Hacker News: Ringz

New comment by Ringz in "Installing Every* Firefox Extension"

Ringz — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 13:46:28 +0000

Extremely interesting and also humorously written. Considering that Firefox once changed its plugin system to become more secure, you can still cause quite a lot of damage with plugins. By now I get by with very few plugins. I think everyone should try to use as few as possible.

I have the feeling there are even more plugins for Chrome, right? That would certainly be worth exploring too.

New comment by Ringz in "Has electricity decoupled from natural gas prices in Germany?"

Ringz — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 13:40:44 +0000

No. In Germany, rooftop solar is usually economically attractive, not prohibitively expensive. Especially on a decent roof and if you use a fair share of the power yourself. Verbraucherzentrale(1) says PV systems for private homes are “usually worthwhile” economically, and that self-consumption is the key driver of profitability.

(1) https://www.verbraucherzentrale.de/wissen/energie/erneuerbar...

New comment by Ringz in "Help Keep Thunderbird Alive"

Ringz — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 13:32:18 +0000

I tried for a long time to work with Thunderbird, but what kept bothering me was that I couldn’t simply define keyboard shortcuts. In the end, I landed on AERC and created my own extreme Vim-style keyboard configuration (the idea is to look at the list of mails like looking at a buffer in vim) for it. I’ve never been this fast when it comes to email.

https://aerc-mail.org/ https://github.com/rafo/aerc-vim

New comment by Ringz in "Has electricity decoupled from natural gas prices in Germany?"

Ringz — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 14:22:10 +0000

Building nuclear power plants still takes the longest. Especially if you want to produce the same amount of energy that will be needed in the coming years. Currently, nuclear power plants supply about 9% of the electrical energy used worldwide — and it has taken us from 1950 until today to get there. Why should it suddenly be faster and more elegant now? We also don’t have the money to pursue both in parallel. Yes, I know China and to some extent South Korea build nuclear power plants faster. But even there, some plants have taken up to eleven years to build, and others that were built quickly only achieve a capacity factor of 60%. At least in China’s case, many of the conditions cannot be directly transferred to Western countries. Space, social and political circumstances, and other factors are simply not the same everywhere as in China. Moreover, even China, whose share of nuclear energy in its electricity mix is around 4.5%, is finding that renewables are much faster and cheaper.

New comment by Ringz in "Has electricity decoupled from natural gas prices in Germany?"

Ringz — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 14:14:10 +0000

Nuclear power plants produce CO₂ emissions. The only point at which they do not emit CO₂ is the electricity generation itself. Everything that happens before and after produces CO₂. The amount of CO₂ is debatable, even the major meta-studies (UNECE 2022) point out that across all collected studies, parts of the lifecycle emissions are consistently missing because, drumroll, the nuclear power industry is so non-transparent. Important factors include the mining of uranium ore. If the concentration of uranium ore in the rock is low and the more nuclear power plants are built and the more ore is needed, the sooner such deposits will have to be tapped, mining becomes increasingly CO₂-intensive. The same applies to enrichment. Both processes would greatly benefit if renewable energy were expanded to the point where uranium mining and enrichment could be operated with lower CO₂ emissions.

New comment by Ringz in "Has electricity decoupled from natural gas prices in Germany?"

Ringz — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 14:01:46 +0000

You can install solar panels over areas that are already developed — rooftops (lol), parking garages, highways, and so on. Some agricultural land even benefits from being covered by solar panels. This has great potential and was first researched in the United States. China is covering water reservoirs with solar panels, which has the additional positive effect of reducing evaporation. And then there is the incredibly large amount of energy that the North Sea, far from any beaches or islands, could provide in consistent wind energy.

New comment by Ringz in "Has electricity decoupled from natural gas prices in Germany?"

Ringz — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 13:43:10 +0000

But 2011 was not the year the nuclear power plants were shut down. However, that is the year your previous commenter was referring to. So what exactly are you trying to say? Incidentally, the electricity that the nuclear power plants had supplied was not replaced by coal power plants, but by renewable energy.

New comment by Ringz in "Has electricity decoupled from natural gas prices in Germany?"

