Tell HN: Toilet paper, hand sanitizer, and now web cams A Logitech 925e ($99 USD MSRP) currently goes for $180-$260 on eBay and $358 on Amazon. |
Tell HN: Toilet paper, hand sanitizer, and now web cams A Logitech 925e ($99 USD MSRP) currently goes for $180-$260 on eBay and $358 on Amazon. |
Not to mention destructive hysterical hoarding. There is someone in this thread who noticed an extreme shortage in webcams so when only two were left in a shop, he bought both.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_controls#Criticism
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_gouging#Opposition_to_la...
I have mine always disabled, before the new Lenovo's it was tape, not Lenovo has the disable built into the hardware, I super glued mine to the closed position
Here's a good video that gives a run down: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BLgS7m0W94
A $10 webcam I picked up 5-10 years ago vastly outperforms my fancy Logitech which my work bought for me.
Coincidentally, eBay, AliExpress, etc. have a bunch of cheap ones, but with long lead times (shipped from China). I can't vouch for specific models.
Edit: Maybe I'm antisocial, but I have talking meetings all of the time with people I know well, but never feel the need for video.
Which means resources needed at this instant are instead sitting idle, at best awaiting higher prices at some arbitrary future date. And earnings, rather than going to producers, are wasted on pointlessly destructive arbitrage. So in crisis, the market has led us into a soviet style toilet paper shortages for no reason. Not to mention far more important critical supplies.
I can't know what was said in your classes. Assuming no control on prices in a crisis, did they say how holding a large stockpile of a rarely needed item for the long term with it's associated storage cost and risk is in some way more profitable than simply cornering the local market on the commodity at the time it is needed and indeed helping those prices rise rather than fall? In honesty, that may be a hidden assumption against price gouging more than an ideal market example used in a classroom.
At any rate, few if any mainstream economists suggests that sudden monopolization of emergency commodities that are needed immediately but briefly during a crisis would be remotely a good thing. It is more a Cato institute / libertarian position driven by ideology rather than real world data and history which consistently refute it. It is also why no sane society allows it in emergencies on crucial goods.
As if to prove the point, the theory has just been tested yet again: there are no world wide government price caps on toilet paper and yet there is an enduring shortage at the moment.
If interested in this, here is a Nobel prize winning economist writing right now on the issue:
These still seem to be available, though you'll need to be careful with them or build a box.
There also is no flour. Mmm, I mean « normal » flour.
Was in Tesco yesterday for the (now) weekly shop visit and they were putting bags and bags of flour.
But only self raising and plain ones. I wonder if the producers of the flour do this on purpose (those flours are way more expensive than basic ones)
So there's flour - it's just not in your distribution chain.
Flour is out there it's just not making it to the shelves.
Now the ones that did open up to retail customers seem widely sold out of the desirable stuff...
most of it's out of stock as of right now, but they're updating their stock every day. I was able to order a 25 pound bag of flour from them yesterday. Take a look in the morning and you may have some luck.
Wanted to have a light, cheap one from Sennheiser (one of those for 20 €) for homeoffice use. Sold out on Amazon. Estimated delivery mid or late May.
And it's like that for all the inexpensive "business headphones". If you want some shiny-blinky-bulky-"gamer headset", Amazon will be happy to send you a dozen till tomorrow morning.
It's crazy.
What's more of a problem I might run into soon is that my setup was already out of date for video calls; this seems increasingly like a hard expectation rather than an optional plus; and the pseudo-docking way I use my primary laptop at my desk doesn't currently allow me to orient the builtin camera so that it catches my expression at a reasonable angle while also letting me leave the monitor in front of me. Putting the laptop where my monitor currently is might be workable, but it could also get squint-inducing at that distance… I might have to play around with this.
Others at the company have bought similar items over the past couple of weeks too, and they are an increasing presence at conference calls. I wouldn't be surprised if the non-blinkenlight variants were the next item to go on scalpers' hot list.
I really don't see the need for super-high-res webcams for work meeting (unless you have to stream a whole room).
