Hacker News: maciejw

New comment by maciejw in "An update on leaving Gmail for Fastmail"

maciejw — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 07:25:19 +0000

Changing email providers was easy. But replacing gmail address in all my accounts with my own domain based address took me 2 years to complete. You only have to do it once though, and then you can change providers at will.

New comment by maciejw in "The curious case of the disappearing Polish S (2015)"

maciejw — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 20:47:58 +0000

I noticed it too, but for Teams. Is it because they are both MS apps?

New comment by maciejw in "The war on terror primed America for autocracy"

maciejw — Sat, 27 Jun 2026 21:52:27 +0000

I was referring to some factual errors and omissions that make other historians angry. But the narrative is captivating.

New comment by maciejw in "No-One Escapes the Permanent Underclass"

maciejw — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 05:03:45 +0000

Based on demographic reports, permanent underclass will soon be getting smaller each year. In fact in 4-5 generations the problem will solve itself completely.

New comment by maciejw in "The war on terror primed America for autocracy"

maciejw — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 06:15:44 +0000

I recommend a book 'Silk Roads' by Peter Frankopan. It’s an attempt to show world’s history as a continuous movement of center of civilizational gravity. It’s not without flaws, but interesting nonetheless.

Frankopan describes most of modern US history as a series of blunders. This approach is maybe a bit harsh, but it shows how difficult it is for a dominant power to stay on top.

I would summarise the book with a sentence „When you reach the top, the seeds of your decline are already planted”. In fact you can look at China or India - future dominant powers, and guess which of their flaws will make them fall.

New comment by maciejw in "Infomaniak transitions to a foundation model to protect user data privacy"

maciejw — Wed, 20 May 2026 12:39:07 +0000

I recently moved one of my boxes from Mailfence to Infomaniak. It works, but their product/pricing strategy is really hard to understand (my ksuite vs ksuite pro). Their AI is not helpful in explaining the differences. Also their UI opens new browser tab for almost every menu page. After dealing with these issues it works quite well.

I wonder if this move is similar to what Home Assistant project did.

New comment by maciejw in "I am giving up on Intel and have bought an AMD Ryzen 9950X3D"

maciejw — Sun, 07 Sep 2025 08:16:31 +0000

I also switched to cheapest Mac Mini M4 Pro this year (after 20+ years of using Intel CPUs). MacOS has its quirks, but it provides ZSH and it "just works" (unlike manjaro I used in parallel with Windows). I especially like the preview tool - it has useful pdf and photo editing options.

The hardware is impressive - tiny, metal box, always silent, basic speaker built-in and it can be left always on with minimal power consumption.

Drive size for basic models is limited (512gb) - I solved it by moving photos to NAS. I don't use it for gaming, except Hello Kitty Island Adventure. I would say it's a very competitive choice for a desktop PC in 2025 overall.

New comment by maciejw in "[dead]"

maciejw — Mon, 25 Aug 2025 10:41:16 +0000

I don't have means to verify this at all, privately I consider it blunt propaganda. HN is not the site to discuss politics.

I'm more surprised it's possible to post ads on such loaded issues on YouTube. I would appreciate comments from anyone with better knowledge of ads industry.

New comment by maciejw in "[dead]"

maciejw — Mon, 25 Aug 2025 09:58:20 +0000

Ads like the one in the link appear before unrelated videos on YT.

New comment by maciejw in "The F-35 is losing the trade war"

maciejw — Sat, 23 Aug 2025 19:30:00 +0000

Thailand invested in Swedish Gripen recently.

New comment by maciejw in "Europe's crusade against air conditioning is insane"

maciejw — Sat, 23 Aug 2025 17:53:21 +0000

I own both AC and HRV and HRV is not enough for cooling. Single split unit has max air flow of around 500m3/h for a single room. My HRV has max air flow of 350m3/h for the whole house - it's not able to substantially cool anything.

New comment by maciejw in "Europe's crusade against air conditioning is insane"

maciejw — Sat, 23 Aug 2025 17:24:31 +0000

Growing in Poland I'd say Eastern Europe was until recently too poor to afford AC, but also the climate was indeed less extreme just 30 years ago. Nowadays most new detached houses do have AC in at least one room (bedroom or living room) - mine included. Alternatively many new houses have heat pumps. Apartament blocks are less consistent in that matter, but there are interesting initiatives as well - like using combined-heat-and-power citywide heating installations for cooling (by pumping cold water through them).

