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darrenf

Re:Digital Audio on the ZX Spectrum's 1-Bit Beeper on Tuesday September 29, 2026 @01:04PM (#49896544)
The 128k version of Nodes of Yesod had some speech, albeit I think it was just the name of the game. My older brother told me a kid in his class got paid big bucks - like, I dunno, £50 or something? - for coding it. Almost certainly bollocks.

For high quality speech, you could get the Currah μSpeech! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currah#Currah_%CE%BCSpeech_for...

I swear there was one symbol it pronounced "flea bleep".

Re:DeepSeek Harness on Friday August 14, 2026 @05:07AM (#49296292)
But... no-one mentioned surprise except you, did they? Something being uncommon doesn't connote being surprising, at least not always.

It's uncommon for me to have takeaway pizza, but I don't think anyone I know would be surprised when I do.

Pretty sure the jiao (角) (1/10th of a yuan) is still in use?
Re:Only 2.6% of the most visited websites have fully valid HTML on Wednesday August 12, 2026 @11:43AM (#49274228)
AIUI plenty of tags don't need to be closed. `<input>`, `<hr>`, `<img>` are the first three off the top of my head. Probably in XHTML you would've self-closed them.
Then I guess we’ve been in the dystopia for almost a century now. When I was a kid in the 70s and 80s we leased our TV and VCR. It was hugely common in the UK, the company was on many high streets and literally called Radio Rentals, founded 1930: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Rentals

> Radio Rentals was the largest television rental group in the UK and claimed that at its peak it had more than two million customers, more than 500 shops, 3,600 technicians, 2,700 skilled installers and a large ancillary staff. It had sales and service locations across the UK; the Radio Rentals logo being a common sight on many High Streets.

Re:I wrote an bash enumerator because I was sick of xargs on Tuesday July 21, 2026 @02:07AM (#48988638)
> parallel: Warning: Finding the maximal command line length. This may take up to 1 minute.

> So I wait a few seconds [snip]

This warning is only ever printed if running in Cygwin, not Linux or macOS or elsewhere. Cygwin is notoriously slow.

    # This is slow on Cygwin, so give Cygwin users a warning
    if($^O eq "cygwin" or $^O eq "msys") {
    ::warning("Finding the maximal command line length. ".
          "This may take up to 1 minute.")
    }
Also note that it only figures this out first time, after which it’s cached on disk.
Re:Jellyfish Undersea Roundabout on Sunday July 12, 2026 @03:09PM (#48883662)
Fair. I was solo :) got plenty of hiking done too and can’t wait to go back
Re:Jellyfish Undersea Roundabout on Sunday July 12, 2026 @09:35AM (#48881123)
Or do as I did and just use the buses. Highly reliable IME.
Re:Jellyfish Undersea Roundabout on Sunday July 12, 2026 @09:33AM (#48881107)
In fairness, it’s literally called the jellyfish roundabout on the local bus timetables (as I know from having visited and caught the 450)

https://www.ssl.fo/en/timetable/bus/450-torshavn-eysturoy-je...

DuckDuckGo.
Re:Why is this site named Antipope? on Saturday May 16, 2026 @03:46PM (#48163160)
Disappointed it isn’t to do with Robert Rankin. Oh well.
I’d be surprised, given how outspoken Sawe is about doping. He invited the AIU to test him before Berlin and Adidas also paid.

> Determined to prove he is competing clean, Adidas provided $50,000 (£36,900) to the Athletics Integrity Unit, the sport's anti-doping body, to frequently test Sawe over a 12-month period.

> That began with a reported 25 out-of-competition tests in the lead-up to Berlin in September, continuing at a similar rate as he prepared for London.

> Sawe said on Monday: "It's very important to me because it gets out the doubt in my career of athletics and yesterday's performance.

> "It shows Sabastian Sawe is clean. It shows running clean is good, and we can run clean and we can run faster.

Re:At long last, InfoWars is ours on Monday April 20, 2026 @02:12PM (#47838346)
Knowledge Fight podcast already took the “synonym name” route. https://knowledgefight.com/
Re:Qwen3.6-35B-A3B: Agentic Coding Power, Now Open to All on Thursday April 16, 2026 @11:06AM (#47794263)
> > The performance/intelligence is said to be about the same as the geometric mean of the total and active parameter counts. So, this model should be equivalent to a dense model with about 10.25 billion parameters.

> Sorry, how did you calculate the 10.25B?

The geometric mean of two numbers is the square root of their product. Square root of 105 (35*3) is ~10.25.

In Firebase world API keys are for identification, not authorisation.

https://firebase.google.com/docs/projects/api-keys

Public by design: API keys for Firebase services only identify your Firebase project and app to those services. Authorization is handled through Google Cloud IAM permissions, Firebase Security Rules, and Firebase App Check.

