Hacker News: puzzlingcaptcha

New comment by puzzlingcaptcha in "StarFighter 16-Inch"

puzzlingcaptcha — Wed, 06 May 2026 18:47:25 +0000

I suppose that depends on how recent is what you consider recent. I'd have hoped with the coreboot upstreaming effort they would keep official releases coming a bit longer.

You can see the last release for Starlite Mk IV is from 2024: https://fwupd.org/lvfs/search?value=starlite

These seem to be the SKUs they are building roms for: https://github.com/StarLabsLtd/firmware/tree/capsules/roms

New comment by puzzlingcaptcha in "StarFighter 16-Inch"

puzzlingcaptcha — Wed, 06 May 2026 13:34:17 +0000

Their Horizon model is probably closer to a Mk IV successor than Mk V. I would consider it as an upgrade path.

New comment by puzzlingcaptcha in "StarFighter 16-Inch"

puzzlingcaptcha — Wed, 06 May 2026 07:15:32 +0000

I've learned to love numpad when I spent some time working in France. On AZERTY layouts you need to press SHIFT for each regular number.

New comment by puzzlingcaptcha in "StarFighter 16-Inch"

puzzlingcaptcha — Wed, 06 May 2026 07:11:37 +0000

StarLabs predates Framework by a couple years. Framework just does advertising to geeks better.

New comment by puzzlingcaptcha in "StarFighter 16-Inch"

puzzlingcaptcha — Wed, 06 May 2026 07:03:13 +0000

FWIW I have had a StarLite Mk IV for three years now and haven't run into a single issue with it (except maybe the speakers being quite poor).

Unfortunately the company stopped releasing firmware updates for it soon after they launched Mk V. I don't know if it can be still built from source for the older devices.

New comment by puzzlingcaptcha in "Heat pump sales rise across Europe"

puzzlingcaptcha — Mon, 04 May 2026 20:05:08 +0000

You might still get the most out of it when the AMOC collapses.

New comment by puzzlingcaptcha in "Sodium-ion EV battery breakthrough delivers 11-min charging and 450 km range"

puzzlingcaptcha — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 06:45:46 +0000

Technically, you can turn off the sun with a nuclear winter. But in that case your main problem would be starvation anyway.

New comment by puzzlingcaptcha in "Jury told that Meta, Google 'engineered addiction' at landmark US trial"

puzzlingcaptcha — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 15:16:22 +0000

"But if we don't engineer addiction, China will beat us to it! It's a national interest!"

New comment by puzzlingcaptcha in "Discord will require a face scan or ID for full access next month"

puzzlingcaptcha — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 08:40:09 +0000

Thanks, I'll just keep using XMPP MUCs like a caveman I am.

New comment by puzzlingcaptcha in "Custom Firmware for the MZ-RH1 – Ready for Testing"

puzzlingcaptcha — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 08:08:30 +0000

HSALF backwards reads FLASH but Sir68k is just a very diligent guy.

New comment by puzzlingcaptcha in "Berlin: Record harvest sparks mass giveaway of free potatoes"

puzzlingcaptcha — Sat, 31 Jan 2026 22:25:32 +0000

Crop futures are already a thing. Potatoes are traded on EEX for example: https://www.eex.com/en/markets/agriculturals/potatoes

New comment by puzzlingcaptcha in "If you put Apple icons in reverse it looks like someone getting good at design"

puzzlingcaptcha — Sun, 18 Jan 2026 09:53:10 +0000

I'm not a Mac user, but ever since Google changed their icons a couple years back I still struggle to tell apart Maps/Photos/Drive etc at a glance.

New comment by puzzlingcaptcha in "Ideas are cheap, execution is cheaper"

puzzlingcaptcha — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 14:51:11 +0000

You can easily tell UX design roles are obsolete by the recent threads about Tahoe and W11. There is going to be whiplash.

New comment by puzzlingcaptcha in "Hacking a Casio F-91W digital watch (2023)"

puzzlingcaptcha — Fri, 09 Jan 2026 15:21:13 +0000

Is NanoVNA still the best entry-level tool in 2026?

