Hacker News: elphinstone

New comment by elphinstone in "Deciphering the Hashihara Castle Town Map"

elphinstone — Sat, 23 May 2026 14:21:18 +0000

A wonderfully unexpected piece of creativity and worldbuilding, thanks for sharing. Feels like a setting eager to come back to life.

New comment by elphinstone in "Apparently Google hates us now"

elphinstone — Wed, 20 May 2026 18:50:03 +0000

It's laughable to assume good intentions at this point, this predatory monopolist makes every decision against a free and open internet and in favor of monetization, authoritarianism, and enshittification.

New comment by elphinstone in "Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent"

elphinstone — Tue, 05 May 2026 14:34:26 +0000

Everyone who implemented or approved this should be prosecuted under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (18 U.S.C. § 1030). If I was on a jury, I wouldn't hesitate to send them to prison where they belong.

New comment by elphinstone in "Facepunch launches s&box, the highly anticipated successor to Garry's Mod"

elphinstone — Sun, 03 May 2026 13:53:51 +0000

What an awful name, "s&box", it reads like a text rendering error.

New comment by elphinstone in "Ask.com has closed"

elphinstone — Sat, 02 May 2026 06:06:20 +0000

It's a name best saved for an embodied humanobot that can do laundry, etc., too, as well as answer questions, screen calls, etc.

New comment by elphinstone in "Meta in row after workers who saw smart glasses users having sex lose jobs"

elphinstone — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 13:47:33 +0000

What makes you think the outsourcing firm didn't raise these concerns in email or meetings? You think these people wanted to lose jobs and income? That's irrational.

Why reflexively defend a massive tech corporation caught repeatedly violating the law?

New comment by elphinstone in "UAE to leave OPEC in blow to oil cartel"

elphinstone — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 13:56:45 +0000

Leaving OPEC right now means little short-term with so much production shut-in. Long-term, the UAE may cease to exist if this war goes on. Its population is 80%+ guest workers, it's totally dependent on desalination, food imports, and oil/gas exports and is incapable of defending itself on its own.

New comment by elphinstone in "I bought Friendster for $30k – Here's what I'm doing with it"

elphinstone — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 13:54:36 +0000

I doubt gray market sites have any kind of longterm value or predictable revenues. Who knows what kind of site it was, but to be valued so lowly the regulatory risk might be very high.

New comment by elphinstone in "Meta creating AI version of Mark Zuckerberg so staff can talk to the boss"

elphinstone — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 04:05:51 +0000

Great, they can put the Zuckbot nobody wants to talk to in the Metaverse nobody wants to visit.

New comment by elphinstone in "Meta is set to pay its top AI executives almost a billion each in bonuses"

elphinstone — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 14:06:00 +0000

They should invest in a Mars colony and all go there and never come back and leave us alone.

New comment by elphinstone in "Model-Based Testing for Dungeons & Dragons"

elphinstone — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 15:46:16 +0000

Same experience mostly. I distinctly remember trying and then ignoring Unarmed combat and Psionics as cumbersome nonsense. Encumbrance was only enforced for a huge hoard, range penalties were usually irrelevant, and any sort of weapon factor was out. Most important was hp, AC, attacks/round, spells, magic items, STR, DEX, and saving throws.

New comment by elphinstone in "US cities are axing Flock Safety surveillance technology"

elphinstone — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 13:57:25 +0000

An obnoxious, autoplay-at-full-volume ad that took the page an extra 30 seconds to load and somehow bypassed firefox adblockers...

New comment by elphinstone in "TDF ejects its core developers"

elphinstone — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 14:17:34 +0000

Has to be #1, as the blog makes no mention of age restrictions. Ejecting people for being over 30 would be unheard of outside of Logan's Run! (vintage scifi movie)

New comment by elphinstone in "Trevor Milton is raising funds for a new jet he claims will transform flying"

elphinstone — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 14:38:15 +0000

How about Holmes comes back and works at Starbucks? Why should we want known criminals and con artists back in positions of power and trust? Investing in someone like that is a breach of fiduciary duty. Give the opportunity to some worthy unknown, not known liars and criminals.

New comment by elphinstone in "Digg is gone again"

elphinstone — Sat, 14 Mar 2026 14:29:47 +0000

Perhaps they migrate into Discord and Instagram once they acquire better visual and voice capabilities.

New comment by elphinstone in "PayPal discloses data breach that exposed user info for 6 months"

elphinstone — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 15:54:14 +0000

I recently tried to sign up for paypal, "tried" being the operative word since their garbage, broken processes couldn't verify me despite bank info, etc.

After seeing their profound incompetence at customer acquisition, ineptitude on the security front is no surprise.

New comment by elphinstone in "Ministry of Justice orders deletion of the UK's largest court reporting database"

elphinstone — Mon, 16 Feb 2026 14:58:52 +0000

Naturally the first impulse is to protect criminals while law-abiding citizens are ignored.

New comment by elphinstone in "Prediction markets are ushering in a world in which news becomes about gambling"

elphinstone — Sun, 18 Jan 2026 19:22:09 +0000

He's writing about Revolutionary France's debasement, but Mackay's Extraordinary Delusions documents France's debasement under John Law about 70 years earlier, which shows how easily such mistakes are repeated.

New comment by elphinstone in "Apple has locked my Apple ID, and I have no recourse. A plea for help"

elphinstone — Sat, 13 Dec 2025 15:41:18 +0000

Oh, yes, only "important" people deserve customer service. That is an appallingly elitist attitude.

New comment by elphinstone in "Dark Pattern Games"

elphinstone — Mon, 17 Nov 2025 03:22:29 +0000

Even mainstream gaming sites cannot review even a fraction of the mobile games market; you've created for yourself a truly Sisyphean task.

A better approach might be to highlight the fraction of mobile games that deserve more recognition for avoiding dark patterns, like this site does:

https://nobsgames.stavros.io/android/

Alternately, focus on AAA games.