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samjohnsonon Show HN: I Built Paul Graham's Intellectual Captcha Idea

It was the same kind of logic question. You missed a key word in your quote. I think it said “If you study hard enough you _can_ pass the exam”. It was there to make it clear that studying hard is not a guarantee for passing the test, and therefore can’t be used as the certain reason for failure.

samjohnsonon Kindle is removing download and transfer option on Feb 26th

I’ve tried leaving kindle but keep coming back because of how well it syncs side-loaded (via email) epub reading progress between the physical reader and the kindle app on my iPhone.

I recently got a Boox Palma, which I love, but the Android Kindle app can’t display time remaining in a chapter for emailed epubs. I find this very surprising, considering both the kindle hardware readers and iPhone kindle app have no problem doing this. Sharing this story in case someone else has run into this and identified a solution.

samjohnsonon Leaderless Teams

This is interesting, but it’s not obvious to me what “the capacity for an individual to attend to others in the group” means in this context.

It would be interesting to learn how that capacity was observed and measured. Has anyone seen the source research?

samjohnsonon Ask HN: What are some good resources to learn how electricity works?

> Then I realized that a 5V supply will always be 5V in normal operation and ohms law means the current varies.

This is a great observation. I've often thought that teaching Ohms law as I=V/R would lead to less confusion. Similarly, in intro physics why is mass acceleration introduced as f=ma? Wouldn't a=f/m have a clearer meaning?

samjohnsonon 100 Years Later, the Madness of Daylight Saving Time Endures

Are you missing that the quote is from a sentence listing example complaints and not actual affects of daylight saving?

samjohnsonon Show HN: Build A Personal Power Plant for $200

A Watt is an SI unit defined as 1 joule/second, and is used for measure rate of energy usage/generation. So this system generates up to 100 joules/second, and can output up to 150 joules/second (until the stored energy is consumed).

samjohnsonon Why I stopped hacking the Amazon Dash button and learned to solder

There's still significant savings at 5% usage:

100W * 5% * 24 Hours = 120Wh

1W * 24 Hours + 5W * 5% * 24 Hours = 30Wh

So it does depend on the duty cycle - As long as the 5W lightbulb with a 1W computer is used less than ~19 hours a day (80%) you'd still have savings:

1W * 24 Hours + 5W * 80% * 24 Hours = 120Wh

samjohnsonon By 2040, computers will need more electricity than the world can generate

Why is the world's energy production a constant value from 2010 to 2040? Surely we produce more energy today than we did 30 years ago. Is this just a chart scale issue?

samjohnsonon Polycode – Open Source, cross-platform framework for games and interactive apps

You might be interested in Cinder. It's a mature C++ library with multiplatform support: http://libcinder.org/

samjohnsonon E-Mail Security in the Wake of Petraeus

You almost can with http://gmvault.org/