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danielh

1,592 karma · joined September 24, 2008

Software Consultant, based in Cologne, Germany.

http://epicco.de

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danielh··on Colocation: Non-Clown Hosting
Please be aware that this doesn't include electricity and cooling, which is really expensive in Germany. They charge 0.476€/kWh. Running a single 4090 @ 450W 24/7 would add another ~150€/month.
danielh··on 95%-ile isn't that good (2020)
The easiest way to improve your relative ranking is to find a less competitive event :)

I recently won my age class in a 10k (6th overall out of 147 men). In a very competitive race earlier this year, the exact same time barely put me in the upper half (242/498).

danielh··on MRI brain images become 64M times sharper
Do you have private health insurance?

Because from my personal experience (in Cologne), the interaction goes like this:

  “I need an appointment for an MRI.”
  “Next one I can offer is in 4-8 weeks.”
  “I have private health insurance.”
  “Can you come in today?”
Anecdotally, when I dislocated my shoulder in Sweden in 2006, the obly way to even get an MRI was to pay out of pocket.
danielh··on Ask HN: Whatever Happened To Freelancing?
From my experience in DE, it depends on the company size. Larger enterprises probably will go through an agency, probably to (try to) cover themselves against accusations of false self-employment (Scheinselbstständigkeit).

Anecdotally, the two contracts I had through agencies were still the most lucrative financially, despite the middleman taking a hefty cut, simply because large enterprise pay higher rates.

danielh··on Stupid Security Things (2017)
This needs a [2017]. I naively hope that everyone involved in our industry has learned a lit bit about security in the last 5 years.
danielh··on How to open a safe
The vulnerability is not in the front panel. It‘s the panel on the inside that accepts a code reset command without valid authentication.
danielh··on New York rolling out noise law, listening tech for souped-up speedsters
> "Loud pipes save lives" is nonsense. When a driver is concentrated on visual stimuli, has his windows up and music playing, there are no pipes loud enough to make him notice me.

As a former motoryclist with very loud pipes (and also an open air filter, which is just as bad or worse), I can tell you it‘s not just that. Exhaust noise emitted by a motorcycle is way louder behind the it than in front of it, especially when you and the bike are moving in the same direction. I have no hard numbers to back up this claim, but I once switched bikes with a buddy and while my bike was almost inaudible when I was driving in front of him, I was shocked how loud it was driving 200 m / 1/8 mile behind him.

danielh··on Ask HN: Have you ever sold a domain-name? How was your experience selling it?
No, not yet, but you can bet that I check on a regular basis, although I should know better :)

A little backstory: a friend of mine sold a five letter single word .com about a decade ago for a really low price, IIRC $500. The buyer turned out to be Electronic Arts (through a middleman, obviously) and they used the domain for one of their games.

Every time I was contemplating an offer for the domain, I was worried that I was getting EA'd :) When I saw the domain getting relisted, I felt like that's exactly what happened.

So, to answer the original question, my biggest gripe is probably that price finding is really difficult for non-professional players.

danielh··on Ask HN: Have you ever sold a domain-name? How was your experience selling it?
I recently sold a five letter single word .io domain for 5k, which was the median of the estimated value according to various (free) appraisal services.

The person I sold it to immediately relisted it for 79k. That was a bit irritating.

danielh··on IRS records reveal how the wealthiest avoid income tax
> Which is exactly the reaction those kinds of headlines are fishing for.

Not sure I get your point. Do you want to imply that 100B in capital gains would be preferable over a 100B paycheck?

danielh··on IRS records reveal how the wealthiest avoid income tax
This might come as a surprise to folks who do not own stocks and are not aware of the difference between income and (unrealized) capital gains. According to this article [1] from 2020, about half of American families owned stocks. But only 14% own stocks directly, the rest is through retirement accounts.

The media does their part with sensationalist headlines like "Jeff Bezos got 100B richer during the pandemic". Without some financial literacy, someone might interpret this that someone handed Jeff Bezos a 100B paycheck.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/teresaghilarducci/2020/08/31/mo...

danielh··on Hetzner has banned crypto mining and Chia farming
The CPU is not an issue, it’s the SSDs. Chia mining (or more precisely the creation of plots to farm Chia) is a write-heavy process that will literally wear out SSDs. See https://github.com/Chia-Network/chia-blockchain/wiki/SSD-End...

It might be worth noting that Hetzner is known to use consumer hardware for some of their lower tier offerings and consumer SSDs usually have a relatively low TBW (Terabyte written) rating.

danielh··on Chick Corea has died
It is definitely colloquial and not a word you’d use everyday, but it is in Duden:

https://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/Kummerspeck

danielh··on Testicular Compression Boosts Testosterone (1993)
The title has been editorialized, the study comes to a different conclusion:

> Mechanical compression alone did not explain the rise in serum testosterone, although it may have a contributory role.

danielh··on Improving breast reconstruction surgery with a web-based survey
I followed the link before I read your comment. On mobile, I did not notice that there is any scarring or thought it was just rendering artifacts. I would expect your results to be skewed toward the more symmetrical images. Also, is there any reason why the survey takes five minutes? Why not limit it to 10 images, with the option to keep going? I really like the idea, I hope this feedback is valuable.
danielh··on We deleted the production database by accident
According to the about page, "the employees" consist of one guy working on it in his spare time.
danielh··on German stock trading platform Xetra down, all securities affected
I'm not a financial expert, but I think "börsennotiert" (listed on the stock exchange) is much more common than "kotiert", at least in Germany.
danielh··on Stanford Student Claims to Run Bootleg Covid-19 Testing Lab
Assuming immunity, you could take care of your parents, grandparents and other high-risk people. You’d have to balance the risk of a false-positive test and wrong assumptions about immunity against the risk of someone from a high risk group running errands.
danielh··on Haven: turn old Android phones into security cameras
The difference is that a phone might get hot when the camera is running 24/7 and CPU load is high, e.g. due to motion detection.

