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bencevans

4,812 karma · joined July 13, 2011

https://bencevans.io https://github.com/bencevans
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bencevans··on Show HN: Hacker Times – HN Reader
Thanks! Funnily enough, I did start building it before but then decided not to merge as I came to quite like the finiteness of it without. Shall maybe reconsider!
bencevans··on Backblaze has stopped backing up your data
I found this to be a common theme in web design a while back, and in part led to an experiment developing a newspaper/Pocket-like interface to reading HN. It's not perfect, but is easier on the eyes for reading... https://times.hntrends.net/story/47762864
bencevans··on UK government launches fuel forecourt price API
This is great news. There's been a pilot study in which each retailer (voluntarily) hosted a JSON file containing their current prices (https://www.gov.uk/guidance/access-fuel-price-data). I noticed recently that a few of them had been removed/stopped working.

Neither the pilot nor the current API appears to include all fuel stations, but at least they provide (hopefully) more reliable updates from the ones that do.

I'd been playing with the pilot study data and set up FuelBelly to aggregate and compare https://fuelbelly.com/explore?lat=51.50740713124398&lng=-0.1.... (doesn't include the API updates, yet...)

A quick play with the API, the information responses (opening times, addresses etc.) doesn't appear to be working, I just get a 500 (HTML not JSON) response. But the price calls are working, and I'm glad this is being pushed forward post-pilot.

bencevans··on We shouldn't have needed lockfiles
https://times.hntrends.net/story/44813397
bencevans··on ChatGPT and other AI tools could disrupt scientific publishing
I'm quite happy to read something in a paper that ChatGPT or equivalent has written, just as i'm happy to read something that has been written with the assistance of other tools such as Grammarly, LanguageTool, Spell Check etc. I see it as the (human) authors responsibility to ensure that what has been written is factually correct.
bencevans··on Updates to the GitHub Feed
I'm not sure i'm unusual in using the GitHub feed to keep an eye on commit activity on watched repos, all of a sudden there's no option to see push activity in the feed. o.O
bencevans··on Easy SVG sparklines
I've recently used this approach for generating Open Graph images for display when a link to the site is used on Twitter, WhatsApp, Facebook, etc [1]. I was pleasantly surprised at how quickly something could be implemented. The last time I'd done something similar was using Cairo and needing to write more of the scaling dynamics. I don't think I ever got it to adjust to dynamic content very well. This time I put together a prototype in Inkscape, converted it to a template and render it to PNG with Sharp [2].

[1]: https://hntrends.net/api/og?word=twitter [2]: https://github.com/lovell/sharp

bencevans··on Show HN: HN Trends
It's a static list ordered by the number of mentions of all time. I plan to make this dynamic in the future and allow ordering by total score and filtering by time range. Also, I'd like to add separate pages for each book showing the stats and reviews, and maybe some form of sentiment analysis would be cool.
bencevans··on OCR at Edge on Cloudflare Constellation
Looking forward to GPU support for workers. Cloudflare announced they were working on it in 2021 [1], but it doesn't seem generally available yet; they still have a signup page for notification [2].

I know other companies have struggled with demand, so maybe they're doing it on an invite basis.

[1]: https://blog.cloudflare.com/workers-ai/ [2]: https://www.cloudflare.com/nvidia-workers/

bencevans··on Show HN: HN Trends
Cheers! Yes, I already have 'it's' and 'it’s', but that one escaped! Added now.
bencevans··on Show HN: HN Trends
Thanks for the suggestion, yes a good idea! Aha, yes, I've spotted that with Reddit, and it is actually true as appose to a bug, as there's something like just one post back in 2016, and it mentions, thus, 100% popularity. I'll add some other metrics to the page soon.
bencevans··on Show HN: HN Trends
Thanks for the heads up! Fixed
bencevans··on Show HN: HN Trends
Thanks! Same; I've been coming to HN for books to read for years and finally got them in one place. I plan to extend the functionality there in the future :D
bencevans··on GitHub Actions Incident 29.3
Also causing issues due to a change that's made release source tars change [1] (changing hash), so build systems are rejecting [2].

