Hacker News: pandaman

New comment by pandaman in "Buyer cancels showing after Deflock shows two cameras utilized by the HOA"

pandaman — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 00:01:19 +0000

Municipalities in the US are the same type of institution as HOA, self-organized to maintain property. Just like you may not have an HOA you may not have a municipality of any kind. Counties and states are usually not equipped to do maintenance work, same as the federal government. I also don't understand the preference of city government over HOA - it's not like cities don't have codes and you can do whatever you want with your property. It's subdued now but couple years ago we had anti-zoning posts as frequently as we have anti-Flock. Who creates zoning? The city does.

New comment by pandaman in "Abdominal fat predicts heart disease risk better than BMI"

pandaman — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 13:16:44 +0000

There is no "low end" , such a huge difference shows that both studies are not reliable.

New comment by pandaman in "Abdominal fat predicts heart disease risk better than BMI"

pandaman — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 03:14:01 +0000

Also, the same on the exercise side: the most efficient fat loss exercise (literally oxidizing body fat) is moderate intensity high volume aerobic one. You don't need a gym membership, a coach, or a fancy machine to do this. And if you are already a member in a gym, the gym won't be very happy with you doing 2-4 hours of zone 2 there. They'd rather you hire a personal trainer who will give you some resistance exercises, each "targeting" fat at some part of the body. They are exhausting and you will feel completely spent after doing them for 30 mins. The faster you get tired and more damage you cause to the muscles ("burn") the better is the exercise regimen (and less likely you oxidize any fat).

New comment by pandaman in "Abdominal fat predicts heart disease risk better than BMI"

pandaman — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 16:50:35 +0000

> I asked about the specific claim that absolute fat was bad for your heart.

There is no word "heart" or any to this effect in the message you replied to so I did not understand that was what you were doing. I took your question as an attempt to attack the theory on the basis of prevalence of some heart conditions in shorter people.

New comment by pandaman in "Abdominal fat predicts heart disease risk better than BMI"

pandaman — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 12:37:56 +0000

The actual studies [1],[2] that tried to measure this came to very different rates of height loss though: 3.6 cm and 6 cm from 40 to 80 in men. This does not look like a serious fact.

1. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10547143/

2. https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/15/21/4694 (referencing the FHS there, the numbers are hard to find on the study's website).

New comment by pandaman in "Abdominal fat predicts heart disease risk better than BMI"

pandaman — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 04:15:00 +0000

I am not saying that. I am saying that the theory about absolute amount of fat being bad for health, as stated by the comment you responded, seems to be supported by data.

New comment by pandaman in "Abdominal fat predicts heart disease risk better than BMI"

pandaman — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 01:31:11 +0000

The mean height for men at 20-29 is 69.2" and 80+ is 67.1" (measured in 2015-2018, the last data I've found) [1], which could be interpreted as shorter people having lower risk of all mortality. One could say that people are just getting taller over time and 80+ y.o. were shorter at their 20-29, but we also have the median height for 20-29 fro 1970s, when 2018's 80+ were 20-29 - it's actually 69.7" [2], men in the US are getting shorter over time, so unless people naturally shrink 2" with age the data points to shorter people having lower risk of death.

1. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/series/sr_03/sr03-046-508.pdf

2. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/ad/ad347.pdf

New comment by pandaman in "Pixel Watch 5"

pandaman — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 12:09:17 +0000

If it's not in the bed then its vibrating not going to reach you, what wakes you up is the noise it makes while vibrating on some surface and this noise is heard by others just as well.

New comment by pandaman in "US conducted mass spying campaign against leftwing and anti-ICE protesters"

pandaman — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 01:17:43 +0000

Not sure about tomhow, but dang (and sama before him) commented on this many times, it's called "flamewar detector" if you want to search. Here is the first link I've found: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39232311 (here he does not say it's flagged, just demoted so I might be misremembering, but I am pretty sure I read that it can flag too).

