bergoid

I'd feel obliged to add some "but, her emails..." reference.

HRC's secret email server and the leaked Kash Patel emails couldn't be more different.

The first one is, in the words of a federal District of Columbia judge: "one of the gravest modern offenses to government transparency". [1]

The second one is the malicious leaking of some private emails. These emails are frankly none of our business (unless you are part of Kash Patel's family or friends).

[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2018/12/07/politics/clinton-emails-l...

Curiously, they refill the empty bladders with air before sledding them back to McMurdo. "For safety", but the article doesn't explain why this is safer.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-...

In fact, the fly ash emitted by a power plant—a by-product from burning coal for electricity—carries into the surrounding environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy.

In a 1978 paper for Science, J. P. McBride at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and his colleagues looked at the uranium and thorium content of fly ash from coal-fired power plants in Tennessee and Alabama. To answer the question of just how harmful leaching could be, the scientists estimated radiation exposure around the coal plants and compared it with exposure levels around boiling-water reactor and pressurized-water nuclear power plants.

The result: estimated radiation doses ingested by people living near the coal plants were equal to or higher than doses for people living around the nuclear facilities. At one extreme, the scientists estimated fly ash radiation in individuals' bones at around 18 millirems (thousandths of a rem, a unit for measuring doses of ionizing radiation) a year. Doses for the two nuclear plants, by contrast, ranged from between three and six millirems for the same period. And when all food was grown in the area, radiation doses were 50 to 200 percent higher around the coal plants.

What's an example of a decent protest in your view?

I expect that designs for 'permanently underground/inside' cities would need to include some high-ceiling park-like areas with some bright UV lights, and other considerations, but that sort of thing seems pretty doable.

Definitely doable. But then there's no longer any special appeal to living on Mars, as opposed to: living in rotating space habitats among the asteroids.

If we reformulate Musk's goal as being: "Create off-site backups of human civilization", then I think asteroid mining & space habitats have a better shot at bootstrapping this process than colonizing Mars.

Once we are leveled up this way in resources and technology, building settlements on Mars can be a side-effect of this outcome. Just like the burgeoning scientific outposts on Antarctica are a side-effect of our current civilization.

Agreed. You could cover your above-ground pressurized habitat with blocks of ice. Or with a thick layer of dirt. But the subjective experience remains about the same as living underground.

Low gravity is one thing. But the radiation outside the Earth's magnetic field is quite another. People colonizing Mars will need to shield themselves from several types of harmful radiation. Wich means in practice: living underground.

Their modulus squared gives you the probability.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probability_amplitude

Is Jack Dorsey, the Twitter CEO, a good enough source?

https://thehill.com/policy/technology/402495-twitter-ceo-jac...

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey: I 'fully admit' our bias is 'more left-leaning'

The granite sarcophagus in the "Kings's Chamber" [1] of the Great Pyramid of Giza has been used as a lithophone too. Paul Horn's record album "Inside The Great Pyramid" [2] starts with the sound of the sarcophagus being rung like a bell.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pyramid_of_Giza#King's_C...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZmyGavbgLE&list=PLPtysUSalP...

Is there a Raspberry Pi 4 case somewhere for sale that can hold a 2.5 inch HDD?

Beluga whale playing fetch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uMSl28_8Rw

Entire text:

Short Thread: staying with some friends and last night after everyone went to bed I could not figure out how to turn off the large ceiling light in their living room. There is a wall controller that seemed fairly straightforward.

There is a large main light, a smaller light on top that faces up, several levels of brightness, and a fan. Each time I tried to turn off the upward facing light, something else would turn on. After ten minutes, I woke up my wife to ask her to help. It only got worse.

Each time we thought everything was off, a few seconds later something else (or everything else) would turn back on. Minute twenty, I started laughing out of sheer frustration at what felt like a Myst puzzle. Couldn’t wake our friends cause they have a small kid.

Suddenly, we solved it. Everything went off and stayed off and after waiting a full minute we realized it was gonna stay that way. This is circa 1am. I finally went to sleep.

This morning we asked about what the deal was with the light. The answer has broken me.

Our friends are in a newly built condo complex. The fan controls use a binary code to connect to the fans. Additionally the controls were only supposed to have a signal reach of 30 feet. They reach much, much further.

There are almost 40 units within reach. Based on the binary code limitation there’s only 16 possible code options. So everyone in this building controls the main light and fan of at least one other person; maybe more.

