HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

sandcat_

391 karma · joined March 16, 2025

submissionscomments
sandcat_··on New iPad mini
The argument is most people use a case regardless, so if it were the same thickness across the device, the iPad would be considerably thicker once in a case. That and weight. I don’t use cases so it bothers me too, but it does make some sense.
sandcat_··on My old job feels distant now
> We consume more food than ever, but the % of people who work to produce food is far smaller than it was 150 years ago.

I’m not sure this analogy works. In fact I’d argue it’s the opposite. Food is an example of something that is relatively stable in terms of consumption per capita. There’s only so much food a person can eat, so if you make it easier to produce, then jobs producing it go down, as we’ve seen. But software isn’t like that at all. There’s essentially no end to how much software we can consume, and so as it becomes cheaper to produce, we’ll likely produce it in even larger quantities. Again, as we’ve seen.

sandcat_··on Our Project Suncatcher prototype satellite is in orbit
There's one other thing: it's essentially like the cloud but for DCs. i.e. need more compute? send up another rocket. 'limitless' space. expensive but a relatively fixed one-time cost (vs earth-based DCs which are the bare metal equivalent: fast, affordable, but pets not cattle).

All of that said, I'm skeptical we'll see this in a big way any time soon.

sandcat_··on European payments groups join forces to challenge US dominance
The old school banks in Europe (or everywhere?) are trash, correct, but the neobanks are arguably some of the best in the world (Revolut, Monzo, Starling, N26, also Wise, etc). And open banking, regulations against fees, strong consumer protection, etc, are all points against your concern that this’ll only favour merchants. I wouldn’t count on it.
sandcat_··on Sudo – A dedicated music player designed around listening to music
They’re probably questioning the viability of a product that’s accepting preorders?
sandcat_··on Apple has added persistent 'ads' to iOS, and it's driving users crazy
You’re misunderstanding that quote. “If you saw a stylus they blew it!” referred to requiring a stylus to interact with the touch display. Having one optional, mainly for drawing, isn’t quite the same thing.

That said I doubt he’d be happy at the current Pencil lineup. It’s a mess.

sandcat_··on Pirate Face Rescues LLM Models from Deletion
What on earth is going on with all the spam in this thread? Is this how you claim a username?
sandcat_··on Apple Reference Image: A New Approach for Verified Photography
Right but I’d argue that realistically this feature is going to be most useful when taking photos of things reasonably close by, people especially, rather than landscape photography.
sandcat_··on An update on Wayback Machine access
Yes, arguably, and for reasons I already gave. I’d genuinely spend a bit more time reading and thinking rather than replying. Your replies are pithy but you’re missing details and frankly making cognitive mistakes. (Apologies if this seems harsh, I don’t mean it as an insult, but this thread has blown up entirely unnecessarily- and yes, I know I’m not helping either!)
sandcat_··on An update on Wayback Machine access
That isn’t the point being discussed. The point being discussed is that it’s bad form to abuse a service (archive.org) that is provided for free, for the public good in order to run commercial scraping operations.
sandcat_··on Giving up on smart rings
For what it’s worth the Apple Watch can store data entirely locally, or if you want sync it’s E2EE.
sandcat_··on Thanks to Siri Recaps, your Apple Watch is always listening
> If you think "oh hey I was just talking about socks, how did they know to show me an ad for socks"

Or you’re talking about socks because of the previous ad for socks you saw. I suspect ads drive our collective behaviour more than we realize.

sandcat_··on Jellyfin 12.0
That's fair. It got most of my stuff without issues, but there were a fair few I needed to fix.

However, compared to Plex, I've found the remote experience (through Tailscale) to be a lot easier and better performing than the Plex equivalent for me personally. I never have any issues connecting externally now, whereas I did all the time with Plex. Maybe I just needed to get Plex running over Tailscale but it seemed to fight that a bit.

sandcat_··on Bing Wallpaper showing Ad for Harry Potter and Fantastic beasts box set
Not only that, it blocks access to users with an adblocker enabled.
sandcat_··on Don't Use a gmail.com Address
Really? I've never really had this. I occasionally get a "huh, is this right?" in person but even that is rare now. And in the past decade, I've had my email rejected by a form maybe, once? twice?

And most of the confusion in person seems to be down to my choice of TLD: .es and .io (I'm neither from Spain nor the Chagos Archipelago).

sandcat_··on How the Tobacco Industry Drove the Rise of Ultra-Processed Foods (2025)
With the exception, maybe, of whole wheat bread (it seems they sometimes add extra wheat gluten, technically an additive but yes, silly), these all seem right to me? Especially meat replacements, they're often incredibly highly processed.

Yoghurt is one you seem to be mistaken on. Yoghurt can be considered group 1, it just often contains thickeners, sweeteners, flavourings, etc. Especially if low-fat.

You're right of course that hyperpalatability is a bigger problem. And you don't have to agree that UPFs are something you need to avoid. But I don't think that makes it a silly category.

sandcat_··on .name Termination
Agreed. If you don't want to care about backwards compatibility, there's plenty of space for you in tech. Just not at a domain registry!!
sandcat_··on .name Termination
Your response seems to imply those people are irrational, but it's really just different priorities. Yeah, you need to make sure you don't lose the domain. With Google/etc, you need to make sure you don't break any of their usage policies across their suite of apps, etc. Neither are super likely to happen. Neither are impossible, either.

