13 ms·
The bottleneck might be the air in the room
- kennywinker 3mo ago> You gather your most expensive people into a room to make your most important decisions. A terrible way to make decisions.
- sixtyj 3mo agoWhat should be a better way?
- hahahaa 3mo agoMake them mostly async, bringly only the very pointy details that need nutting down sync. If knowledge transfer is needed in a meeting that could be done seperately. Put it this way do you need to book a 3h meeting with your spouse to decide if to buy a house? Nope all the research and decision criteria were in advance. That final minute of making the decision is a cross check over that work.
- 217 3mo agoi love seeing things i saw on twitter two years ago at the front page of hn man like what are we doing
- keiferski 3mo agoYet another reason to have meetings while walking outside: air quality and a natural limit on time, and the mental benefits that come from movement.
- sapiogram 3mo agoRequires an area around your office that isn't ugly or overrun with cars.
- Scroll_Swe 3mo agoScandinavia wins again :)
- vineyardmike 3mo agoIt needs to be safe (including from pollution), but you could absolutely just walk around the parking lot.
- gostsamo 3mo agorequires that everyone is comfortable walking and has no physical impairments. Not to talk about the weather either.
- gpt5 3mo agoI really wish a Apple or another major OEM would integrate CO2 monitor into watches or smartphones. Suddenly, everybody would be aware of the CO2 level in the room, get alerts, etc. and the problem will just solve itself. There are so many rooms, classrooms, movie theaters and other places with poor ventilation where you just feel dizzy, or fall asleep, not knowing it was just due to lower oxygen levels in your blood. Raising awareness is the only real solution.
- scoot 3mo agoApple watches already have a blood-oxygen sensor so it's covered, albeit indirectly.
- oasisbob 3mo agoI don't think that's true at all. Capnography, the measure of carbon dioxide partial pressure is wholly separate from pulseox: > Pulse oximeters have some limitations. They can only employ light at two wavelengths. Thus the devices can only distinguish between hemoglobin and oxygenated hemoglobin. When carboxyhemoglobin and methemoglobin are also present, there are two additional wavelengths required for differentiation. In the presence of elevated carboxyhemoglobin levels, pulse oximetry overestimates the true saturation of oxygen as carboxyhemoglobin binds with a higher affinity than oxygen. In the case of carbon monoxide poisoning, the absorbance spectrum of carbon monoxide is very similar to hemoglobin, which results in a falsely high level of oxygen (overestimation of oxygen saturation) ... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK539754/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK539754/
- throwaway81523 3mo agoDon't forget too, if the CO2 is 1000 ppm, then half of the air in each breath you inhale was recently exhaled by someone else. Yes, airborne viruses are still spreading. I still wear an N95 mask whenever I'm in an indoor space with other people outside of home. IKEA now has a remarkably cheap ($35) air quality monitor that measures CO2 as well as PM: https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/alpstuga-air-quality-sensor-smart-70609396/ https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/alpstuga-air-quality-sensor-sma... I don't have one yet but plan to pick one up soon. A CO2 sensor alone from Adafruit is $50+, though that one is more precise. I bought it a while ago and it's still sitting in my todo bin.
- bebe9494i4 3mo ago[flagged]
- inigyou 3mo agoWould that not induce a responsibility to take reasonable preventative measures like wearing masks?
- bebe9494i4 3mo ago[flagged]
- throwaway81523 3mo agoI haven't heard that 30 minute figure before, you have a reference? I've seen articles about medical workers using masks for much longer. Installing air filtration and UVC in classrooms and meeting rooms certainly helps. Since the mask shortage cleared up, HCW have been advised to stop re-using them. I re-use mind til they get dirty, but maybe I should replace them more often. https://apnews.com/article/fda-n95-masks-plentiful-should-not-reuse-5c4b706a59df7132584b89b1a96cdcf3 https://apnews.com/article/fda-n95-masks-plentiful-should-no... (2021) 2021 reddit thread: https://old.reddit.com/r/Masks4All/comments/lhnj10/one_of_the_best_options_for_using_and_managing/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Masks4All/comments/lhnj10/one_of_th...
- a1371 3mo agoThe building science community has not buy and large came to the agreement that the CO2 itself is the cause of the cognitive decline. It could be the Canary in the coal mine telling us there is an accumulation of compounds causing the decline. Why that matters? You need good ventilation regardless, but instead of just thinking of CO2, try to minimize compounds in your air by selecting things for the room that smell less and off-gas less.
- waterhouse 3mo ago[dead]
- jwpapi 3mo agoBuying one of these gadgets killed my brain fog
- usagisushi 3mo ago[dead]
- Tossrock 3mo agoSubmarines operate in the 1000s of PPM CO2 range and the sailors aboard generally do not experience any ill effects. This was tested and no deficits were found even at 15,000 PPM: https://asma.kglmeridian.com/view/journals/amhp/89/6/article-p520.xml https://asma.kglmeridian.com/view/journals/amhp/89/6/article...
- brookst 3mo agoThough that study included a 45 minute acclimation period. Appropriate for submarines, but I wonder what the results would be in the first 1 / 5 / 10 minutes.
- threatripper 3mo agoCO2 levels will rise much more slowly to such high levels even in a small room.
- Robin_Message 3mo agoIf that study was of submariners, is it possible long-term high-level exposure causes the body to adapt? I am suspicious of 0.1% having a significant effect though, given oxygen is around 20% and we naturally exhale a couple of percent CO2.
- pishpash 3mo agoI mean that can't be right, as the body's breathing response is triggered by that amount of CO2 buildup. It's not about what's in the air. It's about what the body can take up. Maybe submariners are self-selected to be more physically fit, e.g. larger heart, lung capacity etc. to compensate.
- culturestate 3mo agoOne key difference is that submariners are rigorously trained to operate effectively in less-than-ideal environmental conditions, whereas Bob from accounting probably is not.
- 3mo ago
- deanc 3mo agoI’m not saying this isn’t a legitimate concern but this really seems to have exploded amongst the tech community as the next obsession. I see this pop up on X every few weeks. Is the concern about this really based on actual science? Is there empirical data proving people are less productive or are damaging themselves as a result of heightened CO2 levels? And I don’t mean observational epidemiology studies.
