HN user
Denver Colorado has done it. For the most part Denver has been growing in a good way too, lots of new apartments zoned along light rail lines etc.
https://coloradosun.com/2025/04/26/apartment-rents-denver-fa...
Why can't they just put this money towards rejecting fewer claims?
It's such a shame. My wife has an early Model 3 from 2019 that's now over 100,000 miles. It's been a great car, no major issues and no maintenance for 6 years. 100,000 miles with nothing but new tires and windshield washer fluid is amazing to me. We're not in a position to unload our Tesla for something else right now, but without major changes at the head of the company it will likely be the last Tesla we own.
I've toured a couple of ATC towers recently and my impression was they were surprisingly low tech. A tech upgrade seems like the most viable solution at this point. There are processes for writing and testing software and hardware for environments such as this, but the government needs to be willing to make the investment.
I've been using a Garmin Forerunner GPS watch for years, and what I've found I like the most about it is actually the Garmin Connect app on my phone. I don't think Garmin gets enough credit as a software shop. Connect is a great application for tracking your workouts over time. A fair number of runners even use Garmin's workout plans from the app. Even compared to running apps exclusively for iOS and Android I think the Garmin app is one of the better ones around, and is free to use with no monthly fees. Combine that with the fact that I don't even have to take my phone with me, I just wear my watch and it syncs with my phone when I get home. Running with a phone sucks, I have yet to find a way to carry one that isn't annoying.
This pretty much reflects what we get in the US as well. Obviously with the size of the US we have a ways to go before we get to ICE level of coverage but it has gotten much better the last 2-3 years. The only thing Google maps lacks over say the Tesla app is being able to see how many chargers are available at a station. I’ve changed my trip a little bit a few times when it’s clear one station is a lot busier than another one that might be 20 miles down the road.
Tesla actually had $1.74 billion in revenue from its charging network in 2023, Bloomberg estimates that they probably made about 10% profits from that or $174 million. They are predicting that to grow to $7.4 billion in revenue by 2030. In my neck of the woods many of the Tesla superchargers I see are empty most of the time, presumably adding 3rd party vehicles is a way for Tesla to increase it's profits on their already built out network. Of course Tesla is still adding to their network but presumably as that investment decreases and the fact that they are charging more for non-Tesla vehicles, their profits will increase. It seems like it's turned into a nice little side business.
https://insideevs.com/news/715644/tesla-supercharger-network...
One of these years the Colorado mountains are going to get a fraction of the snow they normally get and it's going to be a disaster for the entire southwest US. It almost happened in the winter of 2020-21, the snowpack statewide was just 30-40% of average at the end of winter. A heavy, wet, late spring storm dropped a ton of snow in the Colorado mountains in April of 2021 and saved the day, but man if that storm hadn't happened...imagine the 60 odd million people from Colorado to Mexico fighting over just a third of the normal amount of water they have to work with?
Rocket Lab mentions “human spaceflight” on the Neutron page, that’s the only mention I’ve seen of it. I haven’t seen any plans for a spacecraft for carrying humans or how they might handle re-entry.
It's crazy the US could soon have up to 5 different spacecraft/launch systems that can take humans to orbit with 2 more in development:
Falcon 9 + Dragon, SLS + Orion, Atlas V (Vulcan Centaur) + Starliner
Close to orbital payload launch, likely human rated in the future: Vulcan Centaur + Dream Chaser, Superheavy + Starship
Under development: New Glenn + Space Vehicle (?), Neutron
It's not just that the weight is gained back but the rate that it's gained back. Imagine someone loosing 100 pounds on semaglutide and then gaining 70 pounds of it back in 1 year when they stop taking it. That's over 1 pound a week of weight gain, likely much faster than that individual gained the 100 pounds originally. That type of rapid weight gain is associated with even worse health effects than carrying the extra 100 pounds probably was, and that's just at 1 year, where will this individual be in 2 years, 3 years etc? Will they really keep that other 30% weight off? We don't have the data yet, but it doesn't seem likely they will. I'm not saying we shouldn't use these drugs, just that we need to understand that they are only the first step to a much longer strategy to improved health.
