Hacker News: som

New comment by som in "A Pig, the State, and War: Porco Rosso (Kurenai No Buta) (2014)"

som — Fri, 30 Oct 2026 00:55:08 +0000

An aside, my 8yo son used Porco Rosso as the subject of a school speech about a favourite film. I was surprised how few of the themes were lost on him, especially those of war, comradeship, and the other side of every coin. Not to mention those points that only a child discovering the world can savour, that I'd missed myself (or at least misplaced since I first saw the film at around his age in the 90s).

New comment by som in "Show HN: Air-gapped file encryption as self-decrypting HTML page"

som — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 20:28:44 +0000

A version of this that supported PKE would be cool. So you don't have to share a password in a side channel

New comment by som in "I can't stop thinking about Papua New Guinea"

som — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 13:08:44 +0000

It's a reasonable guess but wrong. My dad is a carpenter and my mum is an artist. Dad was helping build houses up there for one of the government building contractors. Mum was along for the ride.

Edit: And not that it really matters, but neither of my folks are religious.

New comment by som in "I can't stop thinking about Papua New Guinea"

som — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 12:22:46 +0000

My parents lived in the highlands in PNG in the late 70s and early 80s and my dad still speaks pidgin (mostly with his current neighbours who are from Port Moresby the capital). I've heard of lot of amazing (and pretty wild!) stories over the years. And met some interesting folk who up were up there with them - locals, missionaries and others. But despite our childhood being fairly steeped in PNG culture - and my name being from there, after a local who used to work with my dad - the closest I've been myself is the Torres Strait :/

New comment by som in "Planet Labs' open satellite feed"

som — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 21:17:03 +0000

Very cool but looks like it's only aggregating European data (on top of a low res planet basemap). Also is pmtiles useful for satellite imagery?

New comment by som in "Forgotten History of Small Nuclear Reactors (2015)"

som — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 08:34:55 +0000

Not sure this takes away from his arguments? If anything the Wikipedia article sets him up as an expert on the subject?

New comment by som in "Ambient CSS v3 – Blender meets CSS"

som — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 21:19:08 +0000

Both performance and mechanics of the knobs :|

New comment by som in "Fastpotify"

som — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 10:32:27 +0000

Love the Winamp feature - but more so that it comes with milkdrop! That is next level.

What would YouTube music support look like? And another random feature request - universal playlist import / export (i.e. take my YouTube playlist and convert it to Spotify and vice versa - Rosetta stone style)

New comment by som in "I turned my security cameras into an automatic bird identification system"

som — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 21:19:36 +0000

Thanks - this post reminded me to enter some sightings from yesterday into eBird (yes, another Cornell Lab birding app). A pair of rainbow bee eaters that I hadn't seen in the area before.

Came to say birdnet is fantastic but, at least in Australia, it regularly identifies calls with low probability (which are often wrong / skewed for location, but sometimes correct). Meaning you still need some wits about you. That said, it can correctly identify multiple birds in a single chorus which is cool. Just need to keep an eye out for those false positives.

New comment by som in "Show HN: iPhone app takes simultaneous images from 2 lenses, fuses into 1 photo"

som — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 22:59:15 +0000

Also have a 10 pro .. but the AI-enhanced zoom goes up to 100x and is actually pretty handy for working out what tiny things in the distance actually are ... even if it's only a representation of that thing. Often use it for identifying birds, boats, etc.

New comment by som in "Reviving a four year old reMarkable 2"

som — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 14:09:08 +0000

I'm still using my remarkable from 2020. Has been receiving updates since AFAIK. Happy customer.

New comment by som in "The Artist Who Colored Ghibli"

som — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 22:39:21 +0000

Strong agree. I don't read the newsletter every week (they're long!) but when I do find the time I'm always blown away. Whether it's a playlist of short films / film makers I never would have heard of, a deep dive into a series of style or -like yesterday - a colourist I have absolutely overlooked despite being an acknowledged Ghibli fan. Highly recommend subscribing.

New comment by som in "Show HN: Firefox in WebAssembly"

som — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 21:45:54 +0000

... doesn't support Firefox mobile apparently :D

New comment by som in "Australian energy retailers must offer three hours of free daytime electricity"

som — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 17:37:27 +0000

Sorry should have been clearer, in winter there's no aircon (but also no heating, it's 20-25 deg c) and the pool pump runs approx 50%

New comment by som in "Australian energy retailers must offer three hours of free daytime electricity"

som — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 10:25:51 +0000

Forget 3hrs free. We lived in the tropics in Australia with a ~6kW system and often had negative quarterly invoices (i.e. got paid by our retailer) ... esp. in winter months. Aircon, pool, appliances all electric. At the very least the pool pump ran free all year round.

Edit: should add, that's straight solar no battery

New comment by som in "Newly discovered spider builds spring loaded snare to catch ants"

som — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 15:09:24 +0000

I'm from where these spiders were found. The ants they're predating are an equally fascinating and super aggressive species of green weaver ants (that have other cool predators like "mimic" jumping spiders).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weaver_ant

New comment by som in "Ryanair dark UX patterns summer 2026 refresher"

som — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 13:20:10 +0000

It's funny, I booked a flight with Ryanair only about an hour ago - out of pure desperation - first time in 15 years.

I remember them being crafty, but I have to admit I was surprised by the level of tactics ... that is to say, what they are still allowed to get away with given European / UK consumer law.

Not to mention that a 20kg bag and hand luggage cost me significantly more than the fare itself. They even had upfront "package deals" that would have actually worked out more expensive - bundles of nonsense benefits.

In Australia most of this kind of borderline deceptive selling has been stepped on, to the point that you hardly see it any more.

New comment by som in "Debug Project"

som — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 11:56:21 +0000

Since 2011 in northern Australia: https://www.worldmosquitoprogram.org/en/news-stories/stories...

New comment by som in "CSS-Native Parallax Effect"

som — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 11:48:02 +0000

No doubt quite a few folk with the same question. Keen to understand performance tradeoffs.

Obvious comparison note would be that the "new" method currently enjoys somewhat limited browser support (no Firefox without a flag, and only since Safari 26)

New comment by som in "Six years perfecting maps on watchOS"

som — Sat, 02 May 2026 22:51:46 +0000

Great evolution story. Also love seeing what can be achieved by stepping outside design lines, re. centred, symmetrical UIs. Makes me want an apple watch ;)

As an aside there's a screenshot in the article showing the Hidden Valley at Glen Coe, which happens to be one of my favourite short walks in Scotland.

A less happy aside of that aside is the house at the base of the valley. I used to look at it dreamily as we drove past, always closed up, nestled by itself in a remote nook between the mountains. What an extraordinary place it would be to live. The park for the hike was only a couple of hundred metres up the road. A few years later I recognised the house in a Louis Theroux doco, when he travelled there with its owner - TV personality Jimmy Saville. Wow. And then a few years later again, after I'd returned to Australia, it came out, posthumous, that Saville was one of the UK's most prolific child and sexual predators. Horrific stuff. The name and outline of the cottage structure can actually be seen at the top of the map in the screenshot.