<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Hacker News: signaturefish</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=signaturefish</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Thu, 14 May 2026 17:54:16 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=signaturefish" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by signaturefish in "Twin brothers wipe 96 government databases minutes after being fired"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>(hackeridiot12 may be Jewish - IME Jews often type "G-d" because spelling the deity's name in impermanent text is disrespectful. Bit odd from my perspective, but harmless :))</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 14 May 2026 11:53:21 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48134119</link><dc:creator>signaturefish</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48134119</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48134119</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by signaturefish in "Ask HN: How many of you hold an amateur radio license in your country?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Foundation licensee here in the UK, working on my Intermediate (and hoping to pass that exam this year).  I manage the radio system for the UK Discworld Convention (every other year, next instance August 2026), and I spend a chunk of time on the VHF repeater near me, in the Cambridge area (mostly listening).<p>5 and 5, 73.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 06 Mar 2026 13:55:28 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47274934</link><dc:creator>signaturefish</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47274934</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47274934</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by signaturefish in "Show HN: Refine – A Local Alternative to Grammarly"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Simplified English is a thing that exists, for clarity - see for example <a href="https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Practice" rel="nofollow">https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Practice</a><p>I don't know if the parent comment was trying to equate American English and Simple English - I can see it as a way to dismiss American English as a "lesser" language (which it isn't, as you say), but I wouldn't start by assuming that.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 14 Jul 2025 15:42:42 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44561487</link><dc:creator>signaturefish</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44561487</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44561487</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by signaturefish in "Germany and Italy pressed to bring $245B of gold home from US"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>XRF will go a millimetre or so into the sample AFAIK - it's mainly useful for finding alloy contamination, e.g. "this is 99.99% gold" vs "this is 73% gold and 27% other things" - you really want to use both techniques. Resistivity/conductivity is about average composition, XRF is about elemental purity.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 23 Jun 2025 14:02:11 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44355915</link><dc:creator>signaturefish</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44355915</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44355915</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by signaturefish in "Germany and Italy pressed to bring $245B of gold home from US"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Huh, impressive - I guess I'm out of date (and/or the people I listen to about such things have a working XRF already and don't want to replace a working unit).</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 23 Jun 2025 13:56:07 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44355865</link><dc:creator>signaturefish</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44355865</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44355865</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by signaturefish in "Germany and Italy pressed to bring $245B of gold home from US"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>On the individual scale, something like a Sigma Metalytics resistivity analyser (passes an electric field through the sample, checks to see if resistivity, conductivity, weight or size all match up to what you'd expect from a homogeneous gold sample of that size or weight).  On the commercial scale, an XRF spectrometer.  Both methods are completely non-destructive, and highly accurate (the XRF more so).<p>(the two scales are due to price and bulk: the Sigma is about the size of a hardback book and a few hundred pounds, an XRF is the size of a large 3d-printer and many thousands).</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 23 Jun 2025 11:59:38 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44354870</link><dc:creator>signaturefish</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44354870</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44354870</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by signaturefish in "Raspberry Pi 500 Review: The keyboard is the computer, again"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I don't think it's a dumb question, though I guess some might question its relevance. Side-comments can be interesting, though.<p>I don't know why they did it, but it follows the same pattern as the pi400 - develop a whole new board, rather than a daughterboard for the pi4 compute module. If I had to guess, it's probably about reducing e-waste: if someone wants a compute module and it's out of stock but there are pi500s available, why wouldn't they buy a pi500, strip the compute module out and dump the rest of the machine in the bin?<p>And to be fair to them, they're dogfooding a fair amount - the RP1 and the RP2 are in the design, rather than a generic southbridge and keyboard controller.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 09 Dec 2024 17:48:16 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42368429</link><dc:creator>signaturefish</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42368429</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42368429</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by signaturefish in "Top Israeli spy chief exposes his true identity in online security lapse"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Three "bad" missiles over a five minute period. The hit on the WCK convoy killed the latest 7 out of over 200 aid workers who have been killed in Gaza since this latest war began.