Shifting is faster and more precise, with no need for readjustments. It also eliminates a lot of cabling, which makes it look cleaner and simplifies the setup.
A wireless (electronic) device simplifies the setup? What kind of insane fantasy is this? Will you really be able to fix your broken wireless gear box in field conditions? This is the proof of simplicity, not some superficial observation that you make about the amount of cables.
The answer is YES, and this type of shifter is a favorite among mountain bikers whose reliability needs and "field conditions" are already much more challenging than your average biker.
There are plenty of examples of situations where a wireless setup simplifies things.
I used to put wired speed/cadence sensors on my bike. Now I just zip tied two BLE gyros to the wheel and crank and things are vastly simpler. I've had them there for years and still haven't changed the battery. I've also never tangled the cables or had to fiddle with the mounts for a magnetic sensor.
It simplifies installation and getting a reliable, comfortable shifting setup, yes. Installation is simplified, especially in the case of internal and headset routing, which is something the target audience would deal with in case of cable-actuated derailleurs. Changes requiring adjustments over time due to the cable wearing out or stretching are eliminated, simplifying maintenance, both during and in between rides. On drivetrains with front and rear derailleurs, it has an optional adjustable algorithm that shifts both together for you and chooses the best gear combinations as you press up and down, simplifying operations. Auto-shifting is available on some models. There's more possibilities to put the shift buttons in the most ergonomic place, or even put them in more than one place, simplifying setting up your bike for comfort. That it doesn't simplify fixing your derailleur in the middle of a ride doesn't negate all of its benefits. Yes, the radio or battery could fail, but on the other hand it is less prone to go out of adjustment.
Also it has one killer feature and everyone that tries one also raves about how well it works. You know those little ramps stamped into the side of the sprockets on a cassette, that the chain moves up and down on as you change gears? Di2 delays your shift precisely until the start of a ramp, which makes shifting faster and works much better under load. That crunch and possible stuck chain when you shift to start a climb is basically eliminated.
Is it something a bikepacker will choose? Probably not. Is is something attractive to many other types of cyclists and simpler to install, use and maintain in ways they care about? Yes. I'm a weekend mountain bike rider, not at all competitive. I personally won't get one because of the cost but the features are quite attractive to me, while the risk and consequence of a dead battery seem low. There are many, many other things that are more likely to break during a ride, many of which will have you walking back. A dead Di2 battery means you are stuck in one gear, and if your chain has a master link or you carry a chain tool (target demographic definitely has one or both) you can change the gear in 2 minutes.
I thought of an analogy for HN. Think about water cooling in a gaming PC instead using the stock CPU cooler. It's more expensive, but generally higher performing and quieter and arguably looks cool. There's a certain demographic who thinks they are stupid because they must have extra parts so which are difficult to install and must be less reliable, and they may have one horrible failure mode of leaking liquid inside your PC. They might give the example of a mission critical server, and be right for this use case that it's not a good idea, at least at the scale of one machine. There's another demographic who don't think twice about buying them because the positives easily outweigh the negatives for them. This group can sometimes be seen telling the other group that they are out of date on it being difficult to install (you can even buy a case with it pre-installed) and reliability (modern all-in-ones almost never leak). They will most likely concede that for a mission critical server it's not the correct product.
I spend a significant amount of time (a) curating the test suite, and making sure it matches my notion of correctness and (b) forcing the agent to make PNG visuals (which Claude Code can see, by the way, and presumably also Gemini CLI, and maybe Aider?, etc)
I'd have to do this anyways, if I was writing the code myself, so this is not "time above what I'd normally spend"
The visuals it makes for me I can inspect and easily tell if it is on the right path, or wrong. The test suite is a sharper notion of "this is right, this is wrong" -- more sharp than just visual feedback and my directions.
The basic idea is to setup a feedback loop for the agent, and then keep the agent in the loop, and observe what it is doing. The visuals are absolutely critical -- as a compressed representation of the behavior of the codebase, which I can quickly and easily parse and recognize if there are issues.
I find it interesting how the Russian news agency TASS quotes the presidential aide of Russia:
"The election campaign is over," Patrushev noted. "To achieve success in the election, Donald Trump relied on certain forces to which he has corresponding obligations. As a responsible person, he will be obliged to fulfill them."
Yes! I would love to bring it to Apple Watch too! :)
Here is ur code! Promo: WJJAYWH6KTEK
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The app is free with promo code, otherwise it costs 95 cents by default. :)
If you want one here it is: PR3XEE3EMLP3
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it's the same everywhere, not just with jobs and careers. contracts for (mobile) internet are always much cheaper for new customers than for old customers. or old customers don't automatically get the better conditions of new customers. and that although old customers are even more valuable, because they have already earned their acquisition costs.
Is there something like this for epubs or pdfs with a truly high-quality TTS?
All apps that I know of use iOS internal TTS (sounds awful, not as good as Siri). Then is also Voice Dream Reader and even with the paid premium voices it is still not pleasant to listen to. Siri-grade TTS or Elevenlabs would be pleasant enough, though.
