frankus

I thought the benchmark for pricey induction cooktops was Impulse (I love mine but even at the preorder + tax credit price it was a splurge). But then I realized there’s probably a kitchen equivalent of audiophile gear, where you pay through the nose for something lesser nerds wouldn’t even notice (maybe every nerdy niche has an equivalent of audiophile gear?).

Location: Bellingham, WA, USA

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: Unlikely, but try me

Technologies: Swift, Objective-C, UIKit, Swift Concurrency, iOS SDK development.

Résumé/CV: https://frankschmitt.org/resume/

Email: frank+hn@frankschmitt.org

I've spent the last eleven years building ApptentiveKit, an iOS SDK for in-app customer feedback (surveys, message center, prompts) that ships inside other companies' apps. SDK work means caring about things app developers often get to skip: a small binary footprint, long deployment-target support, a public API you can't easily change, and bugs that only appear in someone else's app. I also maintained our React Native, Flutter, Capacitor, and Cordova plugins, so I'm comfortable on either side of a bridge.

The piece I'm proudest of is the on-device targeting engine, which decides which customers see which interactions based on server-defined criteria. I've implemented it four times: NSPredicate, then raw Objective-C for observability, then JavaScript (which became the core of our Web SDK), and finally Swift. I've also worked closely with product and design on ground-up redesigns of major features.

Before iOS I did web backends for about a decade, and before that embedded software for EV battery management and fast charging at AeroVironment. I still tinker with hardware: motor controllers, VESC/LispBM, and a power-assist wheelbarrow prototype. I'd especially enjoy a role where an app talks to a physical device.

I'm looking for a full-time senior iOS role, remote (Pacific time), or hybrid in Seattle or Vancouver, BC. I'm also happy to talk about SDK, developer-tools, or mobile platform/infrastructure work.

PV also (usually) lets you export generation in excess of what you're using, is ~immune to freezing, and can be pretty darned efficient if the PV is driving a heat pump.

  Location: Bellingham, WA, USA
  Remote: Yes
  Willing to relocate: maybe for an exceptional opportunity
  Technologies: Swift, Objective-C, limited Kotlin, backend, and embedded experience
  Résumé/CV: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fschmi/
  Email: frank+hn@frankschmitt.org

I have about 10 years of experience of owning the iOS component of a customer-feedback SDK (https://github.com/apptentive/apptentive-kit-ios). I did a Swift rewrite of the Objective-C SDK around 2020 and recently converted to structured concurrency/Swift 6 language mode. For the 5 years before that I was primarily working on iOS apps, with some web experience in the distant past. The most straightforward fit for me would be helping with another SaaS client-side SDK project on iOS, but I'm happy to consider app work. I also have experience with Flutter, React Native, Capacitor, .NET MAUI, etc. but prefer to work on native code when I can. Authorized to work in US and EU.

Honestly this seems like a super long-shot but at least semi-plausible avenue for putting DAC on the sort of learning curve that took lithium batteries from "high-end camcorder" to utility-scale storage.

Another way of looking at this is that--while it doesn't have to be edible--you have to grow plant matter inside your house at a rate equivalent to what everyone in there consumes as food.

Even if you found like an algae or something that converted CO2, light, and water into fat, 2400 kCal would be ~300g per person, per day, or not too short of a normal package of butter.

"Residential CO2 scrubber" seems like the sort of gadget eccentric rich people would buy, sort of a distributed DAC system.

Relevant xkcd: https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2501:_Average_Fam...

The list of things that require an app rather than a web page was pretty long circa 2010, but it's quite a bit shorter now: it's mostly hardware access (Bluetooth/NFC), background activities (like background app refresh), persisting location permission, reliable offline storage, and system/OS integration (widgets/live activities, Siri shortcuts).

If done for the right reasons, a native app could theoretically be a bit more power- and bandwidth-efficient for a given level of polish.

But usually what you're getting is some cross-platform mystery meat UI, a boatload of tracking, and no real system/OS integration (because it isn't trivial to do from whatever cross-platform environment they chose).

If you're in the US, Costco has certain models at the old price through Saturday (or while supplies last). Just pulled the trigger on a 24GB/1TB 13" MbA for $250 off the new price.

The most popular proposal (from Henry George) is to maintain individual land ownership, but impose a land-value tax that approaches 100% of the land rent.

