kibitzor (u/kibitzor)

kibitzor commented on Eat Real Food realfood.gov... · Posted by u/atestu

I liked the new guidelines given here [1]. However, I disagree with the protein target recommendation. Feels way too much for a normal healthy adult with reasonable activity.

> Protein target: 1.2–1.6 grams per kilogram of body weight per day.

[1]: https://cdn.realfood.gov/Daily%20Serving%20Sizes.pdf

kibitzor · a month ago

Agreed, this protein target is high for likely many people.

Results from this meta-analysis [1] says

> protein intakes at amounts greater than ~1.6 g/kg/day do not further contribute RET [resistance exercise training]-induced gains in FFM [fat-free mass].

Said more plainly: if you're working out to gain muscle, anything more than 1.6g/kg/day won't help your muscle gains.

For those curious about why, see Figure 5. Americans also get too much protein already, ~20% more than recommended [2]. There are negative effects from too much protein (~>2g/kg/day) like kidney stones, heart disease, colon cancer [3]. Going back to the 1.2-1.6 g/kg/day range, this can be a good range if you're already working out, so get out there and walk/run/weight lift/swim/bike!

[1]: https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/bjsports/52/6/376.full.pdf

[2]: https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/protein-is-important-but-were-...

[3]: https://www.health.harvard.edu/nutrition/when-it-comes-to-pr...

kibitzor commented on Can “second life” EV batteries work as grid-scale energy storage? volts.wtf/p/can-second-li... · Posted by u/davidw

kibitzor · 4 months ago

>So top of the list for us, of course, designing this thing is safety.

Funny issue I learned after talking to a founder at a similar company: although the battery packs were certified safe for cars (passing crash tests, wild heat differences from AK to AZ, people sitting on top of the battery packs in the car) ... the founder had issues re-certifying the batteries for safe use in a static location for grid storage.

The certification process treated his company like the batteries were made from scratch even though they used the same BMS/coolant lines/etc. already proven and tested.

It's clear you still need strong safety regulations and practices in the rare case there's an event, but the founder noted the grid storage industry regulations were adding redundant safety testing and slowing down adoption. The founder also added it's difficult to compete on cost even with effectively free used EV batteries in this startup space of grid storage against the low cost of Chinese made grid-specific batteries due to the added testing + custom hardware + space constraints and other items. (Caveat: I didn't fact check any of their statements)

kibitzor commented on Federal judge lifts administration halt of offshore wind farm in New England apnews.com/article/trump-... · Posted by u/zekrioca

potato3732842 · 5 months ago

Don't get too exited. This is a fight that's been happening for over 20yr now. Whoever is throwing the political football of any given wind project or who is receiving it in the end zone is just a name. They'll be gone in a few years. The institution of fighting over off shore wind farms in the Boston to NYC area was there before them and will be there after them.

Regardless of the pretext of any given action the the way things generally are is that the people who have a view they want to protect, the tourism industry and the hippie/nature/biology types are on the no-wind side and the climate types, green energy people, domestic energy and big business types are on the other. Sometimes one side wins, sometimes another side wins. But nobody ever gets a win streak long enough to bring anything to fruition.

The area is well suited to wind power but the area but it's also chock full of rich people and moneyed interests that can afford to fight it, likely to the long term detriment of the region, but like locusts they will be gone and cashed out by then so they don't care. That's probably when these things will finally get built.

I'd love to see some wind turbines go up but I'll believe it when I see it. And even then, I bet they'll find some way to make everyone's bill go up instead of down because of it.

Sincerely and with the utmost disrespect,

A cape wind proponent.

kibitzor · 5 months ago

Also a cape wind proponent here, I got carried away with my comment below reminiscing about the "just one more year" feeling for cape wind for the past 20 years.

My wind energy professor[1] assigned everyone the task of arguing against cape wind as one of our assignments (and later, for it). Of course, we found a few valid arguments for and against, but enormous reasons for it. The professor had a despondent take on utility scale wind, even though it was environmentally + economically viable, partially from the decades of fighting against the often irrational public perception.

Example homework:

"Wind turbines will block our sunset"

> no, dune grass will block more of the sunset for you, many turbines won't even be visible (insert math)

"Wind turbines will be too loud"

> no, they're so far away from shore that even your breathing is louder (insert math)

"They won't make energy cheap enough to reduce costs"

> no, even using conservative payback plans and limited life, it still works (insert math)

"The native's sunset ritual will be ruined by the wind turbines"

>no, see above, are you serious? [Yes, this was proposed- https://www.mysanantonio.com/news/environment/article/tribes... ]

It's less about a conspiracy against renewables, you start to feel this conspiracy for pro foreign fossil fuels in the Boston area. The iconic Citgo sign, core to Boston's image [2]-> maybe The iconic Rainbow tank for liquid natural gas[3] -> maybe maybe The fact that Boston receives tanker ships of LNG from Russia[4]-> maybe maybe maybe

[1]I have a Wind Energy Certificate from my university education, but this was not my focus

[2]https://www.texasstandard.org/stories/how-century-old-citgo-...

