elihu

61 ms·

721.
by elihu 4y ago
The problem with covering a parking lot with solar panels is that it's usually a lot more expensive than covering rural land with solar panels. The panels have to be mounted higher off the ground so vehicles can get beneath them, they
722.
by elihu 4y ago
I'm curious if anyone knows the cost/benefit analysis of HVDC over aluminum cables versus using high-temperature superconductors like ReBCO tape. Maybe supply of yttrium is a bottleneck preventing large-scale use of ReBCO? https
723.
by elihu 4y ago
Another use of natural gas is to make fertilizer. Maybe you'd use a different process though if your end goal is to make ammonia? (I'm not an expert, but it seems you'd use electrolyzed hydrogen either way, but Haber Bosch
724.
by elihu 4y ago
The standard of truth in science is reproducibility. But publication usually happens before results have been independently reproduced. Papers are peer reviewed, but generally peer reviewers are just ensuring that the results are sufficie
725.
by elihu 4y ago
I could imagine that they might also not want to invest the effort and time needed to complete a degree that would be of little value if it became public knowledge that the department issuing the degree had a problem with fraud.
726.
by elihu 4y ago
I could see that possibly being true. I mean, driving is kind of weird; it seems to be mostly done with a part of the brain that can operate automatically with little conscious effort. It's sort of like playing the piano: if I'm
727.
by elihu 4y ago
NIH does get a lot more funding than NASA, they just don't tend to be in the news as much. 41.6 billion vs 22.6 billion in 2020. (I'm actually surprised the difference isn't larger.) I do agree that the stuff that's im
728.
by elihu 4y ago
I kind of wonder what this means for our prospects of being able to make complicated products in the future. Presumably this will all settle out and we'll eventually settle back into a working supply chain that's maybe a little l
729.
by elihu 4y ago
There's still a lot of analog music happening, especially in the modular synthesis world. They're a tiny part of the whole market for electronic components, though.
730.
by elihu 4y ago
I don't think so, I think planets are just too small and far away to be much more than points of light (or shadows crossing in front of stars). In a lot of cases, we infer the presence of planets by making very precise measurements of
731.
by elihu 4y ago
I don't think it's all that rare to need a pickup truck for certain uses, but small pickup trucks have basically disappeared. Rather than require a CDL for any pickup truck, I'd prefer a policy to require a CDL for vehicles a
732.
by elihu 4y ago
> If you leave it to individual choice there will always be plenty of people who don’t care about the costs they’re imposing on others. I think the current state of affairs is actually worse than that -- big trucks are popular not just b
733.
by elihu 4y ago
A Hummer H3 is less than 5,000 pounds. The EV Hummer is about 9,000. This is a vehicle that's much heavier than almost anything on the road that isn't a commercial vehicle, including similar ICE vehicles. (And for what it's
734.
by elihu 4y ago
I think that requiring a CDL to drive a 9,000 pound vehicle with a 3 second 0-60 time would be enough to deter most potential buyers unless they were really motivated. Getting the license would be an actual inconvenience, not something you
735.
by elihu 4y ago
I would have thought so too, but there was a story awhile back about China working out a deal with Chile to import solar power from Chile via a trans-Pacific cable. Maybe it's just hype and nothing will actually come of it, but someon
736.
by elihu 4y ago
I think the right way to mitigate the risk is to keep many/most of the fossil fuel plants around so that they can be brought online in an emergency (i.e. someone destroys a cable), but otherwise don't use them.
737.
by elihu 4y ago
It depends. Fossil fuels are still a major source, which needs to be replaced as soon as possible with something else (where "something else" probably means some combination of solar, wind, and nuclear). What I'm saying is t
738.
by elihu 4y ago
There are heat pump water heaters already. I think people usually have them setup so that the excess cold air is either used to keep the building cool in hot weather or it's routed outside in cold weather.
739.
by elihu 4y ago
Even if we were using substantially less energy overall, transitioning away from fossil fuels for heating and transportation is likely to result in using a lot more electricity. I expect most modern countries are going to need to be constan
740.
by elihu 4y ago
Having some cheap long-term energy storage option is one way to solve that problem, but another is better power grid interconnection. For instance, Chicago could get solar power from Chile in the winter time to buffer out the seasonal vari
741.
by elihu 4y ago
It might be. It's hard to say, probably even by legal experts (and I'm definitely not one). I think a sticking point might be that the letter talked about bad behavior by Elon Musk in public, and a problem with the "no assho
742.
by elihu 4y ago
It's kind of a weird idea to get used to, but I think windowless cars could be pretty cool. Maybe the driver puts on a VR helmet and can see everything. (Obviously the technology would have to be extremely reliable.) It solves a bunc
743.
by elihu 4y ago
What that sounds like in practice is "build complex systems no one else knows how to maintain" or "don't document important processes" or "hide essential information from my coworkers". That can be a very
744.
by elihu 4y ago
Interesting.
745.
by elihu 4y ago
I'd like to think it's called "Strong's Concordance" because that's what you'd be if you carried it around all the time.
746.
by elihu 4y ago
...another reason is that KJV is not currently under copyright, unlike (as far as I know) all modern English translations.
747.
by elihu 4y ago
Very few people are likely to have that sort of charger installed in their house. High speed charging makes sense though where it'll be heavily utilized, like at charging stations along major highways. (I'm hoping eventually the
748.
by elihu 4y ago
Nickel is also expensive. Usually it's quite a bit more expensive than lithium, but it seems that lithium prices are spiking at the moment. (The amount needed is also relevant, I'm not sure exactly how much lithium is in lithium
749.
by elihu 4y ago
How much of that is just sensitivity to the cost of battery cells? If most of the world can buy lithium iron phosphate cells at $100 a kw/h, would battery storage be cost effective in ways it isn't at $300 a kw/h? (I'm
750.
by elihu 4y ago
See also: "Please, enough with the dead butterflies": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27948008

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