bryananderson

13 ms·

91.
by bryananderson 4y ago
I don’t know the numbers for Starship specifically, but this is a matter of how much fuel you have available to burn, and six months has long been considered reasonable. For a free-return trajectory (end up back at Earth if you’re not willi
92.
by bryananderson 4y ago
Correct, an object of this size is almost certain to not burn up completely (and indeed it did not). The same is true for other countries’ rockets, which is why those countries nudge them into the atmosphere over the ocean. China’s refusal
93.
by bryananderson 4y ago
The amount of potential debris is roughly proportional to the mass of the object (maybe more than linear, since smaller objects tend to disintegrate with no detectable debris at all). A Starlink satellite is about 260 kg. The CZ-5B stage is
94.
by bryananderson 4y ago
I can’t emphasize enough how not necessary it is to have the upper stage of CZ-5B reenter uncontrolled. Nudging the stage into the atmosphere while over an ocean is a much easier problem than launching the rocket on a precise trajectory to
95.
by bryananderson 4y ago
I work on Alexa and for whatever it’s worth, I can confirm that Amazon is telling the truth about how Alexa listens and about what is done with your data. This is all publicly available info, and perhaps there’s no reason why you should tru
96.
by bryananderson 4y ago
I think to make it make sense you have to define what “winning” means. It’s usually not the same thing for different sides of a war. When we say the US lost the war in Vietnam, we obviously don’t mean the Viet Cong rolled tanks down Pennsyl
97.
by bryananderson 4y ago
Anyone can apply for time to point JWST somewhere by making a research proposal to the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI). STScI weighs the proposals and picks the ones that it judges to be most compelling. This is the same system th
98.
by bryananderson 4y ago
“When you're young, you look at television and think, There's a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that's not true. The networks are in business to give peopl
99.
by bryananderson 4y ago
That’s fair, it’s definitely plausible that the process of becoming a billionaire does select for sociopathy or similar traits. Still, this is far from scientific, but any time I read in-depth about bad (in my view) people, I’ve always been
100.
by bryananderson 4y ago
How many surveillance-state abuses have we said this about in the last 21 years? Always the answer is “yes in theory, but in practice the state does it anyway and courts usually defer to its judgment”.
101.
by bryananderson 4y ago
True, but not that many people are true sociopaths. Much more common among “bad” people is garden-variety self-centeredness with lots of rationalization. Everyone has selfish instincts, but very few people can sleep at night if they see the
102.
by bryananderson 4y ago
Yeah, you’re correct, you don’t need to invoke relativity to explain the Doppler effect. Sibling comment did a good job explaining the ways relativity does impact redshift, but my initial statement (“because of relativity…”) was not correct
103.
by bryananderson 4y ago
Webb isn’t optimized to produce maximally pretty pictures, because most of Webb’s groundbreaking science is not necessarily going to involve pretty pictures. For example, Webb will tell us otherwise-unknowable things about the atmospheric c
104.
by bryananderson 4y ago
Seeing through dust is part of it. Another part is redshift: because of relativity, things moving away from us appear redder (longer wavelength) the faster they’re moving away. That’s the same principle (Doppler effect) as the lower-pitched
105.
by bryananderson 4y ago
Price changes due to macroeconomic circumstances are explicitly listed in the contract as not being grounds to get out of the deal. I’m telling you, the guy really signed an ironclad contract forcing him to pay $44B to buy Twitter.
106.
by bryananderson 4y ago
As Matt Levine explained [0] the “waiving due diligence” doesn’t really mean anything now. What does mean something is that he signed a binding agreement to buy Twitter, giving Twitter the right to compel him to close the deal, and there’s
107.
by bryananderson 4y ago
> People fear missing an opportunity to make money far more than they fear losing their money. This trend is a fantastic lesson in why evolution has (generally speaking) settled on a bias toward loss aversion.
108.
by bryananderson 4y ago
1) That number was not part of the agreement 2) What is part of the agreement is that Musk waived his right to due diligence 3) That number is part of Twitter’s usual investor disclosure, but with a caveat that it may be wrong; besides,
109.
by bryananderson 5y ago
I think there’s a clear reason why the author’s kitchen has a lived-in, personalized feel while the real estate listing does not, and it’s not particularly philosophical. The author’s kitchen was designed by the author, who knows exactly wh
110.
by bryananderson 5y ago
Who said anything about a bank branch? I did it on the Central Bank of Ukraine’s website in about 30 seconds. I don’t know how much I can emphasize what a solved problem this is.
111.
by bryananderson 5y ago
As always with crypto, this “use case” falls apart on even the tiniest inspection. Ukraine was not cut off from the global financial system and had no issue receiving donations in fiat currency—I myself sent them some fiat. It was quick and
112.
by bryananderson 5y ago
This is not in short supply either. In California, the capital of the American housing crisis, the overwhelming majority of new residential development in the last 50+ years is low-density single-family on greenfield land. This is certainly
113.
by bryananderson 5y ago
I don’t agree at all, and I think many people don’t agree. What has always depressed me the most in the winter is the lack of sunlight in the evening, after work/school. In the morning I don’t really get to enjoy the sunlight anyway. W
114.
by bryananderson 5y ago
You can step inside (and perhaps even ride) a Key System bridge unit at the Western Railway Museum near Suisun City, which has its own electrified railway line! Once upon a time, this line was part of an electric railway connecting Oakland
115.
by bryananderson 5y ago
We are not talking about the same type of development today as in the midcentury decades. In those days, “redevelopment” was a euphemism for the wholesale destruction of entire neighborhoods by use of eminent domain, whether the residents l
116.
by bryananderson 5y ago
It has never been likely that any government would simply decide to start a nuclear war. Putin clearly has many delusions, but he knows how MAD works. But there are three nuclear war scenarios that seem plausible. One is an unintended escal
117.
by bryananderson 5y ago
From what I can gather from a week of obsessively following military experts’ explanations of the conflict, there seem to be two main factors at play. One is the Russian choice of overall military tactics, which is derived from their politi
118.
by bryananderson 5y ago
In practice their acquiescence would be required—if nothing else he would need them to agree to abandon the station.
119.
by bryananderson 5y ago
His cosmonauts would not carry out this order. Not only have they built years of close friendship with their Western colleagues during training, but current and former members of the cosmonaut corps have feuded with Rogozin publicly and pri
120.
by bryananderson 5y ago
A friend of mine is an engineering manager overseeing winterization of gas generators for a utility company in a southern state. His utility hired a company from Texas to do the winterization. My friend commented to his counterpart at the w

More ›