Birbla

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Hacker News

This should've been possible with the Thinkpad HDAPS accelerometer back in the day. (If it detected the laptop was falling, it would park the HDD heads in anticipation of impact.) Shame nobody thought of it then!

by myself248

My Android phone has this too (Vivo). Maybe they all do?

It wasn't well explained what it was for though, I discovered it while messing with the settings and thought it was just a cool random feature to visualize motion. I'm just now learning it's for motion sickness.

by esperent

I use this a lot on my MacBook Air when working in cabs. It’s beautiful and works well for me

by atorodius

I'm curious how this feature chooses to turn itself on with automatic detection.

Somehow managed to fool it the other day by shutting a car trunk, helping someone load up, with me on the outside. It activated the dots for the rest of my walk afterwards, when I was using the phone.

I get the impression there are much more sophisticated signals and classification methods to determine whether someone is in a vehicle or not, beyond the accelerometers.

by oasisbob

I have no idea how something like this is ideated, then prototyped, then validated, but it does work wonders for me, and I am so grateful it exists.

by sssilver

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  • Hacker News
  • This should've been possible with the Thinkpad HDAPS accelerometer back in the day. (If it detected the laptop was falling, it would park the HDD heads in anticipation of impact.) Shame nobody thought of it then!
    by myself248
  • My Android phone has this too (Vivo). Maybe they all do?

    It wasn't well explained what it was for though, I discovered it while messing with the settings and thought it was just a cool random feature to visualize motion. I'm just now learning it's for motion sickness.

    by esperent
  • I just found out this capability is also available on Macbooks!

    This would have saved me a lot of grief during a recent road trip through some mountains.

    https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/change-motion-setti...

    by Centigonal
  • There is a nice little app that does this on Android available on F-droid:

    https://f-droid.org/packages/dev.davidv.motionsickness

    by NateEag
  • I use this a lot on my MacBook Air when working in cabs. It’s beautiful and works well for me
    by atorodius
  • A related post from last month: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48557530

    Sharing this here in case anyone wants to check out the discussion there and see how it looks in the Verge's short review.

    by zyz
  • I'm curious how this feature chooses to turn itself on with automatic detection.

    Somehow managed to fool it the other day by shutting a car trunk, helping someone load up, with me on the outside. It activated the dots for the rest of my walk afterwards, when I was using the phone.

    I get the impression there are much more sophisticated signals and classification methods to determine whether someone is in a vehicle or not, beyond the accelerometers.

    by oasisbob
  • I have no idea how something like this is ideated, then prototyped, then validated, but it does work wonders for me, and I am so grateful it exists.
    by sssilver