Hacker News: hans_castorp

New comment by hans_castorp in "German implementation of eIDAS will require an Apple/Google account to function"

hans_castorp — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 21:13:30 +0000

German citizen as well.

So with a Jolla phone and Linux laptop, I am left in the cold.

New comment by hans_castorp in "Good CTE, Bad CTE"

hans_castorp — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 11:57:46 +0000

> If you want something that is more like actual recursion (I.e., depth-first), Oracle has CONNECT BY which does not require the same kind of tracking. It also comes with extra features to help with cycle detection, stack depth reflection, etc.

All that is supported with CTEs as well. And both Postgres and Oracle support the SQL standard for these things.

You can't choose between breadth first/depth first using CONNECT BY in Oracle. Oracle's manual even states that CTE are more powerful than CONNECT BY

New comment by hans_castorp in "Better JIT for Postgres"

hans_castorp — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 11:46:54 +0000

Ah, didn't see the caching part.

Plans for prepared statements are cached though.

New comment by hans_castorp in "Better JIT for Postgres"

hans_castorp — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 11:37:44 +0000

> and it has no way to serialize a query plan to some form that can be shared between processes

https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/parallel-query.html

"PostgreSQL can devise query plans that can leverage multiple CPUs in order to answer queries faster."

New comment by hans_castorp in "FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE"

hans_castorp — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 06:45:20 +0000

This is simply not true.

Some people are investigated because they spread lies, insults and threats. Things that would be investigated (and punished) as well, if done "off line".

The freedom of speech does not mean "freedom to harass, threat or insult people".

The oppression of free speech seems to be happening much more in the USA, where you are not allowed to criticize the politics of the ruling party any more.

New comment by hans_castorp in "Using PostgreSQL as a Dead Letter Queue for Event-Driven Systems"

hans_castorp — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 12:04:36 +0000

Postgres does index de-duplication. So it's likely that even if you change the strings to enums, the index won't be that much smaller.

> Furthermore, why have two indexes with the same leading field (status)?

That indeed is a valid question.

New comment by hans_castorp in "Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is coming to Android"

hans_castorp — Sun, 25 Jan 2026 10:48:08 +0000

Can we please stop calling it "sideloading"? It's simply "installing" software on hardware that I own, and that I should have full control over.

New comment by hans_castorp in "Unconventional PostgreSQL Optimizations"

hans_castorp — Wed, 21 Jan 2026 14:17:04 +0000

No relational database implements syntax highlighting. The tools you use to write and execute SQL queries implement that.

New comment by hans_castorp in "The super-slow conversion of the U.S. to metric (2025)"

hans_castorp — Wed, 21 Jan 2026 12:33:42 +0000

Or use a hand as a 5-bit integer, then you can count to 31 :)

New comment by hans_castorp in "Radboud University selects Fairphone as standard smartphone for employees"

hans_castorp — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 12:06:53 +0000

I was going to refer to the new Jolla Phone, but then I realized that it doesn't have a headphone jack.

New comment by hans_castorp in "Just the Browser"

hans_castorp — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 22:25:33 +0000

It does if you look into the README for Firefox

https://github.com/corbindavenport/just-the-browser/tree/mai...

New comment by hans_castorp in "I replaced Windows with Linux and everything's going great"

hans_castorp — Sat, 10 Jan 2026 22:29:53 +0000

Graphene only runs on Pixel phones

New comment by hans_castorp in "Late night pizzeria nearby The Pentagon has suddenly surged in traffic"

hans_castorp — Sat, 03 Jan 2026 11:45:55 +0000

So what's his "Drill, baby, drill" about? He thinks renewable energy is the something sent by the anti-christ. The only energy source he accepts is burning fossil fuels or nuclear power.

New comment by hans_castorp in "Late night pizzeria nearby The Pentagon has suddenly surged in traffic"

hans_castorp — Sat, 03 Jan 2026 10:32:35 +0000

The convicted felon in the White House doesn't give a shit about drug criminals - he just pardoned one. He is after Venezuela's oil.

New comment by hans_castorp in "Full Unicode Search at 50× ICU Speed with AVX‑512"

hans_castorp — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 15:36:02 +0000

Would be cool if that could be integrated into Postgres :)

New comment by hans_castorp in "Avoid UUID Version 4 Primary Keys in Postgres"

hans_castorp — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 12:50:33 +0000

With the latest Postgres version (>= 18) you do NOT need a plugin

New comment by hans_castorp in "Avoid UUID Version 4 Primary Keys in Postgres"

hans_castorp — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 12:49:40 +0000

I have seen a lot of people sort by (generated) integer values to return the rows "in creation order" assuming that sorting by an integer is somehow magically faster than sorting by a proper timestamp value (which give a more robust "creation order" sorting than a generated integer value).

New comment by hans_castorp in "Koralm Railway"

hans_castorp — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 14:31:33 +0000

For those that can read German, here is a little article that explains some of the obstacles over time:

https://www.derstandard.at/story/3000000299789/traum-vom-sue...

New comment by hans_castorp in "State Department to deny visas to fact checkers and others, citing 'censorship'"

hans_castorp — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 07:21:58 +0000

I don't have any "social media" accounts. I guess they won't believe me, and would deny me a visa based on the assumption that I am lying.

New comment by hans_castorp in "Designing a Mechanical Calculator"

hans_castorp — Fri, 28 Nov 2025 10:18:43 +0000

The German Wikipedia page[1] about the Z1 also contains a quote from Kurt Pannke, who Zuse told about his plans for the computer.

"Oh, Mr Zuse, there is absolutely nothing left to invent in the field of calculating machines. But you are a nice young engineer, I'll give you 1,500 Reichsmarks and when you have come up with something, show it to me." (Translated by Deepl)

I like the "640K ought to be enough" vibe of that statement :)

[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z1_(Rechner)#:~:text=Ach%2C%20...