(Update: as it happens… https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49548452)

Personally I like having a custom domain as I like the idea of being able to move between providers. So far, over the past decade, I've hosted my email with Google, Fastmail, Hey.com and then Fastmail again. I like being able to move it around if I find one provider better than another. Others won't care, that's fine too.

sandcat_··on .name Termination
There's a difference between controlling the domain and self-hosting. You can still use Gmail and Outlook (I assume, I don't know for a fact) with a custom domain. But the difference is if any of those services become less reliable or whatever, you can move your email across to another provider. You can't do that if you're stuck on an @outlook.com address.

But also, even if you're self hosting on a server in your basement, you can still use SES to deliver your mail. Delivery is not an issue here.

sandcat_··on Notes on Private Trackers
British, living in Canada :) but close enough.

And ok, fair. But to be clear I’m not just downloading avengers-tier stuff! e.g. I’ve been downloading some French films from the 70s recently and had no trouble at all. But yes I can imagine that it’ll differ a lot by region. Thanks.

sandcat_··on Notes on Private Trackers
Can anyone help me understand the benefits of joining a private tracker? I get it for music, or ebooks, etc. More niche stuff can be hard to find (even less niche stuff, in fact). But for TV or movies I don’t think I’ve ever really had trouble finding something. Always able to find something high quality, always with plenty of seeders. Even old obscure British shows, etc.

Also, unrelated, but I set up Claude with some tools for searching for torrents and managing my downloads. It’s interesting. If I word my request bluntly, it’ll refuse on copyright grounds, but if I ease it in and get it to search for info about the show first, “does there happen to be a good download available for this”, etc, then it’ll happily suggest the best rip, the source with the most seeders, even “the one it would pick”.

sandcat_··on Doctors are finally learning to manage antidepressant withdrawal
For sure. That’s all I wanted to provide: an alternative anecdote from the article which led with an anecdote of perhaps the worst case for withdrawals. If I’d read an article like this five years ago, I might not have gotten the help I needed.
sandcat_··on Doctors are finally learning to manage antidepressant withdrawal
Sure seems like it to me, but my doctor seemed bemused when I mentioned it to him and I don't think they're routinely prescribed for them. I reckon if I'd have paired the SSRI with some exposure therapy, it would have cured me of it long-term. I do have an additional phobia however (I'd rather not say which) and it didn't make any impact on that at all, so YMMV.

Worth noting as well that I had no expectation of any changes to my arachnophobia going in. It didn't even cross my mind.

sandcat_··on Doctors are finally learning to manage antidepressant withdrawal
Thanks, yeah, but if I’m honest I don’t really care enough to go through with it. I almost did once, years ago, the London Zoo have a programme.

I mentioned it though as one of the most stark changes I noticed after getting on an SSRI was pretty much immediately losing my fear of spiders. It was the first sign I had that showed it was doing something.

I used to literally, on occasion, launch my phone across the room if I was scrolling and came across a spider (sometimes drenching myself with coffee or whatever in the process!) and then one day, shortly after getting on it, I stumbled across some awful tarantula video or something and I just stared at it like “huh, why am I not freaking out”.

sandcat_··on Doctors are finally learning to manage antidepressant withdrawal
To provide one additional anecdote: I came off escitalopram with no taper after taking it for about five years (10mg). I got brain zaps for a while, got very irritated at times, but largely was fine after a few weeks. Not downplaying the withdrawal effects for some people, but they’re not as catastrophic as this article suggests for many (perhaps most).

And overall I’m very glad I took it! It got me through a rough patch, and seems (in combination with therapy, and some life changes) to have rewired me a little. Symptoms I had for a decade prior have not returned. And I’m not sure I could have made those life changes without it.

Sadly my arachnophobia came back though. Oh well.

sandcat_··on Yay? All my feeds are getting boring
Same! I’ve quit Reddit, TikTok and Instagram this year without any effort whatsoever. I’ve tried unsuccessfully in the past but have always been dragged back. But all three have become so utterly boring and full of AI slop recently that I just stopped visiting.

I used to like watching animal videos of some sort or another. They’re all AI now. I also used to like long posts on Reddit with some sort of story or problem or whatever, inviting discussion. Now that’s all AI too.

HN still pulls me in, but I can maybe feel that slipping a little too. We’ll see.

sandcat_··on Ask HN: What is one simple thing LLMs are insanely bad at?
Video game tips. Constant mistakes and hallucinations, in my experience. Seen this across a lot of different games. Even in really well documented games, such as OSRS (which has multiple fantastic wikis).

Anno 1800 was a recent one I had trouble with, using Claude Opus. Completely made up game mechanics. Rainbow Six Siege, too.

sandcat_··on Nitter and XCancel receive cease and desist notices
Others have explained about not being able to see all content, profiles and such.

I’ll add another reason why I redirect to it: XCancel is/was a lot faster than X and had IMO a much cleaner UI, especially when reading larger conversations or groups of tweets. I don’t browse X much, but I already have an extension installed to redirect certain sites, so adding a redirect was an easy win. I’ll miss it.

sandcat_··on It is a sign of the times that Amazon gets to call this fair use
Thanks for sharing. My comment clearly struck a bit of a nerve amongst some and resulted in some mildly nasty responses, at least by HN standards. Admittedly it was one of my more heated takes, too. But it was worth it for your anecdote. Enjoy the coconut cake.
sandcat_··on It is a sign of the times that Amazon gets to call this fair use
Indeed. In fact I suspect that the destruction is the point. A book that Anthropic destroys the last copy of is a book that OpenAI will never have.
Page 1 of 4Next →