New comment by pandaman in "Dear people who work at the airport"

pandaman — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 19:09:19 +0000

I see. It's how they stay in business - even if they pay minimum wage to the mechanics they are still not going to make rent servicing Walmart/Amazon specials. And even if the owners agreed to pay the labor/parts, which are more expensive on these than on bikes from reputable manufacturers and definitely more than the bike itself costs, they are still going to be priced out of their insurance in the long run (especially on Amazon e-bikes).

New comment by pandaman in "Dear people who work at the airport"

pandaman — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 17:48:50 +0000

Sure, but if you ask him what he has done to the car is he going to say "There was a boo-boo on the thingie in your wheel and I fixed it!"?

New comment by pandaman in "Dear people who work at the airport"

pandaman — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 17:28:33 +0000

What do you actually mean? Bikes have parts with names that are not common knowledge, do they use these names instead of showing you pictures or something? It's same with every trade: a car mechanic, a carpenter, a plumber etc will use the proper names for the things they work with. If you don't know what these names mean - just ask.

New comment by pandaman in "US conducted mass spying campaign against leftwing and anti-ICE protesters"

pandaman — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 16:17:36 +0000

It's one possibility but what happens to these political threads is, more likely, auto-flag due to having more downvotes than comments. This always catches redditors by surprise because, I figure, on Reddit it's an encouraged behavior.

New comment by pandaman in "Pixel Watch 5"

pandaman — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 14:33:06 +0000

Indeed, I didn't see studies so my theory is that most people find sleeping with a phone in the bed much more uncomfortable than with a watch on the wrist.

New comment by pandaman in "Pixel Watch 5"

pandaman — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 20:41:16 +0000

Tbqh, it's the problem for Garmin itself - they want to sell new Fenix every year but the old one is already very good so they are segmenting their own product by holding off updates on the old watches for now but it's only going to work for so long until there is either nothing to update or they push down their value under that of competition's. E.g. Google could give Garmin a scare of its life if they made a watch with a MIP display, ANT+ support and power profile to run GPS for 8-10 hours - I'd buy such a watch from Google instead of Garmin just because Google is going to support it for longer (not that Google is known for longevity of its support but it's still better than Garmin's).

New comment by pandaman in "Pixel Watch 5"

pandaman — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 03:02:28 +0000

The killer feature of modern watches is the vibration alarm - you can wake up even if you use earplugs/headphones/noise machine and you won't wake up anyone else along with you. Health stuff like sleep tracking is likely useful for the vast majority of population, at least to everyone who needs time and thus lives on a schedule of some sort, without the possibility to fall asleep and wake up whenever one feels like it.

I too don't see how the ability to run apps is of any value so I use "sports" watch instead of a "smart" watch, which gives me better screen and better battery life in exchange of a smaller number of apps I won't ever run. Though the battery life is not an issue and smartwatch users I know charge their watch while in the shower.

New comment by pandaman in "License plate reader searches should require a warrant"

pandaman — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 20:56:02 +0000

"Yes, this is why" is in reference to scale here? I don't see how it's "why". Cell phone tracking follows you where a police officer physically cannot follow you (on private property, for example). This is why, not because of scale.

New comment by pandaman in "The USSR in 100 Photographs"

pandaman — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 14:41:02 +0000

Yes, only slight. Ethnic tension exists literally everywhere to a certain degree. It's least significant in a nation state with 90%+ dominant people like China. It's crucial in a union without a single people making the majority of population and built-in separation of peoples like the USSR.

New comment by pandaman in "The USSR in 100 Photographs"

pandaman — Sat, 08 Aug 2026 15:14:10 +0000

They were pragmatic and tried to reform. The problem that China did not have were ethnic tensions. Every SSR believed that it contributes more than it receives from the union and its people are oppressed. The only force holding them together was the ideology.

New comment by pandaman in "US DOT deleting bike lane references"

pandaman — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 14:26:46 +0000

I am not assuming anything, this "I live in, where the bike lanes do exist, yeah, the cyclists will pass right by, so you don't even notice them unless you're at the intersection where they are." indicates that you don't notice cyclists passing by (they are vehicles too).