I wonder how soon till the automated license plate reader cameras everywhere start doing this.
This and ezpass readers are already everywhere in cities (even outside toll points) to track movement.
Readit Newspyk commented on ICE and CBP agents are scanning faces on the street to verify citizenship 404media.co/ice-and-cbp-a... · Posted by u/samfriedman
How do people here feel about water flossers?
Incredible for post-popcorn, and for $10 nowadays a no brainer. I still find floss does a better job at scraping the sides of the tooth vs water flossers for dislodging.
pyk commented on PEZ Robo Dispenser Using Arduino instructables.com/PEZ-Rob... · Posted by u/austinallegro
Fun project! For HN Pez fans, The Pez Outlaw is an amazing “hacker” collector documentary on Netflix that follows Steve Glew - who made his own dispensers semi-legit through connections in Europe (Pez Europe operated separately from Pez USA, and still does in many ways). Has some parallels to the scrappy nature of tech as well.
pyk commented on Impacts of adding PV solar system to internal combustion engine vehicles jstor.org/stable/26169128... · Posted by u/red369
There was some car which used a small solar panel to pass fresh, cooler air into the cabin during sunny days. This both made the car more pleasant to enter and lowered the initial AC surge. I don't know if it also trickle charged the starter battery so it never could get completely depleted from just standing for longer periods. Both these things seemed worthwile.
The 2010 Prius IV had this as an option - one of my favorite cars due to low maintenance (the lowest maintenance visits per year for its era). The solar panel air vent circulation is a nice feature (even if slightly gimmicky) and I suspect extends the hybrid battery life as well by preventing some marginal battery heat death while parked.
The newest (2023+) Prius brought back the solar roof as an option - and this time it charges the battery (albeit marginally / but not bad for those that drive minimally).
pyk commented on Dow plunges 2,200 points, Nasdaq enters bear market finance.yahoo.com/news/li... · Posted by u/geox
I have very little understanding of geopolitics or economics, so these tariffs don't make sense to me, and they don't seem to make sense to most people.
What’s the best steelman argument for them?
I’ve read a bit of Peter Navarro and others who support this line of thinking, but I’m trying to understand: is there a coherent endgame here that benefits the country long-term, or is this just short-term political theater dressed up as strategy?
What would the best possible version of this policy look like if it were smart?
During a world war, you cannot trade with your international “enemies.”
This level of tariffs is to discourage international dependency and trade as a prelude to war. Look who does not have a tariff.
This is not good policy - leading economists have written about this [1] as “…perhaps the worst economic own goal I have seen in my lifetime.”
[1] https://www.thefp.com/p/tyler-cowen-liberation-day-was-even
pyk commented on We need a permanent solution for universal broadband access theverge.com/2024/4/5/241... · Posted by u/rntn
Utilities are weird anyway. A private company provides the service, but pretty much every aspect of the service is heavily regulated by the government. Isn't that basically a government-controlled company in that case? Why not just have the government handle it?
For telco at least, some countries have exactly that and unfortunately it does not run more efficiently and centralizes potential content control. Innovation comes from competition, and privatization keeps content more freely flowing. If we can solve those two while centralizing that would be amazing but maybe unrealistic with current policy.
pyk commented on We think this cool study we found is flawed. Help us reproduce it pudding.cool/2022/04/rand... · Posted by u/colinprince
I was trying to find a mental way to do a true coin toss. Anyone has ideas for how to truly dig into some randomness? Maybe most would think it's impossible, but aren't we at least better placed to do this better than deterministic machines (or maybe we are not - the true free will debate :)?
If you have two people, you can have person A ask person B to “pick a random number”, and use heads for odd, tails for even. Don’t tell person B why you’re asking and my guess is you’re relatively random heads/tails. No studies that I am aware of to back this up, so people could be biased towards odd/even, but a bias correction could correct that too.
pyk commented on Order your rapid tests from the USPS (US only) special.usps.com/testkits... · Posted by u/mattl
My thoughts exactly. I believe the widespread misunderstanding of how to use the different tests and interpret the results will end up hurting infection rates overall. For exactly the reason you mention - it lulls people into a false sense of security. I disagree with this person's take 100% especially since PCR testing has been all but abandoned in the face of the magnitude the omicron wave.
Until a PCR can be done within 15 min instead of 2-3 day turnaround, there will always be a gap in using PCR for public health purposes. That time may come in the future for faster PCR, but it is simply not the reality yet today and we have to rely on antigen tests to at the very least rely on detecting the most virulent days to prevent super spreader events.
pyk commented on Order your rapid tests from the USPS (US only) special.usps.com/testkits... · Posted by u/mattl
Antigen nose swabs are extremely unreliable, unfortunately. Barring public knowledge about this, the campaign could be ineffective at best or actively harm infection rate at worst.
Anecdotal: I was in my 3rd of 4th day of symptoms before I finally came up positive on antigen (at home and at testing sites; the test appeared to be the exact same). PCR showed it from day 0 but the results lag quite a bit especially right now in the US (it took 7-10 days for me to get the PCR back in early Jan).
Best I’ve heard it described is that Antigen tests are best for detecting high virulence on days 3-5 (e.g., when the spread is happening from tons of viral production, including in the nasal passages). They are more for public health usage to prevent spread rather than diagnostic like PCR.
pyk commented on Monitoring my home's air quality with AirGradient's DIY sensor jeffgeerling.com/blog/202... · Posted by u/geerlingguy
If someone knows the answer to this I’d be interested to know :
Do different PM2.5 components affect the body differently, even for the same overall count?
Eg, are the PM2.5 particulates from burning toast comparable in bodily health impact to a similar PM2.5 count coming from a heavy Diesel engine’s exhaust (which I presume would have a different particulate makeup).
Still an active field of study but your intuition seems to be right. One study is here [1]. Combustible “types” of PM are usually worse (think smoke / carbon) vs. vaporous types of PM. The method of action is hypothesized to be the carbon particulate getting lodged in your lungs (similar problems from smoking, carbon nanotube inhalation, or charred foods).
[1] https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/full/10.1289/ehp.0800185?url_v...