Maciek416 (u/Maciek416)

Maciek416 commented on Ask HN: What skills do you want to develop or improve in 2026? · Posted by u/meridion

bapo · 2 days ago

- Art of Bonsai:

We are inheriting about 50-100 bonsai plants from father. All my life I’ve been wondering how he’s been caring for them, but never gave a chance to actually learn from him.

He is not doing well and we don’t know how many years he has left.

That’s why 2026 will be the year of finally learning the craft from him, taking time to acquire his techniques and in general just spend more time with him.

Maciek416 · 2 days ago

There are one or two nice people from Switzerland (assuming you are there, just guessing from comments) on bonsainut if you are looking for local resources and helpful people. A decent-sized collection like that is a real testament to unbroken continuity (especially during the growing season where you can't skip a day or even a few hours sometimes), other hobbyists can help you fill the gap when situations come up. Stop by the r/bonsai beginners thread any time if you wanna talk trees!

Maciek416 commented on A study reveals that deciduous trees' roots remain active in winter creaf.cat/en/articules/de... · Posted by u/bryanrasmussen

taeric · 9 months ago

I'm largely going by what I see in my yard. If I want any of the ground shrubs to not die every year, I have to make sure they are not drowned in leaves.

Note that I'm not claiming the leaves are necessarily bad. They make pretty good mulch and such. But, without tending to uncover the smaller plants, they do a pretty good job of killing the things below the tree.

Maciek416 · 9 months ago

It affects seedling recruitment for sure. Some species love to start beneath leaf mulch and there is probably something out there that would colonize your leaf field hard and fast if it were given the chance. I collect red alder seedlings in timber clearcutting areas, and often find that they've had to twist/push their way through 6-12" of slash (clearcutting debris) to reach light and finally grow upwards. Quite a few conifers can push upward through many inches of needle duff as well.

Maciek416 commented on A study reveals that deciduous trees' roots remain active in winter creaf.cat/en/articules/de... · Posted by u/bryanrasmussen

moate · 9 months ago

In your mind, how does dropping leaves harm the shrubs? Wouldn't it allow for more light to pass down to the forest floor? It feels like the tree's response to shrubs was "grow taller to maximize sun exposure"

I feel like the conventional wisdom that this is a response to environment(conserve energy/lower wind resistance) make more sense than "offensive deterrent for competing plants" even more so when you consider that every leaf dropped is biomass that the tree had already taken in and utilized, but now it's giving it up. Maybe a pro-symbiotic move whereby dropping the leaves provides shelter/biomass for beneficial insects that could provide root aeration or soil enrichment would be another reason?

Maciek416 · 9 months ago

I think conserving energy in cold months is close to the biggest factor.

Regarding the dropping of biomass, in both deciduous and evergreen species, some of the substances from the retiring leaves/needles are reclaimed by trees ("retranslocation") and pulled out of the leaf before letting go of the leaf. In species like pines it'll be the second or third (or older, sometimes much older) retiring needles and in species like maple or beech it'll the be the entire foliage. Mass useful to soil ecosystems still falls but the tree grabs what it can in the late months of the year, hence the color change.

One thing the grandparent comment doesn't talk about much is the cost (in sugar) of both building and thereafter maintaining leaves and the related tradeoffs. Building a fully winter-tolerant broadleaf is more expensive sugar-wise than building a winter-interolerant leaf. A sugar maple in Quebec, where the season is shorter than (say) Oregon is going to compete in its niche better if it can attain surface area quickly at the start of the growing season, and that is better done with a winter-intolerant, more relatively delicate leaf. An evergreen leaf takes more time and mass to build and has to have more limited surface area or armor (cuticle) to tolerate such winters.

Maciek416 commented on A study reveals that deciduous trees' roots remain active in winter creaf.cat/en/articules/de... · Posted by u/bryanrasmussen

squircle · 9 months ago

Not until its published? Have not read the article but I thought this was common knowledge.

Maciek416 · 9 months ago

Winter root growth is widely-observed amongst people who work with tree roots annually (bonsai hobbyists and professionals, commercial ornamental tree growers, especially propagation-adjacent roles) in milder temperate climates (eg: Pacific Northwest).

