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gideonparanoid

126 karma · joined July 26, 2016

British software engineer with an interests in cycling, photography & vegetarianism.
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gideonparanoid··on Show HN: I made a site to tell the time in corporate
First time I've encountered a site blocked by the work firewall, funnily enough.
gideonparanoid··on The rectangular cows of Art UK (2018)
The author of the post is wrong to say there's no famous cows, see the Craven Heifer [0] for example.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craven_Heifer

gideonparanoid··on We used to build steel mills near cheap power. Now we build datacenters
Without convection or conduction?
gideonparanoid··on I lost my boyfriend to cancer 'conspiracy theories’
Coronation Street - a popular TV soap in the UK had a storyline about this last year [0]. As the storyline played out, the character chose alternative therapies before finally trying conventional medicine, but it was too late & she lost her life.

I think it was quite brave of a soap to tackle that, & hopefully it's made people think if they were considering alternative 'solutions'.

[0] https://metro.co.uk/2018/11/06/coronation-street-spoilers-si...

gideonparanoid··on Visa Buys Plaid
Also would make cancelling your cards harder if they were lost along with your phone?
gideonparanoid··on Dry Stone Walls – Principles of structurally sound construction (2018)
Some of these are beautiful. Spent a lot of time looking at them & the trees while riding up the south side of Coll de Sóller.
gideonparanoid··on UK Parliament petitions site crashes under traffic for petition to cancel Brexit
The electoral register is relatively open. You can view it in most public libraries, town hall etc. [0]. You can even buy it in some cases [1].

[0] https://www.gov.uk/electoral-register/view-electoral-registe... [1] https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_fil...

gideonparanoid··on The cassette returns on a wave of nostalgia
Ha, not too dissimilar to a floppy disc really.
gideonparanoid··on Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit
> over 100 people die every day in traditional vehicle accidents.

Which isn't acceptable either. To some degree, people look towards autonomous vehicles as a way of reducing the number of fatalities/injuries on the road. If they're not better than humans & the other benefits don't add up, they won't be accepted.

gideonparanoid··on A Giant Speaker in Taiwan Is About to Switch on Again (2018)
I'm reminded of Dougal Adam's fictional band, Disaster Area [0].

>Disaster Area was a plutonium rock band from the Gagrakacka Mind Zones and was generally regarded as not only the loudest rock band in the Galaxy, but also as being the loudest noise of any kind at all. Regular concert goers judged that the best sound balance was usually to be heard from within large concrete bunkers some thirty-seven miles away from the stage, whilst the musicians themselves played their instruments by remote control from within a heavily insulated spaceship which stayed in orbit around the planet - or more frequently around a completely different planet.

>Their songs are on the whole very simple and mostly follow the familiar theme of boy-being meets girl-being beneath silvery moon, which then explodes for no adequately explored reason.

>Many worlds have now banned their act altogether, sometimes for artistic reasons, but most commonly because the band's public address system contravenes local strategic arms limitations treaties.

[0] https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Disaster_Area

gideonparanoid··on LG Releases Gram 17 Laptop: An Ultra-Thin Notebook with a 17.3in Display
Yeah, it's probably a function of it being a larger laptop. & it's, of course, subjective. I saw this typing on my 2016 MacBook Pro, & I personally love the giant trackpad.
gideonparanoid··on LG Releases Gram 17 Laptop: An Ultra-Thin Notebook with a 17.3in Display
Looking at the Macbook in front of me & back to this laptop on my screen & the trackpad looks absolutely tiny. Large trackpads are good! Seems odd that it's so small.
gideonparanoid··on China backs bold plan to tear down journal paywalls
I agree, two completely different types of suppression, each quite scary.
gideonparanoid··on Amazon Pitches Facial Recognition to Monitor Immigrants
Your experience does not necessarily reflect the reality of it [0].

[0] https://usa.streetsblog.org/2018/01/03/study-cyclists-dont-b...

gideonparanoid··on Fake review factories that run on Facebook and post five-star Amazon reviews
A good local bike shop is invaluable, especially if they have a good workshop.
gideonparanoid··on Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?
This is a good analysis of the situation.

