Hacker News Reader

jsingletonon We need to talk about carbon

TL;DR: Shopify commits to spending at least $5 million USD annually to fight for our environment.

http://fairphone.refr.cc/jamess

I'm not sure they are supported in the US but it looks like you are well aware of that.

jsingletonon Toyota is trying to put solar panels on a Prius to charge battery during the day

This already exists, although not for Teslas. It's called V2G (vehicle to grid) and it's already happening in the UK with the Nissan Leaf.

Not only is this a backup for a rare outage but it makes you money by charging when power is cheap and selling back when expensive. Occasionally the price of power goes negative and you are paid to charge.

https://electricinsights.co.uk/ is good for exploring the energy data and pricing.

jsingletonon Fairphone 3 Teardown

I'd say a Fairphone is better supported than a Nexus (no experience with Oneplus). For example, the Nexus 5 is no longer supported, even by lineage (https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/hammerhead/), although they do say:

> A build guide is available for developers that would like to make private builds, or even restart official support.

Edit: I should add that although I've already ordered my Fairphone 3 I've not had a chance to actually test it out yet. If anyone is interested I can post a 25 EUR discount referral link?

jsingletonon Fairphone 3 Teardown

And that's better than even Google's own devices. Old Nexus models don't get patches any more.

jsingletonon Lake found at 11,000 feet in the Alps proves climate change is real

You're right. We don't need more evidence, we need more action.

Get involved with the strikes on the 20th. You can even put your website on strike https://digital.globalclimatestrike.net/ (got some big names signed up already).

Here are some good resources to combat science deniers but it's probably better to focus on people in the middle who know it's happening but have yet to take action.

https://skepticalscience.com/

https://xkcd.com/1732/

jsingletonon Digital Climate Strike

Simply add this line of JavaScript to any page on your site to join the Digital #ClimateStrike:

  <script src="https://assets.digitalclimatestrike.net/widget.js" async></script>

https://digital.globalclimatestrike.net/#website-assets

jsingletonon A Raspberry Pi-powered live train station sign

Cheers, nice to know it's appreciated. Someone actually asked me to change it to say "Good Service" the other day! Whoosh...

There is a ~mirror at https://unop.uk/tube/ in case CloudFlare go down. Although as I discovered recently, this doesn't help as the API runs on them too! There's another API I could use as a backup but it's not as good.

For the curious: https://reactube.com/

jsingletonon A Raspberry Pi-powered live train station sign

I also found that a binary notification is all I needed. I just want to know if everything is running OK or if there are delays. So I built this a few years ago: https://unop.uk/train-disruption-indicator-with-a-blinky-tap...

jsingletonon A Raspberry Pi-powered live train station sign

Hey, been a while. Glad things look to be going well.

This job looks awesome. Is it full time? I assume it is but worth asking.

jsingletonon A Raspberry Pi-powered live train station sign

Yeah, it is a nasty API for the live departures. There are much worse though!

I wrote a proxy to make it easier to use (https://github.com/jpsingleton/Huxley). Been meaning to port it to .NET Core when I find the time. There is also an old Python client here: https://github.com/HackPartners/darwinrest

You can find many more resources in the community (https://wiki.openraildata.com/ https://github.com/openraildata https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/openraildata-talk). We're pretty friendly, say hi.

jsingletonon Ask HN: Who Here Is Working to Fix the Environment?

Impact Makers are running a hackathon (https://fixathon.io/). Info deck if you want to sponsor: http://bit.ly/fixathon-sponsor

jsingletonon Ask HN: Who Here Is Working to Fix the Environment?

Attend your local authority meetings and ask questions. You might enjoy it!

https://unop.uk/get-involved-in-democracy/

jsingletonon Cutting through the smog: making an air quality bot with Haskell

This looks like an interesting project: https://learn.pimoroni.com/tutorial/sandyj/enviro-plus-and-l...

This sensor also looks good: https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/adafruit-sgp30-air-qualit...

jsingletonon Antarctic sea ice – rapid decreases, reduced to lowest area in 40 years

There are some projects listed on those pages but not all. Here's an incomplete list to give you an idea.

https://climatechoice.co/ (plenty of small issues up for grabs https://github.com/impactmakers/climatechoice/issues)

https://offset.earth/

https://fixathon.io/ (more sponsorship opportunities available, get in touch. https://bit.ly/fixathon-sponsor)

https://medium.com/clean-coffee

jsingletonon Average Global Temperatures since 1850

A few idea for individuals in this community.

https://climateaction.tech/

https://techimpactmakers.com/

https://fixathon.io/ <-- looking for sponsorship if any tech companies are feeling generous (https://bit.ly/fixathon-sponsor)

jsingletonon A critical step to reduce climate change

Another option for getting involved is: https://climateaction.tech/

"Technology professionals from many companies — such as Google, Facebook, Tumblr, Etsy, Github, SoundCloud, Lyft and many more — are coming together under the banner of ClimateAction.tech to find ways to accelerate solutions to climate change."

