wheresmyusern

i hesitate to pursue a career of any kind, especially tech, because of all this. you have to have a pretty good personality and charisma in order to work well with your manager, or else you will make no progress which means you get fired. people are born with all kinds of quirks, peculiarities and qualities. while im a better programmer than most of the people who i went to college with, i have a special problem with my personality and charisma. i have absolutely zero intuition about what to say to other human beings. conversations with me are always like chewing sandpaper, unless they focus on some very narrow interests of mine. conversations that are very focused and intellectual always get a good response but i seldom meet people who want to have those even among engineers. 99 percent of the people i meet, even among "tech" people, i am rejected. i guess ill just scrape by.

i would say both renting and buying a house are bad ideas. when you rent, you have to pay a huge amount of money to pay for your landlords premium gasoline for his lambo. when you buy (in a city), you are having to take on the cost of every other person who bought before you -- nobody ever willingly sells a house for less than they bought it, so houses are like ratchets that go up and up and up in price. when you buy a house in a city you are also paying for someones premium gasoline. its an endless cycle of people buying the house and making it more expensive.

i would say that buying a remote home is where its at. with solar power, electric cars, self driving (even in its current state), and the soon-to-be mesh of satellites that will provide decent internet to every corner of the globe, along with a whole lot of other things, remote land and home ownership is a very exciting prospect indeed.

most of the cost of a house in a city or heavily populated area is in the land (location) and in paying for the profit margin of all the buyers who came before you. so building your own house on remote land is extremely affordable because there were few previous owners and its not close to anything -- you dont need financing like with a regular house.

i saw a story, i believe it was here actually, about a woman who bought a cheap house somewhere remote but good, and just did a four hour commute on the train. you can make just about anything work. and from my perspective, having your own land and a place to sleep that is truly your own is so fundamental and vital that extreme measures feel justified.

i currently share an apartment with a bunch of people. our complex holds at least 200 or 300 units. at an average of two thousand dollars for each unit, all 200 of them. the people who own this complex bring in almost half a million dollars every month before taxes. a while ago, a pipe broke in our kitchen -- a pipe behind a wall, underground that carries sewage. our entire kitchen and dining area were flooded with foul water. it took them almost a month to even get someone to look at it, even though i visited the office every day to remind them that half of my home was flooded with foul water. their response was that getting a plumber to do a job like this is very expensive, so they had to go though a bidding process instead of just hiring someone asap. i dont have a lot of money or free time so i was powerless in this situation. eventually, the pipe was fixed. when you rent, you are powerless. the power dynamic is obvious both in principle and in experience. why then are so many people eager to enter into this demented arrangement in which they are essentially a modern peasant?

i think everyone should own some kind of house somewhere because there is absolutely nothing worse than getting stuck without somewhere to stay. life is chaotic, rent is very expensive in many areas and housing can be difficult to come by and there have been times when i almost wasnt able to find housing. definitely one of the worst feelings ive ever experienced. unlike some people, i have no nets to catch me. if i had a remote home, not finding housing in the city would transform from a ulcer-inducing nightmare into a short vacation back to the country while keeping an eye out for good housing on craigslist.

this is what frustrates me. i cant afford a lawyer. from the looks of it, i cant afford to incorporate either. how is anyone supposed to bootstrap themselves these days?

i recently saw a paper that called into question the expansion of the universe. i think it was by a man called eric lerner. he provided evidence that seemed pretty convincing. is there anything to this?

can anyone give me advice? im starting a small online service that will charge customers -- i guess you could call it a "saas." i am the only person whatsoever involved with this project. am i required to incorporate if i start charging people for my online service? do i have to file taxes as a business? isnt there a clear and straightforward guide for this kind of thing?

i appreciate the effort to make video content accepted here on hn, but this is not video content that i think should be on the front page. this is flat out not very intellectually interesting.

do not buy an xps. i bought a thirteen inch xps and the linux compat has some minor issues and the power supply died on me less than a year after purchasing it. my next computer is a thinkpad for sure.

