Hacker News: frankus

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.

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

frankus — Wed, 21 Jan 2026 18:12:43 +0000

There's now a product for that: https://www.lowes.com/pd/Kobalt-1-4-in-to-1-2-in-Drive-Metri...

New comment by frankus in "STFU"

frankus — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 19:22:43 +0000

They're obviously not the most affordable things around, but if you have an iPhone and spending ~US$250 on a pair of wireless earbuds won't unduly stress your budget, the transparency mode on AirPods Pro is great for this.

New comment by frankus in "Canada slashes 100% tariffs on Chinese EVs to 6%"

frankus — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 17:40:02 +0000

I think the way this would work is you would have your Canadian friend/owner drive it across and then return via another mode of transport. It's entirely possible you could get away with it pretty much indefinitely (especially in an area where folks are used to seeing Canadian plates), but I could also see someone checking a list of "foreign vehicles that entered the US and never left" at some point and one or both of you having some explaining to do (i.e. being ruled inadmissible).

New comment by frankus in "The only GM EV1 ever publicly sold"

frankus — Tue, 25 Nov 2025 00:24:34 +0000

I had a couple of coworkers who had them. I vaguely remember it being based on a ~$35k value in 1997 dollars, so definitely out of my price range as a new graduate earning only a little more than that in a year.

On top of that I'm pretty sure the unit economics were firmly in the negative, even discounting the R&D costs.

They were pretty remarkable though—I got a chance to drive a pre-production one at a ride-and-drive a year before and was super impressed.

New comment by frankus in "The only GM EV1 ever publicly sold"

frankus — Tue, 25 Nov 2025 00:15:20 +0000

Pre-Tesla EV companies were kind of stuck in a catch-22, where they couldn't enter the low end of the market (because the tech was still super costly) and they couldn't enter the high end of the market (because either the performance was lacking or they didn't have the resources to scale production).

But with a combination of throwing a lot of money at the problem, being in the right place at the right time, and good execution, they managed to scale up the high end of the market enough to eventually move (somewhat) down-market.

New comment by frankus in "The time has finally come for geothermal energy"

frankus — Wed, 19 Nov 2025 16:42:15 +0000

Showering in hot water is one of the more energy-intensive things people do on a daily basis. I have a 14.4 kW on-demand heater that just barely keeps up with a 1.5 gallon (~6 liter) per minute shower head with 50°F/10°C incoming water.

On a per-minute basis that's comparable to highway driving in a smallish electric car.

New comment by frankus in "The time has finally come for geothermal energy"

frankus — Tue, 18 Nov 2025 01:31:37 +0000

My favorite memory is following a map to a small isolated hot spring off of some random gravel road in the middle of nowhere. It consisted of a hot-tub-sized pool and a shower.

Whoever was there before had left the shower running. We were the only people there, and hadn't seen anyone pass us on the (dead end) road, so it must have been on for quite a while.

Only when I went to for my pre-soak shower did I realize that it didn't actually have any kind of user-accessible way to turn it off.

New comment by frankus in "Digital ID, a new way to create and present an ID in Apple Wallet"

frankus — Thu, 13 Nov 2025 05:49:46 +0000

From that article it looks like all you need to establish a secure connection with the passport is some data that is printed in plaintext on the photo page.

It seems (again, if I'm reading correctly) that you only really need a private key in order to issue a passport.

New comment by frankus in "Digital ID, a new way to create and present an ID in Apple Wallet"

frankus — Thu, 13 Nov 2025 05:43:37 +0000

Isn't this just seeing a slippery slope and deciding to build a terrace[1], in that the existence of a digital ID doesn't automatically lead to mandate to carry one—any more than the existence of a physical ID card does?

[1] to paraphrase one many excellent John McCarthy-isms: http://jmc.stanford.edu/general/sayings.html

New comment by frankus in "The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia"

frankus — Wed, 12 Nov 2025 22:30:52 +0000

Rounding to a nickel has the advantage that's it's both simple (1, 2, 6, and 7 round down; 3, 4, 8, and 9 round up) and fair (there's no systematic bias in favor of the buyer or seller).

Dimes need to deal with how to round numbers ending in 5, making them unfair, or (with a more elaborate system of looking at both digits) complicated.

Quarters (being an odd value) are fair, but kind of a nightmare to memorize all of the values that round up or down (1–12, 26–37, 51–62, and 76–87 round down; 13–24, 38–49, 63–74, and 88–99 round up; and I'm not even sure I don't have an error in those numbers).

Also it's awkward if a higher-valued coin (e.g. quarters) isn't divisible by the least valuable coin (e.g. a dime)