Hacker News: rjmunro

New comment by rjmunro in "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (July 2026)"

rjmunro — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 23:11:54 +0000

  Location: Oxford area, UK
  Remote: Yes (happy with hybrid — 2–3 office visits/month to London, Reading, Bristol, Birmingham, or similar)
  Willing to relocate: No
  Technologies: TypeScript, JavaScript, Node.js, React, Python, PHP, PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, Docker, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, broadcast automation (Sofie/Bitfocus Companion)
  Résumé/CV:  (see also )
  Email: rjmunro@arjam.net

About: Senior full-stack engineer, 25+ years. Recently shipped major Sofie TV studio automation features for the BBC and SVT (<https://github.com/Sofie-Automation/Sofie-TV-automation>); my contract is wrapping up and I'm looking for what's next.

My recent work is TypeScript/React/Node on systems that have to work live-to-air—timers, playout orchestration, real-time state—not just CRUD behind a login. Example: re-architected Sofie timers to move clock calculations server-side, cutting client timer ticks from 60/s to 1/s.

I also build the tooling around the code: shared ESLint/Prettier presets across the Sofie ecosystem, jamies-git-tools <https://github.com/rjmunro/jamies-git-tools>. I have given company-wide Git talks and have wired up CI on GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, CircleCI, Jenkins, and others.

30 years of volunteer live A/V (sound engineering, directing, vision-mixing, streaming, camera operating, video editing).

Interested in broadcast/live media, live events, full-stack TypeScript, and developer tooling.

New comment by rjmunro in "Android Developer Verification: Threat masquerading as protection"

rjmunro — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 11:39:47 +0000

> Google has been nuking accounts since their inception

Google has been dealing with accounts opened for fraud, spam and other evil bots since their inception. They should be nuking those. What's needed is some way of reverifying an account that was closed incorrectly, maybe some kind of independent ombudsman service or something to get the account back.

New comment by rjmunro in "Hengefinder"

rjmunro — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 14:02:18 +0000

I tried the web henge near me feature (https://hengefinder.rcdis.co/henge_near_me)

It doesn't work if the road is not straight for it's entire length. It takes the start point of a road and the end point and assumes the road is a straight line between. It should work on individual segments of roads, not whole connected ways. It should only include further segments if they are on the same angle to some threshold. It should include segments from other roads if they are connected and aligned (maybe the road changes name at a crossroads).

It could even include disconnected segments if they align and are nearby but there is a discontinuity in between - sometimes a road junction is drawn in detail in Open Street Map - Often if you are stood at one end of the road you can see through and past the junction.

New comment by rjmunro in "45°C cooling design cuts data center water use to near zero"

rjmunro — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 09:11:44 +0000

I agree it's absurd and I'm in favour of some kind of wealth tax, but I don't get the connection here. This feels like a failure of infrastructure planning laws and things like noise regulations.

New comment by rjmunro in "Polymarket has flooded social media with deceptive videos by paid creators"

rjmunro — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 10:33:34 +0000

It's been going for centuries in the UK. There have been murders:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/father-jailed-fo...

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/gambler-murdered-woman...

It's a bit hard to find good stats, but it's at least 1 or 2 a year, it could be more like 10 - plenty of domestic violence is caused by money problems, and those problems can often be gambling related.

There's a lot of suicides - between 250 and 650 people each year according to gamblingwithlives.org https://www.gamblingwithlives.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01...

New comment by rjmunro in "I was wrong about the Midjourney ultra-sound scanner"

rjmunro — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:53:41 +0000

I'm not sure the da Vinci Surgical System is a good example: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4941968/

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

rjmunro — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 11:59:57 +0000

I'd be 100% happy to block those carriers from calling me. Their users should just get a message that calling my number is not supported and they should try calling me from another device.

New comment by rjmunro in "Your ePub Is fine"

rjmunro — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 10:58:41 +0000

They 100% did not let the power users and DIY scene exist. It only existed by exploiting OS security vulnerabilities. Every new iOS release required finding a new way to crack it. That's why a lot of people chose Android.

New comment by rjmunro in "Pokémon Go Scans Trained the Navigation Tech for Military Drones"

rjmunro — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 10:13:30 +0000

Surely military drones will use OpenStreetMap data? Even the Russians and Iranians can use it for whatever purpose they like.

New comment by rjmunro in "Job: Head of Stonehenge"

rjmunro — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 14:20:09 +0000

Last entry is at 3pm in winter because it takes a while to queue then catch the shuttle bus etc. and it gets dark, so closes at 5pm.