In my time studying bonsai (past 7-10y) in every winter (Jan-Mar) I've repotted (anywhere from partial to full bare rooting, partial to full root structure editing) many PNW-native deciduous trees (alders, bigleaf + vine maples, cottonwoods, etc) as well as non-PNW-native deciduous (birches, beeches, elms, maples, hazels, hornbeams, stewartia, bald cypress, cherries/plums, quinces, snowbells, etc). In somewhat-mild-and-milder climates there is always some root growth going on. Such winter root growth is much more aggressive in conifers, particularly pines, but also in spruces, cypress-family species (junipers).

Here's a diagram from a paper showing scots pine and rowan/ash adding either root or vegitative growth in various parts of the year:

https://imgur.com/a/qF4oQ8a

Temperate trees collect or spend carbon in the warm parts of the year, i.e. between bud-break and mid-summer. In cooler parts of the year, they do various things: store it in the wood, move it around (redistribution + retranslocation), spend it (future-season buds + cambium + root expansion) or carefully avoid spending it (dormancy).

Even in these periods they're still collecting sunlight if they can, quite a few deciduous species can photosynthesize at least a little bit directly through their bark -- young twigs have much thinner bark even in trees that get very rough bark (eg: black cottonwood). And evergreens are collecting sunlight any time mild-or-warmer conditions are in play.

Trees are active in some shape or form any time they are able to be. If you live in USDA hardiness zone 7 or warmer and have trees/shrubs outside you can notice this more easily than in colder climates (where the grow/no-grow seasons are more sharply bounded). Roots are not the only thing expanding in winter. Take a picture every day of a branch on a deciduous or evergreen tree and you'll see bud expansion.

Maciek416 commented on Nvidia open-source nanite: continuous level of detail (LOD) mesh library github.com/nvpro-samples/... · Posted by u/klaussilveira

Maciek416 · a year ago

The title seems inaccurate at time of commenting. This library is called “nv_cluster_lod_builder”

Nanite is Unreal’s implementation of a similar thing. The README even links to Unreal’s implementation in the references section.

Maciek416 commented on Xylella Fastidiosa: A crisis brewing in Europe's olive groves everymansci.com/society/x... · Posted by u/indigodaddy

NoMoreNicksLeft · a year ago

I've never been good at that. Knowing exactly how much to trim, and when, is some sort of psychic power. My plant telepathy's just weak.

That said, olives would probably work well for it, considering their growth habit. Only as art, mind you, my wife and I'd fight over the one olive per year for the celebratory dinner salad.

Maciek416 · a year ago

I've studied bonsai with a professional who trained in Japan for a number of years. Bonsai is a well-developed professional craft that should be learned from people who already know it rather than guessed at from absolute first principles (or from completely illiterate/nonsensical web slop, whether AI or not), as most beginners unfortunately try to do.

The known-good techniques that produced long-term bonsai don't in any way whatsoever resemble the naive approach of "trimming" in the hedge pruning sense. This (along with the mistake of growing indoors) is why the vast majority of the public concludes bonsai is a dark art / impossible. Guessing at bonsai is like throwing rocks at a computer hoping that C code will just "happen" somehow.

If you have a sun-facing outdoor garden, know what the term "binary tree" means, and can describe a tree in terms of a data structure (nodes etc), then you have within you the ability to learn bonsai for realsies if you make contact with people who do it in real life. Olive bonsai trees are relatively common in mediterranean-climate bonsai scenes, like that of California's bonsai scene: https://bonsaitonight.com/2023/10/20/preparing-an-olive-for-...

Trees like this are not grown on kitchen counters or in living rooms. _Maybe_ in a world-beating cannabis tent, but the hassle is extreme, and (going back to the topic of this thread), fighting diseases in the indoor cultivation environment is much much harder than outside.

Maciek416 commented on The Art Of Niwaki (2017) blog.fantasticgardenersme... · Posted by u/surprisetalk

delichon · a year ago

I'm pruning trees in my yard this month, mostly pinyon pine. I looked up whether it's ok to remove pinyon branches that have no needles or if maybe they're just dormant. The consensus is: remove.

My motivation is fire suppression. But they look better and the yard feels more peaceful to me after the treatment. I don't know why. Maybe I could study with the Japanese to understand it, but I'm not sure it matters.

