I got my father-in-law to try AirPods Pro 2 last year. He’s needed hearing aids for about a decade, but wouldn’t get them, I think for vanity reasons. I’m at the in-laws for thanksgiving and he’s wearing the AirPods now.
From the other side, it’s night and day. We can have conversations. He can hear my kids. The TV volume is set to reasonable levels.
Sample size of one, but it’s been a tremendous improvement. A lot of places are closing out the second gens right now for $140. I’d give it a go. It’s a pretty low price of entry for something that could literally be life changing.
I would absolutely love for Apple to make proper hearing aids or license their chipset to a HA maker. Before I became completely dependent on HAs I had a set of Beats headphones with the Apple wireless chipset in it and the ease of switching between devices with it was amazing. With my current HAs I essentially only can use it for sound with my phone.
The big problem is that I want prescription-level HAs and the regulatory apparatus around this is complex enough that they probably don’t want to bother.
I did the same with my mom. Big improvement for her. She’s also subsequently gotten ‘real’ hearing aids and finds them much more fiddly to use than her AirPods Pro. She’s 83, FWIW.
We also did this for my mom, but keep in mind this is a bit of a crutch that may keep them even more from getting a real hearing aid. My mom later had to go to the hospital, and because of battery life and other problems we regretted not pushing for a real hearing aid earlier. This caused real problems in the hospital.
I just saw grokpedia results, which include a gay-free description of gay novels (Banana Fish) and forged or curated accounts of war on Iraq, Thatcher and Duterte.
A sustainable business has the capacity to help a lot more kids than an unfinished open source project that never gets released on iOS because no one wants to pay the developer fee.
This isn’t “HackVille by Zynga,” it’s an indie dev trying to make a product they believe in. I hope it succeeds and inspires more high quality edutainment.
I agree with that criticism, and I'd encourage the dev to iterate on non-micro-transaction monetization schemes. The part I disagree with is that a profit motive is antithetical to helping kids.
It'd be nice if we had robust, no-strings attached funding streams to make this kind of content, but we don't, so if we want it to exist, consumers need to pay for it.
You're not arguing against the GP but for the same thing from different angles. They're saying the approach is fighting the goal, while you're just saying "I hope they're successful".
I was responding to the claim that making money is in tension with helping kids learn.
I think it’s fair to claim that a large enterprise will eventually crank the money dial to maximum extraction. But a solo dev is free to follow their conscience and make money in a responsible way.
I don’t like the “pay per hint” model as currently implemented, but I’m willing to give the developer the benefit of the doubt that they didn’t think it all the way through.
The HN crowd is touchy on some topics. Don’t take it too personally - good on you for building something cool and shipping it.
FWIW my favorite non-predatory pattern is a level-limited free version with a single “unlock full game” IAP. That way users don’t have to lose their progress switching to paid.
This is just an optimized version of shareware, now that we don't need to mail in a cheque to get the full set of floppies. seems self-defeating to reference anything like "in app purchase" for what's jsut a path for an immediate update after the user completes a known subset of levels.
It’s bonkers. I bought a pre-charged ductless mini split to DIY. Took my dad and I about four hours to do the install. So call it 8 hours of semi-skilled labor.
The unit was $1350, I added a line set cover, pad and feet for another $200, and needed about $200 in electrical equipment - it was a long wire run and code requires installing a disconnect box. The only special tool was a hole saw bit for running the coolant lines.
So maybe $1850 all-in, plus 8 hours labor. I’m sure a pro could do it in half the time. But the low end for a pro install is $5k.
I get that they have insurance and warranty or whatever, but that’s a damn juicy margin.
I did the same thing and spent slightly less than you did because I did not need the extra linesets, etc. I was also able to install this in a location that few professionals would have tolerated (interior wall). My thinking was that even if the unit died, I would have saved so much on installation that it wouldn’t even matter. It’s a great unit too. Installation costs are kind of a racket.
