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mchannon commented on Hard drives on backorder for two years as AI data centers trigger HDD shortage   tomshardware.com/pc-compo... · Posted by u/pabs3
mchannon · a month ago
During 1998-2000, AOL was ordering so many free trial CDs that it locked up world production, and music CDs faced 8-12 week delays. It was rumored that certain weeks there were no albums getting fabricated at all, worldwide.

I wonder if history isn’t repeating itself. AOL CDs had pretty much jumped the shark by 2000.

mchannon commented on Armed police swarm student after AI mistakes bag of Doritos for a weapon   dexerto.com/entertainment... · Posted by u/antongribok
mchannon · 2 months ago
In 1987, Paul Verhoeven predicted exactly this in the original Robocop.

ED-209 mistakenly viewed a young man as armed, blows him away in the corporate boardroom.

The article even included an homage to:

“Dick, I’m very disappointed in you.”

“It’s just a small glitch.”

mchannon commented on Precious Plastic is in trouble   preciousplastic.com//news... · Posted by u/diggan
hinkley · 7 months ago
15KW to make a single sheet of plastic. That is practically the entire capacity of a residential power feed.

And “several sheets per day”. Ouch.

If I were seeing a plastic recycling facility on How It’s Made I would expect to see a continuous feed system, with elaborate heat scavenging systems to preheat the ingredients while cooling the product.

I’m not sure how you scale such a thing down to cottage industry scale. Preheating to around 60° could be reasonably done by amateurs but this stuff goes up to at least 350° to melt plastic.

mchannon · 7 months ago
Am thinking propane tanks.

Working with those temps probably not appropriate for an office environment, but on a porch or well-ventilated garage, should economically outperform 110V pretty well.

mchannon commented on US Trade Court finds Trump tariffs illegal   bloomberg.com/news/articl... · Posted by u/master_crab
arunabha · 7 months ago
Yes, it does. Because it draws a clear line in the sand. The administration can choose to disobey the order, but that opens up individuals in the govt to potential prosecution later. That's why governments try fairly hard to go the legal route or at least maintain a fig leaf of explanations, however implausible.

The supreme court might have declared the president to be immune for official acts, but that doesn't extend to govt officials blatantly choosing contempt of court. They have practical immunity in the current administration. A future administration might not look so kindly on such actions.

mchannon · 7 months ago
But now we have the “deathbed pardon” or the lame-duck preemptive blanket pardon, popularized by 46.

Break the law all you want, long as the old boss or his successor is happy with you, you can’t be held accountable by the new boss.

mchannon commented on Thermoelectric generator based on a robust carbon nanotube/BiSbTe foam   onlinelibrary.wiley.com/d... · Posted by u/PaulHoule
mchannon · 7 months ago
The ZT (figure of merit) is an apples-to-apples number for comparing one thermoelectric material set to another. Higher is better.

Bismuth Telluride is the standard and has been for decades. It has a ZT of about 1.3. There have been some breakthroughs to exceed that in a few spots, but with limitations. Most of its competitors still exceed a ZT of 1.

This publication’s material is less than 0.01. Not all that newsworthy, unless I’m missing something.

mchannon commented on Elizabeth Holmes's partner raises millions for blood-testing startup   theguardian.com/us-news/2... · Posted by u/elorm
hilux · 7 months ago
If Theranos hadn't falsified anything, would they have had a product? My recollection, having read _Bad Blood_, is that they would not.

Good intentions to save the world, without any working (or even possible!) technology, are not investment-worthy.

mchannon · 7 months ago
Having read the same book (while on the fourth floor of MDC Brooklyn of all places) I believe the conclusion I read was that they were trying to make it all work with one drop, which was impossible, because of the number of tests they were promising and the low solute concentrations some of those tests had to work with.

But there's a wide gulf between a drop and a 20mL vial. Requiring three drops and claiming half the battery of tests would still be a substantial improvement. That's what they should've done. And I think this new startup can do that.

I interviewed with Theranos toward the very end. I have never been in a place with a bigger show of security, and I've previously worked for years in nuclear weapons laboratories. If this new startup ditches the demonic-possession voice and the arch-military security schtick, and the Wizard of Oz curtain, I might not consider an investment in them as foolhardy as one in Theranos.

mchannon commented on Elizabeth Holmes's partner raises millions for blood-testing startup   theguardian.com/us-news/2... · Posted by u/elorm
mchannon · 7 months ago
Just wow.