Unknown object explodes in cornfield in eastern Poland

maciejw — Wed, 20 Aug 2025 06:58:51 +0000

Article URL: https://www.newsweek.com/nato-ukraine-poland-explosion-2116064

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44959373

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

Home Assistant Connect ZWA-2

maciejw — Thu, 14 Aug 2025 09:29:42 +0000

Article URL: https://www.home-assistant.io/connect/zwa-2/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44898483

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by maciejw in "Older editions of which books were better than the new ones? (2010)"

maciejw — Sun, 23 Mar 2025 10:21:14 +0000

Lonely Planet. In 2013 we've done a Morocco backpacking trip with just a Lonely Planet guide - no phones, no Internet access, no pre-booked accomodation or transport. The guide contained maps, hostel suggestions, POI, transport options and a lot more. This year we brought the newest LP release to Thailand, and it was mostly useless - no transport or accommodation info, bad maps, generic POI descriptions. We are not buying another LP guide.

New comment by maciejw in "EU pushes ahead with Big Tech antitrust enforcement"

maciejw — Fri, 21 Mar 2025 20:34:21 +0000

Maybe something as simple as turnover tax would work

New comment by maciejw in "Dutch Parliament: Time to ditch US tech for homegrown options"

maciejw — Thu, 20 Mar 2025 13:48:31 +0000

On "impoverishment": the difference between private sectors in Europe and US are of course important, but I'm referring to a challenge on much lower level.

Lagging country that wants to increase pace, must find resources to invest. The easiest way to find these resources is to squeeze out parts of its population, to decrease consumption and rise investment. This was done historically in the Soviet Union, in Korea, in China. Europe is of course much more prosperous, but I don't think it can escape this logic. I'm not sure if either European politicians and populations are ready to implement such catch-up initiatives that would result in partial dismantling of the welfare state.

New comment by maciejw in "Dutch Parliament: Time to ditch US tech for homegrown options"

maciejw — Thu, 20 Mar 2025 13:10:49 +0000

How do we make it more competitive? Work 996 like the Chinese? Have no maternity leave like Americans? It would certainly make us more competitive...

New comment by maciejw in "Dutch Parliament: Time to ditch US tech for homegrown options"

maciejw — Thu, 20 Mar 2025 12:50:58 +0000

Europe's problem in this area seems to be inability to build a mechanism to realize large, unprofitable projects. It looks like the whole continent operates on thin margins, and has no resources set aside to pursue strategic initiatives.

US is building its pile of resources by capitalising on its current advantage, but also by pushing larger and larger parts of society into poverty. Europe is maybe more fair, but ultimately unable to keep up and very vulnerable because of that.

Even Russia, a country with much smaller economy is able to concentrate its resources to affect politics and develop few important techs (missiles). Of course it achieves the goal even more by expoiting its own population. Few people benefit from it, but their wealth is immense. Before 2022 whole regions of Europe catered to needs of foreign millionaires, not few homegrown ones. Lack of large projects translates to little opportunities to become rich.

I have no idea how Europe can build institutions to develop large projects without impoverishing lots of its citizens.

New comment by maciejw in "Begrudgingly Choosing CBOR over MessagePack"

maciejw — Mon, 03 Mar 2025 06:08:43 +0000

CBOR started as a complimentary project to previous-decade IoT (Internet of Things) and WSN (Wireless Sensor Networks) initiaties. It was designed together with 6LoWPAN, CoAP, RPL and other standards. Main improvement over message pack was discriminating between byte strings and text strings - an important usecase for firmware updates etc. Reasoning is probably available in IETF mailing archive somewhere.

All these standards were designed as a research and seem rather slow to gain general popularity (6LoWPAN is used by Thread, but its uptake is also quite slow - e.g. Nanoleaf announced dropping support for it).

I would say if CBOR fits your purpose it's a good pick, and you shouldn't be worried by it being "not cool". Design by committee is how IETF works, and I wouldn't call it a weakness, although in DOGE times it might sound bloated and outdated.