Hacker News: drewnoakes

New comment by drewnoakes in "Resetting Xbox"

drewnoakes — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 21:52:08 +0000

I wonder how many of these updates are security fixes. I wouldn't be surprised if a majority were.

New comment by drewnoakes in "The worst job interview I ever had"

drewnoakes — Wed, 27 May 2026 11:04:59 +0000

Sounds like a shameless attempt at market research.

New comment by drewnoakes in "Single bone in Spain offers first direct evidence of Hannibal's war elephants"

drewnoakes — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 21:39:53 +0000

That's wonderful, thanks. I've just about finished all of The Fall of Civilisations and am already feeling a sense of loss. I'm sure I'll listen to them again, but am happy to hear recommendations of other great history content.

New comment by drewnoakes in "Single bone in Spain offers first direct evidence of Hannibal's war elephants"

drewnoakes — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 21:17:55 +0000

There's also a video version of the episode on YouTube: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6dbdVhVSat8

New comment by drewnoakes in "Single bone in Spain offers first direct evidence of Hannibal's war elephants"

drewnoakes — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 21:06:07 +0000

I highly recommend "The Fall of Civilisations" podcast's episode on this topic. it's such an epic story and the narrator builds such a rich picture of the times and events.

https://fallofcivilizationspodcast.com/2023/04/11/%F0%9F%90%...

New comment by drewnoakes in "EXIF orientation info in PNGs isn't used for image-orientation: from-image"

drewnoakes — Fri, 21 Nov 2025 20:38:59 +0000

Is that still true if the image dimensions aren't a multiple of the block size?

New comment by drewnoakes in "Public static void main(String[] args) is dead"

drewnoakes — Tue, 16 Sep 2025 06:18:04 +0000

C# has had top level statements since version 9.0 (Nov 2020), and it's still just a compiler trick that produces a static method behind the scenes. Top level functions work too, but in a similar way.

Decompiled example: https://lab.razor.fyi/#41rAyMUVUJSfXpSYq5dcLDSRsbQ4My9dIbiyu...

> lipstick on a pig's turd

There are several valuable compiler transformations that happen under the hood in languages like this. Closures as types, iterator/generator functions, async state machines. This is just another example.

New comment by drewnoakes in "Truchet Tiles"

drewnoakes — Tue, 29 Jul 2025 08:10:29 +0000

They also come up a lot in pen plotter art.

New comment by drewnoakes in "An Indoor Beehive in My Bedroom Wall"

drewnoakes — Sun, 29 Jun 2025 09:39:29 +0000

Where I live, AFB is a reportable infection, requiring burn and bury. Bees are considered livestock and subject to state regulations.

New comment by drewnoakes in "MCP: An (Accidentally) Universal Plugin System"

drewnoakes — Sun, 29 Jun 2025 08:47:41 +0000

I agree with this, and my preference is generally to use a nice library for such things, but understanding the low level protocol and its capabilities helps me conceptualise the interactions more concretely, and understand more of what a given library is doing for me when I use it. In that way, a clear explanation of a protocol has a lot of value for me.

New comment by drewnoakes in "Ask HN: What less-popular systems programming language are you using?"

drewnoakes — Tue, 04 Mar 2025 11:15:58 +0000

it is still supported and developed.

New comment by drewnoakes in "Supreme Court upholds TikTok ban, but Trump might offer lifeline"

drewnoakes — Sat, 18 Jan 2025 08:51:35 +0000

There are browser extensions that block shorts. You can also block all algorithmic suggestions. I uninstalled the YouTube app ages ago and wish I'd done it sooner.

New comment by drewnoakes in "Announcing Stride 4.2 with .NET 8 support"

drewnoakes — Sun, 11 Feb 2024 21:14:28 +0000

The article itself refers to them as a former Stride developer.

New comment by drewnoakes in "Australian World Map"

drewnoakes — Sun, 19 Nov 2023 23:05:48 +0000

I believe you can add filetype:svg or something similar. I've used that in the past to retrieve PNG files.

New comment by drewnoakes in ".NET Aspire: Simplifying Cloud-Native Development with .NET 8"

drewnoakes — Tue, 14 Nov 2023 21:46:28 +0000

You'll need 17.9 preview 1, which was released at the same time as 17.8.

New comment by drewnoakes in "Stack Overflow is laying off another 28%"

drewnoakes — Tue, 17 Oct 2023 01:04:58 +0000

I've found that SO varies a lot by tech/language. In my experience, the C++ and JS subworlds are pretty brutal. C# is middle-of-the-road when it comes to culture. Clojure is very friendly and welcoming, but obviously more niche. This may explain why folks have different experiences on the same site.

New comment by drewnoakes in "Play against the computer – Connect Four game in JavaScript"

drewnoakes — Fri, 21 Oct 2022 22:04:32 +0000

I've found that the only way to win is to go first, just like in tic tac toe. Going second can produce a draw at best, against an optimal opponent. This is just my experience though, not a strong assertion.

New comment by drewnoakes in "What elements does a plant need to grow?"

drewnoakes — Tue, 16 Nov 2021 20:35:35 +0000

I'm curious to know how stable the blend of elements in tap water is. Do you have any data around this?

I once used an inexpensive electrical TDS meter (total dissolved solids) to track the amount of non-organic solids in water both before and after filtering over time. My goal was to determine the rate at which to replace the filter, and it turned out the manufacturer's recommendation was perfect. However I did notice that the unfiltered water's measurement fluctuated a lot over time. Could that pose a challenge in your scenario?

Thanks for a great read, btw.

New comment by drewnoakes in "Typometer: A tool to measure and analyze the visual latency of text editors"

drewnoakes — Sun, 26 Jul 2020 03:40:24 +0000

Why not?

New comment by drewnoakes in "Typometer: A tool to measure and analyze the visual latency of text editors"

drewnoakes — Sun, 26 Jul 2020 03:39:29 +0000

The ear's whole function is to detect differences in patterns. This is how we identify the direction of sound with only two ears. For our ears, a delay of 30ms is an eternity.

The eyes on the other hand have very little response to this. Some will say they can spot a 15ms vs 30ms visual delay easily, but this is an open debate rather than an obvious fact. A 15ms delay in audio is noticeable to almost anyone.

Different senses, different sensitivities. Comparing them isn't very instructive.