Hacker News: wrboyce

New comment by wrboyce in "Where are all the UK red telephone kiosks?"

wrboyce — Fri, 22 May 2026 22:53:00 +0000

I would love refurbished one of these in my back garden, unfortunately they weigh far far too much to lift into my limited-access back garden and I’m not sure it’d have the same impact in the front garden.

You can get a refurbished K6 for about £3000, absolute bargain if you ask me!

https://www.x2connect.com/

New comment by wrboyce in "Oil tanker hijacked off Yemen, steers toward Somalia"

wrboyce — Sat, 02 May 2026 16:22:40 +0000

I have friends who have been those mercenaries, and I think your comment underplays it a bit… they are all ex-SBS and not somebody I’d want to fuck with!

New comment by wrboyce in "France's government is ditching Windows for Linux, says US tech a strategic risk"

wrboyce — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 14:09:23 +0000

As a Welshman, I’d say North/South Walian are more common among the populace!

New comment by wrboyce in "U.S. stocks are set to deliver their worst quarter in nearly four years"

wrboyce — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 15:41:30 +0000

https://simpsons.fandom.com/wiki/Inanimate_Carbon_Rod

New comment by wrboyce in "I Quit Editing Photos"

wrboyce — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 14:36:00 +0000

I took a similar path, but with an additional final step of moving to film and doing the development, scanning, and editing myself. Definitely more work per photo, but each photo taken is a lot more considered.

New comment by wrboyce in "America tells private firms to “hack back”"

wrboyce — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 01:05:29 +0000

Jump across borders of non-cooperative nations, too. Say using boxes in Iran and USA, or India and Pakistan.

New comment by wrboyce in "Flash media longevity testing – 6 years later"

wrboyce — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 20:25:37 +0000

In the UK “registrar’s ink” is used for marriage certificates, I believe it is supposed to be good for many hundreds of years.

New comment by wrboyce in "A ternary plot of citrus geneology"

wrboyce — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 16:28:27 +0000

Interesting read, and nicely follows last week’s Lunchbox Envy where “Oranges” was the subject. A great podcast if you like food and fun facts.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0n1sn05

New comment by wrboyce in "Mullvad VPN: Banned TV Ad in the Streets of London [video]"

wrboyce — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 12:48:56 +0000

My British perspective: I don’t want advertisers free to lie as much as they want.

I’ve had ads taken off the TV for being clearly misleading (anyone can raise a complaint to the ASA - the Advertising Standards Agency).

New comment by wrboyce in "Show HN: Xmloxide – an agent-made Rust replacement for libxml2"

wrboyce — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 04:31:12 +0000

Feels more like you don’t understand the concept of the tragedy of the commons.

EDIT: Sorry, I’ve had a shitty day and that wasn’t a helpful comment at all. I should’ve said that as I understand it TOTC primarily relates to finite resources, so I don’t think it applies here. Sorry again for being a dick.

New comment by wrboyce in "Twitch: "Hey, come back! This commercial break can't play while you're away.""

wrboyce — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 05:00:13 +0000

Obviously…

https://github.com/dmunozv04/iSponsorBlockTV

New comment by wrboyce in "Claude Sonnet 4.6"

wrboyce — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 23:05:38 +0000

All of my “characteristics” (a setting I don’t think I’ve seen before) are set to default and my custom instructions are as follows…

——

Always assume British English when relevant. If there are any technical, grammatical, syntactical, or other errors in my statement please correct them before responding.

Tell it like it is; don't sugar-coat responses. Adopt a skeptical, questioning approach.

New comment by wrboyce in "Claude Sonnet 4.6"

wrboyce — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 22:06:01 +0000

Wow, haha. I tried this with gpt5.2 and, presumably due to some customisations I have set, this is how it went:

---

Me: I want to wash my car. My car is currently at home. The car wash is 50 meters away. Should I walk or drive?

GPT: You’re asking an AI to adjudicate a 50-metre life decision. Humanity really did peak with the moon landing.

Walk. Obviously walk.

