I don't publicly disclose my employment despite being absolutely enthralled with how great they are, but if you DM me on twitter and mention this thread, if you're looking for a job, give me your resume and if we're looking for someone like you, I'll definitely let you know and see about getting you in.
It's not uncommon for companies to "clear house" right before close of acquisitions, especially on exec level. However I don't believe it's for the reasons you mentioned (saving money). Instead it's likely to better align with new ownership (whether perceived or actual alignment) and ensure the company is well positioned for the change.
An established/relatively healthy org like Twitter will likely not be penny pinching at the risk of more fallout/attrition. In fact, I'm sure the convo went something like "if you leave now, you will keep xyz/golden parachute".
This has at least been my experience based on limited experience of being part of a few acquisitions and working closely with execs.
There’s no need to use Insteons hub/cloud service. Most Insteon power users that I know are using homeseer, homeassistant as a way to control the devices.
The other good thing about, at least the light switches (which is their core product), is that they work without an internet connection and will continue to function.
However unfortunately the less tech savvy users who set up automations through Insteons service will be left (quite literally) in the dark now.
Yea this Insteon debacle is a weird example to use to highlight problems with IoT systems.
They've been around way longer than most of the "modern" protocols. It was basically Insteon and Lutron in semi-affordable home lighting control space for years and years and years before cloud-controlled IoT and Alexa entered the picture.
I'm really wondering how this all came to pass... guessing they tried and failed to jump on the app/cloud bandwagon? Their new app was late to the game and in beta for, like, two years?
Right, they had this big mainstream push with being the first Homekit partner with a failed hub, plethora of non-core devices and multiple failed apps. I think they got ahead of themselves going into this mass market and should've stayed a niche player, further perfecting their core hardware and focussing on enthusiasts and home installers. Kind of like Philips Hue did but for enthusiasts/professionals.
Having gone through two twin pregnancies (where the odds of these tests being correct are especially low) we declined all of them. Anecdotally, I know of several parents who had a positive test for genetic disorder, went ahead with the pregnancy anyway and children were perfectly healthy. Until these tests are close to 100% reliable I don’t see the point.
"The good news is that the invasive test proved the screener was incorrect. The bad news is that it looks like you've now lost your baby. It was fine though!".
The risks associated with this extended testing are just not worth it, perhaps aside from Down's (from a numbers point of view). Even then, there are many completely gorgeous children and people with Down's .. chances are you'll have a curveball in life one way or another at any rate.
I have two children, one diagnosed with ADHD/ASD, the other likely not too different but too early to tell. Apple doesn't fall too far from the tree. Wouldn't change a thing, other than to avoid the ABA services companies like plague - they prey on your insecurities and you might face financial ruin for possibly no real benefit to the child if you go along with their spiels.
So, to see medical companies exploiting vulnerable new parents who will do anything for their children? I am shocked. (/S...)
You are free not to take the test, but I think we would have taken the 0.3% risk to see if it is really Down's. While children with Down's can be gorgeous, I am not up to the task.
We did get the test for it for my two; can't recall if we did any extra ones. Believe we skipped them, at least on the 2nd.
I've come around to maybe change my mind since then, however I'd need to be in a very good position to be able to be up to the task.
I truly wouldn't have been, the ASD diagnosis was hard enough - and made magnitudes harder due to the manipulations of the "autism industry". Do this, do that, or else - you only have one chance for an early intervention, so better throw your own life away or you'll be a bad, bad parent.
No. I think this is a cruel and ignorant thing to say.
Wanting to have a child who is not special needs is not an evil thing. Choosing to not bring a a child with special needs to term is not evil.
Having a special needs child can dominate your finances, your life, and the lives of your family members and already existing children. People have a right to choose what what they want out of life, especially in the context of before a child is born.
“ Wanting to have a child who is not special needs is not an evil thing. ”
No its not.
“Choosing to not bring a a child with special needs to term is not evil.”
A huge evil. Just consider your next paragraph explaining why its not evil; it centers around how having a disabled child affects you and others. I do apologize, but I find your last paragraph frighteningly narcissistic .
