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skookum

742 karma · joined July 4, 2016

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skookum··on Net worth of Americans aged 18 to 35 has dropped 34 percent since 1996: study
The OP simply misspelled 'principal'. By ">50% of principal" they meant that the interest paid over the life of the loan is more than 50% of the original loan amount.
skookum··on Associations of Egg Consumption with Cardiovascular Disease and Mortality
Here's another study reaching the opposite conclusion: https://heart.bmj.com/content/104/21/1756

The key difference is "Among US adults..." versus "Among Chinese adults..."

Hmmm, maybe it's not the eggs?

skookum··on Canada grounds Boeing 737 Max 8
If it were just southern Ontario that would be one thing. Every flight from the US west coast to Europe spends half (from SEA) to a third (from SFO or LAX) of its flight time in Canadian airspace. However all such flights would likely already be affected due to the widespread European bans. I have no idea if any of those routes were served by 737 Max 8s.
skookum··on The Life of a Backpacker in Asia in the 1970s
Forget the cost... 500 rolls is over 30lbs! I can't imagine carting that much film around while backpacking. I don't think I ever brought more than about 4-5 dozen rolls even on month-plus length trips - that plus a lead-lined bag for airport x-ray was already a hassle and a significant portion of my carry-on.

I very much relate to the "really think about it each time I pressed that shutter". I spent so much time shooting film that now, even after over 15 years of digital, I still struggle to kick this habit and need to constantly remind myself to take more shots: explore more variations on a subject, grab a shot even if I don't think it's going to be outstanding, etc.

skookum··on Tom and Kate’s Personal Finance Diary Is a Sad Indictment of Capitalism
> ...it's not reasonable to expect the majority of people to be able to outsmart the system...

"Our kids are used to sushi."

Their problem isn't being outsmarted by the system. Their problem is feeling entitled to a lifestyle they can't afford.

skookum··on The New Retirement Plan: Save Almost Everything, Spend Virtually Nothing
This reply is somewhat disingenuous. Read the question instead as "can your average millennial stuff away 64% of their income?"

To achieve the "shockingly simple" 11 year FIRE goal in that blog post, someone working 40 hour weeks at $15 an hour would need to indefinitely keep their annual expenses below an inflation-adjusted $12K to build the required savings prior to their early retirement and to live off those savings afterwards.

In reality, the math is only shockingly simple if you can control all the inputs.

skookum··on GoPro Hero 7
EIS is more akin to a poor-man's gimbal than it is to OIS, and that's the purpose it serves in GoPros. One could argue that for sufficiently small range of movement a gimbal and OIS can serve similar purposes for stills photography - a gimbal after all is a form of external stabilization. However EIS is not seriously applicable to stills photography as it does nothing for a standalone capture and OIS cannot replace a gimbal (or EIS) for video capture other than in very narrow scenarios where static support would generally be a better solution.

It's obvious that OIS + EIS > EIS. However it's not that case that OIS > EIS for all applications. One could argue that given just OIS one could apply EIS in post, but that's just a different implementation of OIS + EIS.

As far as I know, the GoPro is fixed-focus - there's no moving parts in its optical system. Adding mechanical stabilization whether optical or sensor-based would reduce the durability of a system of which one of the main criteria is being able to withstand repeated impacts. Maybe it's possible to build a sufficiently ruggedized OIS solution, but it's not clear whether the expense or size/weight of that would make it viable for action cameras.

skookum··on GoPro Hero 7
> A camera rotating or tilting

> I'm pretty educated on what I'm talking about.

Then you should know that tilting is rotation. Unless by rotation you mean specifically around the optical axis to differentiate from pitch and yaw... in which case you should know that such rotation is uncorrectable by optical systems - though it is correctable by sensor-shift systems.

I think the point you're trying to make with "a few degrees has magnitudes more of an impact" is that rotation has more impact than shift. I agree that the rotation caused by moving the lens a few millimeters has more impact than shifting the camera a few millimeters for sufficiently distant subjects. This is why early IS systems were focused on mitigating pitch and yaw as opposed to shifts: moving lens groups to counter millimeters of rotation is within the physical capabilities of a system that can fit within a lens and it gives a lot of bang for the buck in a narrow sweet spot. Rotational movement is most prevalent in hand-held cameras while operating the camera - for example pressing the shutter button - and less so when it's just being held. This is why there was a standard trick in still photography of using bursts of continuous shooting to get clearer captures: the first frame is impacted by sudden pitch but subsequent ones are much less so. OIS does an excellent job of addressing that first frame blur.

Due to inertia, when a camera is attached to a larger object in motion (athlete, surfboard, vehicle, etc.) random rotational movement is much less pronounced while continuous shifting is. Correcting sustained directional movement - be it rotational or shift - is not something OIS systems are designed to handle. They are meant to correct random movement around a mean, essentially they provide an instant mechanical "reversion to the mean" of sorts. Correcting tens of centimeters of shift is well outside their capabilities and shifting a camera tens of centimeters during exposure will absolutely result in noticeable blur. It doesn't remotely require "the fastest possible athlete" to achieve that level of shift during a 1/30s exposure.

