Hacker News: polshaw

New comment by polshaw in "CRISPR tech selectively shreds cancer cells, including "undruggable" cancers"

polshaw — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 18:28:19 +0000

That's a huge misreading. Hiding comments in the UI empirically does not suppress discussion, if anything it actually attracts engagement. Lots of people are seeking the "wrong" to "correct" it.

Suppressed debate is almost universally due to biased/captured moderation teams aggressively using bans.

New comment by polshaw in "WhatsApp Business API pricing 2026: what's free and where markup hides"

polshaw — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 18:08:10 +0000

It's not "richer countries", unless none exist in Europe or Asia. SMS has only kept its primacy for text communication in North America. Also note the RoW has never had to pay to receive SMS.

But NB even where messaging apps are defacto norms, most of the confirmation and verification for businesses remains via SMS.

New comment by polshaw in "YouTube users get option to set their Shorts time limit to zero minutes"

polshaw — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 12:49:08 +0000

These are not product placements, it's as if someone wrote a movie or TV episode literally with an ad break.

New comment by polshaw in "Cocoa-Way – Native macOS Wayland compositor for running Linux apps seamlessly"

polshaw — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 11:56:41 +0000

I don't want KDE but I would much prefer gnome to macos desktop, I think it's both prettier and more functional, and that's not a tahoe thing. I hate finder too, and don't see any way to properly use an alternative.

New comment by polshaw in "Apple discontinues the Mac Pro"

polshaw — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 10:41:15 +0000

sounds like 100% risk of getting scammed

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

polshaw — Sat, 31 Jan 2026 10:54:57 +0000

Could we perhaps include medical care in the necessities don't you think?

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

polshaw — Sat, 31 Jan 2026 10:51:43 +0000

UBI discussion invariably is way off the mark. The only thing UBI solves is how to give out the money, which is a massive misdirection, the real problem is how to get the money. Do you gut the state and allow people who don't work to have enough money to barely survive as an underclass, or do you end billionaires and usher in a new renaissance where all needs are met and labour shall just be at our whim. These two vastly different visions are both UBI, but most discussion about UBI completely sidesteps that as it requires touching upon the more difficult issues.

Once you have control of the money to give out, literally every way of redistribution is as good as UBI. If you calculate how much money would be required for a reasonable UBI.. then imagine what could be done if that money was spent on communal, humane, services then it would be able to revolutionise the world every bit as much.

New comment by polshaw in "TikTok settles just before social media addiction trial to begin"

polshaw — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 21:24:42 +0000

(regardless of the fact Google is included in the suit;) Youtube is a different model I think. Yes you can burn time with it forever if you are bored, but it's not the relentless dopamine machine gun that IG and Tiktok deliver. (which is why YT tried to get in on that with shorts, but failed).

New comment by polshaw in "Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores"

polshaw — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 18:02:18 +0000

The range of stars is very deliberately NOT zero indexed, you cannot rate a product below 1.

New comment by polshaw in "Pocket TTS: A high quality TTS that gives your CPU a voice"

polshaw — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 10:04:08 +0000

I think this is totally wrong. When you have both parties speaking multiple languages this happens all the time. You see this more with English being the loaner more often than it is the borrower, due to the reach that the language has. Listen to an Indian or Filipino speak for a while, it's interspersed with English words ALL the time. It happens less in English as there is not the universal knowledge base of one specific other language, but it does happen sometimes when searching for a certain, je ne sais pas.

New comment by polshaw in "India's Electric Two-Wheeler Market: Rise, Reset and What Comes Next"

polshaw — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 15:52:46 +0000

FWIW Taiwan has had an e-scooter battery swap system for a decade; Gogoro

New comment by polshaw in "US Job Openings Decline to Lowest Level in More Than a Year"

polshaw — Wed, 07 Jan 2026 16:33:05 +0000

US would lose out significantly if this were applied by everyone worldwide. The whole of Europe + Anglosphere have surrendered their whole tech related sectors to US companies, an enormous wealth transfer.

New comment by polshaw in "FracturedJson"

polshaw — Fri, 02 Jan 2026 13:18:51 +0000

Is there an option for it to read the contents from a pipe? that's by far my biggest use for the jq app.

New comment by polshaw in "This is not the future"

polshaw — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 16:31:51 +0000

Your introductory paragraph comes across very much like "people who want to change the status quo are political and people who want to maintain it are not"; which is clearly nonsense. "how things are is how they should be" is as much of an ideology, just a less conspicuous one given the existing norms.

>Is my choice to write some boiler plate code using gen AI truly political?

I am much closer to agreeing with your take here, but as you recognise, there are lots of political aspects to your actions, even if they are not conscious. Not intentionally being political doesn't mean you are not making political choices; there are many more that your AI choice touches upon; privacy issues, wealth distribution, centralisation, etc etc. Of course these choices become limited by practicalities but they still exist.

New comment by polshaw in "How to Assemble an Electric Heating Element from Scratch"

polshaw — Mon, 20 Oct 2025 10:39:29 +0000

>Uptime 5 weeks, 1 day, 3 hours, 46 minutes

Seems to have had no issue whatsoever! Even through the whole night period. Shows the depth of inefficiency of our 'advanced' systems.

New comment by polshaw in "Replacement.ai"

polshaw — Sun, 19 Oct 2025 15:53:41 +0000

It's been happening, it's just one abstraction away. They have demonised unions for decades in US discourse.

New comment by polshaw in "M5 MacBook Pro"

polshaw — Wed, 15 Oct 2025 15:47:37 +0000

Indeed. RAM is the tool of planned obselecence (and profiteering for that matter).

New comment by polshaw in "UK government states that 'safety' act is about influence over public discourse"

polshaw — Fri, 15 Aug 2025 10:59:17 +0000

So there is not a magical space where the law does not apply? that is what you call hypocritical.

New comment by polshaw in "Apple pulls data protection tool after UK government security row"

polshaw — Sat, 22 Feb 2025 15:09:10 +0000

You don't say it's "especially" red then do you. The comparison was started by the GP.

New comment by polshaw in "Apple pulls data protection tool after UK government security row"

polshaw — Sat, 22 Feb 2025 15:05:12 +0000

No, the monarch does not pick the Prime Minister. At all.

They have a ceremonial role in confirming them. Like they do with every law that Parliament creates. If they ever actually practically exercised this theoretical power it would be the end of the monarchy.