Hacker News: smackay

New comment by smackay in "The Genius of the Barn Owl's Feathers"

smackay — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 10:25:45 +0000

Look at how pure the signal is from the peregrine's wings. The signal from feral pigeon is extremely noisy in comparison, as if it is fighting to stay the in the air. The peregrine wingbeat is clean so I presume the energy is being turned into velocity with high efficiency. Extremely cool.

New comment by smackay in "Dad brains: How fatherhood rewires the male mind"

smackay — Sun, 19 Apr 2026 02:51:06 +0000

Same here. I can still hear them breathing quite clearly in the next room, even with the bedroom doors partially closed. My hearing for noises further away got more sensitive, but those nearby less so. I put this down to an ancestral ability to listen for sabre-tooth tigers trying to sneak up in the grass.

New comment by smackay in "Have I been Flocked? – Check if your license plate is being watched"

smackay — Sat, 06 Dec 2025 15:50:51 +0000

You forgot to mention personal integrity and setting a good example to others.

New comment by smackay in "Britain is one of the richest countries. So why do children live in poverty?"

smackay — Mon, 24 Nov 2025 17:32:52 +0000

If you need an authoritative source, look no further than the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

https://www.jrf.org.uk/uk-poverty-2025-the-essential-guide-t...

New comment by smackay in "Doge Developed Error-Prone AI Tool to "Munch" Veterans Affairs Contracts"

smackay — Fri, 06 Jun 2025 14:08:50 +0000

Not at all, the slightly snarky wording, was typed on the spur of the moment. Incidentally, I tried the same terms on Google and the AI-powered answer was rather informative with the pros and cons of the approach. Indeed the cons seem to be playing out before our very eyes.

New comment by smackay in "Doge Developed Error-Prone AI Tool to "Munch" Veterans Affairs Contracts"

smackay — Fri, 06 Jun 2025 13:51:10 +0000

I'd be very interested in learning more about how DOGE got staffed.

If your goal was to dramatically cut government spending, then hiring bright, young people, with no prior experience, who axed first, and asked questions later would be the way to do it, otherwise you'd get bogged down in details since there was probably a good reason, at least initially for the said spending.

However, if you really, wanted to make a spectacular mess then hiring bright, young people, with no prior experience, who axed first, and asked questions later would be the way to do it.

Somebody, somewhere, thought this was a good approach. How could they not know it would turn into a massive clusterfuck. Hubris?

New comment by smackay in "The Curious Case of the Pygmy Nuthatch"

smackay — Fri, 23 May 2025 15:01:56 +0000

> you are always birding

Amen, Brother.

I think a large part of the blame for this state of affairs belongs to people like the BBC's Natural History Unit who licence their material to film and TV companies far and wide. So, for example, in many a scene you can thrill to the song of Willow Warbler (Phylloscopus trochilis) or Eurasian Chaffinch (Fringilla coelebs), which would be knee-deep in twitchers if the birds were actually there.

New comment by smackay in "June Huh dropped out to become a poet, now he’s won a Fields Medal (2022)"

smackay — Thu, 08 May 2025 09:23:04 +0000

The path of progress is strewn with needles.

New comment by smackay in "Office is too slow, so Microsoft is making it load at Windows startup"

smackay — Thu, 01 May 2025 09:43:48 +0000

Microsoft at least sees the writing on the wall...

Microsoft announces new European digital commitments https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2025/04/30/europea...

New comment by smackay in "A Map of British Dialects (2023)"

smackay — Sat, 19 Apr 2025 10:17:18 +0000

A somewhat public thank you to Donald Omand from Aberdeen University for all the work he did in documenting the dialect of Caithness - that purple-ish bit at the far top right of the Scottish mainland.

https://www.wickvoices.co.uk/voices_listen.php?id=0806202309...

New comment by smackay in "Spaghetti science: What pasta reveals about the universe"

smackay — Mon, 24 Mar 2025 13:29:49 +0000

Spaghetti revealling scientific truths? Bobby Henderson would not be amused, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pastafarians

New comment by smackay in "The earliest versions of the first C compiler known to exist"

smackay — Mon, 24 Mar 2025 12:29:52 +0000

1972 is the answer to the question on the lips of everybody too busy to look at the source files.

New comment by smackay in "More than 140 Kenya Facebook moderators sue after diagnoses of PTSD"

smackay — Sun, 22 Dec 2024 16:50:10 +0000

I expect first responders rarely have to deal with the level of depravity mentioned in this Wired article from 2014, https://www.wired.com/2014/10/content-moderation/

You probably DO NOT want to read it.

There's a very good reason moderators are employed in far-away countries, where people are unlikely to have the resources to gain redress for the problems they have to deal with as a result.

New comment by smackay in "Gemini 2.0: our new AI model for the agentic era"

smackay — Wed, 11 Dec 2024 19:17:02 +0000

Brown Pelican (Pelecanus occidentalis) heads are white in the breeding season. Birds start breeding aged three to five. So technically the statement is correct but I wonder if Gemini didn't get its pelicans and cormorants in a muddle. The mainland European Great Cormorant (Phalacrocorax carbo sinensis) has a head that gets progressively whiter as birds age.

New comment by smackay in "A washing machine for human beings, from 1970"

smackay — Thu, 28 Nov 2024 07:48:20 +0000

Technologists' very existence is based on the idea of improvement, and, as a result, making the lives of others better. Compared to other approaches, nothing has delivered quite on the same scale, though it's not without its costs.

New comment by smackay in "Denmark will plant 1B trees and convert 10% of farmland into forest"

smackay — Sun, 24 Nov 2024 07:43:10 +0000

What kinds of forests? For nature, or for lumber? If the latter, what is quality of the timber produced, or will it spark a new wave of power stations burning wood pellets. Lots of questions, with very little detail available in the article.

New comment by smackay in "Why did people rub snow on frozen feet? (2017)"

smackay — Sat, 16 Nov 2024 10:38:07 +0000

If you wear gloves, you'll always wear gloves - annec-data from the crew I used to go out with catching shorebirds, in Scotland, in the middle of winter. The glove wearers we unable to function within an hour of taking them off to band, measure and release the birds. The non-glove wearers were able to keep going for as long as it took.

New comment by smackay in "Dear CTO: it's not 2015 anymore"

smackay — Mon, 21 Oct 2024 14:51:42 +0000

This is a re-run of the end of the first dot-com boom where the rest of the organisation got some payback against the pampered and coddled engineers who built the web sites in between foosball games. Except this time around when your engineers are able to create agents, what do you need the rest of the organisation for. Software is eating the world, and it's only just getting started.

New comment by smackay in "All software in EU under product liability from 2026"

smackay — Wed, 16 Oct 2024 15:45:22 +0000

Interesting to see from the press release that Right to Repair is being cracked down upon:

When a product is repaired and upgraded outside the original manufacturer’s control, the company or person that modified the product should be held liable.

Will we see companies sue repair shops or compatible component manufacturers in order to prevent potential injury to their customers. Interesting times.

New comment by smackay in "Portugal seeks to become low-tax haven for young people"

smackay — Thu, 10 Oct 2024 14:46:35 +0000

The prices for housing, in any form, in the major metropolitan areas suggest this will not be successful.