1: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/402616 2: https://github.com/microsoft/vcpkg/issues/30481

bencevans··on Migrating to GraphQL: A Practical Assessment
For others, esp. on mobile https://www.arxiv-vanity.com/papers/1906.07535/
bencevans··on How a shampoo bottle is saving young lives
Adding it to Pocket, then lets you read it.
bencevans··on Patchwork – Decentralized messaging and sharing app built on Secure Scuttlebutt
You've got it! You run a P2P system on your local machine... in theory, you don't need the internet to communicate. Messages can be sent via your friends hopping between LANs using the underlying gossip protocol.
bencevans··on Show HN: A proxy service for debugging HTTP/S traffic
Interface looks cool but what benefits are there over using mitmproxy?
bencevans··on Show HN: Stacker – The Easiest way to Publish and Reply on Social Media
Would like to see some screenshots on the frontpage. I don't want to give access to my social profiles if I can't actually see what benefits something gives me (text just doesn't cut it)
bencevans··on Ask HN: Cache the frontpage links on HN?
Check this out http://hncache.bensbit.co.uk/
bencevans··on Fry.IO - An ultra simple URL shortener
You might want to put some sort of URL validation as at the moment it could be used to store other data.

Also by entering what I've put at http://hastebin.com/ruxixitunu I'm provided with http://fry.io/9m which returns a 502 Bad Gateway error from your nginx server (BUG?).

bencevans··on Instawallet Hacked
Clicking the logo directs the user to http://localhost:3000.

On a side note... New Business plan:

1. Setup an online Bitcoin wallet service 2. Wait a while till people actually trust/use it 3. "We got hacked"

bencevans··on The RESTful CookBook
I'm not the author, but found it interesting and thought others may too. The site is on GitHub and seems to be in active development.

GitHub: https://github.com/restcookbook/restcookbook Authors/Contributors: https://github.com/restcookbook/restcookbook/contributors

bencevans··on Ask HN: alternatives to the dashing dashboard framework?
Some others I've come across include:

https://github.com/oazabir/Droptiles & https://github.com/Anephenix/dashku

bencevans··on Bitcoin.org has a new site
The info looks good but the design I'd say has taken a step back.
bencevans··on SIP from Twilio
If only Vodafone/Mobile phone companies would provide SIP support so I can use my credit and number.
bencevans··on More than 500,000 Google Reader users have joined Feedly in the past 48 hours
Sounds like a http://highscalability.com/ post to me!
bencevans··on LayerVault Sends DMCA Takedown Letter re Flat-UI
Flat UI (http://designmodo.github.com/Flat-UI/) in an open source project along the same lines as Twitter Bootstrap. or another bootstrappable interface framework.

LayerVault (https://layervault.com/) are a company that provide a version control system for design work.

bencevans··on Teach kids to farm, not code.
Brilliant post! Props for the RHoK link too.

I'm currently an A Level student in the UK that's been hacking on software and hardware projects for the last 6-7 years. I decided to go to the June RHoK event in Southampton and worked on a new project called WaterMe with 4 others that takes open satellite imagery from NASA and outputs an index of water content and foliage and more in the area over time from a user friendly interface. Also making available the data for researchers and hackers for other awesome projects.

After the Hackathon we were accepted into a humanitarian incubator called GWOB (Geeks Without Bounds) which has put our team in contact with many spectacular personalities and guidance which has intorduced me into areas of mapping, open data, funding, advertising, additional technologies and even quad-copters/balloons/flying-machines.

We are still developing the product (now closed source) and are hoping to look for investment in the near future to run the product at scale to provide for farmers, researchers and anyone interested in things such as drought and glaciers amongst others.

Needless to say this has one of the best experiences of my life so far and is way more rewarding than any freelance work I've done as just make money jobs.

bencevans··on Simple user styles for popular websites
What tool/extension is being used to apply the custom stylesheets?
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