- kashishgrover 3mo agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Nh_vxpycEA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Nh_vxpycEA
- Krutonium 3mo agoSomewhat unrelated, Tom also did a great video where he was put in a low oxygen environment. Similarish effects, differentish cause.
- deanc 3mo agoThis is not a peer-reviewed study. It's a Tom Scott youtube video.
- inigyou 3mo agoAre we not peers to Tom Scott?
- ohyoutravel 3mo agoOnly if you watch it on Peertube. The link is explicitly YouTube.
- deanc 3mo agoI appreciate Tom as an educator, but he's not particularly an authority on anything.
- thrance 3mo ago
- sixtyj 3mo agoA lot of CO2 is bad for thinking. CO2 is just a tip as office or home is toxic environment anyway. Plastic (e.g. carpets), formaldehyde in furniture, air fresheners… add home office and cooking at home (-> small carcinogenic particles)… If you start reading How not to die by Michael Greger, you find out that dust, soda and sitting - not CO2 - are real killers… It's similar to how people think sharks and airplanes are the biggest killers - when in reality it is coconuts, mosquitoes, and motorcycles.
- _def 3mo agoHow do you avoid/reduce exposure to dust? Genuine question
- Dove 3mo agoAir filters, decluttering, regular deep cleaning, replacing dust-friendly surfaces and furniture (such as carpet, drapes, and upholstered sofas) with things like wood, vinyl, or leather. HVAC maintenance, cleaning, and filters. Washable allergen covers for things like pillows and mattresses.
- throw-the-towel 3mo agoUse an air purifier, wear a respirator outside if you live in a polluted place.
- Gigachad 3mo agoAir purifier is good for PM2.5 and other microscopic pollutants but it doesn’t do that much for dust unless it’s particularly light dust and very close to the purifier. Dust is much more likely to just settle on the ground and be kicked back up than it is to move all the way to the purifier to get stuck in the filter.
- mrob 3mo agoI have an air purifier with built in particulate sensor. It doesn't provide numbers, but has a multi-color LED indicator to report PM2.5 level as good/mediocre/bad/terrible. Running a vacuum cleaner that supposedly has a good filter consistently increases the reported PM2.5 level from the first band to the second. The air purifier (or faster/cheaper depending on the weather, just open some windows) can bring it back down again.
- _def 3mo ago> Then, somewhere in the second hour, the room quietly gets worse at making them. Maybe it's not just the air but also the multi-hour meetings that drive people to a sense of "oh god let this finally end now", which leads do decisions that fall short.
- Scroll_Swe 3mo agoI am able to open the windows at home and at work but have to be reminded to air out, but I always feel much clearer when I do. Also, take walks. I am lucky to be able to walk to and from work and it helps immensely.
- oasisbob 3mo agoThere needs to be a meter for the amount of AI writing in blogposts. Same physics, same climb, same afternoon fog.
- stavros 3mo agoYeah, it's really tiring reading Claude's output all day, every day. Nowadays I yearn for a different style.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- naet 3mo agoThis reads to me as AI generated. Apparently it's still good enough to the general audience to be the #1 post on HN right now though. Which is honestly a troubling signal for the state of the world...
- LordDragonfang 3mo agoYeah, I clocked it as AI the moment I read "Here is the uncomfortable part". FWIW, Pangram detects it as 100% AI-generated. https://www.pangram.com/history/c410d4b4-abfd-4ca0-b52d-db0d495e6abd https://www.pangram.com/history/c410d4b4-abfd-4ca0-b52d-db0d...
- salahadawi 3mo agoI've actually been tracking the front page of HN for AI posts for a while now: https://www.salahadawi.com/hacker-news-ai-detector https://www.salahadawi.com/hacker-news-ai-detector This post evaluates to 99% AI generated.
- jsnell 3mo agoNice! Have you considered doing a Show HN for that? That's valuable in at least three different ways: public education, showing that most of the articles are still human-written which can be easy to forget about sometimes, and as an easy way to cross-validate my intuition when flagging something as AI-generated without having to manually run Pangram. I despair a little bit about how many HN voters either seem to want to read slop or don't understand when they're reading it. This post is obviously AI generated from the first paragraph on, and still has 480 votes.
- kashishgrover 3mo agoOh this is absolutely so relevant and I wonder if there are any high quality studies that have analyzed driving performance against CO2 buildup in cars. Cars often ship with circulate air feature in the aircon, and people use it aggressively, nonchalantly at least where I live, having no idea about the dangers of possible hypoxia and sleepiness that might be inducing in them while driving. It is absolutely critical in my opinion for cars to have CO2 monitors. We put so many sensors in cars these days that this seems to be a really cheap and fairly high value of life addition that could possibly prevent accidents on roads. I keep a portable CO2 sensor in my car at all times, because sometimes circulation is not something I can avoid when stuck in traffic or when passing by a drain.
- npunt 3mo agoGot a firsthand experience with this. I was dropping off my girlfriend and we stopped to talk in the car, with all the windows up. Over the course of the conversation we got more and more agitated at each other until I had a thought and pulled my Aranet out from my backpack. It was >3000ppm CO2. We opened windows and within 2 minutes all the agitation went away.
- hypfer 3mo agoTo be fair, that might not just have been the CO2 dropping, but also the pattern interrupt + giving you both an easy and face-saving way out of that situation.
- the_gipsy 3mo agoOr, you became aware of the agitation and interrupted it. The CO2 was a placebo. You have invested already in the idea, it all clicked in your mind.
- mbo 3mo agoI'm not sure this is a helpful comment. This is a common story with many medications, where someone notices their feelings are off and suddenly remembers that there is a probable root cause. It's why medications list side effects.
- rikschennink 3mo ago“That number matters more than it looks.”, then the next paragraph starts with “Here is the uncomfortable part”, and then I closed the tab.
- vasco 3mo agoSimilar to this a closed motorcycle helmet without air circulation increases CO2 extremely rapidly, within 60s it's already at really high levels. Open your visor when you stop!
- eitau_1 3mo agoCan someone provide an explanation why CO2 concentrations above 1000 ppm have such a negative influence given the fact that CO2 concentration in lungs (at rest) never falls below 10000 ppm?
- fer 3mo agoIt simply makes the baseline higher. If you want to go to extreme cases, check carbogen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbogen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbogen
- Terr_ 3mo agoI'm not a doctor, but I would consider it in terms of flow and throughput, rather than,—metaphorically—the amount of water the pipe can hold.