Re:How the world’s first electric grid was built on Wednesday March 25, 2026 @06:47AM (#47515619)
Godalming, UK (where I live) stakes a claim for having the world's first public electricity supply in 1881. I walk past the commemorative plaque on almost a daily basis. https://www.godalmingmuseum.co.uk/articles/electricity
Ah. I’ve always used the subclass 651 eVisitor, without realising it was only for some European countries (or that it was different to the ETA).
That link clearly says you don't have to use an app.

If you are unable to use the app, you can apply online through ImmiAccount for another visa that suits your needs.

This triggered me because I've been to Australia tens of times (albeit not since 2023) and have always used my Immi account. I just logged in to check and sure enough I can still lodge an application there, no app required. Ironically I would prefer an app and will use it for my next visits because I've always found the Immi site cumbersome. But the site is still there.

Re:Rust at Scale: An Added Layer of Security for WhatsApp on Wednesday January 28, 2026 @03:33PM (#46801118)
There is legislation in the EU, and BirdyChat announced compatibility.

https://www.birdy.chat/blog/first-to-interoperate-with-whats...

The BBC have been covering it in the UK. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/topics/cjnwl8q4ggwt
People have been protesting in the UK.

Fourteen arrested after protest at Iranian embassy: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5y3g8glgxvo

Protester climbs on to balcony of Iranian embassy in London: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy09yvd57x2o

Silent protestors gather in solidarity with Iran: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy4g1me23x7o

Re:Apple Creator Studio on Tuesday January 13, 2026 @10:54AM (#46602632)
> What data centers? Does Apple even have data centers?

Apple absolutely has data centres. Where do you think Apple TV, Apple Music, iCloud, Maps, etc compute happens?

Here's a press release straight from the horse's mouth about one in Denmark, in late 2020: https://www.apple.com/uk/newsroom/2020/09/apple-expands-rene...

> Can people purchase compute on Apple's data centers?

Not to my knowledge, but that's not saying much.

Re:Network of Scottish X accounts go dark amid Iran blackout on Tuesday January 13, 2026 @07:43AM (#46600235)
Manx is the demonym for people from the Isle of Man. It's odd to see it written "Isle of Manx" in a list of other demonyms, but the word Manx itself is far from modern. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manx_people
I’m advocating not advertising.

I capitalise it out of muscle memory. That’s all. FWIW Wikipedia capitalises it as well.

I called it out with a link because I expect many folk to be unfamiliar with it, but the nature of parkrun itself — rather than simply going for a 5k[m] run — is intrinsic to the point I was trying to make.

5k is perfectly well understood to be a distance, especially in context, in British English and I’m a Brit. My bad I guess for not adding “m” for (some of) the HN readership. [EDIT: actually, I said 5km! Not my fault if parkrun says 5k, but they are a British organisation)

Regardless of that, you were correct that parkrun is indeed a run around a park. I won’t explain any further nor link anywhere lest it be misconstrued as advertising (something that’s proudly free, mind you). Besides which I need to get to and get my running kit on.

I found this to be true, and that it perfectly dovetailed with TFA.

When I was at my absolute depth (so far…) back in 2013, I would see my counsellor at 1130 on a Saturday. I’d be able to recount the darkness of the previous 7 days in stark vivid detail, yet cheerfully and not feeling at all depressed in the moment. The counsellor asked what I did on Saturday morning except the session and my answer was, well I do Parkrun[0] of course. I always do Parkrun. It’s in my calendar, it’s not really negotiable. It might have been the only time I managed to get out of bed all week, but, I mean, how can I possibly skip Parkrun?

I never actually linked the exercise to the boost in my mental health until I had it pointed out to me at that moment. I go for a run and I feel better because of the run. I would spend the whole 5km stewing and ruminating and maybe in tears but half hour after getting home I could function! it’s stuck with me ever since, and I’ve never (yet) been so down again.

Tomorrow will be my 429th Parkrun :)

[0] https://www.parkrun.com/

Long time fileformat.info user. here, just wanted to say thanks -- always found it incredibly useful for this exact purpose.
Re:Show HN: Ez FFmpeg – Video editing in plain English on Saturday December 27, 2025 @04:44PM (#46405556)
I’m trying to understand the “In order of usage popularity” thing — this implies telemetry in CLIs, doesn’t it? Wouldn’t the order of options change/fluctuate over time?

Or if no telemetry but based on local usage, it would promote/reinforce the options you already can recall and do use, hiding the ones you can’t/don’t?

Re:Show HN: Shittp – Volatile Dotfiles over SSH on Sunday December 21, 2025 @10:59AM (#46345706)

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