But if there were actual Police, not just English Heritage security, it sounds like something strange was happening that day, like a VIP visit or something.

It gets so busy that it's recommended to book a timeslot in advance on the website, even if you are a member and don't have to pay.

New comment by rjmunro in "Hacking your PC using your speaker without ever touching it"

rjmunro — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 13:45:06 +0000

While the article only talks about using this as a USB HID keyboard to send attacks, surely if you spent more time creating an evil firmware from scratch you could do much more than this? You could bridge any information from USB -> Bluetooth.

New comment by rjmunro in "Can the stockmarket swallow Anthropic, SpaceX and OpenAI?"

rjmunro — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 14:10:07 +0000

Could you use a prediction market (or Spread Betting in the UK) to hedge against your ETF loosing money during the period? If the ETF lost value, the hedge would gain it back and vice versa. You wouldn't need to sell the ETF and you'd only be liable for tax on gains from the prediction.

New comment by rjmunro in "New York, California pension leaders oppose 'extreme' SpaceX control structure"

rjmunro — Thu, 14 May 2026 15:14:43 +0000

According to Gemini, index funds in total own about 20% of the value on the Nasdaq 100 index. So if you list a new company in Nasdaq, typically they have to buy 20% of it. But only about 5% of SpaceX will floated, which means there won't be enough shares to go round.

They are doing a bunch of changes to rules to try and make this not completely break, but even if it doesn't, it feels like index funds are going to have to buy a lot of the SpaceX float, which is going to make it look like a successful IPO even if hardly any real investors buy it.

New comment by rjmunro in "New York, California pension leaders oppose 'extreme' SpaceX control structure"

rjmunro — Thu, 14 May 2026 14:53:42 +0000

I'd like to be able to invest in an "index minus certain companies which I choose" fund so that people can exclude companies that they don't like for whatever reason.

New comment by rjmunro in "Uber wants to turn its drivers into a sensor grid for AV companies"

rjmunro — Sat, 02 May 2026 16:55:34 +0000

Some people would tell me that they do, but only for training their internal self-driving AI.

I'm not sure about the privacy implications. You say "all its cars" but you actually mean "all its customers cars". The relationship between Uber and the cars/drivers is fairly different.

New comment by rjmunro in "Uber wants to turn its drivers into a sensor grid for self-driving companies"

rjmunro — Sat, 02 May 2026 16:53:21 +0000

Sometimes AV is supposed to mean Anti Virus or Alternative Vote and that's really confusing because it really means Audio Visual. Anything else, no.

I saw the title and thought it can't be AV, they must mean AI and made a typo.

New comment by rjmunro in "A Roblox cheat and one AI tool brought down Vercel's platform"

rjmunro — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 14:53:48 +0000

It might be the opposite - they logged into their work gmail account on their home machine to check their email.

New comment by rjmunro in "Edit store price tags using Flipper Zero"

rjmunro — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 12:22:46 +0000

In which country?

New comment by rjmunro in "FSF trying to contact Google about spammer sending 10k+ mails from Gmail account"

rjmunro — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 11:40:07 +0000

I think thats a really wrong definition of spam. Spam is untargeted junk from people you don't know, who are probably hiding there real identity using fake email headers etc. If it's a legit company with legit unsubscribe options, it's not spam.

It worries me a lot that people clicking "mark as spam" on messages from legit companies because they subscribed to the newsletter will mean that my messages with important information (order confirmations, e-tickets etc.) will get blocked.

New comment by rjmunro in "FSF trying to contact Google about spammer sending 10k+ mails from Gmail account"

rjmunro — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 11:35:27 +0000

I don't think your definition of spam matches the one that I understand it to mean. Spam is random email from someone you have not had contact with before firing messages to every address they can find anywhere on the web, the dark web, etc. Or if you ask not to be added to a mailing list and are added anyway. They often use fraudulent tricks to try to get the email through filters, such as fake from addresses.

Spam is not email from legitimate companies with valid contact details that have an opt out that you forgot to click when you signed up with them. That's legitimate marketing emails. You might argue they also shouldn't exist, but they are a different category.

I get plenty of the second from mailchimp (it's what they do), almost none of the first. Marking the second kind as spam, rather than clicking the unsubscribe link is dangerous because it teaches your anti-spam filter to reject messages from legitimate companies. You might find that if they need to contact you for a genuine reason e.g. a reciept for a future transaction, the message is blocked.