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lxmorj

637 karma · joined August 7, 2010

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lxmorj··on Scientists break down plastic using a simple, inexpensive catalyst and air
Wouldn't (fully) burning all single-use plastics effectively make them no more long-lived and problematic than burning crude oil at sea? I know that's a low bar, but it seems like at least you're getting two uses out of them at that point...
lxmorj··on Full $71M breakdown for The Village by M. Night Shyamalan (2003) [pdf]
Firm believer that he stole the entire thing from the book Running Out of Time by Margaret Peterson Haddix.
lxmorj··on US companies are producing heat pumps that work below -20F
Why not just use a natural gas or electric heating element to heat up the air coming into the heat exchanger when it's below the operating window? In most of the US below zero is a <10 day per year issue. Sure it's terribly inefficient on those days, but I'd bet it's cheaper than maintaining an entire secondary heating system.
lxmorj··on Ask HN: Why is Docusign a $50B company?
I use SignNow.com - the level of subscription I need is something like $8/mo.

However, I probably use it less than 1/3 of the months that I pay for. This is true for dozens of memberships: Adobe, Canva Pro, Netflix, HBOMax, The Economist, etc.

It'd be nice to have a service that automatically unsubscribes me after every use, but rejoins seamlessly the next time I sign in.

If I pay for a month of Netflix on Jan 1 and immediately unsubscribe, I'm good to use it until Feb 1. If I don't log in for a week, it'd pay on Feb 8th and unsubscribe again. I'd have til March 8th to watch, and I'd save ~25%. For less frequently used services I might save 50% or more this way.

lxmorj··on Jetson One – Personal Electric Aerial Vehicle
Surely there are flight patterns that can minimize this risk: ie diagnostic hover at 10ft for X seconds to rule out start up failures, followed by an ascend to 500ft, flight path maintains that height, similar pause prior to descent on landing...
lxmorj··on Under the skin of OnlyFans
I believe he is not saying the site owners are traffickers but that some OF channels could be trafficker run.
lxmorj··on A dwarf planet coming within 11 AU of the sun over the next 10 years
Saturn's captured satellites might also be the result of incidental aerobraking or whatever you want to call smashing into a bunch of very tiny satellites during a close periapsis, no?
lxmorj··on A salt monopoly could spike car accidents in the Midwest
That’s silly. A single buyer doesn’t have to buy the entire supply in one shot. They could easily say “We buy the cheapest marginal salt in any quantity until our total capacity is met. You must beat $CANADA_PRICE + $IMPORT_PRICE, as well as $NY_PRICE + $TRANSPORT_PRICE or we’ll have to buy from them instead”.
lxmorj··on The demise and potential revival of the American chestnut
They are both collections of flawed humans. Accountability is necessary regardless of the collective noun you use.
lxmorj··on The demise and potential revival of the American chestnut
We could maintain a few populations in labs and/or isolated areas. Inspects repopulate hella fast, so it’d be easy enough to undo such a project if we found that they were a lynchpin of some kind.
lxmorj··on NASA Has Decided to Start Building the Lunar Gateway Using the Falcon Heavy
The asteroid is the reaction mass. Send a solar collector and a rail gun sled that fires bits of asteroid really fast backwards.
lxmorj··on Killer Whales: 'Transient' Orcas Are Thriving
It’s an interesting alternative history idea though - what if the disease pressure was flipped but the technology was left as is?
lxmorj··on Turning desalination waste into a useful resource
2/3rds power rebate on your desalination ain’t bad!
lxmorj··on 'Megascale' structures that humans could one day build
Don't forget you get 2.7% more mass per volume from the salt!
lxmorj··on Ugandan government blocks Google Play Store, Apple App Store, and YouTube
Is this really different than old media? Seems like all networks are biased - these are just more powerful, centralized networks.
lxmorj··on Gravity Energy Storage: Alternative to batteries for grid storage
Nah man you make tanks down there
lxmorj··on Gravity Energy Storage: Alternative to batteries for grid storage
Probably easier to have a hose and a balloon / reservoir of compressed air.
lxmorj··on Why Doesn’t Gravity Happen Instantly?
The more I try to read about this the more unsure I am I truly understand it, so perhaps not...
lxmorj··on Why Doesn’t Gravity Happen Instantly?
You can only slingshot in a direction another body is orbiting (to gain velocity). You're harvesting it's momentum, basically!
lxmorj··on You have the right to record police in public, federal court rules
They are tried in the court of public opinion largely because it's just accepted that they will not be tried in a court of law, because no charges will be brought against them even.

There are honest cops who are impacted by the lack of trust that's created by lack of accountability. If they continue to support that lack of accountability through supporting union policy that protects good and bad cops alike, then it's a self-inflicted problem.

lxmorj··on Child-safety laws may reduce the birth rate
Seems like a good opp. Make a bench seat attachment that fits into most cars, with interchangeable carseats for different aged kids. Could have a 3-wide and a 4-wide model for different sized cars.
lxmorj··on UV B LEDs More Effective in Producing Vitamin D3 in Human Skin (2017)
Moving water shouldn’t cause the same issue as stationary droplets lensing in one place.
lxmorj··on Springtime Everywhere
Eventually they should have enough data to stitch all different seasons together globally, no?
lxmorj··on An oil tanker with 60M gallons of oil aboard is currently sinking [video]
No way to guarantee them the oil is still theirs / pay them for it? Probably worth a coalition ’buying’ that boat from them...
lxmorj··on Australia to produce seaweed cattle feed that reduces methane emissions by 80%
Absolutely. There are some many direct and indirect subsidies (fossil fuels, defense, farm) that actively encourage and reward actions with huge negative externalities.
lxmorj··on Australia to produce seaweed cattle feed that reduces methane emissions by 80%
I completely disagree. Individual restraint will not do the trick. Your limited time and energy is better spent working on creating mandatory, systemic behavior change. It is not hypocritical to, for example, vote for closing tax loopholes while using the very same.
lxmorj··on Australia to produce seaweed cattle feed that reduces methane emissions by 80%
Any plan that relies on self-imposed austerity measures of billions of people from disparate groups is doomed to failure. We need to quietly change the math behind the scenes by internalizing externalities legally - long enough for green tech to get enough investment dollars to be cheaper than dirty tech even if those rules change later.

This is mostly already happened with solar / wind power, though we need some improvements on battery tech to get grid-scale adoption. The levelized cost of wind is lower than any alternative, and solar is getting close. I’m sure the situation has improved in the last two years, but here is a report from 2018:

https://www.lazard.com/media/450784/lazards-levelized-cost-o...

lxmorj··on NASA proposes a magnetic shield to protect Mars' atmosphere (2017)
I would argue that the manipulation of the interactions of geological & solar radiation systems is orders of magnitude less unpredictable than manipulating intentionally manipulating living systems on a living planet.
lxmorj··on Tech my dad banned in our house when I was a kid
It’s just back-filling a personality when you don’t really have a strong internal identity. We all do it a lot when we’re very young - defining yourself as someone who likes a certain Venn Diagram of interests whose intersection makes you feel unique and cool.
lxmorj··on Millions of Americans could lose their electricity as shutoff moratoriums expire
I've seen wage garnishment work terribly. A guy works at my company for a week or two and then ghosts once we get the state letter mandating wage garnishment for child support. One woman (of many this particular charmer owed) was owed over $25k, and she will almost certainly never see a dime.
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