Hacker News Reader

plextoriaon If you (still) work at Twitter and you can code, head to the HQ now

The problem is not that Elon is getting rid of the dead weight, but in the fact that he seems to be alienating the good talent in the process.

plextoriaon Volkswagen develops hydrogen car that can travel 2k kilometers on one tank

Hydrogen can be created using electricity and water. Who will create a new battery once yours dies out?

plextoriaon Germany extends lifetime of all 3 remaining nuclear plants

It would have made tens of thousands of coal industry workers jobless and CDU/SPD needed those votes. Yikes

After the closure of the nuclear plants, the share of electricity generated from coal INCREASED

plextoriaon Germany extends lifetime of all 3 remaining nuclear plants

At least the LNG terminal construction is sped up and “0 LNG” will hopefully not hold true for long.

plextoriaon Germany extends lifetime of all 3 remaining nuclear plants

It’s true that Germany might have enough electricity, but we are sharing with EU. And it so happens that in the biggest neighbor, France, half of the nuclear reactors are stopped for maintenance and the French might need to import considerable amounts of electricity this winter.

plextoriaon Germany extends lifetime of all 3 remaining nuclear plants

This is the best explanation I’ve heard so far about Germany’s position on nuclear. It is based much more on emotions than on rational arguments.

plextoriaon Hospitals, Administrative buildings and Army buildings marked as “Funeral homes”

Please take this down, this could be a trick to confuse the aggressor

plextoriaon Not-a-Linux distro review: SerenityOS is a Unix-y love letter to the ‘90s

pkgsrc support is worked on by a dev: https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity/pull/9268

I also gave a go at cross-compiling pkgsrc for SerenityOS. Will resume if I find some free time in the future.

plextoriaon Using NetBSD’s pkgsrc everywhere I can

pkg_rolling-replace -u

plextoriaon German Professor Who Is Hardcore Star Wars Fan Repaints Observatory as R2-D2

Why would they? This is free advertisement for Disney.

plextoriaon Fortunately, I don't squash my commits

Unless there's a way to achieve the same thing without global variables. In any case, the decision to use them can be documented in a comment or a commit message.

^: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.identitym...

plextoriaon Fortunately, I don't squash my commits

`squash` is a tool and it's neither good nor bad; it needs to be applied where it makes sense. The title is indeed click-baity. It would have been more interesting to read that the bug/mistake was caused as a result of squashing. It's not the case and I take issue with the way the author describes his commits.

The problematic commit is described "Extract CreateTokenValidationParameters method", without an explanation of why the refactoring is necessary or what problem is it solving. It looks like it is improving code readability, but it doesn't go as far as fixing the more glaring issue with global variables. Other commit messages seem to follow the same pattern.

In other words, the commit:

- has minor code readability improvements

- contains no useful message for the future programmer (why is it needed?)

- provides no new functional feature/improvement/business value

- is later found to contain a bug

I find squash/rebase/cherry-pick useful when reviewing my work and deciding what should go in the current pull-request. For example, a refactoring might be postponed for later if it is deemed too time-consuming or irrelevant to the current PR. Or, one can squash logically related commits together, add a useful message and merge them separately. The resulting commit log will still be bisect-able.

For beginners: there's a very good article with tips for Git Commit Messages[0] that helped me have git histories I enjoy reading.

[0] https://chris.beams.io/posts/git-commit/#why-not-how

plextoriaon A startup is testing a subscription model for search engines

I would like to pay for web search, but per usage. I hate subscriptions because they are a pain to keep track of and I end up paying for stuff I don’t use, like Netflix.

plextoriaon Moldova Shuts Down Bootleg Helicopter Factory

Exact location of the factory, for the curious: https://www.google.com/maps/place/R%C4%83cule%C5%9Fti,+Moldo...

