Hacker News: cprayingmantis

New comment by cprayingmantis in "Ford F-150 Lightning outsold the Cybertruck and was then canceled for poor sales"

cprayingmantis — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 01:07:02 +0000

I keep looking for good deals on a R1T, CT, or Lightning in the used market. To be fair they’ve dipped but not enough to make an amazing deal.

New comment by cprayingmantis in "Just let me select text"

cprayingmantis — Wed, 24 Sep 2025 20:26:36 +0000

On my iPhone I end up using a screenshot to select text via OCR and copy it from there. It’s frustrating when apps like Facebook won’t let you copy and paste stuff into Google Maps from a birthday invite.

New comment by cprayingmantis in "EPA Seeks to Eliminate Critical PFAS Drinking Water Protections"

cprayingmantis — Sun, 14 Sep 2025 20:30:24 +0000

Are there any labs in the US that a regular joe could use to get their water tested? I’ve got quite a few properties with natural springs and I can send the water to get tested for bacteria and mineral content but I don’t know of anywhere that tests for PFAS.

New comment by cprayingmantis in "California farmers identify a hot new cash crop: Solar power"

cprayingmantis — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 03:17:10 +0000

Solar energy has become a significant topic in my rural Virginia county, where I serve on the Board of Supervisors. During our discussions, the issue of food production has come up a lot. While I understand people’s concerns about maintaining a resilient food supply, they often overlook the amount of farmland that is abandoned and rendered unusable for crop production.

I see it happen all too often, farmer dies, kids don’t want to do anything with the land so it sits growing up becoming unusable. The rate at which farmers are either retiring or passing away far exceeds the rate at which agricultural land is being converted to solar farms. For many farmers, this transition has become a valuable secondary source of income and allowed them to continue or expand their operations.

New comment by cprayingmantis in "OpenAI charges by the minute, so speed up your audio"

cprayingmantis — Thu, 26 Jun 2025 00:33:15 +0000

I noticed something similar with images as inputs to Claude, you can scale down the images and still get good outputs. There is an accuracy drop off at a certain point but the token savings are worth doing a little tuning there.

New comment by cprayingmantis in "Railroad Tycoon II"

cprayingmantis — Mon, 13 Jan 2025 12:41:56 +0000

I’m so glad to see this game getting some love. It’s been a constant for me ever since I found it at Dollar General when I was a kid.

New comment by cprayingmantis in "FCC grants SpaceX right to some direct-to-cellular operations [pdf]"

cprayingmantis — Wed, 27 Nov 2024 02:47:57 +0000

Very exited for this, hopefully it works well.

New comment by cprayingmantis in "Starlink Direct to Cell"

cprayingmantis — Sun, 24 Nov 2024 23:22:39 +0000

If anyone from Starlink or SpaceX is reading these comments here’s what you want to do: Sell your own branded trail cam with solar charging and LTE from orbit. You can charge $25-$40 a month for unlimited pictures sent from the cam. This would open up hunters, nature enthusiasts, and researchers to be able to place their hardware anywhere in the field without worrying about connectivity. Here in SWVA we have deep hollows that can’t get LTE without dense tower coverage that we don’t have the population to justify, but you can grab a satellite connection.

After writing this out I’m beginning to doubt the market would be big enough but I know at least 20 people with 2 or more LTE cams for deer season.

New comment by cprayingmantis in "Show HN: Basis – a production focused robotics framework"

cprayingmantis — Tue, 29 Oct 2024 20:10:39 +0000

How does one get started with robotics? What's a good onboarding project?

New comment by cprayingmantis in "Tips for Building and Deploying Robots"

cprayingmantis — Mon, 30 Sep 2024 23:01:08 +0000

Are there any good blogs, communities, or Discords to get more into robotics? Specifically outdoor applications?

New comment by cprayingmantis in "How economical is your local Taco Bell?"

cprayingmantis — Wed, 11 Sep 2024 15:42:47 +0000

Love this! I'd love to take the underlying data combine it with data like average income for a county and see which counties had the most affordable Taco Bell.

