Hacker News Reader

the_why_of_yon Systemd is a suite of basic building blocks

Because firstly, it had a broken architecture.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/upstart/+bug/406397/comments/21

https://bugs.launchpad.net/upstart/+bug/447654/comments/6

Secondly, Canonical required copyright assignment for any contribution to Upstart, and Lennart/Kay decided that if they basically have to substantially rewrite it to fix the broken architecture, they better do it in a new project with no copyright assignment barriers.

See the comments in this thread by Upstart author and former Canonical employee Scott James Remnant:

https://web.archive.org/web/20140928104327/https://plus.goog...

Had the CLA not been in place, the result of the LF Collab discussions would have almost certainly been contributions of patches from +Kay Sievers and Lennart (after all, we'd all worked together on things like udev, and got along) that would have fixed all those design issues, etc.

But the CLA prevented them from doing that (I won't sign the CLA myself, which is one reason I don't contribute since leaving Canonical - so I hold no grudges here), so history happened differently. After our April 2010 meeting, Lennart went away and wrote systemd, which was released in July 2010 if memory serves.

the_why_of_yon Google will buy half the electricity from one of Finland's nuclear power plants

> The EU price varies by renewables production.

This may be technically true at the moment, but the underlying reason for the high prices is fossil fuels: when renewable generation is low, natural gas peaker plants are generating, and these have the highest cost of any generation source, and by the merit order rules under which commodity markets such as electricity operate, the highest source price sets the price of the commodity.

The obvious and affordable mitigation for high prices is to build out massive battery storage capacities so that natural gas plants are needed far less often.

the_why_of_yon Google will buy half the electricity from one of Finland's nuclear power plants

China added 315 GW of solar and 120 GW of wind capacity in the year 2025.

There is a lot of hydro generation deployed (1455 GW) but only 30 GW capacity added worldwide in 2025, and 200 GW added worldwide during last 10 years.

Total geothermal capacity is 15 GW worldwide in 2025.

https://www.irena.org/Publications/2026/Mar/Renewable-capaci...

the_why_of_yon US diesel hits record $6 a gallon on Iran supply shock

Both of your statements are technically true (the cancelled pipeline was called South Stream).

Also true is that another pipeline called Balkan Stream connects to Turk Stream to transport the Russian gas into Bulgaria, Serbia, and Hungary, and went into operation in 2021.

https://n1info.rs/english/news/balkan-stream-gas-pipeline-op...

the_why_of_yon US diesel hits record $6 a gallon on Iran supply shock

Orange Man was elected in 2015.

Europeans decided to construct Nord Stream 2 to completion (finished 2021, but never certified for operation).

Nord Stream 1 was shut down by Russia in 2022.

Turk Stream pipeline (from Russia to Bulgaria) finished construction/began operation in 2020.

the_why_of_yon Carbon-aware electricity pricing, measured daily on 38 grids

Spending 19 billion € over 18 years to build 1.65GW Flamanville 3 is not quite obvious to me.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_(nuclear_reactor)#Flamanvi...

Edit: compare this with China: they added 315 GW of Solar capacity in a single year (2025; see page 34 of the PDF).

https://www.irena.org/Publications/2026/Mar/Renewable-capaci...

(You can't compare nameplate capacity directly, but it can be safely assumed that 2 orders of magnitude more is ... actually more)

the_why_of_yon International investment and local rules push prices up faster than supply

Congress did improve the situation with the Corporate Transparency Act in 2020, but then Trump became president again and simply announced that the law will no longer be enforced, and now what is left of the Republican party wants to repeal it altogether.

https://newrepublic.com/article/211855/republicans-making-wo...

the_why_of_yon Tracing a powerful GNSS interference source over Europe

Russian Armed Forces have practically demonstrated a range of at least 1200 km, see this news report that was linked from Wikipedia.

https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/russia-us...

There's more interesting stuff on Wikipedia; this gives the impression that both Russia and USA wanted to exit the treaty because China wasn't bound by it or any similar treaty and thus has been stockpiling exactly these kind of missiles for a long time now, so the treaty puts both Russia and USA at a disadvantage. Then follows some theatrics where Russia and USA point finger at each other while never talking about their true motivation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermediate-Range_Nuclear_For...

the_why_of_yon Tracing a powerful GNSS interference source over Europe

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novator_9M729

the_why_of_yon Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

What happened in Spain is that they joined the Euro currency, and this caused a massive boom from 2001-2007 where GDP more than doubled in only 6 years. This was mostly fueled by capital transfers from other Eurozone countries, seeking higher returns than in their home country.

