Hacker News Reader

rompicon Magic Earth: OSM based map and routing with crowd sourced traffic data

Shameless, but related, plug for NUNAV (I work for the company behind it, but not on this product): If you are located in Europe you might like to try NUNAV Navigation as well, which uses a collaborative routing based approach to distribute traffic.

iphone: https://apps.apple.com/de/app/nunav-navigation/id1193133974?...

android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nunav.play

rompicon StabilityAI cofounder says CEO tricked him into selling stake for $100

Could be a "peppercorn" as described in

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peppercorn_(law)

rompicon Nitter is working again

RSS does not work?

rompicon I created Clippy [video]

As far as I remember it wasn't for word only. At least the dog (there also was a cat and I think a robot) were used as the windows file search companion as well.

See https://youtu.be/lnOxTJwTmcc

rompicon Ask HN: Side projects making less than $2k MRR, what's your project?

I run a website to create sociograms online: https://cliq.at

Its predecessor was basically hacked together for a company retreat while stranded at schiphol airport for a whole day.

It has quite some usage, but basically only covers its hosting costs.

rompicon My Hardest Bug Ever (2013)

My favorite one: The company I once worked for used an outdated version of sqlite (3.8.6) in one of their products. The databases used got bigger and bigger and in a very big project one of the "already known to be slow"-queries took more than an hour on my laptop making the tool unusable. On a quiet day, I was able to save the temporary table used as part of the process and run the problematic query against it in an isolated fashion.

The query returned an extremely high number of results and when I discovered this I questioned my SQL-fu, my sanity and my trust in computers.

I found that we were hit by a bug that was fixed 6 years before I discovered it (https://sqlite.org/src/info/6f2222d550f5b0ee7ed). Sqlite's query planner assumed that a field with a not null constraint can never be null, which isn't the case for the right hand table in a left join.

I fixed it by adding a not null check in the query and then later by updating the library. After that the 1 hour query ran in ~700 ms.

rompicon Where do stolen bikes go?

At least in Austria that's not how it works.

The new "owner" will keep the bike as he has bought it in good faith. The shop will claim that it cannot check every used bike. The rightful owner could try to get money from the person who stole it (if found), but they most likely don't have any money.

It's the perfect crime and the reason why we cannot have nice bikes. People are literally sleeping with their expensive bikes in a room.

rompicon Ask HN: Something you’ve done your whole life that you realized is wrong?

You need this calculator: https://comfort.cbe.berkeley.edu/?eyJ0YSI6MTgsInRyIjoxOCwidm...

rompicon The Untold Story of SQLite (2021)

I think it was due to EXPLAIN that I found out what's happening.

At the same time there have been roughly 60 release notes that mention performance since 3.8.6, so these came for free with the update: https://www.sqlite.org/changes.html

rompicon The Untold Story of SQLite (2021)

My favourite random sqlite story: The company I once worked for used an outdated version of sqlite (3.8.6) in one of their products. The databases used got bigger and bigger and in a very big project one of the "already known to be slow"-queries took more than an hour on my laptop making the tool unusable.

On a quiet day, I was able to save the temporary table used as part of the process and run the problematic query against it in an isolated fashion.

The query returned an extremely high number of results and when I discovered this I questioned my SQL-fu, my sanity and my trust in computers.

I fixed it by adding a not null check in the query and then later by updating the library. After that the 1 hour query ran in ~700 ms.

This faster run time also helped with smaller projects and in the end allowed extending our test suite considerably.

Tldr: Keep your dependencies up to date.

rompicon Ask HN: What sub $200 product improved your 2022

same here. it stressed me to not be able to vacuum when I had time due to the fact that the battery did not last. Now I'm on top of things again.

rompicon Ask HN: What sub $200 product improved your 2022

New battery for our Dyson. Should have bought one way earlier (old one was almost 4 years old). Went with the original one even though that's more expensive.

I'm still using the old one during the week as it only takes a few minutes to swap.

rompicon Ask HN: Why isn't remote work advertised as a pro environment initiative?

For austria: https://www.umweltbundesamt.at/news201221-1

The result is a share of 25.8% (short-term) to 39.3% (long-term) of all employed persons in Austria who could in principle work from home on a permanent or temporary basis.

By overestimating the work-related passenger kilometers, this results in a savings potential of about 300 kilotons of CO2 equivalents per year, if about a quarter of all employed persons in Austria work from home for 40 % of the working time (or 2 out of 5 working days).

Due to undesirable rebound effects, such as an increasing distance between home and work, induced traffic as a result of freed-up capacity, or increased capacities or increased leisure mobility, this potential can increase to 90 kilotons of CO2 equivalents per year.

rompicon Ask HN: Why isn't remote work advertised as a pro environment initiative?

I asked myself the same thing and I'm afraid the effect is not as big as expected (in relation to other emissions).

From https://www.agora-verkehrswende.de/veroeffentlichungen/wende... For Germany:

The climate effects of home office were estimated for 40 percent of the workers, each with two home office days per week, were estimated to save 5.4 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent per year.

This corresponds to 18 percent of percent of the emissions from commuting to work or 4 percent of the of total passenger transport emissions (Büttner and Breitkreuz 2020).

rompicon Show HN: America – Road Trip Simulator