Hacker News: stephen_g

New comment by stephen_g in "France's government is ditching Windows for Linux, says US tech a strategic risk"

stephen_g — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 16:44:55 +0000

I mean it’s not just that, the current administration have destroyed a bunch of the US’s oldest and most important alliances…

I’m not in Europe but in another allied country, the feeling amongst people here is that the US is not able to be trusted as a partner anymore.

And with ways the Government can apply pressure to US companies (CLOUD Act etc.) that extends to IS companies too.

New comment by stephen_g in ""Negative" views of Broadcom driving VMware migrations, rival says"

stephen_g — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 16:27:08 +0000

Proxmox can do containers too and has other benefits like really good ZFS support. I only have a couple of VMs and everything else in containers on my little Proxmox server.

New comment by stephen_g in "EFF is leaving X"

stephen_g — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 18:52:34 +0000

I stoped using Twitter (around when it was changing to be X) because 60-70% of the accounts I cared about left the platform. More and more people will look elsewhere as more organisations and people who aren’t into Musk’s politics leave.

New comment by stephen_g in "Britain today generating 90%+ of electricity from renewables"

stephen_g — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 12:54:46 +0000

The headline is perfectly accurate… I’d say what you’re saying is a kind of whataboutism about stuff everybody knows…

Milestones like the one here are notable and interesting to most people!

New comment by stephen_g in "‘Energy independence feels practical’: Europeans building mini solar farms"

stephen_g — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 10:53:33 +0000

What tripping curve do your RCDs have? That is not normal if they are the right type, really sounds like something is wrong!

New comment by stephen_g in "Apple discontinues the Mac Pro"

stephen_g — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 12:47:04 +0000

What I’m trying to say is that with 7 slots and being more than double the size that it needed to be, it was way more machine than 95% of the market who might actually want it would buy, with a price that was correspondingly way too expensive…

New comment by stephen_g in "Apple discontinues the Mac Pro"

stephen_g — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 12:29:13 +0000

I never understood the point of the Mac Pro for the last decade or so - especially after the Mac Studio was released, Apple should have worked out what professionals actually want - basically a Mac Studio but with three or four PCIe slots and a few SSD slots. That’s literally all it should be!

The Mac Pro was at the same time bizarrely over the top while also weirdly limited in some ways - while also being way to expensive…

New comment by stephen_g in "Running Tesla Model 3's computer on my desk using parts from crashed cars"

stephen_g — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 07:02:53 +0000

That kind of thing is always the stated justification but never the real reason.

Almost invariably when that excuse is trotted out, there are are usually many things that are much more common that are also far more dangerous. For example, texting while driving or driving with bald tires in the wet are both 100x more dangerous than anything almost anybody would do by modifying the car's software.

New comment by stephen_g in "Running Tesla Model 3's computer on my desk using parts from crashed cars"

stephen_g — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 23:45:11 +0000

The cable in the article is pretty much doing the same conflation of terms that Wiki is talking about - the automotive one is a proprietary cable that carries some protocol that uses LVDS as its signalling, so at the most basic level both it and the display cable in the laptop are 'LVDS cables' but that's also the most generic term that gives you no information about the protocol actually being carried by the cables.

New comment by stephen_g in "Oil at $150 will trigger global recession, says boss of financial BlackRock"

stephen_g — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 05:40:32 +0000

Your picture is not an accurate picture of what it's like for most people - you frame the exceptions as if it's the normal case.

Most people who have a driveway or garage where they can install an EVSE (or an apartment complex where the parking has chargers) don't even need to charge every day. Depending on the commute it could even be just two or three times a week. It would usually only be when your only option is trickle charging out of a standard wall outlet that you are in the 'might not be able to charge in time for the next drive' territory, not with EVSE where you can get 7 kW single phase or 11 kW three-phase with most cars (some cars can do up to 22 kW with three phase but that's rare for them to support that on AC charging and it would be rare to have an EVSE that could do that power at home).

