bsmith

BFR will launch (at least suborbital flights) later this year (if things go to schedule...). It's orbital variant will have about twice the liftoff thrust of the Saturn V.

Spot on. In other industries, the entrenched, established incumbents' products are only viable because they are "fake government-subsidized cheaper" (ah ehm...looking at you, corn). I'd not be surprised to see this happening with fossil fuels here in the U.S. one day – maybe it already is?

This is all well and good (really), but I'm a bit disappointed that the entire post omits the word "efficiency." Yes, we must do everything he mentions – but we waste a TON of energy. Reducing our demand will only make any other solution(s) easier to achieve. One salient stat: it's estimated that commercial office buildings in the U.S. waste about 30% (!) of the energy they consume.

Shameless plug: my startup (bractlet.com) uses physics-based simulation models to try and claw back most of that 30%. If you're interested in that sort of thing, I'd love your feedback on our website/offering. Feel free to email me: brian@bractlet.com

Plus, the comment 1 level up had "CO2" rather than "CO₂."

This seems like a rip-off, and a pretty high-risk buy given how new Bird is to hardware...

With a quick Google search, you can find the same Segway scooter that many of the scooter companies (including Bird) have used for around $500, new.

Agreed. Taken to its logical extreme, imagine someone insisting that some new revolutionary surgical procedure's tooling and instructions should be made public because people "are gonna try to do it themselves, anyway." No bueno.

I don't see why anyone feels the need to compel Apple to make their phones "repairable" in the first place. If you want that feature, I'm sure Samsung or myriad other manufacturers would gladly sell you their handsets instead.

Maybe you could make some sort of anti-trust arguments about the probably-a-little-too-tight relationships between wireless carriers and the device manufacturers, but there are a lot of handset makers to choose from and the market can choose who wins.

While on the surface this may seem true, this is actually totally false. For example, if you eat too much protein in one meal (even with no carbs) it will still throw the body out of ketosis. The science of staying in keto is way more nuanced than "no carbs" (which is nutritionally impossible, anyway). Again, read the blog I linked to if you want to know more.

To turn this idea on its head...maybe SpaceX will be able to compete with Verizon/AT&T etc. by providing a global Internet service that also has some way of connecting to phones. I'm imagining having an Internet and cell phone plan in one, all powered by Starlink, with no roaming or other B.S. to deal with.

Can we update to the original source? https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/27/18519778/spacex-starlink-...

Awesome that it worked so well for you while it did. Tip for others who may try this: don't forget to lower your macros (and, in turn, calories) an appropriate amount as your weight drops. The same diet that maintains keto at 250 lbs won't keep you in keto at 190. For much, much more: https://peterattiamd.com/

I think this title needs to be changed by a moderator. It has seemingly nothing to do with the linked page.

Electronics, especially with displays, are very commonly shipped with protective, removable plastic coatings. How is this at all surprising? Seems like an honest mistake on the part of the user, combined with a bit of design (and documentation) fault on the part of the manufacturer.

Interesting. At what point does it stop being sounds waves traveling through the ground and start becoming straight-up seismic vibrations caused by the (effective) explosions happening on the pad? Probably a bit of a spectrum, as the ground is itself acting like a giant woofer of sorts. I wonder where such a launch registers on the Richter scale...

I know this is a nit, but the incorrect use of commas is making this a really tough read for me...pet peeve of mine, I suppose. Anyway, salient points: use the right tools for the right jobs and all that jazz. Depends on the required level of correctness for the application. Are we coding for an airplane control system, or a slack bot that lets us know when the build biffs?

From what I've read, the assessed severity of the failure of aviation systems is rated. The rating for this system was not severe enough to require redundancy based on the assigned rating. I'll update my comment if I can find a reference.

Aren't little bits of debris in LEO going to fall back into the atmosphere and burn up pretty quickly, though? Not an expert here, but I think there is enough atmosphere left at standard LEO altitudes that thrusters are needed semi-regularly to keep these things in orbit. Granted, some debris may get launched into a weird elliptical orbit that takes them farther away from Earth for a bit, but then won't they come right back into the atmosphere at perigee and burn up?

