It's possible that when nobody is working in the room, the lights aid in maintaining a sterile environment.
At specific wavelengths (~245-265 nm), (UV) light inactivates quite a few living things. As light is quantized, the purpleish color you see is due to e- stepping down.
My UVC bulbs deployed in a FL home water treatment system pipe out UV in the region of 253.7nm. An ophthalmologist friend pointed out that unfiltered long term exposure to these wavelengths first catalyzes conjunctivitis (pink eye) then conditions go down hill from there. It's suggested that you don't stare directly at sources of this purplish color for any protracted periods.
Nope. Our bio hoods have a toggle switch. Lights off is in the middle, lights on is one direction, UV sterilization is the other direction. To turn the lights on, you have to turn the UV off.
The first n cords to be plugged in becomes a primary (read full) charge cord.
Once n primary cords are in use, any subsequent cords start as secondary (read trickle charge -- an aside, do EV's really need to be trickle charged). Again, in order of arrival, the secondary cords are put into a queue.
As the initial batch of n cars reach full charge (or maybe 90%), primary cords swap functionality with the next secondary cord in the queue.
Design has really never been Pebble's strong point.
Secondly (call me close-minded) I honestly don't get what use/niche 'Smart Watches' fill.
Got a notification? Whip out your phone.
Got a notification and need to respond? Whip out your phone.
Got a notification and need to respond but are 10 meters away from your phone? Sprint like hell to your phone...or conversely, wait till you find your way back to your phone.
Got a notification but don't want to obnoxiously check your phone in front of your significant other/friend/coworker/familymemeber/human? Newsflash: You're still being obnoxious when you check your watch/Glass.
Want to change your music? Come on, your phone lockscreen does that in one button touch too.
Want to check your "team's score"? Google Now. NFL app. Lockscreen changers. Etc.
Want to have a watch that works underwater? See above link.
Want to customize your watchband? See above above link.
Want to read it in sunlight? ...
Want to wake up (assuming you charge it at some other time) with it's gentle vibrations? Lots of smartphone apps ( and of course Jawbone Up, Nike Fuel Band, FitBit, etc) do that as well.
Want to know the time? Well...Sure.
I just don't really understand the rationale behind smart-watches [as they currently stand].
[Edit: I've read the below comments and I now understand.]
Fish your phone out of your pocket or bag, unlock the screen, pull down the notification bar, navigate to the app...
vs
Look at your wrist.
Pebble is quite convenient especially when you're on the go. Walking while staring at your phone is quite hazardous. Also, when my phone is in my pocket, I usually don't hear it ring but I definitely feel when something strapped to my wrist vibrates.
Does it really matter if you hear it or not though?
My phone is in my pocket. I don't need to respond to every minor notification. The only important one is when it rings and it makes a lot of noise then as well.
It does to me. I have notifications set up to appear from things I care about - and now I can see them instantly, which means I'm not pulling my phone out of my pocket to check for them when they haven't actually appeared yet, just in case.
I've been watching my fiancé use his Pebble for a few months now and I think it's useful. It's basically the convenience in knowing the time, except you also get more information on everything (his face shows time, weather, phone battery, and calendar info) with reliable one-touch actions (touchid on our iPhone 5s's became moot while we had gloves on in Boston a few days ago so there goes any "one touch" actions on a phone in one common case). For a lot of people a watch is pointless or purely a status item in the first place.
Although... it may be that I want one because my phone lives in my purse/bag since girl pants tend to avoid pockets like the plague, whereas men tend to have pants pockets where they can put their phone. It would take one second to look at a pebble vs a few seconds or more to look for my phone and a lot of the time, it's some trivial message that could have waited but there's only so much sound/notification customization I can do. I could be shaving a couple minutes and a bunch of effort and annoyance every single day with a Pebble.
Unfortunately, as you mention, design has never been their strong point. I don't think I can walk around with one and not have it look like a bulky mens watch.
You're missing the utility it provides if you use specific applications built for the watch.
I have built tennis and squash scoring apps.
I wear the watch day to day, however I get most value from the watch by keeping track of my racquet sport games from my wrist.
Not sure if you've played before but after a couple intensive rallies it is really easy to forget what the score was, or where the next serve needs to be from.
There are plenty of other custom applications people can use to assist them in day to day activities. Something my friend has mentioned is when riding his scooter, he can use google maps without looking at his phone because the notifications are pushed to his pebble...
I really like the idea of squash scoring on the watch. Is it the version on mypebblefaces?
