Hacker News: circadian

New comment by circadian in "Do_not_track"

circadian — Sat, 02 May 2026 19:50:46 +0000

I would suggest that the default to enrolling people in supplying such information is the issue. In a world driven by surveillance capitalism, even "anonymous" data can be used for much broader purposes (think, for example, of when and where people are using tools geographically and at what times: you can start to track the behaviour of people in this way).

Users should never be opted in through usage alone of free or paid-for tooling to supply information that isn't part of the function of the tool. Where that is required for a service or product, you should opt-in explicitly, not implicitly.

New comment by circadian in "Starfling: A one-tap endless orbital slingshot game in a single HTML file"

circadian — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 19:18:28 +0000

Lush, perfect to take my mind off existing for a few minutes. Always a strong sign of a winning concept. Kudos :)

The claws are open, until they close around you, out of your control

circadian — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 00:57:49 +0000

Article URL: https://blog.inconsistentrecords.co.uk/blog/the-claws-are-open-until-they-close-around-you/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47042374

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by circadian in "The Thinking Game Film – Google DeepMind documentary"

circadian — Mon, 01 Dec 2025 00:26:24 +0000

There's some funny comments going on in this thread. Understandably so. What could be more divisive an issue than AI on a silicon valley forum!?

As a brit, I found it to be a really great documentary about the fact that you can be idealistic and still make it. There are, for sure, numerous reasons to give Deepmind shit: Alphabet, potential arms usage, "we're doing research, we're not responsible". The Oppenheimer aspect is not to be lost, we all have to take responsibility for wielding technology.

I was more anti-Deepmind than pro before this, but the truth is as I get older it's nicer to see someone embodying the aspiration of wanton benevolence (for whatever reason) based on scientific reasoning, than to not. To keep it away from the US and acknowledge the benefits of spreading the proverbial "love" to the benefit of all (US included) shows a level of consideration that should not be under-acknowledged.

I like this documentary. Does AGI and the search for it scare me? Hell yes. So do killer mutant spiders descending on earth post nuclear holocaust. It's all about probabilities. To be honest: disease X freaks me out more than a superintelligence built by an organisation willing to donate the research to solve the problems of disease X. Google are assbiscuits, but Deepmind point in the right direction (I know more about their weather and climate forecasting efforts). This at least gave me reason to think some heart is involved...

New comment by circadian in "Happy 30th Birthday Task Manager"

circadian — Wed, 12 Nov 2025 22:55:12 +0000

Honestly I've got so much respect for the candour of this video. Quite rightly there's a lot of brilliant nuggets here to perhaps one of the best things about Windows throughout the ages!

New comment by circadian in "AWS multiple services outage in us-east-1"

circadian — Mon, 20 Oct 2025 08:44:41 +0000

BGP (again)?

New comment by circadian in "Python developers are embracing type hints"

circadian — Sun, 28 Sep 2025 12:04:06 +0000

I think the face they fundamentally don't look after you is where my resistance comes from. Will try and evaluate some newer code that uses them and see how I get on a bit more :)

New comment by circadian in "Python developers are embracing type hints"

circadian — Sat, 27 Sep 2025 23:19:18 +0000

I really love Python for it's expedience, but type hints still feel like they don't belong in the language. They don't seem to come with the benefits of optimisation that you get with static typed languages. As someone who uses C and Julia (and wishes they had time for Rust), introducing solid typing yields better end results at a minimum, or is a requirement at the other end of the scale.

The extra typing clarification in python makes the code harder to read. I liked python because it was easy to do something quickly and without that cognitive overhead. Type hints, and they feel like they're just hints, don't yield enough of a benefit for me to really embrace them yet.

Perhaps that's just because I don't use advanced features of IDEs. But then I am getting old :P

EDIT: also, this massively depends on what you're doing with the language! I don't have huge customer workloads to consider any longer..!

New comment by circadian in "Always Invite Anna"

circadian — Tue, 23 Sep 2025 20:57:43 +0000

I'm in my 40s now, but when I was very young I had quite a rough time living in shared accommodation. It was people reaching out and asking me if I wanted to go out, whether or not I could, that in the same way stuck with me as helping to deal with being lonely. I still have the memory of peoples kindness and this story reminded me of those kindnesses. It's kind of a beautiful memory to have, even when the times were dark.

