Top all-time · #5593
Mark Round
Personal blog · markround.com · on HN as mark_roundprogramminghardware
Mark Round's personal blog at markround.com covers programming and hardware. Since 2019, 14 different Hacker News readers have linked it 32 times, most often “Haiku Package Management”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-12, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (1) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Mark Round's "Sloppy Copies" post about an app he built being copied quickly by others. A commenter uses it to discuss whether copying software is a real problem.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 1 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Code, Retro-Computing, Music and other things of interest…
Most-linked posts?
- Haiku Package Management3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-02-16
- Returning to Rails in 20263 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2026-03-09
- Amiga Systems Programming in 20232 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-09-05
- Back to the Floppy (2019)2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-02-03
- Sloppy Copies2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-04-24
- Writing a Demoscene Intro for the ZX Spectrum2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-10-12
- A 25-Year-Old Blog Looks Back at 40 Years of Computing2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-06-23
What Hacker News says?
I wrote about this a few years ago on my blog when I re-fitted my old Commodore Amiga with a floppy drive after years of using SD-card floppy emulators: http://www.markround.com/blog/2019/12/30/back-to-the-floppy/ There really was something special about labelling the disks, the deliberate act of sorting through your collection and selecting one... To me, it feels much like picking out a vinyl record to enjoy rather…
Comment linking /blog/2019/12/30/back-to-the-floppy/
on “The last person standing in the floppy disk business”Submitted Writing a Demoscene Intro for the ZX Spectrum as a story · 176 points
HN discussionI grew up with the Speccy and it's what kick-started my interest in computers and ultimately led to my career. I still have a +3, which is connected to the internet [1]. It's amazing to see that there's still a sizeable scene devoted to this humble little box, and there's new hardware and impressive hacks being built to this day. In the words of one of the messages from a user of my site: "It’s mad being online with…
Comment linking /blog/2021/12/21/devops-for-the-sinclair-spectrum-part-1
on “Celebrating 40 years of ZX Spectrum”Submitted Stop Breaking TLS as a story · 175 points
HN discussionThis is it exactly! I wrote this back in 2019 on my "Back To The Floppy" post[1]: I’ve been thinking a lot recently about what it is exactly about the Amiga that captures me in a way that no other computer ever did. Part of it is I think because the Amiga was the last system that was simple enough that one person could reasonably hold the entire machine in their head. It was complex, true, but with enough studying a…
Comment linking /blog/2019/12/30/back-to-the-floppy/
on “Writing a Demoscene Intro for the ZX Spectrum”Submitted DevOps for the Sinclair Spectrum as a story · 56 points
HN discussionI wrote an article about the very subject : https://www.markround.com/blog/2023/08/30/amiga-systems-prog... Which also featured on HN at the time, with some very insightful comments and discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37389376 TL;DR is I cross-compile using VSCode & Docker from Mac/Win/Linux mainly, but if I want to develop in the Amiga environment (e.g. on native) I use VBCC on 68k.
