News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

thatwasunusual

Re:DoorDash to Acquire Instacart on Thursday October 29, 2026 @10:59AM (#50290202)
> I would be fired

Ok, but _should_ you be fired? And - if so - why?

Re:DoorDash to Acquire Instacart on Thursday October 29, 2026 @10:58AM (#50290181)
And still people will continue to use their services. :(
I love it. It would also be nice to be able to a) enter desired distance, and b) choose the metric system.
Re:3rd Yandex Cloud Data Center Was Hit on Monday October 12, 2026 @03:01AM (#50052373)
> You don't f*cking understand what has happened to the country. It's become a dictatorship.

Oh, we westerners know...

Re:GLM-5.3-Flash Intelligence, Performance and Price Analysis on Wednesday August 26, 2026 @01:20PM (#49452673)
I'd assume we want at least human-level intelligence, but better than human-level _decision making_. ;)
Re:Disruption with Some GitHub Services on Wednesday August 26, 2026 @01:11PM (#49452526)
I have been very happy with github for _years_. Lately, not so much. Now I want to try a self-hosting alternative again. I tried gitlab years ago (pre-pandemic, IIRC), and it wasn't for me (they had _serious_ security issues as well, which of course didn't affect my self-hosting thing, but still...).

So - where do we stand in August 2026?

*EDIT:* No, I don't want anything related to Felon Musk.

Re:PostgreSQL for Everything on Wednesday August 19, 2026 @11:07AM (#49362632)
It's the other way around for me: as 99% of the stuff I develop is .NET (and I use EF Core for database stuff), I can get away with SQLite for local development, prototyping (and even staging), and then just "flip a switch" for it to run on production PostgreSQL.

Both are amazing technologies.

Correct;

On July 9, 2026, the Bundestag passed Germany's new electricity-capacity law, which subsidizes reserve/dispatchable power capacity as coal is phased out. SPD and CDU/CSU voted for it; the Greens and Die Linke voted against it.

The Greens specifically argued against a long-term fossil-fuel lock-in, while Die Linke argued for renewables and batteries instead of subsidizing new fossil gas plants.

The law itself is primarily about new hydrogen-ready/gas-capable reserve plants, not coal plants.

Source: https://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2026-07/kraftwerksge...

> Texas which are covered with turbines, and they absolutely do not look cool.

Compared to coal plants, which are _extremely_ cool-looking. /s

Re:DeepSeek warns of a 'significant' price rise on Friday August 07, 2026 @06:04AM (#49208156)
> If you continue to use our services after the billing adjustment, you will be deemed to have accepted the adjusted billing terms. If you do not agree, you may choose to cancel your service and apply for a refund.

Is it just me, or does this sound like the pricing change is somehow retroactive, i.e. I have to pay extra for already used (and paid for) tokens?

> You can't just raise minimum wage and expect people to make more money since businesses need to fire everyone who aren't worth the new minimum wage [...]

This way of thinking is what's wrong with USA (among many other things).

You don't (or at least shouldn't) hire lots of people because it's cheap.

"Good artists copy; great artists steal" - Pablo Picasso, but was also used by Steve Jobs, ironically.
Re:Did DeepSeek v4 suddenly become more expensive? on Saturday May 30, 2026 @12:22AM (#48332543)
I've been doing the same-ish workload the past week (the graph shows the whole month), and it's been consistently on $10 USD/day.

Yesterday, however, spiked at $50 USD, and after just 2 hours of "activity" today, it's already at $10 USD.

What's going on?

> I put Proxmox on it [...]

How, exactly? Doesn't it require phyiscal access to the server?

> A very similar development is going on in neighboring Finland.

Same in neighbouring Norway. Hi, neighbour! :)

Re:XML Is a Cheap DSL on Saturday March 14, 2026 @01:32PM (#47378989)
> When I was in middle school (1970s) we learned how to file a tax return. For some reason this is no longer taught today.

We have the same problem in Norway; youngsters aren't taught proper private economy at school, just the "normal maths." Which leads to people getting into financial trouble because of stupid stuff. :/

Thanks for updating me on the US tax system! Hope all is well over there! :)

Re:XML Is a Cheap DSL on Saturday March 14, 2026 @01:04PM (#47378704)
If it's that simple, how come it's so complicated that the US have an entire business line profiting from tax filing?
Re:XML Is a Cheap DSL on Saturday March 14, 2026 @12:46PM (#47378488)
A Norwegian "ENK" ("enkeltmannsforetak"; self-employment) deals with a more integrated state reporting environment, stricter cash-sale controls, more emphasis on formal bookkeeping and VAT/cash-register infrastructure, and a more pre-filled tax ecosystem.

You can get a long way cheating the system if you deal with cash only, as banks etc. are required to report everything about everyone to the government, but these days it can only take you so far.

My understand is that the US is much more depending on self-reporting.

But given that the US has its own industry involving tax reporting, and having lived there myself, I don't believe you when you say it's "simple." ;)

Re:XML Is a Cheap DSL on Saturday March 14, 2026 @09:26AM (#47376464)
Having a proper system for handling citizens' main priorities is important. What happens in 3rd world countries is a struggle that UN++ needs to focus on.
Re:XML Is a Cheap DSL on Saturday March 14, 2026 @09:19AM (#47376412)
It's completely unbelievable that so-called developed countries are struggling with this in 2026.

In Norway, we've had a more or less automated tax system for many years; every year you get a notification that the tax settlement is complete, you log in and check if everything is correct (and edit if desired) and click OK.

It shouldn't be more difficult than this.

Re:Apple Introduces MacBook Neo on Wednesday March 04, 2026 @02:41PM (#47252737)
Good for you. Not sure how your comment contribute to ... well, anything, but... Good for you!
Re:Apple Introduces MacBook Neo on Wednesday March 04, 2026 @12:23PM (#47250758)
> Apple doesn't want us to keep using old hardware even if it's similar to new hardware.

I'm not disagreeing with you, but is this a fact, i.e. has it been proved?

Not related to this release, but their trade-in for old hardware is a joke to me. My 2019 MBP i9 2.4GHz w/64GB RAM and 2TB SSD is worth $200. It seems to me that they don't even want a trade-in; it makes much more sense to me to just keep the old MBP and use it as a dev server, home assistant, docker hub thing or something.
Re:Can you reverse engineer our neural network? on Saturday February 28, 2026 @06:18AM (#47193776)
You assume that what smart people _do_ is the same as what humanity _ought to do_.

Even if every genius on Earth spent their days trying to get rich, that would show something about incentives, institutions, fear, status, and survival. It would not automatically prove that wealth is mankind's highest purpose.

Rats also optimize for calories when the maze is built that way. That does not make cheese (or whatever rats prefer) the meaning of life.

Modern capitalism often acts like the scoreboard is the game. That confusion is one of civilization's recurring clown acts.

> Cost wise it does not seem very effective.

Why is this so damn important? Isn't it more important to end up with the best result?

I (in Norway) use a homelab with Ollama to generate a report every morning. It's slow, but it runs between 5-6 am, energy prices are at a low, and it doesn't matter if it takes 5 or 50 minutes.

And IMO that's what should be done.

Don't get me wrong, I like the idea and all that, but this is another pgsql "solution" that is tied to the database layer, when it should be in the application layer.

I like to be database agnostic, and while I prefer PostgreSQL on production, I prefer SQLite on the dev layer. You should never have to HAVE TO use a specific database to make your APPLICATION work.

> It's similar to when we wrote all our business logic in eg pl/sql [...]

What do you mean with "when"? /s

I dread companies who still have logic in their databases when it's not necessary. <insert sad face>

Older »