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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: July 22nd, 2023

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  • Based on the picture in the article, there’s some redundancy in this model, which makes sense for a product specifically designed to be used in a car, but you can buy an LD-06 lidar sensor for less than $30.

    It’s impossible to tell from the picture, but it does look a bit like two LD-06 sensors in a case with a bit of room for some processing hardware. It depends on what kind/how much processing they’re doing, and I’m in no way an expert, but as a nerd with an Aliexpress account who loves to tinker, this looks more like a success of Chinese manufacturing at scale than some kind of new advancement that MacroVision made.






  • One big downside to ham radio (as someone with my license) is that you can’t use encryption. Which is fine for some use cases, but does limit the usefulness in the “government shut down the internet” kind of scenario.

    Which, I suppose if you’re already using back-channels to circumvent some broader government censorship, maybe abiding by FCC rules isn’t a priority anymore, but IMO this is an area where large mesh networks of “consumer” devices with encryption very much still has value.




  • Depending on how much you have set aside it can work, if you don’t have anything set aside and break a leg in a freak accident you can get stuck making massive payments on $20,000+ of medical debt and set yourself back several years. I’m sure it’s gotten more expensive now too, that was 6 years ago, and while I don’t have the debt any more, I also have complications from the surgery that still bother me that I feel like I can’t afford to get fixed.

    That said, a high deductible plan can also leave you screwed, and doesn’t save you as much money as they act like it does. The pricing is different for insured vs uninsured patients, and your insurance company has basically negotiated the rates higher so you think they’re more useful than they actually are.


  • Started moving to Element/Matrix this weekend when I attended a protest and wanted to have some kind of communication, but also wanted to leave my primary phone at home. I was using a de-googled android fork and an e-sim, but being a data-only e-sim, I couldn’t use Signal due to the phone number requirement.

    Annoying to have try to get contacts to get another app, but at least it’s decentralized and comes with the option of being self-hosted once I’m ready to tackle that.