akkoma - Link to source

Bug Hunter (1990) is one of those rare puzzle platformers written exclusively for the Acorn 32-bit machines.

Whenever I stumble on an Archimedes title, I perk up. These machines—descendants of Acorn’s BBC line—were the first computers powered by ARM CPUs. Think about that: ARM, the chipset now running your phone, your tablet, your Nintendo Switch, even your M-series Mac.

Back in 1990, ARM wasn’t about pocket gadgets. It was pitched as the next big leap in desktop computing. Only problem was the Acorn Archimedes barely left the UK, and outside of classrooms, almost nobody touched one.

That’s a shame, because games like Bug Hunter show what these machines could do. The hero is Hysteron Proteron—a bioengineered soldier gone wrong. A lab mix-up left him a spineless bug-eyed creature who can’t actually fight. So the army threw him on pest control duty.

His gimmick: suckered feet that let him scuttle along floors, ceilings, and walls, and the ability to pick up objects and drop them on unsuspecting insects. Kill them all, move to the next room, repeat. Simple, but clever.

Graphically, it’s impressive for 1990. Crisp sprites, fluid enough movement, and backgrounds that look every bit as solid as what you’d see on the Amiga or Genesis. The SNES wasn’t even out yet, and here’s Acorn pushing visuals in that league.

Sound, though, is the usual British compromise: no music, just effects. Still, compared to the PC speaker squawks of DOS games, those crunchy bug-splat noises were fine.

What makes Bug Hunter stand out isn’t just the gameplay—it’s the personality. One room even has a parody movie poster on the wall: Schwarzenegger in Decorator, with the tagline “They picked the wrong man…” It’s little details like that which make it feel less like a generic extermination game and more like someone’s sly passion project. Which it was.

Ian Richardson, a solo dev at the time, built this thing himself. He’d later go on to Gremlin and Ocean before becoming a respected figure in UK game development. He passed away in 2021, but Bug Hunter remains a testament to his early craft.

The sequel, Bug Hunter in Space, came out the same year, expanding the concept to alien ships and teleports. And Bug Hunter & Moon Dash was even sold together on a single disk, though everyone agrees Moon Dash was the weaker half. Bug Hunter’s the one people remember—the one schoolkids used to sneak onto Archimedes machines in British classrooms.

So if you ever find an Acorn 32-bit, don’t pass this up. Bug Hunter is charming, tough, and a reminder that the ARM revolution didn’t start with iPhones. It started with a bug-eyed mutant wandering the walls on a forgotten British computer.

@videogames

Retro video game screenshot from Bug Hunter. The scene shows a green-walled room with red brick borders. At the top, the title “BUG HUNTER” is displayed in bold red and white text, alongside the player’s score of 652. On the left, there’s a brown shelf stacked with random objects like a beach ball, bottles, and food. Below the shelf, a spiky black creature waits on the floor. A conveyor belt runs across the room, carrying a large insect. Two hanging fluorescent lights dangle from chains above. The back wall features two posters: one blue sign reads “Archimedes — more power to your fingertips,” while another is a parody movie poster showing a muscular figure with sunglasses and a paint roller, with the caption “SCHWARZENEGGER: They picked the wrong man… DECORATOR.”
@Video Games

pleroma - Link to source

FYI trichloroethylene causes Parkinson's

Dry cleaning chemicals hang around - on your clothes | Environmental Working Group ewg.org/news-insights/news/dry…

Dry cleaning chemicals hang around - on your clothes

If you've ever dry cleaned your clothes (you have, right?), you've likely wondered how the "dry" part happens. And it may even have crossed your mind that it's a chemical process. Of course you'd be right.
Environmental Working Group

mastodon - Link to source
Question for fellow #NVDA users: why has the Office Desk addon been discontinued? I saw the message from the addon itself and read the homepage. It says it has been discontinued and that I should uninstall it, but it doesn't give a reason for it. I'd understand if it said something like, "The features in this addon have been merged into the core," or something like that, but it doesn't. #Accessibility #Blind #ScreenReader
#Accessibility #blind #screenreader #nvda
in reply to Squish

mastodon - Link to source

NV Access

I don't have any specific info, but I expect the issues which would need to be overcome would include licensing, and also if the voices require internet access to work, responsiveness. It is one thing to throw a page of text at a synthesizer, have it take a couple of seconds to process that online and return it and then read it out - but if it did that every time you press right arrow to move by one character, that would be quite frustrating for users

mastodon - Link to source

For anyone interested in that AudioScreen add-on we just shared, the link posted by the vOICe was not the right one to download it, you need to follow that one through another post to it, or go direct to: github.com/nvaccess/audioScree…

This is a great example of an add-on where the original author didn't have capacity to continue developing it, and has passed it on to someone else. This is a healthy part of our ecosystem and one which should be encouraged.


