I Spent My Sabbatical Building a Power Meter for Sledgehammers
48 points
1 day ago
| 12 comments
| leblancfg.com
| HN
jrflo
58 minutes ago
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So how does the power meter itself actually work? How do you know the output is accurate? How much power is lost from the measurement due to dampening? How do you know it will hold up to cycling in such an aggressive environment? That's kind of the interesting thing here, but there's no mention of it in the article.
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pdabbadabba
50 minutes ago
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Agreed. I was disappointed at the overall lack of engineering content in this piece. Lots of general talk about how there were issues and that they were overcome. But what? And how? I feel like most of the content could apply to almost any project.
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zeristor
1 hour ago
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Lovely idea, always nice to put something together and scratch that itch.

What you need is a small weight or something that rises up a pole depending on how hard you hit it, a great visualisation.

You could even have a bell at the top, so if this small weight hits it with enough voom it could making a resounding ding sound, so life affirming.

Perhaps you could charge a 'apenny a go, and give a prize for those that can do it. Saying Roll up Roll up to passers by in a local fair.

"High Striker": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_striker

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_spoke_
2 hours ago
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Is anyone else bothered that this was run through an LLM before publication? The tone is a distraction for me.
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foltik
2 hours ago
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yes

All the superficial filler leaves a linkedin flavored taste in my mouth. I’d prefer to hear the author’s own voice and thoughts without noise injected to give the illusion of polish.

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bee_rider
1 hour ago
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I thought it was actually quite funny, but I read it as a sarcastic parody of that writing style. I mean there’s no way:

> This is the founder story: what I built, why I chose it, and what a month of hardware taught me. The engineering writeup will come later, once I've talked to someone who actually understands IP strategy.

is for real, right?

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ramon156
2 hours ago
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Cool idea, just wondering why you wouldn't travel during a sabbatical.

> a paid month off

that's not a sabbatical anyway, is it? i thought this was 6-12 months, not one?

https://intensity.systems/ is currently unstyled.

Post also has some LLM sniffs, so I'm unsure how much of the content is true.

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wdrw
2 hours ago
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At least in North America (and the author seems to be from Canada), having a company give you any sabbatical at all is pretty rare, and 6+ months is pure fantasy:) And not everyone likes travel, the post actually explains his reasoning pretty well.
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0xfaded
2 hours ago
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I work in the US and every year I take 17 days off over the July period which works out (with another company holiday) to be 4 continuous weeks. The first year I did it I told my manager "I'm going to take three weeks off, but what do you think about four?". I got my three weeks and made myself indispensable enough to get the four the next year.

This stuff can be negotiable if asked for and planned correctly. It won't be offered.

The Danes do it best, they basically shut down the country for 3 months every summer and have an unspoken agreement that nothing will get done.

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lagniappe
1 hour ago
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>The Danes do it best, they basically shut down the country for 3 months every summer and have an unspoken agreement that nothing will get done.

Is there a skeleton crew to run grocery and fuel?

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zokier
44 minutes ago
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OP was talking about white-collar jobs, not service industry.
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MisterTea
2 hours ago
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> and 6+ months is pure fantasy:)

I've seen this before. Had a vendor become helpless after their only engineer took a 6 month sabbatical. Had to cancel orders and switch vendors because they stated "Until the engineer returns, we can not quote a delivery time." Imagine being that company...

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bee_rider
1 hour ago
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Kinda surprising they weren’t able to plan around that, surely The Engineer didn’t just decide randomly to go on a 6 month sabbatical all of a sudden.
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mikepurvis
14 minutes ago
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"Just so you know, our bus number is 1. Now, about your order..."
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asib
16 minutes ago
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> Cool idea, just wondering why you wouldn't travel during a sabbatical.

Because they didn't want to? A very odd question; people have motivations/interests that aren't yours.

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MisterTea
2 hours ago
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> Cool idea, just wondering why you wouldn't travel during a sabbatical.

