Hacker News Reader

Comment by tandr | Hacker News Reader

Is it just me or do those events occure more often than say, 3-5 years ago? I understand we observe more, record and report more, but there should not be a significant difference from 5 years ago, right? I used to read about them and it was one-off wow event, now I read about it and feels like everyday news...

View on HN

There's been a huge proliferation of cameras in the last 10 years and more recently as dashcams have come into increasing prevalence as camera costs come down more and more.

If you don't own a dashcam (or 7) now is the time to get one. It can massively help you (if you are a safe (read: slow) driver). /PSA

They're super useful for filing road debris insurance claims. I was able to pull a frame from my dashcam video to show my insurance the airborne tire tread that destroyed the front end of my car.

Which one would you suggest?

There's a thousand different reviews available but I've been a fan of Wirecutter for almost anything they've taken the time to review and I've had pretty good results so far.

https://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-dash-cam/

Likely they’ve just entered public consciousness in a new way after the Chelyabinsk event (which occurred six years ago).

Did not think of that, thank you. So we are just paying attention more ("reporting more") :)

> A steadily growing number of fireballs are recorded at the American Meteor Society every year.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteoroid#Fireball

It's not clear to me if this is because the frequency is actually increasing... maybe it has to do with an increase in the number of cameras, or growing awareness of the AMS website?

Would be interesting to see some stats from say NASA or ballistic missiles monitoring system, but I suspect that data has high level of secrecy.

I've personally seen lots of meteorites when driving long distance at night. But I had no means to capture it.

Almost all of videos come from dashboard cameras, and rarely from surveillance cameras because those are pointed downwards.

Guess which technology become popular with drivers in the last decade, and recently became good enough to capture good video at night?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com