Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | aaron695's commentslogin

Here's what robotic mowers blades look like to understand how they work - https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/676d76e61268a4...

We just got a Sunseeker X7 to do ~4 acres of grassed area but probably ~2 acres will be garden beds and roads etc

The hardware is there, it's all software now.

People talk about updates and the robot improved amazingly, comments like - "these scuffs are from pre-update"

These are Elon's updateable cars, they will get better with time. (Sunseeker is also camera not yet LiDAR)

Robotic mowers are better than humans, there are a few if's and buts, grass nerds compare the cuts on a grass blade on YouTube for instance.

With a robot you can set blade lengths for areas and be seasonal/weather orientated. The constant cuttings mean the nutrients get shredded back in.

The Chinese seem to be the best... but that might have been my price bracket.

Obviously since you can run them at night at 3am you quickly see other uses like security/wildlife auditing. Exciting times to live in.


Please don't run them at night to protect animals like hedgehogs and others that are active at night.

Even better is to turn most of your lawn into natural landscape, leaving just the part you want to use for recreation as mowed.

This is highly dependent on where you live and what kind of creatures and insects you will be hosting.

I’m a big fan of natural landscaping, but just letting your grass over grow is not that.


I didn't say "just let it grow over" though. Turn it into natural landscape except the part you need for recreation. In many places people almost never play or sit in their front yard, for example. If you make that a natural landscape you might have to mow it once or less per year depending on what you actually plant.

It's a nice thought but the reality is that you'll be killing animals no matter what. I have a 48" riding mower and live in a rural area. At first I was really worried about all the field mice, voles, frogs, etc., that I saw running away from the mower. After a while, I realized that no matter how hard I tried, a certain number of them were just going to die. I tend to let my lawn grow fairly tall before cutting, and it's a mix of grasses, clovers, wildflowers and other plants that just grow naturally around here. The downside is that a lot of small animals live in it. I only remember running over one bunny so far, but who knows how many I might not have seen.

At least it's not fawns. Baby deer seem to be a magnet for combines harvesting corn.


Also to protect all those, animals and humans alike, who would like to enjoy a silent night.

I'm assuming (perhaps unreasonably?) that given the suggestion you could run it at night, that it's silent, or near silent?

If that's not the case, GP must be a madman.


Anything having lots of rpm ain't silent. Especially not at night.

So they surely ain't as loud as a combustion lawn mower and are pretty silent in comparison, so maybe you won't notice them in the city with its background noise. But in rural areas I perceive them as noisy even on daylight with normal noise level. And I never saw anyone using them at night - for a reason.

And as for gp .. he is already shadowbanned and you likely cannot see his answer (I have showdead=true). He reacted poorly I think.


Yeah, in that case, this sounds like a horrific idea.

I could hear a neighbours smoke alarm beeping periodically due to low battery the other night and went around to replace the battery for them the next day.

Also, I wasn't aware of the showdead setting (and had no idea about the answer that had been hidden), thanks for the tip.


chrip

There’s a growing discovery on YouTube and TikTok videos, that some people just live like this.


Your brain will completely tune the beeping sound out after a certain point, if it's a thing you notice at all. Similar reason to reversing truck beepers being replaced with ones that produce white (or other coloured) noise, so you don't lose your ability to hear where they are.

It's hard to believe until it happens to you.


Still hasn't happened to me; beeping smoke alarms drive me crazy.

Can only disagree there (I built an OpenMower based on a SA650B), in a rural area, also cannot hear it from about 10m away, even at night. Though I don't run it at night except when it is just finishing up from the afternoon

Either there is a new generation of ultra silent mowers, or we have vastly different hearing levels.

Edit: but I only know of mowers noise level from what I experience walking around, I don't own one, nor did I research that model number. Maybe I will.


Must depend on the model. I can't hear mine from more than 10 meters away.

At night?

I doubt that. At daylight with normal background noise level, possible.


The modern razor blade based robot mowers are barely audible. Segway claims 58 dBA, for context. Anywhere near a city (which, these smaller robot lawnmowers are really meant for smaller city lawns) is going to have close to that for background noise levels. Maybe it's partially audible if you're standing next to it, but with fencing and some distance between you and your neighbor, you aren't bothering anyone.

