Hacker News: chimpansteve

New comment by chimpansteve in "An AI agent deleted our production database. The agent's confession is below"

chimpansteve — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 01:36:42 +0000

This was the line that did for me, as an old school backend engineer who has accidentally deleted way more production databases than I have fingers over the years -

> We have restored from a three-month-old backup.

You were absolutely screwed anyway if that was your backup strategy - deciding to plug your entire production infrastructure into a random number generator has only accelerated the process. Sort yourself out.

New comment by chimpansteve in "How bad are childhood literacy rates?"

chimpansteve — Wed, 16 Jul 2025 03:16:02 +0000

Is English your first language? If it isn't, I completely agree with you.

However if it is, then I would make the argument that it's exactly the right way to teach it, particularly to young people. As you point out, it's a very fluid language with a lot of rules that are completely arbitrary. As a native speaker, it's more important getting to grips with the, I dunno what we'd call it on here, pseudocode rather than formulaic structure? Concepts over syntax maybe.

I'm from the UK. My immediate family is from Dundee and Sunderland. I had inlaws from Liverpool and Bristol. When we all got together, especially after a few drinks, at no point would an outsider think we were even speaking the same language, but we all had the same common grounding.

I agree with you that it's probably a bad way to teach formal grammar. It depends on the context though

New comment by chimpansteve in "She Got a Permit for Her Chickens. Now the City Is Fining Her $80k"

chimpansteve — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 02:20:55 +0000

I guess it depends. There's been a major issue in the UK for a while regarding quite a few very iconic, decades old, live music venues. Back in the day they were in less salubrious areas of town so no one really cared, but now they're prime property with very expensive flats being put up all around them.

Many of the new residents never even do so much as even visit the area before buying them, and then immediately (and sadly often successfully) put in noise complaints attempting to get the venues shut down, despite the already strict licensing laws (curfew at 10.30 at the absolute latest, no outside drinking etc).

New comment by chimpansteve in "Show HN: Controlling 3D models with voice and hand gestures"

chimpansteve — Wed, 04 Jun 2025 03:20:12 +0000

Slightly on topic - anyone remember LeapMotion and is anyone aware of any current support for that? Found an original one in a drawer when I was having a clearout the other day

New comment by chimpansteve in "Standing desk might be as bad as sitting all day"

chimpansteve — Mon, 11 Nov 2024 06:08:16 +0000

Agreed, and many of mine do when I'm out with the dog or on the toilet. The thing is that those are unscripted. The point that I think the OP was making was that enforced breaks on a schedule will immediately kill any form of concentration or workflow

New comment by chimpansteve in "Automatic Content Recognition Tracking in Smart TVs"

chimpansteve — Sat, 28 Sep 2024 04:32:59 +0000

Yeah, but people who grow or sell flowers are not on the same level as the very very good engineers who develop these dystopian systems. The people in the advertising industry who make these systems could absolutely do more good for society in a different field.

New comment by chimpansteve in "Automatic Content Recognition Tracking in Smart TVs"

chimpansteve — Sat, 28 Sep 2024 04:23:13 +0000

And I would argue that this very quickly becomes a race to the bottom, where the viewing of mass produced trash accelerates because "that's what people want to watch" becomes "we'll flood the market with cheap mass produced bullshit" which immediately becomes "people love watching bullshit and our stats say so!"

I also don't believe for a single second, based on their past records, that Sony, or LG, or whoever, are actually properly anonymising this data

New comment by chimpansteve in "How to Exit Vim"

chimpansteve — Sun, 19 May 2024 02:50:26 +0000

I love Vim. I use it pretty much exclusively. I found it very funny.

So, yes.

New comment by chimpansteve in "$64B Gamble: SoftBank Arm Plan to Launch AI Chip in 2025"

chimpansteve — Sun, 12 May 2024 02:00:30 +0000

Thank you. Think we've hit the level of my "run away scared at the first sight of machine code" understanding, but I now vaguely understand what's going on.

