I think some of the sources like the Reviews.org survey, JAMA analysis and Sleep Medicine study have flaws and are largely correlational, not causal. The Reviews.org data is self reported, not peer reviewed or randomised, and probably has sampling bias. JAMA's analysis is observational, so it doesn't prove causation. The Sleep Medicine study uses a tiny sample, short duration, and likely has self selection bias.
Regardless, we all sense that excessive smartphone use ties to lower mood and higher depression risks. There's already an influx of people experimenting with timers, dumbphones, or just switching their phone off, but app builders will keep chasing our attention no matter what. It's their core business. As the patchy research (in both quantity and quality) shows, real change won't come until we as a society dig deeper into the problem.
key points that stood out to me:
- Smartphones are built to addict via dopamine from notifications and scrolling. Americans check theirs 144 times a day on average. Strong links to anxiety, depression, poor sleep, and weaker focus.
- Short breaks (24 hours to a week) can boost focus and mood. Limiting non work screen time to under two hours daily correlates with lower depression.
International cooperation is important, but over reliance on a single foreign partner, even a close ally causes risks. It leads to a situation where a country possesses shiny new military hardware but lacks the logistical support, sovereign weapons integration, skilled personnel, and overall control to use it effectively and autonomously.
I imagine the UK's experience with the F35 is a major driver in it's decision to partner with Japan and Italy on the next gen Tempest fighter, so they can regain sovereign control over its future air combat capabilities.
However, the problem extends beyond the F35. Although the UK has increased its defence budget in real terms, the extra funding has been outstripped by soaring equipment costs (Boeing mark up the costs of soap dispensers by 7,943%!), the legacy of decades of under investment, and the spiralling expense of strategic programmes like the nuclear deterrent. The budget for conventional forces does just not exist.
This is becoming the consensus, but I'm yet to see a lot of people making the logical conclusion: The "peace dividend" was based on a lie/severe miscalculations, and those that drew upon it should be the ones to pay it back.
- Progress is iterative and driven by a seemingly bottom up, meritocratic approach. Not a top down master plan. Essentially, good ideas can come from anywhere and leaders are promoted based on execution and quality of ideas, not political skill.
- People seem empowered to build things without asking permission there, which seems like it leads to multiple parallel projects with the promising ones gaining resources.
- People there have good intentions. Despite public criticism, they are genuinely trying to do the right thing and navigate the immense responsibility they hold.
- Product is deeply influenced by public sentiment, or more bluntly, the company "runs on twitter vibes."
- The sheer cost of GPUs changes everything. It is the single factor shaping financial and engineering priorities. The expense for computing power is so immense that it makes almost every other infrastructure cost a "rounding error."
- I liked the take of the path to AGI being framed as a three horse race between OpenAI (consumer product DNA), Anthropic (business/enterprise DNA), and Google (infrastructure/data DNA), with each organisation's unique culture shaping its approach to AGI.
> I liked the take of the path to AGI being framed as a three horse race between OpenAI (consumer product DNA), Anthropic (business/enterprise DNA), and Google (infrastructure/data DNA)
Wouldn't want to forget Meta which also has consumer product DNA. They literally championed the act of making the consumer the product.
"Hey, Twitter vibes are a metric, so make sure to mention the company on Twitter if you want to be heard."
Twitter is a one-way communication tool. I doubt they're using it to create a feedback loop with users, maybe just to analyse their sentiment after a release?
The entire article reads more like a puff piece than an honest reflection. Those of us who live outside the US are more sceptical, especially after everything revealed about OpenAI in the book Empire of AI.
I think it's circumstantial and dependent on individual situations. I personally think you should optimise for equity as much as you can. If you wanted to optimise just for cash, you could have found a better paying job most of the time.
From the small sample size of my friends in SF/NYC and are well funded by a top-tier VC, most take lower salaries for more equity. The majority have the same salary as their seed round with small bumps along the way, but nothing crazy. A couple have reduced their salaries to extend runway without diluting themselves further.
The only exception seems to be those with families and dependents.
