Full_Clark (u/Full_Clark)

Full_Clark commented on The Space Shuttle Columbia disaster and the over-reliance on PowerPoint (2019) mcdreeamiemusings.com/blo... · Posted by u/scapecast

kg · 7 days ago

I've been slowly refining a pitch deck over the past couple years and the feedback from reviews and test pitches has strongly reinforced for me just how important it is for slides to be short and laid out precisely.

You want the most important information in the right places, communicated with as few words as possible, using the most accurate words possible.

You want the key takeaways to be the things that people are most likely to remember from each slide.

You want to minimize distractions and try not to pollute slides with a bunch of vaguely related stuff. A crowded slide risks communicating nothing.

It's a real dramatic change compared to how I am used to using powerpoint for technical audiences or when I had to make presentations during school.

Full_Clark · 6 days ago

it's also important to know your audience. If they've spent their career reading technical papers or dense prose, that's one thing.

If they've largely grown up in the social media era and click away from reels/shorts that don't have animated captions, you'd design a very different deck.

Full_Clark commented on Bento: A Steam Deck in a Keyboard github.com/lunchbox-compu... · Posted by u/MichaelThatsIt

nottorp · 3 months ago

> I started using the XREAL glasses a few months ago.

How's your eye sight? Any signs of fatigue?

I've seen people saying that they're fine for gaming and movie watching but too fuzzy for work...

Full_Clark · 3 months ago

I've been using the Viture XR Pro glasses and they're fine for occasional PC use but I don't like them enough to use a daily driver for work.

It's great for gaming and movies as you say, and also for adopting a better posture when using a laptop in a cramped space like a train or airline seat. But even with the individual focus wheels for each eye, it doesn't feel sharp enough at 1080p to replace a 24" or 27" screen on a standard desk layout.

If I had the option of one 24" 1080p monitor on my desk or XR glasses to use for 8-10 hours of thoughtful work, I would choose the monitor.

Regarding eye strain or fatigue, I don't notice any. The fact that the projected display appears to be 3-4m away probably helps a lot with that.

Full_Clark commented on Reinventing circuit breakers with supercritical CO2 spectrum.ieee.org/sf6-gas... · Posted by u/rbanffy

kragen · 3 months ago

> Unless we manage to make massive cost reductions for atmospheric CO2 sequestration,

We will. The main reason atmospheric carbon capture is expensive is that it requires a lot of energy, and the cost of energy is falling through the floor because of cheap renewables. Expensive high-efficiency chemistries for carbon capture will cede to simpler, energy-hungrier chemistries, the ultimate reductio ad absurdum being something like soda lime. Soon enough synfuel from atmospheric carbon capture will be an attractive alternative to fossil fuels for transport (within 15 years), and then it's just a question of capturing the combustion products from the fuel. We may need to start adding high-multiple GHGs to the atmosphere to compensate for carbon dioxide we remove to make plastic. Hopefully shorter-half-life GHGs than sulfur hexafluoride, though.

The US has taken a very aggressive policy stance against renewables and in favor of fossil fuels, but ultimately it can't prevent the inevitable. If it continues to punish the importation of renewable energy equipment, US subjects will import cheap synfuel, or, failing that, they'll import electrolytic iron, zinc, or magnesium to use as fuel, from countries like Chile, China, and Dubai.

Full_Clark · 3 months ago

> Expensive high-efficiency chemistries for carbon capture will cede to simpler, energy-hungrier chemistries, the ultimate reductio ad absurdum being something like soda lime

I haven't looked into the topic much at all but that does resonate. It reminds of the way solar farms are becoming less fine-tuned (e.g., no sun-tracking tilt motors anymore) as panel costs drops through the floor.

Full_Clark commented on Reinventing circuit breakers with supercritical CO2 spectrum.ieee.org/sf6-gas... · Posted by u/rbanffy

kragen · 3 months ago

Thank you for doing these calculations! 0.39% of anthropogenic global warming is surprisingly large, but it doesn't sound like a big impact to me. I mean, it sounds like about the same greenhouse effect impact as the San Bernardino metropolitan area (5 million people) or the Chongqing metropolitan area (12 million people).

Retric: I regret not having responded in time to your comments, which I agree with.

Full_Clark · 3 months ago

In terms of impact, it doesn't sound major, I agree. But it's still work that will need to be done. As industry and transport become more electrified, and electric generation gets decarbonized, impacts like high-multiple GHG gases will become a bigger and bigger share of CO2e still happening.

Atmospheric CO2 is already too high to avert terrible long-term impacts of global climate change. Unless we manage to make massive cost reductions for atmospheric CO2 sequestration, weaning entirely off of fossil fuels will not be sufficient to avoid climate change impacts if we still add long-lived GHG molecules to the atmosphere. (SF6 has an atmospheric lifetime on the order of 1000s of years.)

Think of it like the tide going out in a rocky bay. As the water level recedes, rock pillars that used to be too deep underwater to worry about now are close enough to the surface to cause you trouble. On the other side of the same coin, putting in the work to clear them helps give you as big a space to operate in as you had before.