Sound correction for dead rooms or echo-y rooms would be nice too. If AI can magically "fix" video with almost no pixels and poor sound a hundred years old, they should be able to apply it to webcam broadcasts.
The other thing is old phones and tablets. Wipe them, root, install something like Lineage and then get an IP camera app, dead simple and provides a second display for what you're presenting on the camera.
The other option I was looking at was just picking up a cheap chrome book with a camera built in.
I haven't yet tried fixing it, because honestly, nobody really needs to see any of... this. As I gesture vaguely at myself.
Video conferencing is vastly overrated. I'd rather share an image of my desktop or a drawing canvas.
(Granted, there were some 'rona-caused supply chain problems with the headsets and also Half Life: Alyx just was released, but still.)
It makes sense now I've seen it happen, but I've always associated food shortages with austerity - instead I'm suddenly buying premium organic free range duck eggs.
One of my co-workers mentioned there is an android app that sets up a server on the phone and it allows you to turn your phone into a web cam for your computer.
I also just discovered that certain DSLR cameras can be used as web cams with certain software.
Amazon's been sold out of current-gen iPad Mini's for a while too. (Though regular iPads are there.)
Global supply chains are disrupted, so all sorts of random individual products are either jumping in price or sold out, while plenty of other ones are perfectly fine. But aside from masks/TP/sanitizer/rice and similar, I'm not seeing a lot of whole product-category trends.
The resulting camera angle is just perfect [1], and the iPad's camera is excellent compared to a laptop's.
[1] Tom Ford's guide on how to look good on a video conference. Tip 1: camera should for top of head.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/07/style/tom-ford-video-chat...
A bit pricey software, but now I can put transparent images or greenscreen the output, which gives daily amusement to the team :).
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_controls#Criticism [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_gouging#Opposition_to_la... [3]: https://economics.stackexchange.com/a/34439/27218
I feel your pain :( couple days ago someone posted this: https://jami.net
So there is no point in making higher resolution cameras, that won't run 5 frames per second.
Besides, high-end phones have very good cameras nowadays but they sell for a $1000 and upward. The typical webcam budget is rather in the $20-30 range. If you're willing to put hundred(s) in a webcam, like businesses and streamers, there are good options.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/616210/average-internet-...
Anecdotally, my local ISP has gone from everyone getting 10/1 to 100/5 in the base package in the last few years.
I've got 500/500 MBit/s at home. 10 years ago I had about 30, but even that is more than sufficient to stream high quality video.
And this is not a "first-world" country even.
Now I'm using my Nikon d800 with 85mm lens to get a video feed that doesn't suck and pick up my entire messy home office - but it's an overkill, messy, and reduces lifespan of my camera. Boo all around!
This is a thing that definitely could and should be improved.
No. This is not panic-buying or hoarding. There are actual supply chain disruptions, shifting demands, fewer workers going to work, and things just aren't keeping up with major disruptions to economic structures based on low margins, having just enough capacity, and doing everything just-in-time.
They're addressable, but we're not addressing them. Instead everyone tells themselves pretty stories about how the problems aren't real, and everyone else seems to believe it.
As far as I can tell, no one actually keeps an eye on these things either. We have no idea if we will have too much or not enough food in 6 months, and my guess is not enough (B2C producers aren't scaling up due to pretty stories, while B2B ones are shutting down due to lack-of-demand).
Our current political system is invested in manipulating the truth to poke your political rivals in the eye; and there's no way you can keep an eye on things if you fire everyone who doesn't tell you what you want to hear...
The more expensive options are just another form of demand lever: some people will be unwilling to buy a $5 carton of eggs even if it means walking away with no eggs. I suspect a lot of people are just buying the expensive eggs -- which is likely a huge boon for "premium" food vendors as they typically have to account for a larger % of unsold product loss.
Canned Tomatoes, 2.5 kg cans available. 500g cans: out.
Pasta, 500g Spaghetti? Forget it. 5kg bulk: Available.