I've lived here for about 5 years. I live downtown and routinely walk (or Bird) to work (I started a startup here and the job market is great). I run on a 10-mile loop that's completely isolated from traffic around the (beautiful) lake that runs downtown between my apartment and my office. I watch the sun set from my balcony over hill country (Google "violet crown sunset") and I frequently hike the Greenbelt trails that are walking distance from my apartment. I can easily walk or bike to over 100 bars where I routinely see jazz, rock, and blues shows in this so-called "Music capital of the world." And the food scene here is incredible. Lots of young, fit people live here and downtown is always safe and abuzz with buskers, tourists, and locals alike all intermingling and having a great time. Yeah, it's pretty lame – don't move here.

Wow, that's heinous. At worst they could use a VPN, and at best they would just download firmware updates or poll for config changes from the Internet the same way other clients on the network do. Out of curiosity, do you remember what brand(s) and or product(s)?

This works especially well for pop tunes, where the vocal track is by far the most prominent and is almost universally panned dead-center in the mix.

I'm a fairly n00b-level hobbyist music producer, but I can take a stab.

I like thinking of the "stereo image" of a track as having 3 dimensions in physical space. If you imagine looking forward at a stereo system, left to right is the "pan" (how much of a signal is originating from the left vs. right speakers, with 50% each being dead center), volume of each track (or instrument) is how distant (or close) the sound is (you can imagine an individual instrument moving forwards toward you if louder, and vice versa), and the frequency (or pitch) is how high the track is (with lower pitch or frequency being at the floor).

When a mixing engineer "mixes" a track, each track (or instrument) tends to be: 1) adjusted to an appropriate volume relative to other tracks (forward/backward), panned or spread left/right (usually more stereo "width" on the higher frequency sounds), and "equalized" to narrow and manipulate the band of frequencies coming through to the master mix from that track (it's common to cut out some of the harmonics either side of the fundamental of one instrument to leave "space" for another instrument competing for the same frequency range).

So now, even with a final, mastered track, we could apply various filters to de-mix fairly easily if the mixing engineer has left a good amount of "space" in between the elements in this stereo image. If our bass is always under 150 Hz and every other element is above 200 Hz, a simple low pass will grab the bass (and likely also the kick drum, if there is one). But we could also use a "gate" to only allow a signal of a certain magnitude (volume) through to isolate that kick hit, or the inverse to exclude the kick and just get the bass sound. A band-pass could do a decent job on a guitar or vocal track, but will also grab background noise from other tracks sharing the same frequency range. More complicated techniques could be used to isolate things that have been panned left or right of center based on comparison between the left and right stereo channels of the mix.

These techniques won't be as universally useful as the approach in this article, but for certain tracks or sections of tracks, can give very good results very quickly. More tracks and effects like reverb and distortion make all of this more difficult to do with simpler techniques.

This is definitely a nit, but isn't calling this a "new vulnerability" incorrect? The vulnerability has existed, but has only recently been discovered. I'd prefer it was referred to as a "new exploit."

Complete clickbait title — the airline will offer customer service through it's app, just not over the phone.

I like this idea a lot. How many reposts don't end up getting a comment like this because no one remembers the original submission? It would be interesting to see a history of every time an article was submitted.

I don't see any reason not to focus on reduction AND capture now – in fact, I think it would be irresponsible not to. The atmosphere is a reservoir that's already holding way too much carbon; let's reduce what we're putting in AND increase what we're taking out – NOW, at the same time.

I don't know why using my keyboard is any different. Where are your assumptions coming from? A button is a button. This is why we use CI at my company – it IS all automated. And the last button I press after I type `git push origin master` is...you guessed it...return on my keyboard. That commit never sees the light of day in production unless it makes it through all of our checks.

Hate to say it, but my first thought upon reading the headline was, "You mean, like, the return key on my keyboard??" But that's no fun at all – I actually love the spirit of this post.

Yes, someone (thing?) is gaming the system: cheaper renewable energy generation assets, and thus, weather (which is inherently unpredictable). When the sun is shining and wind is gusting isn't always at highest demand, which depresses rates during these totally unanticipated spikes in supply. Unless someone is playing God with the weather, I don't think there's a finger to point here.

Here's an archive of the blog post the broken link points to: https://web.archive.org/web/20100307015535/http://www.infini...

Yikes! Thanks...I need to fix that.