hnmullany (u/hnmullany)

hnmullany commented on A Remarkable Assertion from A16Z nealstephenson.substack.c... · Posted by u/boplicity

Even if that's the intended meaning of literally, it is still a reckless exaggeration. I'm pretty sure that Stephenson's endings are no more abrupt than some of Shakespeare's (check out Hamlet and Macbeth) or some of Frank Herbert's (see Dune and Children of Dune), and I never hear anyone go out of their way to describe either of them as being unable to write endings.

hnmullany · 20 days ago

Everything from Stephenson after Anathem is an unremitting slog. He needs an editor who won't back down from telling him he needs to cut a third of his pages.

hnmullany commented on Scientific fraud has become an 'industry,' analysis finds science.org/content/artic... · Posted by u/pseudolus

currymj · 4 months ago

there are many separate problems of scientific fraud. I think these issues sometimes get confused which is unhelpful.

1. apparently-legitimate papers in prestigious journals with fraudulent data. extremely bad.

2. legitimate papers in legitimate journals which, innocently or not, just used bad methods and have wrong conclusions. this is "the replication crisis".

3. totally fake papers in paper mills with no meaningful peer review. it's really easy to spot these, no one is individually getting taken in by the results, but...

3a. sometimes they wind up in a meta-analysis, which is really bad because people might trust the meta analysis.

Problem 1 is morally worst and much more common than one would hope. Outright fabricated data in a Nature or NEJM publication (as has happened) is a disaster.

Problem 2 is amenable to reform for the most part (fields are already doing this).

Problem 3 isn't a problem at all for scientific knowledge per se, although universities and funding bodies might not be pleased their scientists are buying fake papers. You can just ignore the paper mills.

But Problem 3a can actually alter policy, which is pretty serious.

hnmullany · 4 months ago

I did a meta-analysis for my masters thesis and I was convinced that 2 of the 39 papers in my dataset had fraudulent data.

hnmullany commented on Geothermal power is a climate moon shot beneath our feet newyorker.com/news/the-le... · Posted by u/pseudolus

hnmullany · 9 months ago

I wrote an introductory piece on the economics and technology of enhanced geothermal with good technical sources. I think it summarizes the state of the tech better than the New Yorker article.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/note-fracked-geothermal-energ...

hnmullany commented on DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes nytimes.com/2025/02/21/up... · Posted by u/belter

jimmar · 10 months ago

1. US GDP estimated GDP in 2024 is $29 trillion. According to your first source, U.S. Federal Spending was 23% of GDP. If that were reduced to the 2014-2019 average of 20%, that would trim $870 billion from federal spending. That seems like good progress toward avoiding a potential debt crisis.

2. Reduce defense overall and make the process of getting money to the needy more efficient.

3. No comment. Healthcare is mess.

4. Taxes on corporations, like tariffs, are just passed onto consumers. I'm in favor of tax reform, but thinking that taxing corporations is a way to stick it to rich people is shortsighted, IMO.

hnmullany · 10 months ago

The more competitive the market, the less that companies are able to pass on income tax increases (as opposed to input tax increases - like tariffs). If companies are able to pass along income tax increases, it means that they have pricing power.

hnmullany commented on DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes nytimes.com/2025/02/21/up... · Posted by u/belter

heartbreak · 10 months ago

You linked to a blog post about Medicare fraud, not Social Security fraud.

hnmullany · 10 months ago

That's because the original responder's data was about medicare fraud although the estimate was provided by the Social Security Administration

hnmullany commented on Device uses wind to create ammonia out of air spectrum.ieee.org/ammonia... · Posted by u/rbanffy

hnmullany · a year ago

Here is an overview I wrote of next generation methods for ammonia synthesis:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/climatetech-134-de-carbonizin...