Yeast, regular cubes: no way. Ordering half a kilo of dry yeast: no problem.
It's just that as a regular normal family, 500g of yeast will get you through a year or two, depending on how much you bake (that's about the equivalent of 75 packets of dry yeast) But that stuff is also impossible to repackage into smaller quantities without exposing it to spoilage. There's a few supermarkets in Berlin that sell unpackaged stuff (basically you bring your own reusable container and they fill it for you) and they're well stocked in flour, pasta and stuff since they solve the repackaging issue at the point of sale.
Same question regarding all the food normally sold to restaurants and companies that are now closed.
Repacking is entirely infeasible for a lot of products - re-canning 2.5kg of canned tomato concentrate is a bit of a mess.
So supply chains will adapt, but that takes time. Some things may be out of stock for a while - I would not expect any substantial quantities of italian brand pasta to show up on the German market for quite a bit. We’ll probably have to rely on German pasta (different flour, often with egg unlike Italian)
We’ll not starve, but we’ll have to live without some stuff we’ve learned to expect as part of our regular diet.
A 1080p video on Netflix today has lower quality (bitrate) than a 720p video on Youtube 5 years ago. The only reason Netflix HD works for so many people is because Netflix has lowered the standard of what was considered HD.
Here in South Korea, 100M symmetric is the bare minimum. For just a few dollars more, you can upgrade to an "up to 500M" plan that usually provides something like 300M symmetric. Often, upload speeds are even faster than download speeds because there's less congestion in that direction.
Where was the US mentioned, and how is this relevant?
Fact is, x265 can do 25-33% smaller size than x264 for equivalent visual quality. The higher gain at higher resolutions (2k, 4k) that were not well supported by older codecs anyway. You can refer to Netflix own papers on that.
Services doing half the bandwidth have reduced quality. The improvement in codec can only explain half the reduction, the other half is grossly lowering quality (to reduce costs and work with mediocre home connections). That's not necessarily bad for customers, better have a pseudo HD stream than no stream.
I picked the US as a worst-case example because it has some of the most asymmetric broadband plans in the developed world. How on Earth does an ISP get away with selling something like 100/5?
I would also say 5mbps upload is hardly an upgrade. A single FaceTime call uses a couple mbps, so it’s probably just enough for that, assuming everyone in the neighborhood isn’t uploading too, which they are nowadays.
Specific data on upload speeds is harder to come by, but https://www.tomsguide.com/us/internet-speed-what-you-need,ne... says "According to Ookla, the average U.S. broadband download speed is 96 Mbps and average upload speeds are now at 33Mbps."
The ISPs can claim whatever numbers they want, but the real test is what it feels like when you use it.
So to quote a source, that is not my brain: from 2017 to 2018 upload speeds went up 22%
https://www.vox.com/2018/12/12/18134899/internet-broafband-f...
There’s a reason it’s never advertised by cable ISPs.
Its definitely improving on average.
The average of 9 households having broadband and 1 having gigabit fiber may be 100 Mbps theoretically, but practically that's 9 people who can't use a HD webcam.
This is... not the case?
Broadband ADSL has a total usable bandwidth around 20/1 Mbps due to how it works, that goes down significantly as a home is further from the phone center. Many homes won't get any better than 5/0.5 as they're kilometers away.
A single fiber can do a Tbps both ways. The difference is night and day.
Define "fairly recently". I haven't paid per-text in over a decade.
The part that ignores the existence of cable internet? Or the fact that plenty of people are on cell phones for their broadband usage?
The available options are more than "DSL, fiber, or nothing".
Anything on the ISP network is most likely fiber (or Ethernet within one building), so symmetric both ways.
That’s why they fight municipal fiber installation in court. If they didn’t do this, they wouldn’t be so evil, and also why fiber internet needs to be a utility, like electricity, water, gas, and sewage.
Also, since the media companies are also the owners of the wire in the case or Comcast, they can prioritize their traffic and de prioritize competitor’s traffic.
You will also need a USB a-a cable that I didn't know existed or was legal.
