alden5 (u/alden5) - Readit News

alden5 commented on TrackWeight: Turn your MacBook's trackpad into a digital weighing scale github.com/KrishKrosh/Tra... · Posted by u/wtcactus

pmxi · 5 months ago

This is clever! and potentially useful too.

Have you done any testing to determine how precise and accurate this is? I suspect their must be a lot of variance between laptops, since this isn’t an intended use case.

alden5 · 5 months ago

The app isn't accurate at all, magic 8-ball of scales, anything you put on the trackpad it'll settle on a weight and give you a number but it'll be random. The app will accurately tell you how much force you're applying with a finger but when putting something else on it'll settle on a random number

alden5 commented on TrackWeight: Turn your MacBook's trackpad into a digital weighing scale github.com/KrishKrosh/Tra... · Posted by u/wtcactus

mikpanko · 5 months ago

Very cool. Curious: what is the minimum and maximum weight MacBook's trackpad can reliably measure this way?

alden5 · 5 months ago

It goes in gram increments and my laptop was able to read 7300g pressing as hard as i could, which I was surprised it would be designed to read that high, might go up to 10kg but I don't want to crack my trackpad lol. The actual measurements though are extremely unreliable. I've found it can't reliably measure anything, measuring a roll of tape gave me measurements from 70g to 700g, it always settled on a number but was different every time. Maybe the underlying data is more accurate but this API is definitely just designed for outputting the force of a finger. M1 MBP for reference

alden5 commented on Ads chew through half of mobile data nextpit.com/ads-consume-h... · Posted by u/mahirsaid

crazygringo · a year ago

Surprising they don't mention what I imagine has to be the obvious culprit: video ads.

It's not even about advertising for me -- static ads don't bother me that much. But whenever there's autoplaying video in the corner of a page, I hate it so much. Whether it's an ad, or a news site that inexplicably thinks I want to multitask and watch their news channel at the same time I read their article. It's genuinely hard to read the article when there's constant motion an inch or two away at all times!

alden5 · a year ago

That's your monkey brain hard at work making sure you notice movement that could mean danger in your peripheral vision, funny how much technology is built off of manipulating primal parts of our brains

alden5 commented on FDA Authorizes First Over-the-Counter Hearing Aid Software fda.gov/news-events/press... · Posted by u/mgerdts

latexr · a year ago

The event was prerecorded. It doesn’t seem farfetched¹ to think they already had the approval but legally couldn’t say it without the FDA making it officially public. But if the FDA had announced it before the event, it would’ve stolen the surprise. Not only of the feature, but that new AirPods would be announced. Apple would’ve hated that so they may have asked for the announcement to be delayed.

¹ Maybe it is. I’m not an expert on the USA’s health and government policies.

alden5 · a year ago

apple actually didn't release any 'pro' airpods at this event, the feature is for the pro 2's which have been out for over two years now, was glad it wasn't made a feature only for a new version

alden5 commented on Brazil blocks Starlink bank accounts msn.com/en-in/news/world/... · Posted by u/shark1

mistrial9 · a year ago

Starlink is widely used in deforestation and mining in Brazil. Elon Musk personally flew to Brazil to promote it (with Balsenero?), despite the predictions that Starlink would be used that way. The political pitch was that schools in the far reaches would use it - that has measurably failed to materialize. Meanwhile, Federal raids on gold mining operations show Starlink transceivers routinely.

source: Brazilian activist report

alden5 · a year ago

that's not a source, could you link the report?

alden5 commented on Apple explores home robotics as potential 'next big thing' bloomberg.com/news/articl... · Posted by u/apike

d--b · 2 years ago

There are a bunch of things in a house that are time consuming that would benefit from the help of robots. In fact it’s all the things that rich people can afford to hire someone to do:

- cooking

- cleaning

- taking care of kids

You can be sure that a ton of people are working on those.

alden5 · 2 years ago

apple already sells a device for taking care of kids, just get them an ipad and it'll keep them entertained all day long! /s

alden5 commented on Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores gizmodo.com/amazon-report... · Posted by u/walterbell

bilalq · 2 years ago

This is pretty sad to read. Before Covid, the Amazon Go store experience was phenomenal. All the convenience of a 7-Eleven but with the pricing of a normal grocery store. The food options were really good and the BlueApron style meal-kits were amazing. The Alexa integration was also nice for being able to just verbally ask what's the next step on a recipe while you're busy stirring or chopping things.

When it rolled out to Amazon Fresh stores, it was a breadth of fresh air. The painful clunkiness of self-checkout was gone. The slow and pointless exercise of unloading and reloading your cart was gone. You could just bring your reusable shopping bags, throw stuff in, and walk home. By far the most hassle-free shopping experience to be had.

Scan as you shop is a big step backwards and feels like you've got the annoying self-checkout experience looming over you the entire time you're there.

The selection and operating hours both took a hit during covid and never recovered.

alden5 · 2 years ago

What never made sense to me with their go stores was why a store that only needed 1-2 people max to operate had such bad hours. Hearing now that getting the bill is a mainly manual process i guess their hours had to line up with their data entry team in india so people could get their recipes quickly. insane to think about

alden5 commented on Earth Just Received A Laser-Beamed Message From 16 Million Kilometers Away iflscience.com/earth-just... · Posted by u/5F7bGnd6fWJ66xN

krzys · 2 years ago

absolutely impressive!

How can anything aim with such precision?

alden5 · 2 years ago

the trick is lots of amplification on both ends is able to compensate for a wide beam spread, edfa's allow you to optically amplify the sent signal and allows the faint received signal to also be amplified

alden5 commented on SheepIt Render Farm sheepit-renderfarm.com/ho... · Posted by u/Tomte

alden5 · 2 years ago

Years ago when gpu power was basically free through google colab I used that to my advantage by racking up sheepit credits rendering other people's projects on google's dime. I still have about 10 million credits right now and I don't think I'll be able to use them all.