(FWIW - there are many many promising lab results that turn out to be false positives because the researchers did a bad job of controlling potential contamination in their ammonia measurements. Low concentrations of ammonia are everywhere, and you have to do a really good job making sure you're not measuring background levels vs. what you think you're producing)

hnmullany commented on Device uses wind to create ammonia out of air spectrum.ieee.org/ammonia... · Posted by u/rbanffy

littlestymaar · a year ago

Idk but soil micro-organisms do break N2 to make ammonia so there sure exists a pathway that just implies catalysis at low temperature.

hnmullany · a year ago

Soil nitrate fixation is also energy intensive. The nitrogenase enzyme takes about 27 ATPs to break a single N2 bond. Legumes feed about a third of their entire photosynthesis output to their nitrogen fixing nodules in order to generate significant amounts of nitrates.

There is no free lunch.

hnmullany commented on I am rich and have no idea what to do vinay.sh/i-am-rich-and-ha... · Posted by u/vhiremath4

smokedetector1 · a year ago

Therapy. Wealth and success is one of the most massive crutches there is. It can make it almost impossible to be truly in touch with your insecurities and pain because its simply too easy to hide in your victory. Your toughest challenge now is to, despite your wealth, find a way to contact the pain that drove you to your hunger for success. As the bible said, it's easier for a camel to get through the head of a needle than for a rich man to go to heaven. I interpret that metaphorically.

hnmullany · a year ago

Therapy = Exactly. He thinks he has freedom and agency but he's just being puppeteered by conflicting subconscious forces he doesn't understand and seems to have no insight into. This is a man who's in a self-driving car turning a steering wheel that's connected to nothing.

hnmullany commented on China completes green belt around Taklamakan Desert sand-boarding.com/china-b... · Posted by u/uprootdev

mlinksva · a year ago

Very interesting topic but the article strikes me as being blogspam adjacent.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Green_Wall_(China) cites https://www.yahoo.com/news/china-completes-3-000-km-11254926... which is one of many press articles that only cites (but does not link) state media.

The Economist has paywalled writeup https://www.economist.com/china/2024/12/05/will-chinas-green... that is a bit skeptical of the project's impact (unlinked claims at least half due to increased rain, not human efforts) and sustainability (also unlinked, but I'd guess correct, it seems somewhat similar projects such as the great plains shelterbelt in the US decline unless maintained).

Surely there must be an afforestation/macro ecological engineering geek out there who has blogged on this in depth, would love to read it!

hnmullany · a year ago

Vegetation-type is determined by temperature and precipitation. You can't un-desertify a true desert unless you irrigate. Most of these projects that "succeed" - miraculously correlate with good rainfall experience.

Most of the Sahel revegetated all by itself, when the decadal drought ended in the 90's.

Re-vegetation projects can help put vegetation back when it's been removed by shitty management practises like severe over-grazing.

It can also help speed revegetation if there are no nearby seed sources and dispersion speeds for those species are low. But dry-adapted vegetation seeds can usually persist for very long periods of time waiting for water.

hnmullany commented on Sci-fi books that you may never have heard of, but definitely should read shepherd.com/best-books/s... · Posted by u/bwb

ABraidotti · a year ago

I've read the latest Weir book (Project Hail Mary) and the two prominent Watts books (Blindsight and Echopraxia) recently and they were all memorable but frustrating.

Weir writes like a blogger who also writes script treatments but doesn't actually read novels. He throws plot at you every page ("ok so this happened so I need to do this next") which makes his books readable, but he has zero character development. His characters appear, react to external stimuli and solve problems, but don't change over time.

Watts's books, on the other hand, could use some of Weir's plot juice. Very cool ideas and interesting scenes, but the plots were hard to discern. I had no idea what needed to happen to resolve conflict most of the time. Echopraxia was particularly confusing. Watts did a Reddit AMA shortly after Echopraxia came out where he was put on the spot to explain fundamental plot elements.

Watts Reddit AMA: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2enwks/iama_science_f...

Watts also gave a real-sounding lecture on vampirism, which is enjoyable if you liked that in his books: https://youtu.be/wEOUaJW05bU?si=6fTMtmf9yA8JT9at

hnmullany · a year ago

I also found Echopraxia extremely confusing and had to read that AMA to figure out what the hell I just read.