Hm. With 58 dBA extra noise in a silent area you can bet, that I will be bothered.

In a loud city where it doesn't matter anyway, yeah well, who cares.


Electric motors can run at quite high rpms with lower decibels. Sure not silent but the origin is low enough that at a distance say 25 feet it’s almost silent.

True, but remember what’s quiet to a human may be quite different to what’s quiet to a hedgehog. When reading about these things it’s surprising how often things that we might not consider - like how vibrations travel though the ground - can confuse wildlife in ways that we might not expect when viewed through an anthropomorphic lens.

Man I'm sorry, while I don't want my mower running over a hedgehog, it's my lawn. If they don't like the noise they can leave lol

Yea, my neighbors battery powered mower is super quiet. I don't even know when they run it.

Mine is also electric and my wife says (i'm always too close to it) it's easily 4x as loud. Not sure what the difference is.


> And I never saw anyone using them at night - for a reason.

...how late you were checking?

I can see reason to set them on say 5AM so it finishes before you wake up


you've never been woken up at 5am by a neighbor using some tools?

I have an electric (though not robotic) lawn mower, and it turns out that it's not much quieter than a gas powered one. No engine noise obviously, but the blades spinning and hitting grass still makes a lot of noise (and indeed in my case it turned out to be the vast majority of the noise). So it wouldn't be a very good idea to run your robot lawn mower at night.

Maybe your specific model? I have a Makita electric mower and the difference is night and day. It's very relaxing and I mow with no hearing protection. I've tested to see how far the noise carries and none of my neighbors can even hear it. Meanwhile, I hear gas mowers from my neighbors on all sides and several lots away from me.

This is uninformed - my Navimow is close to silent. It makes a slight clicking/snipping sound as it cuts through grass.

The mechanical components are entirely different, instead of a helicopter-like blade it is a ~silent solid disc with some razor blades on the edges.


It probably depends on model, but mine is dead silent (Mammotion Luba 2). However the reason I avoid running it at night is it has a fairly bright headlight, and I worry it might create shadows/light effects in my neighbors house and I know they have little kids.

I mean how fast do these mowers mow? I seriously doubt it's fast enough to run over an animal

I think the concern is animals that hide or sit still when threatened more so than it chasing down a rabbit :p Also, eventually animals would get used to the noise until they get hurt.

The wildlife (like hedgehogs) will feel very audited when they get sliced up by a razorblade, run over, and can barely drag themselves off your lawn to bleed out throughout hours of pain. If they don't bleed out, they often end up mutilated, unable to properly eat, walk, etc.

Nice wildlife auditing. Hedgehogs are endangered in lots of areas of the world. Run your robot lawnmower during the day.

If you don't like that mental image, you should feel for the people working at hedgehog rescues


They're certainly not endangered. They were "Least Concern" up until the last few years but have been reclassified as "Near Threatened" due to greenfield sites turned over to land development fragmenting their habitats. The most likely place a person will see them in 2025 is flattened on a road.

Domestic gardens make up an almost insignificant percentage of their natural habitat in any case, and any sort of HOA or Estate Management scenario would likely make it a violation to rewild a garden sufficient to create an amenable hedgehog habitat.

In short, its the responsibility of land utilised for agriculture - and this is recognised by measures around Europe such as the Eco-Scheme and ACRES (Agri-Climate Rural Environment Scheme) which indirectly support the re-establishment of hedgehog populations.


Hedgehogs ignore loud moving things going their direction ?

No, but they curl up into a ball to protect themselves. Since they're spiky, that seems to work reasonably well against animals. Less so against blades.

My dogs will eat them if they get hit. It's not a problem.

The price still needs to come down for what is effectively a slightly more rugged robot vaccuum. I could buy a used car for that, and have enough left over to make it run reliably.

The quality of cheaper models is not great. I bought two from Einhell (power tool brand like DeWalt in Europe) and they both had to be returned due to motor failures. A replacement motor was €150 - for a €400 robot without battery (it uses their 18V tool batteries which is what appealed to me - easy replacement).


