Hacker News: mogoman

New comment by mogoman in "The L in "LLM" Stands for Lying"

mogoman — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 12:49:30 +0000

try scrolling up and down a few times on the logo and see what happens

New comment by mogoman in "Ask HN: Who is hiring? (March 2026)"

mogoman — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 16:52:33 +0000

any2any | On-site (Munich, Germany) | Full-time

About us: We provide access and visitor management platforms integrating a wide range of technologies. Backed by a large Swiss AG.

Hiring: Multiple roles; backend developer (Kotlin, PHP), frontend developer (Angular Typescript), app developer (React Native), support (1st/2nd level), testers (all roles on-site Munich only, 5 mins walk from Munich Ost).

Why join: Multiple technologies, room for growth, great offices near to the city centre and a growing dynamic team.

Contact: Please apply at jobs [at] any2any.co

New comment by mogoman in "Claude Code: connect to a local model when your quota runs out"

mogoman — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 20:40:53 +0000

can you recommend a setup with ollama and a cli tool? Do you know if I need a licence for Claude if I only use my own local LLM?

New comment by mogoman in "Heathrow scraps liquid container limit"

mogoman — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 08:27:27 +0000

It seems that this is only in place at the security entering the terminal. I landed in Heathrow a few days ago and had to empty out my water bottle (which I got given on the flight to the UK) for the transfer security check.

New comment by mogoman in "Bring bathroom doors back to hotels"

mogoman — Thu, 27 Nov 2025 10:52:43 +0000

We once stayed in a beach house with an outdoor shower in South Africa. One morning I got up, took a shower (without my glasses, I am very short sighted) and went in for breakfast. About 20 minutes later my sister-in-law comes running into the house shouting that "there is a huge snake in the outside shower"

New comment by mogoman in "The Sagrada Família takes its final shape"

mogoman — Fri, 19 Sep 2025 09:16:54 +0000

Fully agree. Walking towards the address I came around a corner and my jaw dropped. Still get goosebumps thinking of that moment. Sadly inside was a construction site with no lighting (this was around 2003), would love to go back and see it again.

New comment by mogoman in "Want to piss off your IT department? Are the links not malicious looking enough?"

mogoman — Fri, 19 Sep 2025 09:07:44 +0000

Around 2001 I worked for one of the big dot com news outlets. In our reception we had a PC with a browser set up where people could "use the internet" while they waited. One day the receptionist asked me to fix the PC as it wasn't connected to the internet and no one from IT was available. So I messed around a bit (think in the end I just reset the DCHP lease) and to test I opened the browser to surf the net.

Of course with the millions of websites available I couldn't think of one specific one, so I just held down the "x" key and then pressed CTRL+ENTER (which automatically added "www" and ".com" to your entry - typing this on a mac I see it still works with Firefox).

Of course www.x(and a few more x).com was a porn site.

Of course there were a bunch of people (including customers) sitting in reception (and the receptionist herself) who could directly see the screen.

Of course the PC was running nothing else, so a quick alt+tab didn't hide anything.

I announced that all was fine and ran for my desk.

New comment by mogoman in "I should have loved biology (2020)"

mogoman — Mon, 22 Apr 2024 08:50:45 +0000

As others have mentioned, this resonates well. But for me, not only biology. Looking back, I wish my history teacher had done something similar; taken me by the shoulders and shook me until I really understood what we were learning. Instead, major events in our history ended up being "memorize yet another date" rather than us understanding the impact these events had on us or our parents/grandparents.

New comment by mogoman in "Ask HN: Ideas for useful uses of excess electricity?"

mogoman — Thu, 02 Jun 2022 15:10:10 +0000

That's a very good idea, probably also the easiest to implement since my set up is API driven.

New comment by mogoman in "Ask HN: Ideas for useful uses of excess electricity?"

mogoman — Thu, 02 Jun 2022 15:05:19 +0000

I LOVE the simplicity of it!

New comment by mogoman in "Ask HN: Ideas for useful uses of excess electricity?"

mogoman — Thu, 02 Jun 2022 14:35:16 +0000

Fully agree, this is probably the most viable future option.

New comment by mogoman in "Ask HN: Ideas for useful uses of excess electricity?"

mogoman — Thu, 02 Jun 2022 14:34:34 +0000

Would pumping up into a tank in the roof work? Any idea of the amount of energy vs weight can be stored?

