adastra

10 ms·

31.
by adastra 14y ago
Interesting. Here's the relevant bit: "[Quoting Elon]'The final leg of his trip was 61 miles and yet he disconnected the charge cable when the range display stated 32 miles. He did so expressly against the advice of Tesla personnel and in o
32.
by adastra 14y ago
That all comes down to what Broder claims someone told him on a phone call. Except he doesn't quote them verbatim and never provides the name(s) of the people he was talking to. Given all that they had at stake, namely a disastrous NY Times
33.
by adastra 14y ago
The "Norwich Charge" data point is all you need to understand what happened here. Notice how vague Broder is in his original account: "After making arrangements to recharge at the Norwich station, I located the proper adapter in the trunk,
34.
by adastra 14y ago
I saw that, and the point stands. I don't think an message basically telling someone their email was ignored is helpful. The existence of this feature could lead to a lot more emails being ignored, or even worse, lead to it being more socia
35.
by adastra 14y ago
A comment that I feel very strongly about. First, let me say the primary thesis of adding structure (and asking your senders to add structure on their own) is a great idea. My email inbox took a quantum leap when I simply structured all ema
36.
by adastra 14y ago
I've spent time doing both, and I think we're just going to have to agree to disagree.
37.
by adastra 14y ago
So engaging the system would have resulted in an outcome that is worse than what actually happened? I don't think so. It's a false choice. You can engage the system and change it at the same time. Of course you can.
38.
by adastra 14y ago
If you want a member of congress to act on something, you have to ask them. That's how the system works. If you don't put in the effort, their time is spent on the thousands of other people clamoring for their attention who were more motiva
39.
by adastra 14y ago
> Paul Shawcross is still a long way from making amends for what he's done to help cripple our human space flight program, however. And what is it you think he did, exactly? Just curious.
40.
by adastra 14y ago
In fairness, the DoD didn't just wake up one day and decide to Do The Right Thing. This development is the result of years of effort and millions of dollars spent on lobbying by SpaceX. And even then, SpaceX is only getting a couple of laun
41.
by adastra 14y ago
Please see my comment above. The event was run by the CEO of Startup Weekend, so I don't think I'm misrepresenting the organization.
42.
by adastra 14y ago
Responding to top comment, but want to address concerns in several of the replies. FWIW, the event was actually organized by the management of Startup Weekend themselves: Marc Nager, the CEO, and Frank Nouyrigat, the CTO. So I don't think I
43.
by adastra 14y ago
He lost me when he started talking about Startup Weekend. Some people may find that kind of thing fun, but sorry that's not a hackathon. I went to one a few weeks ago, and bailed when I realized business school students and hustlers out-num
44.
by adastra 14y ago
Actually came here to the comments to say exactly this. Will be interesting to see if the Syrian government has people pretend to be free citizens go online and post to say "hey don't worry about what you read in the newspapers. Everything
45.
by adastra 14y ago
The mission would leave in 150 years. It would last for 20-30 years one way. The laser (a bank of lasers, more likely) would need to consume energy at a rate approximately equal to the world's entire current electricity production, basicall
46.
by adastra 14y ago
Stross and cletus both say we will never leave the solar system and travel to another star. Never! I'm trying to show that notion is dead wrong. I didn't say it was a solved problem, if you mean in the sense of the engineering is basicall
47.
by adastra 14y ago
He's wrong. For starters, there's this assertion: "The far-fetched version is to use back holes as power sources [1] as this is, as far as I've read anyway, the only remotely viable method of providing propulsion without reaction mass to sp
48.
by adastra 14y ago
Is this seriously an article titled "An Amazon Engineer Had a Little Idea That Turned Into a Billion-Dollar Business" that doesn't actually name said engineer? I will never understand the instinct for writers to attribute everything to a co
49.
by adastra 14y ago
I think whatever the relationship, it's clear he no longer comments on anything that isn't directly poll-related. Someone is telling him to "stay in his lane" and he's doing it. His pieces are all long, detailed poll analyses. Nate could be
50.
by adastra 14y ago
They've hated him ever since he spoiled the 2008 primary for them. Nate has said he started following politics because of poker, but he started the 538 blog because of the Hillary vs. Obama primary. The news media were still touting it as a
51.
by adastra 14y ago
These straw-man arguments are the reason why I don't post on Hacker News more often. Where did I say ignore China's rise as a power? I'm basically just saying: don't panic. The US lead in aerospace isn't going away any time soon, we are far
52.
by adastra 14y ago
Don't put it past the Chinese to put out something for show without actually having the functional equipment under the hood. Stealth is hard -- sensors have the potential to leak radiation, communications can be picked up on, etc. Just beca
53.
by adastra 14y ago
After crashing his third rocket in a row, there was this exchange with a writer at Wired: Wired.com: At the end of the day you’re still zero for three; you have so far failed to put a rocket into orbit. Musk: We haven’t gotten into orbit, t
54.
by adastra 14y ago
I just don't understand why, as a CEO, it would ever be in your interest or the company's interest to appear in an article to be taking 100% of the credit. Wouldn't you want to do all you can to make sure your other team members get credit
55.
by adastra 14y ago
Your system is a bit of a black box, so I'm just going by my best guess here. I'm imagining that after the obviously great applications have been added to the interview list, and the bad applications have been tossed, that there will be one
56.
by adastra 14y ago
If we edit our application now and re-submit, doesn't that create a problem where different people at YC have read different versions of the application? One solution would be to only add to our answers, not subtract, by adding "EDIT: I wan
57.
by adastra 14y ago
This is great. Is the app pronounced "finished", "finish it", or "finish shit!" ? I kind of like the last one, haha. Seriously though I'm curious which one.
58.
by adastra 14y ago
I look forward to Bezos matching his words with actions. It's pretty well known that Amazon's lobbying in DC is entirely focused on preventing Amazon from having to pay state sales taxes. Bezos has never lifted a finger to help any other te
59.
by adastra 14y ago
Wings aren't the only way. Both Elon Musk (SpaceX) and Jeff Bezos (Blue Origin) are pursuing reusable launch vehicles that land vertically by gimbaling and throttling the rocket engines. This isn't wishful thinking either -- both have alrea
60.
by adastra 14y ago
You can make a reusable launch vehicle that's economical. You can also make one that is incredibly expensive, if its poorly designed. The two are not mutually exclusive. Kind of like how most cars are cheap on a per-use basis, but it would

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