njarboe

35 ms·

451.
by njarboe 5y ago
The generation that had a great fear of nuclear bombs due to duck and cover exercises in schools when they were kids started coming into political power (the boomers) and have been in power ever since. Most people don't really separate
452.
by njarboe 5y ago
RenTech is also basically the only largest hedge fund that has beat the market by a wide margin for decades. An average 66% annual return in their Medallion Fund since 1988 according to wikipedia. That is pretty much insane and seems to be
453.
by njarboe 5y ago
If cost per pound to orbit drops by 100-1000 times with the advent of SpaceX's Starship rocket, who knows what kinds of space activities will be profitable. If it only costs $1 million to immigrate to Mars, you might be surprised how m
454.
by njarboe 5y ago
SpaceX has sure gone somewhere and is still moving at a very fast pace. They have very few U.S. Military contracts and had to sue to be able to compete for those.
455.
by njarboe 5y ago
They won't be running them, of course, just have long term contracts with the companies that make them. Check out NuScale Power[1]. They recently had their small reactor approved in the US (approval paperwork cost $500 million dollars)
456.
by njarboe 5y ago
If big crypto-mining syndacates start using small scale nuclear (as some have shown interest in doing) to be carbon neutral, they could be on the vangaurd of proving out the technology and be a net positive in the medium to long term. They
457.
by njarboe 5y ago
Funnier social engineering fact: If it's legal for people sell their kidneys, wait lists for kidneys goes to zero[1]. Too bad only one country in the world does that. Another fun fact. The US government spends more on dialysis than the
458.
by njarboe 5y ago
This is not correct. Gold in the US was freely exchanged for about $20 an ounce in the US until the Great Depression when, on April 5th, 1933 Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order (no. 6102) prohibiting the hoarding of gold coin, gol
459.
by njarboe 5y ago
They started buying them during the pandemic but, looking into it in more detail, it looks like it was only a few tens of billions, so not that much.
460.
by njarboe 5y ago
It is hard to know what horrors nuclear weapons have prevented and what horrors they may cause in the future. So far I would say they have been a net positive, but tail risks are a bitch. But certainly it would be much better to just have a
461.
by njarboe 5y ago
"consenting adults" By that did you mean "the Fed"?
462.
by njarboe 5y ago
Since world production of oil is currently about 75 millions of barrels per day (mbpd)[1], this 20 mbpd figure is certainly wrong. Probably someone wanted to make the figure seem higher than it was and used gallons instead of the standard b
463.
by njarboe 5y ago
"All that’s missing is a database..." Did you forget about this[1]? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center
464.
by njarboe 5y ago
The biggest emission reduction would be if every person committed suicide today, so you can always reduce emissions more with more radical plans until you get to that point. Using nuclear power and wind with electric vehicles gets you prett
465.
by njarboe 5y ago
The biggest emission reduction is when a person switches from using an ICE car to a EV car. Getting the price of a new EV car to be below a similar ICE car will cause that to happen very quickly. These new battery chemistries using iron ins
466.
by njarboe 5y ago
Because trying out new political structures that is the reason for building the new city. Nevada has passed a law recently that allows for basically the creation of new counties within existing ones. The county level is where quite a bit of
467.
by njarboe 5y ago
Maybe the first step to financial literacy is learning that if a company or a person you don't know is doing something for you for "free", you need to figure out what the hidden catch is before you take the "free" s
468.
by njarboe 5y ago
10 years? That would be great.
469.
by njarboe 5y ago
The abstract from the paper[1] linked to from the article is a good read and short, so I think it is worth quoting here: "The existence of a giant planet beyond Neptune -- referred to as Planet Nine (P9) -- has been inferred from the c
470.
by njarboe 5y ago
Softbank held 49%. "SoftBank subsidiary sold a 51% stake of the company to a consortium of Chinese investors for paltry $775M."
471.
by njarboe 5y ago
This is very true. Hopefully the Boring company can be successful in reducing tunneling costs by a factor of 10 or 100. Then cities will just have to fined the political will to allow them to be built. Maybe public, self-driving taxies can
472.
by njarboe 5y ago
Possibly, but in physics the standard for stating something is "true" is 5 or 6 sigma while in sociology, maybe 2 sigma. In the first case, you can take the finding as a fact and it is very unlikely to change in your lifetime, in
473.
by njarboe 5y ago
If you never fail, you aren't moving fast enough. A million people are killed globally each year by motor vehicles. Staggering amounts of pain and injuries. Massive amounts of property damage. Tesla's cars are not supposed to be l
474.
by njarboe 5y ago
People at Tesla and other autonomous driving companies, of course are aware and worry about such situations. If you have a few hours and want to see many of the technologies and methods that Tesla is using to solve them, check out Tesla&#x2
475.
by njarboe 5y ago
Twitter started asking me for my phone number about a week ago to sign in. I did not provide it and complained that I should be able to verify my account with just the email on file. Then a few days ago I could login again, but my account w
476.
by njarboe 5y ago
The original "Manhattan Project" was to produce a nuclear bomb once the physics of sustained nuclear reactions were well enough understood to know it was possible. This level of knowledge was probably known about fusion power gene
477.
by njarboe 5y ago
I'm all for creating feedback loops that can create the self-fulfilling prophesies of a fossil fuel free energy future and a human civilization on Mars. Seems to be working pretty well so far.
478.
by njarboe 5y ago
My father is a long time plasma physicist researching fusion power. I have talked to him quite a bit about these issues. The research budget for fusion has long been, unfortunately, spent on a few large projects instead of many smaller that
479.
by njarboe 5y ago
Tesla doesn't makes their own casting equipment (yet?). They do custom order the largest presses built by Idra Group in Italy (owned by a Chinese company) though [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giga_Press
480.
by njarboe 5y ago
The solution to not being "worried that our ID may get stolen" is penalize companies who report false information to credit bureaus and penalize credit bureaus that give out false information. You don't care if someone impers

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