Hacker News: thorin

New comment by thorin in "People hooked on vapes try a new way to quit: cigarettes"

thorin — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 11:17:22 +0000

I'm interested in how addiction is so much more likely in some people than others. For over 20 years I loved to drink all sorts of different things. Once I had kids and hit 40+ it was so unpleasant in the morning so I decided to massively reduce. In the UK drinking is so pervasive. I limited my intake to <=2 drinks per night and never had an issue and would only break that maybe once a year. Recently I decided to reduce it even more. I will have a pint of ale in a pub if I go, but hardly anything else. It really didn't feel that hard.

Again at uni I found lots of people smoked cigs and mj and so I did it too a little bit, but decided after a year or 2 to stop and I've never really done it since. My dad was the same.

I've had the same realisation with certain foods recently and coffee, massively cutting down on sugar, salt and coffee.

Probably my only addiction at the moment is too much scrolling on my phone.

I totally accept this is a huge issue for many people, but no real idea why...

New comment by thorin in "Ask HN: Losing motivation to work in the IT field, need advice"

thorin — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 09:12:47 +0000

My primary motivation for work has always been to earn money for myself and my family. This enables me to do things that I want to do outside of work time. I have tried to align this with work that I find interesting or working with people I like, but this is not always the case.

If this is not an issue for you, then by all means find something else to do. Maybe look to move into a business domain you already provide IT/software for, or retrain to something else.

It's highly likely that many domains currently will be looking to maximise use of AI e.g. medical professionals, accountants, lawyers will not escape completely. Moving to something practical may be a better short term bet.

New comment by thorin in "Can I get insurance for company renting humanoids for parties?"

thorin — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 08:39:35 +0000

Would you rather fight one chicken sized robot or 100 robot sized chickens?

New comment by thorin in "Doomscrolling ourselves to death"

thorin — Mon, 07 Sep 2026 13:03:52 +0000

This is interesting? Do you have any other sources of caffeine in your diet? For instance I would have a regular can of coke maybe once a week and English breakfast tea at least once a day. Only coffee seems to really affect me though. I don't really need the affect but I do like the taste and now probably have 3 or 4 coffees a week rather than 2 a day and it seems to be helping.

New comment by thorin in "Tim Curry has died"

thorin — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 10:16:27 +0000

Also Frank Beard

New comment by thorin in "Being ambitious and being a dad"

thorin — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 10:03:19 +0000

It was both, however where I lived, a few years before fathers would get up at 6am and go and work down a mine all day, or a shipyard or factory. They might get home at 6pm but after dinner they'd quickly go for a pint or go fishing or go to the football. Women often didn't work, or worked part-time so they could take the kids to school so saw a lot more of the kids and managed the household more.

Now women have the freedom to work, so both sexes can choose to avoid seeing their children if they want to. Bleak indeed.

TikTok Ireland Layoffs

thorin — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 14:20:45 +0000

Article URL: https://www.thejournal.ie/tiktok-ireland-layoffs-7127430-Aug2026/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49286395

Points: 5

# Comments: 1

New comment by thorin in "London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces"

thorin — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 09:11:34 +0000

They might talk about it, but gambling is a huge industry in the US and many different types of gambling are possible and have been for decades/centuries. It is far less restrictive than many other major countries on gambling I would say e.g. US, China, Australia etc.

New comment by thorin in "I'm switching my phone from Android to Linux"

thorin — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 07:56:41 +0000

Barclays use both the physical hardware code generator in the UK as well as a virtual version in the app. The Bank staff also use the same physical hardware in the branch so I guess it will stay around for a while.

New comment by thorin in "The Golden Age of British Ice Cream"

thorin — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 07:50:00 +0000

I was at a graduate recruitment event in the UK for Unilever around 1998 when he speaker told us about the Magnum story. The premise was that someone might pay £1 for an ice cream to eat at home which seemed ridiculous at the time, given that people were probably expecting to pay 25-50p per choc ice/lolly, and that it might be something that would appeal more to adults than children. The Magnum was a big success and drove the way to flashier and more expensive ice creams!

New comment by thorin in "Is surveillance risk chilling your online speech?"

thorin — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 09:36:27 +0000

Not really, at least in the UK ( where "apparently" everyone is being jailed for free speech violations). I've moved to the position where I wouldn't post anything online that I wouldn't say in person, and I very rarely post anything work related.

New comment by thorin in "Ask HN: My father died and I need to find my path"

thorin — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 09:32:26 +0000

My father worked in signals, first in the armed forces and then railway signals and telephone lines for his whole life. When I was young I was interested in Electronics, but not too great with them. I did study a degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering but preferred the computer parts of the course and have since then been working in IT for nearly 30 years. I can understand how your fathers advice is important, but you also need to do something you can enjoy and succeed at.

I would say with your background don't worry too much about which technologies to learn. Things are changing fast so try and instead develop an engineering mindset, which will serve you well whatever you do.

He will guide you, but you also need to make your own path. Good luck in your journey.

New comment by thorin in "Have you restarted your computer this week?"

thorin — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 13:25:05 +0000

Tell him you'll make sure to turn it off at exactly 5pm (or whenever you're supposed to finish). And that you'll turn it on at 9am and can't join any meetings till it's started.

New comment by thorin in "Oracle shed about 20k roles globally in the last year"

thorin — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 08:35:14 +0000

I know they were pushing cloud very hard, and it was nice to see they were offering a lot of free tier to developers. What has been a surprise to me this year is working in the UK with certain enormous clients that they are still choosing Oracle products for new implementations which I was not expecting.

New comment by thorin in "Oracle shed about 20k roles globally in the last year"

thorin — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 14:29:33 +0000

Oracle is still mostly generating income from an old school model, a bit like IBM and SAP used to. They have huge contracts with mega-corps bringing in millions per year for a license. The have been pivoting to other things like consulting, cloud, AI for years but I still feel most of the income comes from these original db and product licenses. As someone who worked with Oracle since 1998 I'm kind of amazed they've kept at it for so long major Healthcare, Utilities, Banks still locked in and in some cases buying new contracts.

Callback – Less Scroll. More Soul

thorin — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 09:49:40 +0000

Article URL: https://commodore.net/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48628007

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by thorin in "U.S. science is in chaos"

thorin — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 14:06:13 +0000

Spain is a pretty big country in terms of space. It's been full of British expats for years a lot of whom had to leave due to Brexit so can probably stand to have a few more influencers move over.

New comment by thorin in "Web Browsers on Video Game Consoles"

thorin — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 13:11:32 +0000

I seem to remember some pirate copies of art packages (maybe Photon paint) on the Amiga coming with a similar set of images that would be of interest to some teenagers...

New comment by thorin in "Ask HN: Burned out on AI and want to go part time"

thorin — Fri, 29 May 2026 09:25:38 +0000

It's a lot easier to go part time in a job you already have than find a new part time job. If you are already successful in your job start by asking to move to having every Friday off or even every second Friday. This is very popular in UK/Europe. If this is working maybe you can drop another day after some time.

Alternatively a lot of companies let you take as much unpaid leave as you want (as long as you don't miss anything critical). This amounts to the same thing but gives you a lot of flexibility.

New comment by thorin in "Ask HN: What game have you replayed more times than any other?"

thorin — Wed, 27 May 2026 13:26:32 +0000

Probably Manic Miner!