- eitau_1 3mo agoPer Wikipedia, at rest 500 ml of inhaled air is diluted with ≥2500 ml [1] of residual air in lungs containing ≥40000 ppm (4%) of CO2 [2]. Other things being equal, increasing concentration of CO2 in ambient air 10x (500ppm -> 5000 ppm) would increase concentration of CO2 in the lungs after taking the breath by less than 2.5% [3]. I imagine it could easily be compensated by an equivalently minor increase of breathing rate or breathing depth. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_exchange#Alveolar_air https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_exchange#Alveolar_air [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breathing#Composition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breathing#Composition [3] 5/6 × 40000 ppm + 1/6 × 500 ppm = 33417 ppm; 5/6 × 40000 ppm + 1/6 × 5000 ppm = 34167 ppm; 34167 / 33417 = 1.0225
- sohpea 3mo agoA reasonably popular brand's product that uses an NDIR sensor revealed to me just how much the CO2 level increases each night in my two bedrooms. One of them seems to have much worse ventilation to the extent that it reaches double the level. Opening the window slightly 24/7 keeps it low. My fiance's chronic headaches/migraines/idk became noticeably less frequent after this change and when they do occur it's usually because the window was accidentally left closed. Anybody who struggles with this kind of thing might want to try checking their levels. Or just open a window I guess?
- JoshTriplett 3mo agoOne easy way to fix this for many people's bedrooms or home offices: look at your HVAC system, and there's probably an option to have the fan run all the time, even if the heat or air isn't running. Turn that on, and your home's CO2 levels will drop substantially.
- udfalkso 3mo agoThis. I have mine set to run the fan 15 min every hour. Circulates air nicely.
- red75prime 3mo agoDoes it work the other way around? Does breathing air with 0% CO2 improve human cognitive performance? I haven't been able to find any research on the effects of lower CO2 concentrations.
- zh3 3mo agoFor the DIYers, it's simple to get an SCD4x sensor and hook it to a pi, arduino, ESP32 etc (then use CC to create a live web interface). I did this after trying an Inkbird CO2 monitor, which gets reasonable scores in reviews and wanting a live web report in the office. Interestingly the Inkbird and the SCD4X quite often diverge by anything up to hundreds of PPMs; I kind of back the SCD4x (on a Pi in my case) for accuracy after lots of experimentation, reading the datasheet and ensuring the correct calibration procedurs are followed (basically expose the sensors to outside air once a week). It's also interesting how much it varies day to day in my one-person office - possibly down to how windy it is outside, even with windows closed one day it never goes about 800ppm, other days it'll hit 1500ppm by lunchtime if I don't open a window. N.B. Quite possible the Inkbird uses an SCD4x internally, seems reasonable kit so I have no explanation for the differences in readings.
- jofzar 3mo agoYou can also get the IKEA one which uses a good sensor https://www.ikea.com/au/en/p/alpstuga-air-quality-sensor-smart-70609377/ https://www.ikea.com/au/en/p/alpstuga-air-quality-sensor-sma...
- ludicrousdispla 3mo agoI've been using an Inkbird CO2 monitor for a while, and it's definitely accurate enough for my needs.
- glub103011 3mo ago[dead]
- gwd 3mo agoI noticed this effect really strongly at university. There was one particular lecture hall that was effectively buried in the side of a hill; I can't count how many times I had an early afternoon lecture in there (so it had been in use since 8am), where I just could not focus or stay awake. Assuming sleep deprivation was the problem, afterwards I'd head out and lie down on a bench to take a nap, only to find myself wide awake. I have no trouble taking cat-naps when I'm actually tired, leading me to eventually conclude it was CO2 / O2 in the room that was the culprit.
- hanspagel 3mo agoNot gonna happen in Germany. I don’t think I‘ve ever seen a windowless room here and it’s common to open all windows at once for a few minutes, just to replace as much air as possible: Stoßlüften.
- em-bee 3mo agowhen i read the article i thought that maybe this is where german ingenuity comes from. but then germany hasn't been doing so well lately, and people who do most of their work outside should also be doing better...
- aurelwu 3mo agoTake a look at indoorco2map.com and you will find plenty of places in Germany with bad air measured in a crowd data collection effort. Most notably doctor‘s offices are often very bad. Many supermarkets too. Schools are not well measurable this way but academic research shows they often are at 2000-3000 ppm or even higher. (Disclaimer: I built the website/App)
- Aperocky 3mo agoThis article is rated 100% on my AI smell meter, making it less trustworthy despite convincing arguments. For instance, I'm now really only sure that author measured a 2000 ppm CO2 in a meeting room once. Everything else could just be LLM trying to invent convincing argument.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- girvo 3mo agoGlad someone else is saying it. It has that exact LLM cadence to it, horrible. The worst thing is, I'm pretty sure humans are starting to mimic that cadence too...
- LordDragonfang 3mo agoYeah, I clocked it as AI the moment I read "Here is the uncomfortable part". Pangram detects it as 100% AI-generated: https://www.pangram.com/history/c410d4b4-abfd-4ca0-b52d-db0d495e6abd https://www.pangram.com/history/c410d4b4-abfd-4ca0-b52d-db0d...
- GreenWatermelon 3mo agoMyeter started tingling at "Not the people. The room." On the first paragraph, and reached maximums level at the same part as you. Feels like I wasted time reading bullshit.
- ccozan 3mo agoI wonder if the corona times trend to WFH and jump to Teams/Zoom/etc meetings instead of physical meetings had/has a positive effect in regards to this.
- lexoj 3mo agoI remember some years ago after coming from work at 6 pm I was dead tired at home thinking it was due to hard work during the day. Then one summer day decided to code side projects on my balcony and I was building until midnight full of energy.