Comment linking /blog/2023/08/30/amiga-systems-programming-in-2023/
on “Roguecraft Devs on Developing for Amiga in 2024”Submitted Back to the Floppy (2019) as a story · 46 points
HN discussionI think it's the same reason I guess why people mourn e.g. BeOS. The Atari was a nice system, but it wasn't ground-breaking. The Amiga was decades ahead of it's time and could have been so much more if Commodore had any business-savvy. It's hard to overstate the impact of seeing an Amiga A500 in full flight, coming from the previous generation of 8-bit machines. It felt like it was straight from the future (and stil…
Comment linking /blog/2019/12/30/back-to-the-floppy/
on “Well-Known Secrets of AmigaDOS”Submitted Returning to Rails in 2026 as a story · 7 points
HN discussionIt's a lot of fun, still! I touched on it in my "Amiga Systems Programming in 2023" post[1] which had some discussion here[2]. In the few years since then there's been lots of development still across the whole scene. OS4 is largely stagnating (although I still fire up my X5000 whenever I have a chance) but the classic 68k scene is positively thriving. Lots of great software & homebrew games, and the hardware option…
Comment linking /blog/2023/08/30/amiga-systems-programming-in-2023/
on “Dual Kickstart ROM Replacement for Amiga”Submitted Writing a Demoscene Intro for the ZX Spectrum as a story · 4 points
HN discussionThe TNFS protocol used by FujiNet has also been used in other network cards for old 8-bit computers. My own ZX Spectrum is fitted with a Spectranet card which enables the same kind of connectivity and creativity. I wrote about it in my "DevOps For The Sinclair Spectrum" article[1] which featured here, and my TNFS site is now available through a JS emulator on a web page[2] if you want to see the kind of thing you ca…
Comment linking /blog/2021/12/21/devops-for-the-sinclair-spectrum-part-1
on “Ascending Mount FujiNet”Submitted Returning to Rails in 2026 as a story · 4 points
HN discussionStill got mine. Still write code on it, too[1] although it's now connected to the Internet with a Spectranet card. My 9-year old self would have been astonished that there's still a lively scene surrounding the Spectrum and some quality games still being released for it today. Or that I'd still be writing Speccy BASIC code projects[2] in the 21st century! It's remarkably fun to tinker with still, and I don't think i…
Comment linking /blog/2021/12/21/devops-for-the-sinclair-spectrum-part-1
on “ZX Spectrum Documentary 'The Rubber Keyed Wonder' Gets London Premiere”Submitted Haiku Package Management as a story · 4 points
HN discussionStrangely enough, that's one of the big draws for me. I'm "on the spectrum" and often find face-to-face socialisation and making new contacts very draining. I tend to prefer systems to people - although as time went on, I realised one of the things I really enjoy about DN42 is making the human contacts! After getting started with the various "auto peering" systems, I've been making much more of an effort to find ind…
Comment linking /dn42
on “AI Agent Bankrupted Their Operator While Trying to Scan DN42”Submitted Amiga Systems Programming in 2023 as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI love the original article [0]; it seems like Mark had fun building this app. It doesn't seem like he expected it to make him a billionaire. So what's the problem? If you post a recipe on a cooking blog, and someone immediately rips it for their own site, that's a bummer, but like… what are you going to do, patent it? We software developers are so used to software being difficult, time-consuming and expensive, but…
Comment linking /blog/2026/03/05/returning-to-rails-in-2026
on “Sloppy Copies”Submitted A 25-Year-Old Blog Looks Back at 40 Years of Computing as a story · 2 points
HN discussionIf you'd like to experiment with running your own AS in private address space, connecting to a friendly network of geeks over wireguard tunnels, check out DN42 https://dn42.dev/Home . It's a great way to explore routing technologies and safely experiment with your own AS, running the same protocols as the "real" Internet, just in private space. If you do get set up, give me a shout ( https://markround.com/dn42 ), I'…
Comment linking /dn42
on “Running Your Own As: BGP on FreeBSD with FRR, GRE Tunnels, and Policy Routing”Submitted Sloppy Copies as a story · 2 points
HN discussionGreat stuff! Like many here, my blog/website seems to have been started at that magic ~20 year-old point. I also went back through the Internet Archive and revisited the different phases in my site's "life" at https://www.markround.com/about It started off as static HTML - built in a tool called "AOL Press" I think I got on a CD from a magazine -and uploaded to the shared FTP space we got with our family's dial-up i…
Comment linking /blog/2002/07/02/Solaris-9-initial-impressions/
on “Twenty Years of Blogging”Submitted Returning to Rails in 2026 as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted DevOps for the Sinclair Spectrum as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted It's Only When You Look Back as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Sloppy Copies as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Haiku Package Management as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Haiku Package Management as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Haiku Package Management as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
