Hacker News: fredley

New comment by fredley in "Apple Just Lost Me"

fredley — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 14:59:57 +0000

I had the UK Age verification popup today. It verified immediately based on the age of my Apple account, I didn't have to take any further action. I am much younger than the OP, and probably than their Apple account. I am surprised that this didn't happen for them.

AI toys for children misread emotions and respond inappropriately

fredley — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 10:44:06 +0000

Article URL: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clyg4wx6nxgo

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47362684

Points: 39

# Comments: 15

M2x2

fredley — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 11:04:27 +0000

Article URL: https://www.wattiv.nl/work/m2x2/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47334046

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by fredley in "Mac mini will be made at a new facility in Houston"

fredley — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 10:43:09 +0000

It's like the mastered Factorio and applied it to real life.

New comment by fredley in "Yes there is a right way to stack the dishwasher. Here are the 5 rules"

fredley — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 20:11:05 +0000

Brit here: It is very uncommon.

New comment by fredley in "Anthropic opens Bengaluru office and announces new partnerships across India"

fredley — Mon, 16 Feb 2026 15:26:51 +0000

This is an interesting development. I would predict some of the biggest losers in the AI boom will be Indian (and similar) outsourcing companies. Companies like Wipro and Infosys have thrived off richer countries' businesses wanting grunt work done cheap, not caring necessarily about quality, as long as it meets some baseline functionality. LLMs are very good at this.

In addition, support volume must be taking a hit from AI agents too. When pricing stabilises, will Indian outsourcing still be competitive? Maybe. Maybe less so. If I were working for Infosys right now I'd be a more than a little worried.

Perhaps Anthropic anticipates a glut of engineers in the near future.

Intermittent fasting may make little difference to weight loss, review finds

fredley — Mon, 16 Feb 2026 15:19:01 +0000

Article URL: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4ge7n3pq62o

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47036116

Points: 33

# Comments: 60

New comment by fredley in "Cache Monet"

fredley — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 13:45:43 +0000

I genuinely can't tell if this is satire or not.

New comment by fredley in "Show HN: A free online British accent generator for instant voice conversion"

fredley — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 11:41:45 +0000

Americans always think a British accent is exactly one accent.

New comment by fredley in "From Tobacco to Ultraprocessed Food: How Industry Fuels Preventable Disease"

fredley — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 11:04:18 +0000

True, existing addictions are a good bet, but a brand new one with no competition, regulation or recognition? That's you you get Zuckerberg wealthy.

New comment by fredley in "What's up with all those equals signs anyway?"

fredley — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 11:02:47 +0000

Me too. I first assumced it was an OCR error, then remembered they were emails and wouldn't need to go through OCR. Then I thought that the US Government is exactly the kind of place to print out millions of emails only to scan them back in again.

I'm glad to know the real reason!

New comment by fredley in "From Tobacco to Ultraprocessed Food: How Industry Fuels Preventable Disease"

fredley — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 09:30:43 +0000

If you want to become a billionaire, the best way to do it is invent some new addiction.

New comment by fredley in "Coffee as a staining agent substitute in electron microscopy"

fredley — Sun, 01 Feb 2026 11:54:25 +0000

Calling it now: this is ignobel prize-worthy research. If it doesn’t get a nod I’ll eat my hat.

New comment by fredley in "An anecdote about backward compatibility"

fredley — Sat, 31 Jan 2026 15:22:01 +0000

I love this fact. If you're a fish with no neck, the route it takes is the most direct and obvious. But as evolution gradually lengthened necks the route remained the same!

New comment by fredley in "Antirender: remove the glossy shine on architectural renderings"

fredley — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 21:10:41 +0000

As someone in the UK, this was especially chilling.

New comment by fredley in "I stopped following the news"

fredley — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 09:50:11 +0000

Once you start noticing how often you see content that references e.g. anything that's happening in the US right now (I'm in the UK), you realise how 'news' is everywhere.

If you go on reddit, unless you've curated your subreddits and never touch /all or /popular, it's very heavy with 'news'. The Google app, a left-swipe by default on your Android phone is all 'news'. Twxtter/Bluesky/etc. are full of news. Avoiding news entirely is almost impossible on today's internet.

I have had success with this approach too, but key to all this is being careful about where you go online to minimise exposure. These days I don't use any 'social media' platforms, but I do visit HN and BBC news (both of which are of higher quality than most places, and crucially only have a few stories on a typical day - the rate of new content is low). This way I stay informed without falling down rabbit holes about every twist and turn of every (mostly awful/depressing) thing happening in the World.

New comment by fredley in "US believes its power matters more than international law, UN chief"

fredley — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 10:39:45 +0000

Yes, laws only matter if they are collectively believed in. International law just the same. This has always been the case, but largely speaking in the West, for the last century or so, the rule of law has been broadly believed in, including international law.

The story here is that the US seems to not currently believe international law is an effective tool for projecting its power. Whether correctly or otherwise, it has believed that up until now.

New comment by fredley in "Ask HN: Share your personal website"

fredley — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 21:21:43 +0000

https://mamota.net my ultra minimalist site

New comment by fredley in "Floppy disks turn out to be the greatest TV remote for kids"

fredley — Mon, 12 Jan 2026 19:17:48 +0000

That's fair, library systems can be very variable, where we are we can access audiobooks on a desktop, so there's access to the raw files, I can see how if you're doing it with an iPhone app it's considerably harder!

New comment by fredley in "Floppy disks turn out to be the greatest TV remote for kids"

fredley — Mon, 12 Jan 2026 16:07:32 +0000

The Yoto system actively encourages you to buy 'blank' cards to fill with your own content, and the process is relatively simple. Simply remove the DRM from the borrowed media, (convert to an appropriate format if required), then upload to the card. Wipe your card whenever you borrow a new audio book from the libarary for a clear conscience. yt-dlp is also a great source of content.