ericd

64 ms·

901.
by ericd 3y ago
My impression is that Bezos isn't involved in day-to-day operations anymore?
902.
by ericd 3y ago
The carbon footprint of an astronaut going into space on eg a Falcon 9 is on the order of that of a couple average American families for a year. It's not a huge impact compared to how much they advance our understanding of how to live
903.
by ericd 3y ago
It’s not just stroking egos; if you read any accounts by astronauts, there’s a profound effect on people that get a chance to look back at earth, and see how it’s actually not infinite. I hope every powerful person gets the chance to do tha
904.
by ericd 3y ago
Well, we’re talking about the US…
905.
by ericd 3y ago
Why do you want the ability to vent such potent greenhouse gasses? I'd like the ability to visit space at some point in my life, and I'd like our species to become experienced at doing things in space. Like, if we need to be able
906.
by ericd 3y ago
Those are all relatively small, I think they're all lifted sedans. When people are talking about an arms race, they're probably talking about the true SUVs, which are built on truck frames - the Escalades, Suburbans, etc. They&#x2
907.
by ericd 3y ago
Really depends, if I blitz along at 80, then yeah. If I stick to the speed limit, it’s not a bad estimate, on mostly slow local roads, we get substantially better. It’s a great demonstration of drag’s nonlinear nature (the cube of the speed
908.
by ericd 3y ago
This is one of the potential paths (look up BECCS/bioenergy with carbon capture and sequestration). Basically, grow something that grows very quickly (I think switchgrass is usually discussed), burn it for energy, and put something to
909.
by ericd 3y ago
My software hand trowels don't get randomly totally wrecked by some fresh grad UX guru who decided that they needed to rework everything to justify their employment or because they felt they urgently need to chase the latest design fad
910.
by ericd 3y ago
The rich are going to be paying the majority of the taxes that fund this. Is it unacceptable that their children be allowed to get a small fraction of the food their parents paid for?
911.
by ericd 3y ago
The rich will pay far more into the program for free lunches that include their kids than their kids will receive back. And it'll probably make the program more efficient, since there won't be a pointless bureaucracy devoted to ma
912.
by ericd 3y ago
>Its the same tactic doctors use when dealing with medicare. I've been to several doctors that won't take it. The reasoning is obvious: your insurance company will just deny you and medicare will fight them to the bitter end on
913.
by ericd 3y ago
On your last point, lithium ion battery packs are supposedly extremely recyclable, and it’s cheaper to recycle them than to make a new one, so it seems likely that they will be recycled.
914.
by ericd 3y ago
I’m not a physicist, but it seems like they’re a little magic, in that they’re so far from our normal experience, since gravity is proportional to the inverse square of the distance, and the distance to their center of mass is relatively ve
915.
by ericd 3y ago
Yep, #1 works well in my experience, and for us, it mostly involved doing less - letting most of our yard go back to not being an all-grass yard, leaving dead trees when possible, not trying to kill the insects that live around our house, n
916.
by ericd 3y ago
Do you have a direct link to the underlying study?
917.
by ericd 3y ago
That doesn’t seem to say that entrepreneurs rely on family money other than a couple of tired anecdotes about Musk/Gates. It’s mostly saying that successful entrepreneurs tend to come from more successful parents, but I’m pretty sure t
918.
by ericd 3y ago
Down that path lies a lot of resentment from the person who is committing their full time and effort. Not a good idea for a partnership. Surely this hypothetical super-valuable expert earns enough such that they could have saved up some liv
919.
by ericd 3y ago
I think this is largely because the Fed quickly set up a massive facility to save the others? Looks like its usage has passed $100B so far: https://twitter.com/LynAldenContact/status/16669440006269255...
920.
by ericd 3y ago
My understanding is that the issue there was that they were simultaneously sharing those MP3s, as they were downloading them. Which is to say, I think the person you're responding to is correct about the difference between sharing and
921.
by ericd 3y ago
The existence of Wikipedia seems to be a pretty strong counterargument to this.
922.
by ericd 3y ago
From what I can tell, it seems like the Chinese are doing a pretty good job making EVs affordable for their populace. And you’d be stunned at the huge numbers of e-bikes/scooters they’ve been using for the last decade+. Swarms of those
923.
by ericd 3y ago
I'm guessing it's a gut feeling based on seeing a lot of the same types of influencers who used to endlessly hype up crypto now making similar noise about AI. But I agree that that assessment is unfair to AI, even if the hype is a
924.
by ericd 3y ago
In order to avoid the really catastrophic scenarios, the goal is to get to zero CO2 emissions by 2050, not to reduce it as much as possible as quickly as possible. To do that, we need to be selling only pure EVs by ~2040 at the latest, hybr
925.
by ericd 3y ago
And very shortly thereafter, an emperor :-)
926.
by ericd 3y ago
My impression is that those kinds of preference terms have been unusual over the past decade in SV.
927.
by ericd 3y ago
And that's why you see fireplaces/stoves in a lot of houses in the northeast, even if they have gas/electric heat.
928.
by ericd 3y ago
Obviously everyone is pushing for their own interests, some of them more effectively than others. But I also don't see many voters ranking this as their single biggest issue, and politicians are well aware of that. Whatever forces you
929.
by ericd 3y ago
A relatively simple carbon tax could put us on the right path, but most voters aren’t pushing for it. If the voters were all pushing for it, even if it means living a lower energy lifestyle in the short run and all that that entails, you’d
930.
by ericd 3y ago
Human conflict is the most immediate danger from climate change, as tensions rise. We can kill ourselves a lot faster than the climate has any hope of doing it for us. So maybe don’t exacerbate that?

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