And a 32gb microsd.
I did this last week, came in one day on Amazon prime. Under $50 for everything.
Setup went okay, although the 3-4 minutes for firmware write was under a minute for me with their branded microsd.
Quality is passable, lens is more fisheye than I'd prefer so you see my messy office, but it works. 1080/30 the software claims. Note it has a speaker, so check your sound mixer settings to have it not steal audio out.
https://support.wyzecam.com/hc/en-us/articles/360041605111-W...
Read this blog series about Wyze, and then make up you mind if you are comfortable having that piece of hardware in your home. I think it is pretty clear the risks are not trivial.
They are a great cheap option when using their custom RTSP firmware with synology surveillance stations. I throw them on their own SSID that is isolated from other local networks and does not have internet access. The SS can reach into their network but they can't initiate connections out.
Still they briefly need internet when setting up to enable RTSP but I'm more concerned about them being remotely accessible at anytime and having access to anything else on my network. Even my setup would allow my email and the isolated network's topo to leak bc of brief internet access.
So the risks are mitigated for the most part since it has no network connection.
Holy cow. And easy to do if you found their unsecured database.
They exist, but are not allowed by the USB standard. The basic premise of the classic USB standard is that the A side provides the 5V power, while the B side consumes that 5V power. With an A to A cable, you are shorting both power supplies together.
(USB-C changes that to resistors; IIRC, the side with the pull-up resistors will initially provide the 5V power, while the side with the pull-down resistors will initially consume the 5V power. The passive adapters to classic USB just have the correct pair of resistors for the corresponding classic USB plug or socket.)
I don't use wyze normally, not sure what the type a female port is for.
It's a hack on top of a hack that functions reasonably, and helps with supply chain issues.
I assume in the first paragraph you mean a usb A cable with plugs on both ends
The normal function of a security camera is also good, however, a warning that these contain active microphones. So if you transition to using these as indoor, facing-outdoor security cams to strongly consider pulling the microphone from the circuit board. There are youtube videos, it can be done easily in under 10 minutes.
There is a software disable, but I do not believe this can be trusted.
Search for "USB camera" or "machine vision camera".
https://www.amazon.com/Spinel-Support-1920x1080-Compliant-Ad...
https://www.amazon.com/Intel-Realsense-D435-Webcam-FPS/dp/B0... (bonus! it's a depth camera but it does have RGB output as well)
https://www.amazon.com/ELP-degree-megapixel-fisheye-aluminum...
Also, toilet paper is in stock at several industrial suppliers, and especially the jumbo rolls (I'm sure if you're on HN you can improvise a way to hold those). I'm not going to list specific ones here but you probably know the usual suspects if you have ordered for a company before. It's mostly sold out only at consumer outlets.
I've tried workarounds using the excellent OSB, but there's currently no software that let's you reroute video on a Mac (like Loopback does for audio)
EDIT: I stand corrected, as user wolfhumble points out below, EpocCam seems to do this - thanks! https://apps.apple.com/us/app/epoccam-webcamera-for-computer...
Of course, using a 42.4 Megapixel sensor and a Carl Zeiss Sonnar lens it would.
https://www.elgato.com/en/gaming/cam-link-4k
Turns a HDMI input into a USB web cam.
I heard about the webcam thing from my boss, he asked me if he gave me a webcam years ago when I started remote working. He did, but it was in the attic and I had to go looking for it ;)
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/food-and-wine/article-f...
If you’re feeling really hacky you might be able to do without the capture card and use gphoto2 to stream your camera over usb, and then use something like OBS virtual am or V4l2loopback. This is fiddly though and only works with a few cameras.
Would you prefer a shortage with no incentive to increase production?
Ran into the problems mentioned in the article, and put a Logitech camera onto pre-order.
Cancelled that order last night though: possible to use an android phone as a webcam that's most likely better quality than the current generator of USB webcam. I chose this app [1], others are available.
[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pas.webcam...
