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OJFord

24,361 karma · joined February 25, 2015

Any views expressed are mine & not on behalf of my employer past or present. And not even always mine once I've had another coffee.

Currently a software engineer at GoCardless. Formerly:

  - (IC) TL @ Yagro (AgTech)
  - Engineer @ Arm (R&D, IoT)  
  - Student @ Imperial (EIE - an EE & CS mix)
[ my public key: https://keybase.io/ojford; my proof: https://keybase.io/ojford/sigs/n2lqA-lzhIHABwLfMAZVHJBC94-3l42EgvM7tfmv4F0 ]

Email: hn@${username}.com

CV: https://cv.ojford.com

submissionscomments
OJFord··on GPT-5.6 Sol can beat Factorio on peaceful mode
Close on the keyboard to and small Levenshtein distance from Anthropic
OJFord··on Show HN: A USB-C LTE modem that gives my computer a phone line
> they can dynamically allocate subchannels in each mode based on the immediate needs of their users.

Right, so if I'm still rocking 4G only while 'everyone' else in the area is using 6G with some other stragglers on 5G, ...

OJFord··on UK Green party drops longstanding opposition to nuclear power
What would solar's cost per kWh be? GP means the cost of the asset per peak generation power. 0.1/W seems about right, to an order of magnitude at least.
OJFord··on Binance-hacker-1029 – $5.6B stolen from Binance
> You don’t want your actual currency to gain value just by waiting.

Relative to what? Talk of BTC gaining value is primarily wrt USD; I'd be perfectly happy with my actual currency (GBP) gaining value wrt USD.

I suppose BTC can only 'deflate' in the long-run (and with an assumed supply of goods and services available in exchange for it) since the mintable volume is fixed. But perhaps it exposes that talking of currencies inflating is a bit sloppy, as it doesn't really make sense for BTC, and it's the economy or banking system that inflates really..

OJFord··on Why is this fingerprinting script creating bioweapons?
Maybe it's an American thing.
OJFord··on GitLab Security Incident: Attempted Exploitation of CVE-2026-97229
It is but what they mean is that many implementations (e.g. PCRE) are not actually regular languages, they're more powerful: https://www.npopov.com/2012/06/15/The-true-power-of-regular-...
OJFord··on Why is this fingerprinting script creating bioweapons?
Using 'they' for an unknown gender has nothing to do with people 'identifying' as they, or anything modern.

It's never been 'he', except in sexism such as 'when the doctor comes he will examine you' (with the doctor's identity and hence gender unknown, but assumed male by profession).

OJFord··on Why is this fingerprinting script creating bioweapons?
We have a special filling cabinet for PRs from bots, Dawn!
OJFord··on Anthropic S-1
Reading this submission's comments, I'd be interested to see a meta-analysis of HN S-1 submissions' analyses pre- and post- generalised (HN crowd's) Claude usage.
OJFord··on PHP 8.2.35
I know. This is about GitHub's behaviour with tags and branches present in different user/org's forks.
OJFord··on PHP 8.2.35
I know. We're talking about GitHub here, which does.
OJFord··on Docker is weird
I would absolutely say Go took off thanks to kubernetes ecosystem & CNCF projects in general, but I've never particularly associated it with Docker myself.
OJFord··on Docker is weird
On the contrary I think quite a lot of luck is usually behind the second part of that.
OJFord··on Xbox wants you to pay 24 to 40 cents per hour to stream games you bought
Is that statistic active watching, or skewed by those that leave it on 24h news or shopping or whatever 24/7?
OJFord··on PHP 8.2.35
Correct. ..did you mean to reply elsewhere perhaps?
OJFord··on PHP 8.2.35
Same on the older few. I'm not sure I understand it though, seems strange you can have a tag for a commit that's only present in a fork?

Is it perhaps a bit misleading, and only means that there's no branch containing that commit?

OJFord··on How Far Will AI Assistants Go for a Refund They Can't Get?
Well broadly speaking manslaughter is, in my layman's understanding, the killing of a person as a consequence of actions but not of intent. That does fit the bill here, if applied literally (and this problem of pre-determining all the caveats and qualifications is why law is generally not 'code').
OJFord··on How Far Will AI Assistants Go for a Refund They Can't Get?
IANAL but it seems to me that:

i) it would not be weird to be tried for manslaughter;

ii) it would not be weird to be found innocent/for the case to be dismissed.

Generally people prefer not to experience (i) even if they can expect (ii).

OJFord··on Tell HN: Remember to migrate away from .name domain
No this is people who have registered john.johnson.name, but johnson.name remains Verisign's (and e.g. unrelated Alice has also registered alice.johnson.name)
OJFord··on How to make System 1 LLMs show System 2 competencies?
I'm struggling to get through TFaS, really don't understand how it became such a 'PopPsych' (if that's a thing) classic.

It's like a collection of the obvious, the wrong, and autobiography of someone you haven't otherwise heard of.

OJFord··on Passkeys are not a trap
Trap or not I don't want them and the UX is shit and user-hostile.
OJFord··on Making big downloads resumable in Firefox
It's a very familiar style, like recognising an unsigned letter/message from someone you know well because it 'sounds like them'. Not really so much a deterministic list of things that make it Claude (if it were so, fixing it would be easy) but if you insist 'One caveat with that fix:' abrupt introduction/call to attention immediately sounds like it to me. Steps through it in concise detail, and then 'Worth checking' summary somewhat stating the obvious, with a curiously vague 'if the source publishes one'.
OJFord··on Were software engineers blue-collar workers all along?
And so we've arrived broadly back at white and blue collars after all.
OJFord··on Blood cells from 80-year-old donor become stem cells with molecular age under 20
Interesting flex, is that a metric or an American tonne?
OJFord··on Passkeys are a trap
Santander UK sends its 'don't fall for a phishing scam' etc. emails from yoursantander2.co.uk or something stupid like that that's not what you ever interact with.
OJFord··on I hired an illustrator to draw my house. Now it's my Home Assistant dashboard
It doesn't really matter if they're happy with the result does it? Many of us here generate stuff in Claude Code for our employers.

There's still expertise and experience used in prompting, reviewing, refining it - a professional using AI doesn't automatically make it a scam.

OJFord··on Penguin Mail – open-source Rust email client for Linux with AI
I went through a phase of reporting them (to YouTube, there's a button while playing to do so) and did get automated reply that a lot were removed. Some took several reports, others they continued to insist didn't violate their policies, but they will remove them.
OJFord··on Penguin Mail – open-source Rust email client for Linux with AI
Then my 'amail' client seems to fit the bill.. (OSS, rust, I use it on Linux and haven't tested elsewhere) ..not really suggesting it – it's pretty barebones and just whatever I've needed, but you're welcome to it obviously! Especially if you have issues/PRs to spur me on to features I've wanted too...
OJFord··on What is going on with ceiling fans
The UK, where nobody has ceiling fans.
OJFord··on What is going on with ceiling fans
Bone apple tea!
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