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TrackWeight: Turn your MacBook's trackpad into a digital weighing scale

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Re: TrackWeight: Turn your MacBook's trackpad into a digital weighing scale

#41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anyone happens to be using an iPhone 6S... http://touchscale.co/

This worked all the way up through the iPhone Xs.

The single most irritating killed feature from Apple. Redesign half of their UI to rely on 3D Touch to make sense, then get rid of 3D Touch without redesigning the UI. Previewing links, moving the cursor, interacting with items, they’re all “press and hold until haptic feedback” instead of “quickly press hard and get immediate feedback.” Easier to accidentally trigger, slower to trigger on purpose.

Re: TrackWeight: Turn your MacBook's trackpad into a digital weighing scale

#42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I heard that IBM decided to move out of this building [1] because vibration due to the construction of the tower across the street kept destroying hard drives in their computing center. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/330_North_Wabash

Obligatory link to Brendan Gregg shouting at hard drives: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDacjrSCeq4 .

Gosh I hope there are some lucky 10K seeing this today.

Re: TrackWeight: Turn your MacBook's trackpad into a digital weighing scale

#43

I think this is neat, but only in a Rube Goldberg machine sort of way. The instructions are: 1. Open the scale 2. Rest your finger on the trackpad 3. While mainting finger contact, put your object on the trackpad 4. Try and put as little pressure on the trackpad while still maintaining contact. This is the weight of your object That is, the pressure sensors only work if it detects capacitance, so you need to be touch…

This is a very clever hack, exactly the sort of thing that belongs on Hacker News.

Re: TrackWeight: Turn your MacBook's trackpad into a digital weighing scale

#45

This reminds me of how, twenty years ago, I used the PowerBook’s hard drive vibration sensor to rig up a seismograph to measure construction noise: https://allthegooddomainsweretaken.justinmiller.io/2007/04/0...

I used an iPhone as an air pressure recorder. There's an app for that; many actually. Anyways, the trunk gate on my car wasn't sealing and when it went over pavement joints on the highway it would slightly open and then close in quick succession which was nauseating. I showed the data to Tesla service and they (grumbled and) readjusted the trunk gate. The problem disappeared.

Re: TrackWeight: Turn your MacBook's trackpad into a digital weighing scale

#46
post #12

[flagged]

> 3rd party application to keep your computer from falling asleep

Settings -> Desktop & Dock -> Hot corners -> set one to "Disable Screen Saver"

Then just shove your cursor into that corner whenever you want to leave your computer without it sleeping

Re: TrackWeight: Turn your MacBook's trackpad into a digital weighing scale

#47
post #17

I think this is neat, but only in a Rube Goldberg machine sort of way. The instructions are: 1. Open the scale 2. Rest your finger on the trackpad 3. While mainting finger contact, put your object on the trackpad 4. Try and put as little pressure on the trackpad while still maintaining contact. This is the weight of your object That is, the pressure sensors only work if it detects capacitance, so you need to be touch…

Could a small piece of conductive foam or some cleverly layered tin foil+paper work? So put the object on the shim (which has a known or even negligeable weight)

Could probably make a small stand with nubbins from touch screen pens as the feet.

Re: TrackWeight: Turn your MacBook's trackpad into a digital weighing scale

#49
post #12

[flagged]

> 3rd party application to keep your computer from falling asleep Type `caffeinate` into the terminal, your mac will stay awake until you ctrl+c it

for personal use i created a LaunchDaemon to keep `caffeinate -s` running all the time

  /Library/LaunchDaemons/ze.caffeinate.plist

  
  
  
  
      Label
      ze.caffeinate
      ProgramArguments
      
          /usr/bin/caffeinate
          -s
      
      KeepAlive
      
  
  
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