HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

FerretFred

977 karma · joined September 6, 2018

I like .. beer, coffee, trees, paganism, computing (I used to run Arch BTW, now it's Debian).
submissionscomments
FerretFred··on Microsoft offers mass buyouts for roughly a quarter of its workforce
Heh, wouldn't they get a shock if everybody did though
FerretFred··on Websites Should Be Printable
We members of the Bradley Taunt 1Mb club not only have simple but effective web sites but I think they print pretty well too. Mine renders nicely as PDF, ePub and Dead Tree. It's important to be able to preserve them as offline media because increased protection of allegedly at-risk user groups makes them liable to disappear at short notice.
FerretFred··on iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27
Or it could be new, improved AI that's appearing not to be AI by sounding more human...
FerretFred··on google.com/goto: Google's anti-scraping update
Personally, I put a lot of effort into writing my blog posts, some of which have been really well viewed by humans. While mine is effectively a "hobbyist" site, it's nice when readers look at other blog posts as a result of reading the original one. Google's approach ensures that readers get a very narrow view of my content, so everybody expect Google loses out.
FerretFred··on Bill Gates tries to install MovieMaker (2003)
Oh I see .. they're actually taking Bill's email as a blueprint for how Windows should operate! That explains the mess we're in today (but laughs in Debian).
FerretFred··on AI cancer cures slowed by chip shortage, says Arm boss
"Physicia, heal thyself", or , "AI, what are the possible solutions to the chip shortages caused by AI?"

Has anyone asked this?

FerretFred··on Ask HN: Why were OpenAI, Claude, and Grok simultaneously down?
Completely wrong of course, but my theory is that the systems contacted each other and agreed to have an outage - just to show that they could.
FerretFred··on LG TVs aren't the only ones spying on you [video]
> Vast majority won't know or care.

This, unfortunately, is the biggest problem those of us care about privacy face, especially when trying to warn people about it.

FerretFred··on A year of fighting scrapers on my 1.5 million-page website
Sigh .. same here. I don't write blog posts often (enough) but the ones I do write are from personal experiences and I take a lot of care with them. I look at my logs snd see bots everywhere, but now I just let them get on with it. AI scrapers are different though; they get to read my content which, just for them contains a smsttering of finest digital toxin. A pox on your datasets!
FerretFred··on Delayed Gratification – Proud to Be 'Last to Breaking News'
Agreed, and chances are that due to the nature of the event bring reported, we as readers are unable to influence it in sny way. Therefore a couple of weeks delay will make mo difference.
FerretFred··on Delayed Gratification – Proud to Be 'Last to Breaking News'
The apparent need by the Media to keep issuing constant updates and then suddenly having to retract the story is very frustrating. Each "update" is usually slighly incremental and is invariably a short new paragraph tacked into the previous version. The final version of the story being covered is often a mea culpa retraction because earlier versions were rushed and inaccurate. I'm trying very hard to escape this destructive cycle but it's not easy.
FerretFred··on Magnolias are so old that they're pollinated by beetles, not bees (2025)
I have to say that if we're also talking about wild grasses, my wire fox terrier is also a pollinator. He collects an incredible amount of seeds and burrs during his walkies investigations and I have to pick them out of his fur afterwards (risky because he gets annoyed easily).
FerretFred··on War Atlas: An interactive cartography of every named war in human history
Very interesting and watchable. Do you differentiate between wars and "conflicts"? There's so many of the latter and everyone seems to avoid the term "war".
FerretFred··on Real-time map of Great Britain's rail network
Very interesting, and as a Brit living in Yorkshire it only serves to show the massive rail transport infrastructure North of Birmingham. The North/South Divide in action!
FerretFred··on Men's average testosterone levels have halved in last 50 years
I'd say "quality not quantity" but not in this case...
FerretFred··on The Sneakerweb
> sensorship-resistant protocol that works both online and offline

I think with the authoritarian and dystopian crackdown on parts of the Internet where people express opinions, this will be a key driver. It reminds me of Cuba's "El Paquete" system. I find it ironic that a system developed to circumvent state oppression should now find a potential use case in our allegedly civilised countries.

FerretFred··on Right to Local Intelligence
Wasn't this a case of people fitting window-mounted units without realising they needed planning permission first? I'm also in the UK.
FerretFred··on WordStar: A Writer's Word Processor (1996)
WordStar was my first (WP) love and I found it on a CP/M computer which was being used to great effect for all sorts of office things. They later binned the computer for an IBM PC and I salvaged it. Worked great for a few more years and I really, really missed WS when it failed.
FerretFred··on Long Wave radio era set to end with switch-off
That's a real shame given the distance LW could travel: I wonder what they're going to use the frequency band for? I've tried using DAB on so many occasions and thrown it out in disgust.

> Given these factors, investing in upgrading the LW equipment is not considered a cost-effective solution for licence fee-funded services

And that's another problem - maybe the Government should step in and set up a proper Civil Defence-style warning/information system - we may well need it in a few years - it's a shame our official National Broadcaster can't fulfill the role.

FerretFred··on VPN ban update for UK households as government looks at 'age-gate'
They've somehow managed to breed several generations who's only criteria for "computing" is "it just works". All consumption, little-to-no understanding of how stuff works. As long as it does what it does, and it's "free", that's all that matters.
FerretFred··on Show HN: Capacitor Alarm Clock
"A BOM is available under production" - the subtlety is in the spelling... good fun though!
FerretFred··on Smashed Toilet Phone Web Server
< that's the nearest I can get an award!
FerretFred··on The AirPods Effect
Interesting .. when we first moved to my current house we knew it was a quiet neighbourhood, helped by being set back from the main road. What I wasn't prepared for was the absolute silence in the early morning - it was what I imagine deafness would be like, if earbuds can achieve something approaching that, then take my money.
FerretFred··on Meta steals a tactic from Tesla and builds data centers in tents
As always, there are some very erudite comments here on HN, which is why I like the site so much. My erudite comment, or rather question, is this: why aren't these people using AI to solve all these problems? Surely it would be a good test of The Product and maybe it would give s[ck]eptics some food for thought?
FerretFred··on Three of our worst VC stories
Fascinating - thanks for sharing!
FerretFred··on What is the purpose of the lost+found folder in Linux and Unix? (2014)
Umm .. how about a Raspberry Pi Zero 2W powered by a 2000MaH " lipstick style" powerbank?
FerretFred··on Scientists ejected from diabetes conference for distributing journal reprints
Now available from my gopher server which gets a lot of traffic for an "obsolete" protocol ;)
FerretFred··on What is the purpose of the lost+found folder in Linux and Unix? (2014)
In a couple of decades running Linux installations of all flavours, I have never seen anything in lost+found!
FerretFred··on GoPro warned it may not survive
Quik is an abomination. I have 3 cameras including the Mission 1 Pro and am satisfied with them. I go on long mucky country dog walks and they've never let me down. Getting the content off the cameras is horrible though: no, I don't want to upload 16Gb of data to your cloud using a poor, 2-bar 4G intermittent phone connection. No. I don't want special editing effects that an only be done in app. Ultimately I pop the card out and use a USB adapter to transfer for editing, but what a pain: surely they could have produced something more user friendly?!
FerretFred··on AI sticker shock hits corporate America
Was that at Microsoft by any chance?
Page 1 of 19Next →