Hacker News: robotmay

My weird ADHD to-do app, Do-dono

robotmay — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 18:36:28 +0000

Article URL: https://good.afternoonrobot.co.uk/my-weird-adhd-to-do-app-do-dono/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47222092

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

I can't read books written in the first-person perspective

robotmay — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 17:52:18 +0000

Article URL: https://good.afternoonrobot.co.uk/i-cant-read-books-written-in-the-first-person-perspective/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47221454

Points: 3

# Comments: 2

New comment by robotmay in "Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant"

robotmay — Wed, 08 Dec 2021 16:26:27 +0000

Er, so? They developed and are producing a vaccine that will save millions of lives. That's a damn sight more deserving of billions in profit than any other number of industries or corporations.

New comment by robotmay in "Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant"

robotmay — Wed, 08 Dec 2021 16:24:27 +0000

I mean, I pay nothing for mine. I already pay tax to fund our health service, which purchases many drugs from many vendors for many diseases. This is just one more, and by all accounts it's comparatively cheap for the overall cost-savings when it keeps the vast majority of people out of the hospitals.

New comment by robotmay in "Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant"

robotmay — Wed, 08 Dec 2021 16:16:22 +0000

Yeah cool I'll pass that along to the 3 people I personally know who died from it.

1 in 100 odds isn't super great, and that's ignoring the unknown impact of long-COVID. The risk of bad vaccine side-effects is lower than the chance of death.

New comment by robotmay in "What the world can learn from Britain’s humble hedge"

robotmay — Thu, 25 Nov 2021 22:36:31 +0000

This’ll likely make me sound like a lunatic, but when I go abroad from the UK, hedgerows are one of the top 3 things I miss (the other two being beer and tea). They’re just so ubiquitous when travelling here, and they make the world feel a bit smaller.

As a wildlife photographer I probably take 75% of my photos of birds in hedges. I don’t have to camp out for hours - I just walk along the hedgerows aimlessly.

Also, if other countries don’t have hedges, what happens to the grotty pornography magazines that dwell natively in the hedgerows? Are they in some sort of meta-state of quasi-existence? A theoretical hedgerow porn mag?

New comment by robotmay in "The unbearable fussiness of the smart home"

robotmay — Wed, 24 Nov 2021 13:32:11 +0000

I've had a lot of success with z-wave devices in my home, hooked into Home Assistant. They seem more resilient than zigbee (and much more reliable than any of the bespoke wifi stuff) and are largely all interoperable. I've got a bunch of z-wave devices like plugs and thermostats, but it comes at a high cost.

For lights I do use zigbee ones just because they're cheaper, but my Hue and IKEA mix do have communication issues sometimes (I have them both on a Deconz stick attached to my server).

But all of this relies on Home Assistant. I honestly can't imagine trying to use smart home devices as a "normal" consumer, relying on the software of specific companies. They're all largely terrible walled gardens, and I'm constantly surprised by how bad they actually are.

New comment by robotmay in "EU lawmakers pass strict new rules affecting big U.S. tech"

robotmay — Tue, 23 Nov 2021 16:17:32 +0000

It'd be interesting to see. At the moment Europe is largely dominated by the US tech industry (bar a few notable exceptions, like Spotify). One of them leaving would open a nice big gap for new/existing EU alternatives to compete in.

New comment by robotmay in "Winamp"

robotmay — Tue, 23 Nov 2021 15:15:55 +0000

This website doesn't even run smoothly on my overpowered gaming desktop. Back in 2000 I'd have never thought we'd be at the point where I can run games in 4K happily but not scroll through a website without it lagging up.

New comment by robotmay in "Ask HN: What browser extensions are a must-have in 2021?"

robotmay — Tue, 23 Nov 2021 11:41:07 +0000

Sounds like the plot for Face/Off sequel where Nicolas Cage swaps his face with himself, Nicolas Cage.

New comment by robotmay in "Why Are Topre Keyboards So Expensive?"

robotmay — Sat, 20 Nov 2021 01:15:23 +0000

I have two Topre keyboards. I love my RealForce whole-heartedly, but my HHKB is nowhere near the same typing quality. The HHKB is still nice, but I only use it as a portable alternative (I have a bluetooth model). The RealForce feels easy, fluid, and solid, somehow.

I have the RealForce R2 with variably-weighted switches and it is such a pleasant experience to type on that I don't even bother looking at other keyboards any more - there's nothing else I want from a board.

