If we really wanted to stop it early, we could have. It's about the right size for a nuke.
(and no, an iceberg is NOT anything like a hurricane, which is a heat engine phenomena -- you can definitely shatter an iceberg)
Readit Newsknaq commented on World’s biggest iceberg heads for disaster graphics.reuters.com/CLIM... · Posted by u/wglb
knaq commented on Ask HN: What is a product you wish was sold in your country but isnt? · Posted by u/kva
1. new rifles with selective fire
2. lawn darts
3. scanners that can receive 824 to 849 MHz and 869 to 894 MHz
4. acetic anhydride
5. phosphorus
6. Moon rocks
7. good pesticides: DDT, diazinon, endosulfan, chlorpyrifos, etc.
8. gasoline cans that work properly (old-style ones)
knaq commented on Partisanship and Support for Immigration – Econlib econlib.org/partisanship-... · Posted by u/amadeuspagel
Two key quotes from the article:
1. "Race had no statistically significant effect on any group. Both conservatives and liberals, however, changed their views based on how they would vote. Only conservatives were affected by whether the refugees were said to be high-skilled and therefore presumably beneficial to the economy, or low-skilled and likely to rely on government assistance. Figure 1 below shows how partisanship, but not necessarily race, matters. The gap between the groups “very liberal” and “very conservative” in support for immigration is cut by around two-thirds when refugees are said to support Republicans instead of Democrats!"
2. "Notice: Not only do very liberal respondents like white migrants more than the very conservative do; very liberal respondents like Republican migrants more than very conservative ones do! To my mind this is strong evidence that Republicans’ core prejudice is not racism but xenophobia. They’re even relatively hostile to immigrants on their own side of the aisle."
knaq commented on FDA approves genetically engineered pigs theverge.com/2020/12/14/2... · Posted by u/gmays
Pigs also have 62 troublesome viruses embedded right in their germline DNA. Some other company fixed that with CRISPR... would they cooperate?
Fixing the PERV genes in pigs:
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/08/crispr-slices-virus-...
knaq commented on The demographic and cultural roots of the midlife crisis royalsocietypublishing.or... · Posted by u/mayiplease
The article's most important quote:
"All this is denied me in this stale marriage to an elderly, sickly, complaining, nagging wife. Let's get rid of her, start life all over again with another woman."
Even if a person doesn't consciously have the thought, there is a biological drive to reproduce. Even if a person expresses the desire to be childless, that biological urge may be pushing for a younger mate who might be fertile.
That leads to the anxiety. Trying to do impressive things and to display wealth, no matter how useless, is a biological urge. It becomes time to buy the fast car or take up hang gliding. When sanity and resource limits pull back on that, the emotions don't go so well.
I “upgraded” my HVAC to a super modern heat pump with fully variable compressor for efficiency. But the only thermostat that can drive it is a crappy Trane 1050
The remote thermostats can only be averaged and not switched (eg Measure Bedroom at night, Living Room & Office during day)
There’s only 4 time blocks per day
There’s no adjustment of start time based on outside temp. In fact, no way to say: Be at 72 at 8am when I get up
There’s a ”quiet mode” to reduce speed (and noise) at night, but clearly this is on an internal timer. It will come on at 67% for up to a minute before the timed Quiet Mode Function notices and scales it back to the pre-set maximum. Sadly, I’m already awake by then.
(Also, the default values at install are wrong - they have Day and Night switched)
Since this is the smartest thermostat they do for this, can they at least open up the API so I can have a chance to get back the features I liked about my Ecobee?
For so much money, there is so little “smart”
I think I can use what APIs I have to implement the OP solution without mechanical switches, but I can not control the compressor speed directly for Quiet Mode to work
At my house, Trane lost a sale because of that incompatible proprietary protocol. I really wanted to super modern heat pump with fully variable compressor. I refuse to be stuck with one vendor. I'm also not putting my system on the internet, though of course IP protocol within my own home could be nice.
Maybe the answer is to look at systems sold for business use.
