Hacker News: digikazi

New comment by digikazi in "MacBook Neo"

digikazi — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 16:56:07 +0000

My last tablet was a Nexus 7, so I wouldn’t know ;)

But on a more serious note yes, I agree with you. Tablets - absolutely great for the use cases you mentioned, for everything else I want a proper keyboard, etc.

New comment by digikazi in "MacBook Neo"

digikazi — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 14:54:39 +0000

Maybe. When a decent Chromebook is £697 (https://www.johnlewis.com/lenovo-chromebook-14m9610-laptop-m...) it doesn't make economic sense to get one.

New comment by digikazi in "MacBook Neo"

digikazi — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 14:35:09 +0000

I wonder if Apple is positioning these to counter Google's Chromebooks? The pricing makes sense, especially as lately I've seen some pretty expensive Chrome devices: £500 - £700... which is not that far off from base Macbook Air, but without the quirky limitations.

As an aside, I have been a firm ChromeOS user since 2013; since my computing life at work is pretty complicated, so I wanted to keep it really simple at home. For the most part, this setup worked just fine.

However, lately... I've found the Pixel line to be very underwhelming and expensive - add to that the ever increasing cost of Chromebooks... What can I say? Moving over to the Great Walled Garden of Apple makes sense. I'll probably buy one of these.

New comment by digikazi in "What podcasts are you listening to?"

digikazi — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 13:17:13 +0000

Currently working my way through Melvyn Bragg's back catalogue of In Our Time. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qykl/episodes/player

Also from the BBC, the 13 Minutes series (?): https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/w13xttx2

...and The Fall of Civilisations: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/fall-of-civilizations-...

...ocasionally a smattering of Dan Carlin's Hardcore History.

Really curious to see what other people are listening to.

I'm trying to be a bit more "intentional" with my podcasts, especially as its easy to amass a huge list of stuff and then not listen to 95% of them.

Edit: grammar

New comment by digikazi in "A novelist who took on the Italian mafia and lived"

digikazi — Sun, 01 Feb 2026 21:11:35 +0000

I have no idea why you’re being downvoted, since what you say is objectively true.

New comment by digikazi in "uBlock Origin Lite now available for Safari"

digikazi — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 17:40:32 +0000

Bizarrely when I do that it tells me “uBO Lite is not supported by this version of Safari”.

On an iPhone 13 with the latest version of iOS.

I’m very new to the Apple ecosystem so it could well be that it’s meant to work on a laptop/desktop rather than the mobile version.

I could of course be wrong: does anybody know better? Or is it a case of me being frazzled after work?

EDIT: some users have suggested upgrading to iOS 18.6 solves this problem. Doing it as we speak!

New comment by digikazi in "Creating a static website for all my bookmarks"

digikazi — Mon, 12 May 2025 13:28:39 +0000

That's genuinely awesome! I've been wanting to do something like this for a long time!

I don't have a background in coding, rather I'm just a humble engineering tech but this sounds like something I want to learn and sink my teeth into.

I have a tremendous amount of links - probably going back to the late 2000's and I've always relied on services like Pinboard, Raindrop and Delicious (!).

Once again thank you for the inspiration and the metaphorical kick up the backside!

New comment by digikazi in "Man who lost $800M Bitcoin in landfill wants to buy the garbage dump"

digikazi — Mon, 17 Feb 2025 13:31:15 +0000

This was talked about on here just last week: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42999044

New comment by digikazi in "All Kindles can now be jailbroken"

digikazi — Mon, 17 Feb 2025 12:21:44 +0000

Sadly Libgen seems to have been down for the past couple of months, there is some discussion whether it will ever come back or not.

New comment by digikazi in "Man who lost Bitcoin fortune in Welsh tip explores purchase of entire landfill"

digikazi — Mon, 10 Feb 2025 12:33:31 +0000

That exactly what I was going to say: what makes him think that a HDD bought in 2013 and buried in a landfill site since then will work when its plugged in?

Personally I have my doubts - as per Nursie: It's gone mate.