There used to be ruins of an unfinished facility in that place, walked past it many times as a kid. Never imagined they would build helicopters in there.

plextoriaon Moldova Shuts Down Bootleg Helicopter Factory

I was born in the village next to the bootleg factory. Heard about the factory a couple years ago when they were looking to hire mechanics. I couldn't believe they decided to open it illegally and found the whole story hilarious. The story is still unfolding and the owner claims that the factory was in fact a research facility and no helicopters were sold. I don't believe that :)

The facility is located in the commune of Răculești, district Criuleni. It's a couple of kilometers away, but not in the disputed territory of Transnistria as falsely claimed in another comment. The owner and the factory workers on the hand, are residents of Transnistria. Why had they decided to open the factory on the "legal" side of the border - I have no idea. Transnistria is notorious for illicit activities including drugs and guns smuggling and would have been the perfect location for a bootleg factory.

Anyway, Moldovan Prosecutor's Office is known to take bribes and this "shut down" sounds like a deal gone wrong between prosecutor mafia and the factory owner.

plextoriaon German solar and wind are triple the cost of French nuclear, last half as long

> if our direct neighbor country France has one of their so-low-carbon nuclear plants blow up, we are just as inhabitable, for eternity

Do you have a verifiable source for this? The impact sounds greatly exaggerated to me.

plextoriaon Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (October 2019)

  Location: Berlin, Germany
  Remote: Yes, Preferrable
  Willing to relocate: Maybe
  Technologies: Kubernetes, Terraform, AWS, Kong, PHP
  Résumé/CV: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1itmxpXz_uTJauTSk2_-Lsm98HI7IKNXx/view?usp=sharing
  Email: cirnatdan@gmail.com

plextoriaon China ‘Is the Only One in the Race’ to Make Electric Buses, Taxis and Trucks

We never got rid of them in Moldova! Trolley lines must still be running in most post soviet countries.

plextoriaon Germany's FlixBus to Take on Greyhound in the United States

> Flixbus bought MeinFernBus a couple of years ago

It's a common misconception. More precisely, FlixBus merged with MeinFernBus. At the time MFB had the bigger share of the market. FlixBus was chosen as a name mainly because it sounds better to foreigners.

plextoriaon Search for $1B Stolen from Moldova Leads to Ex-Council Flat in Scotland

The stamps in questions are corporate stamps, not government's: http://ichef-1.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/2390/production... You can have those made anywhere.

plextoriaon Letter from Transnistria

Moldova did not have a professional army at the time because it was in the process of leaving the Soviet Union.

The only reason Transnistria exists is for Russia to exert influence on the politics of Moldova. Read the "Primakov memorandum of 1997": "3. Transdniestria shall participate in the conduct of the foreign policy of the Republic of Moldova - a subject of international law - on questions touching its interests. Decision of such questions shall be taken by agreement of the Parties."

In other words, Russia participates in the conduct of the foreign policy of the Republic of Moldova on questions touching its interests. An independent Transnistria will not offer the same advantages, and an Russian exclave between Ukraine and Moldova would hardly prove itself economically or militarily viable.

plextoriaon Letter from Transnistria

You're wrong, the Russians intervened when the rebel forces where losing ground against constitutional forces of R. of Moldova. And while doing so they invented stories of a "genocide". Basically, if you follow the Donbass events, the propaganda is the same.

plextoriaon The story of .io

And they are also quite pricey for locals too, given our fragile economy. We're not some inhabited island in the ocean.

plextoriaon Replacing Middle Management with APIs

Then what would be the right way forward? We've known capitalism is broken since at least the times of Karl Marx.

plextoriaon Ask HN: Who is hiring? (February 2015)

Same here... Very cool projects!

plextoriaon WhatsApp doesn't understand the web

Does Telegram have an app for J2ME?

plextoriaon Taking PHP Seriously

No, it does not compile to C++, but to bytecode. HHVM's predecessor converted PHP to C++, though.

plextoriaon Lua support in the NetBSD kernel

I want to get involved and experiment with NetBSD, but I don't feel comfortable in C, nor C++ for that matter.

plextoriaon Linux only needs one 'killer' game to explode, says Battlefield director

You'll be able to stream your games from your Windows PC to your living room SteamBox

plextoriaon How Snowden's Email Provider Tried To Foil The FBI Using Tiny Font

I can't use Paypal in my country