New comment by puzzlingcaptcha in "Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn"

puzzlingcaptcha — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 11:23:52 +0000

I have my own travel story involving DB. I had a ticket for a Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt am Main to Warsaw. When I tried to check-in online a day before the flight it told me I had to do it at the airport. I fly a bit, so I knew what that meant - they overbooked the flight. The next day I got my "no aircraft entry guaranteed" boarding card of shame at the airport and learned at the gate that they overbooked the plane by three persons! After explaining my EU passenger rights, I got them to confirm my €250 compensation and since I was in an adventurous mood headed for the Frankfurt Flughafen Fernbahnhof train station.

The manned DB Travelcenter was still open so I walked in and asked for an international ticket to Warsaw. The gentleman (who spoke fluent English) typed a bit on the computer and told me he cannot sell a ticket for the Berlin-Warsaw leg of the journey due to a "system error on the Polish side". I knew that probably meant the Berlin-Warsaw-Express is at full capacity again and they don't sell tickets with no seat indicated for that route. I asked for a ticket to Berlin instead (€207, 2nd class) and went for a hamburger - still had about an hour until the train.

The train was initially supposed to arrive delayed 5 minutes but that was soon to change. The delay kept ticking up to 20 minutes, 45 minutes, 1 hour (around this time the DB travelcenter closed for the night) then two hours then cancelled altogether. I wasn't sure if my ticket is valid for the next train (the DB website was a bit vague about that) so I called my friend in Hamburg who confirmed I was good to jump onto the next train which would arrive on schedule in another three hours. I tried getting a Capri-Sun from a vending machine but it got stuck and wouldn't fall out. So I sat at the empty station with noting but rats as company until 3AM when the next Berlin-bound train arrived on time. In Berlin I got out at Sudkreutz and jumped onto a FlixBus to Poznań (€22) and stayed the night over at my friend's place (I badly needed a shower at that point) before taking a train to Warsaw the next day (€16, 2nd class).

Now, I technically did eventually use my Frankfurt-Berlin ticket but I was quite annoyed at DB so I applied for a reimbursement due to a cancelled train, which was granted in full. I also applied for reimbursement of the plane ticket from Lufthansa which was also granted. With the additional €250 compensation for denied boarding I actually made money on that little adventure but I probably wouldn't do that again. Gotta check in earlier from now on.

New comment by puzzlingcaptcha in "Open source USB to GPIB converter (for Test and Measurement instruments)"

puzzlingcaptcha — Wed, 24 Dec 2025 10:44:16 +0000

I wish AVR DU series had any sort of open source support, we could finally move on from 32U4.

https://www.microchip.com/en-us/products/microcontrollers/8-...

New comment by puzzlingcaptcha in "NTP at NIST Boulder Has Lost Power"

puzzlingcaptcha — Sat, 20 Dec 2025 10:41:51 +0000

I think people have a wrong idea of what a modern atomic clock looks like. These are readily available commercially, Microchip for example will happily sell you hydrogen, cesium or rubidium atomic clocks. Hydrogen masers are rather unwieldy, but you can get a rubidium clock in a 1U format and cesium ones are not much bigger. I think their cesium freq standards are formerly a HP business they acquired.

Example: https://www.microchip.com/en-us/products/clock-and-timing/co...

New comment by puzzlingcaptcha in "Purrtran – ᓚᘏᗢ – A Programming Language for Cat People"

puzzlingcaptcha — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 19:20:52 +0000

that's just unchecked neurotoxoplasmosis

New comment by puzzlingcaptcha in "Seagate achieves 6.9TB storage capacity per platter"

puzzlingcaptcha — Thu, 27 Nov 2025 19:15:31 +0000

I guess you could say that MiniDisc was the original HAMR format.

New comment by puzzlingcaptcha in "Python is not a great language for data science"

puzzlingcaptcha — Wed, 26 Nov 2025 11:12:28 +0000

The second part of the article is right here: https://blog.genesmindsmachines.com/p/python-is-not-a-great-...