netfire

The problem with glass is that it isn’t biodegradable. If it gets broken, it can cause a hazard for humans and wildlife. If it gets thrown away, it’s not going to break down. Glass is good for the ideal case, but not great for the other use cases. For milk and juice, it’s seems like thick paper might be a better option, since it’s biodegradable and recyclable.

Just because Hillary’s campaign contributions were not as effective at persuading voters enough to win a electoral college majority does not mean that Trump (or other politicians) are not influenced by those contributions. It seems clear to me that businesses are getting a return in investment for the money they are spending in politics, otherwise they wouldn’t do it.

How about international visitors? Since they don’t pay taxes to help maintain the park should they have to pay a higher entrance fee?

It’s $5 for a group wilderness permit application plus $5 per person per permit. I think it’s another $5/person if you want to add on the Half Dome summit.

The linked article indicates that only a small amount of seaweed needs to be added to their diet to be effective and that seaweed is easy to grow, so it doesn’t sound like it would take long to scale.

Several states already ban payday loans and some don’t allow lotteries (let alone state sponsored lotteries that are used to fund things like education). Personally, I think setting an effective interest rate cap (including loan fees) at around 15-20% a year would be very effective at preventing the kind of lending that can lead someone to multiple years of high-interest debt repayment or eventual bankruptcy. More education in high school about how to manage your finances wisely could also prove beneficial.

Per https://www.valuepenguin.com/average-credit-card-debt#income; the lower income earners in the US have almost 10% of their income in credit card debt. Per https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/fact-shee... 12 million people spend $9 billion in payday loan fees and people spend billions of dollars each year playing the lottery. Poor financial decisions and money management is definitely playing a role in this as well.

We really need to include suggestions for adding programs and laws for encouraging saving, removing predatory lending, and incentivizing responsible spending in articles like these. There is too much focus on consumer spending and not enough on household stability and having money in the bank for emergencies.

I also didn’t intend on “shouldn’t melt” to be taken sarcastically. I was trying to show how I would like something changed in the article. Probably a bad use of quotes on my part...

Not at all. I expect NASA has done as much due diligence, planning, testing, and verification as possible. I just don’t think they are being upfront as they should be about the possible risks for a previously unattempted scientific endeavor. We’ve had massive failures (including NASA itself), in environments that are much better understood and with systems that have actually had exposure to those environments.

For sure, but it would be a shame if NASA lost confidence and trust (and possibly funding) with their stakeholders (the public), because they weren’t more upfront about the potential risks. As a scientific organization that has experienced significant (and expensive) failures before, I expect better.

Doesn’t it undermine the credibility of NASA if something goes wrong? The public who is the audience for this article is also paying the bills (through taxes). I’d settle for just changing “won’t melt” to “shouldn’t melt”. I think that appropriate for something that’s never been attempted.

The article makes it sound like there is no possible way for the probe to melt. Is this actually the case? Is there no possibility that manufacturer defects or a solar anomaly that could cause unexpected problems?

I don’t want to downplay the good design and engineering that went into this, but should we be so confident without actually having done something like this thousands of times?

Personally, I’d be happy with just automated freeway driving. That seems like an easier problem to solve (no pedestrians, complex traffic controls, cars going the other way or turning across your path, and visibility is usually pretty good). Why not focus on and perfect that first?

Why not just go with paper milk cartons? They are very recyclable and biodegradeable and I think it would be easy to find a supplier/packager and the stores would have no problem selling it.

You don’t need to know the reason why someone isn’t working or is working less to have better claims for or against discrimination. I’d just like to see something that says that a certain demographic who work a certain number of hours a week differs from a different demographic who works the same number of hours a week.

I’m just saying there is a factor that could impact the statistics and that how much a person works should be taken into account for all the findings. Not just the gender-based one, so that we have accurate data from which to make decisions from.

I didn’t say anything about forcing anyone to work or subsidizing habits. I think these charts are trying to claim that discrimination is happening and if how much someone is working isn’t taken into account, they don’t support that claim very well.

To be clear I’m not stating that discrimination is or isn’t happening. I’d just like better data.

The same could be said for the racial-based statistics, since race might be tied to cultural opinions which could impact how many hours a week or years in a lifetime someone works.

This is covered in the article. The forests in question are in Argentina, not the US, and it sounds like demand for Soybeans from China may be causing some of the deforestation (although it is unclear how much is due to that versus US-based demand).

And cost.

Question: Why do the autonomous cargo missions need to be done in the ideal launch window? It doesn't seem like the systems required to operate and navigate in space should require much energy, once your are up to cruising speed (and there's no air resistance in space to slow you down). Does it matter if the cargo takes 6 months to deliver the cargo instead of 3? Am I missing something?

Then you have to support changing said system and it may make it difficult to change your product as needed. Plus you've got to setup the marketplace, payment processing, add documentation and market to and support third party app developers. Unless you've already reached scale (or have other products that have -- like Google, Facebook, etc), this is probably a dangerous option.

I know deterioration of the solar panels is a concern for land-based installations. I imagine that could be accelerated by sea salt, waves, and storms.

I'm also curious how cloudy/foggy ocean sites are compared to ideal desert-based land sites like Nevada. That also might be a factor.

It seems like you could get a basic idea of what rooms are where just by looking the exterior of the house using satellite images, street view, or driving by a house. Also if your house has ever been listed for sale, there's likely pictures of the interior out on the web as well. Would the robot-generated maps provide much additional information to thieves?

I did some quick searching and found a Newsweek article with the same claim referencing a study where:

"White made that estimation by watching grizzlies with a scope for up to 14 hours per day, while writing his dissertation on the animals at Montana State University-Bozeman. He also counted how many dead moths he could find in each bear “scat,” or pile of poo, and multiplied that by the number of times these bears defecated."

http://www.newsweek.com/grizzly-bears-can-eat-40000-moths-da...

I was surprised as this as well. I wouldn't think running these queries on small datasets would take much computing resources and would provide a nice competitive advantage over other alternatives.

Car sharing (if self-driven) does provide an additional perk--time and money saved trying to find a place to park and paying for that parking. In addition, people turning into parking lots/garages (or worse parallel parking) interrupt the flow of traffic, making congestion worse. There's also many other potential improvements that self-driving cars could use to reduce congestion (faster speeds, reaction times, communication between cars, etc) and greatly lessen the commute during peak times

I think you are generally right about a primary/family car, but less so for a second, commuter car. I think this mainly hinges around making the self-driving technology safe, reliable and cheap (that is, cheaper than owning a car currently). I think taxis would be used more if they were significantly cheaper. Buses and trains have extra delays for stops, and you may still have to walk/bike after you get off. Having a cheap transportation option once you get off the train would probably increase train ridership as well, and decrease congestion during peak hours (at least for the major freeways, it may increase it some on roads closer to the train station)

I'll add that the article doesn't seem to add the monthly cell phone costs (minutes, text and data -- especially data) into their calculation. Dependending on how much data you are using, that could be significant. Also, I imagine most phone are bought using installment plans, which increases the monthly costs, and makes it hard to save and make better investments in your future. (What you think you can afford today, may not be what you can afford tomorrow).

What do you hope to gain by being unwelcoming? Does ostricizing someone really help us move forward as a society? In my experience, reaching out to people that aren't like you and trying to understand/relate with them is a far better thing to do. (And exactly what the original post is about)

"intercity and commuter rail passenger transportation provided by or for Amtrak has preference over freight transportation"

What qualifies as commuter rail? I think most of Amtrak's cross-country tracks would probably not be considered intercity or commuter lines.