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sandermvanvliet

674 karma · joined March 25, 2014

Senior Staff Engineer at StackOverflow
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sandermvanvliet··on Disruption with Some GitHub Services – Resolved
As a joke I built an extension to the GitHub CLI called “omens” so you can run “gh omens” before you’re planning to use GitHub and it’ll tell you if it’s likely to work in idiomatic Aussie.

As an example:

$> gh omens

reckon github's about to go full bin chicken

—-

You can find it here: https://github.com/sandermvanvliet-stack/gh-omens

sandermvanvliet··on Gh omens: will GitHub go down?
If you've been hit with Github going down at the worst time like when you're just trying to get your PR merged I've got something for you.

Before you start work you can check for omens that tell you if Github is likely to work or go down.

(Yes this is a joke, it's comic relief more than anything else)

sandermvanvliet··on TLS certificates for internal services done right
I run a reverse proxy that handles the TLS termination for that reason.

Services themselves are constrained to the server, bound to listen on 127.0.0.1 only.

Key is only available to the reverse proxy.

sandermvanvliet··on Windows UI evolution: Clicking an unassociated file
I’ve been buying the same model of Brooks (the Ghost one) for _years_ because they fit well for me and while they release a refresh every other year or so they feel the same to me when I buy a new pair.

Sure hope they keep producing them because finding a different model that works for me would be kind of shit

sandermvanvliet··on Making Claude a Chemist
Waiting for Claude to end up on Derek Lowe’s list of things he won’t work with
sandermvanvliet··on Principles for agent-native CLIs
Is it me or are all these articles about using AI effectively and building for AI just, you know, things that we should have been doing all along?

It feels like most of the “rules” are “don’t be an ass to your consumer”.

sandermvanvliet··on Document poisoning in RAG systems: How attackers corrupt AI's sources
If you think about this in the context of systems that ingest content from third party systems then this attack becomes more feasible.

But then, if you’re inside the network you’ve already overcome many of the boundaries

sandermvanvliet··on The Windows 95 user interface: A case study in usability engineering (1996)
Let me introduce you to the world of _devices for keeping small kids asleep_.

For whatever reason they won’t work when hooked up to a charger and of course the moment you need them most the batteries have gone dead so you must charge…

At this point I can’t help but think that the people who design these things really hate parents

sandermvanvliet··on X-Clacks-Overhead
stackoverflow.com and all stack exchange sites also include X-Clacks-Overhead in the response thanks to yours truly
sandermvanvliet··on Janet Jackson had the power to crash laptop computers (2022)
Not very likely

https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/54400

sandermvanvliet··on You can make PS2 games in JavaScript
1. I heard about nano banana and wanted to try it 2. I’m on my phone so no photoshop or whatever
sandermvanvliet··on You can make PS2 games in JavaScript
Nano Banana to the rescue https://box2.codenizer.nl/cloud/index.php/s/ZYHdsYZ9rdRNM2B
sandermvanvliet··on Give Your Metrics an Expiry Date
I think this should be true for many things, or at least have a fixed future date at which you re-evaluate $thing

For example with Architecture Decision Records, put a 6 or 12 month expiry on them and evaluate to see if they can be renewed, should be changed or replaced with something that covers new insights.

Unfortunately that seems a very unpopular thing to do so I’ve never seen it work and companies end up with “we have always done it like this” type practices

sandermvanvliet··on Building my childhood dream PC
Looking at those pictures made me realise I could _smell_ it…

Got kicked right in the nostalgia I guess

sandermvanvliet··on Our European search index goes live
Most are constitutional monarchies in which the monarch is a head of state with no or very limited political power.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monarchies_in_Europe

sandermvanvliet··on ChatGPT now performs well at GeoGuesser
“This is the gradient of Senegal”
sandermvanvliet··on How much do you think it costs to make a pair of Nike shoes in Asia?
Isn’t this simply taking advantage of what the market is willing to pay?
sandermvanvliet··on Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?
Netherlands indeed. We live downriver from known contamination in Dordrecht and around heavy industry in Rotterdam area
sandermvanvliet··on Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?
Some other downsides:

- The smell… Chicken crap is horrible. Our neighbour has chickens, we have flies. Lots of black flies.

- Bye bye garden… My dad has two chickens (did I mention the smell?) that free roam and absolutely tear up everything looking for a tasty bite.

