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kimmk

264 karma · joined April 7, 2016

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kimmk··on Wired headphone sales are exploding
I've repaired a few headphone wires; theyre usually thin copper wires covered with enamel insulation. Burn off the insulation with a blob of solder, or sand it off, and the solder will stick.
kimmk··on Swedish Campground (2004)
The same sign is used in Finland. I was puzzled why Apple computers used it but I thought it was just a coincidence...!
kimmk··on The metre originated in the French Revolution
From an European view who has accustomed to imperial units, these discussions are so tiring. The metric vs imperial debates almost always come down to just personally preferring what you're familiar with. I've had the exact same feelings about imperial units as Americans express of metric. I really don't have a problem estimating what 10 cm or 1 kg or 1 kilometer or 2 degrees of Celsius difference in the weather is.

And the division issue is almost trivial in my view; you can just take 120 cm or 12 gram quantity. You don't magically lose the ability to divide things by other than 10 or 5 or 2 when using metric. Its not like decimal fractions disappear in imperial systems either. The metric system is there for making it easy to scale things between orders of magnitude and have sane conversions between units.

kimmk··on Iron as an inexpensive storage medium for hydrogen
For seasonal grid-level storage, I wonder if simple compressed hydrogen storage (around 350 bar) is the most reasonable solution. AFAIK doesnt require any high-tech materials, avoids most embrittlement caused by LH2 and boil-off rates are reasonable.
kimmk··on If English was written like Chinese (1999)
Funnily enough, the spelling introduced there is quite legible for a Finnish speaker.
kimmk··on Solar will supply almost all growth in U.S. electricity generation through 2025
Round-trip efficiency of hydrogen storage is at best around 40% though. But with abundant and cheap renewables, this might not be much of an issue.
kimmk··on Liero – Sling'n'shoot Worms Game
Liero is part of the Finnish shareware game scene that lasted from early 90s to mid 00s [1]. These games are super nostalgic for me and a lot of other tech minded Finns of my age!

[1] https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luettelo_suomalaisista_sharewa...

kimmk··on I made a smooth shadows generator
Nice generator! I'm not much of an UI or web designer, but I guess this is a common design task in those contexts. Presets for corner roundness are nice, but there could also be a slider for it.
kimmk··on Globalization is evolving, but does not seem to be reversing
One could argue it more moral to deal with those externalities within the wealthy nations than offloading them to poorer, less well-regulated economies.

Western nations pride themselves with achievements in environmental, labour and other industry regulations. Extending them further down the supply chain would maximize their positive effects.

kimmk··on Will boiling water ruin green tea?
As a non-American I don't understand the Fahrenheit vs Celsius arguments. What's special about 0F being really cold and 100F feeling really hot? I find that -20C being really cold and 30C really hot quite intuitive and easy to understand. Also in terms of weather it is easy to understand that below zero temps snow and ice will form. Add the convenience that Celsius is basically just an offset of Kelvin and I really don't see the appeal of Fahrenheit at all.
kimmk··on Why Not Mars
Regarding atmosphere loss: currently Mars is losing about 95 kt of atmosphere per year [1]. Actively offsetting that amount of loss is not that big of an effort. Also I guess if you would generate an ozone layer, part of this atmosphere loss due to UV radiation would be attenuated.

Obviously, generating an atmosphere on Mars would be immensely energy intensive and likely possible only after we level up on the Kardashev scale.

1. https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/PT.3.4988

kimmk··on Starlink for RVs
This used to be the case, however the new dish along with recent firmware updates brings the power usage down to around 50 W on average.
kimmk··on Hundreds of skulls reveal massive scale of human sacrifice in Aztec capital
Romans very rarely practiced ritual human sacrifice (outside of gladiator games). The specific case of burying two Gauls and a Greek alive was an exception done by consulting the Sibylline books, a collection of prophetic instructions only to be used during extreme crisis like after the battle of Cannae during the second Punic War.
kimmk··on Why “children,” not “childs”? (2016)
You can write phonetically on the Latin alphabet perfectly fine, for example Finnish does so. In the case of English, its a matter of standardizing the pronunciation of characters (considering it requires every English speaker to essentially learn to write/read again, just changing the alphabet to Arabic is almost easier).