- marouen19 3mo agoJust open the door
- microtonal 3mo agoTwo tips: if you want a stationary CO2 meter in a room, you can make one very cheap with a SenseAir S88 sensor (22 Euro) and hooking it up to an ESP board. Flash ESPHome and you can get live statistics in your Home Assistant dashboard. The S88 is a pretty good optical NDIR Sensor that auto-calibrates by putting it in the outside air or in a well-ventilated room every N-days (N is in the data sheet). A bit more info about hooking up the S88: https://danieldk.eu/hardware/smart-home/esphome-senseair-s88 https://danieldk.eu/hardware/smart-home/esphome-senseair-s88 If you want something with a display that works on batteries without spending over 200 Euro for an AraNet, the SwitchBot Meter Pro CO2 is pretty good option. It is regularly on offer below 50 Euro. It uses photoacoustic NDIR, but does not deviate a lot from the S88. You can use it without a SwitchBot by configuring it with a phone on Bluetooth. The meter works on external power and battery, but even when on battery, you can set the reporting interval to 5 minutes, which is good enough in practice. The meter broadcasts the measurements with Bluetooth LE, so if you want to get the data in Home Assistant, you can place a ESPHome Bluetooth LE Proxy in the vicinity [1]. This is an ESP32 flashed with ESPHome that listens on Bluetooth LE advertisement and forwards them to your HA instance over WiFi. Of course, you could also get the SwitchBot Hub, but what is the fun in doing that? :) I would avoid the Ikea ALPSTUGA, it uses a thermal conductivity sensor, which is a very indirect method for measurements and it's often several hundred ppm off. https://esphome.io/components/bluetooth_proxy/ https://esphome.io/components/bluetooth_proxy/
- dgellow 3mo agoThanks for mentioning that, last week I got 2 SwitchBot hub mini, 3 temperature sensors each, for 70€ total, they are really neat. Even put one in our fridge, I didn’t expect the signal to pass but it’s working :) Will look at adding the CO2 monitoring Edit: actually, they only sell them as part of a 6-in-1 device, with a display, and a bunch of other sensors. That feels overkill, I wish they would just sell the CO2 sensor itself
- ac29 3mo agoI have a SwitchBot Meter Pro CO2 that is just temp/humidity/C02. Works well and was inexpensive ($50 or so).
- nenadg 3mo agoAt some point I worked with a team of ~10 people, and we did sprint plannings in 20sq meters room from 10am to 5pm. It was like everyone was high
- joshuaS98 3mo agoWhy did your startup fail? The CO2 was sitting at 1.000 ppm
- materialpoint 3mo agoGoes a long way to prove that industrial air conditioning is absolutely abysmal. If air conditioning actually worked satisfactorily, opening a window should never be necessary unless you want the cold waft of air, while the air conditioning actually delivered high-quality, low-CO2 air without smell. Instead any room at > 20% capacity is quickly filled with CO2 and the putrid smell of bad mouth and body odour. I get it that perfect ventilation would be way more expensive, but at the current level it is just bad, and the windows are sealed shut. It does not make sense from a human perspective.
- bambax 3mo ago> Open a window. In most office buildings (towers) that's impossible. You have to deal with what the A/C gives you.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- fractallyte 3mo agoAranet detectors are superb, and – best of all! – made in Latvia. Support European! https://aranet.com/en/home https://aranet.com/en/home
- skrebbel 3mo agoI wonder how many high impact political decisions (eg EU treaties) have been made in rooms like these.
- zerop 3mo agoI tend to agree with this observation. I started taking my evening calls (6:30 to 10:30 PM everyday) from my terrace in open air and my overall fatigue became quite less and I feel quite less tired compared to earlier time when I used to take these calls from my room.
- swe_dima 3mo agoif I travel and expect to be working I now bring a CO2 meter
- metalman 3mo agoopen a window, wait, ok, ok, turn up the , wait, no, ummm, hmmmmm re, re, no forget that, hmmm anyway, as a person with a strong interest in civil engineering, systems, and the subset of air handling, I can say that there has long been disenting arguments about how things are built,that have been ignored due to cost, which are large in terms of internal volumes required, and the intractable issues around, noise, filtration, heating/cooling and maintenance. And as the climate warms, and in many areas pollution increases , the inadequate methods used to "calculate" requirements, get further from real world needs. You could try throwing a desk through a window, but as that is one of the things the planners and engineers have antisipated, it will prove to be surprisingly difficult.
- teekert 3mo agoI also use my Aranet everywhere. The nice thing is you quickly develop a feel for when you need to ventilate spaces you know so you don’t need it there anymore. I also developed a feeling for new (to me) rooms a bit. I once woke up with the fam in a hotel with airco at 5500 ppm. It is then that I learned the airco does not blow fresh air (logical after thinking about it).
- jumploops 3mo agoIndoor air quality improvements were one of my “pandemic sourdough” activities. After testing a variety of AQI sensors, I ended up acquiring multiple Airthings-branded devices. They provided the best mix of CO2/VOCs/PM sensors in a single device with a decent enough app. There may be better options now, but I have these at both home and office. Highly recommend doing the research and learning about the environments you’re in, especially if you have little ones at home. Edit to add: opening windows is usually the easiest/best solution!
- londons_explore 3mo agoAre there studies which analyze performance Vs artificial CO2? Natural CO2 in a room probably correlates strongly with other things given off by humans... Farts, water vapour, viruses, etc. The effect needs to be properly understood before totally redesigning the nations ventilation systems on a possibly wrong premise.
- irdc 3mo agoThere are. The article literally cites a publication describing just such a study.
- Mistletoe 3mo agoThe really uncomfortable part is that 1000 ppm isn’t that far off from how EARTH will be. A terrifying scenario that will be like Total Recall with people clamoring for and paying for fresh air. Those that can’t will be permanently in a stupor. https://science.nasa.gov/earth/explore/earth-indicators/carbon-dioxide/ https://science.nasa.gov/earth/explore/earth-indicators/carb...
- SunboX 3mo agoGreat article! I did build a open source one years ago: https://andrefiedler.de/open-source-co2-ampel/ https://andrefiedler.de/open-source-co2-ampel/ It's on my desk and I can confirm, opening the window if it gets orange helps a lot with thinking. Some days in the morning it shows red and I barely can't think or get awake. Opening the window and it changes instantly.
- carterschonwald 3mo agoi literally had a co2 sensor for my engineering team last fall cause the space was so poorly ventilated. just measuring it continuously radically changed how everyone approached using the space packing wise and ventilation. smelled better too :p
- TonyAlicea10 3mo agoTopic must be very interesting to have this much discussion on an obviously AI-written article. I couldn’t get past the first few sentences.