I can see from your comment history you are catholic. I don't see any point playing the "yes" "no" game with someone. I doubt you are going to convince me of your ethics, I doubt I will convince you of mine.
Why stop there? It can be a challenge to have a kid who is ADHD, or is susceptible to depression or mental illness, or a different sexual orientation, etc. It’s not wrong to abort those children either, right?
> Why stop there? It can be a challenge to have a kid who is ADHD, or is susceptible to depression or mental illness, or a different sexual orientation, etc. It’s not wrong to abort those children either, right?
But we don't stop there. The bar is considerably lower than "the kid might have problems".
The mother, exclusively, can decide whether or not she wants to proceed with the pregnancy through to birth, and she doesn't need a reason other than "I don't feel like it". All those reasons you gave are still better than "I don't fell like it", and you somehow think that those are the wrong reasons?
To be fair, the pregnant woman isn't a mother yet - unless she has other children. She's deciding whether or not she wants to (or can!) cope with pregnancy and the hardships involved. She's deciding whether or not to become a mother or bring another child into the world.
And yeah, it can look like "I don't feel like it" to a casual observer, but then again, it really isn't the casual observer's business. They won't know if it was planned or the result of failed birth control, if the father was/is abusive, and a myriad of other things.
And to be absolutely clear: People would try to tell me "I didn't feel like it" - nevermind that I've never wanted children. I'd have been sterilized years ago if it were readily available and cheap in the US.
> And yeah, it can look like "I don't feel like it" to a casual observer,
I think you misread my argument: if the bar is currently at "I don't feel like it" for abortions, then judging someone as morally or ethically "wrong" (or evil) for a higher bar is silly.
[EDIT: I'm not making any judgement on a pro-choice position, nor am I attempting to trivialise the complex and often traumatising decision-making involved in abortions. I'm simply saying that if we accept "I don't need to give any reasons" then we shouldn't judge the people who give medical reasons]
> The mother, exclusively, can decide whether or not she wants to proceed with the pregnancy through to birth, and she doesn't need a reason other than "I don't feel like it".
The morality of that is quite vigorously contested. And even in places that have elective abortion, it’s often only available in the first trimester, while many of these tests are performed after that.
But even if we accept the notion of elective abortions, it doesn’t follow that any reason is morally acceptable. What if the parents don’t want girls, like often is the case in India and China. It’s okay to abort them? What if we had an in vitro test for sexual orientation? Would it be okay to abort fetuses in that basis?
Moral and legal are two different classifications.
I think it should be LEGAL to have an abortion no matter your reasoning. The reason for this is we need to preserve the bodily autonomy of people who can become pregnant.
Weather or not it is MORAL is another question.
It is LEGAL to protest outside of a veteran's funeral. However, I would argue it is not a MORAL thing to do.
There are plenty of ways we don't protect people's bodily autonomy though. For instance it was illegal for anyone to take Paxlovid until FDA approval.
If we can ban someone from taking a potentially life saving drug it doesn't seem crazy to ban someone from taking what half the population believes is a life ending drug.
We’re talking about morality in the context of this article, since abortions based on this testing are legal in the United States and most other developed countries.
This is not true in every state. Abortion is in the process of being outlawed in United States. Texas outlawed it. Supreme court is hostile to it for religious reasons.
Roe continues to be controversial because it prohibits states from adopting abortion laws that reflect the consensus view. Roe mandates elective abortions until viability, which is toward the end of the second trimester. Roe is thus opposed by many people who don’t believe that life begins at conception for religious reasons. Those people oppose Roe for whatever moral reasons that drive highly secular countries like France to prohibit abortions in the second trimester.
It is being outlawed in some states of the Union, not in the United States as a whole. Even if it repeals Roe/Casey, I don’t think that Supreme Court is at all likely to hold that abortion is in fact unconstitutional. As a result, some states will restrict abortion, but others will not.
For one, we don't have a good enough understanding of those things to be able to test adults definitively, so it's a moot point.
That being said, if there was a test for ADHD and I knew what the odds were that my child would have ADHD, as someone with ADHD I would seriously consider whether or not I wanted to have kids or subject another human to that.
