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Why some people mow a lawn better than others

pudding.cool

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Re: Why some people mow a lawn better than others

#61

Post by leftnode »

paradox460 wrote: post #20
cortesoft wrote: post #3

This is a very different problem than actual efficiency when mowing a lawn or vacuuming a rub. Turning takes more work and time, and you miss a part of the 'square' when you are turning (the arc of the curve is not a straight line). In addition, vacuums especially have an area at the edge of the machine that is not cleaned as well, which is why you want a bit of overlap in your lines. Plus, when mowing a lawn, you of…

Plus mowing a lawn is meditative Copying another comment I made earlier When I was laid off a couple months ago, the first thing I did was go out and mow my lawn. One hour of simple, clean labor, with clear progress, goals, and solitude. It helped me stay out of a bad mental frame, and when I finished I went inside and sent out a few hundred applications Over the next several weeks, I spent a lot of time that wasn't…

Absolutely agree. I could easily afford to hire a lawn crew to cut my lawn, but I enjoy doing it every weekend or two for similar reasons. I have a little under half an acre to mow, but I still enjoy doing it manually with a push mower.

Gets me outside and moving, accomplishes something tangible, can catch up on a podcast or two or just get lost in my thoughts, often leads to fixing other odds and ends around the house I've put off.

Re: Why some people mow a lawn better than others

#64

Post by jvanderbot »

Reminds me of Zachtronics: Take a computationally difficult problem, reduce it to a game, and then score people against each other.

Pure genius and nerd snipe marksmanship.

Did you know multi-robot exploration pretty much as laid out in Exapunks has loose but well studied bounds on number of agents, bits of information, and exploration steps?

For example, one agent with only one pebble cannot explore all graphs?

https://josh.vanderhook.info/media/pdf/exapunks-graph.pdf

Re: Why some people mow a lawn better than others

#65

Post by wildzzz »

scottyah wrote: post #14
cortesoft wrote: post #3

This is a very different problem than actual efficiency when mowing a lawn or vacuuming a rub. Turning takes more work and time, and you miss a part of the 'square' when you are turning (the arc of the curve is not a straight line). In addition, vacuums especially have an area at the edge of the machine that is not cleaned as well, which is why you want a bit of overlap in your lines. Plus, when mowing a lawn, you of…

You should see how optimal the poster's first dates are! Meet at a location with premade bottles of Soylent while they ask 15 questions. Done in 30min. Optimized away the cost and time "wasted" at restaurants or mini-golf type activities.

I just send prospective dates a pre-screening questionaire, my social résumé, and a doordash giftcard. It's really efficient since I don't need to waste my time going on bad dates or even leaving the house. Unfortunately I haven't figured out the best way screen for candidates on the second round because they never return the questionaire.

Re: Why some people mow a lawn better than others

#66

Post by SoftTalker »

gdhkgdhkvff wrote: post #55
sunrunner wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> hitting with a (relatively) blunt object in the first place Well there's your problem right there.

Lawn mower blades are meant to be somewhat blunt. Like a butter knife. Too sharp and the blade will chip away on the harder materials.

I have a battery electric lawnmower. I found I got noticably better battery life after sharpening the blade to a near razor edge. Yes the edge is more fragile but it cuts the grass with much less resistance.

Re: Why some people mow a lawn better than others

#67

Post by Finnucane »

sunrunner wrote: post #31
svat wrote: post #25

This is a really nice presentation of how some people play the authors' lawn-moving game better than others -- a great analysis of the gameplay. But the majority of comments on this HN thread right now are reacting to the title rather than to the article, as if it were about real-life lawn-moving.

And not enough people are reacting to the rocks that should just be removed in the first place to make the optimised algorithm a lot simpler. And I thought I was on HN.

There's a spot where you could just lift up the mower over the rocks to get from one side to the other. Or at least, that's how I would have done, but I have a tiny lawn and a reel mower.

Re: Why some people mow a lawn better than others

#68

Post by SoftTalker »

gavinray wrote: post #9

Semi-related: Worked as a landscaper during my youth, one of my first jobs I used to think that the line patterns mowed into grass were a purely aesthetic thing. It turns out, the lines are mowed in a rotation to prevent wearing out the grass and causing damage. First you mow length-wise, then width-wise, then diagonally, finally diagonally in the opposite direction, before cycling through again. Useless information…

I don't usually do the diagonal paths but I do try to go at right angles to the previous mowing each time I mow the lawn (excepting when I can't remember which way I did it last time, but it's usually still visible) or a few narrow areas which really only make sense to mow in one direction.

Re: Why some people mow a lawn better than others

#69

Post by tamimio »

Mowing the lawn is never about mowing but people wanted to be busy, feel productive for a bit, some exercise, and helping to clear thoughts. For others it might be driving long roads, or doing chores inside the house, cycling, and such. Otherwise, it’s inefficient and useless, the lawn can be replaced with better flowers or even small garden, or simply pave it and save the time and efforts and electricity/water doing a repetitive thing like it, and also spare your neighbors the noise 7am Saturday morning, and if you look at the bigger picture, the process is a total waste, you waste water to grow crops only to waste electricity to mow it later, it provides no useful product or outcome either, no flowers, no food, not even cosmetics like fancy looking garden, plus the maintenance and/or initial installations.

Re: Why some people mow a lawn better than others

#70

Post by frou_dh »

zahlman wrote: post #26
Dylan16807 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... If JavaScript is required to view more content than this, why? By "asked people to mow it" they're talking about the visitors to the site. It's interactive. It's somewhat a mistake not to have "skip to results" in the actual html. On the other hand, it makes sense they want to force people to see the landing page first. And unless they want to add a whole rendered fallback the results page isn't going to be sup…

Without JavaScript, there is literally no page text beyond that point until the footer. Thee is no indication that there would be any interactive content. There is also no discussion of what the interactive content demonstrates after it. There are no "results" to which a "skip to results" could skip.

We get it, you're really proud that you choose to disable JavaScript, and need to let everyone know about it
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