[3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_Swash

[4]https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/why-is-lng-coming-4500-miles-...

kibitzor commented on Show HN: Put this touch sensor on a robot and learn super precise tasks any-skin.github.io... · Posted by u/raunaqmb

sfink · a year ago

I don't know anything about this space, but damn, this looks impressive!

Could it be used to sort trash and recycling? Could it recalibrate if gunk got on it, or as it aged? (I guess silicon is probably pretty resistant to aging.) Can it wash and de-stem a tomato?

I think I want a trackpad made out of this. How much resolution could it get? I suppose I wouldn't want to sacrifice a lot of resolution for the pressure, tilt, etc. that I am assuming this would provide.

(I said "think", because I might find out that it feels like running my finger over skin, and I'm wondering how creepy that might feel. I don't really want my laptop to have a fleshy part.)

kibitzor · a year ago

I've worked in this space in automation with industrial grade robots and more bespoke end effectors that don't look like mainstream robots, but fulfil specific needs. Responding to some of your questions with how I could see the above touch sensor helping:

Trash sort and recycling: Not many robots here, majority of sorting takes advantage of object material properties. Some companies tried to add delta robots to keep up with the high rates required to even approach profitability, but they weren't good enough. Maybe some municipalities or universities that have lots of funding could justify adding robots, but it's just hard to financially justify.

Recalibration: I'm curious what the developers have for handling reduced magnetic fields over time along with gunk. Silicone is washdown rated, but anything soft at high throughput with parts will start to wear out and change pickup characteristics.

Washing and destemming a tomato is more of a problem to solve now that will need another 10+ years of price reductions in robot+end effector costs and increased efficiency before it beats bulk washing and hand-destemming (or crude machine work). Maybe it'll be a grad-student's project for a theoretical future home-bot

The Lenovo TrackPoint is likely already 95% of what you'd need from a trackpad, but this touch sensor is likely not even focused at that market.

Things I see useful for this robot touch sensor:

* Simpler version that detects part presence, is just a Boolean feedback of "part detected" which can stick on existing end effectors. This is often handled by load calculations of the robot to detect if it has a part, but could also detect if a part has substantially "moved" while it's been gripped, sending a signal to the robot to pause

* Harder to suggest items for food as soft grippers (inflatable fingers) will grip at the precise pressure that they're inflated, reducing the need for sensitive feedback. The application for this touch sensor would be food that needs a combination of different pressures to properly secure something, can't think of a great example

* Hard to also suggest places where this sensor would help with fine alignment, as major manufacturers have motor and arm feedback with WAY more sensitivity than the average person would realize, google Fanuc " Touch Sensing". But, this could help when the end effector is longer and it's harder for the joints to detect position

* Fabric manipulation. Fabric is just a hard problem for robots, adding in more information about the "part" should be helpful. Unlocking more automations for shoe manufacturing at reasonable prices is a big wall

kibitzor commented on Show HN: Will I run Boston 2025? getfast.ai/boston2025/... · Posted by u/steadyelk

kibitzor · a year ago

Context for those not following running news, The Boston Marathon lowered qualifying times for most prospective runners for 2026 race [0]. Because the Boston Marathon has limited capacity, you can only run if you either:

1) raise $5k+ for a charity (limited spots)

2) run a full marathon below* a qualifying time

The reason it's below* is because even if you run under a qualifying time, there may be enough people even faster than you that fill up the available spots.

This results in some years where you needed to be many minutes faster than the posted qualifying time to guarantee a spot, and every few years, the BAA (group in charge of Boston Marathon) drops the qualifying times.

Note, even though the qualifying times have been dropping, they have been even faster in the past (see the 1980s)[1]

As someone that's done the Boston Marathon a few times, I am glad they are trying to find a good balance of reasonable qualifying times for the most participation without dramatically expanding the field. I'm also always surprised with how popular and well known this marathon is given the NYC marathon (and others) are harder to get into, only about 2 of the miles are actually in Boston [2], and the start/finish are so far away making participating a logistic headache. But that could be what gives it the charm and why I'm now thinking about doing 2026

[0] https://apnews.com/article/boston-marathon-qualifying-times-...

[1]https://www.baa.org/races/boston-marathon/qualify/history-qu...

