Hacker News: parkersweb

New comment by parkersweb in "Updates to GitHub Copilot interaction data usage policy"

parkersweb — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 23:20:22 +0000

Gah - you’re right - but given that I don’t use personal copilot - but I do manage an organisation that gives copilot to some of our developers AND I was sent an email this evening making no mention at all of business copilot being excluded it could definitely have been communicated better…

New comment by parkersweb in "Updates to GitHub Copilot interaction data usage policy"

parkersweb — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 20:55:44 +0000

Yes - not impressed at all that this is opt-in default for business users. We have a policy in place with clients that code we write for them won’t be used in AI training - so expecting us to opt out isn’t an acceptable approach for a business relationship where the expectation is security and privacy.

New comment by parkersweb in "Can I hear a difference between MP3s and uncompressed audio?"

parkersweb — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 20:49:49 +0000

I’ve done a bunch of testing over the years including a similar test of ‘can people hear mp3 compression’ as well as comparison of mp3 variable bit rate qualities.

In practice, on average playback equipment (by which I mean decent hifi) in an average listening environment most people can’t tell the difference.

But… I’ve also done blind testing with a top mastering engineer on studio speakers and he was able to identifying 48 vs 192 reliably.

Mastering quality was ruined by the battle for perceived loudness. So masters with decent degrees of dynamic range is definitely helpful.

New comment by parkersweb in "John Baskerville's type punches released digitally"

parkersweb — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 19:14:22 +0000

Cambridge University library have digitised hundreds of rare steel punches cut for John Baskerville in the 18th century and made them freely available online

John Baskerville's type punches released digitally

parkersweb — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 19:14:22 +0000

Article URL: https://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/stories/baskerville-digital-collection

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47222644

Points: 2

# Comments: 1

John Baskerville's type punches released digitally

parkersweb — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 17:45:28 +0000

Cambridge University library have digitised hundreds of rare steel punches cut for John Baskerville in the 18th century and made them freely available online

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47221349

Points: 2

# Comments: 1

New comment by parkersweb in "Show HN: Geo Racers – Race from London to Tokyo on a single bus pass"

parkersweb — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 12:51:42 +0000

Love this! One piece of UI feedback - on mobile particularly I often found it very difficult to access the departure timetable once I'd arrived at a station. I walked to Bercy Seine in Paris (so I could try and find a bus out) - but even when I had arrived I couldn't trigger the departure timetable....

New comment by parkersweb in "Show HN: Geo Racers – Race from London to Tokyo on a single bus pass"

parkersweb — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 12:49:27 +0000

One of the best constraints of the TV show is the limited budget (along with the lack of mobile phone). It's frequently the case that teams panic spend in order stay ahead, but are hurt by those decisions later in the race.

Over the series people have also developed strategies within those constraints - so it's quite frequent to see teams earning money in the penultimate leg and taking the time hit in order to splash out in the final leg.

It's a great show if you're able to get hold of it.

New comment by parkersweb in "Ask HN: What are you working on? (February 2026)"

parkersweb — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 16:16:26 +0000

I like that idea in concept - I’ve often felt similarly about budgeting apps. Many of them feel targeted either at low income / high debt people (who need strict control to manage their way out), or at people who have a strong interest in optimising their finances.

I’m trying to find a middle ground though I think. I’m not strongly acquisitive - but want to be sensible about my finances. There needs to be a purpose to tracking and allocating - so I’d want intelligent prompting (e.g “you could easily move £x to a higher rate account each month and maintain a balance that will meet your outgoings”), as well as answering my own queries. I’ve seen that promise in other products - but it’s nearly always in a free product that uses those prompts to sell you financial products. I’d personally much rather pay for impartiality.

New comment by parkersweb in "GB Renewables Map"

parkersweb — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 15:47:01 +0000

This has just had a major update to include other renewables (eg hydro, solar) as well as non-renewable energy sources (gas).

It’s also added grid boundaries and cabling recently - and I think there’s also wind roses planned?

My one UI wish - the energy sources filters are currently displayed as options on the map - rather than controls for the entire UI - which meant I missed them entirely at first. Would be great if they could be given more prominence.

New comment by parkersweb in "Adobe Animate will be discontinued"

parkersweb — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 10:31:44 +0000

I suspect this may be driven by subscription consequences. In the UK consumer rights mean that you're able to cancel a subscription commitment if the offering is materially changed. I used this in the past when Adobe withdrew a product to cancel an annual license I no longer needed mid-term.

Making a zombie product probably has a lower impact on their revenues.

New comment by parkersweb in "Sinclair C5"

parkersweb — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 17:46:48 +0000

Last year they celebrated the 40th anniversary with a group ride through Cambridge city centre:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c98jr0145rgo

New comment by parkersweb in "Show HN: Books mentioned on Hacker News in 2025"

parkersweb — Mon, 22 Dec 2025 14:48:36 +0000

Amazon lists it as book 3 of 3 in a series - do you need to have read the first two?

New comment by parkersweb in "Google releases its new Google Sans Flex font as open source"

parkersweb — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 20:37:42 +0000

Many fonts have a disambiguation option. Inter by default doesn't pass the I test - but it can be enabled.

Google Flex Sans supports font-feature-settings: "zero" - but doesn't seem to support lower-case l, upper-case I disambiguation.

New comment by parkersweb in "The "Mad Men" in 4K on HBO Max Debacle"

parkersweb — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 09:52:32 +0000

I also spent quite a bit of time with some quite well known mastering engineers in a former career - many of them talked about the pressure to produce "loud" masters for CD, but how they were given much more creative freedom for vinyl releases.

Hearing the two masters side by side on some incredible speakers really gave me an appreciation for how different 'versions' of an album can transform the experience of the music.

New comment by parkersweb in "Amazon launches Trainium3"

parkersweb — Wed, 03 Dec 2025 13:30:57 +0000

When they're in short supply can we name them Unobtranium?

New comment by parkersweb in "The "Mad Men" in 4K on HBO Max Debacle"

parkersweb — Wed, 03 Dec 2025 13:28:51 +0000

Through work I once got into conversation with the guy who did the re-mastering into 96kHz of the ABBA back catalogue. Up until that point CD re-releases of their material was apparently all converted from the cassette masters where they'd massively exaggerated the HF to compensate for the fact that cassette had a notoriously terrible HF response...

New comment by parkersweb in "Pocketbase – open-source realtime back end in 1 file"

parkersweb — Fri, 28 Nov 2025 08:18:20 +0000

I’ve been using on a personal side project - but found that LLMs seem to be permanently confused over how to interact with pocketbase - to the point where I’ve even tried creating a Claude Skill to try and reduce the confusion.

Wondering if anyone else has had a similar experience?

New comment by parkersweb in "What you can get for the price of a Netflix subscription"

parkersweb — Tue, 25 Nov 2025 09:06:54 +0000

On the music side, the current trend for vinyl has been a really great thing for my teenage kids. My eldest (who according to Spotify listens to about 130k mins of music a year) has really discovered an appreciation for the arc of an album when he has to spend the time loading up a disc.

New comment by parkersweb in "Show HN: I scraped 3B Goodreads reviews to train a better recommendation model"

parkersweb — Thu, 06 Nov 2025 22:23:25 +0000

I sadly didn’t share that experience - I fed it my goodreads most recent - but it largely picked up on 2 or 3 series I’ve been slowly working my way through so that most of the recommendation list was ALL the other books in the series (and the spin-off series) so I didn’t really get anything useful…