elihu

73 ms·

871.
by elihu 5y ago
It would be nice to have it in printed form, but just reading it before you need to use it (which we all hope never happens) is a good idea. Unfortunately, most of the things that one would be likely to die from are things you have to deal
872.
by elihu 5y ago
According to the book, a big risk is "skyshine": gamma radiation from the decay of radioactive particles that get spread into the atmosphere. Concrete walls are pretty good, and being underground is pretty good, but the problem w
873.
by elihu 5y ago
It really depends on what kind of scenario we're talking about. At the moment in time someone is affected by a nuclear blast in their vicinity, it's unlikely that person knows what else is going on in the world. A nuclear blast
874.
by elihu 5y ago
I think it's useful to know and understand things. How a nuclear war would play out might not correspond to what your imagination or popular culture say they will. I started reading that book about 6 months or so ago after coming acr
875.
by elihu 5y ago
I didn't take the test, but one thing I worry about is that the existence of mediocre fakes makes people more confident in their ability to spot fakes when in reality they might just not be catching the ones that are well-done. There&
876.
by elihu 5y ago
It doesn't give them more power. As I understand it, small planes last a long time, and a lot of them have old engines that were designed for leaded gas and wear out faster if run on unleaded fuel. Thus, the FAA is reluctant to appro
877.
by elihu 5y ago
I don't think an island invasion would be easier than a land invasion, but I agree that "China definitely won't invade Taiwan right now" is overly optimistic. It's probably not in their best interests, but Russia i
878.
by elihu 5y ago
Do you mean the most important thing for SpaceX? Because it's also important for Ukraine not just to win on the technological front but also to seem like they're winning, and bragging about capabilities helps their propaganda eff
879.
by elihu 5y ago
One theory I came across recently was that the Russian IFF system ("Identify Friend or Foe") has been subverted by Ukraine, possibly due to captured vehicles, and that Russia doesn't trust their own IFF system. So, any attac
880.
by elihu 5y ago
I'm thinking maybe their long-range plan is to turn the reactor off and then damage it in some way that it can never be used again without rebuilding from scratch. Russia's main export is fossil fuels, and it's in Russia&#x2
881.
by elihu 5y ago
I wonder if Russia thinks it gives them a strategic advantage to be able to turn the power on and off at will? (Hypothetically, if they have full control of some city, they can turn the power back on and the people are less likely to revol
882.
by elihu 5y ago
Depends whether you mean "free" as in "zero financial cost" or "free" as in "all the RTL, firmware, and software source code is available to anyone with a permissive license that permits derivative works&q
883.
by elihu 5y ago
No, but medics are necessary too, and they contribute to the defense of the country in their own way.
884.
by elihu 5y ago
Storing energy in the summer to be used in the winter probably isn't going to ever be practical with batteries. (Maybe it's practical by using electricity to make synthetic liquid fuels? That wouldn't be very efficient, tho
885.
by elihu 5y ago
You're making a lot of assumptions. Size of roof, type of solar installation, climate, geographical location, how much the person drives, whether electric heating is resistive or uses a more efficient heat pump, whether their house is
886.
by elihu 5y ago
Honestly the elephant's foot is the closest real-life thing I can think of to the Ark of the Covenant from Raiders of the Lost Ark. It's just that everyone already knows that it has no practical applications and they don't w
887.
by elihu 5y ago
Article 5 requires all NATO members to defend if one nation is attacked. It doesn't obligate any NATO member to participate if one NATO nation decides to fight an optional war (like in Iraq). Thus the structure of the alliance is def
888.
by elihu 5y ago
It hasn't happened often to me either, but I imagine it varies quite a bit depending on what industry you work in, what your main product is, who your employer is, and what the team you work on is like. Some kinds of products have fai
889.
by elihu 5y ago
Kuro5hin was amazing until the trolls took over. I really liked the idea of people writing stories and have them subject to editorial comments before they go live. That's sort of what my mental model of what citizen journalism should
890.
by elihu 5y ago
Having to pay market prices isn't the end of the world; the U.S. is a wealthy country, so we can afford it more easily than a lot of others. (It would, of course, hurt poor people the most.) I think restrictions on exports are a good
891.
by elihu 5y ago
Ships can be made to burn just about anything as fuel, the main problem is just whether existing ships can burn different fuels without major re-engineering. Even electric shipping is possible, but would require substantial infrastructure
892.
by elihu 5y ago
A bug in one's cryptography could be really bad, if there's someone like Alan Turing on the other side capable of noticing and exploiting it. Also any automated threat detection system that looks at satellite photos / night v
893.
by elihu 5y ago
Not the person you're replying to, but in general refraction is pretty easy to do in a ray tracer. When the ray hits the object you use the normal vector, the incident ray direction, and the index of refraction of the material (or mat
894.
by elihu 5y ago
Also, relating to difficult it's interesting that the original game that SMB2 in the U.S. was based on didn't have the B-run ability, and that change made the game substantially easier. Though in that case they may have decided t
895.
by elihu 5y ago
Yeah, I see a lot of those via Google Finance.
896.
by elihu 5y ago
Interesting. This is something that I hoped someone would do. However, I think that for Benford's law to be meaningful, you probably need to be looking at the finest-grain stats that are available, not just the top-line national numb
897.
by elihu 5y ago
Single mode fiber optic cable has amazingly high bandwidth. It's hard to compete with that with a radio link. (Though I suppose lasers between satellites could in theory be on par with what you can get from a fiber optic link. On th
898.
by elihu 5y ago
I figure that any large-scale asteroid mining operation is likely to employ a fairly complicated supply chain that doesn't ship everything to or from Earth. Earth would probably continue to manufacture high-value, complex machines like
899.
by elihu 5y ago
The ability to make methane on Mars is pretty huge, though. If you're mining the asteroid belt and need to refuel your ships, it's a lot easier to ferry fuel from Mars to the belt than haul it all the way from Earth. And methane
900.
by elihu 5y ago
Mars is different because it has a lot of resources, a lot of empty land, it has easier access to space than Earth due to the reduced gravity, and space is really big. Maybe in the long run we'll be able to house more people in the as

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