Hacker News: mpclark

New comment by mpclark in "Poison, Poison Everywhere"

mpclark — Mon, 27 Oct 2025 10:09:03 +0000

I heard that farmers ‘spray off’ the crop to kill it to make harvesting easier.

New comment by mpclark in "Anandtech.com now redirects to its forums"

mpclark — Sun, 03 Aug 2025 08:09:21 +0000

Those who are currently publishing will tell you otherwise; traffic from Google has dropped off a cliff. There’s a little bit of long tail, but nothing like the volumes the tech media built its businesses around.

New comment by mpclark in "How My Six Months Working on the Railway Changed My Life"

mpclark — Thu, 20 Mar 2025 10:20:57 +0000

I’ve recently changed career in the UK — I’ve gone from web dev to a passenger train conductor/manager. The conditions are excellent, the money is terrific for the work involved, and overall the experience is very rewarding. I couldn’t be happier.

New comment by mpclark in "The other British invasion: how UK lingo conquered the US"

mpclark — Sat, 05 Oct 2024 11:02:30 +0000

They absolutely are! She just looks a little different.

New comment by mpclark in "Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead""

mpclark — Sun, 19 May 2024 09:33:20 +0000

"a European federation" != "The European Federation"

New comment by mpclark in "Ask HN: Should I try to manufacture toasters?"

mpclark — Tue, 16 Jan 2024 10:02:19 +0000

I’ve used my Dualit almost daily since 1992. Still in tip-top condition, though it has had two sets of new heating elements at a cost of about £30 each time.

New comment by mpclark in "London Is Building Its Own Vegas Sphere"

mpclark — Mon, 20 Nov 2023 13:10:46 +0000

I suspect OP is referring to the presence of newts or bats or greater-crested hedge warblers etc, which can put a stop on building work for literally years in the UK

New comment by mpclark in "Internal slides on the work of the Google "Ads Quality" team"

mpclark — Mon, 30 Oct 2023 12:50:32 +0000

It hinges on different definitions of quality, I think...

New comment by mpclark in "LinkedIn laying off nearly 700, mostly from core engineering teams"

mpclark — Mon, 16 Oct 2023 16:09:34 +0000

Ow! That's nearly half an Activision...

New comment by mpclark in "Amsterdam preparing to lower speed limit to 30 kilometers per hour"

mpclark — Mon, 02 Oct 2023 08:45:56 +0000

That would be good too. Let's do both!

New comment by mpclark in "Amsterdam preparing to lower speed limit to 30 kilometers per hour"

mpclark — Mon, 02 Oct 2023 08:41:11 +0000

Well, from where I sit it looks like one formerly popular political party has seen what's coming up in its horoscope and has pinned its last hopes on turning these quality-of-life measures -- which it previously vociferously supported -- into a wedge issue by whipping up a frenzy around ThE wAr On DrIvErS!11!

New comment by mpclark in "Amsterdam preparing to lower speed limit to 30 kilometers per hour"

mpclark — Mon, 02 Oct 2023 08:03:32 +0000

We've had a 20mph limit in towns here in Wales for a couple of weeks now. It seems to be going well where I am; the traffic is noticeably slower during the day (though the people who hoon about at night are still doing it) and the only negative effect I've noticed so far is it might be fractionally harder (as in one has to wait longer) to cross the road at places other than designated crossings, presumably because the traffic is now distributed slightly differently.

New comment by mpclark in "Gambling firm allegedly paid blogs to link new mothers to its online games"

mpclark — Mon, 15 May 2023 09:15:26 +0000

IME a lot of these people are middle men -- though it looks like it, they aren't actually offering to buy a link; they'll just add you to the list of sites willing to sell links that they hawk around to other site operators (via spam, natch)

Also, when I see prices mentioned, they tend to be in the $10-$50 range. But that could just be the tier my sites are in, I guess.

All that aside, it's an absolute no from me. Lie down with dogs, get fleas.

New comment by mpclark in "The F-15 Eagle: Origins and Development, 1964-1972 [pdf]"

mpclark — Sun, 26 Mar 2023 17:24:49 +0000

I get to see them flying at low level pretty much daily, as I live on the Mach Loop in Wales where they practice. The howl as they go over never gets old, though I guess I’d feel very differently if they weren’t just training.

New comment by mpclark in "Information about a recent security incident at Mailchimp"

mpclark — Sat, 21 Jan 2023 16:29:43 +0000

What are savvy folks using instead of Mailchimp nowadays? I run a B2B news site and use Mailchimp for its daily and weekly newsletters. I like that MC handles the subscriber management and deliverability side of things, but they seem to be moving away from doing email well and towards random value added small biz marketing stuff. And my monthly bill has almost doubled since the Intuit acquisition.

New comment by mpclark in "What it's like to live in Monaco"

mpclark — Fri, 09 Dec 2022 12:54:02 +0000

...and practically speaking, it is really hard to get in and out of Monaco (there are only a few roads in and out and traffic moves slowly) and everywhere is covered by cameras. Anyone who tried a street robbery likely wouldn't make it very far at all.

New comment by mpclark in "Ask HN: Work instead of tech?"

mpclark — Wed, 09 Nov 2022 11:22:26 +0000

Become a Freemason. It’s an excellent way to ‘go horizontal’ by meeting a lot of decent people (well, men) from all walks of life and with many different experiences to share. You will find inspiration, fellowship and real life there.

Here in the UK there don’t seem to be too many techies in the Masons as yet, but I suspect this will grow as WFH does and people look to replace missing face-to-face relationships.

New comment by mpclark in "60-80% of Tweeters posting on Russia-Ukraine war are bots, 90% pro Ukraine"

mpclark — Fri, 16 Sep 2022 15:49:48 +0000

If I was a propagandist, this is the second order effect I'd want to see. If people don't lap up my story, inducing apathy is the next best thing.

New comment by mpclark in "Bank tells customers to disable updates and not upgrade to iOS 16"

mpclark — Sat, 10 Sep 2022 20:14:16 +0000

In a previous life I banked with Coutts. They were very pro online banking and security very early on. From the mid nineties to early noughties I was handling my account online and was given a physical securid token (Remember them? Like a thick credit card with an LCD display that generated a new OTP every 60 seconds) to deal with the login. But then they were absorbed into NatWest, and I expect their approach to IT changed.

New comment by mpclark in "Fake IMDB credits"

mpclark — Sun, 07 Aug 2022 19:37:33 +0000

This is a headline, not British English ;)