Of course this rate of growth proved unsustainable: in 2008 the (Spanish) real estate bubble burst and this caused bank bail outs, massive unemployment (rates around 25%), and put an end to GDP growth for many years, exacerbated by the fact that Spain did no longer have its own currency to devalue in order to regain international competitiveness.

At the time the bubble burst, government debt in Spain was at a bit more than 40% GDP, with a budget surplus, far lower than for example the "responsible" Germany at more than 60%.

Now what does any of that have to do with "socialists"? If anything, it's a cautionary tale about badly designed currency zones and financial markets misallocating capital.

the_why_of_yon Russia Poisons Wikipedia

Did that article also mention how Nuland gave cookies to the riot police on Maidan square?

https://archivist.substack.com/p/in-kyiv-nuland-handed-cooki...

the_why_of_yon Russia Poisons Wikipedia

> What public state speculation about Russian interference in anything ever was substantiated?

Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference In The 2016 Presidential Election

https://www.justice.gov/archives/sco/file/1373816/dl

the_why_of_yon SystemD is of out of control. The Best Minimal, Modern, Linux alternative

That's not even factually correct, systemd doesn't verify anybody's age, it just provides a DBus API to store any date the user enters, in case the OS provides some UI on top of it.

https://blog.bofh.it/debian/id_473

the_why_of_yon America's Geothermal Breakthrough

Because it saves the have-nots 300 dollars a year, it's a transfer from the poor? Thank you for explaining, that was not obvious to me.

the_why_of_yon America's Geothermal Breakthrough

Moving the goalposts.

the_why_of_yon America's Geothermal Breakthrough

Australian households will be able to access free electricity for three hours every day, in an effort to encourage energy use when excess solar power is being fed into the grid.
The federal government scheme will require retailers to offer free electricity to households for at least three hours in the middle of the day, when there is often more electricity generated than is being used, leading to very cheap or even negative wholesale prices.

Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen said the scheme would share around the benefits of solar panels, including to those without panels or who rented their homes.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-03/energy-retailers-offe...

the_why_of_yon IEA: Solar overtakes all energy sources in a major global first

The majority of the subsidies are implicit, in the form of negative externalities that are not priced in.

But I really should locate a more recent version of this report...

https://www.imf.org/en/publications/wp/issues/2025/12/20/und...

In 2024 they found $725bn in explicit subsides, plus $6.7tn in implicit subsidies.

the_why_of_yon IEA: Solar overtakes all energy sources in a major global first

Subsidies for fossil fuels in 2020 were $5 trillion according to IMF Working Paper:

https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2021/09/23/Sti...

the_why_of_yon France's government is ditching Windows for Linux, says US tech a strategic risk

There are now "loyalty tests" for those who apply to positions at the FBI, to be hired you have to state that the "patriots" on Jan. 6 2021 were the rioters attempting a coup, not the Capitol Police defending the constitutional transfer of government power.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/02/08/...

But technically you are correct, of course. Trump never demanded that VP Mike Pence be hanged, the rioters he sent to Congress did.

the_why_of_yon EFF is leaving X

My bad, I posted below the wrong parent, now I can't delete it.

the_why_of_yon EFF is leaving X

https://www.techdirt.com/2022/12/07/hello-youve-been-referre...

the_why_of_yon Author of "Careless People" banned from saying anything negative about Meta

Ms Wynn-Williams has also filed a whistleblower complaint with the US markets regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), alleging Meta misled investors - which Meta also denies. The BBC has reviewed the complaint.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cq5zyq0250wo

the_why_of_yon Author of "Careless People" banned from saying anything negative about Meta

Facebook has always moderated (in those languages where they do moderate at all) according to policies, and politicians are exempt.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/09/facebook-confirm...

Joel Kaplan was hired as the VP of global policy at Facebook in 2014, and he was hired for DEI reasons, i.e., specifically because he was Republican.

