Hacker News Reader

montalbanoon Mass extinction pulses driven by major marine carbon cycle perturbations (2020)

"Scientists estimate that 50-80% of the oxygen production on Earth comes from the ocean"

https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/ocean-oxygen.html

montalbanoon Feeding cows seaweed cuts 99% of greenhouse gas emissions from their burps

It seems that seaweed cultivation should be much more actively researched and invested in.

Seaweed produces omega 3 so could become a far more common vegetarian diet supplement or food. It is a potential carbon sink at larger scales. And also the benefit described in this article of course.

I'm sure there are plenty of other reasons to cultivate seaweed en masse but those are the first ones that came to mind.

montalbanoon Ask HN: Do you use Purism, PinePhone, or Fairphone?

I had a fairphone 2 for just under 5 years. It was good. A couple of quirks but overall very happy with it. Replaced the modular usb port component myself a couple of years in when the connection got a bit dodgy. Bluetooth was quite a bit worse compared to my new smartphone (Google pixel)

I could have made it last a bit longer by replacing the battery, but I was about to start a new job and knew I needed a reliable phone, so I wasn't sure it was worth investing keeping the fairphone going.

montalbanoon Europe's all-time heat record set in Sicily at nearly 120 degrees

Even with Celsius, perhaps not impossible at the right altitude, low convection, and with a dark color for better radiative absorption.

montalbanoon Astronomical Engineering: A Strategy for Modifying Planetary Orbits (2001)

> supercomputer to predict the chaotic effects.

This might be the hardest part of your proposal to achieve. Chaotic systems are fundamentally difficult to simulate, not just because of their differential equations but our lack of perfect knowledge of their initial conditions. Blanket solar reduction seems more feasible?

montalbanoon Summer 2021 has changed our understanding of extreme weather

Thinking about an equation like (how much an average individuals life will be affected * number of people who will be affected), the co2 ppm should probably be a front page headline every day. Yet the most popular newspapers in my country (and other countrys' that I check) only have one story once every few months at best.

montalbanoon $100M donation powers decade-long moonshot to generate solar-power from space

This is interesting, but the article itself doesn't mention the state-of-the-art in wireless power transmission. Where are we in that field? How close are we to something resembling beaming power down from space?

montalbanoon Launch HN: Heimdal (YC S21) – Carbon neutral cement

Looks great, good luck! Question about the seawater aspect, are ecological impacts similar to conventional desalination processes?

montalbanoon Japan's cherry blossom: as indisputable as climate change evidence gets

I changed the wording to more closely respond to the parent comment.

montalbanoon Japan's cherry blossom: as indisputable as climate change evidence gets

I think there's more to it than that. It reminds me of JBS Haldane's four stages of acceptance:

1. This is worthless nonsense

2. This is an interesting, but perverse, point of view.

3. This is true, but quite unimportant.

4. I always said so.

I think many former 'skeptics' are now at stage 3.

montalbanoon UK Weather: Flooding in London after heavy rain

Do you have any data suggesting there has been rapid paving of lawns and gardens since last year?

montalbanoon UK Weather: Flooding in London after heavy rain

This is the second time in a few weeks that there has been unprecedented surface water (rain, not river) induced flooding in many parts of London. An NYT article from 13th July:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/13/world/europe/uk-london-fl...

montalbanoon Rainfall flooding is becoming an issue

If there was such a tool, and it was accurate, do you think insurance companies would have insured the parts of Germany that recently flooded?

I think you may be underestimating the complexity of both weather and climate modelling.

montalbanoon Climate change: Science failed to predict flood and heat intensity

You might still be able to edit the link directly, although that feature may have timed-out

montalbanoon Update to limits to growth: Comparing the World3 model with empirical data

Full paper is free direct from the author/KPMG:

https://advisory.kpmg.us/articles/2021/limits-to-growth.html

Vice article with bad title but decent content:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/z3xw3x/new-research-vindicat...

montalbanoon Why writing software is not like engineering (2008)

> Software Development by contrast has no standards

That's not true in the context of medical and car software. See

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEC_62304

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_26262

montalbanoon ‘Heat dome’ probably killed 1bn marine animals on Canada coast, experts say

The mass death of shellfish would temporarily affect water quality because mussels and clams help filter the sea, Harley said, keeping it clear enough that sunlight reaches the eelgrass beds while also creating habitats for other species.

This is very concerning to me, seagrass is an excellent carbon sink.

https://www.technologynetworks.com/applied-sciences/news/sea...

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-64094-1

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/underwater-mea...

montalbanoon Comparison of Haskell and Julia List Comprehensions

Note that in Julia these are often referred to as array comprehensions, as the data structure involved is a (very efficient) array. C.f. Python

montalbanoon I want to learn D3. I don’t want to learn Observable. Is that ok?

I think you may be incorrect regarding its version compatibility. See the author's github repository here:

https://github.com/janert/d3-for-the-impatient

> All examples have been verified to work with this version of the D3 library (D3 Version 5.9.2, downloaded 15. Apr 2019)

So, not quite V6, but a lot more up-to-date than v4.

'D3 for the impatient' is indeed an excellent book and was my entry point into using D3 aswell.

montalbanoon Replacing grass lawns with native plants

A video on this topic from my favourite botanist: Crime Pays but Botany Doesn't

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oz9I2YwmV8M

montalbanoon OpenFlexure Microscope, an open-source optical microscope

Earlier iterations of this were used successfully as part of a water quality monitoring in Tanzania:

https://www.waterscope.org/about-us/

Richard Bowman (previously Cambridge uni, now Bath) was the main driver of these microscopes and is a great, highly intelligent person. Many other people have contributed to the project in small and large ways over the years.

Some other links:

https://3dprint.com/165457/openflexure-3d-printed-microscope...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7249832/

montalbanoon Scientists prefer studying pretty plants to dull ones

As Poincaré said a while ago:

The scientist does not study nature because it is useful; he studies it because he delights in it, and he delights in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing, and if nature were not worth knowing, life would not be worth living.

On a separate note, Arabidopsis isn't that pretty yet it has been The Model System in plant science for years..

montalbanoon Julia and the satellite Amazonia-1 (2020)

See my comment above. I'm not sure why it was changed but hopefully one of the mods can change it back.

montalbanoon Julia and the satellite Amazonia-1 (2020)

I didn't put a (2020) in the submission title as the post was only created 6 days ago. Did I miss something here? I'm sure it was editorialised for a reason but I can't figure it out, sorry if I'm being stupid.

montalbanoon Julia and the satellite Amazonia-1 (2020)

I also found a press release on the Julia Computing website:

https://juliacomputing.com/case-studies/BrazilNationalinstit...

But the forum link above seems more informative and the software architect has answered questions within the thread.

montalbanoon Matrix multiplication inches closer to mythic goal

Convenient matrix algebra is one of the selling points of Julia.

montalbanoon Data Science in Julia for Hackers

Julia core developers are at the forefront of trying to push for a better unicode standard:

https://github.com/stevengj/subsuper-proposal

montalbanoon Data Science in Julia for Hackers

https://docs.julialang.org/en/v1/base/collections/#Base.map

https://docs.julialang.org/en/v1/manual/arrays/#Broadcasting