That is really none of your business and sounds judgemental. How about we talk about the pollution you contribute when needlessly traveling for ego boosting?

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lagniappe
1 hour ago
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>After five years at Shopify, employees get a paid month off to do whatever the hell they want. I took mine in April 2026.

Bleak.. Only a month after five years.

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RyanOD
4 minutes ago
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Not bleak for most people. I've never worked anywhere that offers an earned chunk of time off like that (besides standard PTO days).
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NDlurker
1 hour ago
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I think it's a month in addition to whatever they already get. So that could be pretty good.

I've been with my employer for 12 years and get a total of 296hrs PTO per year. That's probably abnormal now that I think about it and one of the reasons I've stuck around so long. I don't think I've ever used up all my PTO in a year, usually cash out a week or 2 in December.

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MattRix
1 hour ago
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Not sure why that’s bleak? It’s on top of the regular vacation days you get every year. I don’t know of any other company (at least not here in Canada!) that would give you an entire paid month off.
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xcskier56
51 minutes ago
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I could see this being used for fitness tests for cross country skiers. A very common exercise is med-ball slams. These aren’t a perfect analog to double poling but definitely close.

Being able to track your one rep max force you can generate could be an interesting metric especially for sprinters

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1970-01-01
3 hours ago
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I could see this becoming a tiebreaker or ranking device for lumberjack competitions.
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billbrown
1 hour ago
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Have you met shovelglove?

https://shovelglove.com

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liangyunwuxu
1 hour ago
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You remind me of a saying: Boring things are actually interesting.
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Pay08
3 hours ago
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Charpy would like a word.
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engineer_22
2 hours ago
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I'm 13 years into my career and I haven't taken more than 5 days off in a row. That's usually a family reunion.

I think 4-8 weeks to recharge and reset would be helpful. What's the research say?

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FinnKuhn
1 hour ago
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Minimum vacation days here in Germany are 20 with many companies offering 30 so the idea that you can't take of at least a couple of weeks for a vacation is just crazy to me.

How do you travel and see the world like that?

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ilikecakeandpie
2 hours ago
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I'm almost 17 years in and there's been a few times where I had more than 10 days off in a row, and I recently had a four week sabbatical. Anecdotally, it was great and reminded me that retirement has always been the goal.
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AntiUSAbah
1 hour ago
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A sabbatical is half a year or a year in germany. NO one would ever say this nonsense of 'four week sabbatical'.
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AntiUSAbah
1 hour ago
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Wow thats depressing.

I went to japan and took 14 days. I went to Iran and took 14 days. I went to canada and took 4 weeks. I went to Mexico and took 3 weeks.

Don't you want to do things with your life? Experience them properly?

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world2vec
2 hours ago
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I take 3 weeks in a row every summer, couldn't live without it.
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markus_zhang
2 hours ago
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Wish I could do that too. But sabbatical is usually reserved for the elite engineers in elite firms.
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T0Bi
2 hours ago
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Or Europeans (:
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ramon156
2 hours ago
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Work culture is so weird. What do you mean, it's reserved for the elites?

In my country you get to build your holiday days, so I could totally take a month off if I don't take any other days off this year. Hell, we even have a website to perfectly time it here so you get the most bang-for-your-days. lmao.

I will never comprehend this Silicon Valley mindset. You can also be a 10x engineer while drinking a martini in the balkans.

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ilikecakeandpie
2 hours ago
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Lives don't exist in vacuums. If I could uproot my close friends and family and we all moved to the same place then I would, but that's not possible. I'm sure it's the same for a lot of people
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ambicapter
2 hours ago
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What does uprooting your friends and family have to do with taking a month off once in your life?
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average_r_user
2 hours ago
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"After five years at Shopify, employees get a paid month off to do whatever the hell they want. I took mine in April 2026. Thanks Tobi!"
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porkphish
3 hours ago
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Now I have Peter Gabriel in my head.
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a_shoeboy
1 hour ago
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Me too, but it's "Shock the Monkey" which doesn't make sense in this context.
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