wiggler00m

False dichotomy. Why not do both?

The discovery of DNA (Watson & Crick).

3 of the air routes that cover this journey are in the top 11 busiest domestic routes in the world (#3 Sapporo to Tokyo-Haneda;#4 Fukuoka to Tokyo-Haneda;#11 Tokyo-Haneda to Osaka-Itami).

The highest ranking US domestic route is #30 (JFK-LAX), though by distance it's almost 3X (2827.2 miles).

It feels like a huge rate limiting factor for me. Even typing 2x as fast would be a phenomenal improvement.

Speaking is even worse though. Communicating verbally with other humans is frustratingly slow and inaccurate. A new non-verbal means to communicate would enable us to understand others faster and better. This would solve a lot of problems immediately that arise from our inability to understand others or the amount of time it takes to arrive at understanding.

Privacy: If you care about privacy, Suica is relatively anonymous, unless you (optionally) register it. It's probably possible to link a card to someone retrospectively with CCTV, but your transaction history is not being broadcast in real-time to your bank.

Acceptance: It's also increasingly widely accepted: public transport (the Tokyo metro system is amazing and gets you just about anywhere efficiently); taxis; the pervasive convenience stores + some supermarkets; more and more retail stores. Edit: as another poster pointed out, a huge % of transactions in Japan are made in cash and it's quite common for stores to not accept credit cards, yet some of these do accept Suica.

Discounts: You might get discounts on train fares if you use Suica, too.

No battery required: The SUICA works 24/7, 365, with no need to charge it. Unless I'm mistaken, smartphones require at least reserve battery for NFC payments to work.

Energy intensity (and the cost thereof) are a rate limiting factor for thermal desalination:[0]

"Thermal processes are robust, durable and, once in operation, require less maintenance. However, these processes, mainly MSF [Multi-Stage Flash], require large amount of energy for their operation. In fact, up to 50 percent of the operating cost may be attributed to providing energy for the operation of the plant. As a result, many thermal plants are constructed in conjunction with power plants to utilize exhausted steam from the latter. The associated costs of high-energy consumption can have particularly strong restraining effects on small and medium sized plants. However, thermal processes can utilize low grade, low cost source of heat, which would otherwise be lost and discarded to the environment like stack gases, cooling water streams or low pressure exhaust steam. Heat from solar energy can also be used in such processes."

>It surprises me that we haven't worked out a more efficient solar distillation process for desalination.

I'm often surprised at how long it takes to move from discovery to implementation and adoption. The photovoltaic effect was discovered in 1839.[1] Yet 180 years later solar is only 2.4% of the world's installed electricity capacity; transportation and heating/cooling are still overwhelmingly gas/oil.

On an optimistic note, that means humanity probably has tonnes of undeveloped science and engineering that has been discovered but not yet built. It would be infinitely worse if we had already exhausted our collective capacity for invention, yet still had not solved the problems and existential threats we face.

[0] https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/3f8c/147635ef7dae3050075c2c...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmond_Becquerel

If the root cause is insufficient dietary magnesium -- due to poor dietary choices -- eating foods that are rich in magnesium, and cutting out refined foods, might be a good start. It would have other benefits, too.

I don't like to see people taking tons of supplements whilst eating poorly.

a) Chinese nationals; b) HK nationals; c) foreign nationals.

He advised it would apply to all three.

Edit: he also said it's not impossible the bill will be withdrawn.

"[T]he crew were alleged to have stopped working. Gibson spent his day on Skylab's solar console, while Carr and Pogue spent their time in the wardroom looking out at the window."

COMMENTS: Bad comments seem to be a harder problem than bad submissions. While the quality of links on the frontpage of HN hasn't changed much, the quality of the median comment may have decreased somewhat.

There are two main kinds of badness in comments: meanness and stupidity. There is a lot of overlap between the two—mean comments are disproportionately likely also to be dumb—but the strategies for dealing with them are different. Meanness is easier to control. You can have rules saying one shouldn't be mean, and if you enforce them it seems possible to keep a lid on meanness.

