I’ll second this, it’s absolutely a game changer. I’ve used handlebar mounted mirrors and the like but I’ll never willingly go back.
I tend to prefer helmet mounted and I glue them on which isn’t my favorite thing to do on a new helmet. It’s also a bit frustrating when you find yourself cycling in a country that drives on the opposite side.
I do find that on very long tours the week following I’m looking where I’d expect the mirror to be when I want to look behind me.
This reminds me of an oft recommended book "Digital Apollo". One of the driving topics is the human interaction component and the difference in designing a fully automated system versus one that is designed with an operator that can intervene. If I recall correctly, the book presents a dichotomy between the rocketeers and pilots (automate entirely and strap people on for a ride vs design a system controlled by a human).
I think they both have their place, but I think acknowledging it as a system design choice is so helpful even in basic business processes (how will I handle exceptions, how will the person remember to handle a rare exception).
I find myself thinking of this problem frequently. We have lots of modern words for it like observability but I think that removes one a bit from the actual problem.
Hey HN! We're a jewelry retailer (~100 mall locations) going through the classic digital transformation story. Our tech stack is built on two endlessly upgraded systems from the 80s (Universe and Magix) that have finally hit EOL. We're modernizing everything - mainly moving to a new ERP (it's a desktop app built in Delphi/Interbase by a third party), plus some in-house stuff. Want to build something? Talk to the users, then build it. Got a better tool in mind? Let's use it. We're running this hybrid on-prem/Azure/AWS setup and trying to get our IaC game going.
What we need:
Someone who's worked with weird tech stacks before and can figure out obscure systems. Experience with retail/accounting is awesome but not required. Must know your way around version control and have strong opinions about your preferred editor for reasons.
Comfortable talking to users and solving their actual problems. Bonus points if you've done multiunit retail before
Some real problems we're tackling:
- Our credit application system is this web app Frankenstein'd together by various devs - it works but the database updates are a mess. Help me fix our autopayments.
- Distribution uses this configurable-but-unfriendly desktop app. Need someone to really get how it's used and make it better - maybe through RPA, maybe just better docs and UI labels.
- Work wherever you want. Occasional visits to Culver City helpful but not required
- Flexible hours (we're PST, but just need some overlap for now - help me fix our async game?)
International = hired through Upwork
If this sounds like your kind of chaos, email me at matt and then a underscore and then pendergraft followed by an at for the main website of the company this is for. Tell me why this interests you and maybe share a cool project you've worked on. Resume optional but helpful.
They were highly patent encumbered for a while. I think much of that is expired but the manufacturing base hasn’t caught up yet.
The pricing is pretty expensive even in bulk. $50 for the larger displays isn’t off by an order of magnitude (e.g. 7 inch with red) especially as a retailer is buying that as a larger solution which includes all the syncing hardware, maintenance programs, and integrations.
For retailers, the savings story is in increased pricing accuracy and reduced labor for price changes. There is the promise of dynamic pricing but that’s a minefield for various reasons.
That’s why you tend to see it in high-value retailers (pricing accuracy, precision, smaller tag count) and grocers (lots of price changes, high labor costs).
Yes, but a path of heartache if the interfaces between systems aren't robust.
Say W sends a message to Y but doesn't record the message was sent Y or wait for any sort of ack (say a process that drops a flat file to an FTP server that gets deleted after 7 days). Now someone finds out Y is missing a bunch of things. Who's fixing it and who should be fixing it?
The version of this that continually bites me is when someone is designing what is essentially a distributed system but doesn't know that's what they are designing. System W -> System X -> System Y -> System Z are connected with the assumption no guarantees or coherency checks are needed. Might as well just email spreadsheets...
I tend to prefer helmet mounted and I glue them on which isn’t my favorite thing to do on a new helmet. It’s also a bit frustrating when you find yourself cycling in a country that drives on the opposite side.
I do find that on very long tours the week following I’m looking where I’d expect the mirror to be when I want to look behind me.