Hacker News: macbr

New comment by macbr in "Real-time estimates of animals consumed by humans worldwide"

macbr — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 19:01:16 +0000

You don’t have to keep feeding the chicken/pigs/etc. if you stop eating chicken/pigs/etc. Most livestock is fed food specifically grown to feed livestock.

New comment by macbr in "A battle over Canada’s mystery brain disease"

macbr — Sun, 11 Jan 2026 10:55:25 +0000

Creutzfeldt-Jacob can be tested for using the RT-QuIC test[1] where a positive result guarantees with near certainty that misfolded prions are present. But as the disease is defined via the physical changes in brain tissue only obtainable via autopsy a definite diagnosis is often only made after death.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_quaking-induced_conv...

New comment by macbr in "Italian Competition Authority Fines Apple $115M for Abusing Dominant Position"

macbr — Mon, 22 Dec 2025 21:39:55 +0000

You're right but there has been some progress in that matter.

I.e. streaming providers can't stop you from watching Germany exclusive Netflix content when on holidays in Greece using your German Netflix subscription (only free/ad supported services are allowed to do that)

New comment by macbr in "The Problem of Teaching Physics in Latin America (1963)"

macbr — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 21:58:09 +0000

> physics is what you study if you couldn't do engineering

Wdym "couldn't do"? Nobody here is studying Physics for the job opportunities but I'd say everybody who makes it past semester 4 genuinely loves Physics otherwise they'd be studying something easier.

New comment by macbr in "Germany's train service is one of Europe's worst. How did it get so bad?"

macbr — Sat, 13 Dec 2025 22:08:56 +0000

I record my travels using travelynx and this is how Deutsche Bahn has been faring:

- 2022: 15512 km travelled, spent 150:23 in trains, timetable: 148:42

- 2023: 9818 km travelled, spent 121:01 in trains, timetable: 118:39

- 2024: 11614 km travelled, spent 129:28 in trains, timetable: 127:48

- 2025: 10636 km travelled, spent 116:21 in trains, timetable: 109:58

This year was skewed upwards by a 3 hour delay because some teenagers managed to get into a railway tunnel causing a track closure for multiple hours...

A lot of times the time you save by going for high speed rail is still worth it.

New comment by macbr in "Internet's biggest annoyance: Cookie laws should target browsers, not websites"

macbr — Wed, 22 Oct 2025 18:24:44 +0000

Google, including Google Flights, does have a cookie banner. It's just likely that you already accepted/denied the prompt at some point.

New comment by macbr in "Universities should be more than toll gates"

macbr — Sun, 21 Sep 2025 13:08:50 +0000

To be fair: if you're doing a Masters degree the grade you end up getting on your Bachelors degree is pretty unimportant and Masters usually isn't graded that harshly.

But yeah, we had exams with 70% failing.

New comment by macbr in "Universities should be more than toll gates"

macbr — Sun, 21 Sep 2025 13:05:21 +0000

A Fachhochschule (Wikipedia calls them "university of applied sciences") in Germany is very similar to a university but as they're less research oriented and usually (with some notable exceptions) don't have the ability to grant doctoral degrees. AFAIK none have the permission to grant the ability to become professor (Habilitation). They also usually have a limited selection of subjects.

There are also Technische Universitäten (Technical University) which are "proper" universities with the ability to grant doctorates and the ability to become professor.

So Fachhochschulen are a separate thing from both Berufsschule (vocational school) and universities.

New comment by macbr in "Japan requires name change after marriage – big effects on female scientists"

macbr — Sat, 05 Jul 2025 08:10:32 +0000

Not just Asia. E.g. in Congo it's tradition to see the spouse's siblings as sisters and brothers. There it goes both ways though. (Not sure it's embedded into law.)

New comment by macbr in "Old Soviet Venus descent craft nearing Earth reentry"

macbr — Sat, 03 May 2025 08:39:28 +0000

At least with the Venus probes they were only publicly announced when they were well on their way to Venus with failures either not getting published or getting assigned alibi mission goals (e.g. if they failed to leave earth's orbit) so failure modes were limited to the destination.