I resorted to buying a magewell hdmi-2-usb converter. Better quality, I can focus and zoom from further away (no huge nose) and depending on your gear you have automatic background blurring (aperture+sensor size)
You can download an "NDI" apk for your cell phone since the manufacturer removed the app from the play store, to provide the ability for an android phone to serve as a network display interface (of course it's your risk to download APKs from a random site)
There's also a windows driver, but I haven't used that yet
Get a UVC industrial camera with a M12 or CS mount lens to use as a webcam, most are better cameras than the "webcam" models and not everyone has noticed UVC cameras _are_ webcams so the prices are normal.
I grabbed one with an OV2710 sensor (does 1920x1080@30fps, 1280×720@60, and so on) and a 2.8-12mm CS lens for $65 that took a little over a week to arrive (I paid a slight premium from Amazon instead of Aliexpress because it looked like there was US stock... turned out to be the same seller shipping from the same place in China. Oh well).
I'm trying to limp the hands-on portion of some sophomore-level EE courses to the end of the semester, so I've got mine mounted as an overhead camera for drawing/demonstrating/etc. the crap laptop built-in is plenty for facecam.
The major problem is getting the video conferencing apps not to drop cameras to super-low quality, Zoom usually won't even use the full resolution mode of my built-in (except occasionally and apparently at random it decides to and changes the frame by selecting a 16x9 mode instead of the 4:3 it usually picks), and offers no real camera settings that I can find.
Funny enough, at that moment, I just thought it was because Amazon had problem on stocking and delivery. I didn't even realize it's because of the high demand for remote work etc.
I imagine professional headsets are under similar price constraints because on the BBC I've seen at-home reporters using gaming headsets with RGB LEDs.
iriun
droidcam
Turns out your phone's selfie / front camera and microphone is vastly superior to most laptop webcams. Grab yourself selfie tripod. Lots of compliments about picture and sound quality. Coincidentally WSJ covered this topic yesterday.
I haven't tried this, but will ask one of our team to give it a go and confirm - that would make a more affordable option around £40 or so.
Disclaimer: Co-founder of Pimoroni (Raspberry Pi re-seller)
Where items are available, I actually would like to know who's profiteering before sending them my money.
Unfortunately it isn’t working anymore on one of my Catalina installs. Which is my primary daily driver. Luckily works on secondary older Mac that I use for Zoom frequently. Will try it out, thanks!
Seems to be the case across the board though, I bought some Microsoft LifeCam Studios because Microsoft had some in stock. But couldn't find much else anywhere else.
It's not the shops' fault, it's the economics of the industry. Economies of scale mean for some products, Amazon's retail price will be lower than the shop's wholesale price. Cashflow and volumes make it hard to stock a broad range of expensive items like CPUs and laptops. Competent help can often do better than retail wages and working conditions.
> You can get an external webcam—although top models are sold out across the web. ( Logitech says it’s increasing production and distribution to meet the new demand.)
https://www.wsj.com/articles/living-the-coronavirus-work-fro...
I'm just grateful that we have food in the stores at the moment.
Case in point: you wanted to buy a new webcam, not because you needed one, but because you felt it was time to do so. You can't, because the prices are too high. But for someone for whom a webcam is essential (think a doctor providing televisits to patients), a high price isn't as much of a deterrent (within reason).
Because you couldn't/wouldn't buy at the higher price, there was stock available for the doctor who absolutely needed the device.
Are they? Or are all the people who used to go to the now shutdown bars and restaurants, where their beers and wines were supplied by the bars/restaurants, and therefore, commercial supply houses, now drinking at home instead, and so there is much more purchasing on the retail side, resulting in shortages because the retail side was not ready for a substantial X% instant increase in consumption?
I.e., all the beer/wine that used to flow via the commercial supply houses now has to flow via the retail stores.
Maybe smaller stores in cities are shorter on inventory but out where I live any shortages are minimal. (Even though supermarkets are out of the usual items like paper goods.)
At the time, alcohol became currency.
