NickM

53 ms·

241.
by NickM 5y ago
So I'm not sure how we get to that reasonably priced point. Well I'm no expert, but other countries seem to be managing it just fine.
242.
by NickM 5y ago
Discussed previously here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26390834
243.
by NickM 6y ago
the efficency of the process probably prevents market adoption I think this is correct right now, but the biggest cost by far for generating green methane at scale would be the energy costs for electrolysis to get the hydrogen from water.
244.
by NickM 6y ago
Heat pumps are certainly a good option in some cases, but other times they are not practical. For dense urban areas, there may not be enough open ground available to bury the heat pump coils. Also, in colder climates, many houses and buildi
245.
by NickM 6y ago
Nothing is wrong with that, but if it's true, then that doesn't do much to refute the notion that there aren't any good uses for smart contracts. If the best argument in favor of them is "well, they're not really
246.
by NickM 6y ago
Battery storage is a great tool for leveling demand day to day, but I wonder how soon we're going to need to start looking at mechanisms for leveling seasonal demand. Many places need a lot more energy for heating in the winter, right
247.
by NickM 6y ago
Maybe so, but “someone will come up with a good application for them” sure makes them sound like a solution in search of a problem.
248.
by NickM 6y ago
It sort of has underlying value, in that owning bitcoin lets you write entries in an extraordinarily inefficient append-only database. (It seems clear to me that this isn't a valuable enough capability to justify the current price of B
249.
by NickM 6y ago
Article is misleading. Tesla sent a letter to the CA DMV requesting approval for a feature which they referred to as "City Streets" which they say is level 2, and will continue to be level 2 as it is developed. They specifically
250.
by NickM 6y ago
The bias doesn't seem entirely wrong, though, if you look at it outside of these kinds of contrived situations. If you truly believe that not saving a life is equivalent to killing someone, then you have to start accepting some prett
251.
by NickM 6y ago
I think there is not much discussion because the answer is clear, and also unpalatable: it comes down to political and cultural differences. We never successfully implemented the kind of strict lockdowns and other measures that worked to co
252.
by NickM 6y ago
This is completely incorrect. Transactions are processed as part of mining. You cannot simply stop mining and continue doing transactions for free; the whole point of the mining process in a PoW cryptocurrency is that mined coins are given
253.
by NickM 6y ago
Bitcoin wouldn't work without it - sure, it's a building block, but the core innovation behind Bitcoin is not asymmetric crypto. The parent comment was implying that using asymmetric crypto in finance would solve problems with s
254.
by NickM 6y ago
Decreased privacy for everyday users. Increased privacy for those with the time, resources, and incentives to find ways to orchestrate transfers that can't be tied back to them. In other words, the worst of both worlds.
255.
by NickM 6y ago
Things will be priced in bitcoin. You mean like how things are priced in gold now? Oh wait, we got off the gold standard specifically because of its high short-run volatility. Hmm....
256.
by NickM 6y ago
I think you are very confused. Asymmetric cryptography is a completely separate, much older technology that has nothing directly to do with cryptocurrencies. Furthermore, Bitcoin does nothing to solve the kind of fraud problems you are talk
257.
by NickM 6y ago
or direct air capture (expensive and inefficient) The big question in my mind is whether direct air capture is inherently expensive and inefficient...or if this is just a chicken/egg problem where we haven't invested time and
258.
by NickM 6y ago
GME has now become a $25B hedge fund with a gaming focus. I think you're confusing their market cap with their balance sheet. A $25B hedge fund has $25B in assets, but a $25B market cap does not mean that they have access to anywhere
259.
by NickM 6y ago
Blocking people from buying a stock is not the same as blocking people from profiting off of a stock; nobody knows what the future valuation of the stock will be, so if you prevent people from buying, you may just as well be preventing them
260.
by NickM 6y ago
Maybe this is true for some topics. Yeah, a lot of times you can pick up a new programming language by playing around with it. I don't think most people will have much luck learning say, advanced mathematics by just futzing around and
261.
by NickM 6y ago
Yeah that seems too low to me, given that a lot of electric vehicles warranty their batteries for 8 years, and those batteries typically undergo more stress in terms of peak charge/discharge and such (and also would be expected to norm
262.
by NickM 6y ago
I've re-read the article a couple of times but I'm having trouble understanding how this works. I understand how an mRNA vaccine can teach the immune system to recognize a virus, but in the case of an autoimmune disorder, the chal
263.
by NickM 6y ago
Yes, this 100%. I miss being able to talk to people like they're in the same room, with no detectable latency, the way that local landline calls used to work. I think most people don't realize why phone calls suck these days; it j
264.
by NickM 6y ago
I think people just find it disingenuous to re-purpose a famous quote so that it means something other than what the original author intended. To reuse your example: does the idea of an authoritarian figure quoting 1984 not seem shady and
265.
by NickM 6y ago
Screen hero was innovative and it looks like the control aspect of things got abandoned I'm still mad about this. It was such a great piece of software, and then Slack bought it and literally killed it without offering anything to re
266.
by NickM 6y ago
I would assume engineering and building one of these things is non-trivial, and there may also be certain aspects tailored to the specific launch vehicle, so it’s not like as soon as SpaceX proves they can do what they plan to do that you c
267.
by NickM 6y ago
Ah thanks, my mistake - I didn't realize that.
268.
by NickM 6y ago
The statement "there is no tactical incentive for a voter withhold or falsify their second choice" says nothing about a voter falsifying their first choice, which is exactly where IRV broke down in that election. If Republican v
269.
by NickM 6y ago
Australia also uses proportional representation (STV) which is quite different from the winner-takes-all instant-runoff elections that are being referred to as "ranked choice" in the US.
270.
by NickM 6y ago
We shouldn’t let perfect be the enemy of better. I mostly agree with you, but I do fear that some of the hidden flaws of ranked choice could end up poisoning the well for better systems like approval voting. After 2009, Burlington switche

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