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simmschi

Re:AirPods 5 on Wednesday September 09, 2026 @05:57PM (#49635021)
In the USA.
Re:MapComplete – Contibute to OpenStreetMaps on Thursday June 11, 2026 @04:42PM (#48496145)
Thanks for the pointer! I posted here before properly exploring the other themes.

Really nice project. Thank you for contributing to the OSM community.

>Editing geometries is out of scope for this project.

Out of curiosity, may I ask why?

It's not that I have this use case regularly, cycling-related it mainly comes up dealing with tracks through forests and fields.

Re:MapComplete – Contibute to OpenStreetMaps on Thursday June 11, 2026 @11:44AM (#48491945)
Hmmm, I love OSM, consume their data in my small cycling project and regularly contribute smaller fixes.

But I also shy away from anything more complex than fixing attributes and meta data of existing objects. Especially editing relations, ways and nodes - is this possible with MapComplete? I loaded the Cyclofix map, but I can't even select cycle paths or roads, just edit POIs.

Re:Looking Forward to Postgres 19: Query Hints on Tuesday June 09, 2026 @04:06AM (#48458098)
FINALLY!

I never understood the issues PG had with hints. Running a non-trivial DB with a non-trivial schema and scale is, well, non-trivial at all. At some point the DB stops being a black box and starts being a tool that you have to know inside and out to avoid performance issues.

>The optimizer is usually smarter than you think.

Except for when it isn't, and moves heavy calculation inside a nested loop inside a nested loop to avoid an index scan. Nothing is perfect.

Re:Three of our worst VC stories on Saturday June 06, 2026 @03:47AM (#48422487)
So, how long did it take you to go 100 customers after this pitch?
Well, I am in the situation you are so afraid of. Chemo, radiation and other treatments suck big time, let alone the effects of the cancer itself.

BUT ... this is not a binary situation, where suddenly life becomes unbearable. There's so much worth living for. And not just the obvious big things in life (kids, family, friends), but also many many small things. Man, that first cup of cappuchino once the effects of chemo wear off alone is almost worth all the puking beforehand :) Or having a nice piece of cheese. Seeing my small herb garden grow. Etc. etc.

The trick is to live a peaceful, content life. Be grateful for what you have. Enjoy your short time on earth.

Totally agree, the current state of the German grid is not ideal. But I have the naive gut feeling that storage prices will also come down and we will see a similar non-political quiet revolution here as well. I.e. people and companies will simply install more and more storage because it is economically viable, not because of ideology. We'll see.
We have a similar approach here in Germany. Anyone has the right to install a small solar system on their balcony or similar and feed up to 800W into their local grid. You just mount it and plug it into your house/apartment grid. Technically you have to get it registered, too.

The sky is not falling, buildings are not crumbling and the grid is not burning.

It's not revolutionary either, but slowly picking up traction. You see more and more installations here in Berlin. On the country side where people have their own house and enough space it's a total no-brainer to set up one of those mini solar systems.

The typical systems you can buy off the shelf (800-1000W panels + inverter) amortize after a few years already, and are getting cheaper every year. I have the feeling the main limitation in the city is having a nice balcony with good mounting points.

Re:Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (February 2026) on Monday February 09, 2026 @08:54AM (#46945224)
I'm working on Cyclonauts (https://cyclonauts.net), an addon for Strava to make your commute more fun.

It maps your cycling activity data against the OpenStreetMap catalogue to generate all kinds of exploration statistics.

Re:OpenAI declares 'code red' as Google catches up in AI race on Wednesday December 03, 2025 @08:40AM (#46134361)
Fully agree. I've been through a number of code red panics in my career.

But somehow, even in startups with short remaining runway, "code red" rarely means anything.

You still have to attend all the overhead meetings, run through approval circles, deal with HR etc etc.

Re:Ask HN: What are you working on? (May 2025) on Tuesday May 27, 2025 @08:54AM (#44106490)
I'm working on a cycling app that analyzes your Strava data and matches your activities to the OSM street grid. You get cool statistics which paths in your city you've already taken. The goal is to make your commute more fun :)

https://cyclonauts.net

These points are also useful for your own photo library. Forget about your relatives going through your stuff after you die, that doesn't matter. But which of the hundreds of photos you took over the past few years would you look at again?