I started out liking the alerts for using google maps, but ended up finding it intensely annoying when driving in the city since there ended up being far too many notifications when going through roundabouts etc (approaching, turn off roundabout, distance to next turn).
Relatively minor annoyances (including double notifications sometimes when unlocking) compared to the utility I get from it though.
The funny thing is I read all this stuff about people disliking the look of the plastic Pebble, but all I've heard from people who see it has been positive (I don't wear it as a dress watch though).
I bought a Pebble – thinking it'd be great to know who it was calling/texting me while I was riding my motorcycle, so I could decide whether to pull over and get my phone out of my pocket. It turns out that the answer is _always_ "No!". Now that I've had my Pebble for almost a year, I don't even look at it when I feel my phone ringing in my pocket while riding the bike.
It _has_ gotten me back in the habit of wearing a watch though, after something like 20 years of relying on a phone if I wanted to know the time I now feel like I'm "missing something" when I don't have it on my wrist.
(Turns out probably the most useful thing it does as a "smart watch" is being used as a replacement for the bicycle computer I lost - I now use Runkeeper running on my phone and the Pebble on my wrist to do the keeping track of speed/time/distance that I used to do with my ~$20 bike computer. Not a spectacularly successful outcome for a ~$130 toy…)
I have been using the Pebble for about a month. Being able to just glance at your wrist to check the notification is just so convenient. I don't have to take out my phone and then enter my password to check each and every notifications.
There are also a lot of interesting third party apps. The ones I like locks the phone and vibrates the Pebble if it the Pebble and phone are disconnected.
Smart watches are not useful if you are idle or nearly idle and the rate of notifications is low. But if you are busy or the rate of notifications is high then that changes dramatically.
What are some examples? Doing any physical work is a perfect example. Maybe you're cooking, or plugging together and configuring a rack full of networking or AV equipment, or soldering, or building a house, or basically doing any of the million things people do every day where an interruption long enough to check a smart phone is a serious disruption to the flow of work.
And what happens when you're not just receiving 1 notification per hour or even every 10 minutes but perhaps 10 notifications in 1 minute? Not all day, but all it takes is 10 notifications per minute to happen once or twice a day to make having a smart watch worthwhile.
It may not be the sort of thing that is ever useful to you, but that's fine, don't buy one. But they are plenty useful for a lot of people.
Well if you get that many notifications, I'd just start ignoring them / turning them off. Too much noise, too much distraction. Plus, it's probably not important / something one needs to respond immediately to.
It's not noise though. For me a smartwatch would replace a radio. With a radio you can easily pass a handful of messages back and forth every minute with low overhead, but with a smartphone that many messages becomes a burden. With a smart watch it's not a burden.
I've been wearing a Pebble for a little over a month now, and I find the key convenience of it is that I spend less time on my phone.
Before Pebble, I'd get one notification (perhaps from Facebook), but after checking that one notification, I end up getting lost while catching up on my entire News Feed.
Now, I glance at the Pebble. I get that one notification. If it's important, I act on it. Otherwise I dismiss it and go about living in the real world.
Pebble allows me to keep my phone in my pocket, which makes "whipping out my phone" the barrier to an action that will ultimately lead to my distraction.
Personally, I use my Pebble as a 2nd alert device - which is very handy for meeting alerts, as I don't have emails showing up on there, only SMS and meeting reminders - so if my Phone buzzes and I'm heads-down, I can ignore. If I'm wearing my Pebble and it buzzes (likely along with the phone), I pay attention.
That and my old watch died about a year before I got my Pebble, it's nice to have a watch again.
Well, as you are someone who has found their way onto this forum, I must assume you:
1. Are competent at reading.
2. Have visited, and used, the internet before.
Thus, the answer to your question, "Who is this guy" can be found on his WP site under the tab, 'About'. There, it states that he is:
1. Narula is a 19 year old sophomore at the University of Georgia studying Computer Science and Political Science
and
2. Gautam has also written a book on chess and a few Android apps.
When someone asks an obvious question, the interpreter of the question has two paths to choose.
(a) Assume the author is very stupid and then tell him the very stupid and obvious answer.
(b) Interpret the question as rhetorical.
People who take (a) are the type of people who think they're smarter than everyone else, but who are actually, in fact, dumber. Usually they lack empathy, are undersocialized, and probably show on the autism spectrum.
People who take (b) are the type of people who correctly interpret the statement.