Keeping a lid on stupidity is harder, perhaps because stupidity is not so easily distinguishable. Mean people are more likely to know they're being mean than stupid people are to know they're being stupid.

The most dangerous form of stupid comment is not the long but mistaken argument, but the dumb joke. Long but mistaken arguments are actually quite rare. There is a strong correlation between comment quality and length; if you wanted to compare the quality of comments on community sites, average length would be a good predictor. Probably the cause is human nature rather than anything specific to comment threads. Probably it's simply that stupidity more often takes the form of having few ideas than wrong ones.

Whatever the cause, stupid comments tend to be short. And since it's hard to write a short comment that's distinguished for the amount of information it conveys, people try to distinguish them instead by being funny. The most tempting format for stupid comments is the supposedly witty put-down, probably because put-downs are the easiest form of humor. So one advantage of forbidding meanness is that it also cuts down on these.

Bad comments are like kudzu: they take over rapidly. Comments have much more effect on new comments than submissions have on new submissions. If someone submits a lame article, the other submissions don't all become lame. But if someone posts a stupid comment on a thread, that sets the tone for the region around it. People reply to dumb jokes with dumb jokes.

Maybe the solution is to add a delay before people can respond to a comment, and make the length of the delay inversely proportional to some prediction of its quality. Then dumb threads would grow slower.

[0] http://www.paulgraham.com/hackernews.html

I interpret the term (n. hikikomori) differently to the verb (hikikomoru) from which it is derived.

The term (hikikomori): individual instance of the social phenomenon of withdrawing from society and living in persistent isolation.

The verb (hikikomoru): used in reference to a specific (non-persistent) act of staying indoors, without necessarily carrying the broader sociological meaning. Edit: as another comment points out, just staying indoors for a weekend, etc.

From their privacy policy: https://protonmail.com/privacy-policy

We will only disclose the limited user data we possess if we are instructed to do so by a fully binding request coming from the competent Swiss authorities (legal obligation). While we may comply with electronically delivered notices (see exceptions below), the disclosed data can only be used in court after we have received an original copy of the court order by registered post or in person, and provide a formal response.

If a request is made for encrypted message content that ProtonMail does not possess the ability to decrypt, the fully encrypted message content may be turned over. If permitted by law, ProtonMail will always contact a user first before any data disclosure. Under Swiss law, it is obligatory to notify the target of a data request, although such notification may come from the authorities and not from the Company.

ProtonMail may from time to time, contest requests if there is a public interest in doing so. In such situations, the Company will not comply with the request until all legal or other remedies have been exhausted. Therefore, not all requests described in our Transparency Report will lead to data disclosure.

For example, if there is an opportunity to increase efficiency, or reduce costs or environmental impact, it would be relatively easy to deploy this throughout an entire franchise, as compared with heterogenous stores.

As for the issue of opening hours, labour shortages and demographic trends (the population is aging and decreasing) are significant. I am only aware of two likely solutions which are not mutually exclusive: (1) immigration; and (2) automation, ie. robots. Increasing the fertility rate might also address this issue, but seems less likely to happen.

I'm still looking for a catch. I will say it's not clear if the developer(s) are still focused on this, unfortunately. I hope they continue to develop it and attract more users. Also, I'm not sure if the .kanbanier file type is convenient if you want to export data.

> "Do you know of any other apps that use this App Store + native iOS and macOS client model by the way? I’ve never seen this done properly before (i.e. no electron, cross platform UI)"

I like this model too. The native BOOKS application for Mac OS X and iPad equivalent seems similar. It syncs well with icloud in my experience.

I agree with you, it would be great if it was truly cross-platform (ie. also available for Android, Linux, etc).

Not clear if developer(s) are still working on it.

The file format is .kanbanier.

There is a free version and an optional upgrade.