adastra

12 ms·

61.
by adastra 14y ago
You've got it backwards. It is completely impractical to build an entire spaceship, and then throw it away after every launch. Reusable vehicles are the only way to get launch costs down. You can boil the transportation cost function down
62.
by adastra 14y ago
If everything goes according to plan (I know, that's a big if), then Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin, and others like John Carmack's space company will be doing literally thousands of suborbital flights in the next 5 years or so. Not just tou
63.
by adastra 14y ago
I'm not aware of any organization that determines being "in space" by velocity -- the FAI as well as the US DoD, NASA, and the FAA all go solely by altitude. I'm also not sure what you mean by "the way most people think about space". The f
64.
by adastra 14y ago
aka "hydro-synchronous orbit"
65.
by adastra 14y ago
The Causes website says he's chairman of the board, not CEO. That's a huge difference. My comment wasn't meant to denigrate Causes, which is great. By all accounts Parker is full time at Airtime. He has $2 billion of wealth, non-trivial
66.
by adastra 14y ago
Here's a thought experiment: let's say you had two billion dollars, household-name level of fame, and a past history of startup success. If you wanted to start a new company, you could no doubt convince some of silicon valley's elite invest
67.
by adastra 14y ago
Space enthusiast here. Gerard O'Neill proposed these "O'Neill cylinders" as an alternative way to go about colonizing space. This is in comparison to the monstrously expensive Mars missions being conceived at the time. There was a fascinati
68.
by adastra 14y ago
Whoa. Ok yeah that is seriously fast. This is the first I've heard of it -- if anyone cares to comment, I'd be really interested to hear what the limitations of pjax are. As used in this application anyway it's pretty impressive.
69.
by adastra 14y ago
Epic action sequences combined with cryptography, information theory, currency/economics, WWII, and a crazy ambitious tech startup idea. It doesn't get any better than that.
70.
by adastra 14y ago
Love the Cryptonomicon influences. In case anyone is wondering what those mushroom-shaped caverns are that jut up off some of the tunnels... well, you can read the book and find out ;)
71.
by adastra 14y ago
I would take this with a grain of salt. He doesn't say what exposed passwords he used as his sources, but I'd bet the linkedin passwords were part of it. But a lot of people will knowingly use an unsecure password for a site like linkedin,
72.
by adastra 14y ago
Yes, in fact AI of super-human intelligence plays a central role. To go into much detail would spoil one of the books, but needless to say Vinge supposes that exponential improvements in computing power will inevitably lead to that happenin
73.
by adastra 14y ago
For anyone interested in the (just for fun) topic of technological advancement, weaponry, and encounters with other civilizations, you should check out Vernor Vinge's Zone of Thought novels, a Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky
74.
by adastra 14y ago
Thats truly fascinating, makes one wonder if other networks will jump into the act once ABC has their first home run. What worries me though is its only a matter of time until someone figures out they can do this with a startup reality show
75.
by adastra 14y ago
Well that's not very nice.
76.
by adastra 14y ago
I can't tell if you are being sarcastic or not. My underlying assumption is that Obama is more than likely going to win re-election. FiveThirtyEight has him at 75% likelihood to win, and intrade bettors have him at 66%. But even if he wins,
77.
by adastra 14y ago
If people want to help Aaron, I'd recommend a political strategy as well as a legal one. I'm not a lawyer and certainly no expert on this case, but my sense is that there is something political going on or one of the prosecutors sees this a
78.
by adastra 14y ago
Just read PG's submarine essay for the first time a couple weeks ago [1], and have been on the lookout for a good example since then. Bingo. [1] http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html
79.
by adastra 14y ago
The real value of an SO answer is probably best approximated by how many people it helped. In my experience, SO is incredibly useful when I'm learning a new language or framework, and I want to quickly blast through hurdles caused by non-in
80.
by adastra 14y ago
There is an important piece to this story that is missing from all the current news articles: a different earlier post on pastebin, dated 9/2, did not make mention of any kind of ransom: http://pastebin.com/zdU1TK40 That earlier post si
81.
by adastra 14y ago
In the case of the "allow release" bitcoin account, clearly someone is sending a message to the perpetuators saying "prove that you actually have the documents". In the case of the "stop release", a different person likely sent a message as
82.
by adastra 14y ago
This post has so much flame-bait in it I almost wonder if it's a meta-post-- a practical joke to see how many people go after these various politically-charged statements rather than comment on the article itself. I'll assume it's not thoug
83.
by adastra 14y ago
I'm friends with some people who have worked for Dan. Here's the best article I could find that might give some insight on what happened. Short answer is each year event per-participant expenses kept increasing (Pallotta has a bit of a "sp
84.
by adastra 14y ago
I've gotten to know John a little bit, and I have to say it's a strange feeling to have a conversation with a person of his off-the-charts intelligence. I consider myself to be pretty smart-- was known as "the math whiz" in high school, wen
85.
by adastra 14y ago
When I saw the headline I thought data haven. Hilariously over-hyped headline. What is the NY Times coming to these days?
86.
by adastra 14y ago
I can strongly recommend the large Galant desk. It's basically indestructible, and a nice design (just one giant smooth flat surface, with nicely adjustable legs). I basically don't use anything else to work on now if I can help it. Also ha
87.
by adastra 14y ago
This is awesome. Much thanks.
88.
by adastra 14y ago
My contention is that the average value per user of Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, Pinterest, Instagram, Yelp, and Youtube is $56. You take the average of those and you're probably looking at a pretty decent ballpark for the value per user
89.
by adastra 14y ago
Can I ask how precisely you deleted it? When I tried a few months back, they wouldn't allow a deletion, they would only allow it to be "disabled". My reason for trying to delete it was also privacy related, although it will seem like a min
90.
by adastra 14y ago
I'm sorry but this whole branch of this thread needs to be downvoted straight into the abyss. It's a massive distraction from the actual topic at hand. No thank you.

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