A few translations, as seen by a majority of the electorate:
> He built over 500 miles of crime-stopping wall
Mostly repaired the existing wall which accomplishes practically nothing about illegal immigration anyway
> raised tariffs on China
Started a trade war that ravaged the farm sector, resulting in costly bailouts
> didn't attack a new country
Partnered with Saudi dictatorship to escalate drone strikes, and abolished transparency around them, attempted to start war with Iran by brazenly assassinating a high-ranking official
> appointed decent judges
Packed the courts with unqualified ideologues
> appointed a wonderful person for the Department of Education
Appointed a person who ruthlessly fought against relief for student debt
> put an end to racist anti-American hate sessions at federal employers
Aggressively fought against improving race relations
> ditched the Paris Accord
Went back on a climate policy supported by 70% of voters
> stopped China from using NAFTA via Mexico
Used foreign bogeyman to distract from automation, which has eliminated far more jobs
> Just before that virus hit
Bungled the biggest crisis to hit the nation in decades
> got us to the lowest unemployment numbers in recorded history
Was born on third base and claimed he hit a triple
Overall the biggest signal that they've devolved into a personality cult was that the republican party was so overconfident, despite all signals to the contrary, that they had no platform whatsoever in the 2020 campaign.
I hope that's just how you believe the majority of the electorate to be uninformed. Some is opinion, but some is just wrong.
Calling the wall a "repair" is far from reality. It is different in size and structure. The new wall is 18 or 30 feet high, cuttable more as a stunt than a practical bypass. It extends at least 10 feet underground as a 2-foot-thick concrete wall to prevent easy tunneling. In some places the wall is both sizes, doubled up with a road down the middle. Much of the old barrier was only I-beam steel in the ground, intended to stop cars and trucks. You could ride through on a horse or motorcycle. Other parts were just 8 to 12 feet high, without any underground protection from tunnels. Instead of being a major operation, a tunnel just required 1 person with a trowel and an hour to spare.
To say it "accomplishes practically nothing" is strange. About half of the illegal aliens present in the United States came via illegal crossings. Those are the ones who matter the most, because they obviously were denied a visa. In other words, they probably have a history that caused them to fail the background check. Illegal crossings also bring drugs to the USA, guns to Mexico (see "Operation Fast and Furious" for when we even allowed it), dehydration in the desert, drowning in the All-American Canal, and migrants getting rapped by their smugglers.
The trade war started half a century ago. It's still a war when we aren't fighting back. We can't opt out. We can fight, or we can accept certain loss. The farm sector provides far fewer jobs than the manufacturing that is lost to China.
Assassinating a high-ranking official is not attempting to start a war. The USA can get away with that, so it does. It's notable that CNN had a few days of loving Trump when he did that; they want war.
It's a matter of opinion about judges, but for certain the top 3 are not unqualified ideologues in comparison to Sotomayor.
Relief for student debt would be horribly unfair to both non-borrowers (like a plumber, car salesman, or marine) and responsible borrowers. The economics term for the problems caused is called "moral hazard". We would be subsidizing expensive low-value incomplete degrees, and thus encouraging more of this waste.
The effect of those racist employer-mandated hate sessions has been studied. It turns out that they cause the exact opposite effect from the supposed intent. When you put a bunch of employees in a room and lecture them about race, they start thinking of each other by race. It brings out the latent racism, raises suspicion, and creates resentment. Race relations were doing better under Trump until the BLM fundraising riots started stirring up anger. Sometimes you have to forgive and forget, but that isn't good fundraising.
People like climate policy when detached from any mention of job losses and taxes. The same goes for healthcare and many other things. Who wouldn't want something if there isn't a price tag? Mention the price, and opinions suddenly change. You won't find 70% in favor of the Paris Accord when you mention the price.
Automation may have eliminated far more jobs than foreign bogeymen, but that only increases the urgency for pulling jobs back from China and elsewhere. If the USA loses 1 job to a Chinese worker and 5 jobs to automation, that means that 6 jobs need to be transferred from China to the USA.
The virus crisis was mostly self-imposed by the states and by the people. The actual virus harms very few. The fact that rioters were allowed to form huge groups while businesses were shut down tells us the truth: the motive was to prevent Trump from having his record-breaking economy. In any case, basic hygiene is a personal choice, not a presidential choice.