Couple of weeks ago there was no stock for C922 on Amazon, but was able to purchase it direct from Logitech. Shipping was free I think and it arrived in week or so.
Razer Kiyo as well, direct from Razer.
A week later, maybe the wife would like one: none to be found. You can still get a Switch Lite, though.
I guess companies really are just making exactly the number of units they need to make, nothing more.
PS. To make it work you need to install a driver on your PC, so it can be a no-go for many company owned computers.
With my old battery, the sessions were... short. So I managed to snatch a Brio last week, and I'm much more satisfied.
Also since gamers don't care about color accuracy, I have a feeling they didn't give two shits about preservation of color accuracy in the Razer Ripsaw HD. The settings for color space is suepr whack.
Supply chains really haven’t had a chance to react to the change in demand & won’t be able to until Chinese manufacturing has a chance to ramp up to meet demand I guess.
https://myomigo.com/products/element
Has not arrived yet so I can not say if I recommend it yet or not but from the research I did it seemed like people who tested the different range of attachments pretty much liked all of them regardless of price so I probably overpaid. The one criteria we had was that my girlfriend wanted a front spray as well which the Omigo has.
Try cleaning your hands with paper instead of water some day, and see how that works out for you. It's the same thing.
Also specifically Ring Fit Adventure for Nintendo Switch, that allows you to exercise from home. It's been sold out worldwide, with limited numbers showing up in stores and immediately disappearing.
Plus the government can act as a central buyer to back those who have the greatest needs. That and companies should be responsible for providing protection for employees
I don't even understand how that works.
And since raising prices to increase profits is not necessary with hugely increased damand, it's seen as profiteering to do so on essentials (or in this case things that make you feel less isolated) during a global crisis.
For what it's worth, this isn't how "supply and demand" works in economics.
The idea is that a given firm is already producing as much as they can at that price. There's not usually a ton of slack just laying around that could respond to a spike in demand. For instance, my wife who works at a soap factory right now, has seen a ton of demand. They would love to increase production to accommodate but it's just not immediately possible, without retooling the factory. They're managing to increase supply a little, by not offering as many varieties of scents and such, but that's the extent of what they can do immediately.
The reason prices increase with an increase in demand, according to standard economics orthodoxy, is because that allows more firms to enter the market, as well as existing firms to do less efficient things (more workers, more expensive supply chain, etc), to meet that demand.
This assumes that you can actually scale production to 10,000 units (a plant that can produce 100 items a month is not necessarily one that can produce 1000), that your typical channels can absorb said production (if they need to hold inventory, they likely cannot), that you have enough packaging supplies for your increased inventory (a real problem being encountered at the moment), the list goes on. Supply chains are not linear. You can have valid issues with price gouging despite this fact, but simply saying "increase production, problem solved" is an extremely uninformed position.
On the other hand, prices quickly get out of control if left to their own devices. Some say that's natural, and perhaps it is, but that doesn't mean it's good all the time.
As for increasing production, this is one thing where raising prices can actually decrease the incentive to increase production. For literally the same money that I was using to create 100 units per month, I'm now getting the same profit that 10000 units per month would have given me. Why would I spend money to increase production, thus increasing supply which reduces demand, which lowers prices, which lowers profits?
You see the problem?
Alas, the world is rather more complicated than that. Case in point, this Dallas surgical mask factory that is not running overtime, because the hospitals screwed him over last emergency, and he almost went out of business:
https://www.dallasnews.com/news/watchdog/2020/04/03/if-you-i...
And more to the point: you have no idea. Prices are emergent from trillions of decisions, and are used to communicate a great deal of information. People want to act like it's an engineering problem where we can dial up and down one part without affecting other parts, but anyone who has worked even on a controlled marketplace knows this isn't true.
Go read "I, Pencil" https://fee.org/resources/i-pencil/
Pivoting a factory on a dime to make something else is hard, but often doable by the experts for sufficiently loose definitions of “on a dime”.
