chris_va

74 ms·

721.
by chris_va 11y ago
Yes, ingestion/exposure to contaminated material seems to be more of an issue than exposure to direct radiation. Exceptions being something like space travel, where background gamma is high. An interesting example: https://e
722.
by chris_va 11y ago
This may help at a policy level, but I feel like it is solving the wrong problem. Most of the time, poaching is easy to discover because there is a dead elephant on the ground missing its tusks. These game parks already know they have a pro
723.
by chris_va 11y ago
You laugh, but the motorized bull business is hoppin'.
724.
by chris_va 11y ago
The amount of water used globally (approx 10^13 m^3) is only about 2.5% the total yearly evaporation off of the ocean (approx 4*10^14 m^3). I suspect small changes in climate have a much greater effect on net evaporation.
725.
by chris_va 11y ago
That is not a likely scenario. The projected net impact from global warming is on the ~$2T/year range. That is about 3% of GWP. We aren't talking the end of the species, just really stupid expensive mistakes.
726.
by chris_va 11y ago
It's a reasonable question. While I am not a climatologist... Anthropogenic evaporation is probably minuscule next to deviations in natural evaporation due to small changes in temperature. A single hurricane, for example, dumps more po
727.
by chris_va 11y ago
(This doesn't really answer your question, but hopefully is still useful) I actually do this for startups, but it's a bit of a specialized and difficult art. Answering specific questions about technology stacks requires having use
728.
by chris_va 11y ago
Energy storage (battery, flywheel, etc) would solve the transient energy problem, you are correct. Something like the Tesla PowerWall could potentially be scaled up to commercial energy production, but honestly we probably still have 30 yea
729.
by chris_va 11y ago
Solar and wind are decent, and I agree that we should build more, and reaching carbon neutrality is a great goal. However, since you care about this subject, I feel compelled to point out that: - Neither produce power all the time (i.e. at
730.
by chris_va 11y ago
We spent a fair bit of time researching this trend at Google News (former TL), and talking to the industry. I cannot speak for the company anymore, but the major finding was: "The newspaper industry was not in the business of deliverin
731.
by chris_va 11y ago
I agree. Projects should not be scheduled in isolation. Delay may be a great idea, or a terrible idea. Sometimes prediction is easy, sometimes it is not. Trying to oversimplify the decision making is a mistake.
732.
by chris_va 11y ago
And yet, you might take longer to finish the project than someone else. Just because something is freeing doesn't mean it's a good idea. Nor does it mean it is a bad idea, it just means it's an uninformed idea. Obviously it&#
733.
by chris_va 11y ago
Using your example: Let's say I know it will cause a complexity burden in the future. Shouldn't we ask if that complexity burden and opportunity cost are outweighed by the expected benefits, rather than rather than simply relying
734.
by chris_va 11y ago
I think this is trying to simplify an already simple idea, succinctly: "Optimize your time intelligently". Rules of thumb (like YAGNI) may not be correct, depending on the situation. Estimating time complexity is hard, so deferrin
735.
Ask HN: Test/Play with 3D Printing Library
1 points by chris_va 11y ago|0 comments
736.
by chris_va 12y ago
Well, being skeptical of an entire field of study is different than being skeptical of the predicted outcome. One often sounds like the other, and it is 99.99% likely that something is happening, even if we don't do a good job unders
737.
by chris_va 12y ago
Adding to this, my (limited, apologies climatologists) understanding of one theory is that global warming reduces the temperature gradient between the temperate zone and the arctic. This destabilizes the jet stream, causing bifurcation. Tha
738.
by chris_va 12y ago
https://algorithmia.com/docs/marketplace#pricing "Royalty Algorithm developers may choose to set a cost-per-call royalty associated with their algorithm"
739.
by chris_va 12y ago
I've spent too much of my life on this problem :). The short version is that you can expose the different read/write modes to the client, and let them decide on what works best for their use case. For spanner, table 2 in the paper
740.
by chris_va 12y ago
+1 to this, the computer history museum is truly awesome.
741.
by chris_va 12y ago
I always find it useful to map a new problem into a space I am more familiar with. Given that you have a many years of experience with high level languages, you can probably use array algorithms as an analogue for bitwise operations. Can yo
742.
by chris_va 12y ago
This was one of the most rock-solid internal services that I very much miss, now ex-Google.
743.
by chris_va 12y ago
This is actually a fun way to measure the speed of light. You can measure the wavelength by looking at the distance between the bubbles. That plus the operating frequency of the microwave will give you the phase velocity.
744.
by chris_va 12y ago
"Extract of sunlight"
745.
by chris_va 12y ago
Question for Stripe folks. At creation, Stripe guarantees an exchange rate that is usable for 10 minutes. If the customer sends bitcoin to the receiver after the 10 minutes have expired, we’ll still process the transaction but the conversi
746.
by chris_va 12y ago
But we all know which UW is the right one :)
747.
by chris_va 12y ago
Remember that this will almost certainly be Preferred stock, not Common stock. That means that even if Snapchat sells for $1B tomorrow, everyone who invests at the $19B valuation still comes out positive.
748.
by chris_va 12y ago
Maybe... Technically it's not their study, it's the study of the company running the trial. That isn't public information. Now, one could argue that all clinical and pre-clinical data used for the drug approval process should
749.
by chris_va 12y ago
Well, technically they are replicating the study over 50+ different hospitals until they reach some confidence interval on the safety data. If you get fraud in a small fraction of them, it should not (and if you read the actual testimony, d
750.
by chris_va 12y ago
"FDA managers hid the evidence of fraud and misconduct from the advisory committee, which was fooled into voting for approval" -> Yes, that sounds super sketchy. The actual testimony doesn't, though it's one sided (be

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