comicjk

45 ms·

241.
by comicjk 7y ago
Yes, you can, much better in fact. ATP makes sense in the specific context of the inside of cells, but it doesn't compare to e.g. methane + liquid oxygen in terms of cost or performance.
242.
by comicjk 7y ago
There's also a big middle ground. For example, some semi-green power is generated by breaking wood into flammable gases + carbon ("biochar"), then burying the carbon and burning the gases.
243.
by comicjk 7y ago
This is true but not very informative. Each greenhouse gas absorbs heat at different wavelengths, with no single gas covering the spectrum. Adding CO2 or methane increases heat absorption, even in air that's saturated with water vapor.
244.
by comicjk 7y ago
Leaving aside your geographic confusion, you're wrong about how water is used. Silicon Valley has a tiny water demand per dollar of output; they could even afford desalinization if needed. The industry that would die would be farming.
245.
by comicjk 7y ago
I have taken several trips to Los Angeles without using a car. It's not convenient, but it works if you allow enough time - the bus lines do at least exist.
246.
by comicjk 7y ago
The US has had gas shortages and gas rationing several times within living memory. Maybe you should take up long-distance bicycling?
247.
by comicjk 7y ago
Nations, companies, states, towns, nonprofits, and all kinds of other groups can issue bonds, which are then bought and traded on markets in pretty much the same way. There's nothing special about being able to issue bonds - the market
248.
by comicjk 7y ago
The national debt refers only to the debt of the federal government. Separately, statistics are also kept on the private debt within a country - in the US, that's about $27 trillion. For comparison, the US national debt is $23 trillion
249.
by comicjk 7y ago
As long as everyone has confidence in Chase, yes, their accounts are money just like any other money. The difference arises when confidence fails - rare, but important for understanding the banking system. In this case, Chase can run out of
250.
by comicjk 7y ago
Very true! I'm just trying to explain that there is a distinction between central banks and commercial banks, objecting to the statement `The central bank "prints" a lot [of] money, but so do private banks.` I think that the
251.
by comicjk 7y ago
Lenders do increase the money supply, and in that sense create money, but I am hesitant about that phrasing because it elides the important distinction between ordinary banks and the central bank. That's why I mentioned the distinction
252.
by comicjk 7y ago
This is like saying that human exertion is independent of having to eat, because a person can go for a walk without first planning their next meal. This appears true on a small scale, but in the long run the inputs and outputs must balance.
253.
by comicjk 7y ago
You are right that no one knows the exact money supply. But banks printing money is a misconception. Private lenders "create" money by fostering trust - I have $N in the bank, even they also loaned 90% * $N to other people. Effect
254.
by comicjk 7y ago
Separating mixed things always means putting in work because it reduces entropy. Around 3% of US energy goes just to distilling oil, for instance.
255.
by comicjk 7y ago
I'm surprised and humbled that a project of this importance doesn't have their own physical ARM machine for benchmarking. Compare that to the computer and human time saved across all the places it could be used!
256.
by comicjk 7y ago
Maybe you're thinking of hormesis? That's the term for small amounts of damage bring helpful, as with exercise. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hormesis But this is a detectable amount of damage, so it's
257.
by comicjk 7y ago
If you think a false Satoshi would hem and haw and not say anything, you don't know how con artists work. Some people have the skill of lying fluently. If Wright isn't Satoshi, then clearly he is one of those people. Therefore thi
258.
by comicjk 7y ago
If you just assume that the sample mean = the population mean, then you get the right answer, at least for this example. I don't see why the article fools around with the maximum at all - isn't the maximum a much more noisy statis
259.
by comicjk 7y ago
I thought the same, and tried it. The mean sample mean after 10 million runs is 500.47, which is very close to the true mean, 500.5. Bessel's correction is not correct here - it's effectively multiplying by n/(n-1), so your e
260.
by comicjk 7y ago
Cycling the legislators doesn't help at all - it's easy to make a farm team of lackies, already "bought" before they're even elected. They can even be picked according to ideology, so you don't have to pay them
261.
by comicjk 7y ago
The YouTube recommendation algorithm will rapidly bubble you into a parody of your original beliefs. Of course this feels true and reliable and complete, but it's a false sense. It's a good way to learn what you want to learn, but
262.
by comicjk 7y ago
I don't think the nerd/Ivy distinction you're making is significant. Most students at Ivy League schools are nerds, at least by the standards of broader society (you need good grades to get in). Few of them "network for
263.
by comicjk 7y ago
If this was the reason you voted for Trump, I have some bad news about the trajectory of military spending.
264.
by comicjk 7y ago
I have run into that problem, but only when merging Latex documents with different packages. If you find something that's really difficult and requires a lot of packages, ask why other users haven't made it easy already - maybe it
265.
by comicjk 7y ago
Historical correction: no one is saying the US is gassing kids, that's confusion about what "concentration camp" means. Not every concentration camp is a Nazi death camp. Anytime you gather up the population in camps to keep
266.
by comicjk 7y ago
I used this text as an intro to the classic D&D adventure "Tomb of Horrors" - in my reimagining, the ancient evil at the bottom of the tomb was its civilization's version of nuclear waste.
267.
by comicjk 7y ago
Most medicines are already "open source" in the sense that their patents have expired, the details are known, and any chemistry lab can make them. The problem is selling them legally as medicine! A generic medicine needs FDA appro
268.
by comicjk 7y ago
Currently the fuel is very inexpensive - a tiny fraction of the total cost of the electricity produced. Most of the cost is the initial capital, and most of the ongoing cost is the (highly specialized) labor. A new reactor design that saves
269.
by comicjk 7y ago
Statistical significance isn't necessary for deriving value from information! The point of multi-armed bandit is that you use the best information you currently have, while also not taking that information too seriously. In a context w
270.
by comicjk 7y ago
That could be post-hoc reasoning, though. It would be interesting to pre-register your hypotheses, or see whether you could tell bandit outcomes from random ones.

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