The biggest problem with semaglutide is once you stop taking it things like blood sugar and body weight start to go back to where they were before. On average people gain back 70% of the weight they lost on the drug within the first year when they stop taking it. It seems likely this is going to be true with other addictions as well such as alcohol. While the effects are impressive, without addressing the underlying causes such as psychological factors that cause people to overeat or abuse other substances like alcohol it seems like we are just replacing one form of chemical dependance with another, albeit a healthier one.
https://www.healthline.com/health/semaglutide-withdrawal-sym...
One proposal I've seen involves putting asteroids into an orbit such that their gravity pulls the Earth outwards a tiny bit each time they pass. Over an extended period of time (millions of years?) we could move the Earth outwards from the sun before the sun expands and cooks it. Obviously the Earth would pull the asteroid inward as well so we would have to adjust the asteroid's orbit after each pass. One proposal I've seen would be use Venus to keep the asteroid in a stable orbit. Essentially each pass of the Earth would slow the asteroid down a little bit, but each pass by Venus would speed it back up again, essentially pulling the Earth away from the sun while pulling Venus closer to the sun. In theory we could set up a system like this and just let it do its thing over a very long time, the change would be imperceptible over a human lifetime.
By some accounts it takes a pretty sizable neural network to simulate a single neuron:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S089662732...
So we are going to need a lot of computational power to approximate what’s going on in an entire human brain.
In some ways this whole industry creates it's own problems because airlines don't want to get pay to get their pilots certified for new planes. So Boeing tried to engineer their way out of the problem and hack in some changes to make an entirely new design fly like an old 737-800. Southwest Airlines was a major contributor to this as the largest purchaser of 737s in the world, because you know, god forbid Southwest's pilots had to get certified to fly a new plane once every 50 years.
I think it's worth noting that the 3 body series were originally written in Chinese and translated to other languages. Some of the issue with characters and dialog can be attributed to Chinese culture where people cannot or will not speak their mind in public or to their superiors for example. I think in some cases where a character in the books makes outright puzzling decisions from a western perspective probably makes perfect sense from a Chinese perspective. Some of these issues can probably also be attributed to the translation as well. Personally I really enjoyed not only the hard sci-fi aspect of the books but the predominately Chinese perspective you get from the books. I loved the way he tied the story historically back to the Cultural Revolution in China for example.
I have read the creators of the Netflix series have adapted the story to make it more of a global epic, changing some of the characters from Chinese to other nationalities and you see that in the trailers as well. I think this probably makes a lot of sense for Netflix given their target audiences but I hope they still keep a lot of the Chinese aspect of the books and some of the characters as I do think it's important for the story.
Minimal orbital speed is somewhere around 25,000-28,000 kph. The fastest air breathing plane every built (SR-71) had a top speed of about 3,500 kph. So for the added weight and complexity of adding an air breathing first stage (wings, air breathing engines, landing gear etc) you are only getting about 14% of the way to the minimal orbital velocity needed, and that would be if your air breathing first stage could match the performance of the fastest plane ever built, keep in mind the SR-71 carried almost no payload. It is far more likely that any realistic air breathing first stage is going to get to less than 10% of orbital velocity, and that would likely be for launching a fairly small rocket. On the other hand the Falcon 9 first stage usually doesn't separate until 6,000-9,000 kph which is closer to 25-35% of orbital velocity, and that's while carrying almost 23,000 kg of payload plus the fully fueled second stage.
I still use a dumb watch (the classic Timex Ironman Triathlon) when I workout sometimes or when I'm coaching and I just need a stopwatch, I have yet to see a smartwatch that makes a very good stopwatch. Even some of the exercise specific smartwatches like the Garmin Forerunners don't do stopwatch as well as a Timex.
As a coach I've been seeing a lot of smartwatches on kids lately that are maybe a little young for a smartphone, they seem to be the go-to choice these days for parents to keep track of their kids. That seems like a decent fit, by the time the watch dies the kid will probably be old enough for a smartphone anyway.
In the US there has been significant cutbacks in USDA programs like the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) that paid farmers to keep certain pieces of land fallow and to plant native plants and grasses to provide food and habitat for wildlife. These programs were popular with small farmers and ranchers as it gave them some guaranteed income each year, and allowed them to follow good practices like rotating crops etc. Many of these programs were created after the dust bowl to provided incentives for better land management practices. We've been seeing reduced investments in these kinds of programs over the last couple of decades with the most recent farm bill in 2023 being one of the worse cuts yet:
https://www.eenews.net/articles/conservation-cuts-sink-in-as...
