Hacker News Reader

montalbanoon The Reason Why Are Trucks Getting Bigger

Blind spots increase with truck height.

google has many studies and articles on the dangers of this but a link to get you started

https://www.consumerreports.org/car-safety/the-hidden-danger...

montalbanoon In a Zoom Job Interview, the Recruiter Asked Me to ‘Show Her Around the Room

Surely seeing photographic identification would be a better way of detecting fraud than seeing someone's room?

montalbanoon Ask HN: Working in tech for climate?

Covid models underestimated the number of cases, just as climate models did not largely predict such extreme heat this soon.

If you choose to be skeptical of models on these two topics, it seems safer to assume they are underestimating the issues rather than overestimating them.

https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/commentisfree/2021/m...

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/this-...

montalbanoon Data centers are melting in U.K. heat wave

I didn't say 'encourage' it.

In my opinion, it's just uninteresting. journalists make bad figurative word choices in technical articles every day. Lots of repetitive HN comments labouring the fact make for much less interesting threads.

montalbanoon Data centers are melting in U.K. heat wave

Before technically correct comments attack the use of the word 'melting' here, as in the runway threads, please give the journalist a bit of slack here for using it in the title.

The key part about this is the consistent theme of the day that many parts of UK infrastructure, both public and private, were not engineered to withstand 40 degree Celsius.

montalbanoon Runway melts at London Luton airport as temperatures in UK near 40°C

its about temperature difference relative to geographic norms. this is the hottest recorded temperature in UK history.

montalbanoon Ask HN: Climate Textbooks

Not strictly climate change, but realted to it: Sustainable energy without the hot air is great, freely available. But the numbers used for estimates are out of date. I think there was an effort to update it but I can't remember who the newer author was.

https://www.withouthotair.com/download.html

montalbanoon Motors Big and Small (1971) [video]

Previously discussed in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13825078 but seems that it was worth a repost.

montalbanoon Global Methane Tracker 2022

This is an interesting quote:

If all producing countries were to match Norway’s emissions intensity, global methane emissions from oil and gas operations would fall by more than 90%.

montalbanoon Sugar deposits found under seagrass meadows

I think the point of the article is that understanding how seagrass captures carbon is useful and interesting.

For more relevant numbers, I did a very quick calculation (tell me if you spot a mistake).

Using these numbers [0, 1], the worlds seagrass captures ~5% of US automobile emissions per year.

Another number of interest, the amount of seagrass carbon sequestration is 2 - 4x greater than mature tropical rainforests (per hectare) [0].

Seems to me that seagrass is an organism worth understanding.

[0] https://www.thebluecarboninitiative.org/about-blue-carbon

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1120499/us-road-vehicle-...

montalbanoon Sugar deposits found under seagrass meadows

Have you got a reference for that?

This article suggests that "92% of the UK’s seagrass has been lost in the past two centuries, with 39% disappearing just since the 1980s, thanks to pollution from industry, mining and farming, along with dredging, bottom trawling and coastal development."

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/05/seagrass...

montalbanoon “Carbon Bombs” – Mapping key fossil fuel projects

If I understand correctly, what you're describing is often called 'embodied carbon' or 'embedded emissions' [0].

Many people spend their lives estimating embedded emissions and, more importantly, the time it will take for any emission-reducing technology (e.g. electric cars) to amortise away the CO2e emissions required to produce it.

For instance, it's been estimated that a Tesla Model 3 "needs to be driven for 13,500 miles (21,725 km) before it does less harm to the environment than a Toyota Corolla" [1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embedded_emissions [1] https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/lifeti...

montalbanoon Apple's director of machine learning resigns due to return to office work

You've skipped over an important group of people here: in any healthy workplace, new starters, graduates and other junior developers benefit massively from being in the same office as their more senior colleagues. The amount they learn from accumulated small interactions that would not happen in remote working cannot be overstated.

montalbanoon Arm-Based 128-Core Ampere CPUs Cost a Fraction of x86 Price

You should be awake already then:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/porting/apps-on...

montalbanoon Lead poisoning among US children

I think you're making potentially invalid assumptions about the about the relative scales of the numbers involved.

The issue is that if the small outlier leads to the product being less than 1, the degree of the root doesn't matter because the largest value possible of the n-th root approaches 1, which may be below whatever meaningful thresholds are relevant here.

montalbanoon “Coding is basically just ifs and for loops.”

Funny, I posted this on another HN thread [0] recently, but it's perfectly relevant again:

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

T. S. Eliot - Little Gidding

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29043941

montalbanoon Can deep learning help mathematicians build intuition?

What does IAMNAM stand for?

montalbanoon About the Urgency of Building Web3

The term has frequently featured in Ethereum docs for quite a few years now.

Not sure if that's where it originated from, but that's where I first came across it.

montalbanoon Circular Harmonics

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

T. S. Eliot - Little Gidding

montalbanoon How to Build a Low-Tech Solar Panel?

Embodied carbon is amortised over time, and is not considered for the Spanish grid comparison, as noted in the article, unless I missed it later on?

montalbanoon Trusting science leaves people vulnerable to believing pseudoscience

The concept of 'trusting science' is utterly absurd.

We may choose to trust certain scientists because no one has the time or inclination to critically assess all primary literature, but the nebulous idea of 'trusting science' should be thrown in the dustbin. No matter what side of the political spectrum you live on.

Edit: to add, I'm certain that a large majority of good scientists would agree with the above.

montalbanoon Italy Braces for Pasta Inflation Amid Soaring Durum Wheat Prices

I could be reading it wrong, but based on this:

> The European Union’s grain output in 2020-21 is forecast to decline by 3% over the previous year due to extremely challenging planting conditions

My understanding is that they cannot plant due to the weather conditions.

montalbanoon Italy Braces for Pasta Inflation Amid Soaring Durum Wheat Prices

The article you linked says that they had difficulty planting because of weather conditions - that doesn't seem planned, or in any way related to modern monetary theory.

montalbanoon Italy Braces for Pasta Inflation Amid Soaring Durum Wheat Prices

Based on the article, it seems that the rise in grain price is closely linked to difficult weather conditions across key grain farming areas.

Do you have any data to suggest that modern monetary theory is a more important factor here?

Edit: maybe that's not what you're suggesting, anyway, still curious.

montalbanoon Italy Braces for Pasta Inflation Amid Soaring Durum Wheat Prices

> The shortage is already having an impact on production costs and will lead to retail price increases before Christmas

Article suggests pasta price increase may kick in over the next few months.

montalbanoon Make your life carbon neutral?

Unless the carbon tax considers embedded carbon on imports in enough countries? (enough is hard to define though, I acknowledge)

montalbanoon Largest plant capturing carbon from air starts in Iceland

No. Some of the carbon can end up being stored in the soil:

https://extension.psu.edu/how-forests-store-carbon

Or alternatively, wood can be used for increasingly complex construction, for example this wooden skyscraper:

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/berlins-woho-wooden-skysc...

Lastly, just increasing the carbon stored in living mass may be vastly beneficial.

montalbanoon Make your life carbon neutral?

This might be better suited as an 'Ask HN', or more likely a 'Show HN'

montalbanoon Sri Lanka’s overnight flip to organic farming has led to an economic disaster

Are you sure about the first paragraph? This article suggest otherwise:

https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20210901-sri-lanka-org...

Rajapaksa came to power in 2019 promising subsidised foreign fertiliser but did a U-turn arguing that agro chemicals were poisoning people.