whafro

As a long-time Sense user, this is great news for them!

However, their approach seems to (in my experience) completely fail to identify heat pump loads, and it hasn't yet picked up my EV charger (~month old, so I should definitely be more patient). At a grid scale, I'd think utilities would really want to see these sorts of loads, which likely dwarf a typical home's non-heating, non-ev electrical use entirely.

Haven't been a Linux daily driver in years, but I love that KDE continues to have such an impact.

Reminder that its built-in browser Konqueror debuted the KHTML rendering engine circa ~1999, which was then forked to become WebKit, and now (including all subsequent forks) powers something approaching 90% of web views globally. Pretty amazing!

I think the parent's comment was unfair – you were (roughly) looking to build a self-hosted, open project for those who don't want to pay for hosted options, and that's exactly what you've done. I'm certainly a person who will be keeping this project in mind for the future.

It's fairly obvious that the largest possible audience would want a turn-key, hosted service, and there are paid options that deliver exactly that. I don't suspect that you were aiming to be "the discord of" this field, and the path to getting there is wildly different.

Great work, and kudos on both the initiative and the progress!

I’ve seen so many teams that fail to realize that once you use a domain in any significant way, you’re basically bound to renewing it until the heat death of the universe – or at least the heat death of your team.

Whether it’s this sort of thing, a stale-but-important URL hanging out somewhere, someone on your team signing up for a service with an old domain-email, or whatever, it’s just so hard to know when it’s truly okay let an old domain go.

But you can see your Mac (running macOS) on it. In that sense, it’s “just” a monitor, but far from Apple’s most expensive monitor.

Another comment mentions that you’re confined to the host computer’s “screen” and can’t break applications away from that rectangle. But you could imagine that being a possibility in the not-too-distant future.

My family calls that sort of intersection “the doublecross”

After being West Point valedictorian, Wes Clark was NATO Supreme Allied Commander, Europe – can’t get too much higher than that. But yes, McCain was “only” a Captain, and Gore served for a year or so.

Might have just been based on what they could show at demo time – they can handle some core productivity stuff, but might not have had the time/access/team to put together something compelling on gaming for that date.

On the other hand, at small companies, this can be a big deal. FAANG companies pretty much know how interested you are in working there, based on the fact that you’re the type of person who thinks they want to work at a FAANG company. And since the scope of these companies is so large, there are all sorts of ways to fit your interests into work at such a company over the mid-to-long-term.

But early-stage companies are looking for folks who have an interest and understanding in the task at hand. For many hiring managers at these companies, expertise – or at least interest – in the problem space is noteworthy. On the hard-skill side, it can suggest that you may be able to help see around corners with your product team, identifying and solving issues during planning or on the fly. On the soft-skill side, it can suggest that you’re bringing positive energy and motivation to the still-nascent team.

In the end, it’s still a matter of knowing your audience and reading the room. It may be a waste of time in some places, and may be the difference-maker in others.

Not to be a buzzkill – this is a cool story! But it’s worth noting that perfect/absolute pitch can be a negative for musicians in some contexts, especially vocal music.

Since even the vast majority of musicians employ relative pitch, entire choruses can move together off of the original key, for good reasons and bad, but those with perfect pitch will (sometimes stubbornly) maintain the original key, even when doing so is counterproductive to the performance.

Lead singer in the ensemble is a little under the weather and can’t hit the high notes? Normally, you’d consider starting the piece down a step or two, and get on with the show without much trouble. But if you have members with perfect pitch, that may not be an option without some significant rehearsal to familiarize them.

This also translates to musical appreciation – I know people who can’t stand when a singer covers a song in a modified key, saying it sounds “wrong” and “terrible” compared to the original. For the vast majority of the audience, the key doesn’t matter terribly much, but for those with perfect pitch, the key is a significant attribute of the original piece, and it’s just as major as changing the words might be.

In other contexts, perfect pitch can be very handy, but it’s not always quite as “perfect” as it’s sometimes portrayed.

Unfortunately, they (or at least mine) communicate by IR, which is not as stable as wires – two of my rooms have very intermittent response to my IR pucks.

