Hacker News: mech987876

New comment by mech987876 in "James Webb Space Telescope Reveals That Most Galaxies Rotate Clockwise"

mech987876 — Mon, 31 Mar 2025 11:12:37 +0000

My best guess would be using a standard coordinate system such as https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supergalactic_coordinate_sys...

New comment by mech987876 in "The Cult of the American Lawn"

mech987876 — Sat, 22 Mar 2025 14:10:37 +0000

I have no idea what you are saying.

New comment by mech987876 in "Wildfires are erasing California's climate gains, research shows (2022)"

mech987876 — Mon, 20 Jan 2025 18:08:09 +0000

I'm not particularly strict on the terminology of whether a carbon sink is permanent or not (in my usage above it is not permanent). But yeah we are on the same page regarding the life cycle of a tree now so it is clear.

New comment by mech987876 in "Wildfires are erasing California's climate gains, research shows (2022)"

mech987876 — Mon, 20 Jan 2025 14:35:44 +0000

While the trees are alive they sink the amount of carbon present within them.

New comment by mech987876 in "Wildfires are erasing California's climate gains, research shows (2022)"

mech987876 — Mon, 20 Jan 2025 12:11:19 +0000

Plant matter dies and rots and the carbon escapes to the atmosphere.

Ever since microorganisms evolved to eat dead plant matter the conditions to make coal on planet earth (and to create a carbon sink of buried coal) have been gone.

New comment by mech987876 in "Estimates of plant CO2 uptake rise by nearly one third"

mech987876 — Tue, 14 Jan 2025 14:26:25 +0000

Most (all?) of the carbon sequestered by a tree that dies and rots on the forest floor goes back into the atmosphere. So the "fixing by all future generations" is just the same carbon sink as the current 1 alive standing tree for that spot of real estate.

New comment by mech987876 in "Why Did We Wait So Long for Wind Power?"

mech987876 — Fri, 10 Jan 2025 17:42:57 +0000

About the only thing I agree with you in terms of repurposability would be the vertical column. And even then, you have to find the right buyer. For everything else, my intuition is the shredding it down for recycling is by far easier than repurposing. I haven't done any math on it though.

New comment by mech987876 in "Tech jobs are mired in a recession"

mech987876 — Tue, 19 Nov 2024 23:25:56 +0000

I've been thinking about the AI gains a lot. If individual developers became, say, 20 percent more efficient at coding, the organization would potentially see even more gains, because all of the reduction in time spent coordinating between people. I.e. a 2-man task that needed 20 man-hours of work, 8 of which hours of work were just communicating, becomes a 1-man 10 hour task. Kind of an extreme example, but communication and coordination is extremely inefficient a lot of the time!

New comment by mech987876 in "Young Doctors Want Work-Life Balance. Older Doctors Say That's Not the Job"

mech987876 — Sun, 03 Nov 2024 23:56:29 +0000

As far as I understand, the most common achievable choice is between staffing a hospital with 3 8 hour shifts per day or 2 1w hour shifts per day. Studies have shown the 12 hour shift system has better outcomes.

New comment by mech987876 in "Big Oil and Big Corn Form Alliance to Challenge Pro-EV Policies"

mech987876 — Thu, 20 Jun 2024 17:18:05 +0000

Ethanol is a non-toxic octane booster. I'd take it over our previous octane boosters (MTBE or tetraethyl lead)

New comment by mech987876 in "BYD and CATL aim to launch new EV batteries with 6C charge rate"

mech987876 — Mon, 17 Jun 2024 15:57:52 +0000

It also makes me wonder how different the packing efficiency would be- gas station fuel dispensers have short hoses and lots of safety features related to avoiding a spill, and it all takes up space. A fast EV charging station might still look more like a parking lot.

New comment by mech987876 in "Tesla Cybertruck Loses to Model X in Towing Range Test – Again"

mech987876 — Fri, 07 Jun 2024 14:41:44 +0000

The majority of energy expenditure is not acceleration and deceleration (especially on an EV with regen braking). At moderate and high speeds wind resistance dominates. At slower speeds rolling resistance is a largish factor.

New comment by mech987876 in "The State of the American Middle Class"

mech987876 — Sun, 02 Jun 2024 16:28:09 +0000

It would be nice if the article shared a graph of the percentile distribution of income.

New comment by mech987876 in "Lithium-free sodium batteries exit the lab and enter US production"

mech987876 — Fri, 03 May 2024 18:25:08 +0000

I had an engineering colleague who previously worked at a company that reconditioned Prius batteries. It involved cycling powe in and out of the battery several times. Where did all that power come from? Another battery.