New comment by cprayingmantis in "After Appalachian hospitals merged, their ERs became much slower"

cprayingmantis — Wed, 27 Mar 2024 03:01:25 +0000

The roughest thing that Ballad has done is take the brand new NICU from Holston Valley in Kingsport that was opened in 2016 [1], shut it down and move it 30-45 minutes further away to Johnson City in 2019 [2]. Granted we know drive times are further up here, and helicopters are faster, but that could be precious minutes for a NICU baby.

[1] https://www.timesnews.net/living/wellness/holston-valley-unv...

[2] https://www.balladhealth.org/saving-lives/nicu-updates

New comment by cprayingmantis in "Expert sounds alarm on new wave of US opioids crisis"

cprayingmantis — Sun, 28 Jan 2024 15:19:45 +0000

It hit this area hard. I’m from neighboring Scott County and I left in 2015 to pursue a job in a larger market. When I brought my family back in 2021 we shocked to see just how much the opioid crisis had hollowed out the community. Whatever big pharma has paid it’s not enough to repair the generations of damage it’s done to the area. I am on the local Board of Supervisors and I’m trying my best (along with the rest of the board) to get everything running back in the right direction.

New comment by cprayingmantis in "Starlink launches "cellphone towers in space" for use with LTE phones"

cprayingmantis — Thu, 04 Jan 2024 05:01:32 +0000

You'd be surprised! I'm a politician in a rural county in the USA and Cell Phone coverage is one thing that people complain about the most. Probably only 30-40% of the county has good signal strength. I'm really excited about this because has the potential to make things so much safer for folks around here.

New comment by cprayingmantis in "Plants that are signs of former human settlements"

cprayingmantis — Thu, 27 Jul 2023 21:05:03 +0000

I think an equally interesting point might be why Daffodils tend to outline the foundation of where a house used to be. Yes of course because people planted them there but then you'd expect wild animals to eat and carry the seeds away. Which would mean that the daffodils would expand out adding some background noise; this doesn't happen though. My theory is it's because not many animals eat daffodils and spread the seeds around.

New comment by cprayingmantis in "The curious side effects of medical transparency"

cprayingmantis — Sat, 29 Apr 2023 22:19:12 +0000

Probably not very many. Fun anecdote: When the Google Glass first came out I wanted to use it to record procedures so that we could create an annotated video dataset of medical procedures to see if we could match outcomes to actions. When I talked to medical professionals about it though they told me no Doctor would wear it for fear of malpractice lawsuits so it never really got off the ground. I guess you could go the opposite way and talk to the insurance companies about forcing surgeons to wear it but that didn’t sit well with me.

New comment by cprayingmantis in "Ask HN: How do I thrive as part of an unambitious team?"

cprayingmantis — Sun, 06 Nov 2022 01:25:45 +0000

Either you become their inspiring leader with your zeal to push your self or you become like them. There is no middle ground. So think about what you want and act accordingly.

Btw being a leader is way more than having some senior position, a leader is someone who the team looks to for guidance, inspiration, and growth. Don’t need to have some fancy title to give that, don’t have to be formally in charge either.

New comment by cprayingmantis in "Meta stock price drops more than 20%"

cprayingmantis — Thu, 27 Oct 2022 23:01:48 +0000

No one ever seems to talk about the fact that RSUs should be treated as bonuses not as real income. It’s nice if they work out but you should never rely on them being worth anything.

New comment by cprayingmantis in "Ask HN: How to show a not “so perfect” MVP to potential customers?"

cprayingmantis — Mon, 24 Oct 2022 12:46:21 +0000

Adding to this if voice recognition is just the first part of a process can you eliminate it? Can you show them an example of how to use it based on text? For example “type your command/query” instead of speaking it.

New comment by cprayingmantis in "The Rise and Fall of the Manufactured Home – Part I"

cprayingmantis — Sat, 16 Jul 2022 23:45:51 +0000

Here in Southwestern VA I’ve seen an interesting trend: people are buying yard barns. Sometimes very large yard barns and are converting them into living quarters. These are folks that don’t have a ton of access to capital or financing but they can scrape together enough for a barn, insulation, a window AC, and plumbing. They’re getting by with them because they’re not sold as livable structures but who knows how safe they are. Mobile/Manufactured homes are too expensive I guess.