Hacker News: drumhead

New comment by drumhead in "The lost joy of music piracy"

drumhead — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 10:42:42 +0000

Piracy, however much it's hated by the industry has saved so much media from being lost forever. The greatest example I can think of is Doctor Who. When the BBC erased tapings of the earlier shows, it was thought they were lost forever, but fans had been taping the audio of the shows off the television, and the cleaned up soundtracks were used by the BBC to create animated editions and maybe in the future AI replacements.

New comment by drumhead in "Why We're Dismantling the International Criminal Court"

drumhead — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 05:52:37 +0000

They're doing it protect themselves and Israel.

The insanity to brag about doing this. Rubio was mainstream once, but the sniff of power seems to have corrupted him completely.

New comment by drumhead in "Samsung overtakes Apple as smartphone market sinks to a 13-year low"

drumhead — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 21:23:36 +0000

Apple dont compete on units sold, they're all about the margin. Samsung sell a lot of low value phones, which in the current environment will do well, but you'd need to sell 10 of those to match the profit on one iPhone.

New comment by drumhead in "Is The Economist Always Wrong?"

drumhead — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 06:53:26 +0000

They're wrong and right in equal measure, but what they do is publish their opinions with conviction and back it up with sound arguments and facts. I remember reading articles they published in the late 80s about their belief that Japans economic boom was about to end, but they were also one of the biggest backers of Bush's invasion of Iraq which they were disastrously wrong about. I haven't read it for a while so I don't know what they're like now but for forward economic intelligence they were always one of the best.

New comment by drumhead in "The Baffling World of Masayoshi Son's Presentations (2020)"

drumhead — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 07:57:43 +0000

The baffling thing is how SoftBank still hasn't gone under.

New comment by drumhead in "Has AI already killed self-help nonfiction books?"

drumhead — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 10:24:23 +0000

There's a misconception about self help books that they teach you "tricks" that you can instantly use to become a completely different person. A lot of the good ones teach you principles that you need to practice constantly to improve. There's hard work and risk taking involved which many people that buy the books are not prepared to do.

The first self help book that actually helped me was How to make friends and influence people. It was hard for me to overcome my shyness and look people in the eye and smile, but with constant practice I got better at it. Taking an interest in people or being agreeable these are all basic principles that genuinely good communicators use, the book just points you in the right direction you have to apply the hard work and courage.

Good self-help books are rare but they do exist.

New comment by drumhead in "I put a datacenter GPU in my gaming PC"

drumhead — Sun, 31 May 2026 18:44:17 +0000

The first dual core processor I built a machine with was an Opteron. It was a nice piece of hardware.

New comment by drumhead in "Bricks and Minifigs Stole a Man's $200k Lego Collection"

drumhead — Sat, 30 May 2026 12:18:15 +0000

Imagine sacrificing millions of dollars worth of business and goodwill for the sake of a $200,000 collection. If I were board member I'd be demanding the CEO's resignation.

New comment by drumhead in "Ferrari Luce"

drumhead — Tue, 26 May 2026 07:38:58 +0000

It's far from ugly, it's just very standard EV. When you buy a Ferrari though you want it to stand it, you don't want it looking like a bog standard Tesla.

New comment by drumhead in "Ferrari Luce"

drumhead — Tue, 26 May 2026 07:36:15 +0000

It's looks less interesting than the cars Xiaomi and BYD have been making. Let's hope that the performance is something special. Though why they chose Mr thin and light instead of someone like Pininfarina I don't know.

New comment by drumhead in "The first British person in space"

drumhead — Fri, 22 May 2026 08:33:07 +0000

I was an adult and other than being on the obvious shows like Blue Peter and newsround, there was nothing. You'd expect a knighthood or a peerage, all she's got is an OBE. England football team in 1990 got a parade through London for getting to the semi finals, and our first astronaut got...nothing.

New comment by drumhead in "The first British person in space"

drumhead — Fri, 22 May 2026 07:37:28 +0000

It was really sad how she doesn't get the recognition she deserves for being the first Briton in space. Whether it's because she's a woman or because it was with the Russians she hasn't received the level of respect or adulation you expect for the achievement.

New comment by drumhead in "Meta blocks human rights accounts from reaching audiences in Saudi Arabia, UAE"

drumhead — Wed, 20 May 2026 16:50:12 +0000

They're like vampires we invited in to our houses. And now we cant get rid of them.

New comment by drumhead in "London to Calcutta by Bus (2022)"

drumhead — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 14:29:50 +0000

The world seems to have become smaller since then. Many places on that route are at war, unstable, unfriendly. Where there would have been curiosity and friendliness there's hostility now.

New comment by drumhead in "The Pentagon Threatened Pope Leo XIV's Ambassador with the Avignon Papacy"

drumhead — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 17:24:40 +0000

Fun Fact - Elbridge Colby is a Catholic, maybe time for excommunication?

New comment by drumhead in "The Pentagon Threatened Pope Leo XIV's Ambassador with the Avignon Papacy"

drumhead — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 17:22:36 +0000

Threatening the holy father is not something I entirely expected, but when you couple that with statements like "We have the military power to do what we want" it becomes rather terrifying.

New comment by drumhead in "Sc-im: Spreadsheets in your terminal"

drumhead — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 16:33:32 +0000

So Lotus 1-2-3

New comment by drumhead in "Iran-backed hackers claim wiper attack on medtech firm Stryker"

drumhead — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 08:12:14 +0000

They were Palantir apparently.

New comment by drumhead in "MacBook Neo"

drumhead — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 08:32:36 +0000

So its fundamentally an iPad with a keyboard running macOS.

New comment by drumhead in "I am directing the Department of War to designate Anthropic a supply-chain risk"

drumhead — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 22:46:46 +0000

Dont forget Nvidia technology was condsidered too sensitive to be exported to China....until the Trump administration decided they could export it if they paid a 10% export tax.