GitHub - nvaccess/audioScreen: An NVDA add-on that allows you to "feel" images with your ears, while moving your finger around a touch screen on Windows 8 and above.

An NVDA add-on that allows you to "feel" images with your ears, while moving your finger around a touch screen on Windows 8 and above. - nvaccess/audioScreen
GitHub
in reply to James Dean

mastodon - Link to source

NV Access

@GamingWithEars @vick21 @alexhall You can explore an image on a touch screen and get audible feedback (pitch) of it. On the GitHub page - github.com/nvaccess/audioScree… - there is a link to an audio demonstration by Mick Curran "where he demonstrates the various modes, and uses it to explore a map of Australia, a rainbow, the earth from space, a cartoon house, and a sun set."

GitHub - nvaccess/audioScreen: An NVDA add-on that allows you to "feel" images with your ears, while moving your finger around a touch screen on Windows 8 and above.

An NVDA add-on that allows you to "feel" images with your ears, while moving your finger around a touch screen on Windows 8 and above. - nvaccess/audioScreen
GitHub
@Alex Hall @victor tsaran @James Dean
in reply to Kevan

mastodon - Link to source

NV Access

@kev Thanks Kevan! We did write some tips on filing issues with GitHub here: nvaccess.org/post/in-process-1…

Also, have you tried our new "form" based template? The same questions, but in edit boxes you can tab between.

You can find the test templates here: github.com/nvaccess/nvda-issue…

Please note, these are currently only for testing - we are not monitoring issues submitted using those forms.

Once you test the form, please head to this discussion to leave feedback: github.com/nvaccess/nvda/discu…


GitHub

GitHub is where people build software. More than 150 million people use GitHub to discover, fork, and contribute to over 420 million projects.
GitHub
@Kevan
in reply to Danielle Foré

mastodon - Link to source

TheEvilSkeleton 🇮🇳 🏳️‍⚧️

> What do anti-vaxxers, flat earthers, 9/11 truthers, and anti-Wayland activism all have in common? All of them are characterized by a blithe rejection of facts to embrace a narrative of victimization by a vague authority. In the case of Wayland, the “vague authority” are a bunch of volunteers who have devoted tens of thousands of hours of their free time towards making free shit for you. “Wayland sucks!” is a conspiracy theory with no basis in truth, and its supporters have spent years harassing Wayland maintainers, contributors, and users. And it’s time for it to fucking stop.

web.archive.org/web/2023122323…

I'm tired of this anti-Wayland horseshit

web.archive.org
in reply to TheEvilSkeleton 🇮🇳 🏳️‍⚧️

mastodon - Link to source

Sriram "sri" Ramkrishna - 😼

@TheEvilSkeleton legit - don't understand why this is an alt-right thing. But this new fork seems to draw them. I don't get what the cause celebre here.

But whatever, I'm not going to use their fork and nobody else is either. They can take their feature requests and apps and continue there.

@TheEvilSkeleton 🇮🇳 🏳️‍⚧️

mastodon - Link to source
If you use Claude Coe, you may be interested in the project I have been contributing the #accessibility features to. It's called Opcode. It's basically a GUI version of the Claude Code CLI.
Check out my branch at github.com/vick08/opcode.
There is an outstanding PR against the main repo, but I am not sure when the author decides to incorporate my changes. There are other 40 PRs in the queue! :)
Enjoy!

GitHub - vick08/opcode: A powerful GUI app and Toolkit for Claude Code - Create custom agents, manage interactive Claude Code sessions, run secure background agents, and more.

A powerful GUI app and Toolkit for Claude Code - Create custom agents, manage interactive Claude Code sessions, run secure background agents, and more. - vick08/opcode
GitHub
#Accessibility

André Polykanine reshared this.

mastodon - Link to source
Ubuntu mod team takes anti-queer "Don't say gay" stance.

Sensitive content

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

reshared this

in reply to unawarewolf 🐺

mastodon - Link to source

unawarewolf 🐺

Ubuntu mod team takes anti-queer "Don't say gay" stance.

Sensitive content

in reply to unawarewolf 🐺

mastodon - Link to source

unawarewolf 🐺

Ubuntu mod team takes anti-queer "Don't say gay" stance.

Sensitive content

mastodon - Link to source

Finally got around to writing up a review of the ecowitt weather gateway/station/sensors I got.

