Hacker News: bpye

New comment by bpye in "FFmpeg 9.1's new AAC encoder"

bpye — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 19:56:33 +0000

Pipewire will quite happily pipe through audio without resampling if it is the only source on a system. You can see this by running pw-top and using speaker-test with various sample rates.

New comment by bpye in "The end of the AArch64 desktop experiment"

bpye — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 10:00:38 +0000

When I looked at this before I found https://github.com/kuruczgy/x1e-nixos-config - reasonable though not 100% support.

I believe Ubuntu also has semi official X1 elite support, no idea if they're working on the latest generation.

New comment by bpye in "The end of my AArch64 desktop experiment"

bpye — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 09:56:21 +0000

ACPI does exist for Aarch64, but is only really used for Windows client devices, and server hardware - though I think the Ampere hardware in the article would use ACPI not DT.

If you want to run Linux on one of the modern Qualcomm Windows laptops, you still generally end up needing to use device tree.

New comment by bpye in "Qwen 3.6 27B is the sweet spot for local development"

bpye — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 06:08:31 +0000

> The maths there is pretty undeniable, but it is not where I'd make the split. Having a machine that can run some modest local LLMs, like the Gemma 4 12B, is really worth it.

Seems like a GPU with 12GB+ VRAM is going to be a much more affordable way to achieve that? Even a B580 should get reasonable perf there.

New comment by bpye in "Historical memory prices 1960-2026"

bpye — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 23:21:55 +0000

Will they..? It seems equally (or perhaps more) likely that we'll increasingly see vibe coded browser or Electron based applications as the bar is now lower to build such a thing.

New comment by bpye in "Half-Life 2 in a Browser"

bpye — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 10:28:09 +0000

That's just the SDK - which does include the game code but not the engine. Xash3D is the reverse engineered engine alluded to above.

New comment by bpye in "AMD will reinstate memory encryption on Ryzen 9000 CPUs via BIOS update in July"

bpye — Sun, 21 Jun 2026 01:07:31 +0000

> and also recently broke and fixed setting manual speed on DDR5 memory with ECC enabled (basically any setting higher or lower than 5200mhz or something was ignored).

Do you know when this was fixed? I recently updated my B650D4U and ended up stuck at 5200MHz instead of 5600MHz. Asrock Rack don't seem to take every update, but I have had luck getting beta releases in the past when I've asked about specific versions.

New comment by bpye in "The AirPods Effect"

bpye — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 22:18:40 +0000

My wired Etymotics work 100% of the time without issue.

It still feels (to me) that in many cases Bluetooth earbuds are solving an issue that doesn't exist.

New comment by bpye in "Swiss voters reject proposal to cap population at ten million"

bpye — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 04:25:51 +0000

The EU referendum in the UK was non binding, did not force the use of Article 50, and did not mention leaving the single market or customs union.

New comment by bpye in "New Referendum Would Flip Brexit Result 10 Years On, Poll Finds"

bpye — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 17:36:59 +0000

If they do, Reform would almost certainly form government on a minority of the vote. Brexit was a yes/no question.

New comment by bpye in "New Referendum Would Flip Brexit Result 10 Years On, Poll Finds"

bpye — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 17:35:49 +0000

> Which is pretty much aligned with what more level-headed people predicted would happen, if my memory is correct.

Of course this was painted as "project fear", and Michael Gove famously said that people had had enough of experts.

New comment by bpye in "News about Raspberry Pi 6 and Microcontroller Development"

bpye — Fri, 29 May 2026 08:15:32 +0000

The Steam Deck price in Canada went up by something like 50% yesterday also - it's now over $1100 for the 512GB OLED, up from just under $700.

New comment by bpye in "What makes a good smartphone camera?"

bpye — Wed, 06 May 2026 22:50:24 +0000

> The best camera is the one you have with you.

This is why I ended up picking up an (admittedly quite expensive) Ricoh GR IV. It's tiny enough to take with me everywhere, has a modern APS-C sensor and great IBIS.

New comment by bpye in "Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent"

bpye — Tue, 05 May 2026 14:13:43 +0000

Nothing says you have to use the same browser at work and outside of work? I use Edge for work, Firefox everywhere else.

New comment by bpye in "Why does it take so long to release black fan versions?"

bpye — Sat, 02 May 2026 08:45:25 +0000

Alternative - return to tradition with beige - https://www.silverstonetek.com/en/product/info/computer-chas...

New comment by bpye in "Granite 4.1: IBM's 8B Model Matching 32B MoE"

bpye — Fri, 01 May 2026 06:02:25 +0000

Out of interest, what are you seeing for token generation - especially as the context fills?

New comment by bpye in "AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it"

bpye — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 20:28:41 +0000

At least today, it isn't practical for most people to run these models locally- I think adding a dependency on a cloud service is different enough to some local (possibly open source) tool like an IDE.

New comment by bpye in "Google plans to invest up to $40B in Anthropic"

bpye — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 21:53:30 +0000

> Putting compute in space is expensive but so is building a data center in the US.

You know what's also really hard in a vacuum? Dissipating heat.

New comment by bpye in "MNT Reform is an open hardware laptop, designed and assembled in Germany"

bpye — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 17:51:41 +0000

I believe the Mali graphics also require a blob if you want 3D acceleration.

New comment by bpye in "NASA Shuts Off Instrument on Voyager 1 to Keep Spacecraft Operating"

bpye — Sun, 19 Apr 2026 04:24:38 +0000

There are definitely projects where getting a full test pass can take a day or two. I worked on one where we only got a full run each weekend, and if someone broke the tests? Nobody gets their results...