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I made a smart watch from scratch

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Re: I made a smart watch from scratch

#211

Post by z3t4 »

sizzle wrote: post #163
undefined1 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although unfortunately not solved, we've made great strides in regards to child mortality, extreme poverty, war, violence, health, freedom, literacy... If you could choose any point in human history to be born, you'd be best off choosing today. https://www.gatesnotes.com/Development/Max-Roser-three-facts... https://ourworldindata.org/a-history-of-global-living-condit...

How would the world be today if the government pulled all the brightest engineers off working on optimizing advertising tech at FAANG companies and paid them equally to solve these larger societal problems such as homelessness, reversing climate change/pollution, solving cancer, creating unlimited nuclear energy to replace fossil fuels, terraforming Mars for the humans, etc? I can only wonder... Thoughts?

Most people don't want to live on Mars. But they do like soap operas. If only people would donate their Netflix money to cancer research and donate the time saved from not using Facebook to do voluntary work.

Re: I made a smart watch from scratch

#212

Post by freehunter »

WillPostForFood wrote: post #172
stordoff wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A practical flying car would also solve the housing price crisis in cities as people could fly in from the exurbs. Doesn't this just reinvent the problem? You're currently spending a long time commuting due to congestion; you'll now spend a long time commuting due to sheer distance.

People are already driving from the exurbs, so a 2 hour commute from Pittsburg, CA to Downtown San Francisco (30 miles) would drop to 15 minutes in a car flying at 120mph. That's better than a typical intra SF commute. If you look at a 30 mile radius it is a tremendous area for living potential.

If we had the ability for humans to safely pilot a flying car at 120mph, we'd have the ability for humans to safely pilot a on-the-ground car at 120mph.

All the traffic collisions that currently happen in 2 dimensions (changing lanes without looking, failure to yield, rear-end collisions) would happen with flying cars but now in three dimensions. And when a collision happens that completely disables the car, it won't just crash in two dimensions, it will plummet to the ground.

To prevent that, we'd need dedicated air lanes that cars would have to merge in and out of, and on-ramps where they're only allowed to move up or down at dedicated spots to help with merging. Which we have on the ground already.

Yes planes fly fast. They're also piloted by professionals who dedicate their lives to piloting them, controlled by a central ATC tower, and heavily regulated by a governing body. And we still have air disasters.

There is zero reason to move cars into a third dimension of travel. If you want "cars but faster", we have a solution for that: cars. But faster.

Re: I made a smart watch from scratch

#213

Post by tlb »

freehunter wrote: post #212
WillPostForFood wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are already driving from the exurbs, so a 2 hour commute from Pittsburg, CA to Downtown San Francisco (30 miles) would drop to 15 minutes in a car flying at 120mph. That's better than a typical intra SF commute. If you look at a 30 mile radius it is a tremendous area for living potential.

If we had the ability for humans to safely pilot a flying car at 120mph, we'd have the ability for humans to safely pilot a on-the-ground car at 120mph. All the traffic collisions that currently happen in 2 dimensions (changing lanes without looking, failure to yield, rear-end collisions) would happen with flying cars but now in three dimensions. And when a collision happens that completely disables the car, it won't…

I don't get your argument. Humans can safely pilot airplanes at 600 mph, but clearly cannot do this safely on the ground. The difference is density. Cars routinely travel only a meter apart on highways, but because there's a lot more space in the air, planes maintain minimum separation of hundreds of meters.

Ships, also driven by professionals, collide more frequently than airplanes for the same reason.

Another important reason to go 3D is that you can go much faster with less fuel at high altitude.

Re: I made a smart watch from scratch

#214

Post by atemerev »

joshuagvk wrote: post #210
atemerev wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The metric used here is an incorrect metric of social mobility. It compares father-son income correlation (which depends mostly on inheritance taxation and many other factors), while a better idea would be to compare the percentage of high achievers who started from humble beginnings.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/aparnamathur/2018/07/16/the-u-s...

Indeed, US education system is somewhat strange, to say the least. However, all these metrics are almost designed to present the US in bad light.

How about "the percentage of millionaires who were born in a poor family"? I bet this is where US shines. Rich people in most other countries are mostly from old money.

Re: I made a smart watch from scratch

#215

Post by StavrosK »

laken wrote: post #209
StavrosK wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, thank you, but removing the alt-text would be bad for accessibility. It is meant for visually impaired people, after all. Maybe setting the title would fix this, I'll look into it, thank you!

The alt-text "The User's Avatar" is worse for accessibility than an _empty_ alt-text (not no alt-text, empty alt text). Alt-text is to describe non-decorative images that add meaning. The parent commenter is correct on how you would implement accessible alt-text here. In the top, your avatar is meant to to represent a link to your profile. That needs an alt attribute. The alt attribute should be the current user's na…

I see, thank you, I'll change them then.

Re: I made a smart watch from scratch

#216

Post by m463 »

undefined1 wrote: post #82
js2 wrote: post #64

We haven’t solved homelessness, poverty, cancer, or war. We don’t have self-piloted flying cars. But for about $90 in parts, one person can design, manufacture, and build their own bespoke smart watch. Humans have made truly remarkable progress in some very specific ways.

Although unfortunately not solved, we've made great strides in regards to child mortality, extreme poverty, war, violence, health, freedom, literacy... If you could choose any point in human history to be born, you'd be best off choosing today. https://www.gatesnotes.com/Development/Max-Roser-three-facts... https://ourworldindata.org/a-history-of-global-living-condit...

I like the book "The Rational Optimist" by Matt Ridley which covers a broad range of topics like these.

Some observations are quite surprising, for example using coal and then oil for energy replaced huge amounts of manual labor and might have eliminated slavery, deforestation and hunting whales for whale oil.

Re: I made a smart watch from scratch

#219

Post by jononor »

simias wrote: post #143

Very impressive and inspiring. I've been thinking about making a custom keyboard for a while now but, while I have no problems with the electronic and software side of things, I'm a bit overwhelmed with the 3D modelling required. I tried learning Blender but it really feels ill-suited for designing physical objects. The author mentions considering openSCAD but I've heard pretty bad things about it so I haven't really…

FreeCAD is the FOSS equivalent type of tool to Fusion360. Lots of learning material available on YouTube. I have designed wearable electronics / jewelery in it several times.

One can drop down to Python to do code-based parametric there also, with cadquery. But even as a software developer, I have only done that for 2 out of over 100 designs. I have also maybe 2 times used the OpenSCAD importer to include some existing designs as parts into my project.

Re: I made a smart watch from scratch

#220

Post by [deleted] »

freehunter wrote: post #87
jonatron wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Homeless, poverty, cancer, or war are all people problems, and people are complicated. We do have flying cars but they're not very good at flying or driving.

The “we don’t have flying cars” argument always strikes me as begging for something to complain about. We could easily have flying cars if there was literally one reason to have a flying car. There is not a single reason to have a flying car, so no one has put in the time to make one because no one would buy it because it’s pointless.

[deleted]
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