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elthran

766 karma · joined September 1, 2015

Python developer working in London finance
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elthran··on Egg prices vs. Consumer Price Index since 1980
Your phrasing of the last sentence caught my interest. Is the other reason fresh chicken meat, or is there another benefit to keeping them that I can't think of?
elthran··on Belgium to Recognise Palestinian State
"Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."
elthran··on Toronto’s network of pedestrian tunnels
We were running late for our train in winter - the Sapporo underground system let us walk to the station so much faster than trying to navigate ice, snow and road crossings
elthran··on The billionaire developer closing London's pubs
Have a third! https://www.londoncentric.media/p/picturehouse-central-cinem...
elthran··on Show HN: Use Their ID – Use your local UK MP’s ID for the Online Safety Act
Ah, you must be a Clacton resident then
elthran··on Voting age to be lowered to 16 in UK by next general election
UK pensions are subject to income tax, if you're receiving more than the annual tax free allowance.
elthran··on Kid gamers to adult gamblers? Investigation of childhood gaming and YA gambling
Team Fortress 2 had crates/keys before CSGO was released - but the blame definitely falls on Valve's shoulders in this timeline (I'm sure if Valve didn't create them in the popular form, someone at EA would have)
elthran··on Tesla sales in Europe down 45% in January
At least in the UK the license plate lets you know when the car was registered, so it's simple to tell if they bought the Tesla before Elon went off the cliff fully. I'm not going to begrudge anyone who doesn't sell their car, my judgement is reserved for the people buying them now
elthran··on Experts say a proposed revamp to the recycling symbol is still deceptive
The process is super common in the big UK supermarkets - and it's absolutely my preferred way of doing a larger shop. You can use whatever bags/containers you like (or even none at all and just keep things in the trolley/cart if you want). They then do spot checks at the checkout to see if items have been scanned, and remove any security tags
elthran··on Geico terminating insurance coverage of Tesla Cybertrucks
Nothing to prevent them giving you an "F U quote" of say 6k for a year though - they've offered to insure, you've declined their price (speaking from UK perspective)
elthran··on The German problem? It's an analogue country in a digital world
It doesn't necessarily show that at all as an isolated statistic - it could be telling us that Germany has less people who are convinced an AI startup is a sensible business decision, or any other number of population based factors
elthran··on We played Valve's new shooter, Deadlock
Monday Night Combat gave me such good times at University in our LAN gaming society, It was such a breath of fresh air compared to the other games we were playing, I don't think it got nearly as much love as it deserved.
elthran··on OpenAI illegally barred staff from airing safety risks, whistleblowers say
Agreed - I've been unable to get at sensible meaning in my head for "AI safety" that isn't "to prevent ultron/skynet/the matrix"
elthran··on Microsoft cutting crucial link to Gaza, Palestinians say
Online ordering and delivery I'd assume
elthran··on Children's daily sugar consumption halved just a year after tax, study finds
Yeah, it's definitely seems it's this from my perspective. The companies reformulated and reduced our full-sugar options, all so they didn't have to put their prices up, at the cost of the tastes of their products and consumer choices. And then the last few years hit and they massively up their prices anyway.

I always happily pay extra for original coke, but so often with other brands I can no longer find the full sugar versions in stock

elthran··on The rarest book in American literature: Poe's Tamerlane
"Cambrian Chronicles" is a great example of this on Youtube - the channel is primarily about Welsh History, but often ends up as an academic exercise of starting with a reference on Youtube, and following through sources, often back to some Victorian scholar who mistranslated or misspelt something (or sometimes just plain made things up), which was then copied by someone else and so on - essentially a game of academic Chinese whispers.
elthran··on FDA, Industry Actions End Sales of PFAS Used in Food Packaging
now you just hire them to seize unreleased trading cards

https://www.dicebreaker.com/categories/trading-card-game/new...

elthran··on AES-GCM and breaking it on nonce reuse
It's also the language/dialect where you can basically used any phrase ending in -ed to mean "drunk". The classics being pissed, plastered, wankered. But if someone came up to me and said "I got (wardrobed|hadron-collidered) last night" I'd know exactly what they meant
elthran··on Jury finds Boeing stole technology from electric airplane startup Zunum
As someone that always makes guacamole immediately before eating it - what do you say changes with the flavour profile by letting it sit?
elthran··on McDonald's Loses 'Big Mac' Trademark in European Union
> While the Big Mac doesn't use chicken

At least in the UK, they've sold a "Chicken Big Mac" as a special menu item twice now

elthran··on The QR Backlash Has Won. Restaurants Are Ditching Them for Good.
And then you get the ones that don't have one at all, or they have a website but refuse to put a menu on it
elthran··on New 'Lord of the Rings' Films for Warner Bros., Targeting 2026 Debut
It's present day WB - I'm fully expecting a worse cash grab than the third hobbit film. Maybe we'll be lucky and they'll decide to cancel it for the tax write off.
elthran··on MTA banned from using facial recognition to enforce fare evasion
Londoner here - with our fare evasion stats at this link

https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/transparency/freedom-of-informa...

None of the articles I've seen ever seen to address why NYC has such a high rate of fare evasion. Is it just an ingrained "cultural" thing now? You could definitely jump over the TfL barriers if you wanted to, but no one does

elthran··on Why you can't get a restaurant reservation
Unfortunately you missed this bit

>Frey launched Appointment Trader, an online marketplace for people to buy and sell reservations—everything from private shopping experiences (the Hermès store in Paris), doctors’ appointments (a hot commodity in Miami and Beverly Hills)

elthran··on How Matzo Is Made
Non-Jewish and British. Personally I really enjoy just slathering it in good butter as a snack - I'd often end up eating a box at a time this way as a growing, ravenous teenager. Not massively healthy, but definitely satiating.

Rakusens is the only brand that's easily available in most supermarkets (but I'm sure if I went to a more Jewish area than where I live they'd have a bigger variety.

elthran··on I'm always rejected at airport e-gates– so the Office suggested changing my name
Interesting - I did try to find more information about how these work, since I apparently did not understand how they function - but everything I could find mentions "facial recognition algorithm" as the mechanism for determining a person-passport match.

Examples - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPassport_gates

https://intranet.birmingham.ac.uk/student/international/news...

elthran··on I'm always rejected at airport e-gates– so the Office suggested changing my name
As someone that came through London Heathrow this morning - most of the time it's because half of the gates are switched off, seemingly for no reason as far as I can tell. Combine that with the fact that US, EU and UK passports can all use these in the UK, I'm sure if i went to the "other countries" line I'd probably get through faster
elthran··on Yen sinks to 34-year low
Definitely - just did this. Last trip was in 2019, when I got 110 Yen for my GBP. This trip, all the Yen denominated prices were essentially the same, but I got 180 Yen/GBP - so everything was nearly 50% cheaper, resulting in a much more luxurious (and enjoyable) trip
elthran··on The Greatest Meme Template
> I'm too out of touch to analyze that further

You're not out of touch, it's the kids that are wrong!

elthran··on New 13- and 15‑inch MacBook Air with M3 chip
Apple Cynic/Windows user here with a genuine question - why is this interesting? I'm currently looking at my wife's old corporate-issued windows laptop, which is running 2 external monitors as well as it's own display - am I missing something here, or is this just a case of Apple being held to different standards to other manufacturers in terms of feature parity?
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