Hacker News: ansgri

New comment by ansgri in "I stopped trusting USB-C cable labels and started testing them"

ansgri — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 09:45:13 +0000

It definitely looks to be one of the better ones. Since many of these products use same generic Chinese platforms, I looked for a similar product on Aliexpress since they have better shipping for me, but didn't find a full analog. Had to use a forwarder to order from Treedix—only to have it shipped in a very roundabout way from China.

New comment by ansgri in "Colorimeter 3nh CR4501 RAL Hack"

ansgri — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 10:02:21 +0000

RAL and Pantone serve different market, at least from my Europe-adjacent POV. Pantone is more used in print and branded sign design (like, colored plastic) as brandbooks typically specify Pantone colors. RAL is more industrial-oriented: it's more constrained but supported by manufacturers of industrial paints and coatings. Like, you buy coated corrugated metal sheets for your roof in RAL, and often can order paints by RAL code in your hardware store.

New comment by ansgri in "REO Trucks I4 4WD Pickup Truck Starts at $21,500"

ansgri — Sun, 19 Jul 2026 09:24:19 +0000

Would be best to have a modular generator for an EV, that would allow slower but practical charging while on the go or at rest. This would be basically a series hybrid with modular generator, not popular due to lower efficiency AFAIU. Just explicitly design for lower performance when battery critically low and is charging on the go.

New comment by ansgri in "Canada's only watchmaking school still ticking after 80 years"

ansgri — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 15:17:26 +0000

Those are not as good as they seem to be. I once had a g-shock mudmaster, seemingly an absolutely overbuilt thing, and it was resetting randomly in wet conditions. Maybe that could be fixed on warranty and it would work next 50 years flawlessly, but it didn’t inspire any confidence in that brand. They re-positioned themselves as a loud fashion brand, not a tool watch manufacturer.

New comment by ansgri in "Heuristics for lab robotics, and where its future may go"

ansgri — Sat, 04 Jul 2026 19:07:51 +0000

So, they predict that the future is a mix of JLCPCB and AWS Lambda for bio research, with immediately available library of reagents and easily programmable hardware-agnostic experiments.

New comment by ansgri in "Phantasy Star IV – 1993 Developer Interviews"

ansgri — Wed, 27 May 2026 17:46:27 +0000

Thanks, I was hoping for this sort of a response. Ordered a Miyoo Mini Plus.

New comment by ansgri in "Phantasy Star IV – 1993 Developer Interviews"

ansgri — Tue, 26 May 2026 12:03:16 +0000

PS3 was one of my favorite games, maybe it's time to get myself one of those pocket emulators and play PS4 finally.

New comment by ansgri in "I believe there are entire companies right now under AI psychosis"

ansgri — Sat, 16 May 2026 20:13:47 +0000

You underestimate the non-computerized part of humanity. Even with automated plants building other automated plants the propagation speed will be highly constrained by natural factors, plain unavailability of resources, and xenophobic nature of humanity of course.

New comment by ansgri in "Maladaptive Frugality"

ansgri — Fri, 01 May 2026 08:50:38 +0000

That is good if you can count on your cost of living being predictable. It's not for many people, even for relatively well-off ones: you may earn a lot for your area but being an immigrant without a permanent enough status in your current country, and your home country which you always have a right to return to may be unsafe or highly undesirable for whatever reason. So you need to consider the emergency of moving somewhere in a political and legal climate not known in advance.

Thus it becomes a more difficult choice what proportion to bet on stability of the current living situation, and what on long-term savings for emergencies which look quite probable but still unmeasurable. And the latter is complicated by absence of reliable and relatively liquid investment opportunities. All in all, fun to be from a sanctioned country.

New comment by ansgri in "Asahi Linux Progress Linux 7.0"

ansgri — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 13:29:26 +0000

One of the reasons I can see is it’s much easier to say “we don’t play this game” than get a lot of negative press for selective openness and breaking compatibility of non-public interfaces. Maybe it’s even more important internally, as it enables new kind of internal discussions distracting from priority work.

New comment by ansgri in "Scientific datasets are riddled with copy-paste errors"

ansgri — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 09:31:30 +0000

It's likely easier to publish genuine research if you have knowledge and rigor to properly synthesize the data. It's not as common as you'd think, and a good simulator is easily publishable, at least was some years ago in domains I'm familiar with.

New comment by ansgri in "Microsoft hasn't had a coherent GUI strategy since Petzold"

ansgri — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 18:15:37 +0000

Which one? The classic QtWidgets, which implements consistent controls but sometimes talked about as deprecated (same as WinForms), or QML, which is "modern" and "actively developed" but does not provide native look and feel and requires (or at least used to require) a lot of manual work to support proper keyboard control and accessibility?

New comment by ansgri in "Data centers are transitioning from AC to DC"

ansgri — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 12:40:06 +0000

Would be more practical to have a single 50-300W AC-DC 24V PSU per room or group of rooms, then pull relatively short DC cables to each light. A multichannel light controller could also be placed nearby, and then if you need fully-featured brightness and color control, only a small PWM amplifier could be placed at each light if distance from controller to each light is too long to transmit PWM power directly.

New comment by ansgri in "//go:fix inline and the source-level inliner"

ansgri — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 22:35:04 +0000

Good illustration that a seemingly simple feature could require a ton of functionality under the hood. Would be nice to have this in Python.

New comment by ansgri in "Wired headphone sales are exploding"

ansgri — Sat, 14 Mar 2026 12:59:28 +0000

Isn’t it the only common variant of 4.4mm? Since portable balanced audio is audiophile-adjacent, no wonder it includes the common ground of dubious utility.

New comment by ansgri in "Wired headphone sales are exploding"

ansgri — Sat, 14 Mar 2026 05:12:40 +0000

What’s 1.44 mm connector in this context? Common sizes for headphones are 2.5, 3.5 and (lately) 4.4 mm

New comment by ansgri in "To the Polypropylene Makers"

ansgri — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 11:25:15 +0000

Rechecked now, PEX became way more accessible it seems. Rehau-style toolkits used to cost several hundreds.

New comment by ansgri in "To the Polypropylene Makers"

ansgri — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 11:06:31 +0000

No, PEX is different. PEX is flexible, sometimes more convenient but requires more specialized and expensive tools to install properly.

New comment by ansgri in "To the Polypropylene Makers"

ansgri — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 10:05:42 +0000

Polypropylene is great: it revolutionized residential plumbing, at least in countries that adopted it (apparently not the US). With PP tubes you can weld any complex plumbing with like $50 worth of tools and minimum skills. The only drawback is significant thermal expansion, but they’re flexible enough that they won’t break even if you forget to design around that.

New comment by ansgri in "Workers who love ‘synergizing paradigms’ might be bad at their jobs"

ansgri — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 14:46:15 +0000

I feel like half of junior programmers are susceptible to this.