The point is not that EIS is better than OIS - the systems serve different purposes. The point is that OIS doesn't bring as much value to action camera use cases and it comes with the significant downside of reduced durability.

skookum··on GoPro Hero 7
You're ignoring the application.

OIS systems move a subgroup of lens elements to compensate for movement of the camera. The degree of that movement is very limited. The main purpose of OIS is to approximate a stationary camera platform from a near-stationary one. Many OIS systems get turned off for panning - while more sophisticated ones support being turned off in the panning axis - specifically because they don't handle movement outside of a very limited range. For applications where the camera is intended to be in-motion the appropriate mechanical solution is using a gimbal, not OIS.

The main purpose of gimbals or EIS is not to produce sharper individual frames but to reduce jarring across a sequence of frames by smoothing the camera movement - gimbals do it physically while EIS simulates it after the fact by using a subset of the total sensor area.

At 30fps the longest possible per-frame exposure is 1/30s. An action camera-wearing athlete moving at a leisurely 20mph will travel about a foot in 1/30s - and that's just movement in one axis. OIS is not going to help with per-frame motion blur when the camera moves that much or more during the exposure.

skookum··on GoPro Hero 7
If you don't understand why someone would buy a GoPro-type camera instead of just using their iPhone then you are probably well outside of the target market. In addition to the mobile phone form factor being unsuitable for a wide number of commonly used camera placements, an iPhone would not survive a single average day of filming PoV freeride mountain biking or skiing/snowboarding.
skookum··on GoPro Hero 7
The respective pros and cons of EIS & OIS don't change with light level. EIS works by cropping part of the image which results in a narrower FoV and a lower resolution, however these effects occur regardless of how bright the scene is.

The additional moving parts of OIS systems make them less suitable for ruggedized cameras.

skookum··on Extreme Athleticism Is the New Midlife Crisis
For a longer treatment of the same topic, I recommend reading the book The Haywire Heart by Case/Mandrola/Zinn.
skookum··on Probiotics are mostly useless and can actually hurt you
Among other potential caveats, it's worth keeping in mind that this study is of probiotic supplements and not of foods containing probiotics. Seems reminiscent of the studies on antioxidants concluding they are useless and/or harmful while studying isolated high-dose supplementation.
skookum··on Coconut oil is 'pure poison', says Harvard professor
There's a bit of "the dose makes the poison" at play here as well: Cooking with coconut oil is one thing. Making bulletproof coffee with 2-3 tbsp of coconut oil per serving is quite another.
skookum··on American Fast Food Took Over Kuwait and Made Its People Obese [video]
I hiked the Inca Trail in Peru in the late 90s. Not only was there Pepsi in the Andes, it was even available on the remotest sections of the trail. People wearing flip-flops carried cases of glass-bottled Pepsi and Coke (using just tumplines!) up to various places with the price of course increasing with altitude & remoteness. :)
skookum··on Peloton raises $550M at a valuation of $4B
> I don't think it would take much for one of the better bike manufacturers to duplicate the "nice bike" part.

No need to duplicate Peleton's nice bike. Quality indoor bikes were around long before Peloton added the connected/remote class angle to one. Example: https://www.keiser.com/fitness-equipment/cardio-training/m3i...

skookum··on Transaction Costs and Tethers: Why I’m a Crypto Skeptic
There aren't millions of users freely choosing to use this system. There are millions of speculators hoping that some day billions of users will freely choose to use this system and that <insert giant leap of logic> these particular instances of this system won't be replicated ad infinitum and somehow all economic activity on the planet will settle on these initial implementations.
skookum··on Why I Don't Buy Organic, and Why You Might Not Want to Either
Pesticide industry shill has "an ethical problem" with eating organic due to the tactics used by that industry. Is this satire?
skookum··on In 1914, a 200ft wave at Trinidad, California (2014)
There is a fjord in Norway that is considered to be at high risk of experiencing a landslide-driven tsunami of similar magnitude:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geirangerfjord#Rock_slides

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wmfs7LesQos

skookum··on The scooter company that raised 400M in 4 months is what is wrong with SV
>There are probably $100 million in profits in New York and San Francisco alone.

If we extend "San Francisco" to mean "Bay Area" and estimate that New York + Bay Area have a population of about 16M then if the company manages to get 5% of locals to become regular riders, $100M in annual profit is over $10 per regular rider per month. Assuming sufficient demand is there, consider the number of scooters that would need to be deployed and maintained to provided sufficient density to service this adoption level. Does that $100M in profit still seem probable in these two metros?

skookum··on The Strange Brain of the World’s Greatest Solo Climber (2016)
In your haste to be derisive you missed the adjective "solo" in the title. While I would agree Alex is probably not in the running for greatest climber, I think one could make the case that he is the greatest solo climber, and or at least the greatest living solo climber.
skookum··on Launch HN: Frey (YC S18) – Laundry and Clothing Care Products Tailored for Men
> Isn't less better when hot air drying?