>(no idea who the other bloke is) Jonathan Bartley [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Bartley

gideonparanoid··on Why I Bid $700 for a Stolen PSN Account
Reminds me of this blog post [0] about a guy who lost his Twitter @N.

[0] https://medium.com/@N/how-i-lost-my-50-000-twitter-username-...

gideonparanoid··on Autonomous braking: 'The most significant development since the safety belt'
Also, surely that needs to be more accurately described as 'safest car ever tested /for its occupants/'.
gideonparanoid··on Hackers Are So Fed Up with Twitter Bots They’re Hunting Them Down Themselves
I've found that with blocking every account I see a promoted tweet from, I barely see any any more.
gideonparanoid··on Chinese police don high-tech glasses to nab suspects
We have ANPR[0] in the UK. Makes it very easy to follow vehicles around the country on main roads.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_number_plate_recogni...

gideonparanoid··on Chinese police don high-tech glasses to nab suspects
Were that the case, there's unlikely to be the resources to act on every crime. However, having some 'dirt' on everyone means that it'd be easy to take action on any particular 'problem' person.
gideonparanoid··on A Type of Road Junction that Kills Cyclists
There's no such thing as road tax, roads are paid for out of general taxation [0]. What they're thinking is vehicle excise duty, which doesn't apply to all vehicles, so that point is moot.

[0] http://ipayroadtax.com/

gideonparanoid··on The Repressive, Authoritarian Soul of “Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends”
That's the difference between an acronym & an initialism. An acronym is pronounced as a word, but an initialism is just the letters (usually because it cannot be pronounced).
gideonparanoid··on HTC 10 keyboard suddenly starts showing ads, fix is on the way
Usually it's pressing the down-volume & the power button at the same time.
gideonparanoid··on HTC 10 keyboard suddenly starts showing ads, fix is on the way
For some context: Peel Remote is an app for using the IR blaster to control your TV/DVR. HTC used to have their own app for it, but it got discontinued so they put up Peel Remote as the replacement.

I was about to consider this a shame, as HTC's own app was pretty good, but not sure if I would trust them not to put ads in it anyway now.

gideonparanoid··on 100-year old fruit cake found in Antarctica's oldest building
My girlfriend has done some work in Antarctica before, she said that it wasn't uncommon to find food ten or twenty years past its use-by-date. This is kind of the next level though.
gideonparanoid··on Dismantling a Million Tons of North Sea Oil Rigs
That depends on how environmentally friendly you want to be in reclaiming that steel [0]:

> A secondhand vessel is currently worth about $190 per tonne to a shipbreaking yard in Turkey, a price established by the local market in reclaimed steel. Sail on to China and a different market, and the same metal is worth $210 per tonne. At breakers’ yards in Alang in India, Chittagong in Bangladesh and Gadani in Pakistan, they will pay around $280 per tonne. Meanwhile, at the EU-approved shipbreaking sites, which are bound to conform to continental waste laws, and where vessels are dismantled in closed-off quays or dry docks, rates are less competitive: European yards offer zero dollars per tonne, and, in fact, tend to ask a fee to take a shipowners’ junk.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/may/02/where-oil-r...

gideonparanoid··on UK election: Conservatives lose majority
There's only two parties - Lib Dems & Greens - which promised a chance to revert Brexit, so I wouldn't expect it to be reversed. A softer Brexit is certainly on the cards though.

This guide [0] from the BBC might help to understand how coalitions are formed. It's currently looking very tricky as the splits are crazy [1].

[0] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2017-40209087

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/ng-interactive/2017/jun...

gideonparanoid··on UK election: Conservatives lose majority
I'm curious what the under-30s turnout is. I'm hoping this will inspire younger people & encourage them to engage more in politics.
gideonparanoid··on Apple’s China Problem
£400? I got mine for £330 last year (was £300 before GBP tanked).
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