Hacker News: frankus

New comment by frankus in "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (September 2026)"

frankus — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 16:27:07 +0000

  Location: Bellingham, WA, USA
  Remote: Yes
  Willing to relocate: maybe for an exceptional opportunity
  Technologies: Swift, Objective-C, limited Kotlin, backend, and embedded experience
  Résumé/CV: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fschmi/
  Email: frank+hn@frankschmitt.org

I have about 10 years of experience of owning the iOS component of a customer-feedback SDK (https://github.com/apptentive/apptentive-kit-ios). I did a Swift rewrite of the Objective-C SDK around 2020 and recently converted to structured concurrency/Swift 6 language mode. For the 5 years before that I was primarily working on iOS apps, with some web experience in the distant past. The most straightforward fit for me would be helping with another SaaS client-side SDK project on iOS, but I'm happy to consider app work. I also have experience with Flutter, React Native, Capacitor, .NET MAUI, etc. but prefer to work on native code when I can. Authorized to work in US and EU.

New comment by frankus in "So you want to use plants to reduce CO₂"

frankus — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 23:00:11 +0000

Honestly this seems like a super long-shot but at least semi-plausible avenue for putting DAC on the sort of learning curve that took lithium batteries from "high-end camcorder" to utility-scale storage.

New comment by frankus in "So you want to use plants to reduce CO₂"

frankus — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 22:54:22 +0000

Another way of looking at this is that--while it doesn't have to be edible--you have to grow plant matter inside your house at a rate equivalent to what everyone in there consumes as food.

Even if you found like an algae or something that converted CO2, light, and water into fat, 2400 kCal would be ~300g per person, per day, or not too short of a normal package of butter.

New comment by frankus in "So you want to use plants to reduce CO₂"

frankus — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 22:49:20 +0000

"Residential CO2 scrubber" seems like the sort of gadget eccentric rich people would buy, sort of a distributed DAC system.

New comment by frankus in "You Could Have Come Up with Kimi Delta Attention"

frankus — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 18:05:46 +0000

Relevant xkcd: https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2501:_Average_Fam...

New comment by frankus in "Your 'app' could have been a webpage (so I fixed it for you)"

frankus — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 16:59:13 +0000

The list of things that require an app rather than a web page was pretty long circa 2010, but it's quite a bit shorter now: it's mostly hardware access (Bluetooth/NFC), background activities (like background app refresh), persisting location permission, reliable offline storage, and system/OS integration (widgets/live activities, Siri shortcuts).

If done for the right reasons, a native app could theoretically be a bit more power- and bandwidth-efficient for a given level of polish.

But usually what you're getting is some cross-platform mystery meat UI, a boatload of tracking, and no real system/OS integration (because it isn't trivial to do from whatever cross-platform environment they chose).

New comment by frankus in "Apple raises prices of MacBooks, iPads"

frankus — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 15:46:35 +0000

If you're in the US, Costco has certain models at the old price through Saturday (or while supplies last). Just pulled the trigger on a 24GB/1TB 13" MbA for $250 off the new price.

New comment by frankus in "Wages in America Are Too Low for the 30% Rule to Work for Renters Anymore"

frankus — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 15:41:33 +0000

The most popular proposal (from Henry George) is to maintain individual land ownership, but impose a land-value tax that approaches 100% of the land rent.

The result is that real estate basically sells for roughly what it would cost to rebuild whatever is built on the land.

There is still a premium charged (in the form of LVT) to allocate access to desirable locations, but the revenue goes to the government/community instead of the previous owner. And the eliminating the incentive for land speculation should actually reduce overall costs.

New comment by frankus in "Wages in America Are Too Low for the 30% Rule to Work for Renters Anymore"

frankus — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 13:58:57 +0000

The difference is that investment in a company can create “more company”, whereas investment in land can’t create more land.

New comment by frankus in "Mercedes‑Benz starts large‑scale production of electric axial flux motor"

frankus — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 20:04:45 +0000

I'd like to see these if these can be scaled down into ebike size, or beyond that into micromobilty form factors that people carry around (like lightweight scooters and skateboards).

New comment by frankus in "Debug Project"

frankus — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 21:38:42 +0000

In the FAQ they discuss how in most of its range this particular species is invasive, feeds almost exclusively on humans, and is not believed to be a major food source for predators.

New comment by frankus in "German Dog Commands"

frankus — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 20:54:17 +0000

I grew up speaking German and still use "zu!" with my (otherwise English-trained) dogs for "get out of the way!".

New comment by frankus in "Does that use a lot of energy?"

frankus — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 03:46:17 +0000

This one is resistive (tiny and cheap to purchase) but will be just an emergency-backup shower once my home renovations are done.

The house is getting a split-system air-to-water heat pump with an indirect tank for domestic hot water, so it should cut that down substantially (the unit maxes out at around 3kW input but likely will run longer to recover/preheat).

New comment by frankus in "Does that use a lot of energy?"

frankus — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 03:36:50 +0000

I wish we did more e.g. district heating with that waste heat in the US.

New comment by frankus in "Does that use a lot of energy?"

frankus — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 23:50:16 +0000

The number I guesstimated for my e-scooter is about 500 miles per dollar of electricity.

New comment by frankus in "Does that use a lot of energy?"

frankus — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 23:49:39 +0000

The electric shower also seemed pretty optimistic. I live in an area with about 50°F/10°C ground temperature and my 14.4 kW water heater can just keep a relatively efficient shower head flowing at a comfortable temperature.

New comment by frankus in "Does that use a lot of energy?"

frankus — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 23:45:43 +0000

Every single ICE car driving down the highway is throwing away enough waste heat to heat a small apartment building on a freezing cold day.

New comment by frankus in "Bus stop balancing is fast, cheap, and effective"

frankus — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 19:31:36 +0000

I feel like the gist here is that "faster, better, cheaper: pick two" doesn't apply to sub-optimally-spaced bus stops. You really can have all three, at the cost of some political blowback from the people who used to have a shorter walk.

New comment by frankus in "Ask HN: Why are electronics still so unrecyclable?"

frankus — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 18:27:37 +0000

I wonder if part of it is also that mining companies are generally allowed to just leave their tailings in a big pile near the mine rather than have to responsibly dispose of the majority of the ore that has no (or negative) commercial value.

New comment by frankus in "The super-slow conversion of the U.S. to metric (2025)"

frankus — Wed, 21 Jan 2026 18:23:07 +0000

The diabolical case is M5 versus 10-32. About a 4% difference in diameter and about 0.8% difference in thread pitch. Basically indistinguishable with the naked eye and even the "nest the threads in each other" check doesn't help without a pretty long length of threads.