im not sure how you and every single other person who responded to my comment came to think that this was about saving resources. the only reason i dont want to use water is because water is a terrible way of taking care of waste on a mobile platform. water is super heavy and you have to use a lot of it each time you flush. and on top of that, the result is a toilet that slowly gets super dirty. plastic is better because you could store hundreds of "flushes" in a small box that doesnt weigh anything and because the toilet is totally and completely clean after every flush assuming all the waste stays inside the bowl and doesnt splatter up and out all over the place (which is a pretty good assumption). and lastly the waste can be stored with almost the minimum possible weight overhead and doesnt make its storage tank dirty or smelly. overall you have a lightweight, highly clean and maintenance free system.

in the end, water and plastic are largely the same thing. oxygen, hydrogen and carbon are all you need to make either. recycling plastic will, in the future, be trivial. same with water and all other substances.

we seriously need a better solution for toilets. toilets use huge amounts of water. if you want to have a toilet in a moving vehicle, or anywhere that is not directly connected to a sewage line and a giant water treatment plant, then you are just out of luck because all the mobile toilet solutions out there suck. it amazes me that a good solution has evaded us for so long.

when considering how to travel where-ever i want and for cheap i considered a van or rv. in both cases im stuck chasing after land installations that allow me to essentially use a toilet. with the rv, you have to offload somewhere and with a van you have to be near someone else's toilet.

the best solution i can think of is to have a special toilet that uses plastic bagging. a continuous sleeve of plastic is fed through the toilet and lines the inside of the "bowl" and is sealed at the bottom of the bowl forming a plastic bag. waste is collected and then the plastic material is rolled out -- so the bag descends and is replaced with new plastic material above. plenty of extra plastic is reeled out and a heating element comes in and seals the bag above the waste, simultaneously creating a new "bag" to catch waste and sealing completely the waste in the old bag. the end result is a completely clean bowl and fully contained waste. the waste bags could then be disposed of in an incinerator or a processing plant at some later time. the bag could be made biodegradable and a sterilizing agent added to the bag before its sealed to allow the bags to be disposed of without processing.

kids who are not raised well are usually the ones who turn to things that are not looked upon well by their community and society. or kids who have some kind of festering problem. there are a some kids who are given zero guidance by their parents in school or life, or who are sabotaged by their parents, and if those kids are not exceptional in some way they will fall behind socially and academically. in this society, falling behind socially and academically to the point where you feel like you cant catch up is sort of like being handed a death sentence. so if you have no future, or you are convinced that you dont, then what is the point of avoiding cancer? what is the point of anything?

i was riding my bike last night and was almost home when i came upon the four way stop in front of my complex. it was very late at night and there were no cars. there was not a soul there -- totally quiet. so of course i didnt stop for the stop sign and of course a cop pulled up right as i did it. i was pulled over, questioned and given a huge fine for doing something completely safe and well-intentioned. we need to change our laws so that cops cant pull over random black people and hand out huge fines to people who arent threatening the community.

this is a waste of time. besides all the great points made elsewhere, about the availability of land, there is the fact that this technique does not provide a good house. concrete houses are usually re-enforced with steel. where is the re-enforcement? concrete is supposed to have "aggregate." without it, you basically have a pile of hardened mortar that expands and contracts way too much when exposed to water.

im really excited about planes that have several smaller motors and props instead of one or two large ones. its a design that is only now becoming possible commercially because of EV popularity. really looking forward to seeing where it all goes.

this is absolutely fascinating. why cant these people just commute from pleasant hill or even lafayette? i had the same accommodations as these people and paid only 400 in pleasant hill.