There was a republican platform. For a rather democratic reason, it was the same as in 2016. The virus had prevented gathering everybody together, and it wouldn't be proper to choose a new platform without everybody there. No normal person reads the platform anyway, and elected officials aren't bound to it.
It's true, Biden was an awful option in so many ways.
It's amazing that voters knew this and were still happy to crawl through broken glass to vote for him. The alternative was that much worse. I hope republicans find some moment of clarity and let their extreme wing be banished to a third party. It will cost them a huge amount of political power short term, but they need some time in the wilderness to rediscover the concept of principles. We need a sane opposition party that actually has ideas and isn't a general-purpose personality cult.
You missed the point if you thought Trump was about a personality cult. Lots of Americans tolerated his personality because they like the policy and the results:
He built over 500 miles of crime-stopping wall, raised tariffs on China, didn't attack a new country, appointed decent judges, appointed a wonderful person for the Department of Education, put an end to racist anti-American hate sessions at federal employers, improved the H1B visa situation, ditched the Paris Accord, cut our taxes, got that pipeline approved, stopped China from using NAFTA via Mexico, got several peace treaties signed, and cut lots of economy-choking regulations. Just before that virus hit, he got us to the lowest unemployment numbers in recorded history (half a century) for black people and he got income inequality to go down a bit for the first time in ages. He even signed the First Step Act, fixing the overly harsh sentences imposed on crack users by another Biden-sponsored law.
That's all policy that people wanted, not personality. I don't know if that is more reassuring or more terrifying for you.
After spending a lot of time alone (mostly during quarantine - ironically in NYC, a place I moved to in March given it's lower barrier of entry to all things social), as someone who pulls more to the side of introvert but can be socially functional in group settings, I'm pretty sure that being alone with less social contact causes me far less stress and anxiety. So in other words, I'm finding that although there are benefits to being social, the fact that I've saved boat loads of money and have less stress from worthless small talk seems like an ideal way to live. Which sucks, because I've also realized that networking is the only true "hack" in essence to get past the drudgery of coding interviews / otherwise opaque career ladders.
I delineate my introvert / extrovert brain by classifying people I deem "interesting enough to talk to" and "people I'd rather not talk to". For this reason, work interactions always seem to go better than off hand social interactions. If someone is condescending or rude then I'd just rather not waste time talking to them. At this point in my life I don't really feel it's worth the effort to force social interaction in either direction, some people like you others won't - dating also gets easier if you take this approach.
Something I'm curious of is if "lonely" brains are less healthy? Also, for reference - the best point of comparison for social anxiety in my case is analogous to why I don't see the point in fancy cars. I drive a 2001 nissan, but I never worry about where I park it, if it gets dented or worry about someone keying it. If I drove a lambo, I'd constantly be worried (even subconsciously) about this kind of thing.
You can buy the car for the car, or as a display of wealth. This is independent of having wealth to spare.
If you do have plenty of wealth to spare, maybe you don't worry about dents. Just tell your people that you spotted a dent, and they'll get the car fixed or replaced.
Being nervous about dents isn't great for displaying wealth. It's better to park on a busy street in San Francisco, right next to a tent city where people have set up shop selling car parts. That shows everybody you don't worry about the money.
I feel like Injection Molding is far more amazing, interesting, intriguing and challenging process than 3D printing and yet, it gets zero media coverage. Before people respond to this - yes, I know the pros/cons of 3D printing and it certainly has place in manufacturing processes. Just pointing out the media hype around 3D printing which I thought would die down after 2015 or so... but it continues to overwhelm news sources.
Edit: Goddamn it HN, why are you all responding to the pros/cons of 3D printing? My complain is about media coverage and how click baity engagement metrics propelled 3D printing into this glorified do-all-world-changing-technology. It disproportionately gets attention, was just using injection-molding as a talking point. There are so many interesting manufacturing techniques. Every MBA exec wants their engineers to explore 3D-printing without knowing its downsides, thanks to the stupid media.
Print on the inside of a spinning drum. That way, you don't have to reverse direction. Print from a whole row of nozzles or lasers or whatever. That way, yet another dimension doesn't require reversing movement. That leaves just one axis if laying something down like an inkjet printer. If curing with a laser, the final axis can be handled by the laser simply crossing the needed distance.