proggy

True. That said, LED lighting has a directionality advantage as well. So it turns out you need less of them to get the same basic coverage as the sodium lamps. Here’s an account of how Tucson, with its many observatories, managed to keep within budget using standard, high-efficiency blue LED fixtures:

“If you absolutely must use white LEDs, you could do what Tucson has done,” Hall said. “They... switched out their whole high-pressure sodium system to 3,000 degree white but reduced their lumen budget for street lighting from 480 million to, like, 170 million [lumens] or something. And you need to do that. For every white LED lumen, you're increasing your skyglow by a factor of about three, but they cut the lumen budget by about a factor of three. So overall, they managed to wash out the skyglow because they’ve got a lot of observatories down there.”

I’m not sure what kind of conversation you’re trying to start with this comment, but the article is pretty clear in its case:

> Platforms also want to appear politically neutral. Inconveniently for them, our research found that although some election-related misinformation circulated on the left, the pattern of the same accounts repeatedly spreading false or misleading claims about voting, or about the legitimacy of the election itself, occurred almost exclusively among pro-Trump influencers, QAnon boosters, and other outlets on the right. We were not the only ones to observe this; researchers at Harvard [1] described the former president and the right-wing media as driving a “disinformation campaign” around mail-in voter fraud during the 2020 election; the researchers’ prior work had meticulously detailed a “propaganda feedback loop” within the closely linked right-wing media ecosystem.

[1] PDF: https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/37365484/Benkler...

If it’s being used for certain mayonnaise packaging in Europe (where mayonnaise is the “ketchup” of the continent), I can’t imagine lack of ketchup market penetration is for cost reasons alone.

It wasn’t just “tapes going back to the 80s.” Those were just the media Universal initially admitted to losing. No, that building was the mother lode. It had film archives going back over 50 years, and worst of all — unreleased audio tape masters for thousands upon thousands of recording artists. The amount of “remastered” album potential that fire destroyed is probably in the billions of dollars, let alone the historical loss of all those recordings by historical persons that will never be heard due to a failure of a fire prevention system. Fascinating case study in why you should never put all your eggs in one basket.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Universal_Studios_fire

I, apparently unlike many others here, think this case has standing. Yes, Griddy provides transparency into its pricing, but is it even reasonable to sell something so volatile to everyday people? Something that requires constant vigilance, lest you end up with a $10k crater in your checking account, is a pretty sketchy business no? This isn’t equities trading, this is a basic need that’s being sold here. Something typically boring and constant, made incredibly spiky.

I am reminded of the predatory lenders that marketed sub-prime mortgages to the masses in the ‘00s. Yes, you can be moderately cognizant of the risks and naively sign up thinking you’re getting a good deal —- but is it ethical on the seller’s part to peddle something that has the potential to bankrupt swaths of everyday people if they’re is a once in-an-every 10-20 year event?

Per Monday’s press conference, all of the EDL cameras and the microphone were commercial off-the-shelf products. They were lightly modified to reduce the likelihood of, say, electronic components off-gassing, but were not mission critical. They were simply put there to prove a point that, hey, if we want to do something cool and can’t justify the cost of bespoke hardware, we can try to use non-space rated hardware so long as we do no harm to the spacecraft or its mission objectives. I’d say the fact that all the cameras worked, and that the microphone came online during initial surface operations checkout (recording some very cool sounds from the surface), meant that the experiment was a rousing success.

The coordinate square contains a lot of roadway, yes, but it also contains the front door to von Kármán Auditorium, which is where many of the public-facing lectures and press conferences are held. In other words, that square is basically the front door to the whole lab.

It’s happened. Worst one I’ve heard of is when an engineer got an idea of how things could go south just days before the final decision point, ran to the testbed, tried it out, and their worst fears were proven right. They took it to the team, and after much wailing and gnashing of teeth, everyone collectively decided they were more confident in the level-headed plans they had executed to validate the system over the past 5+ years than this last minute, panic-induced test. So...they decided to let the sequence run as planned, and loaded up on a double helping of peanuts for the big day.

Well, the big day comes and guess what? The spacecraft performs perfectly. Everyone was absolutely ecstatic.

It turns out the test bed had been misconfigured, and there was nothing wrong whatsoever with the spacecraft or any of its command sequences.

Really makes you think about how to make the best possible decisions in a crisis.

Well, part of the author’s point is that there are a dearth of well-publicized examples of suburban redevelopment. The article is an attempt to raise awareness to those who may be sitting on a really big opportunity without even knowing it.

Hubble’s optics were designed around contemporary manufacturing infrastructure for spy satellites, presumably the KH-11 design developed by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-11_Kennen

I dunno. The UK got whipped into an online frenzy prior to the Brexit vote. Notably, there was possible Russian interference during that campaign on Twitter, similar to the US [1]. And Bolsonaro got elected in Brazil, largely due to manipulation on WhatsApp. Roughly 47% of the country uses WhatsApp, and of the top fifty images circulating at the time of the election, only four were real [2].

Social media has proven itself to have massive impact on the zeitgeist, and it has been weaponized the world over to serve the interests of those willing to manipulate others in order to further their own (often misanthropic) goals.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/14/how-400-russia...

[2] https://www.cfr.org/blog/whatsapps-influence-brazilian-elect...

> health insurance is already a low margin business

I’d like to know much, much more about this statement.

There’s only one meaning for the word, it can just be used in different contexts. For an example, in English, take “hellfire”. It’s a biblical reference to a conflagration in the underworld. Someone in the US military industrial complex thought it’d also be a very apt name for a type of missile. Same word, same basic meaning, different use.

When I was an expat in Japan, I was quite taken with the design of the single serve pour over coffee packets that were sold nearly everywhere. Each packet contained a folded origami filter that was itself filled with ready to brew ground coffee. So to make pour over coffee, all you had to do was unfold the filter, place it over a single cup, and pour some boiling water over it. That’s it — no other equipment required, not even a pour over cone! Far better tasting than instant, although it generated a bit more waste. Granted, it assumes the presence of an electric kettle, but nearly every household has one of those.

Here’s a video of one in use to better illustrate the concept: https://youtu.be/Q1nkDoNcMRc

That’s interesting. I always thought of Don Norman as having sensible, clear design principles. In the Design of Everyday Things [1], one of his main points was that devices should be always be clear about what they do, by presenting unambiguous affordances to the user. A row of light switches is no good; they should be organized so that they map to location in the room. A fridge with two knobs for temperature and volume of air should present a clear mental model to the user in its documentation, or better yet have a more direct interface to simply select the desired temperature for a given area. Doors that should be pulled should have handlebars; doors that should be pushed should have horizontal plates.

If there’s anyone whose design principles I’d want at Apple, it’d be the guy who espoused clarity and unambiguity. Him waxing poetic about a useless juicer seems very out of character, although he did indeed say that [2]. I’d be interested to hear more about his more current work for Apple.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Design_of_Everyday_Thing... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/arts/features/story/0,11710,1166...