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Comment by pjs_ | Hacker News Reader

It has been possible to buy pretty nice handheld Raman spectrometers for a while now:

https://www.bruker.com/en/products-and-solutions/infrared-an...

This paper is obviously trying to go much further. But if you just want to buy a tricorder, you can

I was unable to find a specific price for the model you linked in my few seconds of looking but these devices generally run in the $10,000 USD range, so I don’t think it’s achieved the “if you just want to buy it” territory yet.

Good point. You have to ask yourself — would you rather have a '97 Camry or a raman spectrometer and a pushbike ;)

That said this is getting into Christmas present territory:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/167319991806?_skw=handheld+raman+sp...

I love the juxtaposition of thinking a ‘97 Camry is anywhere close to $10k while at the same time a $3k piece of lab equipment is “Christmas present territory” :)

It’s one banana, Michael. What could it cost? Ten dollars?

It is genuinely disheartening when people in this board start talking about things they buy when they're WILDLY out of my price range. It's almost like living in a flyover state and working in education isn't optimal for income. Weird.

I'm an IT that has ethics, so I haven't made good money, ever. Choosing not to harm, or, in your case, actively doing the opposite, I guess we'll just have to live with being able to sleep.

Dude I have three thousand dollars net total in my bank account. I don't own a car or a house, don't have kids etc. I literally used to co-own 97 camry with bees in the trunk. I paid about $2500 for it. Hence why I say it costs the about the same as the spectrometer on eBay. $2500 is about $3000. However you and I both know that there are people all over this board who buy their kids macbooks for christmas

> there are people all over this board who buy their kids macbooks for christmas

Kids? I bought a MacBook Air for an internet friend of around 2 months because I was so offended by the fact that they didn't own a good computer.

My performance standards are higher for myself of course, but the goal was just to get them any form of macOS.

(They did in fact end up liking it a lot better than Windows)

Hey, it’s me - your new friend. I too am without a MacBook. Woe.

Hehe. Let me know if you have lived a whole life of only emotional neglect and abuse by narcissistic parents and if you share my exact autistic neurotype and maybe then we'll talk :)

Damn, I was only abused by my sister and had a traumatic brain injury as a teenager. I guess that just gets me a...HP laptop? No thanks!

My house cost less than the last four cars that I've bought and it had bees in the bathroom.

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