- Can’t eat the eggs This isn’t necessarily a chicken problem but mostly a problem with chemical industry. We’ve had a lot of PFOA/PFAS contamination and public health advise says to not eat eggs from backyard chickens

sandermvanvliet··on Mission Accomplished? Heat pump adoption has a long way to go
Air con is fairly rare here in NL although you do see more units popping up so it may be getting more popular.
sandermvanvliet··on Mission Accomplished? Heat pump adoption has a long way to go
They work in winter provided there is enough sun.

If there’s no sun you’re looking at a different energy source which typically means electricity so you’re back to the demand problem when the weather is poor regarding renewable power.

sandermvanvliet··on Mission Accomplished? Heat pump adoption has a long way to go
Jedlix had been acquired by Octopus in fact and specifically for the virtual power plant tech + EV integration.

What’s more challenging is that when it comes to EV charging in cities not a lot of people actually have their own charging station and need to use public ones. That means they’re in use all the time and “throttling” them causes availability problems.

One of the challenges would be to get people to charge their cars during the day when there usually is a power surplus (especially with solar when the weather is decent) but that’s a behavioural change that takes time.

sandermvanvliet··on Mission Accomplished? Heat pump adoption has a long way to go
This definitely also is a problem for the reasons you point out: density.

Have heard a few stories about it and it’s also a quite common topic in HOA meetings when someone wants to place an aircon unit.

sandermvanvliet··on Mission Accomplished? Heat pump adoption has a long way to go
What hurts adoption here in NL from what I hear (from installers so grain of salt etc etc) is that there aren’t enough people to do installs and then later maintenance.

Having looked at getting a heat pump set up in our house (built in 1902) is that even with the extra insulation we put in, the energy needs of a heat pump are huge which means more electricity is needed and what with congestion happening locally is getting to be a problem to supply all houses with enough oomph to run heat pumps, electric stoves and charging EV’s.

Even with people having solar installations this remains a problem because we’ve had almost three consecutive weeks with heavy cloud cover and fog as well as hardly any wind. So renewable power generation was down across the board.

Fact of the matter is, we adopted many energy hungry solutions without providing the necessary capacity up front.

I worked at a startup (Jedlix) where we built a platform to optimise EV charging specifically to deal with these problems (demand shifting) but there are so many hurdles to get this rolled out at a large enough scale to matter.

Car OEMs don’t provide the necessary APIs, (local)grid companies won’t provide usage data necessary to steer on so billing/compensation becomes impossible removing the incentive for consumers.

It seems so obvious that this would solve a real problem but even though the technology exists it’s not going anywhere. Maddening

sandermvanvliet··on HD Hyundai set to debut production 14 ton hydrogen wheeled excavator
I don’t think that’s how hydraulics work. You need to move oil to move the piston the other way (lowering/releasing) which means turning a pump, consuming energy.
sandermvanvliet··on Italy's privacy regulator goes after DeepSeek
But the number of incidents with head injuries is increasing because more (elderly) people are riding e-bikes for longer than they would have a normal bike. As reaction times slow with age this is not a great combo with a faster bike which is a cause to more incidents.

There is a big push currently for getting helmet rules adopted similar to how Denmark did this

sandermvanvliet··on UK's hardware talent is being wasted
There is the SeedCapital route: https://english.rvo.nl/subsidies-financing/seed-capital
sandermvanvliet··on Garmin Connect services were down
It’s a binary format but many converters exist for it.

Obtaining the file is as easy as connecting the cable to the device and plugging in to a USB port and accessing the mounted drive

FIT format details: https://docs.fileformat.com/gis/fit/

Converter: https://github.com/dodo-saba/fit2gpx

sandermvanvliet··on Magic/tragic email links: don't make them the only option
As far as I know there’s nothing.

The alternative is to send an OTP in the mail and tell the user to enter that.

In that way there is no link to auto confirm.

However, if you do that ensure that you have a way to jump straight to the page to enter the OTP because (looking at you Samsung) the account registration process can expire or the app is closed (not active long enough) and your user is stuck

sandermvanvliet··on The Swedish cabin on the frontline of a possible hybrid war
Because it would need to be pretty beefy in order to stop an anchor dragged by a big(-ish) ship and would be uneconomical.

If it does get damaged then repair would also be more expensive than current methods

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