- smooc 3mo agoI do feel impaired around 1000ppm. I get headaches. At home I got a few Air Gradient Ones (no affiliation, but they are great) and connected those to my Home Assistant to turn up the ventilation in stages (above 650ppm go up, above 800ppm again, at 1000ppm max). I also do this for the bedrooms, cause in the night it goes up too. The article talks about "within the hour". With four people in my living room doing normal things it jumps within 20min to around 1000ppm. If I am wrestling with my kids much sooner. In offices companies often neglect it. edit: if you are cooking on gas it also has an immediate effect on co2 of course apart from other small particles
- lloydatkinson 3mo agoI can feel the AI in the text.
- netsharc 3mo agoYeah, I noticed it at "Here is the uncomfortable part. 1,000 ppm is not an extreme number." Either AI, or LinkedIn brainrot.
- vertnerd 3mo agoAs a high school teacher, I first noticed this effect when I started using a CO2 monitor in my classroom as a proxy for air freshness during COVID. The CO2 levels in our supposedly "no problem with the air" classrooms shot up to 2000 ppm within minutes of the start of school and stayed there all day. Kids weren't checked out ONLY because I teach mathematics. They were breathing bad air, too. Worse, when I brought the monitor home, I found the levels there were elevated even with no one home and surpassed 2000 with just two or three of us in a room. The good news is that I stopped worrying about making my house "tight" for the sake of energy efficiency. I keep some windows cracked all year and don't worry about how tight the door seals are.
- tsss 3mo agoYour comment is suspiciously missing the part where your students performed measurably better after decreasing CO2 concentration.
- wffurr 3mo agoAssuming they had any control over the ventilation in the room.
- tsss 3mo agoNo such assumption is necessary. If they didn't then that the entire comment is totally baseless speculation, no better than asking a horoscope.
- crypttales 3mo ago[dead]
- weberer 3mo ago>The good news is that I stopped worrying about making my house "tight" for the sake of energy efficiency. I keep some windows cracked all year and don't worry about how tight the door seals are. You could also install an energy recovery ventilation (ERV) system.
- Yajirobe 3mo agoI have a CO2 monitor and I don't understand one thing - it seems that CO2 increases more quickly during summer than during winter. If I close my windows it takes longer to reach 1000 ppm during winter than it does during the summer. I didn't gather concrete data on this but this is just what I eyeballed over the last few years. Does anyone know why could this be the case?
- hoppyhoppy2 3mo agoDo you have a forced-air heating system?
- bad_username 3mo agoThe speed of air exchange through openings in your room (windows, gaps etc) is proportional to the difference of temperature between your room and outside. The more different the temperatures are, the more intensive convection is, and convection is very effective at moving/exchanging air. In summer the difference in temperatures of your room and the outdoor space is much smaller than in winter, which subdues convection, and the stale air tends to stay.
- pavlus 3mo agoCold air is more dense, than hot air. In winter the difference between the room air temperature and outdoor air temperature is much bigger, so the density difference is much bigger, making Archimedes force stronger and the airflow stronger as well. BTW, that's also how stove pipes work - vertical column of air hotter than surrounding accelerates well and creates a strong airflow feeding the fuel. But if the pipe is thermally conductive, that air will cool down and won't flow, for hydrocarbon fuels it can also condensate water, that could extinguish fire underneath it. So, pipes are made insulated enough for strong flow.
- doginasuit 3mo agoI find it kind of funny that we've been low-key suffocating the higher order function of our brains ever since we started building structures to live in with very little awareness of it. My mom is one of those people who complains that the air is getting stale and opens a window, the hero we needed.
- jeromechoo 3mo agoNot that we need more anecdotal evidence but I’ve long felt a certain restlessness and inability to think creatively somewhere in the early afternoon. I work from home with my wife. I’ve eliminated lunch, coffee, and a ton of other variables. The one variable that finally had a distinct effect to my mental state was opening a window.
- lofaszvanitt 3mo agoWow, what a revelation. People rediscover basic things in life :D.
- tsss 3mo agoYou know what also impacts my decision making ability? Freezing my ass off because people are opening all the windows every five minutes.
- xg15 3mo agoA bit OT, but was anyone else amazed by the bad UX of that CO2 monitor in the picture? If you notice, that monitor has a "traffic light" gauge at the bottom to tell you if the current CO2 level is critical. That traffic light is currently showing RED, i.e. highly critical. The thing is essentially sounding the alarm and prompting immediate action. However, became the traffic light colors are printed on and static and the only dynamic indicator is a small e-paper bit above the color gauge, the effect gets lost completely.
- jickmao 3mo agoThe practical bottleneck for most AI tooling isn't model capability anymore - it's the orchestration layer. Getting reliable behavior across edge cases requires more engineering than people expect from demos.
- frigaardj 3mo agoIs this a bot?
- bob1029 3mo agoI've noticed that cooking with gas is easily the worst thing for CO2 levels. Even with lots of ventilation my kitchen will hover around 1200ppm until it's over with. I swear I can feel the 430ppm already. I was born into a world with 340ppm. I can't imagine what it's going to be like when we hit 500+ globally. I'm in the market for an active CO2 scrubbing solution that I could deploy at home. Scrubbing the entire planet won't work but I could make a small room feel like 1960 again.
- Schiendelman 3mo agoWhat have you found so far?
- OutOfHere 3mo agoControlling indoor CO2 is important, but it's a proxy metric for the escalation in indoor bioeffluent VOCs which are a tiring subset of total VOCs. This is why scrubbing indoor CO2 will by itself never produce the pro-cognitive result you want. See https://www.aivc.org/resource/effects-carbon-dioxide-and-without-bioeffluents-humans https://www.aivc.org/resource/effects-carbon-dioxide-and-wit... Also, when you cook on a gas stove, it produces numerous other toxic gases which too are critical to ventilate before they even escalate, failing which the lung cancer is risked. Scrubbing indoor CO2 is sensible only when you want to go below the outdoor CO2 level, not at levels above it.
- mikestew 3mo agoI swear I can feel the 430ppm already. I was born into a world with 340ppm. You’re probably about my age, then, and I’m old. It might not be the baseline CO2 levels. :-) Kidding aside, that would be hard thing to baseline.
- Retr0id 3mo agoLLM prose really sucks the air out of a room.
