Hacker News: stasiu

New comment by stasiu in "Reviving a 15-year-old netbook with Arch Linux"

stasiu — Sun, 19 Jul 2026 14:14:55 +0000

Crunchbang was one of the first distros after Ubuntu I came across, it was cool, quite an influence in my vision of what Linux could be.

New comment by stasiu in "Reviving a 15-year-old netbook with Arch Linux"

stasiu — Sat, 18 Jul 2026 12:07:28 +0000

After this Eee PC I bought a 2014 MacBook Pro, again amazing machine. Used it through out my CS studies and beyond. After that I had some different machines from my employers but my personal laptop is a ThinkPad t480s, nice machine for Linux.

New comment by stasiu in "Reviving a 15-year-old netbook with Arch Linux"

stasiu — Sat, 18 Jul 2026 12:04:16 +0000

The place is called Atelier Wolimierz, but it was technically located in the village of Pobiedna, Lower Silesia. Next to the old Wolimierz train station. I was there in 2014. They converted a small airplane hanger in a “earth ship”. The place was pretty wild though at the time, very anarchy vibes, but it was an amazing time. I learned some Polish there and later back home (The Netherlands) I met my Polish wife with this limited Polish knowledge. Have been to Poland many many times ever since! I would actually love to move there with my wife and our daughter.

New comment by stasiu in "Reviving a 15-year-old netbook with Arch Linux"

stasiu — Sat, 18 Jul 2026 06:03:11 +0000

This brings back memories. I loved my Asus Eee PC 1215p. Bought it with my own money. It was the computer I had when I was moving out of my parental home when I was 20 y/o. When I moved out I had Ubuntu installed on it, but in my student room I realised I had issues with connecting to the internet somehow. Went back to my moms and installed back Windows 7, with the Windows 98 look-and-feel-setting which was a built in option, great user experience. The last Windows machine I even used, but it was amazing. I brought it with me on my hitch hiking adventures through Europe, was using it to DJ using my personal iTunes library in a Polish hippie/hacker/eco village I was staying at. Eventually I stupidly broke the keyboard my cleaning it with a wet towel when it was on, I still feel bad about that really. What a machine, I absolutely loved it!

New comment by stasiu in "Audio tapes reveal mass rule-breaking in Milgram's obedience experiments"

stasiu — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 19:19:14 +0000

You should have said something

New comment by stasiu in "Preferring throwaway code over design docs"

stasiu — Sun, 15 Dec 2024 18:39:58 +0000

Does anyone have a design doc format that they prefer for backend development? We’ve been working with ADRs, is that similar or the same as a design doc?

PS. I like the approach. Sounds like something I read before where devs would throw away their code everyday until they were satisfied with the result.

New comment by stasiu in "Show HN: A retrainable subtitle synchronizer you can now build your own"

stasiu — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 13:04:46 +0000

This worked great for me, thanks for the share!

New comment by stasiu in "Show HN: A retrainable subtitle synchronizer you can now build your own"

stasiu — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 13:04:25 +0000

Wow this Alass [1] tool worked really one this though!

1. https://github.com/kaegi/alass

New comment by stasiu in "Show HN: A retrainable subtitle synchronizer you can now build your own"

stasiu — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 12:59:16 +0000

I tried it with a Russian movie [1] and Polish subtitles. With a single pass it was still off a bit, and dual pass didn't really work super well either. Nevertheless, interesting technology!

1. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118767/ (pretty cool movie)

New comment by stasiu in "How hard should I push myself?"

stasiu — Fri, 22 Jan 2021 22:26:40 +0000

O yeah, this threshold is real for the too.

If I have a relatively focused task to work on, but I also have meeting in the middle of the day, can be a 30 minute call, I know I will not succeed. I really need that build up and then hold on to that momentum. And after, even when I'm satisfied and happy with my work, its super hard to let go. I will keep looking into improvements during the evening and will linger on it in bed.

I still have to figure out how to deal with this. But then I'm only 29 and just starting my professional career, so enough time to learn and grow.

New comment by stasiu in "How hard should I push myself?"

stasiu — Fri, 22 Jan 2021 22:13:47 +0000

Thanks for sharing this article! Even though I know more people are thinking about/struggling with stress, its good to read others assessment on it.

When covid came around and I started working from home I realized how much stress I had at the office. For at least the last 2 to 3 years I would get these huge headaches which would completely disable me and completely drain my energy. I was convinced that it was purely physical for the longest time. I did yoga, worked out, when to chiropractor, ... nothing really helped. I ended up at a physiotherapist with a lot of experience, who was able to look beyond the physical. After having yet another huge headache during my work week I discussed this with her, we were looking for the what could have stressed me. It was an email.

I was working on one project that I needed to finish to continue the work of my team when an email came in about another project I had been pushing away for a while. This email reminding me of that project stressed me so much that it completely disabled me.

I still regularly have these headaches, but now I can start thinking to myself, what stresses me here? And I can focus on fixing those issues. Most of these issues aren't just an easy fix, especially now, but its helping me. I'm helping me, I'm listening to my body.

Also related to the topic of stress and its consequences is When The Body Says No by Dr. Gabor Mate [1]. He did a few talks on the subject, you can find them on Youtube [2].

1. https://drgabormate.com/book/when-the-body-says-no/

2. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=when+the+body+s...

New comment by stasiu in "Why teaching programming is so difficult?"

stasiu — Sun, 17 Jan 2021 11:13:31 +0000

What really helped me with learning programming was the focus on what I was actually building. I remember one of my first real "programs" I wrote during my studies (I was 23 or 24, so I started of later with programming as well). They all gave us these Lego Mindstorm sets, which you can control through this little UI interface, but you could also control using C# code. With my team mates we build this little game you could play with four people, and it worked great! I wrote most of the code for it, knowing very little programming at that moment. I wrote the entire flow in one script, no classes or OOP, I was so proud!

Still I can only learn a new language or framework if I have a project that grabs my attention. So I would say don't start off with teaching "progtamming", like, what 'public static void main' means. Start with letting them create a simple CRUD app or little game through programming. And build from there. I like the process of programming but what I like most is interacting with my creation.

New comment by stasiu in "What can Seattle learn from Dutch street design?"

stasiu — Tue, 12 Jan 2021 10:59:35 +0000

A great insight in this from a Canadian in Amsterdam: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMed1qceJ_Q

New comment by stasiu in "What can Seattle learn from Dutch street design?"

stasiu — Tue, 12 Jan 2021 10:54:07 +0000

Not Just Bikes is a great YouTube channel about cycling infrastructure in (mostly) Amsterdam. Being Dutch I never realised how much attention there is for safe and smooth traffic in The Netherlands. Being abroad right now I see that its not obvious.

https://www.youtube.com/c/NotJustBikes/videos