New comment by mogoman in "Ask HN: Ideas for useful uses of excess electricity?"

mogoman — Thu, 02 Jun 2022 13:46:42 +0000

I have a heat pump driven boiler and I do run it when the excess is available - it uses 500W, so I'm still left with a potential 2-2.5kW. I can of course set the boiler hotter, but then I'm just wearing out the components to lose the heat at night (since I don't need so much hot water).

I do have an EV charger, but no nearby neighbours yet with EVs.

However "sharing the excess" is an interesting idea, since everyone needs electricity. I could run an extension cable to the neighbour and let him run his washer/dryer from it at peak times.

New comment by mogoman in "Ask HN: Ideas for useful uses of excess electricity?"

mogoman — Thu, 02 Jun 2022 13:40:59 +0000

Sure, 30kW storage is fine, but it implies you use all the energy every day (or night). In the summer months my current set up uses basically 0 grid hours (as I already have some storage for night time). The 30% really is an excess after storage, running home appliance, charging batteries etc.

Ask HN: Ideas for useful uses of excess electricity?

mogoman — Thu, 02 Jun 2022 10:08:09 +0000

I'm trying to think up ideas of what I could do with an intermittent "excess" of electricity - only at certain hours of the day up to a certain (fixed) amount. Let's say around 10kW hours a day between 12pm and 3pm (I've described my case below, but other people would have different scenarios).

Ideally the extra energy would be used to help reduce environmental impact rather than making money, so crypto mining (for example) is not an option.

Here are some of my thoughts:

- heat water for home usage (heat pump); this solution is already deployed, but there is only so much hot water one needs - charge an EV; I don't own one presently, but it an option for the future - fight the current 70% rule in Germany (this is the cause of my excess, see below) - generate H2 via electrolysis; not sure what to do with H2 then. What would be interesting would be to be able to "charge" fuel cells and store them for use in winter, or compress H2 into cylinders? Not sure what can fit into my garage / would be affordable. - pumped water storage; I suspect the energies involved at home are insignificant vs industrial hydro solutions - convert to microwave and beam into space - run an industrial press to compress my lawn cuttings / garden waste into pellets and dump them into a deep lake - a magical machine that extracts Co2 from the air and produces a fine black powder which I could compress and dump into a deep lake - ...

Some background:

In Germany, excess domestic solar panel production can be pushed into the grid for a small (cash) refund, but there is a strange rule : only 70% of the maximum panel output is allowed to be pushed. So if the panels could generate 10kW at midday, without anything turned on at home, a maximum of 7kW can be pushed. This effect is only for a few "peak sun" hours (say 12pm to 3pm), but means that roughly 10kW hours of electricity is "lost" (the system is throttled back via the charge controller, so the energy isn't lost or wasted, it just isn't produced)

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31593183

Points: 5

# Comments: 19

New comment by mogoman in "Ask HN: Has Google figured out you gave them a fake date of birth?"

mogoman — Thu, 06 May 2021 06:31:42 +0000

perhaps give a consistent fake birth date (rather than a random one)

New comment by mogoman in "Plane in 'serious incident’ after every Miss on board assigned child’s weight"

mogoman — Fri, 09 Apr 2021 11:14:53 +0000

My dad mentioned to me once that back in the early days of commercial flying each passenger was weighed with their luggage

New comment by mogoman in "I want a computer that I own"

mogoman — Tue, 09 Mar 2021 09:55:45 +0000

Looking through some of the points above, I was somehow reminded of Johnny Mnemonic, where he puts together a computer to get online. Based on today's reality he wouldn't need all the most modern, hard core parts, but actually as retro as possible - break into a computer museum and fire up some kind of antique running code he writes himself.

New comment by mogoman in "Australia Bans Cash for All Purchases Over $7,500 (Jul 2019)"

mogoman — Fri, 11 May 2018 14:52:27 +0000

They have similar limits in Europe already. Is this also the case in the US?

New comment by mogoman in "Pushing the Limits of Extreme Breath-Holding"

mogoman — Wed, 31 Jan 2018 19:22:55 +0000

Generally you lie in the water in a wetsuit for buoyancy. The spotter holds on to you to make sure you don't float out to sea (in our case). They also check on you by prompting you to give an "okay" indication (by lifting a finger every 30 seconds or so).

One danger of being under water is that you can pass out even after you've taken a breath of fresh air, so the spotter also is there to make sure you are good in the few seconds after you come up.