New comment by stephen_g in "Office.eu launches as Europe's sovereign office platform"

stephen_g — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 22:47:20 +0000

Sounds like when there was that news of "Europe is creating a social media website called 'W' to compete with X" and it just turned out it was some random tiny company.

New comment by stephen_g in "Italian prosecutors seek trial for Amazon, 4 execs in alleged $1.4B tax evasion"

stephen_g — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 00:16:53 +0000

I can see that happening in Australia, our tax office can be absolutely brutal on all but the big companies that can afford really good lawyers.

New comment by stephen_g in "Online age-verification tools for child safety are surveilling adults"

stephen_g — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 02:59:30 +0000

This is so much bigger than the “religious right” though, UK and Australia have far less of that and parties from both sides of politics here and in the UK seem to be competing to out-do each other with surveillance, censorship and control of adults online under the guise of ‘child safety’.

And all being pushed so, so much harder in just the last couple of years, all at the same time. I don’t know what’s the source…

New comment by stephen_g in "Florida judge rules red light camera tickets are unconstitutional"

stephen_g — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 23:07:06 +0000

I see this a lot too here in Australia now, and yes it used to be pretty unusual but now I see it every day. I've sometimes wondered if it's just a frequency illusion but I'm sure it has got much worse, maybe since the COVID times?

New comment by stephen_g in "Ireland shuts last coal plant, becomes 15th coal-free country in Europe (2025)"

stephen_g — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 12:57:06 +0000

> If you use Renewable Energy Sources, it may happen there will be no wind or no sun

I still find it staggering that people feel like this is something that needs to be said as if it’s surprising or a novel idea. Do you really believe smart people haven’t been working through these challenges for decades?

New comment by stephen_g in "PCB devboard the size of a USB-C plug"

stephen_g — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 03:30:07 +0000

Title is inaccurate, it's really designed to be about the size of a USB-C receptacle , the plug is the other side (in this case the part of the cable that plugs in to this board)

New comment by stephen_g in "Most of the US economy is in a recession"

stephen_g — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 01:00:15 +0000

We are vulnerable in Australia though because we have to move food large distances from farms to cities and are unusually road-dependent for those kind of distances (most countries use much more freight rail). Large diesel price rises are going to be extremely painful for us.

And electricity and manufacturing too, since we have no real gas reservation policy and the exporters were allowed to build enough capacity to export basically every single joule of gas that we produce (and they pay a fraction of the royalties that countries like Qatar rake in). So locals and local businesses pay very high prices so the gas companies can export most of our supply overseas...

New comment by stephen_g in "To the Polypropylene Makers"

stephen_g — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 10:26:07 +0000

Isn’t that cross-linked polyethylene (PEX), not PP?

New comment by stephen_g in "Libre Solar – Open Hardware for Renewable Energy"

stephen_g — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 22:10:30 +0000

If you're not selling them then there isn't really any certification requirements until you start to get into the mains voltages. This all seems to be 12/24V DC stuff on the battery side and 60V DC on the solar side which comes under 'extra-low voltage' in basically every jurisdiction which is usually not really regulated because it's difficult to shock someone.

The battery stuff is more risky (bringing lithium cells into the picture) but I don't think anyone should be worried by the MPPTs.

New comment by stephen_g in "Libre Solar – Open Hardware for Renewable Energy"

stephen_g — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 21:52:54 +0000

The cheap stuff usually have the certification labels printed on them, but a cursory look inside usually shows breaches if you know what to look for (like we have had stuff from China where the ground wire wasn't connected to anything, but even if that's right there are things like just not having enough clearance between mains and isolated DC in power supplies etc.). So they are definitely not actually certified, they just slap the labels on anyway.

Of course, there is a rising group of actually really high-quality native brands starting to come out of China - Anker were an early one of these, Xiaomi is a massive one, UGreen is really popular on Amazon etc. These kind of brands actually will be properly certified and are scary good for how cheap they are. So it's changing a lot.