Hacker News Reader

A pro device is going to be expensive. Non gamers won't buy it, let alone $60+ games.

$2k for a new product line isn't rough. It's on par with other competitors.

turtlebitson Hitachi launches CO2 heat pump water heaters with solar-friendly tariff controls

Solar water heaters (including evacuated vacuum tube) are great for efficiency, but PV has gotten so cheap and reliable that it's almost never worth a dedicated solar water heater unless you're extremely constrained for space.

turtlebitson Hitachi launches CO2 heat pump water heaters with solar-friendly tariff controls

Chinese brands have all but caught up, they're within a few percentage points in performance, but 3-4x cheaper.

The additional cost barrier being you can't self install or Mitsubishi or get any warranty on a self install, which means you'll likely pay 5-10x when you include install.

turtlebitson iPhone Duo

Why do people keep asking the same question over and over? It's because of market demand.

I have an S24 ultra and I had an even bigger Sony xperia a while back. I have an old iPhone SE ( the one in the form factor of the iPhone 4) and find it absolutely unusable. Typing is a joke.

turtlebitson Decapitating a MacBook (2025)

Yes it seems absurd optimizing to keep on 12v to save on the inverter overhead, but at the same time are running sealed lead acid batteries.

Switching to LFP would give them 5-6x the capacity for the same weight. Current rate for LFP is around $100/kWh.

turtlebitson Decapitating a MacBook (2025)

Unless there is some space/weight constraint, adding additional battery capacity for idle draw and running an inverter is likely less expensive than trying to find 12v only equipment.

OP is running sealed lead acid batteries, they could have 5-6x the capacity using LFP batteries with the same weight.

turtlebitson Htmx 4.0

Datastar relies way to much on IDs everywhere that it's not ergonomic and turns into a chore. It's also a bit too complicated for its own good trying to solve everything.

turtlebitson Bugatti CEO Mate Rimac: The future of supercars is combustion engines

Supercars aren't the excessively noisy ones. Those are the modified cars. Many have quiet modes that run off battery so you don't wake up your neighbors.

IMHO, pollution is way worse.

I'd rather a tax on gas so high that commuter ICE cars don't exist anymore. Let the enthusiasts who actually enjoy driving burn gas.

turtlebitson Building a backyard office, the build and cost breakdown

Yeah of course you could DIY this or find your own subs much cheaper, but in the grand scheme of things, it's not that bad.

You get a finished and conditioned room, and it most likely added value to his house.

turtlebitson Building a backyard office, the build and cost breakdown

Those are 2x4 studs, so R13, shoving thicker insulation in doesn't change much.

turtlebitson Building a backyard office, the build and cost breakdown

Theres a baseline cost for work to be done, the OP decided to build an 8x10, but easily could cost a similar amount or a few thousand more for a shed 4x larger.

turtlebitson Building a backyard office, the build and cost breakdown

HVAC techs are in such high demand, they can charge exorbitant rates to install/service, that its not in their interest to service them, or even install them.

It took me a while to find a company to install a mini split I purchased on my own, and I paid $$ for labor. This was only because I didn't have the time.

That said, mini splits are so cheap (sub $500) that its easier to just purchase a new one than repair.

turtlebitson What If America Went Dark?

"Someone unlocked this story for you. Log in to read for free."

WTF NYT?

turtlebitson Field measurements of neighborhood-scale air temperature impacts of data centers

Current administration has gutted the EPA, which means no one cares about going the cheap route and running data centers off fossil fuels and water.

turtlebitson Buy Your Friends Batteries

I hate being a broken record, but batteries are $100/kWh now, sometimes less. Don't buy proprietary. You can get a 3kW inverter and 5kWh of battery for ~800 USD. Want more storage or output? Just add batteries or swap out the inverter.

turtlebitson How I over-engineered my book

I normally don't comment on AI articles, but the TLDR was so obviously AI and a huge turnoff that I closed the tab.

turtlebitson Because It's Not Fun Enough: why languages fail

Maybe not "fun", but people have preferences, not necessarily rational, in the choices they make. Programming languages, technologies, and even fonts.

Some languages are more enjoyable to use than others. I'm sure there are features/syntax/constructs in languages that you irrationally don't like.

turtlebitson Reviving a four year old reMarkable 2

It barely has enough power to render PDFs, I'm not sure what general purpose use you could get out of it.

The limitation is the whole point, it does pen input very well.

turtlebitson “Code was never the hard part” is an insult to all programmers

Carpenters don't just nail things together and expect that to be a usable/useful product.

If you can't/won't understand what you're supposed be doing, you're either useless or making useless shit.

turtlebitson “Code was never the hard part” is an insult to all programmers

Understanding requirements means talking to customers. A customer can be anyone, even other devs that consume your code/product.

turtlebitson App Store Rejection of the Week: Dark Hours

I'm sure the number of submissions has gone up exponentially due to AI.

Since real people review apps, Apple should charge per app / version submission.

turtlebitson The web server deployment model breaks at hobby scale

At hobby scale, you don't have to care about the details. Just ship a zip or container image with docs and let the user figure out the rest. Self hosting is going to require some bit of expertise.

I personally don't like apps that ship the entire sink (complex stack) when I already have an opinionated setup that already includes TLS/access control/etc.

turtlebitson Almost no skill required to cook a steak

The problem is that not everyone can afford/wants to spend on a high quality cut. A good cook can make a cheap cut of meat taste great. There's no single right way of cooking a steak and that can include spices/herbs/marinades/oils/etc.

turtlebitson Removing React.js from the codebase and adapting Htmx for UI interactivity (2023)

Unless there's a material change to the form, why not just update the changed parts?

I'd also question architectural decisions if you need to send 100kb+ of html down the wire for a partial.

turtlebitson Should you wash your solar panels?

It totally depends on your area. In the PNW I get sap and conifer tree pollen all over my panels and have to wash them at least twice a year.

turtlebitson Ruff v0.16.0 – Significant new updates – 413 default rules up from 59

The one day, your chef leaves, the food goes to shit and productivity/output/morale drops. When the new chef arrives, then everyone has to relearn everything.

Software shouldn't be bespoke and "artisan".

turtlebitson Why Sony can't bring back its classic Walkman models

Why can't somebody take simple smartphone hardware and make a modern media player that is not a phone?

Because you can do that with any phone and just not use the phone part?

turtlebitson Hologram Works. Sponsor What Comes Next

I'm on the opposite side of this. With LLMs, I no longer feel the need to use crazy frontend frameworks and abstractions. I'm back to building static HTML with minimal JS (and ideally no build step). Instead of using Tauri/Wails for GUI apps, I just use Swift.

I no longer try to build everything around my choice of language.

turtlebitson Primate Is the Last Great Web Framework

Great frameworks have great CLI tooling and just work. Be opinionated and consistent. The fact that this supports multiple frontends and multiple runtimes is a hard no for me, already know that it's going to be a massive headache to debug.