is it just me or is homesteading becoming popular again? jerry brown is retiring to an off-grid ranch. off-grid ranches, homes and homesteads are becoming more popular. locally grown greens are more popular which flirts with homesteading and is totally different from the centralized farm model of the past. and me and a lot of people ive known all seem to have come upon living away from the city, growing a little food and keeping some chickens, as an attractive prospect. i think this trend may grow into something much larger

worrying about success is unmitigated idiocy. everyone gets caught up in this herd mentality of wanting to have the best image on instagram and etc. when i was in college, 90 percent of the other people in the cs program were blatant zuckerberg wanna-bes. they all carried around a silent, bulging arrogance because they thought they were going to be rich. they also felt anxiety about being successful and their response was to double down on computer science. instead of questioning the anxiety itself -- the basics -- they embark on a long, demented journey of trying to become rich and look good on instagram at the cost of everything else in their lives. one day the waves of time will wash over the stories of these peoples lives, leaving behind the rational and impersonal perspective that is only ever widely endorsed in retrospect. and those people who agonize over how successful they look in this time of instagram will be considered idiots. you got bent over by the sentiment of the herd. you allowed your life to be made miserable for no reason. and the ultimate precipice of irony is that this success mentality and social media posturing goes completely against everything that the founders of computer science believed -- their culture.

here is my advice to you. take care of your financial needs. engineer your life so that you are stable financially while maintaining the most modest life-style that is comfortable. in other words, get yourself to a point where the practical aspects of life no longer are a problem. no, i never said it was easy. after that, pursue the tangible aspects of success, or pursue anything you want to, without worry. i say that almost nobody said on their death-bed that they regretted not working harder or that they regretted spending too much time enjoying nature, traveling or spending time with the people they loved. use that fact as a guide-line for choosing what to do.

this reminds me of the white zombie -- the car that started my whole obsession with electric cars all those years ago.

your age really comes through with the way that you refer to cathode ray tubes as "monitors."

why is it shocking?

the initial temperature, in that ideal system, is determined by deliberately making it hot or cold with a small sized air conditioner or heater. so in the ideal system you heat or cool once and then never again.

can you tell me more about mgo formwork? where can i learn more about this and more about foam concrete?

venting appliances that create heat is not done anywhere as far as i know. the refrigerator is the main appliance that needs this because it is essentially a heat pump that runs all the time. insulating it well and venting its hot side is very simple conceptually and is completely doable.

not venting heat generating appliances inside the house is a design flaw and does not follow passive house principles. because nobody addresses this problem, i do consider almost all passive houses to be incorrectly designed and implemented.

the reason why this problem is not addressed is because some degree of cooling capacity is usually present and can keep the house cool despite this flaw. the heat load from the appliances is relatively small and so it is overlooked -- small compared the loads encountered in old-style houses. also, heat generating appliances are a benefit during the winter, so the problem only exists half of the time.

in an ideal system, all heat generated by all systems in and around the house would be channeled and utilized correctly. we are coming closer to that goal.

but i would wager that they do not live in perfect conditions inside those houses

first of all, a house with no windows on a single side is not unacceptable. i live in a place that only has windows on one wall and i find it more than acceptable. look at all the houses that people have built with no windows on one or more faces. there are innumerable examples that prove you wrong. and on top of all that, its a completely subjective thing, whether a house needs a certain number of windows. you cant just say that leaving out windows on one side is objectively and definitively unacceptable. thats bullshit.

furthermore, there is no need to omit windows on any side, even the south side. typically, a shading structure is placed that blocks direct sunlight during the warm seasons when the sun occupies those seasonal positions in the sky. these shading structures do allow sunlight when the sun is in its cold season positions, when sunlight is appreciated inside. going even further, windows should filter out any light that is not within the useful spectrum of visibility -- this reduces heat load from the sun. movable shading can also be used to block the sun only during the warm season.

there are countless examples of houses that have lots of windows and do not get too hot.

moving on to power. the back-side of your refrigerator should be vented, not exposed to your inside environment. led bulbs produce very little heat. overall, as i have said elsewhere, you will always need some amount of cooling and heating capacity.

it remains true that a properly implemented passive house will not get too hot, despite your shortsighted observations.

im sorry but this means that the houses were not designed well. if you have a house that is well insulated, and that does not leak heat from the ventilation system, that means that it will stay the same temperature. if you go through a cycle of cooling and then coming home to a hot house and then cooling again, eventually you will stop coming back to a hot house. the only explanation is that there is a leak (poor design) or that heat is being injected into the house through sunlight or some other means. i would put my money on sunlight making its ways through poorly implemented windows.

