Hacker News Reader

tobylaneon Tiny village votes for 'independence' from UK amid asylum seeker row

> The Domesday Book records that by 1086 Judith, Countess of Huntingdon, a niece of William I of England held the manor [of Piddington].

It's been going on for some time now.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piddington%2C_Oxfordshire

tobylaneon YC created Flock 10 years ago

https://whoistheownerof.com/who-owns-flock-safety-complete-o...

Which year did they take part in HN?

tobylaneon Felony charges for citizen deleting phone data at US Border

Also not a lawyer, but some of that applies to anyone within 100 miles of a border, a coastline.

This isn't the case, but if that rule also applied to airports, then I wonder what portion of the population is safe.

tobylaneon US vs. UK Baby Names 2025: The Biggest Top Differences Visualized

> The US list also favors a newer wave of ancient biblical names that only gained real traction in recent decades, giving them a more modern feel despite their centuries of history. Levi, Asher, Ezra, Josiah, Ezekiel, Silas, Adriel and Micah all rank in the American top 100 for boys. Some of these revivals are shared favorites, including Noah, Elijah, Isaac, Caleb and Ezra, and Delilah and Eden for girls.

From the article, plus the two UK biblical names Jude and Reuben. For the UK, I think most of these are second-order, if that is the right way to describe appreciating a name without using it for the same reason as the parents being copied.

tobylaneon US vs. UK Baby Names 2025: The Biggest Top Differences Visualized

I'd like to know whether names are popular because of their theme, eg biblical, or a famous namesake. Parents aren't asked, so there's no real data.

tobylaneon David Hockney, Who Restored the Human Form to Art, Dies at 88

https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/whats-on/david-hockney-a...

Currently on in the Serpentine Gallery in Hyde Park until the 23rd August.

I recently read his book Secret Knowledge on how many of the Old Masters may have used optics, and it's affected my thoughts every day I've looked at old paintings since then.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockney%E2%80%93Falco_thesis https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Secret_Knowledge.html...

tobylaneon Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent

Those two (and more) exist in chrome://flags in Chrome 147. I'm disabling them now, with the expectation that will prevent the new default.

One option I'm leaving as default is "Use LiteRT-LM runtime for on-device model service inference." Any comment on that?

tobylaneon We need a federation of forges

As a project member, I want users to already be logged in to the bug tracker. The lack of friction, likely from being the network effect winner, is key. I know fossil has this, but people don't have their private keys in fossil, they (I) don't even have fossil installed.

tobylaneon John Bradley, author of xv, has died

https://web.archive.org/web/19970211041004/http://www.tummy.... 1997 https://web.archive.org/web/20030407080813/http://www.tummy.... 2003, a consultancy who still lists their software https://web.archive.org/web/20211130023259/https://www.tummy... 2021 company closed

tobylaneon The Xkcd thing, now interactive

I'd like a medal for clearing the screen of all debris. What's that you say, some of it is still useful? oh

tobylaneon Information Is Beautiful

I was given that book as a teenager, and only read it yesterday. It was an interesting look at an unintentional frozen point in history.

tobylaneon Tube trains could navigate the Underground using the rules of Quantum Physics

The lines with platform edge doors (Elizabeth, half of Jubilee) do need to be in the right place with 10-20cm accuracy.

tobylaneon Four strange places to see London's Roman Wall

In a locked room off that car park is a bit more of that fortification. https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/visiting-roman-ruins-hi...

tobylaneon Four strange places to see London's Roman Wall

I went on that Open House tour, and they said the window view is a secret until opening day. They've told contractors not to take personal photos.

For context, this line is Thameslink, just south of Farringdon, on the east (heading south) side.

tobylaneon You already have a Git server

If I clone my fork, I always add the upstream remote straight away. Origin and Upstream could each be github, ambiguous.

tobylaneon French ex-president Sarkozy begins jail sentence

They offered a rather indifferent Rausan-Segla.

tobylaneon Abu Dhabi royal family to take stake in TikTok US

In reading the quote from Vance I was starting to think that American's data is only safe in the hands of European companies.

The quantity of propaganda is going up with the new owners, and this royal family will likely have minimal impact or input.

tobylaneon UK Electricity Generation Map

It's an input to the grid. They will also be an output.

tobylaneon UK Electricity Generation Map

I see 16% now, and my own panels have jumped up to 400w since your comment, with a peak of 1500 earlier today. https://imgur.com/a/HOX6YJu

While domestic installations are counted, they aren't in OP's link. https://www.projectsolaruk.com/blog/latest-uk-solar-photovol...

tobylaneon UK Electricity Generation Map

It depends on what you're thinking of. No, the solar panels on my roof have no battery on the property. The wind turbines will have inertia, but no other store. I doubt the majority of the solar panel farms have batteries.

tobylaneon When the sun will literally set on what's left of the British Empire

The other realms the British King has are the Crown dependencies, eg Isle of Man. Australia is the odd one out in naming the UK as one of the other realms. Your head canon was true, before the independence of the Commonwealth countries.

tobylaneon I Don't Like "AI"

> Those users are happy

AI affects non-users in a substantially different way to phones or social media. When I phone someone, it doesn't matter if it's a landline or mobile phone (though, in the UK we can tell by the leading digit). But when I read someone's pull request or press release, it does matter whether it's vibe coded, or made by the person. Looking at the person using the tool does not show the whole picture. You're welcome to have different values, but don't hide from me what I apply my values to.

tobylaneon Electricity prices are climbing more than twice as fast as inflation

A time and location break down of that first price. https://www.octopriceuk.app/tracker

tobylaneon The dead need right to delete their data so they can't be AI-ified, lawyer says

I would like to pass on my GDPR rights over my data in my will. It already can be a struggle for others to use rights of others they legally hold, eg by legal documents like a death certificate. The law (EU+UK at least) is adaptable and extendable, but the data holders aren't.

tobylaneon Show HN: Refine – A Local Alternative to Grammarly

> contemporary Oxford English

If you chose Oxford because of the Oxford English Dictionary, note that it's not regular en-gb, it's en-gb-oxendict. "the OED often favo[u]rs "-ize" (and its derivatives) over "-ise" for words derived from Greek roots, and may also include historical or less common usages."

tobylaneon The hunt for Marie Curie's radioactive fingerprints in Paris

My dad had childhood shoe shopping helped by xrays on the high street.

tobylaneon Wendelstein 7-X sets new fusion record

How isolated are the paths it could have taken? One major outdated choice ITER took is cold magnets, rather than "warm". Could they have switched this point in an iterative project?

tobylaneon Is TfL losing the battle against heat on the Victoria line?

There is at least one on this line (north of Kings Cross) and one on the Northern line (north of Moorgate). It's for district heating or electricity generation.

tobylaneon Why old games never die, but new ones do

My theory is that we are asking the wrong people. We love old games because we played them when we were young. We should be asking similarly young people what games they don't want to die. One possible answer is that they have so much choice that they find another and don't have the loyalty from scarcity we did.

Back in the day, if you liked Theme Hospital and wanted more, the nearest game was Theme Park (now we have CorsixTH and OpenRCT2). These days, by way of so many more games, something close enough can be recommended, found, pirated.