Hacker News: ak217

New comment by ak217 in "Namecheap just seized and disabled all my domains"

ak217 — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 03:36:05 +0000

Some of us are old enough to remember the great GoDaddy-Namecheap exodus!

These days I can't imagine using anything other than AWS or Cloudflare.

New comment by ak217 in "Nissan's third generation e-POWER powertrain"

ak217 — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 04:33:58 +0000

GM will go down in history as the auto maker that had nine lives and blew them all on canceling EV and high efficiency products.

New comment by ak217 in "Toyota is taking the Corolla electric"

ak217 — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 21:03:20 +0000

Yeah, the subsidies for ICE production are indirect:

- repealing CAFE standards penalties (freeing manufacturers to externalize the costs of their pollution) - a more restrictive financing environment (no government guaranteed loans) for EV supply chain development, combined with

- consumer subsidies for domestically produced vehicles - but the domestic supply chain is not ready to support EVs without further investment

To their credit, they at least didn't yank all of the domestic battery manufacturing credits - though not for a lack of trying.

New comment by ak217 in "Toyota is taking the Corolla electric"

ak217 — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 03:09:47 +0000

The US big 3 and VW canceled several EV product lines because the government policy flipped from subsidizing them to subsidizing ICE production. With the Iran war, the economics has shifted again and some of the products they canceled could have been made profitable, but it's too late for most of them now. This actually creates an opening for Rivian's downmarket R2 line expansion.

Meanwhile the Chinese companies are disrupting the overseas market for all of them (which is why Toyota is fretting). Many don't realize the disruptive potential of China's battery, EV, and solar panel supply chain combined with the oil shock - many subtropical countries are on the verge of flipping their economies to be linked to China's because of this. The long term consequences for American and European manufacturing supply chains will be major - not just in terms of present but future orders, since many of those countries are continuing to grow their consumer base faster than US/EU.

New comment by ak217 in "Toyota is taking the Corolla electric"

ak217 — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 02:34:11 +0000

The 2nd gen Leaf (plus/extended range) is still a great car if you don't need it for road trips or continuous long driving. 200 mile range, built on a no-frills Nissan econobox platform, decent looks, very capable for its size. They are available dirt cheap these days, $10K for perfect condition ones. No fast charging, but you can get 10-90% in 5 hours of level 2 charging. It even has a heat pump heater, but no battery cooling or heating, so works best in mild climates.

Physical buttons. Carplay. 0-60 in 6.5 seconds and wide enough tires, so it can keep up.

New comment by ak217 in "American Airlines mechanic Azriel “Al” Blackman has died"

ak217 — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 13:27:12 +0000

If you're interested in commercial aircraft and their maintenance process, check out Stig Shift on YouTube. He's another AA mechanic based in LAX, and makes interesting videos with some technical deep dives interspersed with planespotting.

New comment by ak217 in "Suica, Japan's First IC Transit Card"

ak217 — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 17:38:41 +0000

Nooo the penguin is the best part of suica!

New comment by ak217 in "About the security content of macOS Tahoe 26.6"

ak217 — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 14:18:17 +0000

Love to see this, now if only they could revert the whole shimmering oil slick disaster that is "glass" on iOS (unlike macOS, even if I "reduce transparency", the oil slick effect still appears in many places, in addition to all the spacing issues).

New comment by ak217 in "LG monitors silently install software through Windows Update without consent"

ak217 — Sat, 18 Jul 2026 16:19:07 +0000

Logitech all the way.

Logitech is a truly innovative company. They actually care deeply about ergonomics. They also introduced the first mass market application of programmable magnets (in the MX Master mouse scroll wheel) - that's incredibly advanced materials science.

New comment by ak217 in "Kaiser nurses say AI, workplace surveillance are making their jobs, care worse"

ak217 — Sat, 18 Jul 2026 01:42:45 +0000

I agree (with the obvious qualification that there are excellent nurses out there who do a great job and don't let this stuff get in the way of helping their patients, some Kaiser nurses included). But I also see a marked difference in behavior and outcomes in other hospitals I've been to. Yes, there are still some unprofessional nurses in those networks as well, but judging by the outcomes, the hospitals don't let them do damage.

New comment by ak217 in "Kaiser nurses say AI, surveillance are making their jobs and patient care worse"

ak217 — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 23:38:37 +0000

Yeah, this whole discussion cracks me up. I have a number of direct experiences with Kaiser nurses. They repeatedly got into arguments with doctors in front of me, tried to countermand doctors' instructions, ignored their patients, and complained to each other about their patients while they were right there.

Repeated unprofessional behavior with no discernible change after trying to address it. My take is that the Kaiser nursing org has a serious discipline and customer (patient) focus problem.

New comment by ak217 in "Kaiser nurses say AI, surveillance are making their jobs and patient care worse"

ak217 — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 23:29:27 +0000

Well then their protocols suck. I have many anecdotal data points about them fumbling in major ways when it matters (missed major pathologies, messed up surgeries, etc.).

If you have a choice of hospital networks, research carefully. Kaiser might be fine for many people's needs, it's not fine when it comes to intensive care.

New comment by ak217 in "I'm a USB-C Maximalist"

ak217 — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 04:47:07 +0000

Both Philips and the similarly sturdy Oral-B. You know they are good because they have a sealed design that uses induction to charge. By contrast the toothbrush mentioned by the OP won't last long with that flimsy door and the USB port in a wet environment.

New comment by ak217 in "A dock that wakes up reliably"

ak217 — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 02:05:36 +0000

I use a bunch of Lenovo Thunderbolt docks, with both Macbooks and Thinkpads. The older models go for as little as $20 used nowadays. I had to update the firmware on the really old ones, but after that they work flawlessly and let me connect 2x4k60 monitors.

New comment by ak217 in "Ask HN: Are systems ready for the first negative leap second?"

ak217 — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 04:25:55 +0000

No and they shouldn’t be. Leap seconds were never a great idea and they become an increasingly worse idea with every passing year. They are a great example of a standards making decision made without sufficient negative feedback from its implementation costs.

New comment by ak217 in "The tech of 'Terminator 2' – an oral history (2017)"

ak217 — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 22:11:15 +0000

Robert Patrick in T2 locations: https://youtu.be/g_weC1AnDYU?is=BCovDJI83JzV2Zlj

New comment by ak217 in "Airplane Boneyards List and Map"

ak217 — Sun, 05 Jul 2026 23:30:37 +0000

There are lots of great aviation museums in the USA, highly recommend visiting them. Many allow various degrees of access inside the aircraft, even more so if you chat up the museum staff. I don't imagine the boneyards will.

New comment by ak217 in "The primary purpose of code review is to find code that will be hard to maintain"

ak217 — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 18:19:32 +0000

The primary purpose of code review is whatever your organization decides it wants it to be. The post makes a good enough point but undermines it with this dogma.

New comment by ak217 in "Epidurals are a miracle technology"

ak217 — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 15:16:39 +0000

Good surgeons are a bit like major airline pilots. They have more pricing power than you think.

New comment by ak217 in "Fossil Fuels Are 40% of Freight Shipping Tonnage, but Half Its Fuel Use"

ak217 — Sun, 21 Jun 2026 21:06:33 +0000

Highly recommend everyone watch this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtQ9nt2ZeGM

Briefly, the most important reason an EV is better because it unlocks energy portability. You gain the flexibility to source your energy in many more ways than with a gas car. Oil energy is about as optimized as it's ever going to get. With electricity, we're just getting started.