My interpretation is that Alexei might well have understood that Anna felt lonely / homesick. The reaching out could well have been simply sympathetic and well thought through to help include someone. That's what people did for me when I was young and out of my depth. Those people probably helped steer me into a good place when it could've gone bad.

It's always nice to reflect on the kindness of others. :)

My now page, inspired by Derek Sivers

circadian — Wed, 06 Aug 2025 23:48:57 +0000

Article URL: https://inconsistentrecords.co.uk/now/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44819185

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by circadian in "303Gen – 303 acid loops generator"

circadian — Wed, 06 Aug 2025 20:17:59 +0000

This is really lush. Instantly it brightened up my evening. This kind of experimentation is always amazing to see.

As many seem to have mentioned below, it brings back memories of Rebirth in some ways. What it also reminds me of is the beautiful results you could have by plugging some simple modules together to create soundscapes. The limits are the things that provide some semblance of freedom and this is no different. Greetings from a fellow UK acid (techno) head! :P

Show HN: Model Ensembling Tool

circadian — Mon, 23 Jun 2025 11:20:04 +0000

Article URL: https://model-ensembler.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44354529

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by circadian in "Learn Makefiles"

circadian — Sat, 21 Jun 2025 00:44:46 +0000

Worth noting I stated "my feeling that the docs are inaccessible", not that I didn't think they're excellent docs.

I'm slightly lazy, so relish having something quick to get into :)

New comment by circadian in "Learn Makefiles"

circadian — Fri, 20 Jun 2025 12:40:32 +0000

Very glad to see a tutorial like this. Make is something I've used relentlessly because it just works, but I know I'm missing out a lot more that it can help with because of my feeling that the docs are inaccessible. Knowing that this is here waiting for the day when a project calls for something just a little more means I won't bloat out my development workflow. Something a little more friendly than the make docs themselves lowers the barrier for me, nice one! :)

Diving into Julia (Part 1)

circadian — Thu, 12 Jun 2025 23:20:24 +0000

Article URL: https://inconsistentrecords.co.uk/blog/diving-into-julia-1/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44264257

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by circadian in "What Is a Pipeline?"

circadian — Fri, 23 May 2025 23:00:32 +0000

A long running draft of some rambling thoughts, but this term is used relentless. What does it really MEAN!?

Hopefully something of interest from a software engineer... would like to write more but interested in the discussion and feedback of others.

What Is a Pipeline?

circadian — Fri, 23 May 2025 23:00:32 +0000

Article URL: https://inconsistentrecords.co.uk/blog/what-the-fook-is-a-pipeline/https://inconsistentrecords.co.uk/blog/what-the-fook-is-a-pipeline/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44077370

Points: 1

# Comments: 2

New comment by circadian in "The Lazy Way to Solve Differential Equations"

circadian — Fri, 28 Mar 2025 09:07:57 +0000

I love posts like this. As a software engineer slowly gaining confidence in the analytical side of physical modelling, it really helps to see insights like this. Thanks for sharing! :)

New comment by circadian in "A love letter to the CSV format"

circadian — Wed, 26 Mar 2025 17:52:18 +0000

Kudos for writing this, it's always worth flagging up the utility of a format that just is what it is, for the benefit of all. Commas can also create fun ambiguity, as that last sentence demonstrates. :P

CSV is lovely. It isn't trying to be cool or legendary. It works for the reasons the author proposes, but isn't trying to go further.

I work in a work of VERY low power devices and CSV sometimes is all you need for a good time.

If it doesn't need to be complicated, it shouldn't be. There are always times when I think to myself CSV fits and that is what makes it a legend. Are those times when I want to parallelise or deal with gigs of data in one sitting. Nope. There are more complex formats for that. CSV has a place in my heart too.

Thanks for reminding me of the beauty of this legendary format... :)

Not talking about work – but why?

circadian — Thu, 13 Mar 2025 01:06:44 +0000

Article URL: https://inconsistentrecords.co.uk/blog/not-talking-about-work-but-why/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43349393

Points: 2

# Comments: 0