I think it's an uncomfortable truth that there was some good in Theranos in terms of the unfulfilled needs of society and the potential of diligent work toward realizing those needs with technology.

I don't know how often it's been said by others, but I often think that Theranos would have had an easier time if they hadn't falsified anything. Faking things takes effort too, and aiming a little lower and being less secretive would have been a better outcome. Maybe a different tack is possible through this reboot.

Mr. Evans' silver spoon is worth $10M, so raising $20M against that in such a fraught area is eye-opening. Whether he sees this as part of Elizabeth's redemption arc or just can't quit the hair of the dog that bit him, I guess we'll see.

Elizabeth Holmes' crime wasn't defrauding people, it was defrauding people richer than her. Change my mind.

Most VC's are taking it in the shorts right now anyway, because they're addicted to free money and there's no more free money, and most of them quite frankly suck at spotting good deals. So for the intrepid souls who cast their lot in with Mr. Evans, maybe only Nixon could go to China, and maybe they'll fare better than the stodgy fat-dumb-and-happy B-tier VC's who are not long for this brave new world anyway.

mchannon commented on Scientists discover new way to convert corn waste to low-cost sugar for biofuel   news.wsu.edu/press-releas... · Posted by u/gnabgib
mchannon · 8 months ago
The devil's always in the details.

I notice they use potassium hydroxide to treat this, and I seriously doubt merely in a catalytic capacity. That means that a lot of electrical input needs to be run into a chlor-alkali plant to make the KOH. If it's just a sprinkling, great. But is it?

Now if you're making moderately valued commodities like sugars or bioreagents, or perhaps even bioplastics, it might be cost-effective in spite of an electrical chlor-alkali input stream.

If you're making biofuels, however, this looks like corn-based ethanol or certain kinds of biodiesel, where there's lots of electrical and petrochemical energy inputs that conveniently get omitted when they tout how great for the environment and home-grown that biofuel energy is. Really hope they're not planning on going the same way with this set of discoveries.

mchannon commented on The future of solar doesn't track the sun   terraformindustries.wordp... · Posted by u/surprisetalk
tinodb · 8 months ago
I guess trackers really are an American thing? I’m in solar for ten years in The Netherlands, and I don’t think any utility scale fields use tracking. For residential roofs east-west placed systems have been an option for the same amount of time. They are now gaining popularity in The Netherlands because of net congestion during midday.
mchannon · 8 months ago
Trackers are useless when the majority of the incoming sunlight is diffuse (as is the case where you live).

Trackers are useful when the majority of the incoming sunlight is direct (America has a mix but the western half and parts of the south have a lot of direct).

Trackers are essential when you use concentrated sunlight.

A tracker that doubles the amount of sunlight hitting a panel is not free, but it also makes the panel take up 2x the area, or more, to avoid shading its neighbor.

The thing people tend to forget about trackers is they offer this trade-off where you can trade shaded area for power per rated panel. When land is cheap and panels (or arrays, heliostats, power towers, etc.) are expensive, trackers make sense.

The reverse has been the case for the past ten years, and continues to get more true by the day. I doubt we will ever see the day return where land is cheap again and/or PV are expensive again.

mchannon commented on The future of solar doesn't track the sun   terraformindustries.wordp... · Posted by u/surprisetalk
mchannon · 8 months ago
I've been in solar energy as my primary vocation since the 1990's.

I've built solar cars, I've built solar panels, I've installed solar panels, I've designed solar trackers. I know this industry inside and out.

I'd never heard of an east-west array before (though I did experiment with one-cell-wide "crinolations" at 60 degree angles, did not find any value to using them but it was a different application where low-angle light wasn't a factor). I'd never thought of such an array on this scale, at this low angle, before.

I don't think most of the people reading this article quite understand that this is a completely different kind of array topology to flat-plate fixed-tilt, or tracking-based systems. Do yourself a favor, if you consider yourself intellectually curious, and if you came away from skimming this article thinking there's nothing new under the sun, read it again with a keener eye toward the novelty of it.

u/mchannon

KarmaCake day3148March 15, 2012
About
Thanks for asking! I'm a real engineer (Materials, Electrical, Solar, and getting into Chemical) and I'm working on a new project in the IoT space.
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