Hacker News: samplatt

New comment by samplatt in "The UK's war on anonymity has come to America"

samplatt — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 01:19:40 +0000

That'd be a lot easier to believe if you provided a source, which you should do if you care enough to comment in the first place, I think?

A cursory google suggests that the return-to-office movement is primarily driven by management's desire for voluntary turnover, avoiding the bad press of mass layoffs. But certainly doesn't show that it's 'been debunked 100 times'.

In my own experience, it's been 50/50 a desire for voluntary turnover, and also a control tactic. Employees are easier to strong-arm when they're immersed in the idea that company culture actually matters.

New comment by samplatt in "Quake – 30th Anniversary Update"

samplatt — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 03:54:25 +0000

I compiled the project on a whim during COVID. It played okay. There was even a very small pool of players who had presumably just done exactly the same thing.

New comment by samplatt in "So Reddit has decided that plain HTML is unsafe"

samplatt — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:56:43 +0000

I was a hypocrite even writing that comment; my latest phone ALSO has an FM radio. Guess that reddit-quippiness infected me too much that day, sorry.

New comment by samplatt in "So Reddit has decided that plain HTML is unsafe"

samplatt — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 05:53:47 +0000

Just like with VR, you can keep on claiming forums are "dead" all you like. Me and all my friends will keep on using them daily.

therearedozensofus.gif

New comment by samplatt in "John C. Dvorak has died"

samplatt — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 01:52:36 +0000

How did you get it? ... How many titles do you have?!

I know there's people like Sir David Attenborough who have three alphabets worth of letters after their name, but I hadn't considered the idea of gaming the system to get superfluous titles.

New comment by samplatt in "It's a shame what's happened to radio"

samplatt — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 06:43:23 +0000

Good thing you're the majority of people, then.

New comment by samplatt in "The human-in-the-loop is tired"

samplatt — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 03:03:53 +0000

"It's not" only has two matches; the third is "It's noticable". The other two are a whole paragraph dedicated to "it's not X, it's Y" which is a little more than you'd normally expect.

Firefox doesn't seem to discriminate between em-dashes and hyphens using ctrl-F so I'm not sure about those.

Having said that the tone REEKS of AI generation, so meh.

New comment by samplatt in "Star Just Ate a Planet, and It's Not Done Yet"

samplatt — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 02:42:38 +0000

My ex wife's parents couldn't change a tire. I had to do it for them, once.

New comment by samplatt in "Beyond All Reason (Free Total Annihilation Inspired RTS)"

samplatt — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 08:34:37 +0000

That varies VASTLY depending on what skill you're at. At D3 where I am, I'd say maybe 2 out of 3 games have at least one person showing banners or skins that are exclusive to Grand Champ tournament winners.

New comment by samplatt in "GrapheneOS has been ported to Android 17"

samplatt — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 03:32:47 +0000

How's the P10 camera on graphene? Literally 90% of the reason I'm on a pixel is because I love the low-light smarts that the camera software has, but I don't know if I'll lose that with Graphene.

New comment by samplatt in "Humiliating IIS servers for fun and jail time"

samplatt — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 03:29:44 +0000

Way, WAY too many corporate IT divisions.

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.