Hacker News: kiwijamo

New comment by kiwijamo in "A Wayland Compositor in Minecraft"

kiwijamo — Sat, 23 May 2026 09:02:04 +0000

I've been using Wayland for some years (at least since Debian switched to it as their default) and not had any issues with it. I think complaints were more common about X, and Wayland has resolved a lot of it for the average user. For example my switch to Wayland was the first time I had 100% working video playback on Intel iGPUs without tinkering with conf files. I appreciate there are still some edge cases where X11 is still better -- but I think for 95-99% of users Wayland has just worked.

New comment by kiwijamo in "Waymo Drives Off with South Bay Man's Luggage"

kiwijamo — Sun, 03 May 2026 01:12:09 +0000

Why can’t they just put back into a car in the back seat or whatever and send it off to him? Seems strange to make it so difficult when they surely have a vehicle sitting right there in their depot that could do the job as soon as the customer is back home.

New comment by kiwijamo in "SSH has no Host header"

kiwijamo — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 00:06:11 +0000

It varies in different parts of the world. Here in New Zealand all except one fixed line (i.e. fibre/xDSL) provider offers IPv6 (the only hold out being the ex-government telco). Wireless/mobile (4G/5G mobile or FWA) is a different story however as all wireless/mobile networks are IPv4 only still to this day (even thogh two of them are also fixed line providers offering IPv6 via their fixed line service!).

New comment by kiwijamo in "Setting up phones is a nightmare"

kiwijamo — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 21:09:29 +0000

Maybe Samsung has changed how the first boot works compared to stock Android, but this definitely has not been my experience across several Samsung devices. Also many apps store their data in different ways which doesn't always survive a device migration/backup. Only cloud-only apps have a good experience, wheras anything that stores data on device can be hit and miss depending on how easy individual apps manage its backup.

New comment by kiwijamo in "Windows 11 Notepad to support Markdown"

kiwijamo — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 22:09:38 +0000

Until a future Window release doesn't include the old notepad anymore.

New comment by kiwijamo in "Windows 11 Notepad to support Markdown"

kiwijamo — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 22:06:52 +0000

It doesn't work everywhere though as there are still apps that don't offer a plain text paste, and as you have noted the shortcut can be different in different applications.

New comment by kiwijamo in "27-year-old Apple iBooks can connect to Wi-Fi and download official updates"

kiwijamo — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 23:21:41 +0000

I've never had this happen to me and I've daily driven Windows 11 for some years now. Can you give an example?

New comment by kiwijamo in "Resizing windows on macOS Tahoe – the saga continues"

kiwijamo — Sun, 15 Feb 2026 19:47:06 +0000

Ah I wish I knew that, thanks for the tip!

New comment by kiwijamo in "Resizing windows on macOS Tahoe – the saga continues"

kiwijamo — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 01:50:36 +0000

Agreed. Even Windows has some nice stuff when it comes to windows management IMHO. Every time I end up on macOS I miss the various Windows/GNOME behaviours e.g. window snapping to the right/left half, pressing the Win key to see all open apps, maximise buttons that doesn't put the whole app into full screen mode, etc.

New comment by kiwijamo in "Migrate Wizard – IMAP Based Email Migration Tool"

kiwijamo — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 20:16:33 +0000

I wonder if it includes workarounds for Google IMAP bugs etc. Some years ago I migrated over 10 years worth of emails from Google to Fastmail and I ran into a lot of issues with Google's buggy IMAP implementation. Things like a random 1 in every 1000 email failing to delete so I would have random emails still remaning. I found out it was a known issue which Google pretty much decided they WONTFIX. I later found Fastmail had its own migration tool that (I presume) has workarounds for various bugs in other providers IMAP implentation making it easier than using e.g. Thunderbird to do it. If I could go back in time and use a tool like this that has a way to work around Google's bugs that would have saved a lot of my time.

