Hacker News: samplatt

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

samplatt — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 05:17:34 +0000

Tasks include: looking at rocks, stars.

New comment by samplatt in "Ask HN: Why hasn't there been a real competitor to Ticketmaster yet?"

samplatt — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 04:18:21 +0000

Your AI-detector needs a calibrate, I think. What made you think it was llm-written?

New comment by samplatt in "Who will buy your services if you fire us all?"

samplatt — Mon, 18 May 2026 23:49:54 +0000

This is the most concisely-expressed version of the actual concerns for UBI that I've ever seen, thankyou.

New comment by samplatt in "A digital billboard company has the technology to make 3D ads on moving trucks"

samplatt — Mon, 18 May 2026 01:14:03 +0000

While I agree utterly and completely, the possibility of such a case needing a jury is low, when there's almost certainly going to be several camera recordings available from the vehicles in question as well as surrounding buildings/vehicles.

New comment by samplatt in "Nullsoft, 1997-2004 (2004)"

samplatt — Tue, 12 May 2026 04:46:42 +0000

WASTE became popular in our area just as LANning was ending its heyday. Even now I think the whole course of technology could have been altered if WASTE was utilised in a "corporate VPN" fashion, instead of the rise of Juniper routers and Sharepoint spaces, we could have had much simpler secure work-collaboration protocols.

New comment by samplatt in "The greatest shot in television: James Burke had one chance to nail this scene (2024)"

samplatt — Mon, 11 May 2026 07:45:54 +0000

My parents have a book published in 1849, "The Chemistry of Modern Life" and it's interesting to see how they transition very deliberately between "technical" and then "dumbed-down" descriptions of things.

It's as jarring as Star Trek's habit of "30 seconds of technobabble followed by a metaphor involving a balloon" trope they keep hammering.

New comment by samplatt in "Can I disable all data collection from my vehicle?"

samplatt — Fri, 01 May 2026 03:22:31 +0000

It's telling just how completely successful the social media revolution has been, when we don't remember that two short decades ago 3rd-party car navigation options that relied on maps loaded on the device and GPS input and that's all. No SIM cards (though they could have done so at the time), no telemetry.

The experience was even comparable to today's experience - I've been auto-routed around a road closure, like, twice in 5 years? And it _failed_ to route me around a road closure probably twice as well?

New comment by samplatt in "What can we gain by losing infinity?"

samplatt — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 01:29:44 +0000

And then the next kid says "infinity plus two", which is a perfectly acceptable progression, and the cycle starts again.

New comment by samplatt in "The Beauty of Bonsai Styles"

samplatt — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 07:58:53 +0000

I had a fig at my work desk for a couple of years. Work moved buildings. The new aircon killed it. No matter how much I watered it, it kept drying out.

It was still trying to live off its two remaining leaves, when I picked it up by its trunk and noticed it was completely hollow and almost made of paper. It was utterly desiccated.

New comment by samplatt in "Air is full of DNA"

samplatt — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 07:47:54 +0000

Not OP, but The Thought Emporium is a personal favourite. Their name belies the hands-on nature of their videos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0_q-fD_lyU

New comment by samplatt in "Rare concert recordings are landing on the Internet Archive"

samplatt — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 07:37:34 +0000

Ah, missed that bit entirely, was going mostly on the story of being front and centre and being smiled at - it's an apocryphal story for TGD.

Now I"m thinking, the mention of digital formats doesn't make much sense either ^_^;

New comment by samplatt in "Rare concert recordings are landing on the Internet Archive"

samplatt — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 01:41:10 +0000

Based on the story there's a good chance it'll be one of these recordings: https://relisten.net/grateful-dead

New comment by samplatt in "Fuck the cloud (2009)"

samplatt — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 01:33:33 +0000

A UK trance artist called Deathboy left directory-traversal open on his website about 23 year ago. Since then I've had a lot of mp3's that he's never released or put on albums, which is sad because a lot of them are pretty great.

Similarly (also from ~2003), the (Australian) ABC's website held a lot of recorded breakfast radio show clips from when Adam & Wil hosted it, getting the awesome comedy band Tripod [0] to write songs in an hour. Many of these were released on their CD's, but nowhere near all of them.

Eventually that ABC server was shutdown due to lack of government funds. There's a very good chance I'm the only one on the planet with these excellent songs & interviews from those shows.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tripod_(band)

New comment by samplatt in "Fuck the cloud (2009)"

samplatt — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 00:57:15 +0000

All of mine. Music, photos, copies of important documents, archived sets of email (and gmail) across different eras. My facebook archive export, IRC & IM logs stretching back to ~2000. A lot of it even on SSD, let alone HDD's, let alone "archival media". The spinning rust is mostly used for double- and triple-redundant copies of my music and photos, as well as the usual movie collection.

I'm not sure HN is the best place for such... technological anachronistic skepticism? A lot of us ARE going to be storing all that for shits and giggles.

New comment by samplatt in "ZomboCom stolen by a hacker, sold, now replaced with AI-generated makeover"

samplatt — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 01:12:32 +0000

I didn't think I'd be the first person in this (or the reddit) thread to call this new site ZombieCom, but not gonna lie I'm pretty happy about it.

New comment by samplatt in "Turning a MacBook into a touchscreen with $1 of hardware (2018)"

samplatt — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 01:29:14 +0000

You're essentially holding a large tablet upright, but all the weight is taken up up the base. Rather than finger-painting, try holding it on both sides like a tablet or gamepad and operating with thumbs.

Scrolling/controlling checkboxes and switches feels GREAT. Depends entirely what you're using it for.

New comment by samplatt in "Study: Workers who fall for 'corporate bullshit' may be worse at their jobs"

samplatt — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 01:53:20 +0000

Dilbert was popular for a long time for a reason.

New comment by samplatt in "A retro terminal music player inspired by Winamp"

samplatt — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 01:36:18 +0000

The times haven't changed. It's still spyware, it's just been normalised.

New comment by samplatt in "Motorola GrapheneOS devices will be bootloader unlockable/relockable"

samplatt — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 05:20:52 +0000

>If there were ever any backdoor in some phone, it would have been found. Not only have MANY been found, but the whole security industry is aware of them and works with/against those backdoors.

This is kind of like a mechanic not knowing what a car's exhaust does...

New comment by samplatt in "Anthropic drops flagship safety pledge"

samplatt — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 09:26:29 +0000

Certainly not the prior century-and-a-half's worth of books and films.