lytfyre (u/lytfyre) - Readit News

lytfyre commented on Kroger acknowledges that its bet on robotics went too far grocerydive.com/news/krog... · Posted by u/JumpCrisscross

Scoundreller · 20 days ago

Had a large-format (for its time) chain store in Canada like that until 1996: https://www.tvo.org/article/what-happened-to-consumers-distr...

Basically a catalogue store without shipping to your door.

lytfyre · 20 days ago

Little bit more specialized, but Lee Valley Tools [https://www.leevalley.com/en-ca] stores seem to still operate this way. Showroom (and a few computer kiosks) and order forms up front, then line up for them to pull the items from the back.

lytfyre commented on 10M people watched a YouTuber shim a lock; the lock company sued him – bad idea arstechnica.com/tech-poli... · Posted by u/Brajeshwar

Tuna-Fish · 2 months ago

Nothing is secure against an oxyacetylene torch.

But if that's not the threat you are trying to protect against, there are locks that are sufficiently secure that picking or other "low-impact" defeat attempts are considered pretty much pointless. Abloy protec2 comes to mind.

lytfyre · 2 months ago

The Canadian Mint in Ottawa has a rather impressive large gold bar on display in the gift shop for people to lift and take photos with. It's not in a case or anything. It's chained down with a Protec padlock - and there's a cop a few feet away to deal with you trying something un-subtle.

I think it's a pretty good endorsement for Abloy.

lytfyre commented on Building the mouse Logitech won't make samwilkinson.io/posts/202... · Posted by u/sammycdubs

mkl · 4 months ago

Strange. I have lots of Kensington Expert Mouse trackballs, some of which I have used for 7+ years, and none have ever given out on me. I have a stockpile of spares in case they stop making them, but they seem to be built very well.

Which models did you have problems with, and what went wrong?

lytfyre · 4 months ago

Never tried the Expert Mouse in particular. Two of mine were slimblades, one orbit with scroll wheel. Different failures each time -

Orbit - broken plastic around one of the bearings. ball no longer turned smoothly or straight in every direction, and dragged. Slimblade #1 - began to operate erratically. I believe it was a failure of some kind with one of the optical sensors, but I never was able to figure it out consistently. Slimblade #2 - microswitch under the LMB failed mechanically, no longer triggered.

the slimblade's were provided by my employer at the time, the orbit was purchased personally for at home - it's use overlapped with the slimblades at work.

I don't think I'm super unusually hard on my trackballs - My Elecom Huge lasted for ~6 years before the soft touch plastic finally got a bit gross from skin oil contact, but still was functionally fine, and my current protoarc is going strong two years in.

lytfyre commented on Building the mouse Logitech won't make samwilkinson.io/posts/202... · Posted by u/sammycdubs

loloquwowndueo · 4 months ago

Don’t current Kensington trackballs have this layout as well?

lytfyre · 4 months ago

They do, but I've had severe quality/lifetime issues with them. Three Kensington trackballs, two different models, all three lasted under a year for me.

lytfyre commented on UK government advises deleting emails to save water gov.uk/government/news/na... · Posted by u/bifftastic

AvAn12 · 5 months ago

Serious question. Is there any technology to capture the excess thermal energy from data centers and run some of it back into the grid? Or drive some kind of desalination process? Or do anything else useful with this “surplus” heat energy?

lytfyre · 5 months ago

Vancouver has a plant that harvests heat from sewage to provide district heating and hot water (https://vancouver.ca/home-property-development/how-the-utili...) - you don't need super high temperatures for it to be useful. During construction there was talk that the Telus building downtown's in house data centre providing heat to the attached condo building (https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/servers/telus-warms-cond...) - I'm unsure if that actually went ahead.

Fundamentally, a limit on doing it at scale is that it for efficiency it requires the heat to be consumed near the production - and the bulk of large power intense data centres are not located in the midst of high density residential neighbourhoods with a demand for heat.

lytfyre commented on Ergonomic keyboarding with the Svalboard: a half-year retrospective twey.io/hci/svalboard/... · Posted by u/Twey

Twey · 5 months ago

That sounds really cool! I'd love to see it when you've got something more concrete. I assume you're already aware of the KeyMouse and the AlphaGrip?

https://www.keymouse.com/https://alphagrip.com/

I don't think the layering needs to be as big a deal as one might assume. I mentioned in the post, but in many ways I think layering is easier to deal with than larger keyboards, and not only that but also culturally small-keyboard users are increasingly okay with using layers, e.g. the tiny-keyboard gamer crowd, or even most laptops now have a dedicated Fn layer in addition to the traditional shift, ctrl, and alt. So long as you don't go overboard with it I think it shouldn't be that intimidating.

lytfyre · 5 months ago

I grabbed an alphagrip from the ewaste bin at my local hackspace a few years ago. Gave it a solid week - which was enough for me to get at least marginally competent with the layout. I found it extremely awkward. I think the compact controller style forces your wrists into an awkward angle, so any advantages of minimizing fingers motion is compromised by the awkward neutral position. Sloppy back switch mechanisms and a really bad trackball on top.