New comment by kiwijamo in "Time Station Emulator"

kiwijamo — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 00:44:59 +0000

I read the title as 'Train Station Emulator'. :)

New comment by kiwijamo in "Xfwl4 – The Roadmap for a Xfce Wayland Compositor"

kiwijamo — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 00:41:59 +0000

Wayland was the first display system on Linux I've used that just worked perfectly right out of the box on a bog standard Intel iGPU across several machines. I think that is a big draw for a lot of people like myself who just want to get things done. For me X11 represents the past through experience I had when I had to tinker with the X11 config file to get basic stuff like video playback to work smoothly without tearing. My first Wayland install was literally a "wow this is the future of Linux" for me quite honestly when I realised everything just worked without even a single line of config. I would recommend a Wayland distro like Debian to the average computer user knowing Wayland just works -- prior to Wayland I'd be like "well Linux is great but if you like watching YouTube you'll need to add a line to your xorg config to trun on the thingy that smoothes out video playback on Intel iGPUs". Appreciate others have different perpectives -- I come from the POV of someone who likes to install a OS and have all the basic stuff working out of the box.

New comment by kiwijamo in "Apple introduces new AirTag with longer range and improved findability"

kiwijamo — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 00:20:42 +0000

The reliability of the other brands are quite poor though. I've tried Tile, I've tried Pebble (using Google's network) and neither has worked reliability enough. So I ended up switching to AirTags and so far I have been impressed with the reliability - it works 100% of the time which is not something I could say about Tile nor Pebble/Google.

New comment by kiwijamo in "200 MB RAM FreeBSD desktop"

kiwijamo — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 01:39:03 +0000

I used to run Acorn's RISC OS in just 2MB of RAM.

New comment by kiwijamo in "What came first: the CNAME or the A record?"

kiwijamo — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 22:59:25 +0000

Some people (myself included) read that as "would ideally come first, but it is not neccessary that it comes first". The language is not clear IMHO and could be worded better.

New comment by kiwijamo in "Roam 50GB is now Roam 100GB"

kiwijamo — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 22:59:38 +0000

Agreed although it's getting to the point that other companies are now using Starlink to provide other services so I've often used Starlink (even if indirectly) without realising it.

For example I go tramping and pretty much every remote accomodation I've stayed at use Starlink. My mobile provider uses Starlink for direct-to-cell services. My national airline uses Starlink as backhaul for their in-flight WiFi.

I know there are other competitors coming who aim to provide alternatives to Starlink -- this should mean at some point accomodation providers, mobile networks, airlines, etc can switch to them.

New comment by kiwijamo in "Roam 50GB is now Roam 100GB"

kiwijamo — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 22:54:34 +0000

Agree that it's only a few mins per satellite, but interestingly I've noticed this pause every now and then (and 30mins seems around what I've noticed) in New Zealand. The latency just spikes and sometimes connections are lost for a brief period then suddenly everything comes right again. Curious why that happens. However it's one reason why I still recommend fibre or 5G if it is availiable as both seem to be more reliable than Starlink.

New comment by kiwijamo in "Roam 50GB is now Roam 100GB"

kiwijamo — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 22:45:37 +0000

Agreed. To upvote I often zoom out to make sure I tap the upvote botton and no the downvote one!

New comment by kiwijamo in "Lessons from 14 years at Google"

kiwijamo — Sun, 04 Jan 2026 20:45:54 +0000

I've used Meet a few times for video calls and I was amazed at how poorly it worked given the amount of resources Google has at their disposal. I've never had a good video call on Meets. I've had a few Meet calls where over time the resolution and bitrate would be reduced to such a low point I couldn't even see the other person at all (just a large blocky mess). Whereas Teams (for all its flaws) normally has no major issues with the video quality. Teams isn't without its flaws and I do occassionally fall back to ZOom for larger group video calls but at the end of the day Teams video calling sort of just works fine. Not great but not terrible either. YMMV of course.

New comment by kiwijamo in "Swapping SIM cards used to be easy, and then came eSIM"

kiwijamo — Mon, 29 Dec 2025 20:52:27 +0000

I agree that seems to be the ideal balance. Retain the flexibility of being ablen to easily swap your home SIM, but also retain access to eSIMs as a option when travelling. I still use physical SIMs when travelling as it's still easy to get a physical SIM in many countries. Dubai I got offered a free SIM at immigration(!) and in Singapore there were cheap SIMs for sale post-Security. But I imagine that there will be other countries where eSIM may be a better option.