Hacker News Reader

st26on Methane leaks from US gas fields dwarf government estimates

It's mostly political. The conservatives argue no regulation of any kind is needed because the industry will self-regulate and capture all the leaking methane because it's lost money.

(Mysteriously, the methane continues to leak, and oil & gas continues to lobby against requirements to fix the leak)

As a secondary improvement, cheaper monitoring equipment might make the political fight easier to win.

Another improvement, the gas is owned by the public, and I don't believe royalties are paid at the pad but rather further down the line- after the leaks. O&G has little incentive to avoid wasting resources that "belong" to someone else that they have not paid a dime for. Just pump more.

st26on Methane leaks from US gas fields dwarf government estimates

Then why are they letting it continue to escape? Proof is in the pudding.

st26on How to stop the decline of public transport in rich countries

It isn't about mpg, it's about use of space & everything that falls out of that. Less money building roads, parking lots, etc.

Sidebar, I wonder how an EV car stacks up to an EV bus.

st26on How to stop the decline of public transport in rich countries

There probably aren't a lot of people getting cheated, paying a lot in and getting nothing out, because so many people drive, yes. This is a valid point (although the distribution of infrastructure spending may not match the driving). However, the other trouble with automobile subsidies is they are invisible. An individual can't see the true marginal cost of their use, either direct (road wear) or indirect (sprawl, parking lot oceans).

Behavior would change dramatically if, e.g., you had a GPS tracker logging miles and you paid a monthly road use bill, and parking spots were all metered at their true cost.

st26on The SEC Will Leave Good ICOs Alone

Marijuana is more states rights vs federal though. Those MJ operations following state law are making a bet on federalism, rather than simply flagrantly ignoring law.

st26on Eight hours a night isn’t enough, according to a leading sleep scientist

The outliers who really do fine with just a few hours are just that: outliers.

Except, people want to believe they are outliers. So no matter how rare you explain that it actually is- well, everybody else is delusional. But me, ME, I really am the outlier! I'm special!

st26on Eight hours a night isn’t enough, according to a leading sleep scientist

Nah, you want to be as fresh as possible when kid arrives. At the beginning, caring for them is a months-long marathon that slowly grinds down your reserves.

st26on Humans Are Turning Mammals More Nocturnal

Thanks for bringing this up!

It can be addressed with warmer LED's, filtered LED, narrow-band LED... trouble is the bulk of the market is at 4K & 5K white balance, so that's the default choice to put in.

The good news about LED is, due to more even color profile, they can use dramatically less lux, but that requires adjustment to lighting level too.

st26on Long-term health risks after having adenoids or tonsils removed in childhood

In that case, it sounds possibly similar. Tubes are pretty non-invasive, although they can come out which is annoying and you have to wear earplugs when you swim.

st26on Long-term health risks after having adenoids or tonsils removed in childhood

So are his eustachian tubes chronically obstructed?

My younger brother had chronic ear infections as a kid, and as best I know he basically had tubes in his eardrums for a while, and then when he was older his eustachian tubes started draining more reliabily. He's been fine since.

st26on Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

Kinda makes it sound like they've got too much road. Property taxes are only a thousand or three per single family household, I believe.

st26on How Children in a Maya Village Do Chores

I don't have a toddler yet, but I do anticipate prohibiting knives for a while. I keep them very sharp; any of my chefs knives could easily remove small digits.

Another commentor mentioned nylon knives though, maybe this is an interesting possibility.

st26on Sucking carbon dioxide from air is cheaper than scientists thought

If we're totally screwed then it doesn't matter what we do; so frankly it isn't really worth thinking about. Better to assume we can save ourselves and try, than assume we are doomed and give up.

st26on Pegatron likely to land new MacBook orders from Apple, say sources

What would make them the best?

st26on A Costly, Deadly Obsession with Coal

Wonder if HVDC could increase the viability of nuclear. Colorado, for example, despite plenty of space and nearby uranium mines, doesn't have nuclear- supposedly because there isn't demand for that much power!

Nuclear seems to be one of those incredibly capital intensive projects where scale is king. If you could build one site as big as you wanted, wherever you wanted, that could sell every watt of power anywhere in the country- maybe that works a lot better for nuclear.

st26on A Costly, Deadly Obsession with Coal

Eventually, but for now it's a 50% reduction over coal.

st26on Sucking carbon dioxide from air is cheaper than scientists thought

Presumably, Zeno's Paradox will be hard at work. We don't have to remove it all in one go. We just have to remove it faster and faster and faster, as we get closer to the limit (whatever that limit is).