Right, it's the same kind of pictures mentioned in the article. Life happening. The kids helping you cooking, mom goofing around, the family hiking etc etc.

It's not the landscape, some flowers, fireworks, a beach usually. What you care about are people and the moments you spent with them.

I know exactly what you're talking about and have been in similar situations many times. For me it's not just limited to speech, but lots of other aspects. Sometimes it feels like being a ghost or some weird Star Trek like phase shift. E.g. one person walks out of a board game night to get some food, everyone stops playing to wait for the person. I walk out, things just continue.

What helped me a lot were 2 things:

1) There are ways to improve your conversation skills. Big topic, with lots of branches. Your speech matters. Your tone. Keep collecting interesting anecdotes. Culture some depth to your personality that is unrelated to work (e.g. interesting hobbies). Essentially train your charisma.

2) The big eye opener for me was the discovery that different groups of people actually react differently to me. I.e. I was simply friends with people who ... didn't care as much about me as I cared about them. The blunt fix here is to change your social circles. Not easy, but doable, slowly, over time.

The "interesting hobby" part of the charisma training actually helps there to connect to different groups of people.

Re:PR Process Is Killing Morale and Productivity on Friday November 29, 2024 @12:50PM (#42275582)
Have you tried the code owners feature (assuming you're on Github).

IMO a good approach is to have the actual code owners (i.e. the team responsible for a specific service or library) review the PR. If they think a shallow LGTM review of 3k LOC is enough, they can also deal with the bugs :-)

If you don't have specific ownership in your code base I'd start there.

Re:A network engineer in search of greener pastures on Thursday August 01, 2024 @02:56PM (#41132326)
"I noted, too, that some of these rejections came instantly after turning in an application. [...] I determined that I was automatically being filtered because I didn't have a college degree. Sure, the job posting says it's required, but you do know I have more experience than the average college student my age, right?"

Sure, I never studied medicine and the hospital stated that they are looking for a doctor, but the experience should count no?

Oh man. I keep thinking about Software Engineering as a craft. Only in our profession is it considered completely acceptable to work without any professional education.

Lawyers, doctors, nurses, even tax accountants go to jail if they practice without being licensed.

You wouldn't get your house wired by some random dude, instead you're looking for a proper, licensed electrician.

But in tech? Somehow we normalized random kids just building critical architecture.

I wonder if that's an anomaly from the exponential, chaotic growth that happened to software engineering since the 60s. I wouldn't be surprised if things normalize, like in a lot of other, mature fields of professions.

I enjoyed reading the article very much. Thanks for the write up!
Is there really anything missing from SQL? I guess adding a few semantic shortcuts like Postgres' SELECT DISTINCT ON (x) are useful.

But otherwise this feels like asking what's coming next for Algebra.

Re:My Cofounder was diagnosed with cancer, what should I do? on Thursday March 28, 2024 @06:16AM (#39849402)
I have been in a similar situation and am sorry to hear about your cofounder.

From a personal perspective things should be pretty clear, no? Understand that your cofounder suddenly has a very different perspective on life and must change his priorities immediately. If he is going through chemo or surgery there will be long stretches where he will not be able to support you or the company. He may or may not come back. He may not recover. Cancer sucks.

From a company perspective things should also be clear? This is exactly why you have clause upon clause in your contracts, notarized, lawyered and signed. Life happens. People die, have accidents, quit, become sick. If you are unsure about your legal obligations get a lawyer.

Re:Infinite Craft on Thursday February 01, 2024 @05:56AM (#39214654)
Well if you ever run into the 'Fresh Prince of Bel Sashimi', that's my world first combination :-D
Re:Endurain: Self-hosted Strava like service on Saturday December 23, 2023 @10:21AM (#38744814)
Looks like it. Which is a problem, because the Strava API Agreement (https://www.strava.com/legal/api) specifically prohibits you from replicating features that Strava has.
In my whole professional life (last 15y) there was not a single time where I had anything resembling a private space where I could just close the door and work in peace.

