Hacker News: hghid

New comment by hghid in "Artemis II Launch Day Updates"

hghid — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 17:39:41 +0000

Even though you could question the whole Artemis concept, it's still extremely exciting watching the countdown with my son. I just missed the original Apollo flights and had assumed I would never see a moon landing in my lifetime. We may well not have a landing for quite some time yet, but it's still cool to see a Moon bound rocket standing on the launchpad...

New comment by hghid in "GIMP 3.0"

hghid — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 08:31:51 +0000

It's the blind assumption that if a UI was developed in the last year it is "Modern" and therefore automatically better. I guess there will be a phase of AI infused UI design to drag things further downhill. The equiavalent of a car saying: "We've noticed that you mainly use the Gas pedal, so we've made it bigger and put it right in the middle for you. Enjoy!". I am, of course, old and stuck in my ways ;-)

New comment by hghid in "Nuclear fusion: WEST beats the world record for plasma duration"

hghid — Wed, 19 Feb 2025 08:38:53 +0000

There may also be a side business selling skin products to protect people who may be exposed to the radiation from this new reactor. Possibly people may even choose to vacation in areas of elevated radation, as it is likely to be warmer. Interesting...

New comment by hghid in "George Stephenson"

hghid — Sun, 28 Apr 2024 14:28:29 +0000

Also worth a trip to:

https://www.beamish.org.uk/

To see a lot of Industrial Revolution tech actually working.

New comment by hghid in "John Lasseter drew the BSD daemon logo"

hghid — Wed, 17 Jan 2024 22:53:15 +0000

There are plenty of things that I like to think I could probably turn my hand to and make a passable job of if I had to, but Illustration is not one of them. I would love to have to ability to visualise something and make it appear on paper like that, but no matter how hard I try I never will. The character and expression put into something that was probably a 30 minute sketch is quite amazing!

New comment by hghid in "Apple plans a slow, appointment-only rollout of Vision Pro"

hghid — Sun, 09 Jul 2023 19:22:44 +0000

I'm not sure I agree with "universally", I bet there are a awful lot of people who can't stand that level of service and find it quite uncomfortable. I get that I could order ahead etc, but that makes an impulse purchase into a multi-step process. I'm sure the multi-trillion dollar company felt that pain when I still bought their product only from a different place. Oh wait... ;-)

New comment by hghid in "Apple plans a slow, appointment-only rollout of Vision Pro"

hghid — Sun, 09 Jul 2023 18:49:53 +0000

That is true, but I'm sometimes I'm frankly far too impatient to wait for delivery.

New comment by hghid in "Apple plans a slow, appointment-only rollout of Vision Pro"

hghid — Sun, 09 Jul 2023 18:43:32 +0000

Slightly tangential rant, but is anybody else becoming frustrated with the process of buying Apple products in Apple stores? For me, it started with the Apple Watch - I knew which one I wanted and was ready just to head down and buy one, but I was forced to sit through an entire "fitting" with patronising explanation on how to use the knob on the the side. Recently, I wanted to buy a new Phone. Again, I knew the one I wanted and was ready to part with cash and walk out with a box as quickly as possible - I approached a sales assistant, said: "Hi, I'd like to buy a new phone please" (or words to that effect) to be informed that if I didn't have an appointment, it would take half an hour or so to get somebody over. A random store nearby that also sold phones had no issue selling me one.

The whole experience of visiting an Apple store has changed from being something I looked forward to just another shopping chore. The VR headset is a case in point - if I want to be guided through the process, then I will ask for that. Otherwise, just sell me the damn product! I guess maybe I'm just not their target audience any more.

New comment by hghid in "No Source Code == No Patent"

hghid — Mon, 17 Apr 2023 08:48:07 +0000

Nice idea, but at some point GPT + "generate code to implement this patent", may develop plausible enough code to satisfy most Patent Examiners. I don't see this fixing the issue in the longer term - maybe a "use it or lost it" rule + much shorter enforcement period for software patents is what is needed?

New comment by hghid in "We achieved a 6-fold increase in Podman startup speed"

hghid — Thu, 13 Apr 2023 21:08:32 +0000

Haha - that summed up my day perfectly!

New comment by hghid in "We achieved a 6-fold increase in Podman startup speed"

hghid — Thu, 13 Apr 2023 14:36:57 +0000

According to the car, the stability control system wasn't working. Cause? Obviously a broken fuel injector. The stability control system talks to the engine ECU to control the torque if there is a lack of traction - it is notified of this by the ABS computer. Broken Injector=No ability to manage torque, hence traction control warning. Sitting here now, that makes perfect sense. In horizontal Scottish rain - less so!

New comment by hghid in "We achieved a 6-fold increase in Podman startup speed"

hghid — Thu, 13 Apr 2023 10:02:04 +0000

Same here - I have owned an old petrol Vauxhall for years as my runaround car and it's so much easier to deal with. The big issue I have with newer cars is that the computers mask any developing issues until they get to a point when they just give up. A less sophicsticated car starts to just feel different a long time before it outright fails.

New comment by hghid in "We achieved a 6-fold increase in Podman startup speed"

hghid — Thu, 13 Apr 2023 09:08:37 +0000

I'm all for improvements to pod startup times etc, but the general idea of putting more software into cars is not that appealing. I recently broke down in the highlands of Scotland in a fairly new car with the family - it was a horrible experience. It was made worse by the fact that there was nobody close that had a clue what to do with the car. The breakdown service arrived promptly, plugged the diagnostic tool into the car, proclaimed it broken, called a tow truck and left - two days later we arrived home. Had I been in a less complex car, a local garage could most likely have fixed the problem and sent us on our way. The sophistication and gadgets in modern cars are great until something goes wrong then they fail hard. Small local garages that used to be a life saver are next to useless now as they don't have the tools and knowledge to fix a mobile data centre.

New comment by hghid in "BASIC is anything but dead"

hghid — Wed, 29 Mar 2023 20:45:59 +0000

Visual Basic was an incredible leap forward in programming in that it made programming accessible to much wider range of people. People that just wanted to make a computer perform a task without necessarily writing a commercial product or changing the world. Being a child of the 70's/80's, I was fortunate enough to learn by just diving in and writing Basic on a BBC Model B. I think the problem people have with BASIC is the 'B' for Beginner. It created a lot of snobbery. I remember being amazed when Windows came out because it brought a level of consistency to everyday software which meant that by and large you could get the basics of a piece of software without a manual. Before VB, there was a huge barrier to programming in Windows because for a long time it was C which, for all it's power, is not a language many people should be using. I suspect a lot of people here won't have experienced starting with an empty Window, dropping a Button on it, double clicking the Button and being dropped straight into the event handler code. It was a revelation. Especially when you realised that you got access to all of the other Windows goodies like printing, database access etc just by dropping a control onto a Form. Software development now is a long way away from the ease of access that VB gave us and is probably poorer for it.