Hacker News: kumarsw

New comment by kumarsw in "Toys with the highest play-time and lowest clean-up-time"

kumarsw — Sun, 28 Dec 2025 14:33:27 +0000

Given that this is hacker news, the answers here are unsurprisingly biased towards building toys. Blocks/Duplo are great, but who is going to explore the newly built environment? Enter the die-cast toy cars/trucks/construction equipment/farm equipment. I've had good luck with the Ertl 1/50th scale stuff, which can be purchased in lots on Ebay.

New comment by kumarsw in "US airlines are pushing to remove protections for passengers and add more fees"

kumarsw — Wed, 24 Sep 2025 15:05:05 +0000

I was hoping that the pendulum would swing the other way with the scandal over too many passengers bringing out their bags on a recent AA evacuation caused by a burning tire. The push to eliminate checked bags has created a chaotic cabin environment that probably exacerbated the situation. There's no sign of it getting better either. The overcrowding of overhead bins creates a prisoners dilemma where flight attendants pressure passengers to put smaller bags under their seats, disincentivizing bringing anything but a big roller bag.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8l2n-di3hJE

New comment by kumarsw in "US airlines are pushing to remove protections for passengers and add more fees"

kumarsw — Wed, 24 Sep 2025 14:33:08 +0000

Paying for a group to sit together is really just a roundabout way of charging extra for the middle seat that solo travelers don't want. There's something gross about it, creating a market price for a nonexistent good.

New comment by kumarsw in "Tell HN: I just updated my wife's Chrome, and uBlock is no longer supported"

kumarsw — Fri, 27 Dec 2024 15:01:31 +0000

I don't know about their other expenses, but SEO/advertising is probably one of their better uses of money even if we don't like it. It's hard to gain market share against a browser that is pitched each time you do a Google search no matter how good the product is.

New comment by kumarsw in "Too many people are killed by supersized cars. This new rule could help"

kumarsw — Mon, 09 Dec 2024 18:22:32 +0000

It might, or it might just become the next CAFE. Disappointingly, the proposed regulation does not apply to vehicles over 10k lbs gross weight. This notably includes heavy duty pickups, a fast growing market segment thanks to the increasing popularity of 5th wheel campers as an alternative to self propelled RVs and their exemption from CAFE. Within 5 years HD pickups will probably be the only class of vehicles available with V8s, further increasing their popularity.

New comment by kumarsw in "How the Econic is protecting pedestrians and cyclists in city traffic (2018)"

kumarsw — Mon, 09 Dec 2024 14:36:15 +0000

Context: As of September 2024, the NHTSA is proposing that the US adopt pedestrian safety crash requirements for vehicles up to 10k lbs. North Americans may not be aware that engineering solutions already exist for medium-duty trucks such as Mercedes-Benz's line of low-entry trucks, linked here.

How the Econic is protecting pedestrians and cyclists in city traffic (2018)

kumarsw — Mon, 09 Dec 2024 14:36:15 +0000

Article URL: https://www.daimlertruck.com/en/newsroom/pressrelease/operating-conditions-in-london-how-the-econic-is-protecting-pedestrians-and-cyclists-in-city-traffic-41707171

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42366561

Points: 1

# Comments: 1

New comment by kumarsw in "Ladybird Web Browser becomes a non-profit with $1M from GitHub Founder"

kumarsw — Wed, 03 Jul 2024 16:30:46 +0000

The original sure looks bland, but a HTML4-esque webpage gives absolutely the wrong message about the maturity level of a browser regardless of how much more usable it may be. Branding matters even if it's a tough pill to swallow.

New comment by kumarsw in "Ladybird Web Browser becomes a non-profit with $1M from GitHub Founder"

kumarsw — Wed, 03 Jul 2024 14:02:22 +0000

The browser is good, but Mozilla has been consistently losing market share despite being well-funded. There is considerable debate as to what specific mistakes were made, but the foundation spent a lot of money on side projects that did not benefit the browser such as Servo, Rust and FireFox OS. Likely market share could have been improved had this been spent on marketing or engineering work that directly benefited the browser.

