Hacker News: benjymo

New comment by benjymo in "Bunny Database"

benjymo — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 15:38:57 +0000

Some ISPs have bad peering with Cloudflare (e.g. Deutsche Telekom). Not Cloudflares fault but it makes it a bad choice if your customers are in Germany.

And Cloudflare is an american company.

New comment by benjymo in "In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels"

benjymo — Fri, 23 Jan 2026 14:30:09 +0000

They unilaterally cut supply through NS1 though and before the invasion deliberately kept gas storage in Germany empty.

It's not all of europe but maybe this is what the the other person is referring to.

New comment by benjymo in "In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels"

benjymo — Fri, 23 Jan 2026 14:19:11 +0000

> No one has even proposed that they have maybe even possibly have perhaps thought of an idea to address transport and agriculture related emissions.

That's weird. In europe trains, trucks, light trucks busses and cars are bascially solved with EVs. There are even some early beginnings for heavy construction and agriculture machinery but it doesn't seem to be mass market yet. Electric ferries also start to pop up for smaller distances.

The biggest issues seem to be ships and planes. Not sure there are any good solutions there.

New comment by benjymo in "In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels"

benjymo — Fri, 23 Jan 2026 14:15:20 +0000

Is this really a lot of people that use resistive heating?

Also at least it saves electricity during summer when you don't want to dump even more heat into the room.

As a side, from my experience LEDs last significantly longer than incadescant LEDs. Maybe it's something to do with the power grid fluctuating more in certain areas?

New comment by benjymo in "In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels"

benjymo — Fri, 23 Jan 2026 14:04:21 +0000

Do you have any sources for this?

I'm also living in Germany and heating is in no way considered a "luxury" nor have many people started burning wood. I don't even think many people would have the possibility to burn wood for heating in Berlin of all places.

New comment by benjymo in "In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels"

benjymo — Fri, 23 Jan 2026 13:57:42 +0000

Batteries are relatively cheap and ideal for shifting solar power generation from noon into the evening.

New comment by benjymo in "In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels"

benjymo — Fri, 23 Jan 2026 13:54:07 +0000

Don't forget wind.

For example in germany, wind is 31.4% of production, solar is 16.8%. For the EU it's 18.1% for wind and 11% for solar.

Wind is often producing more during the morning/night where solar falls short.

New comment by benjymo in "In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels"

benjymo — Fri, 23 Jan 2026 13:37:10 +0000

There's a recent case of Wacker. They tried to build their own windpark in Germany but this got shot down by residents. Now they are moving to a chinese industrial area that is connected to windparks and battery storage providing cheap energy.

New comment by benjymo in "EU Energy labelling will apply to phones and tablets from June 2025"

benjymo — Thu, 24 Apr 2025 14:02:01 +0000

You can check the label here https://energy-efficient-products.ec.europa.eu/product-list/....

It's the electricity usage when running the TV. There is e.g. quite a difference between LED and OLED.

TVs is also quite a large part of electricity usage in a household. Maybe 75 - 150W running a few hours a day. You have to keep in mind that not many people have PCs, NAS, etc. running 24/7.

New comment by benjymo in "EU Energy labelling will apply to phones and tablets from June 2025"

benjymo — Thu, 24 Apr 2025 13:53:34 +0000

When I last bought a car 5 years ago, the used car marked for EVs was very small and EVs were very expensive. Since then, they became much cheaper, there are a lot of new models and a lot of used cars on the market.

I'm not planning to buy a new car though, as mine is only 8 years old and still working fine. I'll check again when repairs start to get more expensive, maybe in a few years.

New comment by benjymo in "Busy Bar"

benjymo — Thu, 10 Apr 2025 15:01:52 +0000

The video for the first use-case is kinda funny. Instead of telling them to come back in a few minutes, just raise your hand and point at the timer.

New comment by benjymo in "[dead]"

benjymo — Fri, 28 Mar 2025 14:12:59 +0000

Getting rid of these biasis is mostly what DEI is.

New comment by benjymo in "Germany concerned over F-35 'kill switch' amid US policy shifts"

benjymo — Tue, 11 Mar 2025 10:51:18 +0000

The government just announced an increase in pension of 3.74%. I think they'll do ok.

New comment by benjymo in "Germany concerned over F-35 'kill switch' amid US policy shifts"

benjymo — Tue, 11 Mar 2025 10:45:48 +0000

I think they went for the F-35 to carry US nuclear weapons. At the time, I read that planes need extensive certifications for this including giving US access to critical components. Obviously no european arms manufacturer should give these to the US.

New comment by benjymo in "Germans turn to balcony solar panels to save money"

benjymo — Thu, 09 Jan 2025 09:01:36 +0000

If rates go negative this isn't relevant.

You can get dynamic contracts based on the day ahead price in Germany. You pay a negative price for the electricity there. You still have to pay a transmission fee and taxes, so the actual end price is almost never negative though.

Of course sometimes you also pay much more than normal contracts.

Also without merit order, you'd still pay close to the most expensive source on the spot market. It's a consequence of the open grid where demand and supply has to match and price is not fixed.

New comment by benjymo in "Skype Credit is no longer available"

benjymo — Mon, 09 Dec 2024 11:28:30 +0000

That really sounds awful, especially if you don't speak the language.

If they only go by phone number I'd guess this could have happened with any phone. Companies regularily reuse phone numbers.

New comment by benjymo in "The Onion buys Infowars"

benjymo — Thu, 14 Nov 2024 14:45:04 +0000

He knowingly rallied his supporters to harass the victims and their families. That's a bit more than "someone ranting on the internet".

New comment by benjymo in "WiFi4EU initiative provides free Wi-Fi in public spaces across Europe"

benjymo — Sun, 06 Oct 2024 15:29:47 +0000

Looking at a few spots around me, it seems it includes some hotspots in public buildings and museums and so on. So on the map it shows e.g. 30 hotspots in a museum, which seems OK as you probably need that many for coverage indoors with the amount of people typically there.

New comment by benjymo in "Why is it so hard to build an airport?"

benjymo — Fri, 22 Mar 2024 15:39:39 +0000

It also should be connected to the national rail network so long distance trains go there directly. It greatly reduces time to switch trains when you're not directly from the nearest city.

Vienna did this with their airport.

New comment by benjymo in "Nanofont3x4: Smallest readable 3x4 font with lowercase (2015)"

benjymo — Mon, 18 Mar 2024 10:48:10 +0000

It's surprisingly readable if I zoom into the images. On 100% it's too small for me, but a modern computer or smartphone screen is probably not the use case.