Ringz — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 13:37:36 +0000

The SCBOE score is a good idea. However, in the case of Germany, it is often overlooked that the power grid dating from the 1970s, which was built as a one-way system from large power plants (nuclear power plants) to consumers, would have needed to be rebuilt regardless. A large share of the grid costs would therefore have been passed on to consumers even without the transition to renewable energy. Additionally, Germany is located in the center of Europe and is thus a major transit country for electricity. Here too, corresponding capacities would have had to be expanded. The expansion of a European power grid also means that the disadvantages of renewable energy variability can be offset. As the SCBOE system also shows, the individual power plant still accounts for the largest share of costs. Many of the additional factors can actually go down in prices as renewables scale up (nuclear has still to prove that this could work there too). In that regard, LCOE remains relevant.

New comment by Ringz in "Has electricity decoupled from natural gas prices in Germany?"

Ringz — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 13:23:26 +0000

Maybe 1-4% lower.

New comment by Ringz in "Show HN: Email.md – Markdown to responsive, email-safe HTML"

Ringz — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 07:56:44 +0000

If only there was a faster way to „select all“!

New comment by Ringz in "Entso-E final report on Iberian 2025 blackout"

Ringz — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 13:37:52 +0000

I use this model all the time. It's very helpful for explaining the multifactorial genesis of catastrophes to ordinary people.

New comment by Ringz in "Sub-$200 Lidar could reshuffle auto sensor economics"

Ringz — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 10:22:22 +0000

What? Please explain!

Someone Is Using AI to Exploit Lonely Writers on Substack

Ringz — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 09:20:39 +0000

Article URL: https://modernshakers.substack.com/p/someone-is-using-ai-to-exploit-lonely

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46957209

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by Ringz in "How London became the rest of the world’s startup capital"

Ringz — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 10:42:43 +0000

I would say [even] Berlin is better than London.

New comment by Ringz in "The struggle of resizing windows on macOS Tahoe"

Ringz — Sun, 11 Jan 2026 22:19:02 +0000

Yep. I hate it. Its easier to open the Finder and use the shortcut to open the application folder.

New comment by Ringz in "The Multi-Trillion-Dollar Battle for Your Attention Is Built on a Lie"

Ringz — Sat, 10 Jan 2026 16:16:49 +0000

https://archive.is/ViTYl

New comment by Ringz in "Uncut Reviews: Kraftwerk – Reissues"

Ringz — Sat, 10 Jan 2026 16:10:34 +0000

„Sadly, the remaster is a fiasco. The soft tones of “Computer Love” become sharp, the wide spaces of “Home Computer” contract into tunnels, and “Pocket Calculator” bears down on us like a spiked ceiling in a horror film. Equally poor is the remastered Radio-activity, where atmospheric crackles and hisses have been removed by noise reduction software. For pity’s sake, they’re part of the music! Autobahn, Trans-Europe Express and The Man-Machine have less sound-quality issues, but are all inferior to the original EMI CDs. Anyone planning to buy the 8CD …The Catalogue, would be well-advised to sample an individual remaster first.

Hütter is within his rights to tinker with Kraftwerk’s canon as he wishes, but a botched Kraftwerk remaster series is a bitter disappointment nevertheless. It’s not such an issue, thankfully, with the remaining three LPS: the lean, industrial Techno Pop (a re-titled Electric Café with added track “House Phone”); The Mix (1991), a surprisingly addictive re-imagining of 11 classic tracks in a dancefloor context; and Tour De France (2003), a cycling fetishist’s techno headphone soundtrack with a gorgeous five-note motif. For those who’ll never sport the yellow jersey, have no fear. It also works its magic if you’re on an exercise bike.“

Uncut Reviews: Kraftwerk – Reissues

Ringz — Sat, 10 Jan 2026 16:10:34 +0000

Article URL: https://www.uncut.co.uk/reviews/uncut-reviews-kraftwerk-reissues-5459/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46566876

Points: 3

# Comments: 1

New comment by Ringz in "How Markdown took over the world"

Ringz — Sat, 10 Jan 2026 08:37:12 +0000

The overlap between these Markdown formats is actually larger than with many other formats. Possibly even larger than HTML’s overlap back when MS Explorer was the dominant browser.

New comment by Ringz in "Efficient method to capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere"

Ringz — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 15:47:09 +0000

Indoor is always higher ppm (how much depends on many parameters) without proper ventilation. „Proper“ should include a „Heat exchanger“ thus you don’t need to reheat fresh air.