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michaelgoldon HoloKit relaunched, $129 AR Headset accessory for iPhone

I was involved in the original project on the business side.

So I can help answer the question of why it looks this way? Optics :)

Technical details are in the patent for the cardboard version from 2017:

https://patents.google.com/patent/US20180011327A1/en

michaelgoldon It’s gotten harder to lose weight and not for the reasons you think

In my experience, losing weight is very hard if you follow fad diets. In the NY tech scene, nearly every tech event has free pizza and beer. I gained a ton of weight from 2008-2012 and have finally lost it. I'm weighing in at 165 pounds now.

In 2012, I was weighing in at 215 pounds. In May of that year, I started on Tim Ferriss' Four Hour Body Slow Carb diet. It worked for a while but I plateued at 195 pounds. I figured that was it for me - that I wasn't going to be able to lose any more weight.

I told my primary care doctor about this in January of 2015 and he recommended ditching the Slow Carb Diet and tracking my calorie consumption in the app My Fitness Pal. He said to continue using My Fitness Pal until I figured out the right balance of food and exercise I needed to eat to drive weight loss or maintain my weight.

Just by guessing calories of the food I was eating, I was able to lose 30 pounds

This may seem like a pain in the ass, but it only added on 5 minutes to my daily routine.

I got a good scale (the WiThings WS-50). It not only tracks your weight, but it tracks your weight loss / weight gain trend over the last 30 days in its app.

In 2015 from CES to SXSW I dropped from 195 to 182 pounds.

From SXSW to June 1st I dropped from 182 to 169 pounds.

I stopped using the app in July and am now weighing 165 pounds.

I've put a few of my friends on to this, and they've also lost weight.

Hope this can help someone else who wants to cut through the noise of fad weight loss advice.

michaelgoldon Ask HN: Which book are you reading these days?

I read Foundation, then the two prequels, then everything else by publication date. I remember this working well, but this was around 20 years ago :)

michaelgoldon Build Your Own Lockitron With Twilio, Arduino, and Node.js

I will take you out for steaks at Keen's if you build me one of these.

michaelgoldon An unofficial alternative to the HN interface

The HipsterNews chrome extension is pretty sweet. I've been using it for 3 months or so https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hipsternews/midncc...

michaelgoldon T-Mobile Rocks

As far as I know, the signal strength for voice calls and the data speed are different issues. Many T-mobile towers only support edge (1x) speeds on non-LTE GSM phones. Some towers have been refarmed to support the 3G hspa+ frequencies. Here is an unofficial coverage map: http://www.airportal.de/

In my apartment in the Upper West Side, I was getting a 3G data on an unlocked AT&T iphone 4S with a t-mobile sim, but only 2 bars of voice service. I'm tempted to try t-mobile's $30 / month 5Gig data + 100 minutes plan to use with my iphone 5s.

If their LTE service has decent coverage I may be able to get away with using facetime audio + google voice + talkatone.

Has anyone done this in NYC?

michaelgoldon T-Mobile Rocks

I don't think the iPhone 5s has wifi calling.

Is this accurate? http://support.t-mobile.com/thread/52768?start=0&tstart=0

michaelgoldon T-Mobile Rocks

I think Fred might be disappointed when he switches back to t-mobile. I was a t-mobile customer for years and I agree they have awesome customer service. The big problem for me was the terrible cell reception in many buildings in NYC. That said, I hear there are many areas in the US where t-mobile provides decent service. For people considering switching if t-mobile's international data deal isn't that important to you, you may want to check out http://www.solavei.com first. They are a t-mobile reseller (MVNO) and you may be able to save some money compared to going through t-mobile directly. Their prices are similar to straight talk (mentioned in some of the other comments) and they also allow you to refer customers to reduce your monthly bill.

Best cell phone service for the price IMO is http://www.pagepluscellular.com/ (a verizon reseller). $55 / month (including taxes and fees) for unlimited calling, unlimited texts, and 2 gigs of data. I have been a customer of theirs for a year and a half. Their customer service is pretty good, but more importantly their signal strength (coming from verizon's towers) is the best out of all the carriers in NYC.

The one big caveat with the MVNO resellers is that they don't offer LTE data and some don't support LTE phones (ie iphone 5, 5c, 5s, etc).

TL;DR - if you're down to use an iPhone 4S or other 3G smartphone you can save some serious money per month going through an MVNO reseller.

michaelgoldon M-rge Is Offering $1 Million of Free Coworking Space and Classes for Hackers

Congrats guys!