New comment by digikazi in "Google Fit APIs get shut down in 2025, might break fitness devices"

digikazi — Tue, 07 May 2024 11:48:30 +0000

In my case, out of nostalgia for the Google of old. I paid for a Pixel phone and was very unimpressed with the experience, so much so that after a lifetime on Android I went and bought a brand new iDevice. Oddly enough I found Google Fit to be a nice app to use, fairly straightforward and without too much crud. Oh well, off to the Goog Graveyard it goes!

New comment by digikazi in "Three chips in and Google Tensor is on life support"

digikazi — Thu, 23 Nov 2023 16:16:38 +0000

That was my experience as well. Generally speaking the Pixel 7a is a competent phone with one (big) flaw. The battery life is truly terrible, and the charging speeds are glacial. I was honestly expecting more, especially as its advertised as Google's best. The forums are full of people complaining about it and the responses are almost the same: Turn off 5G!! Turn off wifi scanning! Turn off bluetooth scanning too! Dial down the screen refresh rate!

Returned the phone and got an iPhone 13 instead; and as painful as it was switching to iOS after 13 years of Android, I don't regret my decision. The iDevice comes with its own niggles, but at least I don't have to worry about battery life (yet). Maybe google will figure it out by the time the Pixel 8a comes out.

New comment by digikazi in "Archive of medieval books and manuscripts discovered in Romanian church"

digikazi — Thu, 25 May 2023 15:20:21 +0000

I do as well, which is why when I went to Athens for two weeks last September, I very much looked forward to lots of smoky old orthodox churches. Alas, it wasn't to be: the vast majority of churches I saw looked brand new and as if they had been designed by MacDonald's. Clearly the church has money - and the imagination/vision of petty shopkeepers.

New comment by digikazi in "Is Cheese Good for You?"

digikazi — Thu, 20 Oct 2022 17:59:35 +0000

That's very true. Luckily I am not, and so I can enjoy cheese in all its forms.

As to whether it's "good for you" or not... I suspect moderation is the key word here.

New comment by digikazi in "Nowhere to hide: How a nuclear war would kill you–and almost everyone else"

digikazi — Thu, 20 Oct 2022 17:46:31 +0000

NATO was quite happy to bomb Serbia and Libya, to name but two.

New comment by digikazi in "Nowhere to hide: How a nuclear war would kill you–and almost everyone else"

digikazi — Thu, 20 Oct 2022 17:42:09 +0000

As somebody who has lived in that neck of the woods, I would want nuclear weapons and war in general to stay very, very far from my shores.

Equally I would want the current combatants to take a step back and have a grown up discussion about NATO expansion, security guarantees, ending the bloodshed - you know the boring nitty gritty stuff. I'm not dumb enough to cheer on a nuclear strike, regardless of who launched it.

New comment by digikazi in "Is Cheese Good for You?"

digikazi — Thu, 20 Oct 2022 17:30:57 +0000

Yes.

New comment by digikazi in "Socialist Romania Computer Chips"

digikazi — Fri, 30 Sep 2022 16:40:57 +0000

...having a bath with water warmed on the stove in huge pans. Equally good memories :)

New comment by digikazi in "Socialist Romania Computer Chips"

digikazi — Fri, 30 Sep 2022 09:28:29 +0000

The hot water was "scheduled" - usually twice a day. I don't remember that well as I was quite young at the time, but I think I was meant to be on for a couple of hours in the morning and another couple of hours in the evening. In reality however, the hot water was never more than lukewarm at best and the schedule itself was very flexible: I remember whole weeks without hot water.

New comment by digikazi in "Why I'm in the Army Reserve – an explainer for my friends in tech"

digikazi — Mon, 04 Apr 2022 16:00:27 +0000

Technically you don't need a degree to be an officer in the UK: you only need A Levels (finish high school) to go to Sandhurst and begin officer training. In reality however something like 98% of Sandhurst applicants are university graduates. I don't know the exact percentage of entrants who don't have a degree though, so don't quote me. It has been a while.

P.s. as a famous example, I believe Prince Harry went to Sandhurst without going to university first.