It's not that different for other contractors either. That's part of the reason housing prices are so high. As unbelievable as it is, someone must be willing to pay the high prices. Economic inequality is the basic reason for the housing shortage.
If prices are high, that typically means demand exceeds supply. What is preventing supply from expanding to meet demand? Elsewhere in this thread someone mentioned regulation.
Suppose we wave a magic wand and everyone in society becomes equally wealthy. That doesn't solve the fundamental problem of a contractor shortage. It just means we no longer have prices as a method for matching contractors with jobs to the same degree as previously. Without prices being bid up as high, there is less incentive to go into contracting, meaning that the shortage is liable to persist for longer.
In New Zealand a pretty basic 3.5kW (the internet told me that’s about a “ton”) mini split will cost about NZ$2000 including basic installation - that’s with the units on the same wall, ground floor, including the line set cover and running a new circuit if you need one. A 9.7kW model is only $3500. Again New Zealand dollars so halve that for US. Also that includes a 10 year warranty.
I know our labour costs are going to be lower, but not that much lower. Glassdoor indicates that salary for a US HVAC installer is about US$60k, and in NZ a local equivalent says NZ$60k, so I’d expect the numbers to be the same.
Oh and that price includes all taxes and excludes rebates (which most of us don’t qualify for anyway)
Lol it's protected by the licensing mafia. You'll have to change $5 capacitors for $1000 a pop for 4 years first while being paid peanuts to do it.
Hardly anyone wants to do that so we're stuck with the status quo. You're basically stuck either paying through the nose or finding a family/friend with the equipment and expertise or doing it yourself.
I don't know why you're being downvoted (it shows as slightly greyed out). This is true. I had a roommate who is a HVAC salesman. Very smooth talked. The 'HVAC' company offers free HVAC maintenance. They techs go in, do some stuff and they point out some problems. Sales guy goes in, smooth talks his way to 5K - 70K bill to most people. Of course, when something goes out and people don't have a choice (like in peak summer or winter), they make out like bandits.
Most of the local firms (Dick's local $town hvac/plumbing/electrical) are owned by massive PE firms (Saudi + other billionaires) which pretty much own the entire businesses all over US. They keep the local name to make people believe they are giving business to a local guy.
Another roommate of mine was a plumber.
The guys who do the actual work get paid close to nothing ($20 - $22/hour) and live on day to day basis.
Plumbing company quoted me $3000 to replace a broken water heater in the middle of peak winter. I paid my guy $300 for labor (heaters are $500 - $1000 from lowes depending on how long of warranty you want) and he was super happy for making a lot of money.
The good local contractors have all the work they can handle on commercial accounts. Residential is an annoyance. That leaves the very small fish (if you can find them) and the PE-owned scam companies.
The equipment is actually a lot cheaper if you’re a pro - the DIY pre-charged line-set adds about $500 over an equivalent unit. Pulling a vacuum and adding coolant is not hard, just requires specialized tools that still aren’t that expensive.
I mentioned warranty and insurance.
You don’t need to “schedule workers” if you are owner operating. Maybe you want a (non-skilled) helper to speed up the install, but you absolutely could install solo. That said, you will need a licensed electrician to run the circuit.
In my metro, hvac contractors can get ten-packs of permits for mini-split installs, and at most one out of ten is inspected. It’s a rubber stamp if you’re a pro, and the individual permit is maybe $50.
And that $5k I mentioned is the low bid, which you’ll only see if you know how to find contractors who aren’t private equity fronts. These guys are not advertising, but they stay busy by having the best price. There are shops that will happily charge you double for the same work.
I never said it’s a get rich quick scheme. It is just highly compensated for owners without requiring the level of expertise of something like a plumber or electrician. I’m curious what is happening in the market to support these margins.
Devils advocate here, it cost me ~$1500 in equipment to buy the vacuum pump, vacuum gauge, nitrogen air tank to flush the lines and pressure test, pressure manifold set and gauge, air lines, good flaring tool, copper bending tool, schrader valve pulling tools, various air tools, and a book on mini split installations.