The thing is, they are more than a robot vacuum. They need to be able to:

- deal with rougher, bumpier terrain (friction!)

- do so uphill through uncut grass

- not stall the mowing motor with high grass

- cover a larger area

- be waterproof against rain

All of these points need a lot more power individually, and especially so when taken together (and carrying the weight increase of all those upgrades). It seems reasonable they'd cost at least twice as much for "similar" feature/budget levels. And I think that's pretty much what we're seeing.


My father just picked up a Husqvarna 430x to do his yard, and it's a pretty great piece of equipment. It runs basically around the clock and handles his acre on a hillside with relative ease... It finds a couple of the garden beds a bit tricky to navigate, but that'll be a software issue that likely improves as time goes on.

I’ve been watching the “Lymow One” with great interest because it appears a lot more rugged and it uses actual mower-style blades rather than the rotating-disc-and-razors model. Also claims to be able to take care of 1.7 acres, which is about spot on what I need.

It’s still pretty new though, and it's a kickstarter from a new company so not much trust yet.


Their website lists the X7 as "0.75 acres" - how that relate to the 4acres you got it to do?

How well does it cut 2 acres? how long does it take?

There is court testimony it was drug testing - https://www.reuters.com/article/business/britney-spears-hook...

Can you link your source?

I'd say it was part of some sort of manic/meltdown episode with multiple things going on with some logic. She was under a conservatorship for good reason, it's not some Deep State conspiracy.

I'd like to hear her explanation in her words.

[edit] - From her book

  I went into a hair salon, and I took the clippers, and I shaved off all my hair.

  Everyone thought it was hilarious. Look how crazy she is! Even my parents acted embarrassed by me. But nobody seemed to understand that I was simply out of my mind with grief. My children had been taken away from me.

  With my head shaved, everyone was scared of me, even my mom. No one would talk to me anymore because I was too ugly.

  My long hair was a big part of what people liked—I knew that. I knew a lot of guys thought long hair was hot.

  Shaving my head was a way of saying to the world: Fuck you. You want me to be pretty for you? Fuck you. You want me to be good for you? Fuck you. You want me to be your dream girl? Fuck you. I’d been the good girl for years. I’d smiled politely while TV show hosts leered at my breasts, while American parents said I was destroying their children by wearing a crop top, while executives patted my hand condescendingly and second-guessed my career choices even though I’d sold millions of records, while my family acted like I was evil. And I was tired of it.

  At the end of the day, I didn’t care. All I wanted to do was see my boys. It made me sick thinking about the hours, the days, the weeks I missed with them. My most special moments in life were taking naps with my children. That’s the closest I’ve ever felt to God—taking naps with my precious babies, smelling their hair, holding their tiny hands.

> it's not some Deep State conspiracy

I know very little about the drama around Britney Spears, but even I know that the question was if her conservator was abusing it, not "the deep state". It's a case of the breach of trust of one or a very few people, NOT a grand conspiracy requiring a supernatural level of coordination and control. It happens with alarming regularity that people abuse conservatorships. It's an inherently very abusable position.

I hate it when people shout "conspiracy theory" over garden variety breach of trust/corruption. The latter actually exists, by using this accusation as a shield for it, you strengthen the actually unreasonable conspiracy theories.

Now that doesn't mean Spears' conservatorship abused their position, they may or have not have, but it's not something that can be reject as a possibility.


> at least from my perspective.

If you are afraid of salt I guess. That's an old idea and somewhat a religion formed off a misdirect marketing campaign.

Any Who even with salt is evil not much difference at McDonalds -

McPlant https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/product/mcplant.html#acco... (510 Cal.)

Quarter Pounder with Cheese https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/product/quarter-pounder-w... (520 Cal.)

I don't see Beyond Meat as a replacement to steak, it's very unhealthy compared to that.

Reducing livestock is the most 2nd most pressing environmental issue in the world, to fixing fishing. I can't think of anything else that matters more than those two. We need to farm the oceans (70%) and leave land (30%) for hunters.

I love pictures of Chinese diamond factories - https://www.google.com/search?num=100&q=chinese+diamond+fact...