Pivoting a factory on a dime to make something else that’s cost competitive with the factories designed and built to do that something else already is impossible. It’s like trying to build a car from junkyard parts to run in F1 races. And old prices will reflect the cost savings those old factories were achieving.
The camera is adequate (I've done a fair amount of computational photography work recently, overly opinionated to follow), it's not hitting anything like the advertised high frame rate/low res modes in guvcview, but is making the 30-60fps higher res modes that matter for webcam use. It's USB2 and enumerated as UVC 1.0 so I can't say I'm surprised. The crop changes in somewhat surprising ways among the modes, I think the readout does a mixture of crop and binning or line skipping. It's not a nice Basler module or anything, but it costs less than 20% what the nominally-comparable offering from "good brands" would.
The lens is ...eh, I have noticeable barrel distortion and vignetting, but its clear, doesn't have the annoying color corruption you sometimes see in cheap C/CS lenses, and the FoV is nice for webcam duty.
It's a damn slight better than the old PS3 eye I was getting by with until it showed up, and being able to easily manually manipulate zoom/focus/aperture instead of hoping the auto does something good is great.
https://www.baslerweb.com/en/products/cameras/
https://www.alliedvision.com/en/digital-industrial-camera-so...
These cameras most likely DO HAVE a NIR (near IR) filter on the sensors. You would need to check on specific models.
Basler provides some documentation for removing the filter from specific camera models.
https://www.baslerweb.com/en/sales-support/downloads/documen...
The desktop app allows you to toggle the handy LED flash for better front lighting, to lock exposure, to trigger autofocus, and to adjust white balance.
I tried it first with the free version, which doesn't allow HD video. The full version is a few dollars; doesn't contain ads.
I have no connection to the developers, but am a happy user. Works flawlessly anywhere a webcam is expected (for me so far: skype, Zoom, Jitsi).
The desktop app is open source, but unfortunately not the android app. I was surprised not find an open source version of this concept (and don't currently have the time to develop it).
Not sure if it's still valid, but "handy" has a different meaning in slang:
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=handy
Again, a native speaker might consider different, but as a german the usage of "handy" immediatley caught my eye. :D
Haven't sprung for the paid version though as I am hoping the back ordered webcam I purchased at the start of this comes in the next few weeks.
Remember to rebuild the kernel module if your kernel gets updated!
Of course, a simple lapel would be a much better investment if you don't have any of that equipment.
This (referral) link provides a discount on all of their standing desks/chairs: https://www.autonomous.ai/?rid=f1ef57&utm_campaign=referrals...
Couldn't be happier with the dual motor I bought a few weeks ago.
I had an adjustable drafting table when I worked at Boeing and it never occurred to me that it needed a motor.
IKEA also has three "proper" standing desks (that you can adjust their height without doing the aforementioned) but they cost x2 and x5 of my desk, and I don't really care to change the height that often/ever.
(I don't work for Ikea, I just don't want to pay $1000 for something I can make with $100 (and have a better pension when I retire).
I even did a lightning talk on my Ikea standing desk once. It's fun and relatively easy to build.
(Don't forget a pad to stand on)
The traditional USB connection has a host with a USB A socket, which provides power; a cable with a USB A plug in one end and a USB B plug in the other end; and a device with a USB B socket. All traditional USB cables are A to B cables, with a USB A plug and a USB B plug; an A to A cable would allow connecting two hosts together, and both would try to provide power at the same time, which might damage the hardware.
USB-C is completely different; all cables have two USB-C plugs, while both hosts and devices have USB-C sockets. Which side provides power is negotiated through a dedicated configuration channel.
USB A is a rectangle, and USB B is closer to a square. I've also never seen anything aside from female USB ports and male/male USB cables (aside from extension cables).
Type C is bi-directional, so can replace either or both plugs.
https://itsolutionindia.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/usb-tuto...
Is the driver signed? If not, you have to enable "test mode" and windows will drop a God-awful watermark in the bottom right of your desktop letting you know "test mode" is on. It's one of the seemingly-small things that bugs me the most about it.