From 12:30 to 1am last night, I was engaged in a proxy war with up to three other apartments, as they in turn, set my fan to high and my lights to the brightest setting, until everyone gave up.

Our hosts have been here for six months and have found a way to live with it by imagining who in their building they might be interacting with. This one guy who they think particularly might be an asshole and they have suspicions about when he’s running the show.

I am staying here again tonight. I look forward to wrestling control of the lights from what is essentially angry ghosts in my own personal AITA post.

My inclination is to go Full Lawful Good and turn off everyone’s lights tonight at 10pm to make sure we all get a good night of sleep and wake up rested and ready for a productive Saturday.

The light is off. War is over.

Such questions are not tolerated, so be warned.

These are fair questions. Where are they not tolerated? And by whom?

it is becoming increasingly apparent that non-technical solutions to climate change will necessarily include the elimination of those who metaphorically are holding a gun to humanity's head.

I beg your pardon?

Who exactly is holding a gun to humanity's head?

Are you thinking of entire populations or do you have specific individuals in mind?

And what does your plan look like?

What will be the unintended consequences of foresting deserts

I think you are overly concerned but here you raise a good point: foresting a desert could lower the albedo of the Earth. If not offset by the CO2 uptake of the trees, this could have a net greenhouse effect on the climate.

Now had we created no-development zones around forests, to allow them to expand naturally, in a world not deforesting at ever increasing rate...

I am no fan of rainforest destruction and the ensuing loss of biodiversity, but globally the world is not deforesting:

https://phys.org/news/2018-08-global-forest-loss-years-offse...

if you biochar fallen trees and litter, and then bury it, it stays sequestered for a long time. It also improves the soil long term - particularly in sandy soils it helps water retention. Obviously this is much more work that just planting and forgetting though.

If we used cross-laminated timber [1] to construct our buildings instead of concrete, there would be an economical incentive to keep a lot of timber forests around. For additional carbon-negativity (and soil quality!) the timber industry could be required to biochar and bury its litter. This way, without too much government coercion, maybe our building frenzy [2] could end up being carbon negative?

Much like modern diesel engines that make (polluted) air clean(er) [3].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-laminated_timber

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXNJa86tErQ

[3] https://newmobility.news/2019/08/28/can-new-diesel-engines-a...

The phenomenon needs a good name, though.

Jamie Zawinski calls this the CADT model: "Cascade of Attention-Deficit Teenagers".

https://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html

If these things were flying in 1997, presumably what's up there now is even better.

The USA-224 satellite was launched in 2011 and has much better capabilities than the ones that took the 1997/1998 pictures.

The Wikipedia article you quoted [1] is about the entire KH-11 series, spanning >40 years.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-11_Kennen

how would you feel if you went on a Hacker News break for 3 months and dang gave your username to someone else?

The funny thing is - dang (AKA gruseom) appropriated his username from a dormant account:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7494093

spinning rust

TIL

https://etherealmind.com/network-dictionary-spinning-rust/

Spinning Rust – term for conventional hard disk drives with motors and using ferrous-based platters for data storage. Probably derogatory now that Flash Drives are beginning to replace conventional drives.

I think GP meant with "higher immigration limits" : less restrictions on immigration.

"Clovis first" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clovis_culture#Clovis_First/...

The Apollo 13 astronauts would like to share a couple of anecdotes with you.

FTA: "Faster-growing, rapacious societies might peter out before they could touch all the stars."

I don't get this reasoning. The way I see it: every solar system that gets settled is a fresh roll of the dice. Every newly colonized system increases the odds that at least one of these settlements will not self-destruct.

Polynesia is a great analogy. While Easter Island is suffering, Hawaiʻi, Tahiti and hundreds of other islands might still be going strong.

Previous HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18960718

I had to look it up.

MAD: Militärischer Abschirmdienst (Military Secret Service, Germany)

https://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/MAD

The author of the piece - Pankaj Mishra - has a track record of making racist anti-white statements under the guise of anti-racism.

Here he's calling Jordan Peterson a fascist: https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/03/19/jordan-peterson-and...

In the same article, writing about Peterson's friendship with Charles Joseph, a Kwakwaka'wakw sculptor, Pankaj Mishra shared the following insight with the world:

"Peterson may seem the latest in a long line of eggheads pretentiously but harmlessly romancing the noble savage."

It's a book excerpt, not a regular article.