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So in 10 years when you have to buy new batteries, what do you expect the payoff time to reset to?

I don't. The batteries will last longer than 10 years. The 10 year typical advertised lifetime of lifepo4 is to 80% capacity, and I'll just keep on using them.

The actual payoff calculation is a lot messier than that because you have to factor in the NPV of buying batteries vs. just throwing the money in the market, AND you have to be able to forecast that growth vs. growth in power prices. So the honest truth is I have no idea if it's going to be a net good investment vs other options.

Fortunately, I don't have to care, because I bought the batteries for UPS runtime, which I value independent of the time-shifting. The time-shifting is just a way to squeeze money out of an investment I already made. Had I been going for payoff, there are cheaper battery/inverter options out there with a sub-5y payoff.


Most US diplomacy historically (including the "by other means") seems driven by commercial interests. Nothing special there though

I keep wondering what Iran planned to do with its 440kg of U-235 enriched to 60% when most nuclear reactors need only 5% and some needing only up to 20%.

https://armscontrolcenter.org/irans-stockpile-of-highly-enri...

https://armscontrolcenter.org/uranium-enrichment-for-peace-o...


You can definitely guess what are they gonna do with it now since the inept US attack obliterated every incentive there was to not do that.

If they were smart, build a defensive nuclear arsenal. It certainly seems to have worked for North Korea.

A functional nuclear weapon would definitely have prevented the current war. Hard to blame them for trying.

I don't care about hypotheticals, there is already a hyper violent belligerent country in the middle east with a few hundred "illegal" nukes. Their officials/thinkers have already stated insane things about using the nukes on eg innocent European capitals without anyone doing counter clarification or pushback. I'd worry much more about the nukes and fissile materials there.

"AWAI by Ryoichi Nakamura

A pen that produces faint, smudged lines, encouraging ambiguity and reflection rather than bold certainty."

This reminds me of the visual design choice in the Grady booch object-oriented design methodology.

During analysis, object classes looked like vaguely circular clouds. During design, classes had square boxes.

He explained that analysis is vague and fuzzy and you shouldn't try to be precise and crisp because that's the stage about which you're dealing with the real world and you know less than you think.

He found it sad that people started producing templates for the object clouds so that they would be precisely unboxed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grady_Booch#/media/File%3ABooc...


Seems kinda arbitrary.

More humans publish non-replicable "science" in sociology -- your bar is way too high


I think you both are a little bit right.

If you are in a casual agreement with a friend and don't keep up your end then it's immoral.

If you have a contract that specifies expectations and consequences, then it's just a business deal.

The (predatory) school loan business works from contracts and they are obligated to keep up their side only as much as you are yours.

The real immorality is not accepting the consequences embedded in the contract to which you both agree to, it is that the United States has such a business in the first place.

Well actually second place I guess. When the student loan business started it was not predatory. But it got horribly abused, by the borrowers who would declare bankruptcy gaming that system, schools who raised rates because they knew loans were available, and the lenders who astroTurfed children into believing that it was a good bargain to exchange $200,000 at high interest for a Art History degree


I can't tell if this is sarcasm about the newspaper that just worried yesterday about the North American Treaty Organization.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15705545/New-York-T...


I wonder if Zwicky had named it Gravimagic or Love (as later hypothesized by Captain and Tennille) if we would still be where we are in the understanding of the cosmos

Depends on what you mean by "we".

Scientists have a good understanding of what the data actually is. The name isn't important. It doesn't throw them off any more than the up and down quarks do.

Non scientists... yeah, maybe. There's a good chance we might never even have heard about it by a duller name. People fixate on charismatic ideas, disproportionately to their relevance or to their understanding.

It is possible that it helps indirectly. Students sometimes get bitten by the bug of charismatic science, and go into the field. And funders may well be influenced as well. That extra attention could put us ahead of where we would be otherwise.


That has been (rightly) said every year there has been a current US administration.

It is not a conspiracy theory if it's true.

And no, it's not "cynicism Olympics", it's observation.


Right on cue!

I wouldn't be so pleased with myself over such "You will get wet in a rainstorm." style predictions.

truths from different angles that are at odds with one another produce mistrust and thoughts of conspiracy. We have more of that now than we have ever had, ever. It doesn't take Nostradamus to point to the trend.

tl;dr : Gee, where did this mistrust in the current government come from? I'd point but I don't have that many hands.


Your complaint is not at all what the article is about.

The article is showing that the proton claim that their new service is private from the US government data acquisition, including inability to access call metadata, is a lie (an intentional misrepresentation of the known truth by Proton).


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