- layer8 3mo agoMy employer started using CO2 monitors in meeting rooms 15 years ago, it’s really a useful thing to have. As well as the meeting rooms having windows you can open.
- teiferer 3mo agoThat article's message is spot on. If your CO2 levels are that high then you should fix the HVAC system and get it up to code or lobby for fixing the code. In many countries, a full air exchange in any office space every X hours is mandatory. In other countries that's optional and they need to get their act together.
- throwaway27448 3mo agoOr just open the window for the world that doesn't have HVAC
- mort96 3mo agoIn most of the world outside of the US, having "an HVAC system" is extremely rare.
- teiferer 3mo agoBut maybe it shouldn't. I visit a friend in Sweden the other day. Her house was built in the 80s, nothing fancy, a simple one family house. There is a ventilation system integrated. Every room has an inlet and the air is sucked out of the bathrooms and kitchen. Even has a heat exchanger. It's a pretty simple system: no cooling and it's not really used for heating except for pre-heating the incoming outside air with the energy in the exhaust air. But it exchanges the houses air multiple times a day. She told me this has been standard there for decades. A few ventilation pipes integrated into the houses construction and that's it. It's even mandatory in multi tenant houses to check air flow every few years. It's not just the AC crazy US where HVAC is standard. It's just common sense to have such a system if you care about your health.
- ncrmro 3mo agoAt a career fair in an auditorium I was showing a sensor suite with OLED displaying current readings, one of which was the SCD41 CO2 sensor (they cost more than the esp32!) I watched the sensor rise from 800 to 1700 PPM by the time the last group left the It’s quite easy to build one and deploy with esphome and breadboard with stuff you can order on Amazon and have an LLM walk your through hardware and setup. It is interesting where the rate of speech quickens as the co2 rises and the body starts to notice the co2, or maybe that was just the coffee.
- Beijinger 3mo agoUgo Bardi has an interesting take on CO2 and intelligence: https://senecaeffect.substack.com/p/a-new-interpretation-of-the-rise https://senecaeffect.substack.com/p/a-new-interpretation-of-...
- Qem 3mo agoThat's scary if confirmed. It took 500 million years for complex life to find the right mix of atmospheric O2/CO2 to foster intelligent lifeforms. Then we are undoing it in mere centuries.
- clbrmbr 3mo agoMatches my experience. Basement home offices are the worst offenders.
- abalashov 3mo agoAs a cyclist, I've heard a similar argument for years about indoor training, and particularly doing difficult indoor intervals beyond FTP.
- alienbaby 3mo agoWorking from home next to my open window feels generally way better then being in the office. Perhaps this is contributing. Still, seems more of a case for WFH rather than against, as article mentions some people have tried to make the case for.
- scrollop 3mo agoInteresting. Perhaps using non-ozone negative ionizers would also help.
- ck2 3mo agoif price is no object get the AirGradient PM2.5+CO2 but Ikea now makes the most affordable PM2.5+CO2 sensor, at $35 a no-brainer https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/alpstuga-air-quality-sensor-smart-70609396/ https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/alpstuga-air-quality-sensor-sma... in there is a very nice/expensive Sensirion SN63C sensor that costs nearly as much as the Ikea itself https://sensirion.com/company/news/press-releases-and-news/article/sensirion-inside-ikea-alpstuga-smart-air-quality-sensor https://sensirion.com/company/news/press-releases-and-news/a... unfortunately Ikea requires Matter network not plain wifi for communication so I've been looking for a cheap Matter hub or DIY SPR
- jessinra98 3mo ago[flagged]
- chrisweekly 3mo agoI bought a $30 CO2 monitor a couple months ago, and it confirmed my suspicion that my home office (a normal room about 12' x 18') reaches unhealthy levels over 1000ppm after just a few hours; opening a window quickly restores levels to the 400-700ppm range. Afternoon mental fatigue solved. Highly recommended.
- abixb 3mo agoFantastic, did you go for a particular "trusted" brand or just went on vibes? How should one rationally approach shopping for a CO2 monitor for home office use?
- chrisweekly 3mo agoI didn't do much research, got a really basic "Temtop" model from Amazon.
- gblargg 3mo agoI've tried several (Amazon Vine) and I would just leave them outside to be sure they reach 430 or so, and then take them in a closed room, also breathe on them several times and it should spike quickly. Opening up to verify an actual CO2 sensor is also a good idea. A few just had a tiny sensor and faked various readings based on this.
- machined_gray 3mo agoGet a sensor with NDIR system and it should be good. I myself have felt cognitive functions decline during my remote work sessions at home. I have smaller room that gets filled with CO2 when my family visit the room. Comprehensive AIR monitor system is must to get most efficient output. Author is right here!
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- tmp147963 3mo agoHaving CO2 sensors is mostly useless. In Quebec province in Canada, they added CO2 sensors in all the classes in all the schools after covid. Now what? Having data does not change anything if nothing is done. If instead all the millions invested would have gone into adding air exchangers, now that would actually do something. And that is assuming that CO2 levels really have an impact. From the last time I researched the subject, I found that there were few studies showing an impact. For context, from what I remember, in submarines the CO2 levels are usually between 10 000 ppm and 20 000 ppm. Very far from 1000 or 2000 ppm. Also, CO2 sensors are usually pretty bad. I work in HVAC and I hate calibrating them, the readings are not very consistent. Leave them alone for a few years and a good percentage will simply output bad readings. Then you see things like a teacher leaving the windows open in winter because the sensor says 2000 ppm all the time instead of realizing the problem is the sensor. (CO2 levels should go back to atmospheric levels over the weekend for example at about 450 ppm)
- shawabawa3 3mo agoI very much doubt submarines operate that high The ISS runs at 3000-6000ppm CO2. over 7000 is dangerous
- a3w 3mo agoover 7000 is dangerous[citation needed] I found 3-11k as regular levels, with no impairment known of. So acclimatization can happen?
- Hikikomori 3mo ago>Having CO2 sensors is mostly useless I got one because old apartment and bad ventilation. Was able to open a window when I felt the effect before, but now I can get an alert earlier. Since getting it I could consistently feel the effect at around 11100-1300.
- spixy 3mo agoNot useless. You cannot solve a problem when you don't know you have a problem.
- Aaron_NW 3mo agoVery interesting. It would be nice if HVAC monitored this and helped adjust for optimum performance. I heard a Freakonomics podcast recently with similar takeaways - that air pollution has a direct effect on cognition skills.
