Ask HN: Favorite purchases of last two years?
I've abandoned all faith in reviews online. But the HN crew can give good advice and are extremely unlikely to shill garbage. Consumer Reports is great for finding which manufacturer/model to buy. But what product or service did you buy that you found really useful/entertaining?
I'll start: I caved and bought a robovac. Wow, unlike many techno-gadgets, this one really delivers. Real utility, not just taking up space. Low maintenance, runs while I sleep, and the floor is just cleaner.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 394 ms ] thread2. Road bike, best exercise and stress relief process and I've got to know my local area up to a radius of 50 miles
3. Upcoming - new guitar to go with the bass guitar a few years back.
Amazing cost/return on these items!
As a homeowner so many things have to be convinced to move with physical force.
which robovac u got ?
I too consider it one of the better purchases. Being able to travel in vr using Google earth, vr videos or own panorama pictures in these times is amazing.
Btw how do you view panorama photos with it?
Possibly the malts I buy for making my own beer. I would say the MM3 grain mill, but that was actually free. I just had to build a bracket and hopper for it. That thing flys through malt, which is good because I have about 60 lbs to go through.
Possibly the bass guitar and Rocksmith. I don't get much time to use it though.
It doesn't allow for certain types of things. Usually you would need a different type of license for satellite control and communication. That one is usually a frequency allocated to you by the FCC/ITU.
1) Fender Squire Classic Vibe 60s Stratocaster. I am amazed how good this range is now. Better than my old Mexican from the 90s. 2) Cheap 335 copy secondhand. I have never had a semi-acoustic and it added a new source for inspiration.
My only mech keyboard so far is my DasKeyboard, but I want to get something tenkeyless for less reach to the mouse, and hot swappable to try different switches
About the quality, they seem pretty decent. I haven't had any issues with it.
* Belka DX shortwave radio: one of the best shortwave radio on the market, with a small and portable form factor
I'm using the Aeropex AfterShokz for reference (https://us.aftershokz.com/products/aeropex)
* Apple Watch
* Dynamax Running Pad (Light Run Treadmill)
I started to put more emphasis on my personal health as I noticed that the COVID-19 pandemic has taken a lot of toll on both my physical and mental state.
The watch has been quite amazing in tracking my movement, heart rate, # of times standing up in a day and overall, has been quite influential in motivating me to do more physical related activities.
The WalkingPad allowed me to perform a lot of light exercises at home and it has been quite a handy companion in my journey to become a healthier person overall.
- A nice shoji paravent to shield me from the room during work.
- A vase and regular flower updates that do wonders for keeping the place fresh and me in a mood for tidying and cleaning it up. (Single flowers from the flower shop nearby are quite cheap.)
- Some lamps to increase the cozy vibe for the evening (changing the light can change the room, and I need about 3 rooms right now where I have one).
Along with an 18-month-old who loves to hear how high his voice can be, and a cat that can be heard cleaning itself from half a block away, and a bad case of misophonia.
These headphones give me peace. Sometimes I'll even turn them on with just noise-cancellation and no music, just to concentrate.
Once I got the mic working properly on ubuntu, they improved my meetings considerably as well.
I’d love a recommendation for a compatible USB Bluetooth dongle.
I had dramatically better luck with that, which AFAICT just presents to the OS as a USB-C headset, and has an entirely-internal bluetooth stack.
Or just try using your phone - I connect both phone and computer to zoom meetings for instance. For some reason, desktop OSes / bluetooth chip stacks are absolutely awful compared to the ones in iOS / Android devices. Nearly everything connects to my Pixel 4a just fine, while nearly everything stutters when connected to my MacBook, and often doesn't connect at all to my Dell.
Unfortunately, I don't remember if I've installed or adjusted anything on the OS.
One moderately annoying caveat is that I have to open the Settings / Sound panel every time I turn on the headphones, and while the Output Device is always automatically set to the headset, I have to explicitly set the Input Device to the headset as well. When I do I get an alert sound and a quickly cut-off moment (like the "Ca-" of "Call") in the bose-lady voice, as if something went wrong, but then it works correctly.
I imagine this can all be automated somehow, but I haven't had the time to figure out how and it's not _that_ big of a deal to go through the motions.
1: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009ZIILLI/
I've had maybe twice since where she said she could kinda hear me a little bit versus her being livid at me for keeping her up all night. Really life changing.
Now big caveat: they don’t stream audio and they aren’t noise canceling. They only play looping sounds that you download from the Bose sleep app. That said, I’ve found them to be helpful in staying asleep. Pricey also, but if it helps you sleep, it’s worth trying in my opinion.
