennies in Google pay credit - but it will at least tell me reliably if a business is closed today or has shut down.

New comment by batiudrami in "Tourists to Australia to have social media vetted under Trumpian Coalition"

batiudrami — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 00:11:51 +0000

These muppets won’t win power anyway, they are at least two election cycles away from being competitive again. The last election was a catastrophe.

That said, New Zealand rules, everyone should visit.

New comment by batiudrami in "Microsoft Set for Worst Quarter Since 2008"

batiudrami — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 18:50:08 +0000

Their target is not coders, it is the professional world who do 90% of their work in Office applications, like me. A $200/m model absolutely does not fly when rolled out to entire corporations. It needs to be a $20/user/month product.

But I agree, it sucks. It is the only AI we are able to use at work and for tasks that it should be good at (compare comment sheets against a deliverable register and assign to specific packages) and it just can’t do it. It can read the spreadsheet and understand them just fine but outputs are garbled nonsense.

New comment by batiudrami in "Denmark was reportedly preparing for full-scale war with the US over Greenland"

batiudrami — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 23:50:09 +0000

It is interesting to me, as an Australian, that it almost seems like Osama Bin Laden won. The fall of the US commenced when they let the fear in, and that was September 2001.

New comment by batiudrami in "The Appalling Stupidity of Spotify's AI DJ"

batiudrami — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 10:01:53 +0000

NTS is truly excellent yes.

The streaming app algorithms are bland as hell, built for people who just want noise in the background.

New comment by batiudrami in "Grammarly is using authors' identities without permission unless they opt out"

batiudrami — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 23:43:42 +0000

The verge does have lawyers on staff (obviously, as does any media organisation of a certain size). I would be sure they have consulted with them, but there is also a story in this.

New comment by batiudrami in "Why New Zealand is seeing an exodus of over-30s"

batiudrami — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 07:00:55 +0000

You can work freely and get access to Medicare (and vice-versa) so they’re more-or-less citizens anyway.

New comment by batiudrami in "Wikipedia was in read-only mode following mass admin account compromise"

batiudrami — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 22:51:19 +0000

A classical virus, from the good old days. None of this botnet/bitcoin mining in the background nonsense.

New comment by batiudrami in "iPhone 17e"

batiudrami — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 00:24:23 +0000

It definitely is less important / visible to some people. I have a 175Hz screen at home and a 120Hz iPhone, but I use a 60Hz iPad and displays at work and if I am not focusing on it I simply do not notice the difference.

New comment by batiudrami in "New iPad Air, powered by M4"

batiudrami — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 00:18:57 +0000

I didn’t understand iPads for years. As a half engineer half email monkey, doing work on them is still next to impossible, especially with nerfed versions of Office applications.

But, they are excellent for media consumption, particularly reading and marking up PDFs. I am able to focus while reading in a way I cannot on a computer. Procreate is amazing (drawing brushes with a pressure sensitive pen and layer/mask support all in one). Great for playing Civ on a flight. And it does all those things in a comfortable form factor while being fundamentally a pleasant device to use.

All that considered, the iPad Air is not that expensive, and it will probably last you a decade before it needs replacing.

New comment by batiudrami in "Amazon Ring's lost dog ad sparks backlash amid fears of mass surveillance"

batiudrami — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 01:23:45 +0000

Or your dog eating the AirTag with the button battery inside it

New comment by batiudrami in "The $100B megadeal between OpenAI and Nvidia is on ice"

batiudrami — Sat, 31 Jan 2026 04:26:27 +0000

Important for what? Google and anthropic's models are already better, and google actually makes money, and both are US companies. What strategic relevance is there to Open AI?

New comment by batiudrami in "BYD Sells 4.6M Vehicles in 2025, Meets Revised Sales Goal"

batiudrami — Fri, 02 Jan 2026 03:19:46 +0000

They are huge in Australia too. And the advice basically everyone gives is "if you're going electric, you'd be crazy not to consider BYD first".

A couple of years ago the only notable EVs you'd see were Teslas, now you'd see at least 2-3x as many BYDs.

New comment by batiudrami in "The post-GeForce era: What if Nvidia abandons PC gaming?"

batiudrami — Sun, 21 Dec 2025 00:10:09 +0000

Crazy take, in the late 90s/early 00s your GPU could be obsolete 9 months after buying. The “optimisation” you talk about was the CPU in the ps4 generation was so weak and tech was moving so fast that any pc bought in 2015 onwards would easily brute force overpower anything that had been built for that generation.

New comment by batiudrami in "Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban"

batiudrami — Wed, 10 Dec 2025 04:57:40 +0000

Isolating children? They’re schoolchildren! They see their peers at school every day.

New comment by batiudrami in "What you can get for the price of a Netflix subscription"

batiudrami — Tue, 25 Nov 2025 09:55:46 +0000

There is tonnes of private art in the world you are simply not able to see at all.

Many of these TV shows also come to DVD/Blu-Ray eventually.

New comment by batiudrami in "What OpenAI did when ChatGPT users lost touch with reality"

batiudrami — Tue, 25 Nov 2025 04:37:22 +0000

Hey hey safe injecting rooms have real harm minimisation impacts. Not convinced you can say the same for chatbot boyfriends.

New comment by batiudrami in "Iowa City made its buses free. Traffic cleared, and so did the air"

batiudrami — Mon, 24 Nov 2025 06:08:01 +0000

The fare is a flat au 50c, though. It is basically free.

New comment by batiudrami in "Steam Machine"

batiudrami — Thu, 13 Nov 2025 00:48:29 +0000

I know you are being rhetorical but for reference, of course not, their margin on hardware is 36%