Hacker News: retired

New comment by retired in "Is the UK falling out of love with social media?"

retired — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 10:46:23 +0000

> “I wouldn’t have even posted my wedding really,” she says. “But I had to because … There’s like an etiquette. Nobody else can post your wedding until you’ve posted. So my friends were like: ‘Please post, it’s been like a week.’”

I might not have the best social life but at least I don't have these type of issues in daily life.

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

retired — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 10:15:58 +0000

Perhaps look at the Spanish Cl@ve, it works with Linux. It's just a simple digital certificate that allows you to identify yourself.

You can even run it on OpenBSD or TempleOS if you want to.

New comment by retired in "Student Debt Burdened Them, So They Moved Abroad and Stopped Paying"

retired — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 23:56:38 +0000

Wow. For The Netherlands it is 4% of your income, but only the part of your income above minimum wage. If you earn €40k, minimum wage is €26k then you pay 4% over €13k = €520 per year = €43 per month.

The average medical student is around €50,000 to €60,000 in debt.

New comment by retired in "When legal sports betting surges, so do Americans' financial problems"

retired — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 22:31:01 +0000

It does. A large part of the country participates in that one.

New comment by retired in "When legal sports betting surges, so do Americans' financial problems"

retired — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 22:03:20 +0000

Gambling is massive in large parts of Europe. For Spain, in 2022 83.9% of the population participated in gambling. Every time I am outside I am confronted with gambling in some sort of way. I don't think society benefits from it.

New comment by retired in "Student Debt Burdened Them, So They Moved Abroad and Stopped Paying"

retired — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 21:36:57 +0000

My best guess is that the embassy in the foreign country gets a red flag when you try to renew your passport and you then have to contact the government debt collector. Different branches of government.

New comment by retired in "Student Debt Burdened Them, So They Moved Abroad and Stopped Paying"

retired — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 21:32:26 +0000

They only do this if communication with the debtor is impossible. If this happens to you, you can contact the government, schedule a payment plan for your debt and then they give you a passport with a 12 to 24 month validity.

New comment by retired in "Student Debt Burdened Them, So They Moved Abroad and Stopped Paying"

retired — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 21:28:08 +0000

Had to look it up, it is 2.3% for 2026 which is a bit below the Euribor 1 year rate. Between 2017 and 2022 it was 0%.

Loan forgiveness happens after 35 years so for most academics that is about 10 years before retirement. Forgiveness also happens upon death.

Bankruptcy is a bit different here. We have a program where someone manages your finances for about three years, and after that most remaining debt is forgiven. However, student debt is an exception, that one stays

New comment by retired in "Student Debt Burdened Them, So They Moved Abroad and Stopped Paying"

retired — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 21:13:25 +0000

People in The Netherlands have done this. They go to S/E Asian countries to skip out on a €30,000 debt. After a while your passport becomes invalid which makes travel very difficult. And with the outstanding debt you are not able to get a new passport.

Which is dumb, because you only have to pay off the debt if you are able to, interest rate is very low, you can pause it for a few years and after 35 years the loan is automatically forgiven. It's not a big deal. Completely uprooting your life to skip out on a €50/month payment is insanity but people see that €30,000 number in their portal and freak out about it.

Approximately 25,000 emigrated debtors are currently untraceable by the student debt collector.

New comment by retired in "I'm 60 years old. Claude Code killed a passion"

retired — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 18:45:47 +0000

You have a gateway / platform for that. You aren’t exposing those services to the internet.

New comment by retired in "I'm 60 years old. Claude Code killed a passion"

retired — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 17:32:24 +0000

Somewhat retired last year. Looking for something new to do. Basic Java micro service with Spring Boot ands it is three hours of coding to write and read from a database and expose over REST interface. Two hours for a tests. Rest of the time is to set up environments, coupling everything, documentation. Two days is do-able if you have a good CI/CD template and your Azure/AWS is setup correctly.

New comment by retired in "I'm 60 years old. Claude Code killed a passion"

retired — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 16:32:28 +0000

A new micro-service in two days is easy with an IDE and autocomplete. But now with AI the PM will likely push to have it in production in a day. Which is possible, but quality will be questionable.

New comment by retired in "I'm 60 years old. Claude Code killed a passion"

retired — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 15:37:02 +0000

PMs now expect that you can create a Java micro service that does basic REST/CRUD from a database and get it into production in a total of two days.

That is hard if you are working in Notepad and have to write your own class import statements and write your own Maven POM or Gradle file. It’s a lot quicker in an IDE with autocomplete and auto-generated Maven POMs. And with AI it’s even faster but at the risk of lower code maintainability.

New comment by retired in "I'm 60 years old. Claude Code killed a passion"

retired — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 14:03:49 +0000

The problem is that since AI employers now expect developers to write code faster.

Similar to when IDEs and autocomplete became common.

New comment by retired in "I'm 60 years old. Claude Code killed a passion"

retired — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 14:01:27 +0000

I have decided that I will only write artisanal code. I’m even thinking of creating a consultancy agency where people can hire me to replace AI generated code.

New comment by retired in "I'm 60 years old. Claude Code killed a passion"

retired — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 13:57:14 +0000

In the town where I grew up in they banned cars and now you are only allowed to ride a horse. So your analogy is actually happening in real life.

New comment by retired in "Your phone is an entire computer"

retired — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 18:41:08 +0000

Isn’t Dex similar to connecting a monitor to an M-powered iPad? Perhaps that will one day come to iPhone.

New comment by retired in "Apple's MacBook Neo makes repairs easier and cheaper than other MacBooks"

retired — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 20:56:20 +0000

I had Apple Care on my 2006 MacBook. It covered around €3000 in repairs. Especially the logic board replacements added up fast. Couple of palm rests as well though that was also covered by extended warranty.

I paid $50 for that Apple Care through an eBay listing and got send a code that I could use to register. This was back when Apple Care was sold in physical boxes and people would resell them from foreign countries. So great deal all round.

But for the rest I never had Apple Care on anything.

New comment by retired in "Apple's MacBook Neo makes repairs easier and cheaper than other MacBooks"

retired — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 20:52:56 +0000

I always thought that website was a daughter company from Apple for liability reasons. Never knew it was a third party. TIL.

New comment by retired in "Apple's MacBook Neo makes repairs easier and cheaper than other MacBooks"

retired — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 20:38:05 +0000

If you account for the taper, the Neo has about 50% more volume than the 12”

I sometimes travel with backpack only (cheap European airlines) and that is a big difference.