Full_Clark commented on Reinventing circuit breakers with supercritical CO2 spectrum.ieee.org/sf6-gas... · Posted by u/rbanffy

Full_Clark · 3 months ago

> The work may be niche, but the impact could be high. About 1 percent of SF6 leaks from electrical equipment. In 2018, that translated to 8,200 tonnes of SF6 emitted globally, accounting for about 1 percent of the global-warming value that year.

This figure is for the electricity sector only, not overall global emissions. Still, considering the sheer volume of CO2 puffing up from power stations, it's impressive that the normal operation of SF6 breakers accounts for an integer percentage of their GHG impact.

----

Global emissions were 53 Gt CO2 equivalent in 2023 [0]. 38% of CO2 emissions are attributed to the electricity sector in 2023. [1] This figure seems to be strictly CO2, not including other GHG, and I can't quickly find a sector-by-sector breakdown for that year. Per IPCC reports in 2022, electricity production and heating accounted for 34% of global GHG in 2019 [2], so for back-of-the-envelope math, it's reasonable.

Per the article, the GHG impact of SF6 is 25k CO2, so 8.2k tons SF6 emitted annually is 205 million tons CO2e. This is 0.39% of 53 Gt CO2e (the global value), or nearly exactly 1% of the electricity sector's 38% share.

[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1285502/annual-global-gr... [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1129656/global-share-of-... [2] https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-overv...

edit: replaced typos of C02 with correct CO2

Full_Clark commented on Nitrogen Triiodide (2016) fourmilab.ch/documents/ch... · Posted by u/keepamovin

Terr_ · 3 months ago

> It is probably quite close to EICAR in that world.

I recall reading some story where the author was able to do a denial of service attack on a system by putting EICAR in it, causing a kind of autoimmune dysfunction.

Full_Clark · 3 months ago

There's a good DEFCON 29 presentation on this topic. https://youtu.be/cIcbAMO6sxo

If you skip forward to 16m 33s you'll be treated to a lively streak of invective from the passenger of a car whose driver has just confirmed that feeding EICAR to a parking system prevents it from letting any vehicle past the barrier.

Full_Clark commented on Is TfL losing the battle against heat on the Victoria line? swlondoner.co.uk/news/160... · Posted by u/zeristor

BJones12 · 3 months ago

I wonder if an extremely tall subterranean windcatcher [0] with its bottom at the top of a tunnel could passively cool the tunnel.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windcatcher

Full_Clark · 3 months ago

The catch here is the cost of the buildings you'd need to destroy in order to build the surface portion of the windcatcher. The deep underground lines run under heavily populated areas of London.

To build enough windcatchers to move the needle on tunnel temps, you'd need to buy many plots in one of the most expensive cities in the world.

Full_Clark commented on Sailing from Berkeley to Hawaii in a 19ft Sailboat potter-yachters.org/stori... · Posted by u/protonbob

frainfreeze · 5 months ago

Sadly, yea. There is a whole website dedicated to the ship (Schooner Niña) and the SAR efforts http://www.schoonernina.com/

Full_Clark · 5 months ago

Good share. fascinating rabbit hole to fall down. Interesting to read about other vessels which had been lost or abandoned in the same area and many months later washed up ashore rather than sinking.

Full_Clark commented on Sailing from Berkeley to Hawaii in a 19ft Sailboat potter-yachters.org/stori... · Posted by u/protonbob

medion · 5 months ago

Did the same voyage in a similarly sized boat, solo. Departed Berkeley then out under the bridge to half moon bay, then off the deep end for Honolulu. Took a bit longer than expected and was nearly hit by a passing vessel, but smooth sailing otherwise!

Full_Clark · 5 months ago

I'd like to know more about the near-miss. Was it close to either port or was it during the open-ocean portion of the voyage?

The "Loose Ends" section of Teplow's write-up mentions that he didn't bring along a radar detector. Then or now, would a radar detector significantly increase a solo sailor's situational awareness?

Full_Clark commented on Nuclear power is officially a clean energy source in Colorado coloradosun.com/2025/04/0... · Posted by u/mooreds

grumpy-de-sre · 5 months ago

The secret ingredient is millions of dollars from fossil fuel lobbyists, and the Murdoch media running a heavy propaganda/misinformation over the past year. Their only goal is to divert public funds away from solar/wind projects.

If voters choose to go down this path it'll be an absolute tragedy for the country and a huge missed opportunity.

I say this as an Australian realist living abroad who always was relatively pro-nuclear.

Full_Clark · 5 months ago

I agree that the current nuclear proposal seems intended principally to extend the life of the coal and gas plants. It's likely born from a cynical attitude of 'who cares about how much the nuclear plants will cost when/if they do get built, just kick the carbon-neutrality can down the road another decade and let the next generation of politicians deal with it.'

I do wonder if there'll ever be a desire to build nuclear plants for baseload firming, though. What amount of excess capacity has to be built in to an all-renewables + storage grid to give the the same reliability as the current grid? Could nuclear power ever be cheap enough to compete on ROI with the marginal providers, the last ~5 gigawatts of wind or solar needed?