It's not that I am afraid of salt, but that many of our foods have an added amount of salt that cumulatively is fairly high. No different to not being afraid of sugar, but there are foods which are abnormally high in it.

My point being is that you're not going to win over enough people to eat Beyond Meat if its just due to environmental factors. You also need to give people an additional benefit, in the case of Beyond Meat whilst its better for the environment, its not better for our bodies given how highly its processed.


> Aren't there plenty of places out of reach for Europol and the FBI, etc.?

There are a few problems with this question, but lets start with

Where is "out of reach for Europol and the FBI"?


I mean I rarely read that they nab anyone outside of Europe/the US. But would have assumed the middle east, south east asia, post-soviet republics. If this guy is Russian speaking why not Russia?

List of teams trying for reference -

"10 teams are racing to build a pivotal tracker replacement" -https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43378925


> it does not align with my anecdotal experience

Given I'll often see the same fraudulent ad repeated I think anecdotal experience is there are not many of them.

I can even talk to friends about the most boring fraudulent ads and they know them. i.e. Elon doubling your bitcoin scams.

For normal ads unless they are viral, there are millions out there that are never repeated or not even seen.

Because fraud ads have short lifetimes pulled out of 'production traffic' you can collect many for the training data

I assume 'clickbait' is the safety word for 'fraud'


Alternate theory, MOOCs got lectures put onto YouTube.

And this is what the early success really was.

It'd be interesting to see if what they "up-skilled" on is now common knowledge in Data Science.


I think especially for Data Science, a lot of the curriculum got taken over by universities and new university programmes for Data Science were created since then so in a way it became common knowledge for fresh graduates.

Wheel wells are heated from equipment inside, some measurements say ~ +20° C vs exterior.

Could the air pressure be higher?

When planes get holes does the inside pressure equal the outside.


> When planes get holes does the inside pressure equal the outside.

Short answer: Yes

Long answer: It depends on the direction. If the hole is in the forward direction the pressure will be higher. If it's on the side or the back then the pressure will be lower. But fluid dynamic is hard so there may be weird exemptions. Anyway the difference can be measured but is small to be relevant in this case.

> say ~ +20° C vs exterior. Could the air pressure be higher?

If you have a sealed container and you increase the temperature ~ +20° C, the pressure will increase, somewhat like 7% (with a lot of guesses and approximations).

But if it's unsealed, when instead of raising the pressure the air will just escape slowly. You can test it with a microwave with a glass of water. When you open it after 1 minute the temperature inside is higher, but it will not hear a pop as a balloon.

The hot air will have the same relative O2 pressure but a lower absolute O2 pressure. I guess this is bad for the survival rate.


Fuck Cucumber.

Buried in the mess there are a couple of good concepts like it moves away for the 'busy-work' of atomic tests.

But shit like "living documentation" makes me want to vomit.

Are people dying quicker than we can teach this is bullshit? Or are people dying stupid?

The idea non-coders might ever be involved with Cucumber is also fucking retarded.

Last I used it, it was a mess, maybe it's better now. Part of that was those arrogant Selenium motherfuckers.

All this shit is why LLMs are talking over. Fucking retards with their stupid as fuck theory's about auto documentation and Selenium refusing to implement X (i forgot) on some BS 'principal'.

LLMs just get the job done, they might fuck shit up, but they are not arrogant autists about it, and LLMs don't care when they are called useless arrogant autists and double down.


This is a mess.

The 1992 talk wasn't at all about AI and since then our phones have given us "ubiquitous computing" en masse.

The original talk required no 'artificial intelligence' for relevance which makes it strange to apply to todays artificial intelligence.

The original talk made good points for instance "voice recognition" has been solved forever at a reasonable level, yet people kept claiming if it was 'better' a 'magic experience' would pop out as if voice was different to typing. Idiots have been around for a long time.

Don't get what OP is trying to say.

'AI HUD metaphors' are very hard, that's why they are not ubiquitous, they require constant input. Spellcheck runs every character typed. Agents are because of less $.

'Hallucinations' also make 'AI HUD metaphors' problematic, for spellcheck squiggly red lines would be blinking on off all over the page as a LLM keeps coming back with different results.


FYI, you're shadowbanned.


Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: