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> If you are not capable of functioning minimally in society

Homelessness is a state, not a capability. The majority of homeless people exist in this state only temporarily (eg, victims of domestic violence who flee their abusers)


All I have is my personal experience that SF felt especially cold this summer.


It sounds like they got some commercially available chemical sunscreens and added zinc oxide, which caused a reaction in those components, increasing their toxicity. That seems bad, but in my experience, zinc oxide is used in lieu of chemical components, not in addition to them. I'm not clear this interpretation is correct because the article only mentions zinc oxide, not the components which reacted to it.


Yeah the study has that major flaw. There are actually a lot of chemical sunscreens where they throw in a few % of zinc oxide for whatever reason, so it’s important to study but these aren’t billed as “natural” or safer. it’s a very flawed study not to test the pure mineral sunscreens.


It's not even clear that they did that. It sounds like they made their own sunscreens from the ingredients commonly found in some sunscreens and then added the zinc oxide to test what would happen.


I don't know anything about the author, but the breathless praise combined with questionable analysis leads me to think this is a PR puff piece.

For example,

> The instant you start letting off the accelerator, the motors start braking and feeding energy back to the battery pack. This is especially helpful for off-roading, which requires lots of careful stopping and starting.

This could very well be true, but how did the author come to this conclusion in the context of a test drive?


Well, it's pretty clear from the article that a significant chunk of the 'test drive' occurred off road.

And it only makes sense that regenerative deceleration with a motor at each wheel would provide much more granular control when crawling over rocks or other loose surfaces than a friction brake system would.

Other manufacturers of conventional off-roaders have had to design and implement 'hill descent control' systems to serve this very purpose; using the brakes individually to provide a controlled descent.

With a driver pressing on a brake pedal, equal force is sent to each wheel, which may cause locking on one wheel (and thus loss of braking force), and increased demands on the other wheels, which might lead to locking/slipping and a loss of control. Anti-lock brakes aren't really designed to solve this; they pulse the brakes at that wheel to un-lock them, but once they decide the wheel is turning again, they'll allow it to lock right up again.

The Adventure Journal review is a bit more in-depth from someone perhaps a bit more experienced.

https://www.adventure-journal.com/2021/09/drive-test-rivian-...


It’s right there in the article. The “test drive” the author is talking about is an off-roading event organized by Rivian. There are several videos on YouTube about this event.

> Rivian invited me out to Colorado earlier in September to spend a few days getting to know the R1T inside and out. I scrambled up mountain passes, cruised sweeping highways, and got up close to the myriad of thoughtful features the truck has to offer.


This one is pretty good (JerryRigEverythin) and even includes repairing a blown tire! https://youtu.be/KGqexebCcUo


Yep, that's a great review. Overall I'm very impressed by the R1T! I'm not a truck buyer, but this bodes well for the R1S which I am interested in.


My point is that evaluating the relative effectiveness of regenerative braking in off-road contexts requires data and analysis which would not be present in a test drive context. Speculating about the effectiveness or parroting Rivian marketing materials would not require any data or analysis.


What data and analysis do you need to say “regenerative braking is useful for off roading”? It’s an opinion by someone who finds that feature useful.

What is so hard to believe for you? Off roading requires plenty of start and stop, hence more braking. Regen allows the driver to use brake pedal less. Seems obvious that this is useful on its own, in addition to regen adding energy back to the battery.


It's not hard to understand how pedal feel-- specifically, the degree of instant, single-pedal control you get in an EV with regenerative braking-- are helpful in many contexts. It's something I realized within a few miles of driving an EV for the first time. It's an opinion I still hold after 10k miles.


While this author might not be as experienced with EVs, nearly every journalist and enthusiast in the space has been impressed with the company and their hands-on experience.

The experience is significantly different from an ICE truck, (quiet, powerful, feature-ful...) that it would have an impact on someone inexperienced


Sounds like the author is waxing lyrical about regenerative braking? A bit breathless and certainly veering into marketing (rather than analysis) territory.


If you've driven a heavy vehicle up and down steep stuff, regenerative braking is super nice. shifting into 3rd or 2nd is not the same. A compression brake is kind of ok.


This is business insider we're reading. The publication is meant for lay folk.

(Like me who apparently doesn't block ads because there were more of those on a given screen than article text)


This is exactly my point. Establishing that regenerative braking is "especially helpful" for a particular driving context feels like a conclusion one could not reach during a test drive.

More likely that the author got some talking points and maybe even data from the fine folks at Rivian.


I think the article is pure PR.

however, automatically engaging regenerative breaking is especially helpful for mimicking a manual transmission (without freewheel/overdrive). It's a desirable characteristic for sporty driving styles.

my favorite piece of BS is "they've flipped the script!" I hope not, people already know what they want a pickup to do: haul their stuff around. They don't want their stuff hauling their pickup around, for example.


Except it mimicks downshifting a transmission where you can have different gear ratios at each wheel, dynamically! It's the perfect application of this tech.

Yes, it's a puff piece, but that doesn't mean there's not truth behind it.


Also, perfect traction control at each wheel. And the ability to do tank turns, or to get out of deep snow/sand


Yes, that’s how these things usually work. Though usually the writer doesn’t handle covering the talking points like checking off a to do list.


They took the cars off-road for hours on Colorado trails. Did you not read the article?


All early access content is written like this, these days. See the Amazon hardware coverage from today.


The entire automotive press industry is designed to simply transform and reprint materials provided by automakers.


Same here, it hit the front page in minutes with no comments and content is lacking a bit...