I know this is a joke, but TSMC is already talking about 1.4nm processes by 2027-2028:
https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/manufacturing/tsm...
It really looks like the current tech could take us to sub 1nm.
Samsung/Qualcomm
Tesla is already using BYD’s blade batteries in the Model Y in Europe:
https://insideevs.com/news/668659/tesla-model-y-batteries-by...
I'm not convinced this is an Africa thing as much as an Ethiopian thing. There are just simply not a lot of western interests in Ethiopia and thus not as much news coverage. Ethiopia flirted with communism for almost 20 years and was an ally of the Soviet Union and has always been a bit closed off to the west. In fact Russia is still flexing it's influence in Ethiopia today:
https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-russia-ethiopia-rethi...
Kenya is another African country that is feared to be on the verge of a civil war, and the violence in Kenya is often covered in the news in the US and Europe. The UK had a long history in Kenya and the US has pretty strong diplomatic ties with Kenya and so news in Kenya tends to get covered in the US and Europe more.
The funny thing is, it's not a single piece of metal anymore, they completely ditched the whole "exoskeleton". The Cybertruck is made just like the Model Y, with casted front and back ends attached to an upper frame with body panels. If you look at recent pictures you can see the lines between all the body panels. The panels are stainless steel and probably are a little thicker than a typical body panel so they might be a little more resistant to dents, but that's about it.
Most other attempts at redesigning the truck bed have failed. The Chevy Avalanche and Cadillac Escalade EXT never sold well and were eventually cancelled. The Honda Ridgeline sold poorly and eventually was redesigned with a regular truck bed with straight walls. The problem with trucks with high bed walls is you can't throw gear, tools or materials over the side of the bed. You can't climb over the side of the bed to tie things down, and you can't (easily) put a custom cap or camper on it either. It's hard to see the Cybertruck selling real well once the initial rush wears off.
Tesla has committed to making 100,000 Cybertrucks a year at this point. It's like they know the vast majority of that 2m+ people that pre-ordered it are not going to be buying it once they find out the actual details. When that pre-order site was up Tesla was promising 300+ miles of range on a charge for $50,000, which would be an incredible deal for a vehicle the size of the Cybertruck. When the reality comes out later this week and it's going to be more like 270 miles of range for $65,000 (which is around what people are predicting) the vast majority of the pre-orders are going to vaporize (fully refundable by the way).
Our local Tesla dealer just got a Cybertruck on display last week and I went and took a look at it last weekend. My impression is the front end is actually pretty good looking, they rounded it off quite a bit from the original prototype and it has a similar shape as other Tesla models like the Y. The headlight bar is actually really cool and the frunk is probably pretty big. The back half of the Cybertruck is a travesty, in addition to just being really angular and ugly they lost some of the most useful aspects of being a truck, like being able to throw gear over the side of the bed, or being able to put a custom cap on the back. The Cybertruck is excessively long for all the more cargo capacity it gives you, all because of that ugly angular back end. A lot of people are probably going to shy away from buying one because it's not going to fit in their garage. The custom tires are probably going to cost a fortune to replace as well, for no real good reason other than looks. In short Tesla designed 50% of a pretty cool truck, it really could have changed the segment.
The front of the Cybertruck is actually fairly rounded and has a fairly normal bumper (and I would assume crumple zone) just like any other Tesla. I don't think the front of the Cybertruck is any worse than any other truck or SUV as far as a collisions go. The ride height is a non-issue, the Cybertruck has air suspension, so while it can have as much as 14" of clearance for off-road for day to day driving it is much lower than that, which is, I assume, how Tesla is going to eke out decent range numbers with it. That leaves the back of the Cybertruck, which is indeed full of sharp angles, but mostly up high. It does have a rear bumper that looks functional but it is hard not to think that the sharp angles on the back wouldn't do some serious damage if rear-ended or someone where to back into a pedestrian. It's a case where hopefully the NHTSA did their due diligence.
Well for one thing they’ll be able to launch 240 Starlink satellites at a time instead of just 60 on the Falcon 9. If they get to the point of reusing the booster and the second stage the cost savings with Starship will be significant over the Falcon 9.
Unfortunately the tried-and-true multiple choice exam complete with Scantron answer sheets remains fairly resistant to cheating with AI and is fully scalable to classes of any size. The only hope for these poor students is that AI can help their professors write better test questions.