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Hacking a $200 Under Desk Exercise Bike

codaris.github.io

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Re: Hacking a $200 Under Desk Exercise Bike

#81

Post by terry_y_comb »

novok wrote: post #60

I've tried desk treadmills with a standing desk, bike desks which are designed for a laptop and under desk pedalers like this. I end up ditching them all in the end because the movement is distracting enough to not let me get into the zone. Whenever I need to focus on something I instinctually stop moving to 'free up' brain power to execute whatever I'm doing better, be it a computer game, writing or coding. Also you…

"Free up" brain power: I turn off the radio when I need to focus driving on the road (e.g. traffic, rain, snow)

It sounds absurds. But I think some may do the same.

Re: Hacking a $200 Under Desk Exercise Bike

#82

Post by Y_Y »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #51
marshmallow_12 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the obvious problem is that exactly no one in the industry has ever devoted more that 3 brain cells and 5 seconds working out a universal standard to present their data. Stuff competitors! And why shouldn't they? They have minus zero interest in making life easier for their broader (and probably narrower also) consumer base.

Nothing will change until interoperability and full end-user access to data become legally mandated. As it is, everyone has every incentive to prevent users from accessing the data, because the whole business model of IoT is about holding data hostage to extract ransom from the customer.

Isn't my workout data covered under GDPR? Not that I'd bother trying to enforce it against the likes of Huawei.

Re: Hacking a $200 Under Desk Exercise Bike

#83

Post by Darmody »

terry_y_comb wrote: post #81
novok wrote: post #60

I've tried desk treadmills with a standing desk, bike desks which are designed for a laptop and under desk pedalers like this. I end up ditching them all in the end because the movement is distracting enough to not let me get into the zone. Whenever I need to focus on something I instinctually stop moving to 'free up' brain power to execute whatever I'm doing better, be it a computer game, writing or coding. Also you…

"Free up" brain power: I turn off the radio when I need to focus driving on the road (e.g. traffic, rain, snow) It sounds absurds. But I think some may do the same.

It is not absurd. There's a reason why people lower the volume to park their car.

Re: Hacking a $200 Under Desk Exercise Bike

#84

Post by TeMPOraL »

Shmebulock wrote: post #66
TeMPOraL wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing will change until interoperability and full end-user access to data become legally mandated. As it is, everyone has every incentive to prevent users from accessing the data, because the whole business model of IoT is about holding data hostage to extract ransom from the customer.

If users care about that, they'll go to a vendor that gives them access to the data. No need to legally mandate anything.

No, they won't, because of many reasons - it's a well-known market failure mode.

Importantly, to pick just one of the reasons, you can't expect users to accurately judge complex technological product, especially when facing marketers who will lie to them. When you're shopping for food or medicine, you're not expected to understand biochemistry or technicalities of randomized control trials - you expect the things you buy to not poison you. Plenty of vendors would be happy to sell you literal poison - and they did, in the past - but we've regulated that possibility away. Similarly, for technology, some of the abuses need to be regulated away, because you can't expect regular people to avoid the traps, and the vendors to not be abusive without external pressure.

Re: Hacking a $200 Under Desk Exercise Bike

#85

Post by donretag »

Years (er, decades) ago, while in college, I was tasked with hooking up a primitive stationary bike with a virtual reality headset. The CRT monitor no longer worked for some reason, but the bicycle itself was still sending out signals, similar to the original story.

The university was big into VR and graphics, and had developed a VR SDK and headgear. Hooking them up was a fun task since I got to work with C internals, connecting things at a lower level. It actually worked quite well.

Today I work on systems that deal with large queries per second, but almost not as fun as getting your hands dirty with low-level bytes.

Re: Hacking a $200 Under Desk Exercise Bike

#86

Post by TeMPOraL »

Y_Y wrote: post #82
TeMPOraL wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing will change until interoperability and full end-user access to data become legally mandated. As it is, everyone has every incentive to prevent users from accessing the data, because the whole business model of IoT is about holding data hostage to extract ransom from the customer.

Isn't my workout data covered under GDPR? Not that I'd bother trying to enforce it against the likes of Huawei.

That depends. It probably is, to some extent, but you either consented to this or it qualifies as essential to deliver the service. I suspect you could get it from the vendor by sending them a strongly worded letter, but a DSAR (data subject access request) isn't exactly an API call. GDPR cares about how your data is being collected and processed, not about interoperability. We need separate regulation to force service interoperability and a separation between hardware and services, so that they can be interchangeable.

Re: Hacking a $200 Under Desk Exercise Bike

#87

Post by hoophoop »

RankingMember wrote: post #31
Grustaf wrote: post #13

> "my desk is actually the perfect height for peddling" Why is it so hard even for native speakers to spell the verb "pedal"? I mean it's spelled exactly like the noun, which most people seem to be able to spell properly. It's a genuine question, I see this all the time, maybe most of the time actually. It's strange because typically people tend to over-generalise, not the other way around.

Probably the same part of the brain fouling up that causes the loose/lose screwup we've all probably made.

As a non-native speaker I might make other grammatical errors but not the ones related to phonetics.

Often I found more difficult to understand English written by native speakers than by others because of that.

Re: Hacking a $200 Under Desk Exercise Bike

#88

Post by wvenable »

Shmebulock wrote: post #66
TeMPOraL wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing will change until interoperability and full end-user access to data become legally mandated. As it is, everyone has every incentive to prevent users from accessing the data, because the whole business model of IoT is about holding data hostage to extract ransom from the customer.

If users care about that, they'll go to a vendor that gives them access to the data. No need to legally mandate anything.

There are no vendors that do it; it's in their best interest to keep data locked down. You can't vote with your wallet when your candidate isn't running.

Re: Hacking a $200 Under Desk Exercise Bike

#89

Post by slightwinder »

vosper wrote: post #76

I think cycling is the wrong motion for an under-desk exercise machine. I think it should be a very short vertical motion, just feet moving up-and-down, something you can do without disrupting your chair posture, or making the rest of your body move too much. Potentially you don't even lift your toes up, just raise and lower your heels with some kind of resistance. Maybe you wouldn't get much exercise this way, but I…

You mean a stepper?

https://www.amazon.com/-/us/dp/B07NRCZHYJ/

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