The result is that real estate basically sells for roughly what it would cost to rebuild whatever is built on the land.

There is still a premium charged (in the form of LVT) to allocate access to desirable locations, but the revenue goes to the government/community instead of the previous owner. And the eliminating the incentive for land speculation should actually reduce overall costs.

The difference is that investment in a company can create “more company”, whereas investment in land can’t create more land.

I'd like to see these if these can be scaled down into ebike size, or beyond that into micromobilty form factors that people carry around (like lightweight scooters and skateboards).

In the FAQ they discuss how in most of its range this particular species is invasive, feeds almost exclusively on humans, and is not believed to be a major food source for predators.

I grew up speaking German and still use "zu!" with my (otherwise English-trained) dogs for "get out of the way!".

This one is resistive (tiny and cheap to purchase) but will be just an emergency-backup shower once my home renovations are done.

The house is getting a split-system air-to-water heat pump with an indirect tank for domestic hot water, so it should cut that down substantially (the unit maxes out at around 3kW input but likely will run longer to recover/preheat).

I wish we did more e.g. district heating with that waste heat in the US.

The number I guesstimated for my e-scooter is about 500 miles per dollar of electricity.

The electric shower also seemed pretty optimistic. I live in an area with about 50°F/10°C ground temperature and my 14.4 kW water heater can just keep a relatively efficient shower head flowing at a comfortable temperature.

Every single ICE car driving down the highway is throwing away enough waste heat to heat a small apartment building on a freezing cold day.

I feel like the gist here is that "faster, better, cheaper: pick two" doesn't apply to sub-optimally-spaced bus stops. You really can have all three, at the cost of some political blowback from the people who used to have a shorter walk.

I wonder if part of it is also that mining companies are generally allowed to just leave their tailings in a big pile near the mine rather than have to responsibly dispose of the majority of the ore that has no (or negative) commercial value.

The diabolical case is M5 versus 10-32. About a 4% difference in diameter and about 0.8% difference in thread pitch. Basically indistinguishable with the naked eye and even the "nest the threads in each other" check doesn't help without a pretty long length of threads.

There's now a product for that: https://www.lowes.com/pd/Kobalt-1-4-in-to-1-2-in-Drive-Metri...

They're obviously not the most affordable things around, but if you have an iPhone and spending ~US$250 on a pair of wireless earbuds won't unduly stress your budget, the transparency mode on AirPods Pro is great for this.

I think the way this would work is you would have your Canadian friend/owner drive it across and then return via another mode of transport. It's entirely possible you could get away with it pretty much indefinitely (especially in an area where folks are used to seeing Canadian plates), but I could also see someone checking a list of "foreign vehicles that entered the US and never left" at some point and one or both of you having some explaining to do (i.e. being ruled inadmissible).

I had a couple of coworkers who had them. I vaguely remember it being based on a ~$35k value in 1997 dollars, so definitely out of my price range as a new graduate earning only a little more than that in a year.

On top of that I'm pretty sure the unit economics were firmly in the negative, even discounting the R&D costs.

They were pretty remarkable though—I got a chance to drive a pre-production one at a ride-and-drive a year before and was super impressed.

Pre-Tesla EV companies were kind of stuck in a catch-22, where they couldn't enter the low end of the market (because the tech was still super costly) and they couldn't enter the high end of the market (because either the performance was lacking or they didn't have the resources to scale production).

But with a combination of throwing a lot of money at the problem, being in the right place at the right time, and good execution, they managed to scale up the high end of the market enough to eventually move (somewhat) down-market.

Showering in hot water is one of the more energy-intensive things people do on a daily basis. I have a 14.4 kW on-demand heater that just barely keeps up with a 1.5 gallon (~6 liter) per minute shower head with 50°F/10°C incoming water.

On a per-minute basis that's comparable to highway driving in a smallish electric car.

My favorite memory is following a map to a small isolated hot spring off of some random gravel road in the middle of nowhere. It consisted of a hot-tub-sized pool and a shower.

Whoever was there before had left the shower running. We were the only people there, and hadn't seen anyone pass us on the (dead end) road, so it must have been on for quite a while.

Only when I went to for my pre-soak shower did I realize that it didn't actually have any kind of user-accessible way to turn it off.