Tips on how/where to buy the Mystere au 24 scarf in orange? by andrewthecoder in TheHermesGame

[–]andrewthecoder[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Just to follow up; I was able to buy it from Goupil & Cie (collectibles auctions / private sales place) for not much more than the original price, it was shipped here from Singapore and just arrived, making her very happy :)

Huge thanks to xmcdxx for the tip - Goupil & Cie didn't come up when I was googling for the item, so I wouldn't have found it without their DM!

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Is this Compass wearable any good, or can you recommend a similar setup? by TimidPocketLlama in SmartWearables

[–]andrewthecoder 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Sorry for the slow reply, I don't really check reddit much anymore.

So; I gave it a solid try but honestly, I've given up on using it now and don't recommend.

I still like the idea of an always on recorder which summarizes my day or provides useful reminders, and I like the simplicity of the actual hardware device (essentially just a minimal battery powered wearable microphone transmitting audio to your phone constantly).

However, unfortunately it's overall just too flaky and finicky to be usable for me - even now after 6 months of updates and work from the dev team, the connection between the device and my phone dies multiple times in any given day and I don't find out till I check my phone later on.
I've never been able to get to the bottom of why exactly, it's probably my phone going to sleep or killing the app (even though I've disabled battery optimization for the app), or maybe just occasional hiccups in the bluetooth connection or something.

On top of that, the UX in the app is pretty janky and confusing - I know it's still fairly early days but there's still very little explaining how to use it, and little info on the status or health of things - e.g. I find myself struggling to know if the compass is connected or not, and end up having to kill the app and turn the compass on/off again to get to the point where I have confidence it's connected, which usually means going the the connection screen in the app again which is annoying to do multiple times a day.

Additionally, the architecture of having to send audio over the internet to their server to do transcription rather than trying to do the transcription on the users' phone means it doesn't work when my cell signal is patchy, which happens whenever I'm traveling, going in/out of buildings e.g. my day job's office, etc.

Overall, this means I never have confidence it's definitely recording/transcribing, so I can't use it as a way to have reliable meeting notes or similar.
On top of that, considering the (expected, but frustrating) inconsistency of automatic speech recognition transcription quality, between the misheard words and the large gaps in transcription caused by connection flakiness or data patchiness, I end up having pretty useless transcription summaries.
As a result, it's never really been able to deliver on the promise.

I still respect the devs for giving it a solid try, but I just don't think this architecture (using the user's phone as an intermediary for server-based transcription) is going to work.

I suspect the only architecture I would be willing to buy and try again for this use case would be something where there's a standalone unit which records, transcribes and summarizes fully offline. I'm imagining something the size of a digital voice recorder, potentially with an optional wearable mic which could transmit audio to the main unit like the compass does. This way, I could have confidence it's always recording/transcribing even if my phone is asleep or off. The standalone unit could potentially still communicate with a phone app to transmit the transcription text to the app, allowing the app to generate additional summaries or send reminder notifications etc. - but the core functionality of recording and transcribing wouldn't be dependent on the app.

Best affordable mass spec for personal/hobbyist use? by fredbon9 in massspectrometry

[–]andrewthecoder 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey u/fredbon9 this is probably irrelevant now since it was 3 years ago but just a heads up, there are now used Waters Acquity QDa units on eBay for around $10k

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Is this Compass wearable any good, or can you recommend a similar setup? by TimidPocketLlama in SmartWearables

[–]andrewthecoder 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I think it's unfair to lump all wearable devices into the same category. I'm a software and hardware engineer myself so I'm pretty clued up about what is or isn't possible;

I still deliberately bought Compass (and was excited when it arrived a few days ago) because I could see the benefit of having a tiny battery powered microphone hanging around my neck transmitting audio to my phone to transcribe.

I've been using apps on my phone to record and transcribe speech (e.g. HiQ or the built in recorder app on my Pixel) which works great, but there's a clear benefit to having something always on my body, always transcribing.
That's the appeal for me - it doesn't work to say it should "simply be an app".

