bfe

41 ms·

361.
by bfe 15y ago
If you go into low Earth orbit from the Earth's surface, you need to go into an orbital inclination equal to the latitude of your launch site - which is extremely unhelpful if you want to then take that mass anywhere else in the solar syste
362.
by bfe 15y ago
Besides the added complexity of assembling components together in LEO, placing any mass into low Earth orbit is really inconsistent with putting it into a trans Mars trajectory and adds a giant extra delta-V penalty. It's a much different o
363.
by bfe 15y ago
It's true that using aerobraking alone for an incoming vessel from Earth landing on Mars would be infeasible. Landing with thrust, like we did on the Moon forty years ago, but also using assistance from aerobraking and parachutes, is not an
364.
by bfe 15y ago
At this point, sending humans to Mars is also just an engineering problem, not a science problem. The trip time using conventional chemical rockets is limited to modified Hohmann transfer orbits of around six to eight months each way, and t
365.
by bfe 15y ago
This is excellent. Many human Mars mission architectures use an Earth return vehicle that is separate from the outbound vessel. The requirements are very different, and there's an overwhelming advantage to placing an Earth return vehicle on
366.
by bfe 15y ago
The author displays ignorance of the topic in alleging that no one has addressed whether mere algorithms per se should be patentable. Case law has discussed this repeatedly and made clear that a mere algorithm per se can't be patented. See
367.
by bfe 16y ago
I have learned a great deal from Diamond's books and articles, but even he shows elsewhere that the two leading causes of death across hunter-gatherer societies are combat between tribes and homicide within tribes. Agricultural civilization
368.
by bfe 16y ago
This is an excellent article that every entrepreneur should keep as a handy reference. However, there's one significant error regarding international patents I want to correct. There's no single patent application for the European Union. Wh
369.
by bfe 16y ago
There's a reverse problem too with complaining about karma farming eroding the SNR. I care about learning interesting things and couldn't care less about my karma on a website. I've only ever submitted two articles, and those were only afte
370.
by bfe 16y ago
Basically correct (except the concept of volume doesn't hold up in a black hole). It is theoretically possible to have a black hole big enough that its Roche limit is inside its event horizon; but a black hole that big is probably at least
371.
by bfe 16y ago
I think it is going to be "as easy" as showing up and starting to dig. The lawyers will wrangle things out in the meantime, but that's a trivial task compared to mining the Moon.
372.
by bfe 16y ago
You're going to have some major practical trade-offs with this choice of cooling system. For one thing, any data you get out of this computer when you're positioned further away from the event horizon is going to be red-shifted down to a lo
373.
by bfe 16y ago
This is excellent. Isn't 53 tonnes to LEO also somewhere around 12 tonnes to the surface of Mars?
374.
by bfe 16y ago
The hardest thing for me going from studying physics and astronomy to law school was getting used to the idea of a form of learning that had little to do with figuring out truth.
375.
by bfe 16y ago
I found this insightful for anyone who has lots of urgent and important tasks to get done and decisions to make and lots of people to keep happy, yet who also has many other personally conceived projects to pursue that no one else is going
376.
by bfe 16y ago
Ben and his partner Marc Andreessen have been doing this for a long time; not coincidentally, Marc co-founded Ning with Gina Bianchini as the CEO.
377.
The most difficult CEO skill: managing your own psychology(bhorowitz.com)
286 points by bfe 16y ago|67 comments
378.
by bfe 16y ago
Ultimately the name "color" makes for weak branding, not only because it's already so widely used for so many things (even including a pre-existing software application), but because everyone and their grandma could introduce new applicatio
379.
by bfe 16y ago
That's interesting too - there's now no time in the YC program for pitching actual demos to investors, at least in inital group pitch format.
380.
by bfe 16y ago
As noted in the article, Buffett also shuns tech investments - and Buffett has said he doesn't invest in something he can't understand well, and he doesn't understand tech. And he's not wrong. Nobody understands the conditions for the futur
381.
by bfe 16y ago
Any thought of adding follow-up longer form presentations on a later day for doing actual demos for interested investors and startups, maybe in groups of five to ten startups at a time?
382.
by bfe 16y ago
If a popular site uses captcha and you can make it work without, sounds like an opportunity.
383.
by bfe 16y ago
I do the majority of my legal work for Fortune 100 companies, and do some work with tech startups, which I approach very differently than any other work: a lot of the time and effort I spend on them, probably the majority, I don't bill for.
384.
by bfe 16y ago
True, the author, as a target of the over-schmoozers, inevitably has a big sampling bias.
385.
by bfe 16y ago
I think another way of looking at this is in parallel with Ben Horowitz's dictum, in the context of hiring, to look for strength rather than lack of weakness. I think in school admissions or hiring, there's a trade-off in the end of trying
386.
by bfe 16y ago
Someone I know well was recruited on full scholarship to Cornell as a math student in 2007, even though he was a high school dropout.
387.
by bfe 16y ago
If someone picks and remains committed to a really bad idea, how great are they really?
388.
by bfe 16y ago
I'm sure Lorenz University, like any good startup, was just launching their minimum viable product to start gathering valuable user input like this blog post to guide their ongoing iterations... ;->
389.
by bfe 16y ago
I think the new funding deal by Milner and SV Angel may snowball into more angels and VCs offering blanket investments to all YC acceptees on easy terms as soon as they're accepted, which will compound the rising applicant pool and place mo
390.
Seasonal tropical methane storms observed on Titan(ciclops.org)
1 points by bfe 16y ago|0 comments

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