skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Audio engineer here. I scrolled through the whole thing and he's been very thorough in his considerations. His conclusions/choices aren't always ideal and may be a little complicated or naive, but considering that the author seems to have put this all together from scratch as a non-domain expert it's commendable. Good work.

Nonetheless, I still found some of the advice to be unsatisfactory and rather than go over everything point by point, I sat for a moment to decide if I couldn't come up with a more elegant solution that can serve the needs of 90% of laypeople trying to communicate remotely. Then it hit me:

Buy a pair of Airpods.

1. The microphone is of high-enough quality. It's not something you'd make an album with, but it's good enough and is optimized for speaking.

2. The ratio of direct sound (voice) to ambient noise (reverb) is very high because the microphone is effectively glued to your face. This dramatically reduces the effort necessary to treat the acoustics in the room. Additionally, the mic will always be placed at optimum range and you don't introduce the possibility of audio quality wavering when you move away from a desktop mic.

As long as your room isn't completely devoid of furnishings (like the first room photo in the guide) any average residential room should have enough acoustic absorption/diffusion and probably be suitable.

3. The fact that you're monitoring all audio through the earbuds completely removes the potential for feedback issues.

4. The built-in noise-cancelling DSP will clean up any remaining steady-state ambient noise (air-conditioning, refrigerator hum, etc)

5. The DSP in the earbuds are optimizing gain. As long as you don't shout you should steer well clear of clipping and be at an optimal gain setting.

It's not gonna be the solution for every situation and the fidelity isn't immaculate, but it's quick, easy, simple, and sounds damn well good enough while also coming in at a price point that is less than a very conservative rudimentary recording package (mic, interface, headphones, cabling) would cost. I regularly watch world-class engineers live-streaming discussions with each other using this exact setup. If they can stand it, I think the layperson will be satisfied.
> The problem is getting consumers to their retail websites. At the moment, anyone trying to buy N95 masks on Google Shopping or Facebook Marketplace is greeted with a blank page; on Amazon, a search for N95s yields a welter of vendors hawking KN95 masks, a Chinese-made equivalent that researchers say is less effective.

> “How is it that you can spread conspiracy theories on Facebook, but we can’t sell N95 masks to the millions of Americans who need them right now?” Mr. Brown asked. “I can understand Facebook not wanting to sell masks made by some guy in his garage, but these masks meet strict N.I.O.S.H. guidelines.”

I can more understand the first half of the article, about ingrained purchasing processes in hospitals etc. leaving newcomers with unbought supply, but this is nuts. All the crap that Amazon does show if you search 'mask' or 'respirator' over the last year, and they refuse to list genuine stuff?

I still have a disposable FFP3 (UK/EU N99 equivalent I believe) from a couple of years before the pandemic, it was £1.12ea or much less in packs. Currently I'd have to pay 10x that for a shitty piece of ill-fitting cloth. (It's probably technically past its shelf life, but it can't be worse than fabric that never met any filtration specification.)
That's borderline gang sign.
This! I just learned how to use Hugo to generate a static site and it’s just sooo much fun!
So where can I buy futures on this?
>I simply don't understand how anyone reliably and comfortably finds the command key blindly with their fingers.

You do it with your Thumb, and once you do you can’t go back and then you do not understand how this dumb design of putting Ctrl in most uncomfortable position in the world was made.

When you type blindly, your fingers are on asdf-jkl; row and your thumb easily finds Cmd key near the spacebar. How on earth anyone can press Control in the corner without moving your hand from comfortable row for blind typing?
Microsoft Teams now has guest access on by default
> people who are complaining about cancel culture are complaining about people not liking their spicy takes

This is oversimplification.

There’s quite a difference between “not liking” and ruining career, denial of access to services etc.

Part of the problem is that only small group of people really “don’t like it” but capable of cancelling, and vast majority of people are happy to just ban that person in their feed and go on with their life (and large number of people are actually open to opposing views).
I complained a couple years ago when all afternoon they were running some completely inane story about trump staff having problems finding light switches in the whitehouse and repeating it multiple times during the day.

Political coverage I can take and I doubt I liked trump any more than the reporters at NPR do, but that's just factionalism. I find it really problematic[1]. If there isn't anything relevant to report on, music (or dinosaurs) would do fine.

But I'm not a cute kid, so I didn't get a response. :D

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-peZ7IeD2w