Hacker News: evjim

New comment by evjim in "LibreCAD in the Browser"

evjim — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 17:30:03 +0000

I have never had success using Freecad or librecad on xubuntu. Tried a couple times and couldn't figure it out. I became very proficient in AutoCAD/inventor in school.

But qcad is very straight forward to use, runs on Linux, and is affordable. Unfortunately no 3D

New comment by evjim in "IRS Free File: Do Your Taxes for Free"

evjim — Sat, 21 Jan 2023 07:08:47 +0000

Use the IRS free fillable forms. It autofills information from one sheet to the next and is pretty easy to figure out after reading the PDF instructions for each IRS form. Makes way more sense then filling bubbles on a tax website that always seem to use inconsistent wording to the actual IRS form

New comment by evjim in "Afghan opium growers have switched to solar power"

evjim — Mon, 27 Jul 2020 17:54:07 +0000

I bought an Alibaba well drilling rig for $3k plus shipping and tariffs. I drilled 130ft deep with it. It took months to fix problems the machine came with and get proper drill bits adapted to it. Then at 130 ft I hit a void. All the drilling mud that you intend to recirculate drained into the ground. This can be a great sign. Aquifers also can absorb liquid. But I couldn't drill further. I did some testing with an airlift pump out the drill stem. It seemed I hit an aquifer. I had to reem the hole larger and used bentonite at the bottom of the hole to restore circulation.

During the whole process the manufacturer offered little guidance. The user manual is just a few pages of poor translation. Their YouTube channel is disjointed 10sec clips of them drilling. The best advice I got was from a local retired driller that came by.

In the end, I still can't get water out of the hole. I drilled some geothermal wells next to my house so I can theoretically use those and not feel like it's a waste. I'm selling the machine and hiring a pro haha. That was a fun hobby for a year. I had better success on friends property's with shallower water tables where we could hand auger 30ft down to water for $100 worth of tools.

New comment by evjim in "Heat Pump Water Heaters"

evjim — Tue, 28 Apr 2020 00:54:08 +0000

Also refrigerant has a very high carbon cost and installing piping on site between all of these appliances would require more refrigerant to fill those pipes and a higher potential for leaks.

New comment by evjim in "A Woman Who Lives 200k Years in the Past"

evjim — Thu, 02 Apr 2020 23:32:44 +0000

President Garfield died from blood poisoning too. But interestingly, they think if he wasn't well to do he would have survived. Many poor people who fought in the civil war walked away with bullets still inside them and no healthcare to remove it. But Garfield being president had all sorts of excessive medical attention before proper sanitation procedures were common in US medical practice. By the way I've just read Candice Miller's book on him and find her writing style great.

New comment by evjim in "Santa Cruz decriminalizes psychedelic mushrooms"

evjim — Thu, 30 Jan 2020 05:30:57 +0000

The fact that doing a drug once compelled you to move countries and become a distributor for drugs does not convince me that it is a good idea.

New comment by evjim in "Outlaw Country"

evjim — Wed, 14 Aug 2019 16:11:24 +0000

I have a few friends who I just visited in that valley. They bought 40 acres for 5k and are starting to build a straw bale house. We augered a 25ft deep well with brackish water at the bottom in a afternoon.

New comment by evjim in "Eat less meat: UN climate change report calls for change to human diet"

evjim — Fri, 09 Aug 2019 18:27:19 +0000

Animals don't eat vegetables. They eat hay and grains that can be dry land farmed on undesirable land with minimal labor.

New comment by evjim in "Thinkpad X210"

evjim — Sun, 17 Mar 2019 17:35:19 +0000

How did you learn freecad? I really want to switch to it from auto desk inventor but have spent hours messing around and can't even make a cube. The YouTube videos I was watching assumed I knew too much.

New comment by evjim in "Paul Graham on the Transition to Meat Substitutes"

evjim — Mon, 25 Feb 2019 18:48:43 +0000

Biodiversity, I think is the biggest problem. The potato blight spread so rampently because mostly one clone of the exact potato was being grown everywhere. Some sort of rice or corn blight would be catastrophic.

