Hacker News: zoom6628

New comment by zoom6628 in "How bicycle coaster brakes work (2018)"

zoom6628 — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 04:06:51 +0000

Brilliant for folks in flat cities riding to and from work. That's the environment in which they got popular 100y ago. For hills def need rim brakes or discs for flexibility of use. BMX racing in early 80s we used the lightest rim brakes and levers we could find. I had couple of times snapping the levers and even the brake arms before fitting with really strong machined aluminium ones which lasted me 3 years before I stopped riding.

New comment by zoom6628 in "Verschlimmbesserung: The Word Your Software Updates Need"

zoom6628 — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 08:18:12 +0000

Glorious word to describe just about every iOS update ever.

New comment by zoom6628 in "In Memory of My Wife, Elise Cawley, with Thanks for 36 Wonderful Years"

zoom6628 — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 00:22:39 +0000

Beautiful and warmth-filled tribute to Elise . Gorgeous piece of writing reflecting his sense of joy, love and loss. A life well lived.

New comment by zoom6628 in "AI migrated legacy COBOL programs to Java, bugs included"

zoom6628 — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 13:49:55 +0000

All this ranting about COBOL. Makes me fairly sure AI hasn't tackled RPG3 yet :-D

New comment by zoom6628 in "LLM Honeypot"

zoom6628 — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 01:39:25 +0000

This is brilliant.

New comment by zoom6628 in "Neutrino-1 8B"

zoom6628 — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 09:04:52 +0000

Can Dang implement a slop rating on submitted pages? Not a block but at least a % likelihood of AI slop content and that could also be tied with a BS rating as well.

Could use AI for both which seems hilariously appropriate.

New comment by zoom6628 in "Chinese Discoveries Thru History"

zoom6628 — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 13:36:40 +0000

Amazing and eye opening list of discoveries made by folk in the realm of modern day China. I was clued on to this by my 6yo getting homework question about "how is he inspired by Li Shanlan". I had not heard of this person but diving into his history and finding about a 9 Arts of Mathematica written 2000 years ago and then happening on this list on Wikipedia. I am stunned.

Makes me wonder how many other amazing discoveries and thinking remains to be known globally and is just hidden due to culture, language, politics or repression. The libraries of Africa, scrolls of Tibet and Burma, and on and on.

Chinese Discoveries Thru History

zoom6628 — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 13:36:40 +0000

Article URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_discoveries

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49047474

Points: 2

# Comments: 1

New comment by zoom6628 in "HMD Touch 4G"

zoom6628 — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 02:38:38 +0000

Reminds me a lot of my old Nokia 525 with windows. Great form factor for running and hiking. If this one got GPS I would buy it. But it's up against excellent full function phones like bluebox and veelo from China which make stunningly good small phones.

New comment by zoom6628 in "Open Book Touch: open-source e-reader"

zoom6628 — Sat, 18 Jul 2026 02:22:37 +0000

I really like the thinking of openness behind this device. Could be great as a pocketable "notice board" getting info on a schedule from mobile and "posting" to a pub on device for me to look at when I feel like it and react to messages on my schedule.

New comment by zoom6628 in "Camera with transparent display launches for the equivalent of $29"

zoom6628 — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 00:42:51 +0000

Great for kids to get started. Saves to SD so you don't fill your mobile storage with 12,000 beach photos from last holiday. Cheaper to lose/replace than ifone.

I still have a LUMIX camera 10+ years for instant pics when travelling. Smaller than my wallet.

New comment by zoom6628 in "Python 3.14 compiled to metal – no interpreter"

zoom6628 — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 00:18:00 +0000

Mojo not good enough?

New comment by zoom6628 in "Nvidia Has Become the Bank Behind the AI Boom"

zoom6628 — Sun, 05 Jul 2026 01:40:53 +0000

So now the speculation can start as to which company they will acquire first.

New comment by zoom6628 in "Show HN: Pieces – Social network for people"

zoom6628 — Sat, 04 Jul 2026 04:29:19 +0000

100% agree with this. The whole "influencer" industry (let's be honest it's about manipulating you) is peak enshitification.

I quit twitter cos it became a cesspool. IG needs aggressive curation and keeping notifications off. Even bluesky became rage bait. And only watch a few channels of YouTube thru FreeTube.

Maybe I just old grumpy geek but after nearly 2 decades of social media I've yet to find the "social" part. It is in the main a bucket into which anyone can vomit their media and hysteria du jour.

It was a good experiment but it's done.

Pieces has promise if they can come up with a curation process that matches the ideals of their platform. I truly hope it works out because part of me wants there to be a place online for people to share publicly without fear of doxing or advertising.

New comment by zoom6628 in "SpaceX to buy Cursor for $60B"

zoom6628 — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 12:33:33 +0000

We could remove 100% of world AI supply and humanity would not be worse off. It is still additive and in areas of generally indeterminate value except in hype.

Reasoning and RAG is amazing already and is a productivity gain but I'm yet to be convinced GenAI is anything but a slop machine.

#startflamingmenow

New comment by zoom6628 in "Show HN: Turn your name into a tree in an infinite procedural shanshui landscape"

zoom6628 — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 04:55:47 +0000

Love it !

New comment by zoom6628 in "FCC wants to kill burner phones by forcing telecoms to get all customers' IDs"

zoom6628 — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 01:36:50 +0000

Straight out of China playbook. Every SIM must be registered with government issued/recognised ID. Yes combats fraud. Yes means govt can track you thru IMEI 24x7 anywhere in the world.

New comment by zoom6628 in "Hacker News front page as a site"

zoom6628 — Tue, 26 May 2026 05:58:37 +0000

This is gorgeous. Makes me feel like I'm picking up an old news sheet. Forces me to read slowly from which I then enjoy the reading much more it's like difference of drinking a fine wine from a glass instead of a straw in the wine bottle.

Kudos to the author.

New comment by zoom6628 in "Google Declaring War on the Web"

zoom6628 — Thu, 21 May 2026 00:54:32 +0000

Agree. Should be legally required for all web hosted pictures to be AI poisoned except with explicit verifiable opt out. Same for text.

Needs some institution with many geek supporters and or large tools, like Wikipedia or EFF to wage a campaign of scanning the web for materials used without permission and then loading the courts with cases of probable non-consensual usage. May not change billionaire behaviour but perhaps will change consumer behaviour.

New comment by zoom6628 in "Does Employment Slow Cognitive Decline? Evidence from Labor Market Shocks"

zoom6628 — Tue, 05 May 2026 01:40:24 +0000

Retirement is an artificial modern construct to create jobs. People are supposed to be active until they die. Hobbies are just a replacement activity. I have no intention of retiring (over 60 already). I work in tech and learning new skills and my income feeds and houses my family and pays for my running shoes.

As other commenters have noted folk in some places don't have anything but work. That is a global social issue that needs addressing first.