NickM

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331.
by NickM 7y ago
From the article: At Carnegie Mellon, 17 professors, all of them tenured, have moved into industry Not sure about other universities, but it doesn’t sound like tenure made much difference at CMU.
332.
by NickM 7y ago
it is an apples-to-oranges comparison because AP is only used on highways where traffic incidents are already far less common per mile driven. True, and that kind of flawed argument bugs me. However, there is also data that showed that ac
333.
by NickM 7y ago
Admittedly it is still a small compromise, but I’ve done 8 hour road trips in my Tesla to go snowboarding in Vermont and having to stop and charge adds under an hour to the trip. The Volt does seem like a great car, but to me it’s not worth
334.
by NickM 7y ago
It is a credit, but it is not refundable and cannot be carried over into future years. However, it has led to some pretty good lease deals for people that can’t get the full credit themselves, since for leases the credit goes to the company
335.
Ask HN: Tips for Outdoor Computer Work?
2 points by NickM 7y ago|1 comments
336.
by NickM 7y ago
So it's nice to think that maybe this could work to turn food waste back into edible protein, but is this actually more efficient than just composting the waste and using it to grow crops? Sure, maybe this is a good source of protein,
337.
by NickM 7y ago
Ah, thanks for the correction, I didn't realize that. Still seems like it's not a bad way to generate electricity though.
338.
by NickM 7y ago
True, but some landfills capture that methane and pump it back into the natural gas grid. I don't know the details of how efficient or widespread this type of capturing scheme is, but it seems to me like this is probably actually more
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by NickM 7y ago
The cost of lithium is a pretty small portion of the cost of the batteries, and in the worst case scenario we can extract an effectively unlimited amount of lithium from seawater; it would make batteries a little more expensive but by that
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by NickM 7y ago
I've certainly found that to be the case when traveling to NYC. From where I live, a plane ride takes about an hour, and Amtrak takes about 6.5 hours...except that really, the total trip time ends up being about five hours for the plan
341.
by NickM 7y ago
Generally you get a big drop in efficiency on short trips, but once the car heats up it's not such a big difference. This means that in practice, cold is not usually a big problem: if you're going on short trips you have plenty of
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by NickM 7y ago
given a fixed budget we're probably better off buying 2 diesel buses rather than a single electric bus. I think the situation is a little more complicated than that. Electricity is a much cheaper fuel than diesel, and maintenance cos
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by NickM 7y ago
People don't have any real control with what happens in their life. Sure they do. Saying that people don't have control over anything is like saying "the light switches in my house don't control the lights because the
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by NickM 7y ago
Thanks for the info! I stand corrected on that point.
345.
by NickM 7y ago
Yeah I have wondered about this option as well. Hydrogen fuel cell cars make very little practical sense for a lot of reasons, but most of those reasons don't seem to apply so much when you're dealing with air travel: - It'
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by NickM 7y ago
Conversations about public perception ignore the bigger problem of cost. Why build big expensive nuclear plants that frequently have to be subsidized and bailed out, when solar/wind/storage are already cheaper and continue to drop
347.
by NickM 7y ago
Perhaps because installers are knowingly and willingly choosing to take the risk of falling off a roof, and are getting paid to accept that risk. It doesn't seem right to compare that type of death with people dying from lung cancer ca
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by NickM 7y ago
There are no current treatments for Alzheimers that do much of anything. Well, unless you count physical exercise.
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by NickM 8y ago
"You can now return a car within 7 days or 1,000 miles for a full refund. Quite literally, you could buy a Tesla, drive several hundred miles for a weekend road trip with friends and then return it for free." Yeah I mean, in the
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by NickM 8y ago
I know a lot of people who want to quit Facebook, but nobody wants to be the odd one out who misses event invitations and stuff because they're the one person in their social circle who doesn't have an account. To partially solve
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by NickM 8y ago
Riak still seems to have a decently active community; all of the formerly commercial-only features have been open sourced, and there have been multiple community releases since the demise of Basho, with another one coming out soon. I'v
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by NickM 8y ago
The vast majority of people buying a Tesla today will never need to replace the battery. The chemistry used in electric vehicle battery packs these days have much better longevity than what you see in most other lithium-ion cells.
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by NickM 8y ago
I sort of agree, but to be fair a nice habitable planet could be a really rare and valuable resource in and of itself, assuming there are any life forms out there with biology similar enough to our own to find Earth desirable.
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by NickM 8y ago
Wow, I had no idea, thanks for the info. The IRS website doesn't provide any obvious indication that FFFF is run by a third party, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised that they contracted it out like that. Maybe it's time to
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by NickM 8y ago
Okay, serious question: how much carbon is sequestered in plastic if we toss it in a landfill? Given that there's a finite amount of oil left in the world, and that it gets more expensive as supplies dwindle, I almost wonder if using m
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by NickM 8y ago
Yeah, so this is part of why I like to fill out the forms myself now. I paid a one-time upfront time cost in learning about all the different rules around deductions and whatnot, but now I can pretty confidently know in advance whether I&#x
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by NickM 8y ago
I started using Free File Fillable Forms. It's a refreshingly simple site run by the IRS that lets you fill out all the standard tax return forms in your browser and file them directly. It helps with a few small things, like doing basi
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by NickM 8y ago
This is exactly why I always used to pay extra for the TurboTax desktop edition (I say "used to" because I ended up ditching TurboTax entirely a couple years ago, but that's another story). It's worth it to me to pay a l
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by NickM 8y ago
Yeah as a long-time Erlang dev I would strongly recommend Dialyzer to anyone trying to build a serious Erlang project. It doesn't give you quite the same level of rigor that a strong typing system would, but it is nice to be able to sp
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by NickM 8y ago
Yes it is. How the hell is it not? If I give you $27 and you give me $3 back, then yes, technically you've handed me $3. Taking that out of context ignores the end result, which is that I've given you a net $24. You wouldn'

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