There are lots of interesting projects and support in the slack workspace.

jsingletonon A critical step to reduce climate change

You are correct that this is a social, economic and political problem. Nothing new needs to be invented.

However, tech solutions can help build the necessary public demand and political will. This is the software side that people here will find more familiar than heavy engineering.

It's not just Gates that can help. We all can do something as tech pros. Join the team here: https://climateaction.tech/

jsingletonon Britain passes one week without coal power for first time since 1882

Also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruachan_Power_Station

Worth a visit https://www.visitcruachan.co.uk/ and if you go by train it's discounted

jsingletonon Britain passes one week without coal power for first time since 1882

There are loads of great resources that display this data.

https://www.electricitymap.org/ provides a global map view.

https://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/people/alex.rogers/gridcarbon/ has apps that calculate the carbon intensity.

https://carbonintensity.org.uk/ is my current favourite. It's an API that provides GB data broken down regionally and with a forecast powered by ML.

I wrote more here: https://unop.uk/your-planet-needs-you/

If you want to get involved start here: https://climateaction.tech/

jsingletonon Hacker News Meetups

We found meetup.com to be bad value for our meetup too so we moved away

https://unop.uk/starting-a-tech-meetup/

jsingletonon Ask HN: What VPN service are you currently using?

The reason this warning will appear in Firefox is that it does not use the OS certificate store and it uses a built-in store. The corporate MitM cert will have been added to the OS root cert store so other browsers will trust it but it probably hasn't been added to the Firefox one.

jsingletonon Ask HN: What VPN service are you currently using?

I use ProtonVPN (and ProtonMail) for business but I haven't been that impressed so far. For personal use (e.g. BBC abroad) I just use OpenVPN on a Raspberry Pi.

I recently wrote a full review on my blog (so I won't repeat it all here): https://unop.uk/protonmail-review/

jsingletonon What are the biggest threats to humanity?

It's going to be tough, not technically but politically. We're not doomed just yet but serious action is required right now. Something on the scale of Facebook and Google getting behind it and using their reach to motivate people.

I do think individual actions can add up, particularly when we use the magnifying power of tech. I wrote a lot on this recently and I can't fit it all in a comment so I'll just link to them at the end.

I'd strongly encourage anyone in tech who cares about this to get involved in https://climateaction.tech/ where there are some very active slack channels. Lots of knowledgeable people on there and some of us old cleanweb peeps too.

It boils down to a three step process:

- Understand

- Organise

- Amplify

There's a long post for each on my blog and a bonus one.

https://unop.uk/how-to-help-with-a-big-global-problem-as-a-t...

jsingletonon New Dell XPS 13 developer edition now available

I'm not bothered about the bottom camera as I don't use it. The specs are pretty good otherwise if you max it out.

However, the battery life is terrible after upgrading Ubuntu LTS from 16 to 18 as it doesn't sleep properly. I wrote a more detailed review of it here (2018 version, not the new one just released): https://unop.uk/dell-xps-13-ubuntu-review/

jsingletonon Microsoft’s Azure DevOps: An Unsatisfying Adventure

The new UI was useful when it was opt-in and we were migrating from on-prem TFS to what was then called VSTS. It made it easy to tell which system you were using.

I'm more used to the old UI but some features are not easily discoverable. I wrote some posts on how to build branches and pull requests as it's not obvious: https://unop.uk/build-and-release-all-pull-request-merge-res...

jsingletonon Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?

This was the main inspiration for the posts and I refer back to it. Software is everywhere and can absolutely make a difference. Hopefully this will inspire others too.

jsingletonon Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?

This is true, and many more companies too. What I was getting at though was that tech companies have lots of influence but choose not to address this challenge and instead focus on advertising or other areas.

jsingletonon Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?

I mean both, first 'prevent a two-degree shift' then 'transition to an zero-net-emissions economy' and finally even negative emissions. This was almost solved in the 1980s and wasn't but that's a sunk-cost fallacy. The chips are down and we are where we are, so let's roll forward and get this solved.

jsingletonon Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?

There is lots of action still required to reach your realistic scenario. Don't give up. You can help.

Hopefully this can motivate people in an optimistic way: https://unop.uk/how-to-help-with-a-big-global-problem-as-a-t...