Hacker News: tppiotrowski

New comment by tppiotrowski in "Shademap: Global Sun Simulation"

tppiotrowski — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 14:06:15 +0000

Happy to field any questions about the project.

New comment by tppiotrowski in "I let AI build a tool to help me figure out what was waking me up at night"

tppiotrowski — Mon, 11 May 2026 21:48:51 +0000

Related project I did in 2014 tried to do this. I was a web developer so used the web audio APIs to trigger a recording when the decibel level exceeded a certain value. I was living in a big tent in my friends back yard in Sydney at the time and was convinced it was airplanes coming into SYD that were waking me up at 4am but never really captured conclusive evidence because my laptop battery couldn't make it through the night :)

New comment by tppiotrowski in "Entities enabling scientific fraud at scale (2025)"

tppiotrowski — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 15:10:09 +0000

Maybe we need a journal completely dedicated to replication studies? It would attract a lot of attention I think.

New comment by tppiotrowski in "Map of all the buildings in the world"

tppiotrowski — Wed, 10 Dec 2025 16:55:09 +0000

> This is a huge leap from the previous global dataset, which contained about 1.7 billion buildings

I use the monthly release of Overture Maps building dataset and the last one had around 2.3 billion buildings iirc

[1] https://docs.overturemaps.org/blog/2025/11/19/release-notes/

New comment by tppiotrowski in "The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia"

tppiotrowski — Thu, 13 Nov 2025 01:46:02 +0000

I remember thinking there's a small arbitrage opportunity in countries that don't have pennies and nickels. In NZ I believe stores round to the nearest decimal (.02, .01 => .00 and .03, .04 => .05). They lose on some sales but gain on others. However, they don't round if you use a CC.

Here's one for the FIRE folks: if it rounds up, use a CC and if it rounds down use cash. Use all those pennies you save using your CC to retire 3 minutes early.

New comment by tppiotrowski in "Vibe Code Warning – A personal casestudy"

tppiotrowski — Tue, 11 Nov 2025 02:43:15 +0000

I think what Claude generated code is still missing is the feeling of "I learned something from reading this code. Reading this code made me a better programmer". We're not there yet. That's why we have forgiveness for the scripts/tests/etc Claude writes - those are purely for utility. However, reading Claude code must make us feel like we're getting smarter, not dumber.

New comment by tppiotrowski in "I analyzed 180M jobs to see what jobs AI is replacing today"

tppiotrowski — Mon, 03 Nov 2025 15:03:28 +0000

My experience using Claude code is that it's excellent at React/React Native and because apps are mostly a View layer the consequences of bad "vibes" are less far reaching.

New comment by tppiotrowski in "Vector Tiles are deployed on OpenStreetMap.org"

tppiotrowski — Fri, 25 Jul 2025 17:32:40 +0000

Protomaps does this already. They do a planet build each day and offer a download for free:

https://docs.protomaps.com/basemaps/downloads

New comment by tppiotrowski in "Vector Tiles are deployed on OpenStreetMap.org"

tppiotrowski — Wed, 23 Jul 2025 23:18:08 +0000

I think mbtiles are being phased out for pmtiles because no DB required and can be served from static storage like R2/S3 (with a worker but hopefully the worker part goes away and they support byte offset requests soon)

New comment by tppiotrowski in "Heat stress mitigation by trees and shelters at bus stops"

tppiotrowski — Thu, 08 May 2025 14:26:16 +0000

Fair. I used Phoenix because it's the only published city shading plan I've come across. It could just be that arid/hot climates are the places trees are needed. The study linked was in Houston, Texas.

The Phoenix report is valuable because it provides lessons that should be avoided going forward: change the laws so property owners are not liable if a tree outside their business hurts someone, don't plant a tree if you can't irrigate it, work with local residents to plant and water trees to save on labor and increase success, etc.

If there's other municipal shade reports I'd love to read them. Helping people find shade is what I do for a living. [1]

[1] shademap.app

New comment by tppiotrowski in "Heat stress mitigation by trees and shelters at bus stops"

tppiotrowski — Thu, 08 May 2025 14:16:38 +0000

Planting trees is hard. Phoenix AZ has a tree planting program called the Shade Phoenix Plan and they publish public reports.

Watering and maintenance are a big cost. Iirc it's about $1000 to plant a tree. $100 for the tree and $900 for the irrigation and labor to plant it. In the first 10 years of the program 2/3 of the 106,000 planted trees were removed due to accidents, storms, not enough water/aging. [1]

[1] https://www.phoenix.gov/content/dam/phoenix/heatsite/documen...

New comment by tppiotrowski in "Heat stress mitigation by trees and shelters at bus stops"

tppiotrowski — Thu, 08 May 2025 14:04:40 +0000

There are a few other reasons that aren't baffling:

roots destroy water pipes and heave sidewalks and pavement. They can interfere with power lines as well. :(

New comment by tppiotrowski in "Supabase raises $200M Series D at $2B valuation"

tppiotrowski — Tue, 22 Apr 2025 17:23:51 +0000

Counterexample:

https://x.com/levelsio/status/1730659933232730443

New comment by tppiotrowski in "Supabase raises $200M Series D at $2B valuation"

tppiotrowski — Tue, 22 Apr 2025 17:03:11 +0000

The YC crowd seems to think the only worthwhile businesses are worth $1 billion+ otherwise why bother

New comment by tppiotrowski in "Tesla fudged odometer to screw me out of warranty, Model Y owner claims"

tppiotrowski — Thu, 17 Apr 2025 14:26:15 +0000

> He was told it would take $10,000 to fix, and the representative also let slip that all Tesla repairs are covered by warranty for A YEAR - meaning he could have got his suspension fixed for free in January 2024

They bought it December 9, 2022. What am I missing?

Edit: or was it fixed on his last visit of June 2023 and then was eligible for replacement?

New comment by tppiotrowski in "What If We Made Advertising Illegal?"

tppiotrowski — Sat, 05 Apr 2025 18:50:53 +0000

I agree with this. Any law that's not universally enforced: speeding, jaywalking, tax audit, etc is a tool for political persecution.

New comment by tppiotrowski in "Solarpunk"

tppiotrowski — Mon, 03 Mar 2025 02:13:04 +0000

Sorry about the burnout. Sounds like you've got skills and I'd encourage you to explore something smaller. There is a path as a solopreneur. I do sun and shadow modeling using publicly available datasets [1]. My customers are gardeners, permaculture, hunters, fishermen, photographers and also real estate prospectors but they're people not big orgs or banks. It feels good to work on this level and personally answer emails and questions. I don't make much revenue but I like the grassroots path. Maybe you'd find it rewarding as well.

[1] shademap.app

New comment by tppiotrowski in "Eggs US – Price – Chart"

tppiotrowski — Wed, 05 Feb 2025 16:39:45 +0000

Why does this mostly affect the US? I've been abroad most of the year and eggs don't seem overly expensive.

New comment by tppiotrowski in "Web page annoyances that I don't inflict on you"

tppiotrowski — Mon, 06 Jan 2025 04:16:04 +0000

Another one: No "Sign in with your Google account" popup covering the upper right corner of the page

New comment by tppiotrowski in "Combining 15s interval whole-sky-camera photos to form a 4y spanning keogram"

tppiotrowski — Sat, 04 Jan 2025 21:06:58 +0000

You can train ML to recognize vegetation in satellite photos and further train it to estimate its height +/-3 meters

https://github.com/facebookresearch/HighResCanopyHeight