Before his role in the GWB White House, he participated in the Brooks Brothers riot that stopped the Florida vote recount in 2000.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/img-src-images-joelk...

the_why_of_yon GabeN Is Shitting Yacht Money into Flatpak and You're Still Arguing Init Systems

If you look at Apple / Google mobile platforms, these are the requirements for modern desktop apps:

1. providing a build environment for app developers to build something that can run on any distro

Both Flatpak and Snap solve this by providing a SDK; for Snap there is one SDK built out of Ubuntu packages, for Flatpak there is a choice of various options, most built on the Freedesktop.org SDK (Gnome/KDE), plus some independent ones. AppImage provides nothing to solve this problem.

2. providing a runtime environment that conveniently integrates the app on users' desktops

Flatpak and Snap solve this via integration into Gnome Software, KDE Discover and similar UIs; AppImage also solves it in a way by being just a single file that the user clicks on.

3. sandboxing to keep users safe

Flatpak provides sandboxing via Bubblewrap, which works on any Linux distro. Snap provides sandboxing mostly via AppArmor, which requires (last I checked) out-of-tree Linux patches, and only works fully on Ubuntu. AppImage does not provide sandboxing, but the expert user can manually run an AppImage with firejail to sandbox it.

4. a convenient way for users to find applications to install

Flatpak has Flathub as a vendor-independent central app store with volunteer reviewers, and also provides the option to self-host apps conveniently. Snap has Snap Store as a central app store that is run and monetized by Canonical, and it's not possible to set up an independent alternative. AppImages are typically hosted directly by the upstream project, but now there is also an AppImageHub.

5. automated updates

Flatpak and Snap provide this automatically from Flathub/Snap Store; AppImages may be auto-updatable in several different ways but it requires the application author to implement support for it.

the_why_of_yon F-15E jet shot down over Iran

Why would Ukraine mine their own cities? Unlike Russia, Ukraine signed the Ottawa Treaty that bans anti-personnel mines in 2006.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottawa_Treaty

A more likely explanation is that butterfly mines were dropped by Russian armed forces; see Human Rights Watch:

Russian forces have used at least seven types of antipersonnel mines in at least four regions of Ukraine: Donetsk, Kharkiv, Kyiv, and Sumy.

There is no credible information that Ukrainian government forces have used antipersonnel mines in violation of the Mine Ban Treaty since 2014 and into 2022.

https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/06/15/background-briefing-land...

https://www.scotsman.com/news/world/ukraine-conflict-likely-...

Of course this is all tradition to bring rebellious minorities back into Russkiy Mir, just look at how Grozny looked in 2000. That was Putin's first war, started when he was prime minister.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Grozny_(1999%E2%80%9... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_war_crimes

the_why_of_yon Iran-linked hackers breach FBI director's personal email

https://www.justice.gov/archives/sco/file/1373816/dl

https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/docu...

the_why_of_yon Iran-linked hackers breach FBI director's personal email

That can't be the first one. Colin Powell used a personal email account during the GWB administration.

https://www.npr.org/2016/09/08/493133413/colin-powells-ways-...

Of course that pales in comparison with the practices of the GWB White House:

https://www.newsweek.com/2016/09/23/george-w-bush-white-hous...

the_why_of_yon Western carmakers' retreat from electric risks dooming them to irrelevance

A big chunk of the $5 trillion yearly subsidies for fossil fuels is for ICE car fuels. See IMF Working Paper for year 2020.

https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2021/09/23/Sti...

the_why_of_yon Head of FCC threatens broadcaster licenses over critical coverage of Iran war

arbitrary, adjective:

2 a: not restrained or limited in the exercise of power : ruling by absolute authority

  b: marked by or resulting from the unrestrained and often tyrannical exercise of power

the_why_of_yon Head of FCC threatens broadcaster licenses over critical coverage of Iran war

Are you sure that these people were "gloating" about private companies moderating arbitrarily? In the US, this is simply an obvious consequence of the first amendment, as many people have indeed pointed out.

The same people may personally hold wildly different beliefs as to whether this legal situation is desirable or not.

And in European countries, where there is no first amendment preventing the government from interfering with social media moderation policies, the situation is often different, and courts have required social media companies to publish speech which they had intended to moderate; see for example:

https://www.tribunaux-rechtbanken.be/sites/default/files/med...