njarboe

49 ms·

631.
by njarboe 6y ago
No. But every company that gives information to Equifax could and probably should be.
632.
by njarboe 6y ago
My own equally-qualified opinion is related to a comment above on the great increase of lawyers and lawsuits. Basically anything that can kill a person that was not already invented by 1970 gets sued into oblivion. Medical devices are a bit
633.
by njarboe 6y ago
Are you talking about back in 2008 when the third launch of the Falcon 1 failed to reach orbit? That was a long time ago. They are not near that situation now. The main goal of SpaceX is creating a human civilization on Mars. Seems to me li
634.
by njarboe 6y ago
In software support, training, and adding/fixing bugs for a fee. Redhat was a large company that did this. If the world stabilized on a few software products that did what people wanted to do, like and office suite, that would be great
635.
by njarboe 6y ago
Elon Musk is funding a space program to put people on Mars via SpaceX. NASA has not improved rocket technology since the 1970's and SpaceX is on track to have a fully reusable rocket the size of the Saturn IV in the next few years and
636.
by njarboe 6y ago
You can't charge money for distributing GPL software because with high speed internet that is very cheap and easy to do. Competition will and has brought that cost to about zero. And that is a good thing. Everyone now has free access t
637.
by njarboe 6y ago
Somewhat ironically, Google is an example of two founders doing just this.
638.
by njarboe 6y ago
There are many such technology advances needed for fusion power to work. This is why spending $22 billion on ITER is a very inefficient use of money for research. Maybe as a diplomatic effort of having all the world's major powers [] (
639.
by njarboe 6y ago
Blue Origin has a rocket that can go up to 100km and come back down. SpaceX's Falcon 9 is an orbital rocket which is a much, much more difficult achievement. But only the first stage of the Falcon 9 is reusable, with the second stage b
640.
by njarboe 6y ago
If you zoom out to about 100,000 light-years and rotate to above the ecliptic of the galaxy, then the software displays the rest of the stars in the galaxy also. A cool perspective on the data.
641.
by njarboe 6y ago
Rocket launch technology was at a standstill for 30-40 years until Elon Musk founded SpaceX. 15 years later they built reusable rockets. The cost of putting something into orbit is likely to drop by a factor of 100-1000 when SpaceX's n
642.
by njarboe 6y ago
Human drivers cause ~40,000 deaths a year in the US. The car would not exist as a consumer product if it were invented today. Automatic car systems may have to have close to zero fatality rates to be acceptable in the US. Possibly a nationa
643.
by njarboe 6y ago
Neal Stephenson wrote a science fiction novel "Fall; or, Dodge in Hell" that came out in 2019 whose plot is about the uploading of people into computer systems. It covers a range of ideas and possibilities with plot lines outside
644.
by njarboe 6y ago
On the other hand, large objects made by us on the Moon could last for 100's of millions of years. Especially if the object was designed to last that long.
645.
by njarboe 6y ago
Foot note number 8 of the essay notes that Michael Nielsen made the same two observations when reading an early version of the essay. For some reason Paul Graham has decided to make the footnote labels almost invisible in the text of the es
646.
by njarboe 6y ago
This was especially true when everything was written out by hand. Editing on a computer changes the time to rewrite something by at least a factor of 10, maybe 100.
647.
by njarboe 6y ago
And when people say "Facebook" the really could (and maybe should) be using "Mark Zuckerburg" instead. He has complete control of Facebook and no one can remove him from that position. Mark Zuckerburg is responsible for
648.
by njarboe 6y ago
Mandating how a certain outcome should be achieved generally is not the best (efficient, quickest, cheapest, etc.) way in getting to that outcome. Autonomous certification should have its safety requirements for each level and require the v
649.
by njarboe 6y ago
The key to why the Oklo reactor was possible was not that a natural process separated U-235 from U-238 from a Uranium ore, but that the reactor existed 1.7 billion years ago. U-235 has a half life of about 700 million years so the ratio of
650.
by njarboe 6y ago
Unfortunately exponentially rising health care costs and excessive litigation may be the two to the largest problems with society in the US at the moment. Whether those guilds help mitigate these problems or amplify them is hard to determin
651.
by njarboe 6y ago
Isle of Mann does not exist. Isle of Man does.
652.
by njarboe 6y ago
“It encourages precise thinking.” This is especially useful as geometry proofs are no longer taught in the standard geometry classes in US high schools.
653.
by njarboe 6y ago
And according to the article the company is "incorporated in the Isle of Mann" which I'm pretty sure doesn't exist on this planet.
654.
by njarboe 6y ago
"It's fairly easy to design something and show that it's safe." To spend 2 million man hours and 1/2 a billion dollars on creating documentation for certification? I would agree that one never knows if something wil
655.
by njarboe 6y ago
"We can't build it!" You should check out the recently approved in the US nuclear reactor by NuScale[1]. It is what everyone has been waiting for. A small (60MW electrical output) reactor built in a factory and shipped to the
656.
by njarboe 6y ago
A new nuclear reactor design that is faster to build, smaller, and much safer has just been approved in the US (after 500 million dollars spent just on the paperwork for approval). Check out NuScale Power[1]. The reactors are small at 60MW
657.
by njarboe 6y ago
I agree. How about the radical move of deciding not to shut down a large nuclear power plant in California in 2025[1] that could power millions of these cars, carbon free. Trying to fix climate change without nuclear power is likely impossi
658.
by njarboe 6y ago
What is the difference you are trying to make? If it is the depletion of resources and/or polluting to world, recycling is much, much less important than reducing consumption. One less airline trip per year, one less weekend road trip.
659.
by njarboe 6y ago
It is probably because a billion? people still use open wood fires indoors with poor ventilation. Visualize a fire in the middle of a hut with a pot on it and a small hole in the ceiling. AQI in that hut is going to be very bad. Creating sy
660.
by njarboe 6y ago
That and $1/2 million in comp (pre-tax, of course).

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