New comment by evjim in "Paul Graham on the Transition to Meat Substitutes"

evjim — Mon, 25 Feb 2019 17:02:44 +0000

Golden Rice is cool. And it's "nice" that the intellectual property owner has relaxed royalties for now. But it will be interesting to see how fast ancient local strains of rice disappear and there is less biodiversity. How hard is it to mix in a few greens with rice to get vitamin A?

New comment by evjim in "Oregon Bottle Deposit System Hits 90 Percent Redemption Rate"

evjim — Thu, 24 Jan 2019 17:49:15 +0000

You just said it. They do their shopping in Oregon. So they probably buy the bottles their tax free. Save ten cents on tax, spend it on deposit. It's a wash to the consumer.

New comment by evjim in "What's behind the quiet rise of homelessness in the countryside?"

evjim — Tue, 05 Jun 2018 06:15:42 +0000

It is cheaper to install solar than run electric. For under $2,000 I have built solar systems that power an efficient fridge, led lightbulbs, normal electronics, and the occasional power tool (even stick welding). Thats only ~2 years of power bills.

I've also made a well drilling auger and manually dug a drinking well for only a few hundred dollars in parts. Many offgrid people collect rainwater into a cistern and meet their water requirements. If these plots were small enough it wouldn't be unreasonable to have one well that supplies 10+ houses.

New comment by evjim in "What's behind the quiet rise of homelessness in the countryside?"

evjim — Mon, 04 Jun 2018 19:54:48 +0000

I have friends that have lived in the national forest for a significant amount of time. Know people who live in cars and RVs in cities. None of them are mentally ill or drug addicts. I know techies and rednecks who are held back by the cost of real estate.

The world needs a modern homesteading act. Give people small parcels of land with limited restrictions.

Real estate speculation/investing/absenteeism has jacked up prices in a lot of areas. This excessive ownership by some is subsidized and allows rent seeking and perpetual wealth growth. Land is not capital. Land is limited. Bare land should be free.

New comment by evjim in "De-Googling my phone"

evjim — Fri, 04 May 2018 05:31:37 +0000

I used k9mail for awhile until I realized it had sent every temporary draft of an email as I revised something and changed between apps. Was super embarrassing. Hard to trust it now even though the ui seemed great.

New comment by evjim in "Dumber phone"

evjim — Tue, 24 Apr 2018 22:45:53 +0000

I did the whole flip phone thing for awhile and you can load a version of google maps onto most phones that run Java applets.

Also, I worked on an epaper feature phone startup. But as a company we never got it to take off. I open sourced it to an extent but havent worked on it as much as I would have hoped. http://woodstead.org/epaper.html

New comment by evjim in "The dots do matter: how to scam a Gmail user"

evjim — Sat, 07 Apr 2018 19:55:46 +0000

But then if the password is reset, the original scammer has no access to the account! And the scammer cannot reset the password because they do not have access to the email.

New comment by evjim in "Why there are so many online mattress-in-a-box companies"

evjim — Mon, 02 Apr 2018 04:05:08 +0000

I was just checking out the harbor freight air nailers. The main concern I had was for the triggers, the plastic seemed really thin and poorly connected. I'll have to check out this video

New comment by evjim in "FCC Accuses Stealthy Startup of Launching Rogue Satellites"

evjim — Sat, 10 Mar 2018 09:15:29 +0000

Sounds like what you can already bounce off amateur space APRS repeaters already for free. Just would be nice to have a few more.

New comment by evjim in "Multifamily Passive House in Vancouver"

evjim — Sat, 10 Feb 2018 22:04:24 +0000

You can add dense pack cellulose insulation pretty easily to an uninsulated house. Home depot rents the machines to do it. Use a hole saw at the top of the drywall, shove in the blower tube and fill the cavity up with low cost cellulose.