- xyzelement 3mo agoI'm in the indoor air quality business. This is real. A good way to think about CO2 is as a proxy for dirty air. CO2 is easy to measure but what it really means: The next breath you take has: - already been inhaled and exhaled by others several times. - contains remnants of their farts, burps, off-gasing from everything they are wearing, have, everything in the room, etc. - may have presence of other gases like radon in the winter, mold spores, g-d knows whatever else. - co2 itself has negative effects but mainly it's a signal of what else is probabilistically in your air, poor ventilation. Florence nightingale the inventor of modern nursing wrote that making indoor air as close as possible to outdoor air (without freezing the patient) is the best and most overlooked input to wellness. I believe this is still true. Weirdly there are people who for some reason are hell bent on denying the air quality as an input to health and cognition. The simplest way to reason about it is: the argument for organic food is the less toxin-like stuff in it the better. Same for filtered or spring water. We often fail to quantity the impact exactly but we (logically) know that less toxin is better. For some reason we hold a much higher bar for "blaming the air" which doesn't make sense. By volume we consume exponentially more air than food or water, and it enters the blood stream faster and more directly so obviously it impacts us. The EPA ranks indoor air quality as a top risk. Ironically we are obsessed with outdoor air quality and if you have allergies to things like pollen that's a real concern but in most cases outdoor air is the baseline for what's indoors + other shit is added. I find that there are people who say "wow air quality here is bad" and there are people who say "oh man I'm tired lately" without being able to attribute it, but I don't ever see anyone thriving in what is objectively bad air.
- xyzelement 3mo agoSorry forgot the thing most directly related to the article. Harvard did a study on air and cognition (Google Harvard cogfx) - here's the Gemini summary which tracks with my research: Study 1 (Simulated Office): Participants in optimized "Green" and "Green+" office environments scored 61% and 101% higher, respectively, on cognitive function tests compared to conventional office environments. Study 2 (Buildingomics): In a real-world analysis, occupants of high-performing, green-certified buildings had 26% higher cognitive scores and slept better than those in high-performing but uncertified buildings. Home/Work Study: Researchers tracking remote workers found that suboptimal indoor temperatures and elevated CO₂ (indicating poor ventilation) directly harmed creative problem-solving and cognitive processing.
- LordDragonfang 3mo agoHey, just FYI to everyone: Even though this article is conveying good (and useful) information, it seems to be completely AI-generated. Pangram clocks it as 100% AI: https://www.pangram.com/history/c410d4b4-abfd-4ca0-b52d-db0d495e6abd https://www.pangram.com/history/c410d4b4-abfd-4ca0-b52d-db0d... Someone else in the thread lists it as 99%: https://www.salahadawi.com/hacker-news-ai-detector https://www.salahadawi.com/hacker-news-ai-detector Also, it sort of jumps out at you if you're used to reading AI writing. Claude loves to start paragraphs with "Here is the uncomfortable part". I'm not necessarily saying this automatically makes it bad, but everyone should be aware of the source of their information.
- gdilla 3mo agoPeople don't understand ppm like they do temperature units. These rebreathed stickers can help drive home the point. Especially when the next respiratory virus season rolls around. https://naltic.com/product/aranet4-rebreathed-percentage-sticker/ https://naltic.com/product/aranet4-rebreathed-percentage-sti... You will take ~ 1000 breaths per meeting hour. really gross!
- Royce-CMR 3mo agoI’ve had a Co2 monitor for years. I get headaches from increased Co2 levels plus the lethargic state. It’s been revolutionary - including on long drives where it’s def saved me from crashing. Personal opinion, you can see cognitive decline at 1000 ppm. Not “ur a zombie” but it’s there. Airflow has vastly improved my life. Another personal opinion - the coporate stupidity and inane behavior we all see tracks back in part to Co2 levels turning people into quasi zombies. It’s a lot easier to just not care, and things don’t click like they should, when in higher Co2 environments - pushing everyone to rote, process, unthinking approaches. Sounds familiar?
- txoria 3mo agoSherlock Holmes disagrees: "I find that a concentrated atmosphere helps a concentration of thought. I have not pushed it to the length of getting into a box to think, but that is the logical outcome of my convictions." As other commenters noted, it's more about dirty air than CO2 levels - so, logically, should not be a problem for everyone. If article is really written by AI though, then what if it's PSYOP? The question to ponder then is: why AI wants low CO2 levels? Maybe, for people like Sherlock Holmes to lose a concentration of thought?
- rcr-anti 3mo agoAfter digging around, it looks like this area has some replication trouble. And as other commentors have pointed out, submarines operate well beyond these levels and the results failed to replicate in those contexts. Doesn't rule out CO2 as proxy for other components of air though, and most of the studies that failed to replicate added pure CO2.
- ButlerianJihad 3mo agoWhen I was homeless, I often battled extreme sleep deprivation. I would often play tabletop games in a coffeehouse during the nighttime hours, and of course I found myself nodding off in there, even with the hubbub and the smell of fresh-roasted coffee brewing all night long. I also attended liturgies at church all the time, and let me tell you, there is no CO2 machine like faithful Christians packed into a little chapel who are all singing for 90 minutes, and standing shoulder-to-shoulder. I was absolutely desperate to stay awake during those times, and I knew instinctively that it was an issue with the CO2/O2 mix in the room, and I was personally the most sensitive to it, being extremly sleep-deprived, but I am certain that many others felt the physical adverse effects, without being cognizant of what was causing them. I still suffer from sleep deprivation today, and when I settle in to our chapel of silent prayer, I often find myself nodding off uncontrollably, and it's so frustrating because I want to be alert and actively praying, but the environment is just... so relaxing. There are only about 4-5 other humans in the room, so the genesis is basically just me relaxing in a sitting, quiescent pose for a significant amount of time. I believe that the room is well-ventilated, but are they constantly recirculating air? The air outside can be 115 degrees; are there active intakes that must cool this hot, dry, dusty air? That's a lot of work! My father having worked in Environmental Health & Safety, I became fairly good at recognizing hazardous or troublesome situations, especially indoors and with large numbers of people. I try to avoid getting embroiled in them, and it usually does no good to try and alert any supervisor or management about the issues, but this blogger is right; we must raise awareness and take action.
