Hacker News: jrflo

New comment by jrflo in "Drunk post: Things I've learned as a senior engineer (2021)"

jrflo — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 16:55:11 +0000

Gotcha, your TFSA sounds pretty similar to a Roth. So if there was a way to convert RRSP into TFSA in the manner I described, you could potentially get access to that money earlier than 59.5 (or whatever your age limit is in Canada) if that rollover is able to count as a "contribution".

New comment by jrflo in "Drunk post: Things I've learned as a senior engineer (2021)"

jrflo — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 15:28:50 +0000

I used to agree with you, but then I learned about 401k/roth conversion ladders. Basically, you can convert everything in a 401k to a roth (taxable event) and after 5 years you can withdraw all of that money penalty free and tax free (except the gains made in those 5 years). The key thing is that you want to strategically do the conversion when you have a very low income, for instance if you're already retired and living off of Roth contributions or taxable brokerage investments, so your only income for the year is the amount you convert. So basically, you just need enough funds to retire for 5 years before you can start withdrawing from the 401k->Roth.

I started doing this when I got a raise and realized pretty much half of my raise was going straight to taxes, whereas I could invest it all if I just upped my 401k contributions.

New comment by jrflo in "Ibuilt a tiny Unix‑like 'OS' with shell and filesystem for Arduino UNO (2KB RAM)"

jrflo — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 19:02:01 +0000

Fun idea! The real time interaction with GPIO from the CLI is the most interesting thing here, I could see a general framework for that being useful for early-stage prototyping with new hardware/sensors if you included things like I2C, SPI, and UART.

New comment by jrflo in "AI Resistance: some recent anti-AI stuff that’s worth discussing"

jrflo — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 20:44:16 +0000

Seems a bit counterproductive if you're concerned about the environmental impact of AI to trick hyperscalers into burning more compute

New comment by jrflo in "Data Center Is Getting a $77M Tax Break to Create One Job"

jrflo — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 19:25:48 +0000

Do you have a separate source for that? The article does not give any detail on potential property tax abatements. Also, this statement at the end seems to contradict your statement: "Porath, for his part, says Rockland County is just following the rules as they’ve been set out. And he maintains that deals like the one the IDA has given to JPMorganChase are paying dividends for the county, turning an asbestos-filled site that wasn’t paying any taxes into one that is pumping hundreds of thousands of dollars per year into local schools and other services."

New comment by jrflo in "Data Center Is Getting a $77M Tax Break to Create One Job"

jrflo — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 15:56:44 +0000

Exactly. The municipalities offer these tax breaks (the article cites the tax breaks are for sales taxes) so that they can continually draw property tax from the site. In the long run, it should provide more tax funds for the community. Not to say there aren't downsides to building datacenters, but it's misleading to pretend it's for 'job creation'.

Humanoid robot beats the human half-marathon world record by 6.5 minutes

jrflo — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 13:20:21 +0000

Article URL: https://apnews.com/article/humanoid-robots-half-marathon-beijing-302d0c4781bab20100d6a0bb4e77b629

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47833925

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by jrflo in "Claude Opus 4.7"

jrflo — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 14:09:13 +0000

I thought the same thing until I hit my rate limit dramatically faster than before. With the way it burns tokens it's much less usable on the $20 plan.

Show HN: Quitting the Modern-Day Cigarette

jrflo — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 14:33:46 +0000

Article URL: https://festudio.net/blog/posts/quitting-the-modern-day-cigarette/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47779583

Points: 1

# Comments: 0