smidgeon

7 ms·

31.
by smidgeon 2y ago
I was astonished to discover (via HN) that the pencil was invented (patented) in 1795, I has always assumed that it was from antiquity
32.
by smidgeon 2y ago
It certainly does, look at the wings on that bad-boy [hic]
33.
by smidgeon 2y ago
It probably all started with typewriters (and teleprinters). Nope, it started with books where 500 years of typographic practice has taught us that anything above 80 characters a line quickly becomes unreadable.
34.
by smidgeon 2y ago
I assumed this was about Greenland ...
35.
by smidgeon 2y ago
So much of what Thatcher did in the wake of her 1983 general election victory seems so obvious now. We take it for granted that private companies play a pivotal role in providing our water, electricity, gas, railways, ports and freight. A
36.
by smidgeon 2y ago
Then I won't go there either, meh
37.
by smidgeon 2y ago
I used to, interesting people there, but stopped when they brought in fingerprinting ...
38.
by smidgeon 2y ago
I used to thumb a lot, standing by the side of the road you often see these car delivery lads, but only briefly; always picked up within a few minutes. I toyed with the idea of getting myself some fake trade-plates but thought better of it
39.
by smidgeon 2y ago
The UK government response: "Challenge accepted!"
40.
by smidgeon 2y ago
End-to-end-encryption-except-when-the-UK-government-is-interested doesn't have the same ring to it, liable to damage the brand ....
41.
by smidgeon 2y ago
The real reason being the longing for the 5 hour kernel compile of yore.
42.
by smidgeon 2y ago
Unrelated to the tech, just the graph-based algorithm (recommender stuff) that we had in mind did not give us the results we were hoping for ... and other things were queued up to be tried ...
43.
by smidgeon 2y ago
I got bitten by the same, we were looking at switching to memgraph (which is also Cypher, but C++ rather than Java), sadly abandoned for other reasons ...
44.
by smidgeon 2y ago
More use of the work "crikey" is needed
45.
by smidgeon 2y ago
Available in several formats at http://seaviewsensing.com/pub/cpt-city/mpl/
46.
by smidgeon 2y ago
For the confused: https://www.xkcd.com/1172/
47.
by smidgeon 2y ago
I liked those: "A bridge to Ireland" had me rolling on the floor ...
48.
by smidgeon 2y ago
Earlier discussion (2020) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23486938
49.
by smidgeon 2y ago
Anyone else puzzled by the declaration of interests? ... He is a paid advisor to QNovia, a company that is developing a therapeutic inhaled nicotine delivery device. ... All authors declare no financial links with tobacco companies, e-ciga
50.
by smidgeon 2y ago
Would you rest your face on a toilet-seat so cleaned?
51.
by smidgeon 2y ago
Clearly trained on Benefits Britain: Life on the Dole
52.
by smidgeon 2y ago
That's an organisation in need of a hyphen: "fair organ-preservation" sounds really quite unpleasant ...
53.
by smidgeon 2y ago
My first experience of Unix was on a dumb terminal on a university AIX (?) machine, I had heard that "man" was how you got to the documentation, so duly typed "man", the resulting Apropos what? made me laugh out
54.
by smidgeon 2y ago
L'Argent by Marcel L'Herbier is rather splendid https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0019646/
55.
by smidgeon 2y ago
To avoid confusion with really big angry sharks
56.
by smidgeon 2y ago
Whatever it is, when you reach it you'll find that it's advanced by a couple of years ...
57.
by smidgeon 2y ago
Are you as confident about the 22nd?
58.
by smidgeon 2y ago
Only 0.6% of startups claim to use AI, I expected it would be higher. I am so bad in python that I had to ask ChatGPT to create the plot for me ah
59.
by smidgeon 2y ago
The opposite it true, as anyone who has seen the documentary "The Meg" will attest.