New comment by robotmay in "Show HN: Pony – a messenger for mindful correspondence"

robotmay — Fri, 19 Nov 2021 16:57:35 +0000

I've had this idea knocking about for a while so it's really nice to see that I wasn't the only one who thought it might work. This looks like a nice implementation - I'm excited to give it a go!

New comment by robotmay in "A no-go fantasy: writing Go in Ruby with Ruby Next"

robotmay — Wed, 10 Nov 2021 13:07:43 +0000

Oh I totally forgot about that - I think I played around with it a few years back. I should check in and see what has changed, it was rather cool.

New comment by robotmay in "A no-go fantasy: writing Go in Ruby with Ruby Next"

robotmay — Wed, 10 Nov 2021 11:33:52 +0000

I've always thought it a bit of a shame that Ruby isn't more popular for Raspberry Pi projects. I mean, I use it, but the standard is still Python. And Python is great, don't get me wrong, but Ruby is just so much fun for hobby projects.

I used to try to write things in the most popular language for those things, like writing Prometheus exporters in Go. But I eventually realised I just didn't care that much, and now I write them in Ruby, and everything is sunshine and happiness again.

New comment by robotmay in "Ask HN: What is the best privacy-focused video doorbell?"

robotmay — Sat, 06 Nov 2021 01:33:10 +0000

Ooh thanks! Yeah Frigate is fantastic and has saved me so much hassle. The Coral device is pretty much a requirement for performance but it does work really well :D

I’ll definitely be writing up a few more things soon! I tend to go through bursts of sorting my Home Assistant stuff out.

New comment by robotmay in "Ask HN: What is the best privacy-focused video doorbell?"

robotmay — Sat, 06 Nov 2021 01:30:23 +0000

Probably not, but I don’t have a need for that - I’m really just after the video and notifications. I imagine it could be possible with some hacking but I haven’t got it yet.

New comment by robotmay in "Ask HN: What is the best privacy-focused video doorbell?"

robotmay — Thu, 04 Nov 2021 14:03:02 +0000

I've just ordered an Amcrest AD410. It has RTSP support! I handle my video footage through https://frigate.video hooked into Home Assistant, and the Amcrest cameras are pretty open and compatible with this setup, apparently. They have a (somewhat hidden) API, with some open source solutions like https://github.com/dchesterton/amcrest2mqtt about which expose it to more common standards, and Home Assistant has an official integration for them too.

I've been really happy with my Frigate setup and previously wrote a few words about the switch: https://senryu.pub/afternoonrobot/articles/replacing-unifi-v.... It has taken me ages to find a viable doorbell, however, which is why I've only just ordered the AD410. I'm pretty hopeful for it, and a colleague already has one and really likes it.

New comment by robotmay in "SSH alternatives for mobile, low-latency or unreliable connections"

robotmay — Tue, 02 Nov 2021 15:12:16 +0000

Hadn't heard of Eternal Terminal before, but I use mosh quite regularly - for portability I remote into my home network via Wireguard on an iPad Pro, using mosh inside Blink shell (https://blink.sh) to connect to my machines. Over 5G and 4G it works very smoothly, but does lag a bit if I drop down to 3G speeds. I very much do not regret getting the 5G version of the iPad as it's super useful, and I prefer this setup to carrying around a hefty workstation laptop. With the magic keyboard attached I basically have a tiny but comfortable laptop, albeit quite top-heavy.

Having to use tmux isn't a hassle for me as I would be using it anyway, and it has the added benefit of being able to connect to my active sessions on another machine and pick up where I left off.

New comment by robotmay in "‘Trojan Source’ Bug Threatens the Security of All Code"

robotmay — Tue, 02 Nov 2021 11:47:10 +0000

Is that possible to do using CSS with our existing markup? Currently we prepend the � using ::before. I imagine we could probably hide the existing character and shuffle the � over where it should be, but it might need some testing across different text sizes I imagine. I'll make a note of it for our next revision :)

New comment by robotmay in "‘Trojan Source’ Bug Threatens the Security of All Code"

robotmay — Mon, 01 Nov 2021 14:54:24 +0000

Thanks for the feedback! Our primary use-case when deciding on it was to flag these up in a code-review situation, to prevent malicious content being submitted in merge requests to unsuspecting projects. We found this made it stand out enough to the reviewer when performing code reviews. I also try to not be too quick to add new alerts or sections to the GUI as we sometimes get criticised for having too much clutter D:

GitHub by comparison went down the alert banner route, from what I can see. I'm not opposed to adding something to that effect as well though - especially for inexperienced reviewers, it would be nice to include some more information about the potential exploit. That could be something we revisit when we add the homoglyph highlighting.