It's not the ebikes that he's saying are dangerous, it's the couriers. I got hit by a Getir rider in Brookline (probably near the parent) who zipped the wrong way out of a one-way street into the crosswalk I was using. Any vehicle driven by someone who isn't following the general rules/flow/expectations of everyone around them is dangerous.

And large vehicles are dangerous too. But that's orthogonal.

They do this here in Massachusetts, but they aren't full-service. I just bought out my lease, and have to go to a real DMV to process the title.

When you only have to handle the simple stuff, it's much easier to make it a great experience. AAA is basically the EZPass lane for the DMV.

That's not to say that a full-service DMVs shouldn't be significantly better in most cases, though.

And Massachusetts.

My partner took Orgo from the professor in question ~20 years ago, and described it as one of the transformational classes of her undergraduate years, though she also thought it was the lowest grade she'd ever received.

Things may have changed during those decades (as things do), but she said there were options at her school to take "Maitland Jones Orgo" or "Easy Orgo", and approximately everyone knew that they would be challenged in the former, but provided the opportunity to grow more than the latter.

I'm sure there are many things involved, but perhaps he didn't fully grasp that when he moved institutions, he was also shifting his audience, and perhaps his new audience wasn't quite as interested in the challenge.

Or Rembrandt.

Hugo Health | Software Engineers | Full-Time | US, REMOTE | https://hugo.health/

Hugo is helping make patient health data more powerful than ever, while ensuring patients themselves remain at the center and in control. We are already facilitating large-scale clinical studies with FDA, CDC, and academic medical centers, and are at the center of the largest long-COVID research studies in the world, and there's so much more to do.

We're hiring mid-to-senior engineers to join our small team and have a huge impact. Whether it's on the back end (typescript, node, mongo, mysql, express), front-end (react), or platform (fargate/docker/airflow/python), we have some great work ahead and hope to do it with great folks.

Interested? Feel free to reach out directly – jackson@hugo.health – and we'll have a conversation and see if it feels like a great fit.

Totally on board with the goals, and I've done some similar work, though haven't gotten anything nearly as trim as this as the output.

I'm interested in if/how this has stood up in externally-audited scenarios, like SOC2/ISO27001 or similar. I get that it's successfully avoided some customer scenarios, but am thinking of more formal processes.

At a glance, it covers many of the bases at a high level, but wonder if it's missing the specifics that an external auditor might typically expect to see from a policy manual. Are there additional sub-documents/playbooks/etc for many of these that elaborate further?

Hugo Health | Software Engineers | Full-Time | US, REMOTE | https://hugo.health/

Hugo is helping make patient health data more powerful than ever, while ensuring patients themselves remain at the center and in control. We are already facilitating large-scale clinical studies with FDA, CDC, and academic medical centers, and are at the center of the largest long-COVID research studies in the world, and there's so much more to do.

We're hiring mid-to-senior engineers to join our small team and have a huge impact. Whether it's on the back end (typescript, node, mongo, mysql, express), front-end (react), or platform (fargate/docker/airflow/python), we have some great work ahead and hope to do it with great folks.

Interested? Feel free to reach out directly – jackson@hugo.health – and we'll have a conversation and see if it feels like a great fit.

Good for him. I hope he comes back in a few months with renewed energy for the next evolution of kottke.org, but even if not, or he heads in a different direction entirely, he deserves it.

Sure, though it's often not simply a hole, but an active ventilation system to ensure fresh air makes it into the structure. Ideally, this is a heat recovery ventilator that uses the heat in stale air to preheat incoming fresh air.

Below about 3.0ACH50, you generally explore active ventilation, which is why 3ACH50 is code, since it doesn't require that extra machinery.

First, there are many gaps in pretty much every home. Junctions between drywall/plaster joints, windows and window frames, every electrical switch/outlet box, details in the attic and roof, the rim joists and sill plates, and yes, even any exposed masonry.

Secondly, exposed masonry does often warrant being air sealed:

https://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/article/insulating-old-...

https://www.jlconline.com/how-to/insulation/air-sealing-a-br...

They may require more maintenance, but that maintenance may also be lighter.

You could also argue that this type of construction allows more room for generational upgrades than those expected to last 500 years.

