r_klancer

10 ms·

31.
by r_klancer 4y ago
You absolutely can get hex bits for drill/drivers. Do yourself a favor and pick some up at the hardware store; I refuse to set up knockdown furniture without one. That said, be careful to set the torque fairly low. (Invest in a driver
32.
by r_klancer 4y ago
My favorite anecdote (so far) from working at Fitbit is that until 2017 or so you could log "Starting a fire, indoors" as an activity. In the early days the web app allowed you log arbitrary activities; it would tote up the calori
33.
by r_klancer 4y ago
Let's be clear. Green vs blue is a bit of a red herring. The real issue is that Apple has to have some fallback protocol for texting with non-iMessage devices, but refusing to upgrade the fallback protocol beyond SMS/MMS makes t
34.
by r_klancer 4y ago
I'd be a bit worried about this from a digital hygiene standpoint: the default device for storing your passkey will be your phone, and every unlock is temptation to get sucked into the world of notifications and social apps. Fortunatel
35.
by r_klancer 5y ago
I don't know. The last time I regularly used a standard def CRT TV was in 2005. Pretty sure I could hear it then at 30-ish. Sometime last year I pulled up a Youtube video that plays a rising tone up through 20kHz. I stopped being able
36.
by r_klancer 5y ago
My favorite endangered sound is probably too subtle for the museum and, alas, one I can no longer hear anyway: the 15625 Hz squeal of an NTSC cathode ray tube TV. I can remember knowing whether the TV had been turned off or was just on mute
37.
by r_klancer 5y ago
Was going to make the same suggestion. The Evan Doorbell tapes you link to are great for learning about that lost world. I can remember that when I was a kid, once you started dialing, the phone would go silent-- almost . What you would act
38.
by r_klancer 5y ago
I'm redoing my kitchen (in the US) with induction and ruled out anything with touch controls. I noticed that particular issue as soon as I stepped into the showroom. Thanks for letting me know about the auto-off problem. The other prob
39.
by r_klancer 5y ago
Sure you can make the case! Manuals are more fun. But they've been dying a slow death in the US and are already down to ~1% of new car sales here. Performance can be handled by an automated manual, economy by a CVT, and the future is E
40.
by r_klancer 5y ago
Me too. On Sunday I happened to park right behind exactly the car I would try to find and buy used if my occasional-use Volvo XC70 had to be replaced: a red VW Golf Alltrack wagon with tan leather and the big sunroof and 6-speed manual. (20
41.
by r_klancer 5y ago
Solid point. Gen X would never put up with this bullshit.
42.
by r_klancer 5y ago
Interesting, I'm sure somebody has made a Youtube video of them. Only been to MV once and that was before these were around. (EDIT: of course, there's also an East Coast/West Coast, or at least an old city/new city issue
43.
by r_klancer 5y ago
Well, the tide has been turning in many cities towards building more human-scale infrastructure by improving walkability and protected lanes for bikees/scooters etc. Delivery bots have a severe risk of wrecking the "flow" of
44.
by r_klancer 5y ago
What's the business model here? It seems like delivery bots could only work on wide walking paths on closed campuses. Or are the startups here assuming we'll build dedicated infrastructure for them? I can't imagine they would
45.
by r_klancer 5y ago
I'm relatively well informed but I always just assumed oat "milk" was an inferior substitute marketed to the actively or wannabe lactose intolerant. [EDIT: and vegans of course.] (No idea if "wannabe lactose intolerant&q
46.
by r_klancer 5y ago
One of my favorite niche forums is https://archboston.com . It has years of deep-dive discussion from passionate users about the history and progress of Boston area infrastructure and real estate development projects. For a while
47.
by r_klancer 5y ago
Growing, yes, but from a much smaller base and probably with a lower ceiling. (I'm a regular Zwift rider in the winter.) Fundamentally, Zwift is for road cyclists who are training or stuck inside, and Peloton is for spin class fans, an
48.
by r_klancer 5y ago
Coincidentally, I was (also) going to jump in this thread to say that at Fitbit we never employed even near 2800 people. Of course, per the standard corporate model nowadays, Fitbit in its time as an independent company didn't directly
49.
by r_klancer 5y ago
The northern part of the Turnpike corridor and the Sopranos give a misleading picture of the whole state. My grandfather was a South Jersey farm boy who grew up to become a professor of entomology in the Rutgers ag school by the 1930s. He s
50.
by r_klancer 5y ago
It's interesting to note that Hacker News really loves Strong Towns. I chatted with Chuck Marohn (founder and face of Strong Towns) once at an event a couple years ago, and they're quite aware that they get a lot of traffic from H
51.
by r_klancer 5y ago
Actually, I'm very rough with my phones and considered buying a ruggedized phone, but went with a Pixel 5. It has a rubberized back and has held up very well over the last 10 months of use with only a screen protector (no case). In fac
52.
by r_klancer 5y ago
If I send an email to someone appearing to expect a reply, and I don't get a reply within X days (I think X=5), Gmail surfaces the email with a chip saying "Sent 5 days ago. Follow up?" If I receive a travel reservation confi
53.
by r_klancer 5y ago
I'm also a Googler these days (via Fitbit). The assumption being made in this entire discussion is that the purchases are mined from Gmail, but that doesn't appear to be correct. From the screenshot, the items are part of the &quo
54.
by r_klancer 5y ago
The funny thing is, I was a subscriber to Agre's mailing list (the archive of which is still at https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/agre/rre.html ) I was impressed by his methodical way of dissecting the desi
55.
by r_klancer 6y ago
Like autonomous electric buses every 2-3 minutes in dedicated lanes that are demarcated by paint? Autonomous because labor costs (and shift considerations) are a major factor limiting the frequency of service you can provide. Electric becau
56.
by r_klancer 6y ago
So both the real and the entirely imaginary nudges really bother you, huh?
57.
by r_klancer 6y ago
> Strongtowns and Citylab were both conceived by single, childless white people You're talking through your rear orifice. Strong Towns was founded and is led by a fairly conservative guy who lives in small town Minnesota and talks a
58.
by r_klancer 6y ago
In Volvo's case I think it's a matter of platform refresh times. The (brand-new) XC40 Recharge BEV is based on the new "CMA" platform that is designed to be flexible enough to support ICE or PHEV or full BEV configuratio
59.
by r_klancer 6y ago
Wow, thanks for this. Around 2005 or so I was super into synthetic biology but have paid almost no attention since. If you told me this was a speculative "letter from 2020" written back then I would almost believe you, it's
60.
by r_klancer 6y ago
What I want to know is, why isn't "Wiki maintainer"/"Librarian" an accepted job category, and why don't companies hire dedicated individuals and teams to do it? I think that would have a decent ROI, but we

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