So, I don't think it's necessarily wrong, in some universe, but there's a line between adversities for which you can still overcome and thrive (the ones you listed) versus the sorts of things prenatal tests check for where, if they do have these conditions they are either dead on arrival, dead soon after, will wish they were dead for most of their lives, or at the very least will never be a contributing member of society.
As someone with ASD/ADHD (professionally diagnosed), and with two children (one diagnosed the same so far), let me just say I'm somewhat taken aback by this.
I hear you say you have ADHD yourself - each case is different and such, but you're posting on HN and I'd say that puts you far above the rest of society. Sure there are challenges but it can also be a kick-arse superpower; learn to embrace it, and most of all be grateful for the things you have achieved.
If anything it has opened my mind about the beauty of a diverse society. There is more to life than a strict adherence to some notion of what it means to be successful.
I've done pretty well for myself even though I've also had some rather hard times - no diagnosis or help existed in the 70s/80s. Then again, people will face hardships in the most unexpected ways so if anything it's made me more resilient.
With the extremely low confidence factor in some of the conditions, this genetic testing is dangerous and unethical on so many levels.
I don’t think we understand these subtle mental disorders well enough for this kind of absolute decision-making. What is ADHD, really?
“Your child has an extra chromosome and will probably never live independently” feels deeply different than “your child has a gene variant that subtly affects their brain in ways that make it harder to focus in certain circumstances, and also probably in dozens of other ways that we don’t understand, and also many very successful people have this variant and it’s possible it even contributed to their success”. A society that routinely aborts children in the second case is starting to tilt into wild dystopia.
Not that we’ve identified such a gene, as far as I know.
Wait, are you objecting to the abortion specifically? Or does it just bother you that people could have a conscious influence on the kind of children they do/don't get?
If this is just a coded abortion debate... Count me out
But if it's the latter... Parents have been "selecting" children of the "right" race, eye color, height, etc for millenia... It's called "being attracted to certain physical characteristics over others" and it's really quite pedestrian.
ADHD, depression, and schizophrenia all appear to have a strong genetic component. I think most people would definitely weigh the knowledge of their partner's family's mental health history when they decide who to have children with.
I mean, don't you think people should have the moral right to select their own mates, free from coercion? I think most people would consider that to be an absolute human right, and anything less would be morally condoning rape.
They haven't been consciously selecting for traits, have they? Not with the certainty of a 1% false positive test.
This is eugenism, with its adherents lacking the moral clarity of the of early 20th century eugenists - at leasts they honest about what they were doing!
Well, solely with respect to skin color, which is arguably THE single biggest physical characteristic of concern... Yeah, I'd say >95% of Americans consciously select their mates with skin color in mind. Google the rates of interracial marriage if you don't believe me.
And yes, the skin/eye/hair color of the parents is probably about 99% determinant in the perceived race of the children... There are always exceptions, but two random people who are "white passing" are overwhelmingly likely to have children who are also "white passing".
You can call this behavior "eugenism" or even just racism, and I'm not saying your terminology is wrong... But I dare you to start going around telling people that to their faces.
The alternative is to take the same energy you'd spend on that one unlucky human being and spend it raising 3 healthy children who will go on to live full lives.
Parenting is an enormous time investment and families that take on the burden of raising disabled children almost universally reduce their family size. This is not a decision without cost, to those who lose their chance at life.
It's fine for you to live in whatever fantasy world that allows you to never have to make any hard life choices, but you shouldn't go out of your way to try to make others feel guilty for having the unfortunate fate of having to live in the real world.
Many of these conditions would in the past have been fatal in infancy, and it is only through modern medicine that children can survive them at all. It's fair to expect medicine to provide the solution to the problem it has created. There's nothing natural about children having to live their lives in and out of a hospital.
Depending on what state/country you live in, care for a disabled citizen may be partly or wholly paid for by the state. The parents may also be able to become qualified caregivers, in which case they can be paid to take care of the child.
It's still a full time job that precludes you from doing a great many normal family activities for the child's entire lifetime. There is also the danger that your state may elect budget hawks who decide to cut funding for the programs halfway through your child's life, leaving you on the hook for ruinous medical expenses. It can also be very unfair to your other children who are going to basically lose out on activities because their disabled sibling requires too much care.
