Hacker News: kjjohnsen

New comment by kjjohnsen in "Should you wash your solar panels?"

kjjohnsen — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 15:51:31 +0000

Of course washing them makes sense, physics-wise. As others have pointed out, you are almost certainly seeing a rise due to cooling off the panels (this would not make economic sense to do all of the time). Temperature has a pretty dramatic effect on solar panel output. Cooling a panel can boost production by 10% or more. Do not polish them. Solar panels are designed to be anti-reflective. You don't want a shiny surface.

But, the real factor in all of this is how valuable the time required to clean the panel is.

New comment by kjjohnsen in "VLC for Unity now supported on Linux"

kjjohnsen — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 13:29:14 +0000

Basically. Unity video player is fine if you control the content. The other very reasonable option is to funnel shared content through a synced web browser interface. I've developed a few collaborative XR applications, and have used a blend of things to support sharing.

New comment by kjjohnsen in "I wanted a clock that never needed setting. Things escalated"

kjjohnsen — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 13:06:54 +0000

I too am fascinated by clocks and how hard it is to get one with the features you want. I settled into two solutions. One is the Bangle JS2, which is the most perfect smartwatch ever made if you use android phones. The other is any rooted Android phone. You get all of the power of the internet and infinite customizability. The only problem with the Android phone solution is battery life if the power goes out. For those looking at e-ink, the M5 paper is really solid as a clock.