Hacker News: medwards666

New comment by medwards666 in "What algorithm did Windows XP use to choose your initial user picture?"

medwards666 — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 10:55:14 +0000

Windows 7 was certainly pretty, but I still think that W2000 was peak Windows UI (and I've been around since Windows 2.0)

New comment by medwards666 in "A Topological Picture Book, Rendered"

medwards666 — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 06:54:46 +0000

Absolutely beautiful.

New comment by medwards666 in "LG smart TVs caught logging audio with screen off and snooping on local devices"

medwards666 — Mon, 07 Sep 2026 10:55:31 +0000

... and that's the trick, isn't it. Have you ever tried going into an electrical store and buying a dumb TV any time recently?

New comment by medwards666 in "LG smart TVs caught logging audio with screen off and snooping on local devices"

medwards666 — Mon, 07 Sep 2026 10:54:30 +0000

True. But corruption by those in positions of power and influence is a problem as old as the ages, sadly. But at least there _are_ rules and penalties in place for those caught so there's an element of risk. Whereas the blanket data harvesting by corporations currently appears to go utterly unabated.

New comment by medwards666 in "216M Spy TVs – The LG Smart TV Problem [video]"

medwards666 — Mon, 07 Sep 2026 10:30:49 +0000

This sort of blanket data collection needs to be made illegal in every single jurisdiction, and have _very_ robust penalties for anyone found in breach of them.

New comment by medwards666 in "Vomit: Clean up Claude 5's token output with a separate LLM"

medwards666 — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 03:09:13 +0000

Turn on caveman mode first?

New comment by medwards666 in "Vomit: Clean up Claude 5's token output with a separate LLM"

medwards666 — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 18:11:29 +0000

This morning I asked Claude to provide a summary of the work it had done but to '... explain it as if you were talking to a moron' and it actually turned out a quite comprehensible summary.

So going to continue trying that as a command structure going forwards...

New comment by medwards666 in "If this is true, the hyperscalers are toast"

medwards666 — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 12:15:10 +0000

But what if I _really like_ Duran Duran???

New comment by medwards666 in "An Infuriating Goodbye to Photoshop"

medwards666 — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 15:18:26 +0000

Awesome. Have starred the repo and will have a look through it later tonight when I'm done with work.

New comment by medwards666 in "An Infuriating Goodbye to Photoshop"

medwards666 — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 14:09:02 +0000

True, that's an option, but a native build would be optimal

New comment by medwards666 in "An Infuriating Goodbye to Photoshop"

medwards666 — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 13:47:01 +0000

Presumably though Canva subscriptions?

Shame it's only Mac/Windows compatible. I'd kill for a Linux build.

New comment by medwards666 in "A backdoor in a LinkedIn job offer"

medwards666 — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 06:11:35 +0000

I had it several years ago when I was running my own one-man consultancy [ie: self-employed] ... somehow I'd managed to have six or seven people on LI claiming to work for the same company.

Reported them to LI and nothing was ever done about it. Eventually the accounts disappeared as I guess they were either shut down or repurposed.

New comment by medwards666 in "Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore"

medwards666 — Tue, 26 May 2026 05:10:16 +0000

Love the closeout of the article: "On page 112 there are coffee stains where the caffeine blots are somehow still a valid Perl program."

New comment by medwards666 in "I Miss Terry Pratchett"

medwards666 — Sat, 23 May 2026 13:38:34 +0000

There were a couple of cartoon series by Cosgrove-Hall that were _really_ well done. (Wyrd Sisters and Soul Music)

New comment by medwards666 in "I Miss Terry Pratchett"

medwards666 — Sat, 23 May 2026 13:34:41 +0000

I read it, and I cried like a baby. Still do whenever I reach for it.

New comment by medwards666 in "The 1987 game “The Last Ninja” was 40 kilobytes"

medwards666 — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 07:39:46 +0000

> LN2 had something in a bathroom? You have to position yourself in the doorway and do a squat of faith)

Sounds like every time I go to the bathroom ... :D

New comment by medwards666 in "Claude Code users hitting usage limits 'way faster than expected'"

medwards666 — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 13:50:23 +0000

I get the same. Work has shifted to being agentic first - and whenever I use anything other than Claude Opus it seems that the model easily gets lost spinning its wheels on even the simplest query - especially with some of our more complex codebases, whereas Opus manages to not only reason adequately about the codebase, but also can produce decent quality code/tests in fairly short order.

Oddly though, when using at home I'm using Sonnet via the standard chat interface and that, whilst it will produce substandard code in its output is still reasonably capable - even in more niche tasks. Granted though that my personal projects are far simpler than the codebase I handle at work.

New comment by medwards666 in "Some uncomfortable truths about AI coding agents"

medwards666 — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 06:54:42 +0000

> "I think it depends on what you find enjoyable"

Exactly this. I use agents every day to either produce tests for code I've written according to the guidelines I set out for it, or to produce the boilerplate code (which is seldom enjoyable) before I get to add the cool stuff.

Furthermore, when I inevitably get stuck on a thornier section of new code, or revisiting a codebase which I've not investigated for some time, I can use the agent to provide ideas and suggestions of where/how to start/get unstuck.

Like any tool - it's how you apply it to the job in hand (and ensuring the job is relevant) that counts.

That, and never 100% trusting the output.

New comment by medwards666 in "Bars close and hundreds lose jobs as US firm buys Brewdog in £33M deal"

medwards666 — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 19:16:11 +0000

Cannabis in the UK is still illegal, so unless you're picking up weed from your local dealer, it's not a big thing outside the home.

But price of booze is killing pubs here. Getting close to £8 a pint now in London. £10 for a pint of Guinness in many bars.

New comment by medwards666 in "Scientists crack the case of "screeching" Scotch tape"

medwards666 — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 18:40:57 +0000

They're mentioned in the article (with a photo)