Hacker News: wrboyce

New comment by wrboyce in "Formalizing Fermat's Last Theorem"

wrboyce — Mon, 07 Sep 2026 15:08:58 +0000

“The Code Book” and “The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets” are also great books by the same author.

New comment by wrboyce in "IBM Bob"

wrboyce — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 20:16:43 +0000

I suspected that might be the case, but I wasn’t about to turn down an opportunity to share one of my fun facts!

New comment by wrboyce in "IBM Bob"

wrboyce — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 18:56:40 +0000

It’s barm, with an m, from barm cakes. Barm is the frothy scummy stuff you get on top of fermented beer, and it contains yeast. Back in the day bakers would take the barm from local brewers to make weakly fermented bread rolls… barm cakes.

(So obviously those calling them cobs or rolls or whatever else are just wrong!)

New comment by wrboyce in "Show HN: Nikon F100 Film Camera Repair Notes"

wrboyce — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 04:09:18 +0000

I managed to break my F100 at the weekend, fantastic timing!

New comment by wrboyce in "Why travellers are obsessed with foreign supermarkets"

wrboyce — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 03:51:53 +0000

Booths makes Waitrose look like Aldi.

New comment by wrboyce in "I requested a copy of my data from McDonald’s loyalty program"

wrboyce — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 17:09:34 +0000

I did this a few years ago with a few companies. The most “interesting” was eBay, the data itself was predictably boring but they sent it to me on a USB flash drive!

New comment by wrboyce in "Nearest Pint"

wrboyce — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 09:40:48 +0000

Hmm, this dataset is pretty poor. There are at least 3 pubs near me that are missing.

New comment by wrboyce in "I Tested 885 Duolingo Chess Puzzles. 24% Do Not Make Sense"

wrboyce — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 05:18:55 +0000

Worth noting that after playing an incredibly irritatingly slow game of chess, Noctie will ask for 14 Euros a month to carry on playing!

New comment by wrboyce in "Who's the smartest corvid?"

wrboyce — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 02:38:35 +0000

Corvids have been known to investigate deaths, truly fascinating creatures!

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00033...

New comment by wrboyce in "Uber’s COO says it’s getting harder to justify money spent on tokenmaxxing"

wrboyce — Mon, 25 May 2026 22:45:22 +0000

There’s been a bug when ordering an Uber in my (quite small, circa 20k pop) town recently in that they think our annual festival (which is in July) is on now and try to force a stupid pickup point which in my case is about the same distance from my local pub as my house is but in the opposite direction. I guess things like this need some sort of maintenance (which apparently they’re not getting!).

New comment by wrboyce in "Where are all the UK red telephone kiosks?"

wrboyce — Fri, 22 May 2026 22:53:00 +0000

I would love refurbished one of these in my back garden, unfortunately they weigh far far too much to lift into my limited-access back garden and I’m not sure it’d have the same impact in the front garden.

You can get a refurbished K6 for about £3000, absolute bargain if you ask me!

https://www.x2connect.com/

New comment by wrboyce in "Oil tanker hijacked off Yemen, steers toward Somalia"

wrboyce — Sat, 02 May 2026 16:22:40 +0000

I have friends who have been those mercenaries, and I think your comment underplays it a bit… they are all ex-SBS and not somebody I’d want to fuck with!

New comment by wrboyce in "France's government is ditching Windows for Linux, says US tech a strategic risk"

wrboyce — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 14:09:23 +0000

As a Welshman, I’d say North/South Walian are more common among the populace!

New comment by wrboyce in "U.S. stocks are set to deliver their worst quarter in nearly four years"

wrboyce — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 15:41:30 +0000

https://simpsons.fandom.com/wiki/Inanimate_Carbon_Rod

New comment by wrboyce in "I Quit Editing Photos"

wrboyce — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 14:36:00 +0000

I took a similar path, but with an additional final step of moving to film and doing the development, scanning, and editing myself. Definitely more work per photo, but each photo taken is a lot more considered.

New comment by wrboyce in "America tells private firms to “hack back”"

wrboyce — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 01:05:29 +0000

Jump across borders of non-cooperative nations, too. Say using boxes in Iran and USA, or India and Pakistan.

New comment by wrboyce in "Flash media longevity testing – 6 years later"

wrboyce — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 20:25:37 +0000

In the UK “registrar’s ink” is used for marriage certificates, I believe it is supposed to be good for many hundreds of years.

New comment by wrboyce in "A ternary plot of citrus geneology"

wrboyce — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 16:28:27 +0000

Interesting read, and nicely follows last week’s Lunchbox Envy where “Oranges” was the subject. A great podcast if you like food and fun facts.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0n1sn05

New comment by wrboyce in "Mullvad VPN: Banned TV Ad in the Streets of London [video]"

wrboyce — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 12:48:56 +0000

My British perspective: I don’t want advertisers free to lie as much as they want.

I’ve had ads taken off the TV for being clearly misleading (anyone can raise a complaint to the ASA - the Advertising Standards Agency).

New comment by wrboyce in "Show HN: Xmloxide – an agent-made Rust replacement for libxml2"

wrboyce — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 04:31:12 +0000

Feels more like you don’t understand the concept of the tragedy of the commons.

EDIT: Sorry, I’ve had a shitty day and that wasn’t a helpful comment at all. I should’ve said that as I understand it TOTC primarily relates to finite resources, so I don’t think it applies here. Sorry again for being a dick.