Hacker News: nixusg

New comment by nixusg in "Is the world becoming uninsurable?"

nixusg — Fri, 17 Jan 2025 13:04:28 +0000

Solar power works very well in summer and can be used for cooling.

New comment by nixusg in "Paris hails victory over short-stay rents"

nixusg — Tue, 22 Sep 2020 15:42:43 +0000

For a period I was a digital nomad and stayed in a few cities for ~1 month each. Airbnb allowed us to immerse ourselves in the local neighborhoods and get a real feel for the places. If I had to stay in a hotel for that same period I probably would have chosen a different destination.

Paris was not one of the places we stayed though.

New comment by nixusg in "Can Sweden tackle the throwaway society?"

nixusg — Sun, 27 Nov 2016 16:51:59 +0000

So to provide some real numbers I just did this with a dishwasher. The circulation pump broke on a 4 year old dishwasher and would cost around $180 to repair but a new one with a 5 year guarantee would cost $350. Given the repairs came with no such guarantee and the price different was not too crazy we just got the new one. FYI: Prices converted from South African Rand.

New comment by nixusg in "Repurposing Old Smartphones for Home Automation"

nixusg — Wed, 25 May 2016 22:19:40 +0000

A couple months ago I setup an old Android phone to be a 3G hotspot for some ESP8266 devices. It also created a SSH reverse tunnel so that I could access the devices from the internet. After rooting the phone, compiling autossh & nginx and getting the whole system setup, the phone broke. At this point it was cheaper and way easier to just get a RasberryPi with a 3G dongle. So unless you have lots of the same old phone lying around this can be a lot more work than the alternatives. Using something like http://janos.io/ may have made things a bit easier but device support was an issue.

New comment by nixusg in "Go best practices, six years in"

nixusg — Mon, 02 May 2016 05:44:18 +0000

Just adding some ram is also not so easy in an embedded system.

New comment by nixusg in "After Capitalism?"

nixusg — Sat, 12 Dec 2015 12:11:36 +0000

Lower birth rates? Short term economic pain of a graying population for a long term gain.

New comment by nixusg in "Google Talk is down"

nixusg — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 11:40:03 +0000

South Africa is down too.

New comment by nixusg in "Argentine ISPs Use Bazooka to Kill Fly"

nixusg — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 20:58:23 +0000

One more reason to have your own IP addresses.

New comment by nixusg in "Ask HN: Fleeing work"

nixusg — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 12:06:20 +0000

For those heading to Cape Town at any point there are fellow HN readers living here that you can contact if you need any information.