The norm here in German startup world seem to be open floors. And if you do have rooms they get crammed full of people.

It's not the end of the world though. A room full of engineers is tolerable, and if they're on your team this is even desirable.

The trouble only comes when the CEO wants to see everyone sweating, so you get stuffed together with Sales or Ops.

Working from home made things a lot easier though. And if the company is big enough it's usually also possible to just book a meeting room if you need to work in silence for a while :-)

Re:Life lessons from a 44 year old (2022) on Thursday November 30, 2023 @12:42PM (#38476422)
There is no magic fat generation. As you age your metabolism slows down. Mystery solved.

Eat less and you'll be fine.

Re:Revenge Bedtime Procrastination on Sunday November 19, 2023 @04:42PM (#38338486)
This behavior is probably pretty normal for anyone with a job, family and kids. I wouldn't associate it with 'revenge' though.

For me 2 things help with the sleep deprivation, power naps and going to bed super early once in a while.

Power naps started working for me nicely once I removed the stressful requirement of actually having to sleep. I just set my phone timer for 20 minutes and allow my mind to float away. Just hitting sleep for a few minutes this way is super helpful and refreshing. And 20 mins you can easily sneak in even into a work day, or when coming home from work.

The going to bed super early is just me crashing once in a while. Sleep deprivation accumulates and for the sake of my health I just let my body crash at 7pm. Happens maybe once a month.

Re:Revenge Bedtime Procrastination on Sunday November 19, 2023 @04:23PM (#38338226)
Ha, I can relate to that. What is the name of your leadership style?
Re:Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (October 2023) on Tuesday October 03, 2023 @05:34AM (#37749659)
Worked in various startups as Engineer, Architect, VPE, CTO, CPO, Founder. Super hands-on, still coding. Had 2 successful exits but did not become rich :-)

Looking for a new challenge as tech lead, architect, VPE or similar.

  Location: Berlin / Germany
  Remote: yes
  Willing to relocate: no (can't, family)
  Technologies: Nodejs, Typescript, React, Postgres, AWS and lots more
  Résumé/CV: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marko-schilde-14095480/
  Email: [email protected]
The proper way to fight scrum is simply doing scrum properly.

Nobody usually wants this.

For developers scrum is actually quite nice. The main success metric is predictability, i.e. the team is held accountable for delivering the sprint successfully. Which means you're supposed to be left alone while the sprint is ongoing.

Some bug? Pfft, if not critical, will maybe take it next sprint.

Finance needs a new report, pronto? Sure, let's talk about business value for priorization. And earliest next sprint anyway.

CEO has a crazy idea that he wants somebody to pull off? Sure, but please talk to Product.

What do you mean, you need more story points delivered per sprint?

The main issue is there are actually people that thrive in this kind of bureaucrazy. I've seen a number of 20-something POs burning themselves over these shitty processes.

Re:How a startup loses its spark on Saturday August 12, 2023 @07:39AM (#37099155)
Companies that grow naturally form a kind of immune system that fights all kinds of change. That's just the way it is.

I guess the lesson to be learned is to be very careful when scaling up your organization. Past a certain point change becomes very difficult. I.e. only grow headcount above 100 when you're certain about product market fit.

So one Lambda execution per tile?
At a certain scale you start to break many things that you're used to abstract away into a neat little box. This can be anything, from kernel, libraries, network stacks to anything running in the cloud.

"Serverless" is not really an option at a certain scale. It's likely too expensive, but especially a giant risk if you abstract away something that can fail in an interesting way.

I remember we once managed to break the AWS ELB in one AZ and had a nice little call with a dev from Seattle. Another time we managed to saturate EC2 in a zone at a certain time.

You will need people who can dig into this. If you're at Twitter scale you'll probably want whole teams digging into aspects that you take for granted.

Re:Cookie Clicker saved my PhD on Thursday June 22, 2023 @03:49PM (#36437771)
Must ... not ... open ... Cookie Clicker

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