Integrating PV solar into the roof might be a more reasonable proposition if you know you're planning to replace the roof in a few years. If you don't expect to have to replace it for several more decades, you're less likely to make that investment.

This also applies to insulation, air sealing, electrical upgrades, etc.

Directionally, I agree with this, but it's important to be clear that it varies by jurisdiction. A blower door score of 3.0 ACH50 (air changes per hour at 50 pascals) is code in some states, while a less-performant 5.0 ACH50 is code in others. Neither of these are terribly "air tight" and you can generally get to 1.5 or even 1.0 without too much additional effort.

But my 1920s house – built very sturdily – scored a 19.5 ACH50 when we moved in, and after a not-insignificant amount of weekend work is now at a 10.33, well off from modern code even in lax areas.

It did. However, the beeping error only occurred long after the oven was used, and seemed to never happen while operating.

And given that we were aiming to have the oven turned off at/near the breaker most of the time, except when in active use (and therefore at least reasonably human-monitored), the risk seems acceptably low.

Quick story:

On the day we were closing on our 1920s house here in Massachusetts, we noticed that the oven wouldn't turn on. Then we noticed that it was shut off at the breaker.

We asked the owner why, and he said "oh, the mainboard in the oven (a Thermidor) has some issue where it beeps incessantly in the middle of the night and wakes us all up – but not a big deal: you can just turn it off and on at the breaker and it works just fine!" He'd apparently sent the mainboard in multiple times to have it serviced, but the problem persisted.

That wasn't a really satisfying answer at the closing table, so we pressed to get compensated for the oven we were rather sure we'd have to replace.

A few weeks later, as we were pricing out $2000-3000 replacement units, I had an idea to look for a smart relay to control the oven's dedicated circuit. I managed to find a 40-amp smart switch for $90 that I could control with SmartThings.

Now we can use the app or say "Alexa, turn on the oven," the switch is activated in the basement, and the oven turns on. At midnight, SmartThings turns it off if we haven't already, preventing the beeping.

$90 got us where we needed to be, and it's been working great for almost five years now.

This is quite cynical. I think the vaccines are doing pretty dang well considering they were developed in a matter of weeks following discovery of the virus, and work very robustly against not only the variants that were targeted, but also many that were not.

HIV has decades of study and literature behind it, so why not be more optimistic about the prospects for progress?

And just to bring it all full-circle in this thread, albeit a slightly different direction:

NBC's chime was developed when it was owned by GE in the 1930s (the notes are G-E-C – General Electric Company). When GE sold its interest, that chime continued to be used.

GE later regained control of NBC, and once again sold the last of its interest to Comcast a few years ago. But the G-E-C jingle remains unchanged, the first audio trademark granted in the US.

I don't disagree in general. What I'm saying is that if what's dangerous is a head injury with a [purely fictional/illustrative] severity of 5 on a scale of 1-10, but this test detects only a diagnosable concussion at 8+, it would be a double-edged sword:

- Individuals with severe injuries (8+) would be detected and could not deny it. You'd rid sports of the trainer who asks how many fingers he's holding up, and the answer is always "two." This is a good thing.

- Individuals with significant injuries (5+) would not be detected and would continue playing, causing perhaps worse outcomes. These injuries are more common, and sports would build up to accept and embrace them, since evidence may take decades to gather that reducing diagnosable concussions is not enough.

The latter case could affect thousands/millions more people, and may in fact be the real metric we should be targeting, rather than the as-currently-defined diagnosable concussion.

Perhaps this is an important step, but my understanding is that a large share of early-onset dementia is suspected to be caused by head injuries more minor than diagnosable concussions.

If we find that conclusively to be the case, this kind of test could in fact be more dangerous than no test at all, as athletes (both adults and children) are cleared to continue play after getting "dinged" but not testing positive with a field-side assay such as the one discussed here.

I've always believed that while adults may be able to make their own decisions about risk, children certainly don't have the capacity to choose between looking cool/tough in the moment, having significant cognitive/memory issues in your 30s like my old friend did [0], or worse.

Athletes and parents should continue to be concerned.

[0] https://www.inquirer.com/philly/sports/20160805_Sielski__Bry...