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Very excited about this. I've been flying curious for years, but haven't actually done it. Some of the cons that have held me back...

A few of the places I'd want to travel to have consistently bad crosswinds. Crabbing looks complex and you have to get 5 things right or you die. For the non flyers check this out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ca0V5q4XSb8 and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ri0D_0DdIU and how to do the maneuver: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92K8s-vppDI&t=3s

It greatly limits your available flying days if you think "hey 30mph crosswinds are super sketchy, I don't want to fly today." So that means delayed trips or delayed returns. Hard to plan around.

I realize this isn't part of the current iteration and requires lots of regulatory hoops... But in future with automation, it would be amazing to know you could fly in clouds or evenings easily with only a basic private pilot's license.

Aviation self driving is so much older and reliable than automotive self driving, it's frustrating that it isn't generally available. It's awesome that you are working to bring it to low cost flying, thanks for working on this and congratulations on the launch!

I'll add that I think the "easy to drive as a boat or car" size of the market is easily 10x the existing private pilot market. (And the easy as a car and the price of a pickup truck size of the market is probably 1000x the current market). So I think you are on to something big.


You're not landing this thing in a 30mph crosswind in something this small, no matter how fancy the control logic. You'd be too skewed to land safely. 30mph is pushing is for some airliners. The aircraft this is built on is only certified for a 15kt cross.

The bigger problem is that low level winds that strong are often associated with bad weather...which again doesn't mix well with small planes.


I dearly wish Apple would just publish Dark Sky again. Let the Weather app be whatever super clean design hero you want, just give us back this perfect information dense weather app to use day to day.

There have to be dozens of devs in apple who would love to be on the 1-2 person team it would take to maintain it. (It was a 2 person startup for years, don't come at me with how hard stuff is.) It could even be a reward for good service, "ok you successfully mucked around with weird EU privacy law in the health app for 2 years, instead of a sabbatical for therapy how about you get to work on Dark Sky for a year?"


What good would that be without the information backing it? (The DarkSky API server)

And if that information does still exist in the (public) Apple Weather API, why hasn't anyone (not just some Apple Engineer) just created an app with the views people care about?


Somewhere in Cupertino an Apple UX engineer is furrowing their brow at you.

How dare you want information!


No, it's painful.


An excellent unintended consequence of forcing builders into modular housing might be a much more robust modular housing market. Sort of like Tesla starting with higher cost Roadsters and Model S cars until there is scale to compete at volume. It would be terrific to see some productivity gain in construction, which as actually declined since 1987. See the Single-Family graph here: https://www.bls.gov/productivity/highlights/construction-lab...

It's worth also noting that despite the drama, Costco is not looking to lose money on these. So the apartments will be nice enough to rent. Nimbys tend to forget the discipline of the market, especially in their talking points.


Robust and energy efficient.

From: https://cleantechnica.com/2024/06/12/one-home-builder-grows-...

Clayton, a leading single-family home builder, recently made big environmental news by deciding to convert nearly all of the 42,000 modern manufactured homes it builds annually to be certified ENERGY STAR and Zero Energy Ready Homes (ZEHR). These certifications mean that its manufactured homes will be much more efficient, save homeowners money on their utility bills (up to 50%) and provide premium energy-efficient appliances that are often considered unaffordable to the average family.

Clayton’s switch to ZERH also means nearly all of its homes now come with a heat pump water heater (HPWH), which likely represents the single largest procurement of HPWHs in the history of the technology. To put it in context, the entire HPWH market in 2022 shipped 141,000 units, and Clayton alone will increase this total by 30%!


Context is important, this is targeted at journalists. They are usually trying to make a point to casual readers.

For readers with more interest or who are numerate in their day jobs (engineers, finance, or economists), dual axis charts can often be a great choice.

This is better graph style advice from the Economist, which includes good dual axis examples and one bad one and how to correct it. https://medium.economist.com/mistakes-weve-drawn-a-few-8cdd8...

Since we are engineers or founders trying to deal with very complex systems, adding detail and clarity like the Economist or Edward Tufte does is the better way to go.


Author here. Thanks for setting the context: Datawrapper – the data vis tool I write articles like this for – is indeed for people who want to make a point with their charts and maps, often to a broad audience. I agree that people who have learned to read dual axis charts can benefit greatly from them (the same is true for rainbow color maps).

Financial Times journalist John Burn Murdoch changed my mind on dual axes charts – even for casual readers! – a bit over the last six years, too. Here's a dual axis chart he created for the FT: https://x.com/AlexSelbyB/status/1529039107732774913

The next article I write on dual axis charts will probably be a "What to consider when you do use them" one.


Wow. That's a quite telling chart (and it's insane to me to think that 5% of total print articles would cover immigration).


