Hacker News: LUmBULtERA

New comment by LUmBULtERA in "The Last Quiet Thing"

LUmBULtERA — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 19:38:14 +0000

This really depends on what you're replacing. Replacing a standard electric water heater that uses ~$500/year of electricity with a heat pump water heater that uses ~$100/year (that's about what ours uses) has a pretty quick payback period.

New comment by LUmBULtERA in "GPT-5.4"

LUmBULtERA — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 21:17:35 +0000

>The vast majority of websites you visit don’t have usable APIs and very poor discovery of the those APIs.

I think an important thing here is that a lot of websites/platforms don't want AIs to have direct API access, because they are afraid that AIs would take the customer "away" from the website/platform, making the consumer a customer of the AI rather than a customer of the website/platform. Therefore for AIs to be able to do what customers want them to do, they need their browsing to look just like the customer's browsing/browser.

New comment by LUmBULtERA in "Ask HN: What are your best purchases under $100?"

LUmBULtERA — Sun, 18 Jan 2026 11:16:39 +0000

Ikea's new matter over thread temperature/humidity sensor has been pretty great for me so far. For $10, it has a nice pixel display that turns on with you press it, and it paired very fast and easily to HomeKit for me. The standard AAA battery will probably last a long time using Thread -- we'll see.

New comment by LUmBULtERA in "Ford F-150 Lightning outsold the Cybertruck and was then canceled for poor sales"

LUmBULtERA — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 11:41:17 +0000

That example doesn't make sense, because 100 miles back to back is only 200 miles. You've got about 80 miles from charging overnight those two days and another 200+ miles already in the battery. In that situation you're totally fine. After that there are superchargers of course.

New comment by LUmBULtERA in "Why some clothes shrink in the wash and how to unshrink them"

LUmBULtERA — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 16:36:45 +0000

Yeah, I've started being a bit concerned about inhaling all the tiny plastic fibers every time I clean the filters and wondering what could be doing to my lunges.

New comment by LUmBULtERA in "Warren Buffett steps down as Berkshire Hathaway CEO after six decades"

LUmBULtERA — Thu, 01 Jan 2026 11:40:26 +0000

Back-up cameras are really important for kids who can't be seen in a rearview mirror. Those can be retrofit into an older car, but after having a kid I can see why these became mandatory.

New comment by LUmBULtERA in "I didn't realize my LG TV was spying on me until I turned off Live Plus"

LUmBULtERA — Wed, 24 Dec 2025 11:33:42 +0000

Of course that's a viable option, but likely uses far more electricity in a year and unless you're going the high seas, unlikely to always get a better 4k HDR resolution from streaming services.

New comment by LUmBULtERA in "Ford kills the All-Electric F-150"

LUmBULtERA — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 22:49:03 +0000

Looking forward to the R2 and hopefully all goes smoothly.

New comment by LUmBULtERA in "Ford kills the All-Electric F-150"

LUmBULtERA — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 22:21:54 +0000

I wish if this U.S. administration and U.S. carmakers don't care to promote EVs, that they'd at least let in the Chinese manufacturers that are interested in them.

New comment by LUmBULtERA in "Ford kills the All-Electric F-150"

LUmBULtERA — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 22:19:13 +0000

I hope that Rivian does fine, but they still aren't profitable are they?

New comment by LUmBULtERA in "An off-grid, flat-packable washing machine"

LUmBULtERA — Sun, 14 Dec 2025 11:32:05 +0000

For my new Bosch Benchmark dishwasher, "normal" actually uses 2.4 gallons and 1.25 kwh a load, is most efficient, and is quietest. There is no "eco" mode. "Auto" mode uses about twice the gallons no matter what's inside and slightly more kwh.

New comment by LUmBULtERA in "Why are my headphones buzzing whenever I run my game?"

LUmBULtERA — Wed, 03 Dec 2025 16:52:36 +0000

Since switching to the $10ish Apple USB-C to headphone adapter vs. just plugging in my 3.5mm headset into the computer, the buzzing when gaming completely stopped for me. Cheap solution.

New comment by LUmBULtERA in "American solar farms"

LUmBULtERA — Mon, 13 Oct 2025 13:26:12 +0000

Oh, that's fair point, except solar isn't relatively sparse in a lot of Republican led states too. Texas, Florida, North Carolina all have a relatively decent amount of solar, and Arizona does too which is... mixed?

New comment by LUmBULtERA in "American solar farms"

LUmBULtERA — Mon, 13 Oct 2025 13:09:49 +0000

Tell that to South Dakota's wind farms?

New comment by LUmBULtERA in "American solar farms"

LUmBULtERA — Mon, 13 Oct 2025 13:09:23 +0000

I don't disagree about it being politicized, but if you look at the states with the highest amounts of renewable generation, your second sentence is not supported. There is a LOT of wind energy in Republican-led states in places where wind makes sense.

New comment by LUmBULtERA in "Mamdani says he would phase out NYC gifted program for early grades"

LUmBULtERA — Thu, 02 Oct 2025 19:07:41 +0000

>But, the Left's problem is that instead of trying to raise everyone up they're bringing people down. It was that way in the USSR, and it's that way here. Where I used to live the Talented and Gifted program (which was state mandated) had a $1000 budget systemwide. The "equity" fund was almost a third of the budget. At that point why bother with public schools? It's taxation without representation.

Whether or not to cut gifted and talented programs is very much debated on the "left".

New comment by LUmBULtERA in "Mamdani says he would phase out NYC gifted program for early grades"

LUmBULtERA — Thu, 02 Oct 2025 19:00:53 +0000

That paper, which follows 106 people born in Denmark from 1975 and 1979, says there may be correlation coefficients of 0.48 or 0.50 for IQ groupings between ages (1) 4 and (2) 14 and 44 years. 0.48^2 is 23%, 0.5^2=25%, so if you accept everything else about this, this would mean 23%-25% of variance in the older years may be explained by IQ at 4... that strikes me as not enough to make your conclusions ("IQ is pretty stable from preschool onward) even if the rest of the study is concluded to be accurate.

New comment by LUmBULtERA in "Ask HN: Why are so many services rejecting Google Voice numbers for signups?"

LUmBULtERA — Thu, 28 Aug 2025 11:12:51 +0000

Wow, I have Mint and have not encountered this yet. What services have you seen block it?

New comment by LUmBULtERA in "Ask HN: What's Your Car?"

LUmBULtERA — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 19:28:28 +0000

2021 Model Y.

New comment by LUmBULtERA in "The $25k car is going extinct?"

LUmBULtERA — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 19:23:21 +0000

There has been constant political discourse in the U.S. about keeping cheap Chinese EVs out of the United States (yes, I know Polestar and Volvo are owned by Chinese corporations, they are older and at higher price point). You may have missed this in the last couple years if you're not from the US, but it would be hard to miss if you're from here.