Hacker News: kowalej

New comment by kowalej in "Petition to Withdraw Canada's Bill C-22"

kowalej — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 16:04:04 +0000

I agree, we need more permanent measures. I'm tired of seeing these bills pop up over and over and having to play whack-a-mole. Any suggestions?

New comment by kowalej in "Petition to Withdraw Canada's Bill C-22"

kowalej — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 20:07:41 +0000

The comment you've replied to is clearly not "partisan bluster". While it may be a tad hyperbolic, with the Stanley Cup line, it's driving a valid point that while Canada is facing a number of very real challenges, the government in power is spending its time on internet censorship bills.

These bills are of almost no benefit to the average Canadian, and the point is that the government should focus more on things that matter to citizens. Instead of playing into people's fear and exposing them to potential government overreach, privacy violations, data breaches, etc., Canada's leadership should focus back on the economy.

Your comment actually seems to be the bluster, considering the ranting and swearing.

New comment by kowalej in "A New Kind of Hybrid Car Is About to Hit America's Streets"

kowalej — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 15:25:00 +0000

That's what I was thinking, sounds just like the Volt. The Volt was a very practical vehicle, drove great and cost so little to fuel up. Most weeks I owned the Volt I wouldn't put gas in it, in fact I would go so long without using the ICE sometimes that the car would fire up the engine for automated "engine maintenance".

In the winter it would only get about 60KM all-eletric range, but for daily city driving or a short commute, that was generally fine. In summer the range was closer to 120KM.

This new truck is supposed to get 233KM electric range, which will be more than enough for both city driving and the majority of commutes, round trip. With the DC fast charge, you can also add 80KM in 10mins which isn't too bad. I think this makes it a very practical vehicle for most folks. Even trades people using it as a work truck where they drive to a site and perhaps use the truck for power will be able to go without using the ICE probably 90% of the time.

New comment by kowalej in "Garry Tan's Claude Code Setup"

kowalej — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 05:10:46 +0000

LOL imagine if this guy was your boss. Scary thing is though, my boss is starting to sound like this :D

New comment by kowalej in "Judge orders government to begin refunding more than $130B in tariffs"

kowalej — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 15:09:43 +0000

Not only that, the companies used the tariff excuse to raise prices which will not come back down even if tariffs are fully off the table. Just like the price inflation during COVID.

New comment by kowalej in "Judge orders government to begin refunding more than $130B in tariffs"

kowalej — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 15:02:54 +0000

I'm shocked you can't see how this is a potential conflict of interest. You don't need to know the exact outcome of the SC decision to have confidence that things will land in your favor. There are certainly all kinds of high level discussions with legal experts in the White House that could have hinted this outcome as likely. The real question is whether there's any personal involvement still with Cantor or this was something launched without influence. If there was influence though, there will of course be denials and bold-face lying (just like with the Epstein involvement).

New comment by kowalej in "Edison founders rant- Canada won't let him build hybrid truck and America blocks [video]"

kowalej — Sun, 28 Sep 2025 15:51:09 +0000

Been writing my local officials to try to get some attention on this, I encourage others to do the same. Typical Canadian government red tape that we really don't need in this current climate especially.

New comment by kowalej in "Ontario set to begin construction of Canada's first mini nuclear power plant"

kowalej — Sat, 10 May 2025 06:06:45 +0000

Very valid points, especially considering a project like the Bruce B reactors (large project just north of this site) were (inflation adjusted) built for around ~6B CAD / GW in the late 1970s. This is 3x the cost of that, and we're 40 years into the future.

New comment by kowalej in "Framework 13 AMD Setup with FreeBSD"

kowalej — Sun, 30 Mar 2025 16:34:09 +0000

Framework 13, 11th Gen Intel, running Fedora 41. I've gone through many Fedora upgrades since buying this in 2021, my unit was I think the 3rd batch of the original laptops.

Everything generally has worked fine over the years, though I did have to replace a broken fan recently. Super easy to repair with a new fan/heatsink unit - cost me about 50$, 10 mins to install.

