Ask HN: Who needs help this holidays?

People have already given awesome suggestions here. There was also a suggestion a few weeks ago to just chat people up about stuff at stores and some will reject that and others are just as happy as you will be to strike up a conversation and who knows where it'll go from there.

Also for ransom pen pals I use an app called slowly to connect to people around the world. I don't think I've reached out to anyone not super interesting.

I can't help financially but I've been in a similar situation a bunch of times. Medical debt usually can be negotiated or there are programs wherever you had the surgery done to alleviate some or all of the burden in your situation. It may not hurt to give their number a ring and explain your situation - the worst they can say is no but I've never run into that.

I have LinkedIn. "Libro companies"?

This depend on what exact tech is used in heater. Many old heaters are just Ohm heaters, for them working Ohm rule: power is proportional to square of voltage, and simple transformers are extremely effective - 90% is normal (sure, 2000W transformer is not small, but affordable), so if you will just use transformer to transform voltage from 220 to 120, your 2000W heater will effectively become 2000/((220/120)*2) = 595W, so 1000W powerstation could feed it (transformer should be for larger power than feed, 2000W will be normal for case of 2000W heater). Even exist regulated transformers, but I don't recommend they for people without electric education.

For heat pumps (fridges, conditioners), boiler automation, microwave, modern high frequency furnaces, things are more complicated and this will not work directly, but for them usually written MAX power input, but in reality they consume max power only few seconds to start, and all other time, typical 1/4 of max power or even less. So, you need to check peak power output of your powerstation, many have constant power for example 1000W, but peak 2000W.

In some cases, may be good solution automobile booster, as they designed to have insane high peak power.

I could not recommend this, but in many cases, in modern tech, only digital part is much depend on voltage and consume very little power, and use closed loop control and sensors, but heaters are just old Ohm heaters, and they connected with digital by relays, so it is possible to power digital part from external power supply, like mobile charger (international variants usually work 100-240V), and heaters directly with lower voltage (120V instead of 220V).

Thank you! War is heavy test of endurance, because of this I will be grateful for any support, but must admit, different ways will give magnitude different results with same resources spent.

For more detailed explanation better if you read Goldratt's Theory of constraints and for beginners introduction good books "the goal" (1/2/3). Also good to read classics - Sun Tzu, the Art of war, it is very short but unfortunately written on old Chinese, which nobody knows, so different translations are significantly different, best if read all translations you could reach in parallel and compare.

Javelins are made with strict reporting, and considered to storage few years. American/European medicine working on evidence based principles and strict protocols.

But at war and emergency, strict protocols usually disabled (and planned operations shift right), because they are extremely slow and expensive, and most Western weapons and supplies are not stored significant time, they near immediately consumed.

And also important, bureaucracy is not good, but Ukrainian bureaucracy now is just disaster, fortunately Ukrainians smart and good in peer interaction, so always when possible, better to use lower level.

So exists few variants to help:

1. If you will help to medicine, via some large fund with their bureaucracy, well, I'm not very optimistic on effectiveness, but I'm grateful.

2. If you find some way to help buy weapons, like Bayraktar heavy drones, also via some big fund, this is better. I'm also grateful.

3. The best, if you hire me, or with your support I'll make my business, probably open source. In this case will be triple win: First, I'll make decent product, I feel very strong importance of tech for community; Second, I will have some predictable future, so I could plan my life and care about health, not wait for medical emergency, so 1st variant will be just not happen with me; Third, I will spend time to talk with Ukrainian military people, I think you understand, they could tell much more to me in private talk, than for people abroad, and I will try to make them best help for this time.

As example, what I could do, FPV drones, which are less effective then Javelin, but cheaper and cost effectiveness of drones is much better. Second example, all drones very depend on communications, I'm really good in communications hard/soft, so I could make things, to make Ukrainian drones communications more reliable, and to interfere enemy communications or intercept them. And others and others. We here at HN, are knowledge workers, all we talk about gather information, store information, and process information, and you might know, knowledge at war is literally life, because with modern weapons, people in many cases don't see enemy, just got info from intelligence that enemy in location X,Y, and who will make successful fire first - will survive.

To be strict, now Russians still have significant advantage in heavy and modern weapons, and strong intelligence, and for them typical to attack civilians, so anything what make more heavy/modern weapons for Ukrainians and less heavy/modern weapons for Russians, will made huge impact on volumes of work for medics.