Hacker News Reader

UncleSlackyon Were software engineers blue-collar workers all along?

> People move freely into becoming labourers and capital owners.

Really? How would that happen? Maybe with a small loan of a million dollars...

UncleSlackyon Whatever became of holography? (2011)

I had a hologram from the old Edmund Scientific Catalog in the 70s, a flat piece of film and a green filter for a slide projector, which together would make a seaplane appear in the space in between. It worked, sorta, but it didn't help that I didn't have a slide projector and tried to make do with a flashlight instead.

UncleSlackyon 50MB operating system can resurrect your old PC

antiX doesn't "force" anything on anyone, it's not "opinionated" like Omarchy, for example. It even offers a multitude of window managers and inits to choose from.

It's antifascist of course, but that is (or at least used to be) an uncontroversial position.

UncleSlackyon 50MB operating system can resurrect your old PC

Or go straight to the distro DSL was forked from - antiX, which has a Debian Trixie-based 32-bit ISO (as well as the expected 64-bit version):

https://antixlinux.com/download/

UncleSlackyon 15-year search for a band that charted once and vanished

UncleSlackyon Digital Audio on the ZX Spectrum's 1-Bit Beeper

There was also "Meteor Storm":

https://spectrumgamesuk.com/index.php?game=Meteor-Storm

I think it said "Meteor Alert!" or something similar, though the quality was terrible.

UncleSlackyon Ask HN: Who's still keeping a DOS machine up because the business depends on it?

FreeDOS exists, no need for AI:

https://freedos.org/

UncleSlackyon Used ThinkPad Buyer's Guide (2019)

Yeah, I have a couple of e6220s, one running MX Linux and the other Win 10 IoT LTSC. The MX one is my "road warrior" travel laptop as it's tough and still acceptably fast, but I also don't care too much if gets lost or damaged.

UncleSlackyon Used ThinkPad Buyer's Guide (2019)

T60 user here - just upgraded the CPU to a T7400 C2D, added an SSD and increased the RAM to 4Gb (3.25 or so usable thanks to Libreboot). It's actually still quite usable. I'm currently running Exe GNU/Linux for a modern yet retro look (Trinity DE), and the 4:3 screen and decent keyboard really make it.

UncleSlackyon Stallman: Thousands Dead, Millions Deprived of Liberties (2001)

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism :

"Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality, right to private property, and equality before the law."

Technically both major parties in the US are liberal parties, it's a "liberal democracy" where they both share a certain set of beliefs, though they may differ on the details. Only in the US is the word used as a slur by one party towards the other.

UncleSlackyon IBM Bob

Funny, because "bob" is slang for shillings in the old LSD pre-decimal British currency system (coins worth 5 pence in the modern system).

UncleSlackyon Commodore 64 released September 1, 1982

They had high market shares in countries with much smaller populations than the US, so in terms of number of countries (particularly in Europe and South America), it dominated in far more of them than the C64 did.

UncleSlackyon RavynOS: Pre-alpha open-source OS based on Darwin, FreeBSD, Apple open-source

It's based on helloSystem (at least the GUI is), which you may remember from a few years ago?

https://hellosystem.github.io/docs/

UncleSlackyon EVE Online moves to Python 3

WKRP lives!

https://www.wherethemusicwent.com/stream

https://www.iheart.com/live/wkrp-10724/

UncleSlackyon France reaches 94.9% fiber coverage in 2026

> they filter traffic/block IPs/force website to imposes checks (like age checks) that aren't done elsewhere, block torrents, etc.

Is that with Orange (France Telecom)? I don't have such issues with Free.

UncleSlackyon Tim Curry has died

Dammit!

UncleSlackyon Oceans hit highest temperature on record

We'd be using wind and water power, as we've done since well before the Industrial Revolution.

UncleSlackyon Using an old Android phone as a music player

I use the F-Droid apps Transistor to listen to streaming radio and Antennapod for podcasts on an old phone:

https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.y20k.transistor/

https://f-droid.org/en/packages/de.danoeh.antennapod/

UncleSlackyon The Road to MS-DOS 2.0

And BASIC in ROM.

UncleSlackyon uBlock Origin Is Giving Up the Fight to Keep Ads Off Facebook

Why not just use Fluff Busting Purity?

https://www.fbpurity.com/

UncleSlackyon ZX Spectrum System Tour: Sound

Some games even used it for (attempted) speech synthesis:

https://spectrumgamesuk.com/index.php?game=Meteor-Storm

"...possibly the first game with speech synthesis, albeit sounding like an unintelligble gargle."

UncleSlackyon US citizen charged after GrapheneOS phone wipes during airport search

The well-known country of Europe with its single set of laws? That Europe?

Self-defence can be a valid justification for manslaughter, at least in the UK.

UncleSlackyon The IBM PC, Part 1: Arrival

And of course, in the UK, every school had at least one BBC Micro (about the only good thing Thatcher ever did).

UncleSlackyon Amiga 1000: Ten years ahead of its time

The UK also had the Sinclair QL (68008-based) in 1984 for £399, famously owned by Linus Torvalds:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_QL#Linux

UncleSlackyon It's a shame what's happened to radio

Lots of Radio 4 programmes are available as podcasts, and it is possible to stream BBC radio outside the UK without a VPN - see the links here:

http://www.radiofeeds.co.uk/

UncleSlackyon It's a shame what's happened to radio

I quite like the "new" WKRP (in Cincinnati of course), it doesn't seem to be a corporate cookie-cutter kind of station, and it plays the kind of thing the TV version would probably play today (and they even use the same jingles):

https://www.iheart.com/live/wkrp-10724/

UncleSlackyon Reviving a 15-year-old netbook with Arch Linux

You should run something like Void, Alpine or antiX on these. HaikuOS also runs really well on them if you don't need actual Linux.

UncleSlackyon Linux on the Atari Jaguar

Also, honourable mention for the Sinclair QL (though it was a 68008 machine).

UncleSlackyon WordStar: A Writer's Word Processor (1996)

https://github.com/lproven/usb-dos

"To get your work off the key, just insert the key into a computer that's already running any more modern OS than DOS."

UncleSlackyon Linux on Older Hardware: The Complete Revival Guide

Haiku OS is a better choice. Runs great on my eeepc 701 4G with 512Mb RAM.