Yes. That's the point. The volumes I was referring to were the volumes of the appliances' tubs, not the volume of the load. The assumption is that the load is constant since it needs to go from washer to dryer.

skookum··on Did Supreme Court Potentially Bankrupt Tens of Thousands of Online Businesses?
China does not pay tariffs on goods it sells in the US. The importers of those goods into the US do.
skookum··on 'Hot Dog Water' seller in Vancouver gets laughs to prove point
> with everything that makes it soda removed

Everything that makes soda soda is bad for me. I could buy soda and remove that stuff myself, which is a fair bit of work. Or I could pay someone to do it for me. The fact that Pepsi does this at no additional premium over the soda is something I appreciate.

skookum··on Launch HN: Frey (YC S18) – Laundry and Clothing Care Products Tailored for Men
The optimal tub volume to wash a load is significantly less than the minimum volume to properly dry the same load with blown-air tumble drying. It's possible that without a leap to a different drying technology the dual-purpose laundry appliances will never work well.
skookum··on The Collapse of a $40 Million Nutrition Science Crusade
"A lot of people believing something does not make it true" is not equivalent to "A lot of people believing something makes it untrue."
skookum··on The Collapse of a $40 Million Nutrition Science Crusade
> Keto sub is really growing fast

"We know that people can maintain an unshakeable faith in any proposition, however absurd, when they are sustained by a community of like-minded believers." - Daniel Kahneman

skookum··on Anti-Salt Narrative Needs a Shakeup
You first make the claim that your chosen diet must be safe because if it weren't safe there would be evidence to the contrary. Then you dismiss those people who try to bring forward evidence to the contrary as liars. You can't have it both ways.

It's funny that you should bring up Atkins and then suggest "following the money"... Atkins Nutritionals sued some of the people that you are labelling as liars, and lost all of their lawsuits. If there's one thing I've learned from my two decades living in America it's that when a corporation loses a lawsuit to individuals here, the individuals are probably barking up the right tree.

Have you considered the possibility that what you are terming "liars" is just "people that disagree with my strongly-held belief"?

skookum··on Anti-Salt Narrative Needs a Shakeup
You seem quite defensive about keto and missed most of the point of my post. I wasn't writing about keto specifically, I just needed a few examples and that was one that came to mind at the time. You can sub in "eating nothing but sauerkraut and grapefruit" or anything else that springs to kind. My post was about self-experimentation in general. The "scares" you refer to, I did not claim were a result of a low carb diet - they were examples of the types of long-term issues that some of us would like to avoid. Unfortunately the impact of diet & lifestyle on those can be decades in the making - not to mention that some, like Alzheimer's, don't allow for do-overs - which makes it rather hard for an individual to employ self-experimentation to avoid them. The fact is that an individual won't be able to determine if consuming more or less of vitamin X or mineral Y will increase or decrease their probability of developing condition Z via self-experimentation for most of the scary conditions, let alone if vitamin X needs to be present in combination with compound Z, etc.

> choose your poison: do you think it's safer to be fat?

This is a false dichotomy. The choice is not keto or obesity. And losing/maintaining weight is one of the short-term & measurable goals I was alluding to. It's trivially achievable in a fairly short time with various approaches and keto is certainly one of them. Many of the others require less self-discipline than keto however, and a number of those have orders of magnitude more man-years of aggregated long-duration testing behind them.

> But don't believe the army of liars that's been spreading FUD consistently over the years.

That's good advice, but how do I identify which one is the army of liars and which one is the army of truth? :)

skookum··on Anti-Salt Narrative Needs a Shakeup
Given the number of variables that can be adjusted, the extent to which they can be adjusted, and the time it takes to see results, self-experimentation is barely viable for even trivial short-term goals. How many chances does one have to try a different set of inputs for 3 months apiece?

Even for short-term goals anything non-measurable is highly prone to confirmation bias - e.g.: "I feel more energetic on this keto diet!" because I expected to feel more energetic on this keto diet and these Instagram accounts I follow keep reinforcing that this is what I should expect. Additionally there is the issue that the human body is a complex system where things that seem good in the short term can be quite bad in the long term - e.g.: "These 6 cigarettes a day are really helping with the over-eating I'd been struggling with!".

For many of us who care to research nutrition more than superficially the goals tend to be more long-term ones like not developing Alzheimer's, cancers, atherosclerosis, organ failures, etc., all in support of staying healthy & active for as long as possible. Those goals don't lend themselves to a hill-climbing optimization via self-experimentation.

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