'Prompt Injection' is everywhere. While it's cheeky, you can't help but feel it's a fair countermeasure. If the academic publishing world is so overwhelmed that reviewers are resorting to AI, maybe the system itself is the real problem.
The only people affected are the lazy reviewers who weren't doing their job properly to begin with.
Are there any particular niches or applications where community-sourced splats are especially well-suited? I see them mentioned on HN from time to time, but I'm curious about their primary use case at the moment.
For me they are by far the best way to view a 3d scene captured from the real world. They are the real "volumetric photograph" and (especially in a VR headset) gives you a strong feeling of being "back there".
360/180 panoramas are fun (I especially used to love the Google stereo panoramas that also contained ambient audio loop from the moment of capture) - but a splat scene is a whole different level.
Thanks!
At the moment the intent is to showcase what the method is capable (and what isn't).
One of my future plans is to extend it to other methods than just gaussian splatting so that we can compare methods across a wide range of captures with varying light conditions, different materials, etc..
I was curious so looked at a few power wheelchairs...It's wild how expensive they are, especially considering the advancements in electric mobility tech elsewhere. You'd think they'd share some components with e-scooters, e-bikes, or even electric cars – motors, batteries, controllers.
Are the powertrains and control systems in power wheelchairs really that specialised? Or is it another case of the medical device markup and regulatory hurdles driving up costs?
I'm a guy who has disassembled and reverse engineered a standard Jazzy power chair, and what I noticed was the attention to detail regarding failures. The chair is thoroughly designed to shut down at the slightest bit of trouble. There's some redundancy in things like the controller, where it used redundant hall effect sensors that were identical to the others, but ran in an inverted power profile, to detect any weirdness in the sensor outputs.
I ended up adding a long range remote control to it. A remote control power chair is fun to drive around. People do get a little concerned when they see a chair rolling around without a driver
My mum recently had a curbside crash while she was riding an e-bike. This resulted in her breaking bones in both her hands, which resulted in a surgery in her left hand and various problems (tcl fracture related) with her right hand.
This makes me actually appreciate reliability in e-vehicles motor cutoffs etc.
I keep thinking if this could have been avoided with a better quality e-bike or if actually it would be even worst with a cheaper one.
Which makes one think, how often a wheelchair with cheap e-scooter parts would crash people into staris, cars etc
I know public use devices have their own problems with reliability, but I did almost cause a traffic accident a couple times over the years. Every time, the scooter's accelerator lever got "sticky" due to repetitive (mis)use, and would sometimes not go all the way to 0 when released. Stuck at ~10%, the scooter would brake normally and remain at halt under my weight, but the moment I stepped off it, it would suddenly launch itself at the cross traffic.
It's these little things that get you. The scooters all have some kind of debounce logic, disabling the accelerator until you're moving sufficiently fast - but the logic doesn't kick in when you stop without releasing the lever. A little bit of redundancy would've helped here.
A friend has an e-unicycle (I think the category devices has some other name as well..) and he wanted to try out how it behaves in a track.
He sort of knew, but didn't expect it, that when the roll of the device exceeds a certain threshold, the device will shutdown. Even if you're on a curve going with some speed. Broke his wrist. Since then he's also wearing wrist protectors that keep the hand straight.
Actually it was a bit unexpected that it would have known to do that; it must have used its complete IMU data to even know it was rolled, as plain accelerometer would have been pointing "down" as usual.
I'm an embedded software engineer with past experience developing robotics and motor control drivers.
Those e-unicycles terrify me. No way I'd trust my life to one. Once you're at speed, every failure mode results in instant passenger ejection. I see people flying through traffic on those things - they're just one sensor glitch or integer overflow away from serious injury.
> Actually it was a bit unexpected that it would have known to do that; it must have used its complete IMU data to even know it was rolled, as plain accelerometer would have been pointing "down" as usual.
That actually feels like overengineering based on well-intentioned, but wrong specs. You probably want to just use sideways acceleration for "falling over" detection, instead of roll.
The safety with ebikes does vary a bit although I'm not sure it's down to price. My one is quite a cheap one but has quite a lot of safety features - will only go if you pedal it, motor cut if you touch the breaks, 14 mph speed limiter etc. But I guess you can come off any two wheeled vehicle.