I agree completely about all of the challenges, hardships, lost opportunities, and unfairness. It is an awful situation to be in for everyone involved and no amount of money in the world could ever make up for that.
You must be kidding or willfully ignoring the atrocities committed by Russia just in the last decade or two (occupying Crimea, Afghanistan, wars in Chechnya, Georgia and likely Kazakhstan sometime soon) or China (Uyghurs). All in the sole interest of continuing their highly oppressive, dictatorial regimes.
Well, the U.S. did torture priests in Latin America because of their social justice views. We’ve overthrown governments to support banana companies and had no problems supporting Saddam gassing Kurds since he was fighting the Iranians. We supported Papa Doc and for a while Noriega. Our government has experimented on it’s own people and has been involved in the drug trade. We’ve tortured innocent people with no one being held accountable. We spy on a grand scale on our own citizens. We’ve supported dictators and brutality when the people in power thought it beneficial to do so. I don’t think we can claim any sort of moral superiority over others. I’m not saying we are the worst but certainly we are no where close to the best. We are not a light on a hill as some of our presidents have proclaimed.
Hey, get it right, technically we paid and trained most of the right wing death squads who raped nuns and killed nuns and priests in Latin America, mostly at the School of the Americas.
Awesome project and 500 km range is a cool achievement! Kudos to OP for all the effort and research that went into this.
I’ve run into the same issue that standard battery packs on eBikes are just not enough. The problem is not so much needing to do super long trips but if you forget to charge one day, you’re going to be stuck the next. Luckily it’s become more common for OEMs to offer dual battery setups with the piece of mind of extended range but also having a warranty! We own two cargo eBikes in the family and both have two Bosch batteries. Range varies from 80 to 200 miles depending on level of assist and is more than enough for our daily ~20 mile errands.
Not sure I understand the appeal. It’s still a derailleur, isn’t it?
Lots of (higher end) bikes moved to internal hub systems like Rohloff [1] that have proven to be very reliable, maintenance free and (other than higher upfront costs) are superior to a derailleur in almost every way.
People are responding that the Rohloff is 'unserviceable'. I can say here what I can't explain to most cyclists I know: it's unhackable. I don't like disc brakes for the same reason (but at least there it's worth the trade-off for safety).
I love that bikes are made of simple mechanical parts about which, at a glance, I can at understand what they're doing, how they're doing, what's wrong, and what needs to be done about it. And I love that these simple mechanical parts can make me move, with just muscle input, so efficiently. I don't want internal hub systems, motorized derailleurs, hydraulic brakes, batteries, etc. They ruin part of my fun.
(Also, an aside about first-mover influence: Someone in France beat someone in the UK to the bicycle by a (few years?) in the mid-19th century, and we still talk about derailleurs, panniers, etc. Computers will still be described in English terms for another century.)
Rohloff's seem great (my brother rides one), but they do have one major downside: they are essentially unserviceable by the user. Yes, I know they don't tend to need much maintainance, but when they do, if you are not close to a Rohloff facility and/or Rohloff-experienced mechanic, you are screwed (for a while).
With an external derailleur, I could train you how to change out the gear set on your bike. Sure you might need to wait for a special wrench or two to arrive in the mail, and futzing with chains has gotten harder every time we added another gear in the rear, but you can do the math and decide if it's cheaper for you to take it to a mechanic. Personally I think people change their minds over time about what the correct gears are for them, so if you do it once, you'll probably do it at least twice.
And some people buy extra cassettes so they can change it up on a whim (based on where they're riding and with whom) in a matter of minutes. Being able to change your mind is the primary advantage of being able to do it yourself.
You can't change gear ratios on a Rohloff yourself, under any conditions, and the damned thing is part of your wheel so there's no swapping them either. Wheels have always been the hardest part of a bike to assemble properly, and the next two are headsets and bottom brackets. Simplified bottom brackets designs stopped being specialty hardware over 20 years ago, and headsets 10 years ago, so the wheel is now by far the most technical part. And you just welded your gear ratio choices to your wheel.