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 05 Apr 2024 14:43:03 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39942988</link><dc:creator>signaturefish</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39942988</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39942988</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by signaturefish in "Driving across America again for a DMS-10 [video]"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Do you have a copy of the hardware manual for the thing? If so, I believe the Connections Museum would love to borrow it :)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 01 Sep 2023 16:07:12 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37352590</link><dc:creator>signaturefish</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37352590</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37352590</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by signaturefish in "Fairphone 5"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Yeah, same here: I upgraded to an FP4 about three months ago (from an increasingly-broken-down Samsung Galaxy S9), after puzzling for a while over whether I should wait for what looked like an imminent FP5 or just grab the FP4 that was available now.  I don't regret my choice fwiw.<p>The battery already lasts two days under my usage model, and the phone still has a five year warranty and OS support for another three years.  I see that Fairphone are still selling some repair parts for FP2 and FP3, so I expect to be able to repair my phone through that whole time period unless something weird happens.<p>The FP5 looks like a nice upgrade, but I don't feel short-changed: I got a new phone when my old one was failing, and it's not absolutely top-of-the-line, and that's fine.  Like you, I'll think harder about the next round of upgrades (maybe to the FP6, maybe the FP7), and I'd love it if Fairphone were to be clearer about their release schedule, but I understand that they don't want to Osborne themselves<i>.<p></i> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_Computer_Corporation#The_Osborne_effect" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_Computer_Corporation#T...</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 30 Aug 2023 11:00:28 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37320155</link><dc:creator>signaturefish</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37320155</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37320155</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by signaturefish in "Commercial interests petition FCC for high power allocation on shortwave"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The thing is, there ARE chunks of spectrum dedicated to digital comms within the amateur radio bands.<p>Here's a link to the VHF band plan we use here in the UK - obviously I can't speak for other countries: [<a href="https://rsgb.services/public/bandplans/19/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://rsgb.services/public/bandplans/19/</a> ]. It's _littered_ with SSTV, beacon and digital mode allocations (and for clarity, that's a good thing). The digital mode allocations are full of people chatting in text using FT-8 or JS8Call (more in HF than VHF, those, but the principle holds). On the next page, there's an entire 1MHz allocation dedicated to wideband digital data modes.<p>If you're a licensee, there's plenty of innovation and digital experimentation space available. Sure, a chunk of the traditionalist ham community aren't excited about it, but there's plenty of us who are. And, as ever, you don't need a license to receive...</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 13 Jul 2023 16:18:55 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36711690</link><dc:creator>signaturefish</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36711690</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36711690</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by signaturefish in "“Rewrite It in Rust” Considered Harmful? [pdf]"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>TBH, I don't have a problem with Rust so much as I have/had a problem with a section of the rust community.<p>The shouting fanbeings of rust put me off looking into it for years, because when I kept getting "rewrite it in rust!" as the answer to "there's a problem with $THIS_CODE" when talking with colleagues, _even when those colleagues had minimal rust experience_, all I could conclude was that the whole thing was an empty promise and that no-one knew how to solve the problem, but everyone "knew" that the New Cool Language was the way to fix everything.<p>Generalisation from incomplete data - no doubt there was a sensible majority in the rust community, but the fanbeings were _loud_.<p>FWIW I was wrong: I'm getting into rust now and I like what I see, and the discussions around it online and with colleagues are pretty sensible.  But, it's taken a while to get there and when you've been in tech for a couple of decades you see this hype cycle and get jaded to it.  Erlang is the new hotness ... OCaml is the new hotness ... Java is the new hotness, rewrite everything in Java, wait C# is the new hotness...<p>I suspect rust is here to stay, and I'm gonna learn more about it, and I regret some of my past words about it. But my problem was never with the increased memory safety, or the language at all, pretty much, just the early community.<p>TL;DR: Other humans are the worst, bug reported, fix unlikely :)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 24 May 2023 17:09:01 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36061112</link><dc:creator>signaturefish</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36061112</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36061112</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by signaturefish in "Wind is main source of UK electricity for first time"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>No, but I see what you mean. Generating hydrogen and methane using electricity will probably never be that efficient, but if you have spare power then using it to get 60% of its energy back again in the form of future burnables may still be worth it (percentage guessed and probably optimistic).</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 11 May 2023 12:50:23 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35901294</link><dc:creator>signaturefish</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35901294</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35901294</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by signaturefish in "Launch HN: Electric Air (YC W23) – Heat pump sold directly to homeowners"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Yeah, I'd like to see those figures too, and I think they might surprise you (and me). I don't have figures or references to hand here, but as I understand it modern heat pumps should be good down at least a little way below freezing.  