New comment by kumarsw in "Can turning office towers into apartments save downtowns?"

kumarsw — Tue, 07 May 2024 21:56:20 +0000

I dunno if it's practical, but the idea of an urban "garage" for woodworking/storing your kayak sounds kinda awesome.

New comment by kumarsw in "Can turning office towers into apartments save downtowns?"

kumarsw — Tue, 07 May 2024 21:26:50 +0000

Back when I worked out of an office in an industrial park in the suburbs of Boston, a number of the younger/single folks would reverse-commute in from the city. Since it was against the prevailing flow of traffic it was a pretty easy drive for them.

New comment by kumarsw in "Ask HN: What's the best car without undesirable features?"

kumarsw — Thu, 18 Jan 2024 03:37:21 +0000

See my other comment - current Toyotas will let you disable the 4G modem with a series of button presses.

New comment by kumarsw in "Ask HN: What's the best car without undesirable features?"

kumarsw — Thu, 18 Jan 2024 03:09:05 +0000

Adding to the list of 2010s-era Japanese cars, the 2nd gen Mazda3s have good reliability without the "Toyota tax." If you don't want to go with a 10yo car, current Toyotas will let you disable the 4G modem by pressing a series of buttons, and have physical HVAC controls. There's pretty much no getting away from touchscreens in current cars, though. The only alternative is Mazda with their selector knob, but I've found it more distracting when I rented one.

New comment by kumarsw in "A cargo plane flew 50 miles with no pilot onboard using a semi-automated system"

kumarsw — Mon, 25 Dec 2023 19:23:53 +0000

I was about to post a snarky reply, but after actually reading TFA, it's not clear that this plane does anything different from a modern-ish commercial aviation autopilot except for being able to set it remotely. Still waiting for "real" autonomous flight meaning path planning.

New comment by kumarsw in "Zotero for Android available for beta tests"

kumarsw — Mon, 25 Dec 2023 12:36:47 +0000

JabRef. No cloud component and as a bonus the database is just a BibTex file which you can keep in Git.

One City Tried to Solve Gridlock for Us All

kumarsw — Thu, 14 Dec 2023 15:03:37 +0000

Article URL: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/12/07/headway/bogota-bus-system-transmilenio.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38642098

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by kumarsw in "Sheldon Brown's Bicycle Technical Info"

kumarsw — Tue, 08 Aug 2023 18:24:10 +0000

I'm sad to hear that not only the man himself but Harris Cyclery passed sometime in the middle of COVID. For the younger folks, it's hard to appreciate how influential his kludgey-looking website was. Pre-YouTube it was the go-to source for bike repair info, and was likely the catalyst for the fixed-gear craze of the early 2010s.

New comment by kumarsw in "Casio adds fitness features to original G-Shock digital watch"

kumarsw — Tue, 09 May 2023 01:06:00 +0000

This one does seem too expensive for what it is. The GBD-200 at $150 seems much more appropriate for a smartwatch-lite, besides scratching the itch for a modern take on the old Casio squares [1].

https://www.casio.com/us/watches/gshock/product.GBD-200-1/

New comment by kumarsw in "Why computer modeling should become a popular hobby (1996)"

kumarsw — Sun, 09 Apr 2023 01:56:17 +0000

This is when I'm glad that pressing F9 to invoke reader mode in Firefox still exists. Try it!

New comment by kumarsw in "What the hell is Forth? (2019)"

kumarsw — Sun, 15 Jan 2023 18:35:25 +0000

For a more modern language that scratches the same minimalist syntax itch as Forth, try Red [1]. It's list-based rather than stack-based and includes the "killer app" of a really nice DSL for GUI layout. Even including the excellent PySimpleGUI, it's the fastest way to build up a custom GUI without a GUI builder tool.

[1] http://redprogramming.com/Getting%20Started.html