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dx034

6,160 karma · joined July 20, 2016

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dx034··on Germans turn to balcony solar panels to save money
It would work anywhere, but only with small amounts of current. In Germany the max is set to 800W. Won’t affect the grid much and standard wiring can easily handle 800W flowing „backwards“.

Germany has many rented apartments compared to eg the US. If you own a house, those systems make little sense. But for Germany, where many rent an apartment, it’s attractive for many. And the only way for many to ever profit from solar.

dx034··on New LLM optimization technique slashes memory costs
But not just for AI, for all their data center operations.
dx034··on Ukraine's three nuclear power plants have restored electricity production
Or, with the wrong weather, nuclear fallout heading towards Moscow.
dx034··on Air traffic failure caused by two locations 3600nm apart sharing 3-letter code
> The Level 2 engineer was rostered on-call and therefore was not available on site at the time of the failure. Having exhausted remote intervention options, it took 1.5 hours for the individual to arrive on-site to perform the necessary full system re-start which was not possible remotely.

Which shows that sometimes, remote isn't a viable option. If you have very critical infrastructure, it's advisable to have people physically very close to the data center so that they can access the servers if all other options fail. That's valid for aviation as well as for health care, banks, etc. Remote staff just isn't enough in these situations.

dx034··on Air traffic failure caused by two locations 3600nm apart sharing 3-letter code
From the text it sounds like it looked up if a code was in the flight plan and at which position it was in the plan. It never looked up two codes or assumed there code only be one, just comparing how the plan was filed.

I'm sure there'd be a better way to handle this, but it sounds to me like the system failed in a graceful way and acted as specified.

dx034··on Air traffic failure caused by two locations 3600nm apart sharing 3-letter code
But that wouldn't help you here. The flight plan will come in with the code and you'll still have to resolve that to your keys.
dx034··on ChatGPT now on chat.com
Transferwise makes sense to me. They used to be just about transferring money abroad. By now, they offer full bank accounts including card payments. I guess they dropped the transfer to make people aware that they’re a proper bank now.
dx034··on Germany to send out survey, mandatory for males, about willingness to fight
And sent back by fax.
dx034··on Defibrillation devices save lives using 1k times less electricity
I just did a training course and for the ones we used it was still two on the front. Only for children it's front and back.
dx034··on ChatGPT Search
As a website owner, I have an incentive to provide access to the Google crawler because of the visitors they send me. They've started to show more content directly, but a fair amount of people still click through to websites.

It looks to me like ChatGPT Search hides links much more. Is there any incentive for website owners to allow access to ChatGPT?

dx034··on What is the point of an online conference?
Yes, a lot gets lost in an email vs. video. I'm not saying it has to be a live meeting, but videos of execs talking about strategy often make their ideas much clearer than a written text.

And live has the big advantage that it cannot be re-recorded, so it's more natural and not as rehearsed as a recorded video.

dx034··on $2 H100s: How the GPU Rental Bubble Burst
Since most applications aren't latency sensitive, space and power can be nearly free by setting up the data center in a place where it's cold, there's nearly free electricity and few people live. Leaves you with cost for infrastructure and connectivity, but I guess electricity prices shouldn't be the issue?
dx034··on Cognizant found guilty of discriminating against non-Indian employees
Not true. I‘ve been at several companies that self host Jira. With the amount of critical data and processes in Jira, it can be comforting to have it on-prem with no one else being able to access the server.
dx034··on Houston-area residents enter sixth day without power, air conditioning
But Europe has frequent floodings, they don't seem to be an issue with buried power lines.
dx034··on How random are TOTP codes?
Absolutely, takes me less than 10 seconds. And the process is transparent. Passkeys don't really seem to be faster.
dx034··on Ask HN: Freelancer's Dilemma – Client Won't Pay Despite Clear Agreement
As Spain is part of the EU, it should at least be good for the EU.
dx034··on How random are TOTP codes?
I don't like passkeys. I'm not sure if I'm using it wrong, but it feels like entering a TOTP is so much faster and easier than using passkeys. It was always easy to enter a 6 digit code and have some back-up codes printed somewhere. Passkeys might be superior in some ways, but feel much harder to use. But then again, I'm also not an average user.
dx034··on How random are TOTP codes?
My employer uses alphanumeric 2 factor codes and I'm so certain that they have a bias towards some letters (mostly y and z). I know I'm probably wrong and it's probably because they appear so rarely in real words, but I can't shake the feeling they aren't random.