This isn't my field, but so many human endeavors go like that. Just buy a little time so we can figure out how to do better, which then buys time to figure out how to do even better.

st26on Tesla Faces Accelerating Rate of Model 3 Refunds

The question wasn't cost, as I recall it was basically power-density, longevity, & recharge rates. Ten or fifteen years ago, you couldn't fit enough battery in a car to get a useful range at any cost. That's why the supercharger network was a bigger deal years ago, and why fuel cells were in focus back then, and have dwindled as batteries gained ground (IMO)

st26on Tesla Faces Accelerating Rate of Model 3 Refunds

I'd put it even simpler. He's betting on uncertain future technologies, where it's completely unclear if the technology he is pursuing will work out.

Ten years ago nobody was particularly certain electric cars could ever be feasible, and currently nobody is sure that hyperloop will ever be feasible either.

In other words, is that next fitness peak even there? Or is it a mirage?

I don't think the current major players are lazily sitting on their hands, they just tend to focus more on the march of incremental improvement than blue sky research. Which can be incredibly valuable- the last hundred years of automobiles and fifty years of semiconductor manufacturing has been mostly the march of incremental improvement.

st26on NSA posters from the 50s and 60s [pdf]

Then, I guess I have to ask you to be more specific about who is trying to erase that from history. I don't think many people dispute the faith of our founders.

st26on NSA posters from the 50s and 60s [pdf]

I probably shouldn't bother, but-

America was founded by a bunch of Christians, and some of the country's construction surely was influenced by that.

However America was NOT founded as a Christian state.

Where the left & right butt heads over this is usually when, for example, pro-lifers say "God clearly forbids abortion and America is a Christian state so our laws must follow the Bible", and pro-choicers say "Uh, no, this is not a Christian state, the Bible does not set our laws".

st26on The Psychology of Money

You could always put them somewhere like under a trash can and post a "free" listing on craigslist, or something like that. I do that occasionally with things I don't want to deal with, but don't want to throw away. Eventually they'll make their way back into useful circulation.

st26on The Psychology of Money

I have since sold my pickup, but it was durable & reliable as hell & easy to work on, and it really was great when I occasionally wanted to tow something large or move something heavy & dirty, most often dirt & mulch. It's the challenge of, I do certain things occasionally but not often. New plan is to rent a trailer, we'll see how it goes.

Many of the benefits of a good pickup are really the benefits of a ladder frame chassis, but few non-pickups are made on a ladder frame now. 4-Runner, Xterra, it's a short list.

st26on Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub

Centralization has an undeniable fundamental attraction. Everything, really, seems to naturally trend towards centralization, and then major scandals reverse the trend. We will probably swing back and forth between the two in perpetuity.

The whole darn internet was built to be decentralized. And yet we all use GMail, the same handful of DNS servers, the same short list of major trunk hubs, the same shrinking list of bitcoin mining pools, etc.

st26on California approves $768M for electric vehicles

Apparently in a break from the usual, they've at least determined where they will get new revenue to pay for this.

st26on America’s Teens Are Choosing YouTube Over Facebook

Isn't that mostly because his car, clothes, and house are probably behind the times? A social media platform can grow & evolve, a house built sixty years ago can't much.

The things my father owned that are still current are pretty special to me, actually.

st26on How to disappear from the internet

No one has a right to have their mistakes hidden, though certainly we could talk about whether a merciful & forgiving society should forget because it's the right thing to do.

st26on Rhetoric around the blockchain hints at problems with techno-utopian ideologies

Which is my biggest issue with most mainline coins, I believe they will ultimately incentivize centralization.

st26on Things no one tells you before an Antarctic expedition (2015)

Until the water starts insisting on breathing.

st26on Things no one tells you before an Antarctic expedition (2015)

Or maybe just go there as a part time low skill worker, so that my whole trip is funded and at the same time I don't have to work more than a few hours a day. I just want the feeling of having lived in Antarctica for a few months. (internet access is a must).

Your idea of an "expedition" is pretty damn weird.