Hacker News: darreninthenet

New comment by darreninthenet in "PlayStation Is Deleting 551 Movies from Customers' Accounts"

darreninthenet — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 22:43:40 +0000

Would likely win in the UK as we have an unfair terms regulation, a small claims court could easily rule it an unfair as any reasonable consumer would assume they were purchasing the movie to watch whenever they want to.

New comment by darreninthenet in "How Madrid built its metro cheaply (2024)"

darreninthenet — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 07:28:02 +0000

The UK used to have that with its railway projects - the old government owned British Rail had massive and extensive knowledge on large rail infrastructure projects and no need for expensive external "consultants". That all got lost when the Tories tore it apart into private companies... hopefully now they are being renationalised as their contracts expire, at some point in the future they can regain all that expertise in-house again.

New comment by darreninthenet in "Driver accused of DUI tracks missing laptop to Illinois State trooper's house"

darreninthenet — Mon, 11 May 2026 13:48:28 +0000

In the UK it's done by breathalyser and refusing is itself an offence.

New comment by darreninthenet in "Introduction to Atom"

darreninthenet — Mon, 04 May 2026 08:40:07 +0000

How do you curate and keep on top of so many feeds? I have ~10 on my RSS reader and I sometimes have trouble keeping up if I have a couple of busy days

New comment by darreninthenet in "I spent 6 years building my Kanban as I hated how managers run the boards"

darreninthenet — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 09:40:21 +0000

A decent tool could surely define multiple different views of the same information?

New comment by darreninthenet in "Runners who churn butter on their runs"

darreninthenet — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 22:09:21 +0000

My wife and I have occasionally made our own butter for years now... one thing people always forget to mention is that it goes bad really quickly. The trick is either to cut it up into chunks and freeze most of it and the remainder you keep in the fridge/defrost later will last about 3 days. Or you can add salt after you've done the separation but this does of course mean you now have salted butter... this will last up to two weeks usually.

New comment by darreninthenet in "Workers who love ‘synergizing paradigms’ might be bad at their jobs"

darreninthenet — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 16:04:54 +0000

As a highly experienced consultant once said to me, forget all the objectives, priorities and corporate culture bullshit, whatever anyone tells you, your job is to make your boss look good.

New comment by darreninthenet in "Ask HN: How many of you hold an amateur radio license in your country?"

darreninthenet — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 12:36:42 +0000

UK Foundation licence holder here, M7HUB

New comment by darreninthenet in "Welcome (back) to Macintosh"

darreninthenet — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 22:35:10 +0000

No issues here either

New comment by darreninthenet in "Over 80% of 16 to 24-year-olds would vote to rejoin the EU"

darreninthenet — Sat, 21 Feb 2026 13:22:33 +0000

You have a way out... you are allowed to live and work in Ireland. Stay there for a few years (I forget how many) and apply for an Irish ( = EU) passport

New comment by darreninthenet in "The best things and stuff of 2025"

darreninthenet — Sat, 27 Dec 2025 10:21:55 +0000

As far as I can tell you can't buy the ebooks for Dungeon Crawler Carl on Kobo, they seem to be exclusive to Kindle... unless anyone knows differently?

Otherwise I guess it'll be the seven seas for me which I really don't want to have to do

New comment by darreninthenet in "'Ghost jobs' are on the rise – and so are calls to ban them"

darreninthenet — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 08:22:59 +0000

In the UK at least Fraud doesn't require any damages, just an intent to gain something of value on the criminals side.

New comment by darreninthenet in "What is the nicest thing a stranger has ever done for you?"

darreninthenet — Sun, 14 Dec 2025 08:17:47 +0000

I remember a friend who was really into his skiing telling me that ski instructors take bets on which overweight 50+ year old first time skiing city person would have the a heart attack first.

New comment by darreninthenet in "Bring bathroom doors back to hotels"

darreninthenet — Thu, 27 Nov 2025 00:23:45 +0000

But how would you know until it's too late and you've already checked in? Doesn't seem to be a very effective way of achieving this... Just means my mate and I wouldn't go back to that hotel again.

New comment by darreninthenet in "The International Criminal Court wants to become independent of USA technology"

darreninthenet — Thu, 30 Oct 2025 14:17:19 +0000

Many years ago, all organisations - "Hey we can cut costs by getting rid of all of our expensive experts and not running our own data centres!"

Many years later - "Oh no! Not running our own data centres means our data is no longer fully in our control!"

Who would have thought it!

New comment by darreninthenet in "Firefox is the best mobile browser"

darreninthenet — Sat, 11 Oct 2025 17:14:39 +0000

I use Orion for my daily mobile web browser and it works fine, the plugin support is generally very good in my experience and you can always post any bugs and they do get looked at. It's worth a shot anyway.

New comment by darreninthenet in "Choose Your Own Adventure"

darreninthenet — Mon, 22 Sep 2025 21:40:22 +0000

The most famous one in the UK was called FIST (Fantasy Ihteractive ?Stories? by Telephone or something) written by Steve Jackson (of Fighting Fantasy fame, not the American Steve Jackson)... premium rate telephone number got me into trouble more times than I can remember as a kid

New comment by darreninthenet in "1910: The year the modern world lost its mind"

darreninthenet — Mon, 11 Aug 2025 12:22:50 +0000

Baldrick!

New comment by darreninthenet in "Show HN: Xenolab – Rasp Pi monitor for my pet carnivourus plants"

darreninthenet — Sat, 10 May 2025 22:52:22 +0000

Just to reiterate what's already been said - don't use tap water. We have a carnivorous plant expert/dealer local to us and he just collects and uses rainwater, as he says tap water will kill them.

Simple waterbutt attached to the drain pipe off the guttering and you get infinite free water for them

New comment by darreninthenet in "Cozy video games can quell stress and anxiety"

darreninthenet — Sat, 19 Apr 2025 08:30:19 +0000

Which Forza would you recommend for doing that?