Hacker News Reader

tiloleboon Surgeon general: No 'value' to locking people up over marijuana use

Curious what's the opinion of the HN community on decriminalization and legalization of marijuana.

It seems accepted as an inevitable progress.

But seeing the damage alcohol and tobacco does to society, I wonder what good it will bring, except from an economic PoV.

tiloleboon Tour of the server room in the Airbus 350

I wish I did not see this video. Knowing that the plane I'm flying in relies on an actual server room is super scary...

tiloleboon Fastmail accounts blocked in Russia, here's what we know

More like $5/month. Or $50/year

tiloleboon America has a drinking problem

You're trivializing alcohol and drug consumption in a dangerous way.

Binge drinking and other drugs consumption are very serious youth problems leading to lifelong health issues or even death.

I'm also pretty sure there is a correlation between youth and adult consumption.

Finally, Germany has a higher alcohol consumption per year per person than the USA

tiloleboon The media's lab leak fiasco

This article explains in very detailed, yet understandable way why the lab leak is a serious hypothesis:

https://nicholaswade.medium.com/origin-of-covid-following-th...

tiloleboon The Awful German Language (1880)

That has been my experience too.

I was always an average foreign language student, until I started to learn German living in Berlin and to speak English at work.

Now I'm fluent in both languages. I forgot most of the German rules I learned during my first months in Berlin taking crash courses. I just know sentence structures because I heard them and used them so often. Like a child, really.

tiloleboon “About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”

It's very easy to find jokes material without making fun of other people.

You just have to have that mindset. Make fun of yourself instead of others, for instance.

tiloleboon “About one-third of Basecamp employees accepted buyouts today”

Then you are for sure not familiar with the way Basecamp has been advertising itself as a company for the past decade.

tiloleboon How to find a job as Software Developer in Germany

Very curious about your role and the company profile.

I'm also in Berlin with a 6 figure comp but I have 10+ years experience (DevOps role) and the company is not German.

tiloleboon Dating Sites Are Not Built for Men

I'm very sceptical of the author's advice to use social media like Facebook and Twitter for dating.

Especially Twitter, were women are routinely harrassed by estranged men and will publicly shame them in return.

I don't think it's a good dating strategy at all.

tiloleboon Software Infrastructure 2.0: A Wishlist

This is an interesting question.

I've seen 1:1 copy of prod databases running in test environments. Very convenient from a dev perspective but a no-go for many customers.

I've also seen test envs using fixtures only. More privacy-compliant, but it makes it harder for in-depth testing or to uncover weird edge cases.

tiloleboon Terraform 0.15 General Availability

Same. I went through a puppet 2->3 migration and also through a terraform 0.11->0.12 update.

The puppet migration was definitely more painful, because of the entangled code.

tiloleboon Ask HN: I feel my career is at a dead end. Any advice on what could I do?

I work with a Principal engineer in my team, who used to be the team lead. He works on IC level only, doing a mix of architecture and operations work, with some interviewing on the side.

No direct reports. There are multiple Principals in the same situation. No direct reports, they just usually work on a scope that involves multiple teams,but they don't lead them.

tiloleboon Ask HN: I feel my career is at a dead end. Any advice on what could I do?

There are companies out there who value the experience of senior software engineers (and I mean real seniority, not the job title that you update to senior after 3 years in the field).

Such companies will have a career ladder up to Principal or Distinguished engineer. You will have to share your knowledge, of course, but without having to give up coding and do people management, if you don't want that.

I'm 39, happy infrastructure engineer, individual contributor. I tried being team lead for some years, but didn't really enjoy people management. That's okay.

Charity Majors wrote some great posts about that:

- https://charity.wtf/2019/09/08/reasons-not-to-be-a-manager/

- https://charity.wtf/2019/11/23/questionable-advice-after-bei...

- https://charity.wtf/2020/09/01/the-official-authorized-list-...

- https://charity.wtf/2020/09/06/if-management-isnt-a-promotio...

tiloleboon All my servers have an 8 GB empty file on disk

Or you could use "tune2fs -m" to temporarily reduce the percentage of reserved blocks

tiloleboon Is that ship still stuck?

The pandemic needs to stop ASAP so we can throw a Burning Man Middle East Edition next to that ship.

Days of partying in the desert, opening random containers, driving little excavators. What a blast it would be!

tiloleboon Suez canal blocked by a massive ship

https://twitter.com/AgenciesLeth/status/1374864596192927746?...

"The #grounding of M/V EVER GIVEN in the #SuezCanal has caused transit delays. Current traffic situation is as follows:

71 vessels at Suez Anchorage awaiting NB transit

79 vessels awaiting SB transit of which 34 are anchored at Great Bitter Lake & 45 at Port Said Outer Anchorage"

150 vessels blocked

tiloleboon Suez canal blocked by a massive ship

Re-floating operation has been temporarily suspended and will resume Thursday morning.

tiloleboon Suez canal blocked by a massive ship

https://twitter.com/AgenciesLeth/status/1374836312860151808?...

As of 2330 (GMT+2) M/V EVER GIVEN, no. 5 in the 23rd of March NB convoy remains #grounded in the #SuezCanal.

Vessel no. 6, 7 & 8 will be assisted by tugs back to Suez anchorage area, clearing space for M/V EVER GIVEN to be towed out the same way as she entered once re-floated. https://t.co/ltXEyRZtqX

Looks like it's going to take a while...

tiloleboon Suez canal blocked by a massive ship

1st dredger "10th of Ramadan" has arrived, 2nd dredger "Mashhour" should be on the scene very soon too.

The tide is at its highest level of the day. Expecting some action in the next hour!

tiloleboon Suez canal blocked by a massive ship

https://www.suezcanal.gov.eg/English/Resources/Pages/Floatin...

The Baraka1, which is already on the scene, is described here as the most powerful tug in the Middle East. It would probably take a while to bring in more powerful tugs.

tiloleboon Suez canal blocked by a massive ship

Tide should apparently play a major role in unblocking the vessel, according to

https://twitter.com/AgenciesLeth/status/1374708535603433472?...

Live local tide: https://www.tide-forecast.com/locations/Suez-Egypt/tides/lat...

tiloleboon Suez canal blocked by a massive ship

https://twitter.com/AgenciesLeth/status/1374634054096723970?...

2 dredges and a larger tug underway to help unblocking the Ever Given.

tiloleboon Suez canal blocked by a massive ship

https://twitter.com/AgenciesLeth/status/1374674714854105093?...

The Twitter account of this transit services agency provides some updates.

I already saw multiple French news sites stating that the canal has been unblocked, but apparently that's not true.

I wonder where that news came from.