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gjem97

452 karma · joined September 25, 2014

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gjem97··on Towards Battery-Free HD Video Streaming [video]
Thanks, that second paper is helpful. The OP is really the proof that passive Wifi is actually useful. In my opinion, the real advance here is in that second paper you cite, the fact that they've built Wifi enabled devices that are powered by the Wifi signal itself.
gjem97··on Airplanes that fly on electricity debut at Fresno’s Chandler Airport
>I heard that airliners can't land with a full load of fuel and they have to dump it to land in an emergency

I think the main reason they do that is that way there's less stuff to burn if there's a fire or explosion.

gjem97··on A manufacturing process that produces long strips of high-quality graphene
Wow, cool. I imagine in volume it's within a factor of two or so of that?
gjem97··on A manufacturing process that produces long strips of high-quality graphene
> Several companies (Graphenea etc) have scaled up CVD and continue to work towards much lower $ / m^2 targets in the near future.

What is the approximate commercial cost of CVD-produced graphene sheets?

gjem97··on Apple's investment into Clangd and refactoring tooling
I'm no expert, but one major distinction I can see is that libclang would be used in (editor) process, and a clangd server would operate outside the editor process and communicate over a protocol with the editor.
gjem97··on OLPC’s $100 laptop was going to change the world
I have an extra one that still works. If anyone is interested in it, please let me know. I will send it to you if you pay for shipping.
gjem97··on Uber enters dockless bike wars with Jump acquisition
> looks like they've excluded areas with more tourists If it's anything like NYC they did this to avoid upsetting the existing bike rental businesses in those areas. They need to do this to get local government buy-in of the program.
gjem97··on Norwegian Shipbuilders Turning to Battery Power
> For now, electric ships make most sense in populated waterfront areas where they can be recharged easily and improve air quality and noise pollution

And probably requires a duty cycle that can afford sitting at a dock for hours a day to recharge, right? So passenger ferries (that typically don't run 24-hours a day)?

gjem97··on Theranos, CEO Holmes, and Former President Balwani Charged with Fraud
Yeah, I don't think she gets nothing. She was paid a salary for many years, I would't be surprised if it was a pretty hefty one. There were probably other perks, too (wasn't she known to fly private for business trips?). It looks like she simply relinquished some equity that probably wasn't worth very much anyway. This settlement doesn't look like much of a deterrent to future would-be fraudsters.
gjem97··on Big Sugar Versus Your Body
I believe there have been some studies that show that artificial sweeteners affect your insulin response to real sugar, but I think it's far from settled science.
gjem97··on Anna: A Fast, Scalable, Flexibly Consistent Key-Value Store
There's a lot more detail in the linked paper.

http://db.cs.berkeley.edu/jmh/papers/anna_ieee18.pdf

gjem97··on Statement on Potentially Unlawful Online Platforms for Trading Digital Assets
There is no requirement that regulators avoid catch-22 like situations. It would be unsurprising if the SEC had responded in such a situation with "Yes, they are likely securities, but no we don't care to elaborate, and we can't undertake approving your exchange because of (insert plausible but kinda lame reason here)."

You have very little in the way of recourse.

However if they determine that you're illegally selling those securities, you better believe that they can and will come after you, in the name of protecting the little guy.

gjem97··on Unnecessary medical care is harming patients physically and financially (2015)
It's a question of fundamental incentives. Doctors and hospitals are paid for procedures, treatments, and appointments. Is it any surprise that there's incentive to undertake these activities? You don't even need to believe that your doctor is greedy to understand that if there's a borderline case, they might order the test or treatment "to be safe", or "because there's no downside", or because "we have the available capacity". Even if they aren't explicitly considering payment as part of the equation, it's not unreasonable to think that subconsciously the monetary incentive will tip some of these cases in the direction of overtreatment.

IMO, the only way this is going to change is a movement away from the "pay for services" model that is dominant in US healthcare today.

gjem97··on Possible interaction between baryons and dark-matter particles revealed
Ok, so my understanding is that the term "dark matter" refers to a difference between the theoretical and observed exapansion speeds (accelerations?) of the universe. Can someone summarize for me why this is a useful concept, and not just simplify it to "we have the theory of universe expansion wrong"? What is the evidence for there actually being something like matter involved?
gjem97··on After rising for 100 years, electricity demand is flat
I'm pretty sure that you're joking, but it reminds me of the story of Microsoft (I think) running heaters in a datacenter to meet one of the technicalities of a power purchase agreement. I cant find a link right now (PR people have probably worked hard to obliterate it from the internet), but from what I recall, MS had a long-term power purchase agreement with a local utility that had both a minimum and maximum energy usage threshold for some time period. Facing contractual penalties if they did not reach the minimum, they essentially ran heaters outside the data center to use some extra energy. This was 10 years ago or so. I'd like to think that if this were today, someone would be willing to swoop in and use all that power to mine some bitcoins.
gjem97··on Building a Well System
Is it just code for "young"?
gjem97··on Content-aware image resize library
> Squeezing images is a huge no-no in any graphic design

Surely this is true in journalism. I find it hard to believe it's true in ad work.

gjem97··on 'Space graffiti': astronomers angry over launch of fake star into sky
Is there a tracker?
gjem97··on With Fungi in the Mix, Concrete Can Fill Its Own Cracks
That's good context, thanks. We're quite near a salt water estuary here, I imagine the humidity and salt in the air also makes a difference...