Trackpad has always been mediocre... workable, but not as good as leading brands. Fingerprint reader always worked well, and no issues with Wifi or Bluetooth. Battery life has always been crap, but I usually have it docked (which also works great with a Dell Thunderbolt unit).

New comment by kowalej in "Docs – Open source alternative to Notion or Outline"

kowalej — Mon, 17 Mar 2025 05:36:10 +0000

Was just thinking how my team can get off current Notion lock in, this looks promising. Might be able to contribute as well, being a Django shop.

New comment by kowalej in "Boston Metal shows industrial reactor that uses electricity to make steel"

kowalej — Mon, 17 Mar 2025 05:31:18 +0000

Using electricity to make steel isn't novel - if you consider electric arc furnaces (which can be powered by renewable energy). This does seem to be a fairly novel and cool approach though (eliminates coke), but it still looks quite energy intensive.

New comment by kowalej in "Do they have humans test cars before they produce them or what?"

kowalej — Mon, 15 Jan 2024 17:47:05 +0000

That's why I like my Chevy Volt. It has a couple different drive modes selectable with the shifter. Under the normal drive mode the regen braking is controlled by a little paddle on the wheel or during regular braking (hitting brake pedal). In the other mode (I believe they call 'low') the regen is applied when you take your foot off the gas, aka single pedal driving. I normally use the regular drive mode and reserve low for when there's some nasty winter conditions which dictate the sort of subconscious slowdown that the forced regen provides.

New comment by kowalej in "YOLO-Driven Development Manifesto"

kowalej — Thu, 17 Aug 2023 21:45:00 +0000

Guys, it's all about the Whirlpool Manifesto: https://whirlpoolmanifesto.org/

New comment by kowalej in "Ironically, Zoom tells employees to return to office for work"

kowalej — Sun, 06 Aug 2023 16:05:09 +0000

They probably force themselves to use their own product which is why remote comms is failing.

New comment by kowalej in "I went to 50 different dentists: almost all gave a different diagnosis (1997)"

kowalej — Sun, 06 Aug 2023 15:54:16 +0000

CBC Marketplace in Canada has done a couple similar assessments over the years where they have someone go to different dentists after an initial diagnosis by independent experts. They saw basically the same thing as this article, huge differences in opinions where clearly some practices were trying to scam money by doing unnecessary work. This is why I drive over an hour to visit my same dentist after moving house, they guy only does work if it is actually in my best interest.

New comment by kowalej in "Is it possible to build a jetpack using downward firing machine guns? (2012)"

kowalej — Wed, 26 Jul 2023 05:16:21 +0000

Reminds me of this guy who actually tried this with pressure washers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKNB3ZeTYiI

New comment by kowalej in "Desktop GPU Sales Lowest in Decades: Report"

kowalej — Fri, 09 Jun 2023 02:33:24 +0000

Seems like a pretty steady decline over the years judging by this figure: https://d15shllkswkct0.cloudfront.net/wp-content/blogs.dir/1...

New comment by kowalej in "Leaked source – CS:GO"

kowalej — Sat, 03 Jun 2023 15:58:35 +0000

No need to even install. Play right in the browser: https://play-cs.com.

New comment by kowalej in "Apollo 13 in Real Time"

kowalej — Sat, 15 Apr 2023 16:58:11 +0000

The developer behind this is Ben Feist, he built this as a hobby project (at the time his day job was in advertising). It inevitably did lead him to a job at NASA working on data visualizations.

New comment by kowalej in "Ask HN: Supplements and vitamins that help with ADHD"

kowalej — Wed, 23 Nov 2022 15:55:54 +0000

N-Acetylcysteine (NAC) has been studied in relation to a myriad of psychiatric disorders with a lot of positive results. It works as an antioxidant and neuro-regulator. For some reason it was recently pulled from supplement classification in the US, but it's available just about anywhere in Canada. Not sure about other countries.