by the laws of physics, if you have a passive house kind of house, you will not be able to come home to a hot house repeatedly.

no, this is not the point of passive houses. it is a contradiction, but the point is to reduce hvac use as much as possible. you will always need hvac for perfect results because it is impossible to build a perfect hrv system. its impossible to insulate perfectly. there will always be heat leaking from the system. in some extreme cases people can do away with their hvac completely but its difficult and expensive.

what are you talking about? who mentioned a dehumidifier? mvhr simply exchanges air without changing its temperature. its not great for cooling or heating by its very definition. its good for humidity and freshness. using insulation and hr ventilation simply allows you to have a heating and air conditioning solution that is massively reduced in size. in some cases none at all.

you dont seem to have read the article. passive houses generally have very good insulation, very air-tight envelopes and a system that is called heat recovery ventilation.

insulation and air tightness afford the house the property of staying the same temperature on the inside regardless of the temperature on the outside, more or less. if its too hot or too cold outside, this is something you always want. heat recovery ventilation gives the house the ability to move old air out of the building and new air into the building while not changing the temperature of the air inside, more or less. this is why its called heat recovery (also it could also be called cold recovery). this solves humidity problems.

the end result is a house that will tend to stay the same temperature, whether that is hot or cold. in an ideal model of this kind of house, you can see that heating and cooling costs are reduced to almost nothing because you simply choose a temperature that you like and simply never think about it again. this is the origin of the "passive" component of "passive house." with a passive house, you simply dont need a large hvac system. and there is nothing stopping you from adding a modest solar system to your passive house to get to net zero -- it is done quite frequently.

i spend a lot of time looking at alternative housing and i must say that container homes are complete and utter bull shit. its a stupid fad that is fueled by idiots.

containers are expensive. just transporting a container is already a losing proposition because you are transporting a mass of steel in the form of a large empty box. so you lose on getting your materials transported. its more expensive than just buying an equivalent amount of steel and building it into a house.

containers are extraordinarily poorly suited for making houses. if you want any windows at all, you need to heavily modify the container, reinforcing and welding and all together going through enough trouble that you might as well just make the whole thing from scratch. the entire container-home movement is completely retarded -- its like watching solar roadways again. a massive group of people who are totally liberated from critical thought. container homes are stupid. they are a pollutant in the alternative housing scene. stop making them.

i think the article is correct, but i also think that new perceptions about society are contributing to the problem. kids used to think that they could make ends meet, somehow. as time goes forward, that notion is increasingly replaced by the notion that there is no way to make ends meet or to have a good life besides succeeding in high school and then college and then in a fancy career. anything besides that is not really accepted or respected, from what ive seen. so imagine that you are a kid and you are in fact not up to the gauntlet of challenges associated with making all of that happen -- or imagine that taking on that huge challenge frightens you which causes you to do badly in school which then makes you even more frightened and hopeless. and you need to do all this while attending a public high school in the US, which are some of the most toxic, inhospitable and shortsighted places in the world.

the whole thing a stupid cultural artifact that not only makes no sense (the economy will not function if everyone has white-collar jobs), but also completely overlooks the mental health of the people who are subjected to it.

and its all made worse by social media, because kids know that if their life and career dont wind up being ideal, their entire social circle is going to be looking at it online.

i was in high school when facebook first took off. i suppose im lucky because i got to experience high school before facebook (before modern social media) and i got to experience high school after. such a transition happens once in a lifetime. i immediately had a very bad feeling about facebook and felt really bad whenever i used it. when i was faced with the transition to a facebook world, informed by the memory of how i felt before facebook, i chose not to make an account and effectively opt out of online social interaction. its a decision that i have never regretted and one that seems better and better as the years tick by.

i still cant understand why people use facebook. and im not surprised in any way that a world where everyone is on facebook has these kinds of consequences.