To add some anecdata: I had an old iPhone (IIRC a 4s) running as security cam for about 6 weeks. When I returned, the case was cracked due to a swollen battery.

danielh··on Autonomous DeLorean drives sideways to move forward
Elon Musk claimed in a tweet that the roadster can beat a time of 6:44 min on the Nürburgring Nordschleife, which is (currently) 20.832 km long.

The current lap record for street legal cars is 6:40 set by a Porsche GT2RS MR.

The overall record is 5:19.55 set by a Porsche 919 Evo.

F1 last raced the Nordschleife in the 70s. The lap record is 7:06.4, but the track was 22.835 km long back then.

The Roadster might have a chance at beating the lap record for street-legal cars, but physic will make sure that it will not come even close to an overall lap record.

danielh··on Those odd-looking security barriers
According to the technical specifications, the security rating is:

    IWA 14: V/2,500(N1G)/48/90:4.5
    IWA 14: V/7,200(N3C)/32/90:4.8
I interpret that like this:

2,500 kg vehicle traveling at 48 km/h penetrates 4.5 metres

7,200 kg vehicle traveling at 32 km/h penetrates 4.8 metres

The article describes one part of the specification and links to a video demonstrating the other part.

danielh··on Germans Grow Frustrated with Their Slow-Poke Internet
Most of the discussions focus on end-users, here is an anecdote how this affects businesses: my current client recently moved to Cologne, the 4th largest city in Germany. They ordered a broadband connection from Deutsche Telekom three months before the move. As it turns out, Telekom needs SIX months to provide service. This is in one of the top-tier business centers, which was built in 2009.

Depending on your mobile provider, you also only have edge connectivity in most of the building.

danielh··on Ask HN: How can I work towards building a company while employed?
IANAL, but if I'm reading §2 correctly, that only applies to patentable inventions.
danielh··on “Medieval” Diseases Flare as Unsanitary Living Conditions Proliferate
Surprisingly, there are no official statistics on homelessness in Germany. Any numbers you see are not from the federal government, but probably from BAGW, a charitable organization supporting the homeless.

Their estimate for 2016 is 860,000 homeless people (including approximately 440,000 homeless refugees). The number of unsheltered homeless people was estimated to be 52,000. [1]

[1] https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&u...

danielh··on The Rhine waterway risks becoming impassable because of climate change
I don't know about your town, but in Cologne there were massive investments in flood protection after the heavy floods in the 90s. I've been living in Cologne for about 10 years, and almost every year the water gets so high that temporary dams are set up. There are a couple of houses outside the protection area and those have been flooded and reachable only by boat or planks on multiple occasions.
danielh··on The Rhine waterway risks becoming impassable because of climate change
The article starts out in the present tense, which might give a false impression that this is happening right now. In Cologne, where I live, the Rhine river actually just recovered from a minor flood as you can see on this chart:

https://www.elwis.de/DE/dynamisch/gewaesserkunde/wasserstaen...

(Everything above 4.5m is considered a flood)

One side effect of the low water that isn't mentioned in the article is that it exposed multiple bombs and grenades from the second world war.

danielh··on Hetzner DIY Private Networking with Tinc
> Normally you only get one public IP and no private interfaces.

From my understanding, this statement is not quite correct, as Hetzner allows you to set up VLANs:

> With the vSwitch feature, you can connect your dedicated root servers in multiple locations to each other using VLAN via the administration interface Robot.

You probably still want to encrypt the traffic passing through those VLANs.

They also offer the option to install custom hardware, so you might even be able to get a second NIC connected to your own private switch.

danielh··on The Stuxnet worm may be the most sophisticated software ever written
If you read this book purely for its informational value, I agree with your assessment.

That being said, I read it mostly for entertainment and I think the author did a good job of packaging a lot of factual information into a captivating story.

That being said, not all parts are created equal. There are quite a few pages dedicated to looking at the number of centrifuges Iran was installing and amount of gas they enriched, as this were the metrics Stuxnet was affecting. To me, that was as exciting as reading a company's monthly inventory report.

But I guess that's to be expected in a book that tells a true story instead of just being based on true story.

danielh··on The Stuxnet worm may be the most sophisticated software ever written
If this short read piked your interest in Stuxnet, I can recommend the book "Countdown to Zero Day: Stuxnet and the Launch of the World's First Digital Weapon".

It explains in great detail how Stuxnet worked and, which I found the most exciting, how it was discovered and reverse engineered.

danielh··on Datomic: Look at all the things I'm not doing
IANAL, but I‘m pretty sure it is acceptable to delete data within 30 days of receiving a request to do so.
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