Its not really true actually. Repeatably starting is actually very bad for the battery and you don't get nearly as much back as you lose.


This feature that Teslas have had for 13+ years is unprecedented!


I believe regenerative braking has been used in cars since 1967. However the review talks specifically about how the feature applies to off-roading which other electric cars including Teslas are not designed for.


The Prius had regenerative braking too, but, like Tesla, only on one axle (or two in the case of Tesla AWD vehicles).


I don’t think this limited to careers in academia. I see similar kinds of survivorship bias in leadership seminars and talks in industry where they trot out the folks at the top of the pyramid to discuss their career trajectory and dispense wisdom to the rank and file.

Of course, you can still get paid well as a rank and file employee in industry, so the harm is not the same.


If your goal is to make it to the top, then it is wise to hear from the people at the top how they got there. Inevitably it comes down to innate talent, passion, hard work, and luck. Luck is the element you can't control, but without hard work any luck presented would be useless.

Even if you never get lucky, the character traits of high-ranking people in your field can still be useful to you. Unfortunately there is no guaranteed path to success, and you just need to keep trying and hanging around if you want to become top-tier in whatever career you choose.


> without hard work any luck presented would be useless

Can you say more about why you’re convinced this is true?


It is self evident. If you meet someone at a conference who opens a door (like an interview), but you didn't work hard enough to pass the interview, then you got lucky but didn't put the work in.

I view "the hustle" as the hard work. You need to constantly try and improve your craft while simultaneously networking and putting yourself out there. When the stars align you meet the right person who can help translate the skills you developed via hard work into success.

There are exceptions to every rule of course, but I find the general premise of working hard and trying to make your own good luck to be a reliable success indicator.

Being born into good fortune helps tremendously, but I have met rich kids who became nothing as well as poor kids who became absurdly successful. Life is simply what you make of it, and there is no "one true path" to follow.


I mean, not to discount the value of working hard or anything, but you describe this as a self evident truth when it can't possibly apply across the board. I am an existence proof. I've had to work relatively little for my success, including in interview situations. Again, this is not to say that I believe hard work has no place, but to frame hard work as some kind of self-evident key to success is exactly the disingenuous framing I expect from leadership seminars.


I work in an industry that is more merit-based than most (tech startups) and being good in your job is heavily dependent on hard work and success. This is across the board in all departments. If you find a job that pays a very high compensation without any hard work, I think you hit on the very high-end of luck.


I think you're just wrong about how merit-based our industry is. I don't think it is meaningfully more merit-based than other industries, nor is it more challenging, despite the fact that it is often presented as both of these things.

I doubt there is anything I could say to convince you of this, so I guess we should call this one a draw.


It is difficult compared to most other jobs, and within tech startups the people who make outsized returns are the executives / VPs / upper management. Getting a job at that level is not easy, or at least in my experience at a mix of failing / middling / successful companies, the successful ones have a very high bar.

I think compared to other industries, you can make a comfortable upper-middle class salary by being a fairly competent person. But to succeed in a very high way is as brutal as any other industry.


> But to succeed in a very high way is as brutal as any other industry.

I agree with this.

The common ground unite us all.


Yeah but everyone already knows the rest of the job market is fucked beyond belief. There is an active false narrative that becoming an academic researcher is about doing good science. At best the cynicism goes "get published in a good journal"/grantsmanship deep. Nobody talks about the "don't be ugly", "Theranos-level oversell your research", "over interpret your data" strategies as positive factors in academic advancement.


> Yeah but everyone already knows the rest of the job market is fucked beyond belief.

I’m not sure what you mean.


I personally use it all the time, for everything I don’t want to show up in an autocomplete context. I started doing this probably 8 years ago after I got annoyed Google would auto suggest misspellings I had previously made. I think they’re much better about this these days but at this point it’s an instinct for pretty much every single one off Google query.


Reading through the article and the comments here, the facts aren't clear to me. Does Google itself track the behavior of its users in incognito mode? Some comments here allege that it does while others suggest this complaint is overblown.


Chrome does not track you, websites will continues their scummy practises of js tracking - google not excluded


In fact it’s not worse at all. I guess when your attack on WIRED failed, you needed to find another target, huh?


Apple is the football here, not the quarterback. If Apple does anything, it will be because they are succumbing to pressure from customers, investors and employees. Corporate activism is not orchestrated by cloaked figures in board rooms; it's orchestrated by regular people who have found a more efficient lever than the legislative process. It's the ultimate expression of capitalism!


Apple has a market cap of 2.4 trillion dollars. I don't think they're a football.


Ok, so what's bigger than a football? A basketball? I don't really play sports.


It just seems weird that you would choose forcing Apple and its employees to operate and live in Texas as the non-dystopian option.


where did I say I was advocating for forcing anyone to do anything? merely encouraging people to respond to massive corporate superficial moralizing with a "lmao ok bub you're a corporation not a person" instead of enthusiastic agreement would go a long ways.


I think a lot of this ends up being motivated by employees and customers of Apple who are using Apple as a lever of action, rather than being orchestrated top-down by Apple. This works, at least in part, because Apple is subject to popular opinion in a way that the legislative process is at least somewhat insulated from.

So I guess I just don't agree that it's a corporate dystopia. It's a popular opinion dystopia, actioned through corporate activism. To use a sports metaphor badly, Apple is the football, not the quarterback.

(And to be clear, I don't think it's dystopic at all, at least compared to the alternative, which would be to forbid this type of corporate activism)


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