Maciek416 · a year ago

Pines have a hard time pulling on the water chain due to their needle design (silhouette/waxy coating). To move water to a location on a pine branch, you usually need needles or a strong tip bud that was already emerging just as the needles were lost (i.e. the needles already drew a lot of sap to that location just before their demise). If at a given junction you can trace to a descendant shoot that is green / has needles, then the live vein traces through that junction. If no descendant shoot with needles, you're looking at dead wood and inspecting under the bark won't find any trace of green cambium, or only fading cambium.

Maciek416 commented on I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney who does work for YC and startups. AMA · Posted by u/proberts

arcticbull · 2 years ago

It doesn't really matter which crossing, IME, you may always encounter a power-tripping officer, and officers at each kind of entry port have the same power. I've been waved through no questions asked at land crossings, pulled into secondary and interviewed by 6 officers in pairs of 2 at an air crossing - and vice versa. Ultimately, admission is at the discretion of the officers unless you're a citizen. Even a green card holder can be denied re-entry on the basis that they 'abandoned their residency.'

Maciek416 · 2 years ago

Understood -- the big multinational I was working for employed an immigration law firm that tracked many such crossings, and they practically begged me not to try crossing by land based on their statistics (which suggested a higher probability of trouble in land crossings). I joined that statistic and learned to never take any chances with any part of this.

Maciek416 commented on I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney who does work for YC and startups. AMA · Posted by u/proberts

astromeson · 2 years ago

I am very interested in developing a tech career in the US. I have roughly 5 years of industrial experience and my bachelor degree is in physics.

I am currently working as a software engineer in the UK (I'm from Hong Kong) for the past 2 years and am actively considering the following:

1. Getting a Masters degree in US then work in US with STEM OPT and apply for Green Card through employer; or

2. Moving to Canada, become a citizen in 3.5 - 4 years then apply for TN status and work in US, then try to find a good timing for Green Card application

If my intent is to settle in the US, which route would you recommend me to go through?

Thank you so much for your time!

Maciek416 · 2 years ago

I am not an immigration lawyer. Something you should be aware of is that when applying for a green card, your status as a Canadian (whether permanent resident or citizen) or as a Brit (ditto) is completely irrelevant. The green card process sees your application solely through the lens of your birth country. The GC backlog for Chinese-born people is very lengthy. So lengthy that it tests the longevity of a visa or a set of visas -- it's not a marathon you want to still be running 15 to 20 years from now.

For that reason, if your goal is ultimately the US, focus on the US, because you will otherwise be adding _many_ years to the process.

One very notable asterisk to the above: If, while applying for a GC, your spouse is from a no-backlog country (born in Canada, UK, or other no-backlog countries), then your application can essentially adopt that country as the birth country, and you can get through the GC process in a relatively short time (all other things equal).

From your perspective "good timing for a green card application" is ASA-F'ing-P.

Maciek416 commented on I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney who does work for YC and startups. AMA · Posted by u/proberts

bonestamp2 · 2 years ago

> However, the officer denied me the TN status saying I need an Engineering, not Computer Science degree, to qualify for the Engineer TN status.

My wife had a similar thing happen (not a TN visa though). The immigration lawyers got to work and she was allowed to try again a couple weeks later. This time the officer agreed with the assessment that she was qualified for that visa type. The original officer had a very narrow perspective on how a certain job title was defined that was not inline with how most companies operate.

If your company has a Canadian office, the lawyers could try getting you on an L visa. Or there's an E visa. Once you're on one of those visas then your company can sponsor a green card. Green cards are much more stable and they're easier to renew. Then citizenship if you want to go that far.

Maciek416 · 2 years ago

I am not a lawyer. The transition from TN->GC is possible too under the right (narrow) circumstances. The big tradeoff is not risking travel while within the lifecycle of one TN term, and likely not being able to straddle a GC application across the boundaries of a TN renewal period at all. For some countries of birth, a TN term is not long enough to get through the GC pipeline. But for Canadians born in Canada, ones who have family willing to visit them instead of the other way around, it may be doable. Or for folks born in other countries which have no GC backlog or a short one. YMMV, but I have personally seen someone go L2->TN->GC. An unusual sequence but necessary given the particulars of that case.