Hacker News: bencevans

New comment by bencevans in "Backblaze has stopped backing up your data"

bencevans — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 11:03:06 +0000

I found this to be a common theme in web design a while back, and in part led to an experiment developing a newspaper/Pocket-like interface to reading HN. It's not perfect, but is easier on the eyes for reading... https://times.hntrends.net/story/47762864

New comment by bencevans in "UK government launches fuel forecourt price API"

bencevans — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 00:41:06 +0000

This is great news. There's been a pilot study in which each retailer (voluntarily) hosted a JSON file containing their current prices (https://www.gov.uk/guidance/access-fuel-price-data). I noticed recently that a few of them had been removed/stopped working.

Neither the pilot nor the current API appears to include all fuel stations, but at least they provide (hopefully) more reliable updates from the ones that do.

I'd been playing with the pilot study data and set up FuelBelly to aggregate and compare https://fuelbelly.com/explore?lat=51.50740713124398&lng=-0.1.... (doesn't include the API updates, yet...)

A quick play with the API, the information responses (opening times, addresses etc.) doesn't appear to be working, I just get a 500 (HTML not JSON) response. But the price calls are working, and I'm glad this is being pushed forward post-pilot.

New comment by bencevans in "We shouldn't have needed lockfiles"

bencevans — Wed, 06 Aug 2025 16:01:34 +0000

https://times.hntrends.net/story/44813397

GitHub Actions: M1 macOS runner available to open source

bencevans — Tue, 30 Jan 2024 18:12:55 +0000

Article URL: https://github.blog/changelog/2024-01-30-github-actions-introducing-the-new-m1-macos-runner-available-to-open-source/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39193545

Points: 40

# Comments: 7

GitHub adds GPUs for Actions (private beta)

bencevans — Tue, 31 Oct 2023 17:13:05 +0000

Article URL: https://github.blog/changelog/2023-10-31-run-your-ml-workloads-on-github-actions-with-gpu-runners/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38088116

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by bencevans in "ChatGPT and other AI tools could disrupt scientific publishing"

bencevans — Wed, 11 Oct 2023 10:36:03 +0000

I'm quite happy to read something in a paper that ChatGPT or equivalent has written, just as i'm happy to read something that has been written with the assistance of other tools such as Grammarly, LanguageTool, Spell Check etc. I see it as the (human) authors responsibility to ensure that what has been written is factually correct.

GitHub Actions now support Apple Silicon (Beta)

bencevans — Mon, 02 Oct 2023 15:57:52 +0000

Article URL: https://github.blog/changelog/2023-10-02-github-actions-apple-silicon-m1-macos-runners-are-now-available-in-public-beta/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37739831

Points: 41

# Comments: 6

New comment by bencevans in "Updates to the GitHub Feed"

bencevans — Wed, 06 Sep 2023 22:26:20 +0000

I'm not sure i'm unusual in using the GitHub feed to keep an eye on commit activity on watched repos, all of a sudden there's no option to see push activity in the feed. o.O

New comment by bencevans in "Easy SVG sparklines"

bencevans — Mon, 10 Jul 2023 12:37:03 +0000

I've recently used this approach for generating Open Graph images for display when a link to the site is used on Twitter, WhatsApp, Facebook, etc [1]. I was pleasantly surprised at how quickly something could be implemented. The last time I'd done something similar was using Cairo and needing to write more of the scaling dynamics. I don't think I ever got it to adjust to dynamic content very well. This time I put together a prototype in Inkscape, converted it to a template and render it to PNG with Sharp [2].

[1]: https://hntrends.net/api/og?word=twitter [2]: https://github.com/lovell/sharp

New comment by bencevans in "Show HN: HN Trends"

bencevans — Tue, 04 Jul 2023 15:49:36 +0000

It's a static list ordered by the number of mentions of all time. I plan to make this dynamic in the future and allow ordering by total score and filtering by time range. Also, I'd like to add separate pages for each book showing the stats and reviews, and maybe some form of sentiment analysis would be cool.

New comment by bencevans in "OCR at Edge on Cloudflare Constellation"

bencevans — Mon, 03 Jul 2023 12:55:38 +0000

Looking forward to GPU support for workers. Cloudflare announced they were working on it in 2021 [1], but it doesn't seem generally available yet; they still have a signup page for notification [2].

I know other companies have struggled with demand, so maybe they're doing it on an invite basis.

[1]: https://blog.cloudflare.com/workers-ai/ [2]: https://www.cloudflare.com/nvidia-workers/

New comment by bencevans in "Show HN: HN Trends"

bencevans — Mon, 03 Jul 2023 09:29:01 +0000

Cheers! Yes, I already have 'it's' and 'it’s', but that one escaped! Added now.

New comment by bencevans in "Show HN: HN Trends"

bencevans — Sun, 02 Jul 2023 21:50:13 +0000

Thanks for the suggestion, yes a good idea! Aha, yes, I've spotted that with Reddit, and it is actually true as appose to a bug, as there's something like just one post back in 2016, and it mentions, thus, 100% popularity. I'll add some other metrics to the page soon.

New comment by bencevans in "Show HN: HN Trends"

bencevans — Sun, 02 Jul 2023 15:59:17 +0000

Thanks for the heads up! Fixed

New comment by bencevans in "Show HN: HN Trends"

bencevans — Sun, 02 Jul 2023 14:27:41 +0000

Thanks! Same; I've been coming to HN for books to read for years and finally got them in one place. I plan to extend the functionality there in the future :D