Too uncomfortable to use full time, to awkward to hunt and peck for an occasional couch/TV navigation keyboard - It went back in the ewaste bin.

I've been on a kinesis advantage 360 for a few years, after an ergodox and the older fixed size Advantages. Been eyeing the Svalboard, thanks for sharing your experiences!

lytfyre commented on Comparing the Glove80 and Maltron Keyboards tratt.net/laurie/blog/202... · Posted by u/ltratt

lytfyre · 5 months ago

I've usually seen "thumb clusters" used for those style of key layouts, rather than thumb pads.

I've been using some variant of the Kinesis Advantage line for over 10 years - currently the Advantage360, their split board. I used an ergodox for a few years before that.

The Advantages are all 3d curved layouts with thumb clusters like the Maltron, and I haven't had RSI issues since making the move. The 360pro runs ZMK for firmware customization, and the stands do support different tenting angles.

Worth a try if you're looking for a more direct alternative to the Maltron.

lytfyre commented on Atlassian announces end of support for Opsgenie atlassian.com/blog/announ... · Posted by u/anurag

devmor · 10 months ago

I'm a fan of whiteboard and sticky notes!

Distributed scaling is a little difficult, you have to set up a webcam and hire an intern to move things around, but it's probably still cheaper than a lot of enterprise solutions.

lytfyre · 10 months ago

On an old team that did this, we joked that the cleaning staff had as much control of the roadmap as the product managers. The cheap offbrand sticky notes didn't stick very well, so after one or two status changes, or just being on the wall for a while, they tended to fall to the floor. If we were lucky they'd get stuck somewhere at random, and not just thrown out.

lytfyre commented on The Evolution of Tunnel Boring Machines (2023) construction-physics.com/... · Posted by u/chautumn

pjc50 · a year ago

Cut and cover is basically unusable in cities because you'd have to "cut" down all the buildings you'd otherwise tunnel under.

There isn't some industry saying "yes we could cut and cover here, but we prefer the slower more expensive option of a TBM"!

(I see NATM mentioned; there have been safety issues https://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/natm.htm )

The HS2 cut and cover tunnels were all in greenfield: https://www.hs2.org.uk/building-hs2/tunnels/green-tunnels/ ; much of the cost there goes on planning and documentation, an under-appreciated cost. It's also questionable as to whether they were needed at all; a plain cutting with embankment open to the air would have been fine from a civil engineering point of view, or even in many places just flat track, but the tunnels were planned because people objected to a railway running through fields.

lytfyre · a year ago

>There isn't some industry saying "yes we could cut and cover here, but we prefer the slower more expensive option of a TBM"!

At least for Vancouver, there was absolutely an industry arguing for the slower-more-expensive TBM option on a route that followed exactly a road (the Broadway line extension) - local businesses along the route. The previous line which was mostly done by Cut-and-Cover (the Canada Line) had a very major impact on businesses along the route for years.

There are plenty of people who will acknowledge that something is cheaper _overall_ but the impact on a small group being higher can make them extremely vocal, and that has to be managed in public projects.

lytfyre commented on The Evolution of Tunnel Boring Machines (2023) construction-physics.com/... · Posted by u/chautumn

tobylane · a year ago

You're often not just building under existing things, but through them. We now have a lot under the roads. The Victorians built the subsurface lines of the London Underground with cut and cover, but Oxford is currently suffering overrunning works to lower a road under the station, because of unknown brick arches and utilities. Even the TBMs are building beside existing tunnels and basements.

What projects in developed countries have used cut and cover recently? In trying to find out, I see that HS2 under west London and the Canada line under Vancouver chose tunnels over cut and cover because it was cheaper.

lytfyre · a year ago

> I see that [...] Canada line under Vancouver chose tunnels over cut and cover because it was cheaper.

Canada Line was mostly Cut-and-Cover - only the bits below downtown and crossing below the water were bored, the bulk of the underground was done cut and cover for cost and speed to make sure it opened for the 2010 olympics.

It was not a popular choice - not really announced before the project was approved, and local businesses along the route took a big hit.

Vancouver's current Broadway Line Extension is being done with TBMs to avoid the impact that the cut and cover canada line segment construction had.