Hacker News: ztetranz

New comment by ztetranz in "Peter Thiel and Jeffrey Epstein Had a Yearslong Relationship"

ztetranz — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 18:40:54 +0000

Maybe New Zealand could revisit his eligibility for citizenship.

New comment by ztetranz in "US electricity demand surged in 2025 – solar handled 61% of it"

ztetranz — Sat, 17 Jan 2026 13:55:07 +0000

Here's a good podcast (with written transcript) about what's happening in Australia.

https://www.volts.wtf/p/whats-the-real-story-with-australian

The difference in the permitting process between Australia and US is staggering.

New comment by ztetranz in "Google Antigravity just deleted the contents of whole drive"

ztetranz — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 02:53:22 +0000

In early versions of DOS, the format command would go ahead and format the default drive with no prompt. It was a bad day if you were on C: and wanted to format A: but you forgot the A:

New comment by ztetranz in "Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright"

ztetranz — Tue, 18 Nov 2025 16:52:30 +0000

New Hampshire just ended inspections.

New comment by ztetranz in "Being poor vs. being broke"

ztetranz — Fri, 14 Nov 2025 19:42:26 +0000

Most HOAs don't allow clotheslines because it makes it look as if poor people live there.

New comment by ztetranz in "Being poor vs. being broke"

ztetranz — Fri, 14 Nov 2025 18:54:22 +0000

I find myself doing that. I'm not sure if it's just a silly habit I have because I don't like to run out of anything even if it is not important or if I picked it up from my dad who lived through the "great" depression as a child.

New comment by ztetranz in "Meow.camera"

ztetranz — Fri, 17 Oct 2025 18:09:50 +0000

> I am not even American but I remember McCain more and more when I hear about this. he was so much better than this.

Very true. https://youtu.be/JIjenjANqAk?si=S65WGSBEGy8XEt27

New comment by ztetranz in "Ask HN: What are you working on? (October 2025)"

ztetranz — Mon, 13 Oct 2025 00:18:39 +0000

I wish you good luck.

This might be a naive question which you've probably been asked plenty of times before so I'm sorry of I'm being tedious here.

Is it really worth the effort and expense to have a real radio station these days? Wouldn't an online stream be just as effective if it was promoted well locally?

A few years ago a friend who was very much involved in a local community group which I was also somewhat interested in asked me if I wanted to help build a low power FM station. He asked me because I know something about radio since I was into ham radio etc.

I was skeptical that it was worth the effort. The nerdy part of me would have enjoyed doing it but I couldn't help thinking that an online stream would probably reach as many people without the hassle and expensive of a transmitter, antenna etc.

I know it's a toss up. Every car has an FM radio. Not everyone is going to have a phone plugged in to Android Auto or Apple Car Play and have a good data plan and have a solid connection.

I also pointed out that the technical effort is probably the small part compared to producing interesting content.

New comment by ztetranz in "A few things to know before stealing my 914 (2022)"

ztetranz — Wed, 08 Oct 2025 23:54:24 +0000

I remember that in the New Zealand code too.

New comment by ztetranz in "Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image"

ztetranz — Thu, 25 Sep 2025 02:06:25 +0000

These guys warned us about this sort of thing.

http://infolab.stanford.edu/pub/papers/google.pdf

Appendix A. Page 18.

New comment by ztetranz in "When the sun will literally set on what's left of the British Empire"

ztetranz — Sun, 31 Aug 2025 20:36:42 +0000

I don't think the Queen instructed the Governor General to do that. He made the decision.

I'm old enough to remember it and remember a statement from the palace saying something like "The Queen is watching events in Australia with interest" but I don't think she took an active part.

I quick search reveals this. I don't know this site but if true then some letters seem to confirm the above. She told the GG to obey the Australian Constitution.

https://constitution-unit.com/2020/07/16/palace-letters-show...

New comment by ztetranz in "The fundamentals still matter"

ztetranz — Fri, 08 Aug 2025 12:05:12 +0000

>I saw a post on twitter about how game devs were using ChatGPT for localization and when you translated the text to English it said something like “as a chat assistant I’m unable to translate this concept”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7702913.stm

New comment by ztetranz in "A Letter to the CalyxOS Community"

ztetranz — Sun, 03 Aug 2025 21:42:48 +0000

This is not a criticism but just an observation. I wonder how many of their members have any clue about what Calyx is about. Calyx is quite well known in the RV community where I suspect most members simply see themselves as "customers" for the T-Mobile internet service which is a "free" membership benefit. It got better recently because they now have a plan where you can put the SIM in your own router. There are very few other "unlimited" data options available for private non-business users that allow "bring your own device".

New comment by ztetranz in "200k Flemish drivers can turn traffic lights green"

ztetranz — Tue, 29 Jul 2025 12:12:27 +0000

Yes roundabouts generally work well despite the fact that many American drivers seem to have problems with them.

There are some traffic patterns where roundabouts don't do well. I've seen the following. Imagine a four way roundabout with north, east, south and west. Predominate rush hour traffic is towards the east. Heavy traffic entering from north. More entering from west. Most exiting at east with very little going around beyond west. Entering from south can be nearly impossible since they're waiting for a break from both north and west.

New comment by ztetranz in "Websites are tracking you via browser fingerprinting"

ztetranz — Wed, 18 Jun 2025 23:40:30 +0000

As an aside, we just spent a couple of weeks camping in our RV with a cellular router connected to a VPN at home. Now that we're back home, Google maps (on a non-GPS equipped device) and Roku still think we're at the campground several states away. I guess my GPS equipped tablet reported the new location of our home IP address. On past experience, it takes about a week to reset.

New comment by ztetranz in "Show HN: Rotary Phone Dial Linux Kernel Driver"

ztetranz — Sun, 25 May 2025 00:23:45 +0000

Thanks for this. I'm a kiwi and wondered why we were different.

When friends started bringing pushbutton / cordless phones across from Australia, I was able to convert them to NZ numbering by reversing a few wires on the keyboard matrix. These generated pulses long before DTMF.

New comment by ztetranz in "A brief history of the numeric keypad"

ztetranz — Sun, 11 May 2025 11:41:03 +0000

It's sounds silly when the Android auto in my car reads a text message. "Message from twenty four thousand, five hundred and thirty nine ..."

New comment by ztetranz in "The cat that wouldn't die"

ztetranz — Thu, 01 May 2025 21:42:59 +0000

Sean Carroll's cat is awake or asleep.

New comment by ztetranz in "In the 1980s we downloaded games from the radio"

ztetranz — Mon, 31 Mar 2025 16:52:53 +0000

Floppy disks DO NOT BEND!

Oh yes they do.

New comment by ztetranz in "Ask HN: What less-popular systems programming language are you using?"

ztetranz — Tue, 04 Mar 2025 02:16:26 +0000

I've been learning Elixir just for fun. I wish I was using it in my day job.