At first glance, sure, but without further context or supporting data I'm suspicious:

   1. Why just the Daily Mail? Is that the only paper that matters in Britain, or just the one that happens to correlate?
   2. I would expect public opinion to lag coverage in the paper if there were a causal relationship. This graph is over too great a period to really see that, but if the creator wants to convince me, they'd show that.
   3. I might expect the lag to differ when coverage is increasing vs. decreasing. Again, if I'm to believe this graph, more context would help.
   4. No consideration of other factors that might lead to changes in public concern?
   5. No consideration of factors that might lead to *both* an increase in coverage *and* an increase in concern?
I'm sure I could come up with 5 more reasons to doubt this graph if I thought for another 60 seconds...


I'd expect these series to be cointegrated. A chart or OLS isn't going to prove chicken or egg.


Why is it telling? That's true for everything the media covers.


> That's true for everything the media covers.

You believe this. (I also tend to believe it.) But why do we believe it? Are we basing that belief on data? Or on conjecture?

This chart is the first one I've seen that starkly lays out an argument based on data that this effect exists.


You don't need data to know something. Sometimes, data helps.


Indeed. I can plainly know that the Earth is flat just by looking out the window.


It's not news, it's the Daily Mail.


What a great update, thanks for posting!


The economist is a fantastic benchmark when it comes to data visualisation. One thing to note is they publish a lot of the underlying data and models behind their visualisations on their github. If you know R it's a tremendous resource.

https://github.com/TheEconomist


"dual axis charts can often be a great choice."

I generally find that a second Y axis creeping in is perhaps an indicator to stop and have a really deep think about what you are trying to achieve. You might try doing a 3D graph for example where x, y1, y2 becomes x, y, z then spin and explore. However you have to remember that y1 and y2 are both dependent on x (by definition) so when you put y2 to a separate dimension, it is not independent from y1 (or is it?)

There are no hard and fast rules when it comes to spin doctoring via graphs, and as the old adage doesn't go: There are liars, damned liars and politicians.


The only one that's improved is the one from Brazil, to be honest. The rest is taste.

Besides, it's ok if the graph takes a bit to digest, other wise you can just keep printing the same three graphs over and over merely renaming the axis.


This is a pretty good article and for the most part, should be heeded. It's quite rare for the audience of a chart to exclusively be highly-numerate people (and these people, who are often inundated with data, are not immune from being misled by poorly-conceived charts). It's kind of strange that the top-voted comment points to "better" advice while also directly contradicting the article's main point ("dual axis charts can often be a great choice").

I mean, certainly you have the right to add some color but it comes off like you are saying to ignore the article entirely in favor of your alternatives.


Nah it's fine. Arizona doesn't use more water than it did in 1957.

https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-environme...

and 74% of that goes to agriculture.

Western water does need to be managed and there are lots of silly water rules that should be changed. But the Mountain West drying up is just a fantasy. For weather, economics, and governance it's probably the region with the brightest future over the next 30 years.


The problem is that average sms security is higher than email, but email CAN be much more secure. So for mass market accounts sms makes a good login confirmation and improves security.

But if you've bothered to have somewhat secure email it sure would be nice to use that instead, and not worry about the 50,000 retail and support staff at telcos who can grab your sms account based on a convincing phone call.

So, please, I beg of you login developers, offer email wherever you use sms now.


I understand it’s a naive statement, but in order to log in into your email you would end up relying on some other sort of 2FA. And we’re back to square one to relying on SMS, because UX of other authentication flows has irrecoverable flaws.


Exactly. You could use a trustworthy mail provider with a domain you own (registrar and DNS provider in two other accounts, probably), and then a second mail account for the 2FA for the other three accounts, but then what's the 2FA for the second email account?


I'll second that for Waymo.

Just took a Waymo ride across San Francisco 3 nights ago in hard rain, at night. A hilly complex city with bike lanes, kinda oddball medians and bollards, many pedestrians, and homeless people wandering down the middle of streets. It did great.

I've taken 5 trips so far, and all have been great and better than the average uber driver.

I've had 3 sketchy Uber rides out of about 10 total in the last 3 months. One older woman was was peering over her steering wheel commenting that she really can't see that well at night, she'd kinda guess and head over to next lane, and had to abort once when she almost merged into another car. One plunged across 3 lanes of traffic without signaling while looking at the phone in her hand, twice! Another did a no look left turn while looking at the map and almost hit a pedestrian in the crosswalk. I said "stop!" and he did and looked up shocked. Slow enough that it would have only been a broken leg, but still...


Nah, it's failure mode is to slow down and pull over. It would be amazing if drunk humans did the same.


Or randomly and suddenly change lanes or brake, or both, and you’d better be ready for that every second of your drive.


Or, you know, happily run you right into a tractor trailor or highway divider.


Just took a Waymo ride across San Francisco 3 nights ago in hard rain, at night. A hilly complex city with bike lanes, kinda oddball medians and bollards, many pedestrians, and homeless people wandering down the middle of streets. It did great.

Even if it didn't work in snow (and it's unlikely to do worse than humans), all the west coast, desert west, and south have basically zero snow all year long.


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