New comment by chimpansteve in "$64B Gamble: SoftBank Arm Plan to Launch AI Chip in 2025"

chimpansteve — Sun, 12 May 2024 01:40:42 +0000

Ah! ok - that makes sense. Thank you. So it would be a specialised chip with a load of hardcoded functions, kind of like an ASIC?

New comment by chimpansteve in "$64B Gamble: SoftBank Arm Plan to Launch AI Chip in 2025"

chimpansteve — Sun, 12 May 2024 01:31:09 +0000

So, given that I'm already aware that I almost certainly won't understand any answers to this question, can someone give me a idiot level baseline as to exactly what an AI chip is and how it would differ from a cpu/gpu?

New comment by chimpansteve in "Apple apologizes for iPad 'Crush' ad that 'missed the mark'"

chimpansteve — Sat, 11 May 2024 02:32:14 +0000

Even if it is a cheap one, it's still wrong. I have the same visceral gut reaction to seeing a musical instrument get destroyed as I do to seeing a book burnt. I own a lot of very expensive, very nice instruments. However, some of my favourite music I have created has been on dirt cheap charity shop instruments.

New comment by chimpansteve in "Self-pay gas station pumps break across NZ as software can't handle Leap Day"

chimpansteve — Thu, 29 Feb 2024 22:17:16 +0000

I've had a driving licence in the UK for 26 years, and have never once paid for my fuel before filling up. This is normal everywhere in Europe at least, to the point where I suspect the US is the outlier

New comment by chimpansteve in "Show HN: Learn piano without sheet music"

chimpansteve — Fri, 22 Sep 2023 23:46:00 +0000

As a kid, I learnt violin and trombone to a very high orchestra level standard, and could read sheet music from a very early age. I then moved on in my late twenties to guitar, bass and keyboard in a rock band, and never looked at a piece of sheet music again in my life, and would have no idea how to translate musical notation to those instruments.

I know people who cannot play a tune without sheet music. I know some of the most talented musicians on this earth who cannot read sheet music. There is no right and wrong to this. It's what works for you.

I do think some form of formal music theory training is an absolute cheat code when it comes to playing multiple instruments, or just jamming and playing by ear though

New comment by chimpansteve in "Many soft contact lenses in US made up of PFAS, research suggests"

chimpansteve — Tue, 16 May 2023 01:19:09 +0000

Depends. My nearsightness is so bad that even the insanely expensive ultra thin lenses are too heavy to wear for more than a few hours at a time and give me a raging headache from the weight. It's no exaggeration to say that contact lenses have had the single greatest positive effect on my life out of anything.

New comment by chimpansteve in "We Found an Neuron in GPT-2"

chimpansteve — Fri, 17 Feb 2023 02:26:11 +0000

It's also not unheard of for native English speakers to use it differently (in speech, at least) as a consequence of regional accents. I would use "a history book", because my accent pronounces the h sound. My wife says "an istory book", because her accent drops the h.

But yeah, it should be easier when you're just dealing with text I guess

New comment by chimpansteve in "Can a Corporation “Own” a Color?"

chimpansteve — Fri, 01 Jul 2022 01:40:48 +0000

I don't know how it works in the US (and tbf, I'm not much wiser after reading this article), but the UK it falls under trade dressing - eg the Royal Mail have rights to use one shade of red on postboxes and delivery vans, and if you're setting up a rival delivery company you can't use "Royal Mail red". There's nothing stopping anyone in an unrelated field using it though.

New comment by chimpansteve in "Sheryl Sandberg stepping down as Facebook COO"

chimpansteve — Thu, 02 Jun 2022 01:09:51 +0000

I mean, cool. If you're already an athletic freak who can do this for a couple of hours at a time with a massive room with no furniture in.

You're basically describing Wii Sports, which was a great novelty at the time. For maybe a year or so.

New comment by chimpansteve in "Old.reddit.com Down?"

chimpansteve — Sun, 03 Apr 2022 00:40:05 +0000

::looks suspiciously at fastly again::

New comment by chimpansteve in "Old.reddit.com Down?"

chimpansteve — Sun, 03 Apr 2022 00:29:22 +0000

Not for me. It's the new one too.