Assistive technology costs are high because consumers barely have an alternative. I am blind. In Europe, a 40-cell braille display starts a 6k. 6k, just for a monitor which displays 40 characters. Prices are largely unchanged since 20 years. Technological advancements are irrelevant. Resellers will squeeze the cow, thats plain capitalism man.
If that is the case, then there seems to be a place in the market for someone else who can sell these devices for cheaper.
However, as you have pointed out, since it is also a market where people have few choices, there is no incentive for any new player to significantly lower the prices. Even if they easily could. Because they know that they will get the customers anyway.
That seems to be the root cause of the excessive price problem. An existing oligopoly of rent-seeking companies. Or a cartel, if you like.
I think that one of the ways to disturb this market and bring the prices down is for some honest company to join it and price their products fairly.
Once there is one such company, I assume that everyone else will lower their prices as well. Because otherwise they will run out of business.
The problem is if you spend 100 million dollars to make one (which is about 30 engineers, 50 testers, and 20 other for a year) and sell 10,000 units (remember there is competition who will get come sales) you need $1000 each just to pay engineering costs. Lack of scale is what makes many products expensive.
If you don't mind educating a curious person — why are Braille displays still worth making when text-to-speech is free, everywhere, and communicates information much more quickly than Braille? I can understand that there might be special situations where you really need a device to be silent, but it's hard for me to see how the cost-benefit tradeoff would weigh in favour of a Braille display except in the rarest of circumstances.
Just from googling -- an orbit reader 40-cell appears to cost $1,700 USD, is there a reason this doesn't actually solve the same problem as the 6,000 euro display, or are these not available in your market for that cost? Sorry if my question is off the mark, I don't know a lot about this and your comment piqued my curiosity.
I’m sure the commenter meant well. You said “In Europe, a 40-cell braille display starts a 6k.” Which to me means that the most low quality, cheapest device starts at 6k.
Now i learn from you that that low quality device is so bad that you consider it a separate product class in itself. Can you tell us more what does it lack? In other words what features are you looking for when you are looking for a 40-cell brail display? (What is the minimum quality for it to be a “car” in your analogy?)
This is a fascinating potential wedge for an open-source initiative. Could you please elaborate as to what makes a device highly usable and of good quality, vs cheap and unpleasant to use?
I’ve long thought that open source would make a lot of sense for assistive devices, and that it has the potential to change incentives within the cartel of assistive device manufacturing.
There was a HackadayPrize 2023 competitor that worked on this [0]. He had to rethink the way those devices are built to bring the cost down.
That would be interesting to know if his solution could match the 4k$ in term of usability or if there is some issue like refreshing rate that make the piezo based system necessary for a good user experience.
That looks like a great project. I share your curiousity regarding the user experience of this vs the piezo units. Looking at it, it should be in the 50-100mS range for refresh times, maybe that is too slow? It seems like it would be plenty fast? I wonder if there are other haptic factors with the piezo, like vibration?
This is specifically like someone that has never seen or used a car or bicycle asking about why a bicycle wouldn't work for someone complaining about car prices, which I think is a pretty reasonable question!
I suspect a major difference is that those e-scooters, bikes, cars, etc are produced and sold by the millions, whereas wheelchairs are small volume by comparison. Another commenter mentioned the legal requirements, which complicates things.
That said, a quick google says there's 65-132 million wheelchair users worldwide so it's not a small market either.
My notes/ points that stood out for me:
- Actively seek diverse social, intellectual, and professional interactions. Each one expands your surface area for serendipity. TAKE MORE SHOTS!
- Don't go into interactions with an agenda. Real interest opens doors unexpected.
- Always aim for excellence. Even in small tasks. People notice this. A strong reputation pulls in opportunity.
- Give before you take. Offer attention, time, or resources without expecting immediate return. That builds high trust relationships.
- Share your authentic self. Put your unique thoughts out there. It's a magnet for those who truly resonate with you. Don't fake it.
- Host stuff. Simple, low pressure events work best. Taking the initiative to create connections is often more effective than just showing up.