Hacker News: mttch

New comment by mttch in "Ti-84 Evo"

mttch — Sat, 02 May 2026 05:31:25 +0000

There are many professional examples outside of teaching (construction, lab based science, field work, engineering, healthcare, retail) where a calculator, not necessary a programmable one, is useful because the environment restricts the use of computers due to safety, security or practicalities.

New comment by mttch in "Buttered Crumpet, a custom typeface for Wallace and Gromit"

mttch — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 22:43:17 +0000

Even more obvious, look at the detail on the frame - it’s a unusual pattern that doesn’t repeat as you would expect.

New comment by mttch in "TerabyteDeals – Compare storage prices by $/TB"

mttch — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 06:35:37 +0000

The best price/TB in Amazon US are mostly NAS drives. For Amazon UK they are mostly external drives.

New comment by mttch in "Toys with the highest play-time and lowest clean-up-time"

mttch — Fri, 26 Dec 2025 07:42:37 +0000

We have a specific area for drawing so the ‘mess’ is confined to a small area. Our daughter is happy to likes to give the drawings away and isn’t overly attached to them after they’ve been displayed for a short while - I don’t personally see this as mess as I am also quite proud of her pictures. If I judge magnetic tiles by the same measure I should also include the storage space taken up by a large plastic box of magnetic tiles, the resistance to tidy away their tile creations and the frustration when younger siblings get involved!

New comment by mttch in "Toys with the highest play-time and lowest clean-up-time"

mttch — Thu, 25 Dec 2025 21:44:32 +0000

After my daughter turned 4, the ‘toy’ with the most play time and lowest clean up time was a good pad of blank paper and colouring pencils. The bonus is that it takes up little room and is therefore highly portable. Furthermore, if you forget it, you can replace it easily and cheaply!

New comment by mttch in "I misused LLMs to diagnose myself and ended up bedridden for a week"

mttch — Tue, 09 Dec 2025 21:42:38 +0000

In the UK we have the 111 NHS non-emergency telephone service - they don’t give medical advice but triage you based on your symptoms. Either a doctor will call you back, they will tell you to go the non-urgent care centre or A&E (ER) immediately.

New comment by mttch in "Show HN: I built a synth for my daughter"

mttch — Mon, 17 Nov 2025 16:18:51 +0000

This is great, i’d kickstart it, my 5 year old would love it.

New comment by mttch in "Frying Eggs and Air Quality Tests"

mttch — Fri, 19 Sep 2025 13:09:55 +0000

Two things, no oil as others have suggested but also frying eggs does not require a very high temperature, around 150 Celsius and your eggs don’t look particularly browned (which is how I prefer them too) so you aren’t exercising the Maillard reaction, which generates the PM2.5. Try again with browning a fatty cut of beef or pork steak in oil which require higher temperatures where lots of browning is occurring and you are also closer to the smoke point of the oil.

New comment by mttch in "Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription"

mttch — Sat, 16 Aug 2025 14:06:50 +0000

Is this the same with EV though? The power of the installed engine is more nuanced, for example the full power is limited by software already to prevent wheel spin and improve range. Also, in the UK EVs are listed as a 0cc engine on the vehicle ownership records so effectively have no engine.

New comment by mttch in "Unsafe and Unpredictable: My Volvo EX90 Experience"

mttch — Tue, 22 Jul 2025 21:07:24 +0000

I wouldn’t buy Tesla again but I’ve never experienced software issues in mine. Although some of the menus could be re-arranged for clarity, it’s otherwise clear and responsive. The app is great and the third party apps are even better. I’ve not heard positive things from VW or MG owners in terms of software either. Is there any good alternative to Tesla in this domain?

New comment by mttch in "Japanese grandparents create life-size Totoro with bus stop for grandkids (2020)"

mttch — Mon, 14 Jul 2025 19:18:33 +0000

The my neighbour Totoro theatre show has a 18ft soft moving puppet built by Jim Henson’s Creature shop. It’s incredible how they pulled it off.

https://muppet.fandom.com/wiki/My_Neighbour_Totoro

New comment by mttch in "Show HN: Patio – Rent tools, learn DIY, reduce waste"

mttch — Sun, 01 Jun 2025 20:26:13 +0000

There was one running in Frome, UK but unfortunately these community things are hard to keep going and it has now closed. The issues are cost of storage space, insurance, staffing etc.

You can see the requirements they needed to keep it going here: https://sharefrome.org/save-SHARE-together/

New comment by mttch in "Show HN: I built a tool to add noise texture to your images"

mttch — Sun, 30 Mar 2025 20:21:59 +0000

Same for me, I had to press the options button on iOS when uploading and set the format to ‘most compatible’. It now works but the aspect ratio of the image is squashed.

New comment by mttch in "Aluminum batteries outlive lithium-ion with a pinch of salt"

mttch — Fri, 07 Feb 2025 12:26:51 +0000

A few companies are cropping up to do EV battery repairs so it may be affordable to a consumer.

E.g. https://cedarelectric.co.uk/electric-and-hybrid-battery-repa...

My thoughts are that even after 80% usage the battery still has a second life for use in home power storage. Even after that most of the battery parts can be recycled. I think that battery trade-in schemes will start to become affordable once these reuse and recycling routes are scaled up.

New comment by mttch in "I bought a container full of Chinese electric excavators. Here's what showed up"

mttch — Tue, 04 Feb 2025 06:00:51 +0000

These would be great in the UK where we have smaller gardens and poor access. Typically access to rear gardens in semi-detached housing stock is down a narrow path between then houses. For terraced houses I’ve seen someone drive a mini-digger through the house to access the garden.

New comment by mttch in "One in four 2020 Tesla Model 3 failed the Danish periodic inspection in 2024"

mttch — Mon, 27 Jan 2025 09:41:17 +0000

In the UK first inspection is at 3 years and then every year after that. I wonder if the UK data looks any different due to the more onerous inspection schedule.

New comment by mttch in "My solar-powered and self-hosted website"

mttch — Sat, 19 Oct 2024 08:16:23 +0000

Cool project and I’d really like to try something similar with a 4G/5G connection so it doesn’t rely on site WiFi.

I don’t think your cost comparison is fair between the rpi and hosting. I host my website on a £1/mo shared vps and for my energy costs that equivalent to running a low power server at home, ignoring all the other benefits of it being off-site.

New comment by mttch in "Starship Flight 5: Launch and booster catch [video]"

mttch — Sun, 13 Oct 2024 19:53:53 +0000

High energy gammas have a relatively low cross section, most are going to pass right through the chip. If you add a too little shielding, or don’t layer shielding appropriately you are going to stop more gammas but produce lower energy x-rays from the shielding, which have a higher cross section, potentially increasing your chip dose.

New comment by mttch in "Almost all new car sales in Norway last month were EVs"

mttch — Sat, 14 Sep 2024 22:09:59 +0000

I just bought a second hand EV for 4k, cheaper than and ICE of the same age.

New comment by mttch in "Almost all new car sales in Norway last month were EVs"

mttch — Sat, 14 Sep 2024 22:08:03 +0000

Who needs a garage for charging? I’ve got a 7kWh charger on my driveway but no garage. Over the road there are chargers on the street lamps. Where I live I’ve even seen charger cables run inside gullies under pavements for people with no driveways.