They're widely used and popular in Norway, for example, and the Norwegians aren't exactly new to cold weather.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 13 Mar 2023 18:13:21 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35139951</link><dc:creator>signaturefish</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35139951</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35139951</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by signaturefish in "Launch HN: Electric Air (YC W23) – Heat pump sold directly to homeowners"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>In the context of heat pumps, a "backup heating strip" is a resistive heating element - electricity goes in, heat comes out just like an old electric heater. They're generally used during defrost cycles for the external air handler in cold weather, or to provide a temporary thermal boost when the heat pump is having performance trouble e.g. when the exterior temperature is near the bottom of the heat pump's operating range.<p>More detail at <a href="https://carolinacomfortsc.com/hvac/what-are-heat-strips/" rel="nofollow">https://carolinacomfortsc.com/hvac/what-are-heat-strips/</a> (no affiliation, they were the first authoritative return from my web search).</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 13 Mar 2023 17:07:06 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35138752</link><dc:creator>signaturefish</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35138752</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35138752</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by signaturefish in "We need a lot more electricians"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I always forget the size difference between US and UK homes (I assume toomuchtodo is speaking from a US perspective).  Here, in my three-bedroom UK house I'm on a 60A service fuse and considering updating to 100A in the future (amusingly, as part of a solar PV / electric vehicle charger install).<p>I've never heard of a UK house having a larger than 100A service (although I imagine they exist here and there - it's certainly not common).</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 11 Jan 2023 16:18:15 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34340115</link><dc:creator>signaturefish</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34340115</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34340115</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by signaturefish in "Short Thoughts on Computers and Programming"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>"Affordances" are a UI design concept - they're things that the design of an object makes you think you can do with that object, if that makes sense.  In this context, door handles afford being pulled (because they stick out of the door and you want to pull the door, so you pull the handle), buttons afford being pressed (because they are small, often labelled with a function, and project above the surface they're embedded in), etc.<p>So yes, I think you're right that it's a word-play between the UI design concept and the cost of implementation concept.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 23 Sep 2022 10:23:48 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32950026</link><dc:creator>signaturefish</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32950026</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32950026</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by signaturefish in "WikiHouse – Open source, modular, wood based, zero carbon housing"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It is indeed a concern, and I suspect that's why they're recommending any wikihous project include a full-house MVHR system (see About=>Product, the bent arrow near the middle of the image map). MVHR is the solution I've settled on for my house retrofit project - it should allow the house to breathe in a controlled manner, without leaking warm air in winter.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 07 Sep 2022 14:10:56 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32750884</link><dc:creator>signaturefish</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32750884</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32750884</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by signaturefish in "Bluetooth relay attacks allow Tesla Model 3 / Y to be unlocked and driven away"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I really want to see more electric conversion kits for existing cars, I must admit. It seems like such a waste to throw away what is in many cases a perfectly good chassis/geartrain/body/etc just because you want to change the ICE engine and fuel tank for an electric motor and a battery pack.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 17 May 2022 12:55:39 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31409818</link><dc:creator>signaturefish</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31409818</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31409818</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by signaturefish in "Order your rapid tests from the USPS (US only)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>They're not so much unreliable as ... really not very sensitive, as I understand it.  Viral load in covid sufferers follows a curve with a rapid ramp up and a slower ramp down, both PCR and lateral-flow devices require a certain minimum level in order to read positive.  PCR is much more sensitive (because it's an amplification technology, so can "see" a lower level of viral load) than lateral-flow devices - which means you can be "safe" on an LFD and "unsafe" on a PCR for a small amount of time on the ramp up and a fairly large amount of time on the ramp down.  The level at which you're at risk of passing it to other humans is I _believe_ somewhere between the two tests, so it sounds like you maybe got unlucky with an LFD or two, but the results you report are about what I'd expect :(<p>LFDs are decent for telling you if you're infectious _right now_ - they're much worse than PCRs for telling you if you have covid at all.<p>Disclaimer: I'm a software engineer, do not take medical advice from me. My partner is a biochemist and I regularly chat with a couple of council covid-response officers, and the above is the explanation I've had from them when I've asked.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 18 Jan 2022 18:50:56 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29983877</link><dc:creator>signaturefish</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29983877</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29983877</guid></item></channel></rss>