Another thing you can do relatively cheaply (I think) is powered cathodic protection. I don't know if they bothered to do that on this building.

gjem97··on With Fungi in the Mix, Concrete Can Fill Its Own Cracks
I for one would love to see something like this happen, but I think ultimately this will always be limited to niche applications.

A developer recently built a 20 story apartment building next to my office window using entirely a reinforced concrete frame. I was incensed to find out that because of "concrete cancer" [1], the lifespan of that building may be less than 70 years. But the more I thought about it, the more I began to believe that maybe the additional lifespan is not an asset. The building is attractive today, but might not (probably won't) appeal to people 40 years from now. Furthermore, buyers are going to want different things from their homes (look at the popularity of open kitchens 40 years ago vs now). And I began to realize that it would be quite difficult to design and build a building that would be useful beyond 70 years from now.

Another way to look at it is that the marginal value of 10 years of longevity is not that large out 80-90 years. I think you'd have a difficult time finding a developer who would pay 10% extra to get a building that lasts 100 years instead of 90.

This line of reasoning leads to an icky "planned obsolescence" approach, but I think these are the economic realities.

[1] http://www.remedial.com.au/structural-repairs/concrete-cance...

gjem97··on High-end art is one of the most manipulated markets (2013)
Furthermore, restricting future sales to a buyer because you don't like that they sold the last one sounds pretty anti-competitive, especially when you consider that usually a gallery has a temporary monopoly on an artists works.
gjem97··on Airbus Handed A380 Lifeline With $16B Emirates Order
Maybe it was a "semi-bluff", then.

http://www.pokerlistings.com/10-essential-texas-hold-em-move...

gjem97··on Airbus Handed A380 Lifeline With $16B Emirates Order
I'm with you. I think the correct poker metaphor, though, is that the bluff worked. The way I see this is that Airbus knew that Emirates was generally happy with the A380, but unwilling to agree to whatever terms Airbus had on the table for new planes. Airbus then puts out a press release that they may cancel the line if there are no forthcoming customers, effectively saying "it's now or never if you want an A380"--i.e. the bluff. At which point Emirates folded. (in all likelihood, it just brought them back to the negotiating table). If Emirates had called the bluff, they would have said "Ok, good luck then!" and waited for Airbus to admit that they weren't cancelling the line.
gjem97··on Fuze for Nintendo Switch: An easy-to-learn text-based programming language
Just to make sure I'm not missing anything, this is not yet available, right?
gjem97··on Genetic Study Supports Carbohydrate-Insulin Model of Obesity
This is the medium post to garner attention for their journal article [1]. Admittedly the style seems like something out of the "self help" section of the bookstore, but my takeaway was: "look at this new result, it supports adopting a new theory of obesity, and I personally think this theory is the right one."

[1] http://clinchem.aaccjnls.org/content/64/1/192

gjem97··on China's Nio takes on Tesla with a car half the price of Model X
I don't want to get into the "grandfather's axe"-level semiotics argument, but if most of the people who worked at Saab in 2010 no longer work there, and the car is made in a different factory in China, it doesn't make much difference to me that there's a piece of paper that says it's the "same company". I just don't know if either of those things is true.
gjem97··on China's Nio takes on Tesla with a car half the price of Model X
In what regard is that car a "Saab"? Same factory? Same IP? Certainly doesn't look like same designer.
gjem97··on Why you can’t cash out part 1: Bitcoin’s “price” is largely fictional
Can someone weigh in on the relatively large difference in prices between various exchanges. I have always mentally chalked it up to friction--caused by the fees of converting from fiat to bitcoin--eating up all the edge in the arb. Is that all it is?

[1] https://www.cryptocompare.com/coins/btc/markets/USD

gjem97··on Show HN: Accelerate SHA256 Computations in Go Using AVX512 instructions
IMO, it's playing fast and loose with that term, but I guess the point is that it's not using CGO (i.e. calling into C code). It is, however, using the assembler packaged with the Go tools, so in that regard it's not "pure" go.
gjem97··on Congress took $101M in donations from the ISP industry
That makes sense, but it is certainly the opposite of the narrative that is advanced in pieces like this: that the compliance of a given representative is purchased with dollars. But I guess what you're saying is that the compliance of the congress as a whole is what matters.
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