Hacker News: FabCH

New comment by FabCH in "Count Binface receives over a quarter of votes in Clacton by-election"

FabCH — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 19:29:06 +0000

Typically, the government takes over a company.

The shareholders or owners may or may not receive compensation.

Presumably a normal(?) interpretation would be that the British government uses whatever eminent domain law it has and it takes over Adels copyright on all her songs and gives her whatever the fair market value of the catalog is.

But because this is a joke candidate, could be anything.

New comment by FabCH in "Ask HN: In your experience, what are sound conventions for e-ink UI development?"

FabCH — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 07:02:25 +0000

Agree. But that is the OPs job then. The difference between good and bad design is that it will make those choices well.

New comment by FabCH in "Ask HN: In your experience, what are sound conventions for e-ink UI development?"

FabCH — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 20:50:37 +0000

I use eInk as my daily driver and do everything including ssh into tmux into vim and code on eInk.

I build all my UIs with Rust and Ratatui. It works very well.

So for web, I think it would translate to:

0) NO ANIMATION. You have like, 0.3 fps. You might poke somebody’s eye out if you animate something.

1) NO SCROLLING. Pagination only.

2) Use actual added visual element to tell the user where their input control / cursor / selection is. Don’t rely on color, font weight etc. Put an asterisk, Unicode arrow or something.

3) Direct(?) action controls. A button should DO something. Don’t give me a button that opens a drop-down that opens a menu to do something.

4) Use the whole screen! Keeping a pixel on/off costs nothing. Only changes do. So any whitespace is just sacrificing screen real estate and forcing more frequent changes.

New comment by FabCH in "The climate benefits of retiring an operational combustion engine vehicle"

FabCH — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 19:22:05 +0000

It seems to me you are not aware you can use dish soap and pry bar, wrench or screwdrivers to mount tires on rims. Enjoy:

https://youtu.be/CbDCDOs3Vr8

New comment by FabCH in "The climate benefits of retiring an operational combustion engine vehicle"

FabCH — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 13:51:29 +0000

I don’t think that a single-moving-piece gas turbine powered cars are currently on the market? And how many are single piston? Go carts and motorcycles maybe, but cars?

And I was using complex as a shorthand for „more things to maintain“.

New comment by FabCH in "The climate benefits of retiring an operational combustion engine vehicle"

FabCH — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 13:46:27 +0000

To be fair, DIY natural gas production from kitchen waste is a thing some people have done. It’s surprisingly doable and produces surprisingly large amount of usable energy.

It can be scaled up.

New comment by FabCH in "The climate benefits of retiring an operational combustion engine vehicle"

FabCH — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 07:23:28 +0000

True. But we don’t have enough synthetic hydrocarbons for the current most important usage: jet fuel.

Might as well drive a quiet, renewable powered electric vehicle and let the jets use the synth.

Or take the train.

New comment by FabCH in "The climate benefits of retiring an operational combustion engine vehicle"

FabCH — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 07:19:47 +0000

Both, I guess. But fine, rotating tires and changing seasonal tires at least is something every car owner should be able to do.

Either way, you need to do both on both ICE and BEV equally.

New comment by FabCH in "The climate benefits of retiring an operational combustion engine vehicle"

FabCH — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 07:17:16 +0000

I stand by my statement. We have passed the point where burning fossil fuels more efficiently helps. If you think that is wild, you should see the wild_fires_ going on.

Going to 100 mpg is still strictly worse than a battery powered by renewables.

New comment by FabCH in "The climate benefits of retiring an operational combustion engine vehicle"

FabCH — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 07:08:24 +0000

You are not comparing complexity to an ICE though. You are comparing to a BEV.

A plug-in hybrid is a much more complex machine than a BEV.

New comment by FabCH in "The climate benefits of retiring an operational combustion engine vehicle"

FabCH — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 03:12:12 +0000

Non-plugin hybrids are pointless in the context of the paper from the OP, since they don’t help with climate change.

New comment by FabCH in "The climate benefits of retiring an operational combustion engine vehicle"

FabCH — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 03:07:11 +0000

It’s mechanical maintenance beyond the skill level of 99 out of a 100 car owners.

New comment by FabCH in "The climate benefits of retiring an operational combustion engine vehicle"

FabCH — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 03:05:02 +0000

I mean, you also need to top up the wiper fluid and clean the floor, but that and tire change is not even maintenance, it’s just part of „use“, no?

I didn’t feel the need to mention something that everyone should be easily doing at home for the cost of materials alone.

New comment by FabCH in "The climate benefits of retiring an operational combustion engine vehicle"

FabCH — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 23:06:22 +0000

Hybrids are the worst of both worlds when it comes to maintenance. They have their benefits and are key to fighting climate change, but mechanically you inherit all the problems from both sides.

There is no way you are driving a 25 year old car without serious maintenance like exchanging the timing belt. Add the frequent oil changes and all other yearly maintenance and it does add up.

Compared to a BEV, where you literally only need to change the break pads, and you may or may not need to change the battery, and the batteries keep outperforming the expected lifespan. BEV are simply mechanically much simpler devices.

New comment by FabCH in "The climate benefits of retiring an operational combustion engine vehicle"

FabCH — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 22:59:20 +0000

As a data point: I’m at year 8 of Model X 100kWh with basically 0% capacity loss. If it exists at all, it’s less than 1-2%, so less than what I can reasonably measure with just the odometer and battery indicator.

Nissan Leaf gave BEV a bad name because it had much worse battery tech. Battery longevity is not a problem for modern, or even decade old cars.

New comment by FabCH in "Discovery Loop"

FabCH — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 17:50:20 +0000

IIRC Sanjay was literally never a manager and Jeff was not a manager until like a decade after MapReduce was built.

And of course they didn’t build it alone, that’s the point of companies and teams.

New comment by FabCH in "Discovery Loop"

FabCH — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 13:57:04 +0000

Jeff Dean invented MapReduce and Bigtable.

Say what you want about their later years, but Dean and Ghemawat deserve their title of engineer.

New comment by FabCH in "Show HN: I'm a 15 Year Old Wannabe Engineer, This Is a Cycloidal Gearbox I Built"

FabCH — Sun, 02 Aug 2026 20:45:43 +0000

FYI - There literally are guilds in some countries regulating who can use the title engineer.

Although they prefer „chambers“ as a name these days.

New comment by FabCH in "GCC steering committee announces AI policy"

FabCH — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 10:30:09 +0000

In most ethical systems existing today: „no, but“

Only if you view it as appropriate measured self-defense against future attacks, which is a viewpoint some people subscribe too.

New comment by FabCH in "Judge Rejects Google's Attempt to DMCA Its Way Out of Being Scraped"

FabCH — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 21:05:38 +0000

Claude Sonnet 5 Medium more or less on the timestamp of the comment:

Prompt: Who won the 2026 World Cup?

Answer: Spain won the 2026 World Cup, beating Argentina 1-0 after extra time in the final at MetLife Stadium on July 19. Ferran Torres scored the only goal in the 106th minute, coming on as a substitute in the 62nd minute. It’s Spain’s second World Cup title, having also won in 2010.

Prompt: Nearby BBQ places open now?

Answer: (a geolocation permission request prompt for the browser followed by) Right in [redacted] both [redacted] (4.6 stars, open until [redacted]) and [redacted] ([redacted]) are close and currently open.

A bit further out but highly rated: [redacted]

Seems like LLM does a good job on those questions…