Hacker News: rsynnott

New comment by rsynnott in "I like 'em thick: an apology to my English teachers"

rsynnott — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 13:00:36 +0000

For those who enjoy the Bosch painting, there’s this fun robot, which posts random crops of it daily: https://bsky.app/profile/boschbot.bsky.social

It’s been going years now, still hasn’t run out (though it seems to have added a few of his other pieces recently).

There’s a Twitter version too, but I think it broke when Musk screwed up the api; don’t have an account to check.

New comment by rsynnott in "Pixel 11 Pro Fold feels like the end of an era"

rsynnott — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 09:06:50 +0000

Foldable phones still feel like a solution in search of a problem to me. Like, what is the actual usecase?

New comment by rsynnott in "Why Microsoft Entertainment Pack had a sticker announcing that it had Tetris?"

rsynnott — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 08:12:06 +0000

The sticker seems like an important aspect.

New comment by rsynnott in "Windows brings out the Rorschach test in everyone"

rsynnott — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 08:02:32 +0000

I refuse to believe that at this point the AI companies are not doing that deliberately.

New comment by rsynnott in "Scientists stunned by children's lung recovery in ultra low emission zone"

rsynnott — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 08:06:43 +0000

Are you suggesting that it would be advantageous for humanity to evolve to live in London circa 2000?

Larry Niven played with this in one of his stories; a time traveller from the far (and highly polluted) future has to use mechanical breathing assistance, because the levels of CO2 in the air in the past weren't high enough to prompt the breathing response properly (human breathing is controlled largely by blood CO2 levels).

New comment by rsynnott in "Scientists stunned by children's lung recovery in ultra low emission zone"

rsynnott — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 08:02:36 +0000

Impossible to retrofit, of course, but what helps more are big tunnels. Modern ~9m diameter single tunnel systems are a lot better for this than old 3.5m diameter double tunnel systems.

New comment by rsynnott in "Scientists stunned by children's lung recovery in ultra low emission zone"

rsynnott — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 08:01:16 +0000

And diesel hydraulic trains (and some buses) usually use these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retarder_(mechanical_engineeri...

New comment by rsynnott in "Children's stunted lungs show recovery in ultra low emission zone"

rsynnott — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 07:55:16 +0000

Generally, the busiest streets are pedestrianised; you just can't move that volume of people in cars.

(Actually, the _very_ busiest streets are probably major bus gates (where, again, there are no cars), those can have fairly ridiculous density at peak times.

New comment by rsynnott in "Beware Management Consultants"

rsynnott — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 07:40:22 +0000

Well, ah, selectively progressive: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-21508758

New comment by rsynnott in "My friends all hate AI; I just joined an AI startup"

rsynnott — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 09:16:09 +0000

Well, for a start, electric motors worked properly and didn’t generate infinite amounts of unreadable crap.

New comment by rsynnott in "Mexico crackdown on coastal development"

rsynnott — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 17:48:50 +0000

Eh, this varies by European country. In Ireland, for a long time, there was an element of "seek forgiveness": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Plaza_(Dublin)#History (built ten meters higher than they had planning for, got away with it)

These days, the authorities are somewhat less forgiving: https://www.archiwik.org/index.php/%27Archer%27s_Garage%27,_... (illegally demolished building, _forced to reinstate it_), https://www.thejournal.ie/diggers-begin-demolition-of-co-mea... (illegally built building, demolished).

(Ireland has become generally significantly less corrupt in the interim.)

New comment by rsynnott in "Buy Your Friends Batteries"

rsynnott — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 17:35:17 +0000

Eh, there’s a tension there, becuase on the other hand as more renewable power is added to the grid, you’d expect divergence. Especially in countries which are letting people buy at spot price; that can be horribly expensive, or go _negative_.

New comment by rsynnott in "Nvidia dramatically reduces amount of OpenAI infra financing it may guarantee"

rsynnott — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 17:07:36 +0000

Outside the car industry, it's unusual for the vendor to be the lender, tho.

New comment by rsynnott in "Nvidia dramatically reduces amount of OpenAI infra financing it may guarantee"

rsynnott — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 17:06:51 +0000

Oh, no! Anyway...

New comment by rsynnott in "Anthropic's ‘watermark’ text adulteration in Claude is a perversion of writing"

rsynnott — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 16:34:09 +0000

... Maybe it's localised or something?

I see a section "How to install apps from a developer’s website in the European Union". Do you see that?

(They do require notarisation, but not review/approval).

New comment by rsynnott in "The federal keyword lists that canceled billions in research funding"

rsynnott — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 06:52:00 +0000

Ah, yes, what could go wrong?

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism

New comment by rsynnott in "Anthropic's ‘watermark’ text adulteration in Claude is a perversion of writing"

rsynnott — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 06:22:22 +0000

Yes: https://support.apple.com/en-mk/117767

New comment by rsynnott in "Anthropic's ‘watermark’ text adulteration in Claude is a perversion of writing"

rsynnott — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 06:17:39 +0000

... If watermarking is a perversion of writing, what does that make 'writing' with an LLM?

New comment by rsynnott in "Count Binface receives over a quarter of votes in Clacton by-election"

rsynnott — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 19:43:09 +0000

Oh, sure, it was probably the right thing to do, no argument there.

New comment by rsynnott in "Count Binface receives over a quarter of votes in Clacton by-election"

rsynnott — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 07:04:24 +0000

What I'm getting at is that _in practice_ they would not be subject to Schengen or the euro anyway. For Schengen, see the Northern Ireland situation post-Brexit; exactly the same problem would emerge. For the Euro, see Poland.