Hacker News Reader

ExcelSagaon Uber will not re-apply for self-driving car permit in California

Exactly, and this issue is highly emotive for many. The rational counter argument, that humans are generally terrible drivers, is just guaranteed to piss people off more.

ExcelSagaon North Korea Is Starting Up a Nuclear Reactor

To be efficient as a power plant a reactor needs to spend most of its time operating. If you want to make nuclear material for bombs with this kind of reactor it will enter a number of startup-shutdown cycles, which would make it inefficient, and would be very noticeable. Of course they recently extended the coolant outflow quite a bit to mask the thermal signature of operation, but it should still be possible to determine a rough operational schedule.

ExcelSagaon Uber will not re-apply for self-driving car permit in California

My guess is that they don’t want to be seen asking for something they’ll publically fail to get. At this point, outside of the world of tech, people who were downright alarmed by SDV’s now have a place to hang their hat. Politicians follow the direction of popular sentiment, and they’re not going to risk the next Uber fatality having their stamp on it. They’ll be thinking the next corpse might be a child’s as well, and how that would hurt their prospects for re-election.

On HN there are a lot of Vulcans who have stats ready to go about human driver fatalities, but that’s far out of touch with the average voter. Fear = Dread/Sense of Control, and most people think they have a high degree of control as the driver of a car. I’m not arguing that they’re right, but they’re the majority.

ExcelSagaon North Korea Is Starting Up a Nuclear Reactor

It’s worth pointing out that the extensive submarine fleet the US has could give it a bit more leeway in choosing their second strike than any other nation. Having said that, Americans went to two wars based on a conventional attack on New York. I’m pretty sure that they’d be baying for nuclear fire if they were actually nuked themselves, and they might not be satisfied with anything less than “parking lot” effects. At the very least, I think Pyongyang would be thoroughly nuked. The intersection of a few dozen Mach stems would do the trick, although the fallout wouldn’t be trivial for anyone downwind, like China or RoK.

ExcelSagaon Virtual embodiment challenges our understanding of who and what we are

Be suspicious.

In the V.R. game Surgeon Simulator, players use power drills, bone saws, and other tools to vivisect a humanoid alien that writhes in pain on the operating table. As in most V.R. video games, players in Kitchen and Surgeon Simulator move in fanciful ways and are, at best, semi-embodied.

In this case the verbiage seems like a cover for ignorance of the subject matter.

ExcelSagaon Lockheed Martin has obtained a patent for a compact fusion reactor

Fission is required for D-T fusion at this point, otherwise you don’t have any tritium. It’s the people who ignore that, and our failure to breed tritium within a fusion reactor who are disingenuous. If you don’t know even that much about the science, I’d strongly recommmemd refraining from accusing people of being less tham forthright.

ExcelSagaon Lockheed Martin has obtained a patent for a compact fusion reactor

If you want to be really cynical then the project they’re moved to is still fusion, but the NIF style used for nuclear weapons research rather than power plants. Then it’s not just about salary, it’s about tempting people who would never work on weapons research into that space.

ExcelSagaon Lockheed Martin has obtained a patent for a compact fusion reactor

D-T fusion suffers from all of those problems.

ExcelSagaon New Leadership Has Not Changed Uber

Reality is what we choose to make of it. In the case of the US, reality is crony capitalism running a yearly trillion dollar deficit, billlions wasted on military contracts like Zumwalt, and overspending-underperforming healthcare. Let’s leave the buzzwords and ideology aside.

ExcelSagaon Lockheed Martin has obtained a patent for a compact fusion reactor

It is very unclean, especially since it requires conventional fission reactors to produce the tritium. It’s theoretically possibl to breed tritium in the reactor blanket of the fusion reactor, but that’s a totally unsolved problem. The high neutron flux of the D-T reaction also destroys all known materials in short order by disrupting the atomic structure of the materials through atomic spallation. There are plenty of other hurdles to making a fusion power plant as oppposed to just a research reactor, but those are big ones.

ExcelSagaon The 'alien megastructure' star just set a new record by going really dark

To be clear, previously the star was apparently dimmed by 4%, and now “really dark” means 5%. It’s still not an alien megastructure, and an additional 1% is not “really dark” and this is clickbait.

ExcelSagaon Yes, Cops Are Now Opening iPhones with Dead People's Fingerprints

I... don’t mind this? If you have a corpse and a phone, that’s sort of sensible. I’d expect this to be the case, and the person is dead after all.

ExcelSagaon Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street

An “amazing work,” just to be very very clear, by Ted Kaczynski, the serial bomber. Not that he has nothing of value to say, but keep the source well in mind. He’s a smart guy, with a lot of insight, and he’s also batshit crazy and a remorseless killer.

ExcelSagaon Personal Reason for Hating Facebook (2015)

It’s not about what you share. See responses to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16675819

ExcelSagaon Personal Reason for Hating Facebook (2015)

Also don’t let your friends and family use it, block their Pixel, don’t let them buy brokered info on you, don’t let anyone else with Facebook on your WiFi... and do this all perfectly 100% of the time.

ExcelSagaon Personal Reason for Hating Facebook (2015)

Naive. Facebook does more than just passively let you fill out surveys, with their Pixel and snooping on your texts and contacts being just a couple of examples.

ExcelSagaon Personal Reason for Hating Facebook (2015)

I hate that, if I somehow don’t want to consign my personal data, beliefs, preferences, relationships, work history, daily plans, and private messages to a massive advertising corporation, I have to risk missing out on seminal life events. Not being on Facebook is sort of like not having a cellphone. Sure, me and a small number of weirdos can opt out, but we are increasingly disadvantaged by it.

I think that’s a good point, well stated, and your dismissal is rude and without depth. Owning a phone doesn’t necessitate giving something like Facebook access to your whole life. When a means of communication becomes a utility (as you’re describing), it has responsibilities and regulations.

As of 2015, this blog was on the nose.

ExcelSagaon Zuckerberg Takes Steps to Calm Facebook Employees

This is why they’re being “calmed” and kept comfortable. In the immortal words of Pickle Rick, I think it's helped a lot of people get comfortable and stop panicking, which is a state of mind we value in the animals we eat, but not something I want for myself.

Plus they can bury any qualms they have in piles of money and rationalizations.