Hacker News: polymatter

New comment by polymatter in "How I, a non-developer, read the tutorial you, a developer, wrote for me"

polymatter — Mon, 22 Sep 2025 09:09:17 +0000

Maybe being able to follow a set of (seemingly silly) instructions should be part of the interview/onboarding process. And emphasised at job performance time.

New comment by polymatter in "I built an app to backup Live Photos from iPhone to external hard drives"

polymatter — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 20:42:35 +0000

Thank you for including a non subscription “lifetime” payment option.

New comment by polymatter in "Show HN: Duolingo-style exercises but with real-world content like the news"

polymatter — Tue, 01 Apr 2025 09:14:19 +0000

Second this request

New comment by polymatter in "US Judge invalidates blood glucose sensor patent, opens door for Apple Watch"

polymatter — Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:30:58 +0000

But that happens anyway. Patent litigation is expensive and time consuming and is far more often used to punch down, regardless of merits.

The fairy tale of the solo patent holder fighting off giant mega corporations is worthy of a Hallmark movie and just as realistic.

New comment by polymatter in "The FDA Hasn't Inspected This Drug Factory After 7 Recalls for the Same Flaw"

polymatter — Fri, 13 Dec 2024 14:19:58 +0000

thanks

New comment by polymatter in "The FDA Hasn't Inspected This Drug Factory After 7 Recalls for the Same Flaw"

polymatter — Fri, 13 Dec 2024 10:27:28 +0000

What’s the “baby formula brouhaha”?

New comment by polymatter in "Limits to running speed in dogs, horses and human"

polymatter — Sun, 11 Aug 2024 16:12:01 +0000

There is a race based on that.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_versus_Horse_Marathon

It’s often fairly close between human and horse

New comment by polymatter in "I was at AMD in the mid-late 2000s helping design CPU/APU/GPUs"

polymatter — Fri, 05 Jul 2024 14:16:30 +0000

That doesn’t make it less true!

It’s a bet because it’s risky “capital is at risk”,“value of investments can go down as well as up” etc. As opposed to a savings account which is far far less risky enough that it’s not really a bet.

New comment by polymatter in "The case for not sanitising fairy tales"

polymatter — Tue, 25 Jun 2024 16:14:23 +0000

And they can be learnt outside of school just as well. I'll never understand how readily people are to accept schooling.

New comment by polymatter in "OpenAI: Model Spec"

polymatter — Thu, 09 May 2024 12:37:18 +0000

Question is asked in traditional characters which are common in Taiwan (and Chinese diaspora). China uses simplified characters (mostly). Might make a difference.

New comment by polymatter in "Mental Health in Open Source"

polymatter — Sat, 16 Mar 2024 21:45:24 +0000

How do you use AI to learn internals of massive repos? Surely the context is too big and/or it requires opening org code up and I'd never get approval for that. What LLM do you use?

New comment by polymatter in "Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel"

polymatter — Fri, 19 Jan 2024 23:12:22 +0000

Sounds like time to consider small claims court.

New comment by polymatter in "Post Office lied and threatened BBC over Fujitsu dev whistleblower"

polymatter — Fri, 12 Jan 2024 18:14:25 +0000

Perhaps forced bankruptcy to personally pay back compensation to the Post Office. Follow the money the way they do with terrorists.

New comment by polymatter in "UK drops 'spy clause' for scanning encrypted messages, admits not 'feasible'"

polymatter — Thu, 07 Sep 2023 19:23:14 +0000

Yes to my understanding. Parliament makes the laws. No court can override Parliament. No existing law binds Parliament. The only thing stopping this is how incredibly embarrassing it would be and individual MPs might lose their next election.

https://www.parliament.uk/site-information/glossary/parliame...

New comment by polymatter in "Ask HN: Who is hiring? (August 2023)"

polymatter — Tue, 01 Aug 2023 21:30:57 +0000

Companies House (part of UK civil service) | Senior Developer | Full time | Remote in UK or Hybrid in Cardiff | Can sponsor Visa to UK

We can offer an incredible defined benefit pension and an extremely family friendly flex system (You can work your time anytime between 6am and 8pm with no core hours, just clock in and out). If that sounds interesting you should apply.

We are Remote first with the super majority of people working from home most of the time.

We do a lot of training including free Pluralsight and other courses throughout the year.

I like to be perfectly frank though that we can not offer London salaries.

See the role at https://www.civilservicejobs.service.gov.uk/csr/index.cgi?SI...

New comment by polymatter in "Show HN: Global Pomodoro every 30 minutes"

polymatter — Tue, 20 Jun 2023 08:16:35 +0000

The feeling of community. If you _feel_ like you are with a community then you are more likely to stick with it. Presumably that's why there is a chat.

New comment by polymatter in "GitHub Copilot, with “public code” blocked, emits my copyrighted code"

polymatter — Mon, 17 Oct 2022 06:50:20 +0000

Exactly. They need to vet each project

New comment by polymatter in "GitHub Copilot, with “public code” blocked, emits my copyrighted code"

polymatter — Mon, 17 Oct 2022 06:36:23 +0000

Exactly, the chain of custody is absolutely required for this to be legal because no oracle can exist. It must be able to attribute exactly who contributed the suspect code. It must be able to handle the edge case where some humans might publish code without permission.

Either that or we effectively get rid of software copyright as copilot can be used (or even claim to be used) to launder code of license restrictions. Eg No I didn't copy your code, I used copilot and it copied your code so I did nothing wrong.

New comment by polymatter in "German Government Agency warns about using Kaspersky"

polymatter — Tue, 15 Mar 2022 10:37:33 +0000

Does Windows Defeneder not count?

New comment by polymatter in "Kids don't need tools for kids"

polymatter — Mon, 14 Mar 2022 13:37:18 +0000

Dragonbox algebra uses the normal algebra notation for the later stages, so it could be you just need to persist.

For example initially the unknown variable is the namesake cute dragon in a box, but it later becomes "x", the bubbles become brackets, the green whirlpool becomes 0, the cute animals become other variables etc.