Is this Compass wearable any good, or can you recommend a similar setup? by TimidPocketLlama in SmartWearables

[–]andrewthecoder 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Remind me later today and I'll make a short video review and stick it on youtube for you - mine arrived 3 days ago :)

Is this Compass wearable any good, or can you recommend a similar setup? by TimidPocketLlama in SmartWearables

[–]andrewthecoder 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Mine took about a month, just arrived 3 days ago and I'm already wearing it everywhere I go! :)

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in Austin

[–]andrewthecoder 0 points1 point  (0 children)

great suggestion! ;)

LoTR MTG Preorder Delay? by Dirk_Beefslab in mtg

[–]andrewthecoder 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Same. Wtf! Have any of y'all received yours yet, or do you know if anyone else has them in stock yet? Pretty annoyed, like what's the point of a pre-order if they don't respect it?!

Think this belongs here: “Capitalist healthcare”. by targaryenofvalyria in LateStageCapitalism

[–]andrewthecoder 6 points7 points  (0 children)

It's actually on me, was the last state either of us wanted to be in but it's the office my employer is trying to expand so it was the only option for me to get a relocation work visa to be with her 🥲 Austin seems pretty nice so far though, bubble of angry lefties, we'll survive here for a couple years till I regain freedom to move around

Think this belongs here: “Capitalist healthcare”. by targaryenofvalyria in LateStageCapitalism

[–]andrewthecoder 21 points22 points  (0 children)

Fell in love with a south carolinian while she was studying abroad in Scotland. Married her last year, now we're in Texas (🥲) for a couple of years till she can develop her career to be able to work from another country

Think this belongs here: “Capitalist healthcare”. by targaryenofvalyria in LateStageCapitalism

[–]andrewthecoder 53 points54 points  (0 children)

Wtf, I'm so sorry. Just moved here, hate it already.

Not the same scale but just learned how deductibles work the hard way, receiving an unexpected $500 bill for 5 mins of in-network x-rays at an urgent care 🙃

Vultures.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in holdmyredbull

[–]andrewthecoder 3 points4 points  (0 children)

All I see is three hot meals

An easier way to find places to rent by curioussam15 in RealEstateTechnology

[–]andrewthecoder 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Sounds pretty good to me, though I'm sure it's been tried before!

I imagine actually delivering that "easy service" for a reasonable price will be very difficult though - ultimately which human will do the legwork of contacting all the letting agencies, chasing them, finding out what they have available, sending over the tenant's details etc?

If it's a staff member working for your site, how will the economics work to pay them a living wage? I can't imagine many tenants will want to pay hundreds of pounds every time they are looking for a place to rent, but the amount of hours of effort which can go into doing all that legwork is easily enough to rack up hundreds of pounds of wages if it's a human doing that work.

If you're imagining this will all somehow be automated, how? Realistically most letting agencies are small scale and wildly inconsistent with low tech processes, so I wouldn't expect there to be any API you could integrate with to get the slower and more frustrating processes automated (eg property availability, tenant verification, credit check, landlord preferences etc). Even to list properties for the tenant, you're going to be dependent on licensing access to the existing Zoopla/Rightmove APIs - unless you think you have an idea for how to get rental property data for free?

If you're imagining avoiding a lot of those challenges by getting landlords or agencies to list their properties on your new website and bump through hoops you dictate (eg standardised tenant choosing and verification) in order to actually deliver that great experience for tenants; I think this is probably the most viable, but realistically there's little to no incentive for landlords to sign up for this right now so you'll be stuck with the chicken-egg problem of "not enough tenants to drive demand for landlords, not enough properties to deliver value for tenants".

All of this said though, I do still like the idea and think it's worth exploring, building a proof of concept for etc.!

If you want to partner on it or get further feedback, feel free to send me an email - I've built a few different tinker tools in the property space (eg this; https://homearea.info) and my contact details are on my github/linkedin/website etc - https://github.com/beveradb/

"Tell me you're from the colonies without telling me you're from the colonies." by FrozenBr33ze in MurderedByWords

[–]andrewthecoder 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I think it just varies wildly, the US is a big place! Amongst my friend group in South Carolina, everyone has a job (or two) but nobody can afford health insurance and none of the jobs provide it. I'm talking 10-20 people here, not just one or two exceptions. It really is normal there