Hacker News: jrgaston

New comment by jrgaston in "Everyone Is Stealing TV"

jrgaston — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 18:19:40 +0000

You can live just fine without tv. Better, in fact. Read books -- they are a lot more interesting.

New comment by jrgaston in "Volkswagen Brings Back Physical Buttons"

jrgaston — Tue, 06 Jan 2026 21:34:03 +0000

Requiring a driver to navigate a touchscreen while driving is a needless distraction. Bring back buttons and knobs, things you can feel without looking, things that don’t move with every app refresh.

Now if only VW would resume bringing small cars to North America. I’ve owned a few VWs, I liked them, but I don’t want a big car, much less an ugh truck, but that seems all they offer any more. I suppose the market has spoken.

New comment by jrgaston in "A woman on a mission to photograph every species of hummingbird"

jrgaston — Wed, 26 Nov 2025 23:55:05 +0000

We get lots of hummers on Vancouver Island and, I swear, when their feeder is empty they send an emissary to find me, buzzing around my head, saying feed me! Feed me!

New comment by jrgaston in "Canada loses its measles-free status, with US on track to follow"

jrgaston — Tue, 11 Nov 2025 16:55:21 +0000

In British Columbia my local health authority texts me to inform me my covid and flu vaccines are available. And both are free. Of course it is cost effective for the province as it is cheaper to give vaccines than treat sick people in hospital.

New comment by jrgaston in "'Rocks as big as cars' are flying down the Dolomites"

jrgaston — Wed, 27 Aug 2025 20:58:49 +0000

The trail I followed for the TMB was not difficult, though difficulty depends on the trail you choose plus how much you want to cover in a day. I had good hiking boots, poles, rain gear, and a not-too-big pack with water, food, and clothing. I did not camp.

New comment by jrgaston in "'Rocks as big as cars' are flying down the Dolomites"

jrgaston — Wed, 27 Aug 2025 18:50:55 +0000

Interesting article, and it brings back a lot of memories.

I've done three alpine hikes: the Tour du Mont Blanc, the Haute Route, and the Dolomites. The Dolomites were my favorite, for both the scenery (though all are spectacular) and for the quality of the mountain inns where we stayed each night. We spent one night at Rifugio Cinque Torri, which is not far from those rock towers in the story.

I took a lot of photos while hiking and while carrying the camera equipment was a bother, I am so glad I did as I can re-visit the trip, photo by photo.

All three hikes are highly recommended.

New comment by jrgaston in "Hundreds lose water source in Colorado's poorest county with no notice"

jrgaston — Mon, 25 Aug 2025 16:49:14 +0000

It’s not just Colorado. Used to live in rural northern California and digging a $25k well (typical price I was quoted) came with no guarantee that water would be found.

New comment by jrgaston in "Adobe Project Indigo is a new photo app from former Pixel camera engineers"

jrgaston — Mon, 23 Jun 2025 03:08:18 +0000

It's not a dslr replacement, what a weird claim. My Nikons and Fujis are so much nicer to hold, to adjust, to shoot. But for a phone camera the s.w is ok. More adjustable than the iPhone app. I like the controls, the current settings text, and built in help text.

Only knock so far is it runs hot: never seen an overheating warning ever on my iPhone 14pro. Now i get one every ten or fifteen minutes when using Indigo.

New comment by jrgaston in "Android 16 is here"

jrgaston — Tue, 10 Jun 2025 20:45:55 +0000

That so many do not see why vaccines are needed is a serious problem.

New comment by jrgaston in "TMSU: Command-line tool for applying tags and viewing virtual tagged filesystem"

jrgaston — Thu, 23 Jan 2025 22:19:11 +0000

Check out Lightroom.

New comment by jrgaston in "A year of Meta's news ban in Canada"

jrgaston — Fri, 02 Aug 2024 21:09:26 +0000

It's but one data point, so don't draw any conclusions, but my Canadian household's news consumption is unchanged. We get lots of news from the CBC, the Atlantic, the New Yorker, the Guardian, and the NY Times. Oh, and there's a local tv channel that has pretty good local (Vancouver Island) news.

New comment by jrgaston in "It is now easier to pass AP tests"

jrgaston — Fri, 26 Jul 2024 20:40:28 +0000

A scam? Really?

I taught AP along with non-AP chemistry for a number of years and I think the AP program is a good fit for those students who plan on going to university, especially those interested in the sciences. In two semesters we covered almost the full range of chemistry topics (only organic was slighted) and the students came out well prepared for college chemistry.

The value in an AP course, to my mind, is not the AP exam. It's that the class has the depth and the pace of a college class. Even those who barely passed my course knew a lot more chem than those in the non-AP class.

New comment by jrgaston in "The Delusion of the Polygraph"

jrgaston — Tue, 16 Jul 2024 15:55:55 +0000

A wonderfully written piece.

It’s not a lie if you believe it. - George Costanza

New comment by jrgaston in "B.C. looks to standardize multiplex designs as latest fix to housing crisis"

jrgaston — Sat, 18 Nov 2023 23:25:50 +0000

You might want to check your units. BC is a bit bigger than Texas, but not 3x.

New comment by jrgaston in "Show HN: Open-source obsidian.md sync server"

jrgaston — Thu, 24 Aug 2023 23:14:10 +0000

Obsidian is a great product, thank you! And the optional Sync service works beautifully to keep my files synched between Windows, iPhone, and iPad.

New comment by jrgaston in "A short history of the VW Mark 1 Rabbit/Golf (2021)"

jrgaston — Sat, 18 Mar 2023 18:23:23 +0000

I owned one, a great car. Spacious and great visibility. Classic clean Ital design. Had Bosch fuel injection so it met air pollution rules and ran beautifully.

New comment by jrgaston in "Apple Entertainment Services are slow or down"

jrgaston — Thu, 23 Feb 2023 22:51:19 +0000

Opened the iTunes store an hour ago, searched "Handel", went to albums, but could not open any album. So yeah, it was down.

New comment by jrgaston in "ChatGPT is a blurry JPEG of the web"

jrgaston — Thu, 09 Feb 2023 18:19:13 +0000

Agreed. I've subscribed to many a magazine in my long life. The New Yorker is the last one standing as it is excellent from cover to cover.

New comment by jrgaston in "The president of Toyota will be replaced to accelerate the transition to EV"

jrgaston — Thu, 26 Jan 2023 20:46:51 +0000

Can't speak for the US but next door in Canada there are waiting lists for EVs. Second-hand EVs sell very well, too. We feel lucky we bought a second-hand, short range EV several years ago and it does almost all of our driving tasks. Haven't visited a gas station in a long time.

New comment by jrgaston in "The button on Canon’s image-stabilized binoculars"

jrgaston — Sat, 31 Dec 2022 02:39:24 +0000

Nice, but why not just put an image-stabilized telephoto on a camera? I've lenses for my Fujis and Nikons that do the same as the Canon binoculars---and it _is_ cool when you see stabilization in action---plus you can take pictures.