> Yi Camera is a front for the Chinese Ministry of State Security. Full stop.
> Yi Cameras send all customer data to Xiaomi as I have previously claimed with Wyze.
Honestly I’m not familiar with the Yi cameras, I haven’t read that newest post, I’ll have to look into it. But, 12 Security is credited with disclosing the 2nd Wyze security breach in December 2019 (the 1st one not even a full calendar year before).
Wyze reluctantly admitted the breach days later, but went into damage control mode, claiming the DB was only exposed for part of the month of December. 12 Security says otherwise, that it was exposed for the majority of the calendar year, and many parties across the globe accessed it according to logs.
https://web.archive.org/web/20200306023236/https://www.nytim...
My main driver already has other minor issues like too much cpu usage from certain Mac processes etc. I’m sure if I took the time, I’d be able to get Camtwist working.
But yeah if for you it works depending on browser and software. Yeah age is showing.
So I don’t like my main MacBook Pro to be 190 F temp and mid cpu usage all the time since I’m on video a lot
So far I haven't been able to see any advantage at all to 1-to-1 calls except it takes fewer clicks to start them.
Between that and OBS Studio [0] which makes it easy to do green screen work, I'm having some real fun with our team meetings. Just make sure you get the virtual camera driver [1].
[1] https://obsproject.com/forum/resources/obs-virtualcam.539/
You can always ask around in your friendly neighborhood forum for a starter culture, there's a lot of people that are willing to share.
If you have bakers yeast, you can just feed it and multiply the amount trivially: Half a cube (20g) or 7g dry yeast, mix with 15g sugar, 100g flour, 100g water, let rise for an hour or two in a warm place. Fill in icecube form, freeze. Each cube is about half as strong as a "regular" cube, so you may need to experiment a little with rising time for your dough.
I did this last weekend and made a pretty good loaf (my first time).
BTW. My "local bakery" is probably in Estonia. In another country that is. Wider Helsinki area is under lockdown and yeast may not be approved essential.
I cannot stress enough how (especially) a standing desk needs to be super sturdy with children/dogs in the vicinity!!!
- https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dreamdroid...
- http://ip-webcam.appspot.com/
Any opinion on which one is best?
Have you encountered a similar hurdle?
I'm sure you've had brown streaks inside the bowl that could not be removed in N flushes, but a simple toilet brush made quick work of the matter.
To use your handwashing analogy, try removing crisco, or some other substance that adheres to your hands with a stream of water. Now try physically wiping it with a paper towel. The towel will win every time.
This is to say nothing of the fact that it's quite nice to leave the bathroom with dry hindquarters rather than a bad case of SA.
You've obviously never used a proper washlet.
Crack hair is useful for a lot of things, keeping skin from rubbing, fart silencing, sweat management, etc. But you only need a bit of hair for that to work. 80% of the length can be removed with no ill effect, but dramatic improvement in general cleanliness and comfort.
So if I ask an American to show me his "Handy", he knows that I want to see his "mobile phone"?
Because that's what "Handy" means in Germany. It's actually "mobile phone", hence the confusion. I learned that "Handy" is almost exclusively used in Germany.
("Mobile phone" isn't very common in the US either. Common usage used to be "cell phone" or "smart phone", but is now simply "phone".)
Their area-scan features turned out to be unsuitable for what I'd hoped to use it for, but having looked at Pylon in determining that, I really wish I'd been able to, because the alternative I ended up with has been closer to "magnetized needle and steady hand" than "lovely API."
Of course, if the user doesn't need to regularly change between sitting and standing, that might not matter.
In those cases, you do not feel any weight.
This also goes for those irritating slow electric versions where you need to hold a button down for 30 sec.
If you really need, run a reverse proxy only on the /video endpoint. For I don't know how hardened the focus and automation control APIs are.
The project is doing a sort of frameless capture off a conventional sensor, so I was hoping to use Stacked ROI as a sort of threshold trigger for selective updates, but (for entirely good technical reasons) there are ordering, size, and number limitations on how the regions can be configured.