Then it took me 2 days between pouring concrete pad for the heat pump, installing the heat pump and bolting it in, running the copper lines, drilling the exit hole, running the drain piping, learning how to use all the tools, running the electric and control cables and installing a new breaker and 220 subpanel, pressure testing, vacuum testing, flaring, releasing vacuum and all the stuff you have to do. I also had to spend several nights watching youtube and get a EPA 608 certification for handling refrigant which took another day.
Wouldn't have been worth it for a single unit, but was worth it for installing 3, and now I can do additional units for basically $0 overhead and of course no one would even have to know if I installed it and now I can order unlimited amount of refrigerants to my doorstep.
Having plumbed my entire house, and done my entire house electrical system, I would say the level of expertise to install a mini split is higher than either alone. You have to do electrical, plumbing, refrigerant handling, pressurized equipment handling, be liable for massive federal/EPA fines if you do something wrong, and on top of that I had to do masonry work.
There is a 0.00000% chance of getting into EPA trouble installing one minisplit. You got crews dumping 5 a day into a bucket of water all over and no one will answer a report
I’ve also been looking at setting up a dumb phone for my kids, but haven’t thought to go the rPi Twilio route.
There’s an existing product that seems to have some mindshare in the space: https://tincan.kids/
Basically $100 for the phone, plus $10/mo to call arbitrary numbers. My main concern here is the company goes belly-up and you’re left with a phone-shaped brick.
That Tin Can device has infiltrated (in a good way, what a fun idea!) my oldest kids’ social circle at elementary school. Most of his friends are requesting one for Christmas and we’re planning on getting our kid one as well.
Really hoping the idea lasts, lots of good memories of dialing friends on our landline growing up and chatting casually.
Now if only it could replicate the dread of calling a crush’s house and her dad picking up the phone…
I don't want to take the time writing up a cogent response to an article someone didn't bother taking the time to write. With this particular article, there were a couple of points I wanted to respond to, before I realized there was no human mind behind them.
I've always liked the HN community because it facilitates an intelligent exchange of ideas. I've learned a lot trawling the comments on this site. I don't want to see the energy of human discourse being sucked up and wasted on the output of ChatGPT. Aggressively flagging this stuff is a sort of immune response for the community.
Yeah, I bounced hard off the article at #5. My AI detector was slow warming up but kicked on at:
"Today’s real chain: React → Electron → Chromium → Docker → Kubernetes → VM → managed DB → API gateways."
Like, yes, those are all technologies, and I can imagine an app + service backend that might use all of them, but the "links" in the chain don't always make sense next to each other and I don't think a human would write this. Read literally, it implies someone deploying an electron app using Kubernetes for god knows why.
If you really wanted to communicate a client-server architecture, you'd list the API gateway as the link between the server-side stuff and the electron app (also you'd probably put electron upstream of chromium).
That was my first thought coming from SPA development. Like, is there even a meaningful translation between rendering logic written in a functional, declarative style to e.g. object-oriented imperative Java? How many LOCs of C would be required to model a simple DOM operation?
Yes, everything is Turing complete and a translation can exist, but how would you make any sense of it as a reader?
As another commenter have put it [0], the need for specialized paradigms is to restrict what you can do and data type available to you, because it's easier to think and act when things are specialized and distinct.
But in daily life, people are not accustomed to formalize their thought at that extent as there's a collective substrate (known as culture and jargon) that does the job for natural languages.
But the wish described in TFA comes from a very naive place. Even natural languages can't be reduced to a single set.
From the other side, it’s night and day. We can have conversations. He can hear my kids. The TV volume is set to reasonable levels.
Sample size of one, but it’s been a tremendous improvement. A lot of places are closing out the second gens right now for $140. I’d give it a go. It’s a pretty low price of entry for something that could literally be life changing.
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