- relwin 3mo agoMy local library displays CO2 level on an inconspicuous wall fixture as part of the HVAC system. If the level gets too high large shutters (near the ceiling) open directly to the outside, supposedly as a failsafe. The head librarian said he's never seen them open in the past dozen years. After 20 years of patronizing this facility I now know a little bit more on its operation.
- cwoolfe 3mo agoI noticed this when comparing my experience in open offices with lots of airflow to the cramped spaces of our WeWork co-working space. I could feel the difference. Also one time I slept in a small basement room with no ventilation. I woke up at 3am feeling like I couldn't breathe. I opened the door and felt better.
- sarchertech 3mo agoIf you want citations search my post history, but CO2 cognitive impact studies have a replication issue. We’ve been studying the impact of CO2 for decades, at much higher levels than you see in office buildings and have never recorded any cognitive impact (until many thousands of PPM) until the Satish study in 2012 and a handful of other studies that Satish was involved in. If you think about it for a second these studies can’t be accurate. If they were, you’d see differences on SAT scores of hundreds of points depending on building ventilation. You’d see huge variations between taking the SAT in the springtime when the windows are more likely to be open or in the winter. You’d expect to see massive performance differences across nearly every metric between regions that use AC vs those that depend on opening windows. And we do not see anything like that.
- phyzome 3mo agoYes, I'm a little skeptical as well. My apartment generally runs between 1000 and 1500 ppm, and I sometimes work outside, but I haven't noticed large differences in ability to work and concentrate between the two. (What does help is moving back and forth.) I tried keeping my room well-ventilated (500-700 ppm) for a few weeks and didn't notice much impact on sleep and work. There was a burst of positive effects a few days into the experiment but it didn't last and was likely unrelated. The air definitely starts feeling stale and gross around 2000 to 3000, so I try to keep it below 2000. That's all personal anecdote, but it similarly drives me to ask: Where's the replication?
- VygmraMGVl 3mo agoAs an example of a negative result-- https://www.nature.com/articles/s41526-019-0071-6 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41526-019-0071-6 Astronauts given two different batteries of cognitive tests showed no dose-response relationship to CO2 concentration
- doctorpangloss 3mo agoI've only seen legitimate CO2 concentration studies with small impact on sleep quality (>1000ppm ie unventilated rooms can cause 1-5% decline in sleep efficiency, observable as more nighttime wake ups or longer sleep).
- utopiah 3mo agoI do free diving recreationally and I think the opposite is true. Air in the room is not the bottleneck, ever. Finding the right goal with the right people is. Even with very very little air a lot can be done, in fact constraints, even as fundamental as air, can help.
- lalalandland 3mo ago"Opening a window or a door costs nothing." Central ventilation system at my job can handle open windows. So that is prohibited :-(
- Melatonic 3mo agoThe real bottleneck is the CO2 while you sleep. More CO2 means worse sleep means worse daytime performance.
- tangenter 3mo agoYou gather your notes about the article you’re to publish and you send them to your favorite LLM. Not your editor. Not your most helpful critic. The LLM.
- GreenWatermelon 3mo agoAnd Here is the uncomfortable part: The LLM smell in your article is obvious. Not only will people notice, but they will severely denounce the article. Absolutely Shame.
- ducktastic 3mo agoDon't forget about a concept called 'sick building syndrome'
- varispeed 3mo agoThis triggers my PTSD. Had to work in managed office that was sealed and aircon was clearly not working properly. I had headaches etc. I didn't have such meter. Numerous complaints to management did nothing. They said everything is normal. That said it seemed like only myself was sensing this as other people said I am dramatising. It got to the point I decided to quit that job as I literally couldn't breathe properly there.
- fuzzfactor 3mo agoMaybe more like a catalyst than a bottleneck when you think about it. A possible cayalyst for compromised decision-making during crowded meetings :\
- reassess_blind 3mo agoI suspect there's a lot of placebo effect happening in this thread.
- colinsane 3mo agoany tips for calibrating or even just validating these handheld CO2 meters? i've taken a few Amazon-listed CO2 meters from $dirt-cheap to $150, tossed them in a ziplock, and then discharged CO2 from a canister into the bag & sealed it. none of them read notably differently after an hour, nor show any sort of range error, etc. i've also done this without the ziplock: put them in a large pot, fill that with CO2. CO2's heavier than the rest of the air so the concentration should remain elevated within the pot, but same deal. i like the idea of monitoring CO2, but it's hard enough to get certainty about the _effects_ of CO2 level; without confidence in my meter i fear the conclusions i draw from it are more noise than signal.
- flawn 3mo agoI mean, I validate them by opening my window and seeing what the floor is. For me around 430ish usually - inline with what's in the atmosphere globally.
- Henchman21 3mo agoImagine if we applied this logic to climate change?
- godot 3mo ago> With so much work now remote, your people spend their days in small home offices with the door shut. People should probably get used to opening doors and windows more. Sure for some people there's noise problems (kids in the house, or outside environment being noisy) but there's also a lot of people who just don't know better even if they are in a perfect environment to open windows in (e.g. no noise outside).
- zftnb666 3mo ago2026: AI runs on GPUs. GPUs generate heat. Heat needs cooling. Cooling costs more than the GPUs
- OutOfHere 3mo agoThe indoor CO2 level is important, but the article completely failed to discuss the correlated bioeffluent VOCs which also contribute to a good chunk of the adverse effects. Ventilation fixes both. Fwiw, my video covers it: https://youtu.be/26ENvFJK08E https://youtu.be/26ENvFJK08E
- zeristor 3mo agoI’ve wondered if we can do better, with my Aranet in Spring, and living close to the forest with the windows open on a breezy day my CO₂ reading went down to 410. I’m guessing if someone had their air go through a conservatory first it could go lower. In some climate YouTube videos people slip in the CO₂level of when they were born, an interesting point, mine was 325, but I guess there was more lead in the air then… Is there much of an improvement, impractical as it is, to a far lower CO₂ level.
- cryptonector 3mo agoI carry an Atmotube with me to monitor VOCs and particulates, but it also measures CO2 and NOX. It's small, and it easily attaches to a backpack or belt loop with a carabiner it comes with. The only thing it's missing is different running average time scales.
- wranglerjeans 3mo agodeleted