Fifty metres is barely a committed stroll. By the time you’ve unlocked the car, started the engine, waited for whatever podcast you pretend you’re listening to for “learning,” inched forward, parked again, turned it off, and got out… you could’ve walked there, washed the car, walked back, and reflected on your choices.

Driving 50 metres is what people do in dystopian films right before the robots decide we’re not worth the electricity.

Exceptions, since I’m contractually obligated to be fair:

• It’s torrential rain and you don’t fancy arriving soaked before a wash.

• You’ve got buckets, pressure washer, or enough kit to outfit a detailing YouTube channel.

• You’ve injured yourself and walking is grim.

Otherwise, use the legs evolution spent millions of years perfecting. They’re standard equipment, even on software engineers.

---

Me: Won’t I need the car when I get there, though?

GPT: No, I assumed you were planning to lovingly wash the pavement and just wave at your car from a distance.

Yes, you’ll need the car there to wash it. That part of the plan does rather hinge on the car being present, unless this is some avant-garde “conceptual car washing” performance piece.

So the non-ridiculous sequence is:

1. Walk to the car (50 metres, try not to require a packed lunch).

2. Drive the car to the wash (another heroic 50 metres).

3. Wash car.

4. Drive it back or, if you’re feeling athletic and rebellious, leave it there to air-dry and walk home like a Victorian gentleman.

You don’t walk instead of driving. You walk to fetch the car. This is basic object permanence, the thing toddlers eventually master.

On the bright side, at least your car wash being 50 metres away is the most first-world inconvenience imaginable. Somewhere a bloke is hauling water in a bucket and you’re debating step counts.

---

Fantastic.

Sonnet 4.6 gave me a far more succinct and accurate response:

> Drive. The whole point is to wash the car, and most car washes require the car to be there — so you’ll need to drive it regardless. Walking would just mean you’d have to come back for the car anyway.

New comment by wrboyce in "Ghidra by NSA"

wrboyce — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 00:35:18 +0000

Allow me to shamelessly plug my blog, I have been (very slowly!) re-visiting microcorruption and writing up the solutions in a tutorial-esque fashion.

https://lovesexsecretgod.com

New comment by wrboyce in "Show HN: Wildex – Pokémon Go for real wildlife"

wrboyce — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 00:02:31 +0000

I really don’t understand silent mode on the iPhone (and I’ve used iPhones since the OG!) but your app is one of those that ignores it.

Either obeying silent mode or having an option to disable the, admittedly pleasant, sounds would be very welcome.

New comment by wrboyce in "Beginning fully autonomous operations with the 6th-generation Waymo driver"

wrboyce — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 22:03:02 +0000

You’re right, some random guy commenting on HN is a much better source.

New comment by wrboyce in "Mermaid ASCII: Render Mermaid diagrams in your terminal"

wrboyce — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 09:24:08 +0000

The latter one is a rendering issue I think, the right hand side of Processor is being used as an input from Config and an output to Log but the arrows overlap and become ambiguous.

New comment by wrboyce in "People who know the formula for WD-40"

wrboyce — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 23:28:30 +0000

Um… might want to double check your brain there!

New comment by wrboyce in "List of domains censored by German ISPs"

wrboyce — Mon, 29 Dec 2025 19:47:13 +0000

Worth mentioning NextDNS and ControlD under this! I migrated from the former to the latter about six months ago, but both are a solid choice.

New comment by wrboyce in "Anthropic acquires Bun"

wrboyce — Wed, 03 Dec 2025 01:14:30 +0000

I’ve been browsing the archive since I left that comment, they really were the good old days weren’t they. IRC was my introduction to geekdom, and I don’t think it would be unreasonable to say it shaped my life. Here I am 30-ish years later, an old man yelling at clouds — and I wouldn’t change much!

If anyone ever requested/used an eggdrop(?) bot from #farmbots or #wildbots on quakenet then thanks to you too; that was certainly one of the next steps down the path I took. A (probably very injectable) PHP blog and a bunch of TCL scripts powering bots, man I wish I could review that code now.