Hacker News: kalessin

New comment by kalessin in "Urban Birds Are Rising Earlier Because of Traffic Noise (2013)"

kalessin — Wed, 06 May 2026 01:23:25 +0000

Weird, my experience has been that EVs are much quieter and that's a real improvement in densely populated areas. Past a certain speed the main source of noise is the tires and then EVs aren't much better than ICE vehicles (wrt noise).

New comment by kalessin in "Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants"

kalessin — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 16:02:03 +0000

> The cleanup bill is real

This still feels irrational compared to other dangerous industries.

> The inability to get insurance is real

It's real, but how much of it is rooted in emotional fear or bad industrial policy?

> The precautionary evacuation of entire cities is real.

And that's one of the lessons to learn from the Fukushima accident, that's why Canada changed their evacuation plans to be more granular for example.

> Renewables and storage are the cheapest energy source in human history.

Storage gets very expensive as your share of renewables increases (because the capacity factor of storage goes down then). Having an amount of clean firm generation (nuclear) brings the overall cost of the system down.

edit: capacity factor might be the wrong term for storage, the point is their rate of utilization goes down and so does their profitability.

> There's no point other than basic research and certain niches like submarines to waste opportunity cost and money on new built nuclear power today.

I don't understand what we could effectively do with civil nuclear builds decades ago cannot be replicated today. Let's also talk about the cost of the transition to renewables in Germany please.

New comment by kalessin in "Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants"

kalessin — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 15:36:49 +0000

The correct unit is GW.

New comment by kalessin in "After Spain's blackout, its shift to renewables and grid evolution power on"

kalessin — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 22:36:38 +0000

Absolutely, and that's different than saying « they don't really require ongoing fuel shipments ».

New comment by kalessin in "After Spain's blackout, its shift to renewables and grid evolution power on"

kalessin — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 18:20:39 +0000

When you consider the intermittency of renewables, and you should, fuel suddenly becomes an issue again.

New comment by kalessin in "The consequences of task switching in supervisory programming"

kalessin — Sun, 15 Feb 2026 00:11:37 +0000

I like the idea of "cognitive debt" vs "technical debt".

New comment by kalessin in "CRISPR fungus: Protein-packed, sustainable, and tastes like meat"

kalessin — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 04:57:37 +0000

Why? I am not sure photosynthesis plays a large role in the lower carbon footprint.

New comment by kalessin in "Bikeshedding, or why I want to build a laptop"

kalessin — Sun, 07 Dec 2025 17:46:21 +0000

Apple’s support for MacOS can been shorter than their laptops longevity (the longevity of their laptops got quite bad when then tried to make them as thin as an usb-c port). So Linux support is also important there imo, and as the original post pointed out because Apple makes it so hard to for Linux to support their hardware, long-term software support may be something to think about before buying a MacBook.

New comment by kalessin in "An e-waste dumping ground"

kalessin — Tue, 08 Oct 2024 02:14:42 +0000

I don't want to fix it myself either, and I don't see how a repair industry could exist without the right to repair.

New comment by kalessin in "Solar power is changing life deep in the Amazon"

kalessin — Fri, 26 Apr 2024 21:16:38 +0000

I don't really understand the idea of micro-grids, how do you account for redundancy, or long term storage if inclement weather goes on for a few days? Do you just keep big fossil gas generators as backup? Moreover residential is one thing, but industrial is another.

New comment by kalessin in "Oxxcu, converting CO₂ into fuels, chemicals and plastics"

kalessin — Wed, 24 Jan 2024 01:12:44 +0000

Seasonal storage for what kind of usage?

FYI, we have clean, and proven, energy sources in our toolbox that are not intermittent.

New comment by kalessin in "Military interests are pushing new nuclear power; UK gov finally admits it"

kalessin — Sun, 21 Jan 2024 20:45:52 +0000

FLA3 is a first of a kind and is a bad example. Nuclear is working very well for France at the moment, we are back to high-availability and making a lot of money through exports.

New comment by kalessin in "Military interests are pushing new nuclear power; UK gov finally admits it"

kalessin — Sun, 21 Jan 2024 20:44:33 +0000

There is bridges between military and civilian nuclear, however keep in mind that nuclear reactors like the EPRs being built in the UK are designed such that producing the necessary fission products to produce weapons is basically impossible. To produce those isotopes you generally want a reactor that allows online refueling.

OTOH, it is possible to "burn" nuclear weapons in civilian reactors, as done in the Megatons to Megawatts disarmament program.

New comment by kalessin in "U.S. reenters the nuclear fuel game"

kalessin — Wed, 15 Nov 2023 04:35:44 +0000

It was a partial meltdown in a pressurized water reactor, it cannot be compared to Chernobyl, it's a completely different technology. PWRs can't explode like what happened in Chernobyl.

New comment by kalessin in "U.S. reenters the nuclear fuel game"

kalessin — Wed, 15 Nov 2023 03:55:15 +0000

What really went wrong at 3 mile island? No one died or was injured afaik.

New comment by kalessin in "How destructive are nuclear weapons really?"

kalessin — Sat, 16 Apr 2022 18:12:41 +0000

"Thought experiment" from Kurzgesagt: What if We Nuke a City? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iPH-br_eJQ

New comment by kalessin in "Ask HN: What are some good keyboards?"

kalessin — Fri, 04 Mar 2022 02:35:28 +0000

I strongly recommend split hands, ortholinear layout and thumb clusters too, as well as a programmable firmware so you can setup your own layers.

New comment by kalessin in "Estonia, allies to trigger NATO Article 4"

kalessin — Thu, 24 Feb 2022 08:35:23 +0000

It is important to note that the gas exported to China and Europe are exported from different fields, and are not connected with each other. As it stands right now, Russia cannot export the gas it produces for Europe to China.

New comment by kalessin in "Nuclear power must be well regulated, not ditched"

kalessin — Thu, 04 Mar 2021 21:42:30 +0000

There is still hope, but we sure do need a global mindset shift when it comes to nuclear (and many other topics for sure).

Global warming will make parts of the worlds inhabitable. Sea levels will rise, so much heat and humidity in some places that your body won't be able to regulate its internal temperature...

New comment by kalessin in "Nuclear power must be well regulated, not ditched"

kalessin — Thu, 04 Mar 2021 21:37:02 +0000

Fusion is multiple decades ahead of us still, even with more funding, but we need to take action this decade if we want to have an impact on global warming.

Fusion is unfortunately not going to help here.