Overall it's quite nice and I am happy with it.

scrye.com/blogs/nirik//posts/2…

#HomeAssistant

A home assistant history of a rain rate sensor from a ecowitt weather station. It shows that at about midnight on saturday it rained really really hard for a few minutes.

ecowitt weather station review (GW2001)

I picked up some ecowitt devices recently and thought I would share a review. We live in a pretty rural area with no official weather stations around. The ones that are nearest are in somewhat differe
Kevin's musings
#homeassistant
in reply to nirik

mastodon - Link to source

Jiří Eischmann

I upload data from our station to Windy.com. One of the benefits is that I can compare the actual data with values forecast by different models and get some sense of what is the best model for our location.
As you can see the wind direction is pretty much random.
By weather measurement standards the temperature sensor should be 2 meters above a grass surface, wind sensors should be 10 meters above the ground. So with all-in-one stations, which is what I have now, you have to decide between one or the other when it comes to accuracy.
A screenhot of Windy.com showing measurements from a personal weather station compared to weather models.

mastodon - Link to source

#FediBlock

Here are 5 more Jimmy the Liar (who often goes by the name JimmyTruth), accounts opened in the past 24 hours now claiming to have been born in multiple cities at the same time.

It seems he's taking a break from claiming to be God's personal servant. Unsure what he's up to this time. But the homophobia, transphobia, and unkindness are sure to follow.

Apparently he's just a con man.

He's opened accounts on countless instances, and has been suspended on most of them, including mine.

I notice that .social already has all of these below suspended, except for the one on mastodon.cc, as of this moment:

@ J @ dizl.de
@ Jimmy @ mastodon.cc
@ J @ moris.social
@J @ friends.ravergram.club
@J @ liberal.city

@hausmeister
@asm
@chromico
@karl
@wjmaggos

#FediBlock @william.maggos @asm @Karl Rockwell @chromico @Hausmeister
This entry was edited (2 months ago)

mastodon - Link to source
Quick Tip:
If you are being harassed on this, or any other instance, you have several options of dealing with it. You may block the account yourself, or if you feel this is a greater threat that the community should deal with, you may block and report the post and/or follower via the Mastodon web interface.
As an example on this instance, you would log into the web interface with your email address and passwored used when you signed up at:
someplace.social/
Then, navigate to the offending post or follower,and then you would click the button labeled more, with an elipsis under the post.
This will open a submenu with all the functions to manage what happens to the post or follower. For screen reader users, Mastodon has unhelpfully located this submenu at the bottom of the page, and focus is not automatically set there, so unless or until you realized this, you might think the more... button was doing nothing. It actually is, you just need to navigate to the bottom of the page after you've pressed it. Two of these options in the submenu that comes up are block and report.
Once you click on report, you will get a form to fill out, to let the moderators know about the situation. Additionally, you will have options to report to all remote instances mentioned within any posts marked for the report.
Once the report form is submitted, the moderators of your instance will immediately receive it, and will act on it as soon as possible.
#Mastodon #Moderation #StopHarassment

SomePlace.Social

Some place where you may feel free to socialize, and not be labeled by the instance.
Mastodon hosted on someplace.social
#Mastodon #moderation #stopharassment

gotosocial - Link to source

Hoy como estaba aburrido me he puesto a programar redes neuronales en rust para recordar como funcionan.

De momento tengo el código para las matrices, producto de matrices, matriz por vector, y me falta el producto escalar que me pondré con él en breve.

Luego a ver si consigo entender el sistema de retropropagación, que es el intríngulis de como funciona el aprendizaje y aunque sé como va a grandes rasgos (descender el gradiente hacia la predicción esperada) no sé bien como funciona en la práctica con el detalle necesario para programarlo.

Esto me recuerda que programar algo es comprender algo. Si no sabes como funciona, al compilador no le vas a convencer. Por eso siempre me gustó esta forma de aprender cosas.

mastodon - Link to source

Earlier this year, someone bought me some gorgeous bath bombs from Lush, and having decided to by myself some more, I've discovered that in January they renamed three of their bath bombs to "Diversity", "Equity", and "Inclusion", in protest against Trump's Executive Order.

lush.com/uk/en


LUSH Fresh Handmade Cosmetics | Vegetarian & Cruelty Free | LUSH

Inventors of the bath bomb and the home of bath art. We're here to create a cosmetics revolution and leave the world lusher than we found it.
Lush

mastodon - Link to source
Те, що в Україні не можна бути просто нормальним — сум і навіть розпач.
#новини #uazmi #війна-в-україні #мобілізація #суспільство
Детальніше тут 👇
uazmi.org/news/post/4630117aa4…
Те, що в Україні не можна бути просто нормальним — сум і навіть розпач.

Те, що в Україні не можна бути просто нормальним — сум і навіть розпач.

Цікаво, що буде з українським будинком після того, як з нього знімуть риштування війни. Оптимістично припустимо, що це все-таки колись трапиться. Поки що має...
Еспресо (UAZMI)
#новини #uazmi #війна #мобілізація #суспільство
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