News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

mgraupner

Re:Doing gigabit Ethernet over my British phone wires on Saturday January 24, 2026 @06:08AM (#46742599)
I have an 8-wire phone line (twisted pair) between floors. I connected it with an RJ45 socket and it connects at Gigabit speed.

If you only have four wires available, it will usually still work at 100 MBit.

Get one with a Bosch CX motor (at least Gen4 or newer with the smart system). They are market leaders here in Europe and they usually ride really well.

Canyon (German brand) sells bikes in the US with this system: https://www.canyon.com/en-us/electric-bikes/electric-touring...

Wow, that is very expensive. Yeah, we're are having a second solar boom here, I installed a second small 2 kWp system on our garden shed for about 700 €. I'm adding a small 5 kWh battery on top so we can use all this generated energy.
I'm in my 13 year and with 10 kWp I'm still generating a maximum of about 8000 W on warm days (which lowers the efficiency). I don't know any neighbours or friends who have had to replace a module.
Are you sure about not breaking even with Solar panels? Here in Europe modern Chinese panels with 450 Wp can be bought for about 50 € a panel. These panels last 20 years without problems. Even just installing 5 of them will lower your electricity bill by a lot (and can be done by yourself if you have little knowledge of electricity).
Re:I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad on Thursday April 03, 2025 @02:44AM (#43565675)
Using a thin microfibre cloth between keyboard and screen prevents this.
Re:I won't connect my dishwasher to your stupid cloud on Tuesday March 25, 2025 @06:48AM (#43469766)
Bosch and Siemens produce home appliances through B(osch)S(iemens)H Hausgeräte GmbH (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSH_Hausgeräte). They are not lending their brand to another manufacturer.
If you do not need a domain you can also publish a static page as your blog on Github: https://pages.github.com
The only way to find out would be in the Whois data, which is anonymised. The provider and registry will still have at least your billing information, but without a court order no user will be able to get it from them.
If you are publishing from your own (German) domain in Germany, you will need to add an impress with your personal address.
Get a .com domain from a provider with Whois privacy and don't add an impress. Done.
You can upgrade the disk of a MacBook Air with a larger SSD and install newer MacOS versions with https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/.
Re:Tesla sales plummet in the UK, France, and Germany on Wednesday February 05, 2025 @01:15PM (#42952756)
Source: https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/chines...

It's 27% for BYD and it was introduced end of October 2024, I guess it had no big effect on sales.

Re:Tesla sales plummet in the UK, France, and Germany on Wednesday February 05, 2025 @01:11PM (#42952700)
Germany: 2.891 new BYDs compared to 232.886 new BMWs in 2024. I haven't seen one yet, even though I usually check for new cars.
Re:YC Graveyard: 821 inactive Y Combinator startups on Sunday January 26, 2025 @01:40PM (#42832614)
Ha, I finally found it myself: http://pivots.fyi
Re:YC Graveyard: 821 inactive Y Combinator startups on Sunday January 26, 2025 @03:04AM (#42828573)
There was a similar project a few months ago that tracked changes/pivots/shutdowns in startups. It was a very light site, unfortunately I lost the bookmark or forgot to bookmark it. Can anyone help me here?
Re:Programmer in Berlin: Culture on Wednesday November 06, 2024 @06:07AM (#42060034)
It's a 30-year-old house, at the moment I live in a similar old house. There is a considerable amount of renovation that needs to be done on houses that old, this house also has an energy efficiency rating of F, which is the worst. You need to invest at least €150,000 on top of that to have a reasonably modern house. It's also not decent to live on a 250m2 plot, which is probably the smallest space you can put a house on.
Re:Programmer in Berlin: Culture on Tuesday November 05, 2024 @04:04AM (#42049873)
"You won't be buying in downtown Munich, but that's very far from average Germany, and you could definitely be buying within half an hour of decent public transport to downtown Munich." - Please show me an offer for a decent house in this region.
Re:Programmer in Berlin: Culture on Tuesday November 05, 2024 @03:11AM (#42049581)
Try buying a decent house in Germany with 4000€ netto, which puts you in the top 10% income bracket. Then come back and tell me, you're a rich person.
Re:Honda Is Already Testing a Manual Transmission for EVs on Wednesday October 30, 2024 @03:44AM (#41992667)
This is not the case anymore with modern transmission having 8 to 10 gears available. See https://www.theautopian.com/heres-exactly-when-automatic-tra...

I drive a BMW with a 8 gear automatic, it's always in the gear I want it to be, and I was a stick advocate for many years, no need for it anymore.

Re:The Rise and Fall of Matchbox's Toy-Car Empire on Thursday October 17, 2024 @08:41AM (#41869107)
Growing up in the Eastern Bloc, it was such a joy to own/get an original Matchbox. Memories...
Re:Alexa Is in Households–and Amazon Is Losing Billions on Saturday July 27, 2024 @03:44AM (#41085071)
Instead of being a dick you could have searched for "Alexa set volume to a value less than 1" on Google. Multiple reddit threads with exactly the same problem.

Have you actually checked that "Set volume to 15%" will set it to 15% in the Alexa app?

Re:Alexa Is in Households–and Amazon Is Losing Billions on Thursday July 25, 2024 @02:22AM (#41065307)
Thanks for the feedback.
Re:Alexa Is in Households–and Amazon Is Losing Billions on Thursday July 25, 2024 @02:21AM (#41065300)
Which is fine (although these routines are very slow, which makes it awkward to use for volume adjustments), but why make things so complicated when the possibility to adjust the volume in 1% steps via the app and 3% via buttons exist?
Re:Alexa Is in Households–and Amazon Is Losing Billions on Thursday July 25, 2024 @02:17AM (#41065272)
I checked and it's 3% increments via the buttons. I have 3 different Echos, they all behave the same.
Re:Alexa Is in Households–and Amazon Is Losing Billions on Wednesday July 24, 2024 @04:53PM (#41061971)
Not working for me, as I said in another comment, asking it to set it to 15% will set it to 20%.
Re:Alexa Is in Households–and Amazon Is Losing Billions on Wednesday July 24, 2024 @03:17PM (#41060777)
Unfortunately it only knows integers and rounds 15% up to 20% and 12% down to 10%.
Re:Alexa Is in Households–and Amazon Is Losing Billions on Wednesday July 24, 2024 @03:09PM (#41060678)
Which correlates to 10% and 100%. I want for example 15%, which works with the buttons.
Re:Alexa Is in Households–and Amazon Is Losing Billions on Wednesday July 24, 2024 @02:57PM (#41060532)
Speaking of Alexa: Can anyone explain the thought process behind making it possible to change the volume in small increments via buttons, but not via voice command (only in 10% increments)? I only use it as an internet radio player for background music and it's extremely annoying that it can't do that.
I did some fact checking on these figures and could not find a source for them. It seems that most of the soy goes to China.

The dynamics of global soybean trade remain heavily influenced by China, which accounts for about 60% of worldwide soybean imports. China’s soybean imports are driven by demand for animal protein and edible oils, two essential components of a diversifying Chinese diet that reflects rising living standards. China predominantly sources its soybean supplies from Brazil and the United States. For many years, the United States was the top supplier, but in the last 15 years China has depended more on imports from South America, especially from Brazil. From 2019-2023, 73% of Brazil’s exported soybeans have headed to China, versus a 51% average for the United States (see Figure 2).

Source: https://farmdocdaily.illinois.edu/2024/02/the-united-states-....

Older »