Another issue is microphone audio quality - it's worse than on headphones where microphone is on a boom.
Also, the switching between connected devices is a travesty (fails a lot of the time), I eventually turned it off altogether.
https://onewheel.com/products/pint
Safety wise, yeah wrecks on onewheels can be bad. If you are a speed demon you will break something. If you are careful you should be fine. A set of fangs on the board and a pair of wrist guards are highly recommended. And a helmet at all times.
It's not too fast and it doesn't go very far, but this hasn't been limiting so far. My legs get tired before the battery runs out.
We've got a dog and my girlfriend has very long hair that we would have to cut strands out of the rollers every couple of runs. The new Roomba models have these rubber rollers doesn't catch hair. I'm not entirely what about the design prevents that, but it is fantastic!
The i3 is probably $100 more than you'd spend on a Robovac though. For us it has been worth every penny.
https://productnotes.com/t/irobot-roomba-i3-review/722
Also, it does have a self-emptying dock if you want to spend an additional $100. It didn't make sense for my condo though.
EDIT: I ran the Roomba this morning and posted some additional pics with what it picked up and how the brush rollers look post-vacuum.
I'm still 100% happy with the purchase. Does it vacuum as well as a person? No, absolutely not, but what it does do is remove 90%+ of the work.
My only suggestion is that you get one that has a self-emptying container. We have two kids and a cat, and we still only have to change the bag every few WEEKS.
I'm not going to tell you it's perfect. It will occasionally get stuck, or you have to clean it out, but boy has it removed a lot of work for my wife and I.
They've really dialed that design in. It does require a deep cleaning about once a month, but it's quite easy. Takes maybe a minute. And whenever we don't pick everything up, the Roomba will choke on things like bubble wrap, socks, towels (we often keep one on the floor by the door for the dog).
It's been a real workhorse.
Ha, I wish that was universally true. My girlfriend's hair is long and insanely strong. It wraps around the rollers and cuts right through them.
Still love the Roomba, but often need to replace rollers. :)
Thing with the robovacs here: when you empty their bin and see how much dust they catched, you know they're very useful. We buy (and I build) furnitures and arrange our home so that the Roomba can go underneath them. I wouldn't for example buy a sofa under which the Roomba couldn't vaccuum.
Perhaps I should have clarified that only the newer i3, i7 and s9 are the models that use the new brushroller design. Otherwise you'll still be cutting hair out of the rollers.
Also, one of my favorite things about it is hearing the base spinning up like a jet engine to suck all the crap out of it, and hearing it go FOOMP.
Reebok Classic Nylon. Finally a comfortable every day shoe that looks good that I can buy over and over again.
iPhone 12 mini. So tired of ginormous smartphones. I wanted a small phone and Apple delivered.
This is, bar none, the best computer I have ever owned. Finally, a zippy and powerful workstation that is a pleasure to use.
My old Mac Mini served me well for 8 years, but after a couple of OS updates, it had become laggy and nearly unusable.
Been dreaming of being able to drive without using gasoline for decades, that dream is now a reality.
Is it a perfect car - nope, but there really isn’t another car like it right now.
Even inexpensive 1st gen EVs are more than ready for most people to use as a city car or second car, and most people would have no need for a petrol car at all if they had a Tesla or Bolt or any modern long range EV. I can see the lack of maintenance being very disruptive to car dealerships in the long term.
How do you heat the water though? Does it taste like cold brew?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmjPjZZRhNQ
[0] https://www.dualit.com/products/lite-jug-kettles
I went on a bit of a thing collecting manual brewers. I've got stove top vacuum pots, a french press, a delter press and a couple of coffee siphons (which are awesome because they make you feel like a mad scientist) but for ease of use and cleanup when making a single coffee, the aeropress beats them all.
https://us.kobobooks.com/products/kobo-forma
Two other things i bought last year, use daily and really like:
- This santoku knife https://www.meesterslijpers.nl/takamura-vg-10-santoku
- Airpod pro’s
That said, "rooting" does seem pretty easy. I use kobopatch for the sole reason of adding a button directly to the Pocket page on the home screen to save myself a "click".
https://github.com/pgaskin/kobopatch-patches/releases
It feels like this is the beginning of the end for ebook DRM stripping.
The files will be in .mobi and .azw3 format.
https://github.com/baskerville/plato
Kobo's in general are quite good I think. The Pocket integration is also really handy for reading all those Hacker News articles away from the computer. :-)