Only problem is that I don't have the algorithm. I started writing down all codes I got but since I only get 5 a week, it's a long process. I'll probably switch jobs before I have valid results.

Not that it would change anything, but I'd be really curious how biases in those codes could appear.

dx034··on Sony Is Killing the Blu-ray, but Physical Media Isn't Dead Yet
Too bad 4k projectors are still so expensive. I bought my 1080p projector 8 years ago and it seems like not that much has changed since then when it comes to prices. 4k projectors are still much more expensive than comparable TVs.
dx034··on Proton launches its own version of Google Docs
My biggest issue with Backblaze B2. It’s so much effort to get my invoice each month. I don’t get why companies send out billing emails but don’t just attach the invoice or insert a link directly to the invoice.
dx034··on GitHub is preparing for IPv6 support for Github.com
Many internet users don't even know what the word firewall means. And there are a lot of devices with unpatched software. Obviously NAT shouldn't be seen as a firewall, but for many consumers it's pretty much the only line of defense.

I don't know if ISPs without NATs automatically deploy firewalls, but would hope so. IPV6 is harder to scan, but once you know a device's IP address (e.g. from web logs), it'd be easy to exploit older devices.

dx034··on Go: What we got right, what we got wrong
I'd disagree with most of that, but the panic in goroutines really hits home. It's so annoying to remember implementing recover in every goroutine started to avoid crashing your application. I don't get why there's no global recover option that can recover from panic's in goroutines as well.
dx034··on Can a pill prevent deaths from venomous snakebites?
They can't give pain meds in the US? I believe in most of Europe, there's always a doctor on board of rescue helicopters, so they routinely administer drugs on board or on site of the accident.
dx034··on 1.1.1.1 lookup failures on October 4th, 2023
I love the visualisations. It's really hard to make visualisations that are easy to read, look pretty and are still technically accurate. Cloudflare really excels at that.
dx034··on 1.1.1.1 lookup failures on October 4th, 2023
I don't think that statement makes sense here. In what way is the user of 1.1.1.1 the product? And for cloud services in general, they mostly tend to be subscription or usage based. In both cases, the user is clearly the customer.

I get the "you're the product, not the customer" for social networks or ad-based search engines, but certainly not for cloud products.

dx034··on Cisco Acquires Splunk
Graylog looks like a good competitor. Certainly won't scale as well, but I've had good experience with it.
dx034··on ChatGPT Isn't Coming for Your Coding Job
I'm completely with you. But 60 metrics for management to track programmers? That honestly doesn't sound like a great work environment.
dx034··on Don't use Discord as your Q&A forum
It's not intuitive but hasn't changed in a very long time. It takes me next to no time to create a return label and even for returns after 30 days, navigating to the chat, asking for a label and receiving it rarely takes longer than 5 minutes.

They've never refused a return I asked for which has frequently happened with other shops.

I really want to support local shops, but for any product where I'm not sure if I will have to return it, I usually use Amazon because of their return policy.

dx034··on Organic Maps
Not always, I've had that exact situation and the flat number was in all systems. All houses in my postcode had several entries for flats and as far as I can tell, they all only had one box.
dx034··on A plot to steal the secret Coke can-liner formula
The materials used don't have to be secret, often it's the way to manufacture that's kept secret.

It's similar with banknotes. The materials used is public knowledge (and parts of it patented), but manufacturing is a secret to avoid counterfeiting.

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