New comment by macbr in "Poland says it may need alternative to Musk’s Starlink in Ukraine"

macbr — Mon, 10 Mar 2025 07:00:10 +0000

From the Wikipedia page:

> The frequency initially chosen for Galileo would have made it impossible for the US to block the Galileo signals without also interfering with its own GPS signals. [...], but they have since reached the compromise that Galileo is to use different frequencies. This allows the blocking or jamming of either GNSS without affecting the other.

Interesting

New comment by macbr in "Don't "optimize" conditional moves in shaders with mix()+step()"

macbr — Sun, 09 Feb 2025 17:53:09 +0000

In the case of the Minecraft mod Sodium, which replaces much of Minecraft's rendering internals, Nvidia optimisations caused the game to crash. So the mod devs had to implement workarounds to stop the driver from detecting that Minecraft is running... (changing the window title among other things)

https://github.com/CaffeineMC/sodium/issues/1486

https://github.com/CaffeineMC/sodium/issues/1816

New comment by macbr in "Caltrain's electric fleet more efficient than expected"

macbr — Sat, 25 Jan 2025 20:16:26 +0000

Developing a new train platform takes a lot of time but Siemen’s Velaro Novo platform (in development since 2013 and presented 2018) uses PMM motors[1]. Siemens has been trialing PMM motors since at least 2003[2].

[1] https://www.railjournal.com/in_depth/velaro-evolution/

[2] https://www.ew.tu-darmstadt.de/media/ew/rd/ew_vortraege/0305...

New comment by macbr in "TikTok goes dark in the US"

macbr — Sun, 19 Jan 2025 09:55:58 +0000

Their source is the “The Economist Democracy Index” [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Democracy_Index

New comment by macbr in "FBI: Largest homemade explosives cache in agency history found in Virginia"

macbr — Wed, 01 Jan 2025 11:03:58 +0000

It’s not like mental health is going super well in European countries either

Germany [1]: > The average waiting time from the initial consultation to the start of therapy is 142.4 days.

[1]: https://www.bptk.de/pressemitteilungen/psychisch-kranke-wart... (German article)

New comment by macbr in "Lfgss shutting down 16th March 2025 (day before Online Safety Act is enforced)"

macbr — Tue, 17 Dec 2024 08:59:45 +0000

NOYB is a non governmental organisation which initiated many of the investigations against Meta. E.g. they recently filed a complaint against the social media app BeReal for not taking no for an answer and continuesly asking for permission for data collection if you decline.

New comment by macbr in "Debian opens a can of username worms"

macbr — Sat, 07 Dec 2024 00:27:01 +0000

Oh, yeah. No non-ASCII in the “machine readable” part. Though I’ve never seen anything use that section. My national id card also has a “machine readable” section – but that doesn’t even contain my whole name: It’s just cut off after 20 letters.

New comment by macbr in "Debian opens a can of username worms"

macbr — Fri, 06 Dec 2024 19:25:13 +0000

I’m confused – my name as written on my passport definitely contains non ASCII characters?

New comment by macbr in "Open Source on its own is no alternative to Big Tech"

macbr — Mon, 28 Oct 2024 17:00:35 +0000

I’m aware of a party in Germany which, at some levels, uses Nextcloud to great success so I could imagine them pushing for it in their fraction. No idea why that wouldn’t work though given that they have tons of experience

New comment by macbr in "Ion engines could take us to the solar gravitational lens in less than 13 years"

macbr — Sat, 26 Oct 2024 23:32:15 +0000

The main reason the Apollo program wouldn't happen today is safety:

The first Apollo test (unfueled) had three astronauts die due to an electrical fire! At the time Apollo 10 launched the lunar module wasn't finished yet (they wouldn't have been able to get back from the moon because it was too heavy). Apollo 16 and 17 by chance missed the 1972 solar storm by months - if an astronaut had been outside the Earth's magnetic field during the storm they have received a potentially lethal dose of radiation. One reason why after Apollo 17 the rest of the flights were cancelled even though the rockets etc. were already ordered or even built and why it took until 1981 (apart from Apollo–Soyuz) to get humans into space again.