HN user

bartislartfast

328 karma
Posts1
Comments132
View on HN

how many more product / brand origin story movies do we need? Facebook, Uber, Blackberry, Apple, Tetris, Nike Air, Cheetos

-- That will eventually happen, and electricity will be just as "expensive" as it is now, simply because the price of a product has nothing to do with its cost and everything to do with the purchasing power of its intended audience.

100%

If we had fusion tomorrow it would help decarbonise our grids, which is a great thing, but the consumer would see zero financial benefit. Companies would charge the same and make record profits.

This is literally happening right now! The market price of energy in Europe has dropped after a huge hike when Russia invaded Ukraine, but customer bills are still extortionately high

4) useful bipedal robots - this one is probably just around the corner (see boston robotics). We often talk about how much AGI could benefit humanity, giving knowledge workers a digital "team" of helpers, but we gloss over the physical version. Everything from dangerous industries all the way through health services and into retail could be enhanced by having robots do all the literal heavy lifting.

5) programmable matter / nanobots - the applications of a swarm of nanobots or even microbots are pretty much endless.

Someone posted a link to a page of "broken arrow" incidents yesterday, and I recalled reading this one a while back.

To me it's the scariest broken arrow case. Two bombs were dropped from a disintegrating B52. One of the bombs parachuted into a tree with 3 of the 4 arming switches live. The other disintegrated in a field with live arming switches. The plutonium 'pit' was recovered, but most of it is still buried in that field.

It's a bloody miracle that neither went off.

their own definition, on the top of the page:

an unexpected event involving nuclear weapons

the term "broken arrow" refers to the launchable weapon itself. there were literally no "arrows" involved in this event.

A Broken Arrow is defined as an unexpected event involving nuclear weapons that result in the accidental launching, firing, detonating, theft, or loss of the weapon.

and then

The CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) "Oscar II" class submarine, Kursk, sinks after a massive onboard explosion. Attempts to rescue the 118 men fail. It is thought that a torpedo failure caused the accident. Radiation levels are normal and the submarine had no nuclear weapons on board.

I don't understand how this is on the list, if it had no nuclear weapons on board.

LinkedIn is one of the most invasive

surprised to read this, I don't find it invasive in the slightest. I've turned off notifications for most things but its the only "social" app I have on my device.

I will say it's gotten a lot more content focussed lately, with everyone and their mom sharing their thoughts on jobs and employment. Personally I just use it as a profile for recruiters to hit and a way for me to talk back to them

I would love to see a grid of all these values for all the latest battery technologies, to see what's leading the field between solid, sodium, aluminium, Sulfur Selenium, iron, etc

Pollution is a huge problem, but climate change is literally an existential problem

100% agree. If there's a choice between a small amount of pollution vs a large payoff to cut carbon emissions, it's definitely a good idea. For instance, any pollution that comes from the production of solar panels and batteries is probably something we should accept, because the payoff is a large cut in emissions.

But we're not talking about pollution directly in the cause of cutting emissions here. We're talking about separate pollution which is avoidable and has nothing to do with cutting emissions.

The point is, if we use all of this phosphate to make better batteries it would be great and have a good impact on emissions, but most of it will be spread on the ground and let run into rivers because that is the main industrial use of phosphates

The greenwashing here is burning my eyes

A huge phosphate rock deposit discovered in Norway contains enough minerals to meet the global demand for batteries and solar panels for the next 100 years, according to the mining company that controls it.

90% of mined phosphates are used for fertilizer and pollution of waterways with it is a growing problem, but the mining company PR firm is telling us about electric cars and solar panels.

This is similar to discovering a massive new oil field, and telling the world that it'll help with electric cars because they all have plastic components.

Far Cry was an excellent multiplayer game, we use to play it at LAN parties (remember those?)

The huge maps, tropical setting and vehicles meant you could hide in the jungle and snipe at someone on the other side of a bay, or sneak right up behind them.

Those early levels where you fight against humans in a tropical setting were the best part. Every Far Cry game that came after, emulated those first levels, and scrapped not monsters in hallways.

I apologise in advance if this seems inflammatory, I'm not trying to start an internet argument here, I'm just being honest about my first impressions of this app.

Of all things, the spaceman in a car was what put me off this, as I straight away felt like anyone who would use that as art must be some kind of Elon Musk superfan. And then the buzzwords web3, blockchain and *coin made me turn away completely.

I'll say one nice thing - I like the live preview of the app on the front page that is interactive and actually works. More web apps should do this

It feels like talking down to someone, not wanting to accept their answer.

In Ireland at least, it's not talking down, but rather making the assumption that the other person is refusing only out of politeness, so as not to inconvenience you, but actually would love a cup of tea, because, well, who wouldn't?

If someone refuses tea with a good reason, like they don't drink tea, or they are had too much caffeine already today, or it's too hot, we don't argue with them

I remember when the TV show Broadchurch came out, and David Tennant's character made tea in the microwave, and there was national uproar in Britain.

Later several scientific articles pointed out this is actually a better way to make tea.

This event, along with Brexit and Covid, will surely be recognised by historians as the beginning of the downfall of the UK

Tea drinking in Ireland is a big part of the culture, and we have a lot of unwritten rules around it. I'm sure other irish HN'ers will jump in here and add to the list, but off the top of my head

- if you don't offer someone tea when they come to visit, you are rude. if they refuse, and you accept their first offer without insisting, that's also rude. you have to persist a bit. this was parodied in the TV show "Father Ted" but it has some truth to it

- additionally, if someone says yes to a cup and you don't offer a second cup a while later, probably rude

- if you don't have biscuits, you need to apologise and explain why.

- if you drink green tea or anything other than black "breakfast" tea, you're "fancy"

- Households are either "Barrys Tea" or "Lyons Tea" and people are expected to have a loyal devotion to one and hatred of the other. Other brands (non-irish) are ridiculed, although we all drink all kinds. (Note - this rivalry also extends to 'crisps' or potato snacks - you're either Tayto or Kings)

- some people prefer coffee which is fine, but if you don't like either you're considered odd