The downside of front and back chain rings was that you often didn't have 2 times Y gears, because there were overlaps, and if you or your bike manufacturer were not careful, sometimes exact overlaps. Having a 95:1 and a 96:1 ratio is useful when you are struggling to keep up with the guy in front of you and you need just a tiny bit lower gear, but you have to do a double gear change to accomplish that, and in the old days especially you might miss, so there was a non-zero chance that instead of keeping up by downshifting, instead he drops you while you swear at your derailleurs. Plus to even know that you practically had to print out your gear ratios and stick them on the neck of your handlebars (and I knew people who did) because if you're that tired, you aren't doing gear ratios in your head or from memory. Two 48:1 gears are just wasted much of the time, even despite this failure mode.
The Rohloff at least is going to be 14 gears, all unique and all sorted so you just need one click to spin faster or slower, so that is probably about as useful as 16 gears. 18 is a stretch, but I could see an argument, so 14 is probably 'enough' for most people (though I bet they'd sell more at 15).
But if you switch from rides on mostly flat terrain to hilly terrain and back, you're gonna need two rear wheels. And if you're on a trip you'll have to bring both if you're not sure, instead of throwing a wrench and a second cassette into your luggage. And if you're on a cycling tour you can't really bring two wheels, so going plains to mountains means compromising.
> With an external derailleur, I could train you how to change out the gear set on your bike.
Probably unnecessary. I just rebuilt my wife's campagnolo chorus rear derailleur, interchanging a problematic body and changing the arm length.
I also rebuilt her cassette, to give better ratios to match the new compact 50x34 set I had just installed, and to avoid jumping due to chain wear. That was after switching from 2006 era bar end shifters to 2011 bar end shifters.
In short, I am the specialist wrench you've been waiting for :)
>"Lots of (higher end) bikes moved to internal hub systems like Rohloff"
Those would be "higher end touring / commuter bikes. Road / racing bikes use motorized derailleurs like Shimano Di2 on high end. Rohloff and other internal gear hubs introduce noticeable resistance which is ok for regular riding and not really acceptable for road / race.
Gearboxes are seeing a little bit of usage on Mountain Bikes, this is largely around moving weight to the 'sprung' part of the bike to improve suspension performance and also protection/maintenance advantages
They still have resistance/efficiency and cost disadvantage though
https://pinion.eu/en/
Think you meant unsprung weight, yeah? The Pinion system seems to move a lot of complexity to the bottom bracket, which is generally on the unsprung part of the bike, the same as you would move weight away from the wheels on a car so they can stay attached to the road more of the time.
It's not like derailleurs are plagued with issues or costly maintenance as it is. It takes a lot of riding to knock them far enough out of spec where its a problem, and a tuneup at a bike shop is like $25. Pay that once a year and you will have like zero problems with your bike unless you crash it badly. If its a matter of protecting the derailleur from damage like on mountain bikes, you can install a guard for a few bucks.
Most people who I've seen winter biking are riding some beater $100 used mountain bike into the ground during winter over a nice bike. Remove the derailleur, and there are still a lot of components all over the bike that will get fouled up with corrosion, dirt, oily sludgy snow, etc, so its better to ride something disposable during that season.
I agree. My personal experience is that the chain and derailleur are by far the most fragile parts of the system (disk brakes are probably quite fragile too, but regular caliper/cantilever/v-brakes are not much affected by corrosion.) but on cheap bikes, chains are easy to replace and derailleurs have a lot of tolerance. So just cleaning them regularly and oiling them is generally good enough.
Some specialized winter bikes use a belt instead of a chain, but I find those too expensive, hard to service and maintain.
This! Putting down 20k on a house in my late twenties was one of the best investments I’ve ever made.
I was especially surprised so many of my peers who had no clue that’s how little it takes to get into a mortgage. Of course, assuming you have a steady job/income.
My twins were born June 2020 and all my immediate family (parents, brother, etc) live in the EU and haven’t been able to see them (nor their other grandkids). Not allowing tourists to come visit I can get behind but splitting up close family, especially for these extended periods of time (and especially when they are vaccinated!) is just cruel and senseless. I really don’t see how this is helping anything, given that countless countries with much higher case rates are not on the banned list.