[2]https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/boston-marathon-route-ma....

kibitzor commented on Hacking eInk Price Tags (2021) dmitry.gr/?r=05.Projects&... · Posted by u/mnem

kibitzor · 2 years ago

I've been sitting on the idea of putting several of these tags around the house and have them display quote, jokes, and facts.

The best guide I've found so far is this one [0], as it uses easy to procure tags + guides on GitHub + offers an application to auto-upate tags via screenshot area of a website and seems like it could be done in an afternoon.

However, I'm hoping to find an even more streamlined approach that I could turn into a gift to others (assuming they want a 3rd party device on their network), where the tags sync to a raspberry pi (or similar cheap USB powered device), and it uses very cheap tags, if anyone has done this or has plans.

[0] https://youtu.be/BCkMu57S_YA?si=BsSXEladdZHvcC57

kibitzor commented on Surprised to see that the standard CO2 level on the space station is 4000 ppm twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack... · Posted by u/bilsbie

kibitzor · 2 years ago

Related reading "I’m living in a carbon bubble. Literally."[0] which has a lot of great basic charts and graphs on everyday data related to CO2. Information in this reading that is relevant to 4000 PPM on the Space Station

  -Typical CO2 concentrations can reach 4000 ppm in a car
  -"On the International Space Station, the odds of a crew member reporting a headache double for every 1300 ppm increase in CO2 concentration [Law 2014]."
  -Nearly every cognitive function go "down" in score when CO2 PPM levels go from 1k to 2.5k. The exceptions are Focused Activity Cognitive Score goes UP and information search stays about the same. Not shown are effects over 2.5k.

Important to note the Space Station is at a different pressure and has no gravitational effects on airflow compared to where many of the studies were done on Earth.

I do not work nor have studied in a CO2 related field but gained a fascination with how we overlook it in daily life (like many here) and have since purchased CO2 measuring devices and read various studies. I think missing from my notes here is a link to NASA done research on the effects of CO2 on astronauts on the space station.

[0]https://medium.com/@joeljean/im-living-in-a-carbon-bubble-li...

kibitzor commented on Tesla driver arrested for homicide after running over motorcyclist on Autopilot electrek.co/2024/04/23/te... · Posted by u/brohee

kibitzor · 2 years ago

Related video "Tesla Autopilot Crashes into Motorcycle Riders - Why?"[0], summarized to: vision used by Tesla seems to process motorcycles differently, and may be incorrectly "assuming" the closer spaced brake lights on a motorcycle is actually a far away car.

More details on the homicide here[1], which shows the crash happened during daylight hours and the bike resembles a sport bike. This is a different condition than my referenced video (night collisions with cruiser-style motorcycles), but I suspect similar incorrect assumptions by Tesla vision happened.

[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRdzIs4FJJg

[1] https://www.king5.com/article/traffic/traffic-news/tesla-on-...

kibitzor commented on Meteorite Self-test check-list sites.wustl.edu/meteorite... · Posted by u/accrual

toss1 · 2 years ago

I read another article which asked strongly that people NOT use rare earth, neodimium or other strong magnets on meteorites, so this should perhaps be emphasized more strongly.

>>You say that your rock attracts a magnet or a compass. Most (>95%) of meteorites (irons and ordinary chondrites) attract cheap magnets because they contain iron-nickel metal. Many terrestrial rocks, however, contain the mineral magnetite, which also attracts a cheap magnet. (Do not use a rare-earth magnet; a cheap “refrigerator magnet” will attract a meteorite.)

The reason is that the strong magnets can re-orient the magnetic properties of the meteorite, ruining it for some aspects of tests or research. Seems polite to not ruin the thing for research for only a few seconds of 'that's cool' sensation.

kibitzor · 2 years ago

To add: there's ongoing research to "reverse-engineer" the magnetic properties of certain meteorites that contain tetrataenite [0], which is as strong as a rare-earth magnet, but requires no rare-earths, but takes millions of years to make[1]. I studied techniques to speed this process up in the lab over a decade ago when this was new, and got to handle meteorites in the process.

A less "magnetically invasive" way to check if a material has magnetic material would be to put a compass nearby (as recommended by the site). Also, one could put a rare earth magnet on a string, watch it align to the earth's field away from the rock in question, then bring it carefully close to the meteorite seeing if it settles to a newer direction. This would still expose the meteorite to a magnet, but a very small field vs checking if something sticks.

[0]https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/new-approach-to-cosmic-m... [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrataenite

kibitzor commented on When should you give up on a project that doesn't work? preethamrn.com/posts/when... · Posted by u/xmprt

kibitzor · 2 years ago

A similar project to what the author worked on is "WikiShootMe" [0] that finds Wikipedia photos near you (green/yellow/blue), and needed (red) on a map. This was discussed here 2 years ago [1].

[0] https://wikishootme.toolforge.org/ [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31575909