njarboe

88 ms·

841.
by njarboe 7y ago
Not really. More like a way to sell a fraction of your vehicle's value while working for less than minimum wage in some cases. Not a great situation but, you are not paying high interest on a loan that you have to pay back.
842.
by njarboe 7y ago
A single pedal would be manual control over acceleration and braking. All the way off is full breaking (or stopped), half way down is coasting, and all the way down is full acceleration. Society could never transition to such a control syst
843.
by njarboe 7y ago
I think if we were starting from scratch that having just one pedal for velocity/acceleration control in a vehicle would be better than having a gas pedal and break pedal. It is nice to have the vehicle slow down when you let up on the
844.
by njarboe 7y ago
It can be a useful way to extract some value from your car without selling it. Say you are between jobs and have a car you bought new. You would like to keep the car, as you know its history, so you drive Uber to "sell" a part of
845.
Uber stops upfront ride pricing in response to California worker law(reuters.com)
132 points by njarboe 7y ago|307 comments
846.
by njarboe 7y ago
This article is about dark energy, not dark matter. IANAC, but I think the evidence for the existence of dark matter is stronger than dark energy.
847.
by njarboe 7y ago
18 people have died in space exploration since the 1950's. Over a million people die in car wrecks each year on earth[1]. Yes, we want to make space travel safer, but letting people who want to take bigger risks to do great things is s
848.
by njarboe 7y ago
The combination of much cheaper launch costs of SpaceX's Starship, zero to negative interest rates, and a bunch of space-interested billionaires, might just get some rotating space hotels up and running sooner than you might think.
849.
by njarboe 7y ago
If SpaceX can get anything near what they hope for the Starship launch costs ($2 million per launch/ 150,000 kg to orbit per launch = $13.3 per kg to orbit), the economics of space will be fundamentally changed. Building the cheapest
850.
by njarboe 7y ago
That is what SpaceX is doing. Their manned and unmanned spacecraft systems are similar now (Falcon 9 + Dragon/Crew Dragon) and will be the same with the next system (Super Heavy + Starship). Hopefully the Starship will begin unmanned l
851.
by njarboe 7y ago
What fraction of the total semi truck traveled miles are on those short routes?
852.
by njarboe 7y ago
Elon Musk originally planned for Crew Dragon to land with rockets instead of parachutes. That way the same spacecraft design could land on Mars and Earth. Also, it is "how a rocket should land". Then they discovered that NASA safe
853.
by njarboe 7y ago
Patents last 20 years, so when a new big thing gets discovered people and companies quickly patent lots of things about it. Then, 20 years later, the patents have expired and you can start to have a large amount of new interest as people ar
854.
by njarboe 7y ago
Way back, a long time ago, software came with large, detailed, paper manuals. The quality varied, but a well written manual was a godsend. I guess the constantly updating that goes on with current software does not allow for such a thing th
855.
by njarboe 7y ago
Even better, let everyone set the fee for calling them and the ability to set up a whitelist. Numbers not on the whitelist get charged (message before connecting stating the amount). I'd set it to $10. To each their own.
856.
by njarboe 7y ago
A lot of helium use is for machines that need to have parts around 0 Kelvin for superconductivity. It is the only liquid at those temperatures besides Hydrogen and Hydrogen is much more dangerous and reactive.
857.
by njarboe 7y ago
But have you seen their adds advising those that really need reliable power to look into buying their own generator? I guess getting people to spend billions on their own power generation could work.
858.
by njarboe 7y ago
Skiing survives in the highly litigious US only due to strong state laws that shield ski run companies from liability. Time will tell if this ski run can stay open without similar protections.
859.
by njarboe 7y ago
It would be interesting to see how these numbers have changed since 2016 with the new US corporate tax scheme. The promise was this avoidance would be greatly reduced. I wonder if it has been?
860.
by njarboe 7y ago
Tesla, sure, but SpaceX was all Elon Musk, unless I am living in an alternative universe. His friends all tried to convince him he was crazy to start a rocket company. One even put together a montage of rocket explosions to try to keep him
861.
by njarboe 7y ago
I don't think that is correct. This article[1] cites the CDC as stating that gun deaths in 2017 were 60% suicides, 37% murder and 3% other. [1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/08/16/what-th
862.
by njarboe 7y ago
Seems to me that working 40-50 hours a week for 10-15 years at high pay is a more reasonable situation. Then have a big enough nest egg to do what you like, a la mrmoneymustache.
863.
by njarboe 7y ago
Weird how the top of this page says the transit is on November 11th, but the side bar and main description section have it as November 12th. From the site rococode linked to, it is November 11, but it is a bit strange for NASA to have this
864.
by njarboe 7y ago
Bill Gates was planning on building his new prototype nuclear reactor in China until the recent US/China spat made that impossible. Now he hopes to build it in the US, but it might be politically impossible. I hope that is not the case
865.
by njarboe 7y ago
I was discussing a system of education that starts early and is more soft. Like having 1st graders using coloring books with nuclear power plants surrounded by beautiful skies and forests while at the same time having pictures of coal plant
866.
by njarboe 7y ago
This is also a problem for any future fusion power plants. Using the fusion power as a dumb heat source to create steam is not going to be economically competitive.
867.
by njarboe 7y ago
We could have used our educational system in the US to teach people about radiation so they would not be so afraid of it. That would have been great and could have paved the way to the use of nuclear power about 30-50 years later.
868.
by njarboe 7y ago
Far from any population centers, just like large coal power plants.
869.
by njarboe 7y ago
CPUC controls PG&E's budget and determines how much they can pay as dividends. Usually around a 5-6% return on capital.
870.
by njarboe 7y ago
The California Public Utilities Commission(CPUC) controls how much PG&E spends on infrastructure and dividends. PG&E requested to spend more on infrastructure improvements but the CPUC decided to keep rates lower, pay out dividends,

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