Hacker News: elphinstone

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.

New comment by elphinstone in "A new Google model is nearly perfect on automated handwriting recognition"

elphinstone — Sat, 15 Nov 2025 03:37:01 +0000

I read the whole article, but have never tried the model. Looking at the input document, I believe the model saw enough of a space between the 14 and 5 to simply treat it that way. I saw the space too. Impressive, but it's a leap to say it saw 145 then used higher order reasoning to correct 145 to 14 and 5.

New comment by elphinstone in "The emergence and diversification of dog morphology"

elphinstone — Fri, 14 Nov 2025 04:09:54 +0000

I always wondered if there was some genetic factor related to mutations, perhaps, that was stronger in dogs than cats, horses, cows, sheep, etc. There's such morphological variety.

New comment by elphinstone in "Guideline has been acquired by Gusto"

elphinstone — Tue, 04 Nov 2025 01:18:03 +0000

If I my retirement was tied up with some startup trying to IPO, I'd be furious. It's the exact opposite of responsible stewardship.

New comment by elphinstone in "Malaysia: Truly Asia"

elphinstone — Mon, 03 Nov 2025 05:47:39 +0000

Smug blogger visits foreign country for a few days, finds evidence of his pre-existing belief system.

New comment by elphinstone in "OpenAI says over a million people talk to ChatGPT about suicide weekly"

elphinstone — Tue, 28 Oct 2025 01:34:59 +0000

How long until they monetize it with sponsored advice to go sign up for betterhelp or some other dubious online therapist? Dystopian and horrifying.

New comment by elphinstone in "Counter-Strike's player economy is in a freefall"

elphinstone — Fri, 24 Oct 2025 01:19:03 +0000

Good. Too many game companies are running unregulated casinos aimed at minors with their lootboxes and pay to win mechanics.

New comment by elphinstone in "Google flags Immich sites as dangerous"

elphinstone — Thu, 23 Oct 2025 01:19:54 +0000

They are not the government and should not have this vast, unaccountable monopoly power with no accountability and no customer service.

New comment by elphinstone in "Buffett indicator says stock market overvalued"

elphinstone — Mon, 29 Sep 2025 02:29:11 +0000

That's valid in regards to one's own company (excluding options, etc.), but to avoid longterm investing in the most dynamic sector with outsized returns is pennywise, pound foolish as the saying goes.

New comment by elphinstone in "OpenAI and Nvidia announce partnership to deploy 10GW of Nvidia systems"

elphinstone — Tue, 23 Sep 2025 03:44:39 +0000

That gives me Enron vibes, even though these are vastly different situations. But the idea of a social media company trading in this space is nuts.

New comment by elphinstone in "Slack has raised our charges by $195k per year"

elphinstone — Thu, 18 Sep 2025 10:22:51 +0000

Unprecedented? From this company? Are you serious?

New comment by elphinstone in "Vietnam to close 86M bank accounts for lack of biometric data"

elphinstone — Thu, 11 Sep 2025 07:52:36 +0000

86M accounts in a country of 100M, that's a LOT of foreign accounts.

New comment by elphinstone in "Enshittification Is Our Fault"

elphinstone — Tue, 26 Aug 2025 02:47:15 +0000

Heroin works, do you praise the dealers as "disruptors" and blame the victims? Not a far-fetched example, the opiod epidemic was basically that.

Individuals have few resources to protect themselves from massive corporations armed with sophisticated technology, predatory tactics, and a compliant and captured state.

This kind of victim blaming is sociopathic.