The correct interpretation of my rhetorical question is to read it as a commentary on authority. Is this 1800 rated 19 year old really the proper authority to learn how to play chess? Wouldn't a professional chess teacher with decades of experience and a higher rating than 1800 be the correct authority to instruct us on the best methods to learn chess? Yes. They would be. There are thousands of these teachers.
Instead of pushing blogspam by amateurs onto the frontpage, if HN really wants to know how to learn chess, HN should just link one of the dozens of much more reputable books on this topic.
As a chess player all I can do is roll my eyes when a 19 year old with an 1800 rating and very few (none?) years of chess teaching experience proclaims himself an expert and gets upvoted for it. It's just absurd.
> are the type of people who think they're smarter than everyone else, but who are actually, in fact, dumber. Usually they lack empathy, are undersocialized, and probably show on the autism spectrum.
Projecting? Everything about both of your comments (above) suggest you fit this model perfectly.
In the opening of the article the author says:
> many people mentioned that they enjoyed playing chess but quit because of the sheer time commitment it took to get “good” at chess
So it's obviously not aimed at someone of your (supposed) skill level, but at others here who may be casual players. No need to be so nasty.
You've completed missed what I'm saying. I'm saying the best teachers for brand new chess players are those humans who specialize in rapidly training new chess players. The people who should write books on chess training are the people who have been doing it for 20+ years and actually have some authority. These people DO write books but apparently they're less interesting than some 19 year old posting his completely untested, unrefined, invalidated hunches. It's low quality content in a field where there is a LOT of high quality content.
If the article was targeted at expert chess players I wouldn't have said anything. Because expert chess players don't need to be told that there are better experts than 19 year old newbies. The fact that the article is targeted at beginners is what motivated me to speak up--beginners might not realize just how much quality information is out there and that they don't need to settle for the afternoon musings of a newbie.
A reasonable way of addressing this, would have been for you to write a short comment describing what you believe to be better resources, with links, and leave the nastiness out of it. Or a short blog post, and submit it.
As for your question:
> Is this 1800 rated 19 year old really the proper authority to learn how to play chess? Wouldn't a professional chess teacher with decades of experience and a higher rating than 1800 be the correct authority to instruct us on the best methods to learn chess?
My answer to that would be "I don't know". It depends on the material. I have more than enough times seen situations from my own fields of expertise where "professionals" with decades of experience have been shown up by relative beginners to be prepared to blindly accept an appeal to authority. Especially when you are not backing it up with any examples of why you believe his article is not good enough to be suitable to his stated audience.
> HN should just link one of the dozens of much more reputable books on this topic.
So give us a name, or a link, rather than spout vitriol.
Your reply sounds a bit fishy. Your second sentence "he doesn't explain why his advice is worth a damn" is inconsistent with a rhetorical question.
I agree he doesn't have much cred by the way, and his method is nothing new or special. But I think his advice is generally sound for an uneducated player who wants to improve.
I actually phrased my comment in the style of a marker who is marking some academic work, like an essay. The norm here is to address your points to the content of the paper itself and not appeal to outside information.
So my comment is more clearly saying, "This essay would be stronger if you used evidence or authority of some kind to back up the assertions you are making." This is actually a polite way of saying "You don't know what you're talking about and shouldn't be proclaiming yourself an expert on this topic."
> When someone asks an obvious question, the interpreter of the question has two paths to choose.
> (a) Assume the author is very stupid and then tell him the very stupid and obvious answer.
> (b) Interpret the question as rhetorical.
> People who take (a) are the type of people who think they're smarter than everyone else, but who are actually, in fact, dumber. Usually they lack empathy, are undersocialized, and probably show on the autism spectrum.
> People who take (b) are the type of people who correctly interpret the statement.
It's funny; people have been telling me my whole life that observing when other people ask obvious questions makes me a huge jerk, and I should patiently give them the obvious answers they ask for.
It's actually a very interesting problem. It depends entirely on the person and the extent to which they are conscious of the multitudinous implications of their statements.
But really, whoever has been giving you that advice is a dunce. I expect your being seen as a jerk has a lot more to do with how you negotiate people's feeling than how you interpret their statements. The people giving you that advice probably want you to stop being a jerk but can't quite articulate what they mean.
This is actually more interesting than whatever the fuck this thread was about. Hermeneutics is funnnn.
Well, my impression is that NathanthePie's answer was rhetorical, too - in other words, interpretation (a) was chosen deliberately and with full awareness of what you actually meant, for no other reason than rhetorical effect :)
At specific wavelengths (~245-265 nm), (UV) light inactivates quite a few living things. As light is quantized, the purpleish color you see is due to e- stepping down.