That is the biggest hurdle, in my opinion. If we could even reply with, "sorry, I don't know about that", it would be such an improvement over what we have today. Sadly, from what I understand, the only way to say "sorry, I don't know about that" is to just say that to every single question?

We should mention when we say this, although I think it is self-evident, that the preferable alternative is reducing the scope of copyright across the board -- be it with shorter time frames (I'd argue even twenty years total is too long!) or some other means.

To programmers and developers, remember the core of free software is NOT the commercial developer / programmer and it NEVER has been. The core is always the user and what they need. This is so important that it needs to be repeated every time someone talks about free software because free software is NOT about open source. Open source code is a necessary part of free software but it is NOT sufficient.

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html

Yes, exactly!

Kind of unrelated, but I think it is important to remember that the left-pad was also ENTIRELY npm team's fault. You can't just take away a namespace from someone just because some startup like kik comes knocking.

Toyota does not have a right to my domain dot tld slash toyota The correct answer would have been npm to tell kik to pound sand.

npm has never fixed this grave error.

https://blog.npmjs.org/post/141577284765/kik-left-pad-and-np...

> We stand by our package name dispute resolution policy, and the decision to which it led us.

npm deserves to die.

My understanding is that there needs to be some kind of upgrade on our grid so everyone can charge their cars. This would likely involve increasing its capacity to handle the additional load from widespread EV charging.

> (2) We need electric panels and wiring future proofed and can also seamless upgrade to solar, battery, complete electrification of home with heat pump water heater and heat pump instead of a separate gas furnace (fridge and AC use heat pump already), induction stove.

I remember seeing a social media post urging people to check their electrical panel and if it was a specific name, “Federal Pacific Electric” for instance, to call an electrician and plan to have it removed because they were known to cause fires. I absolutely agree though. The future is all electric and the sooner we can drop natural gas to homes, the better.

>(3) Home electrification should allow power intake from car, eventually everyone is going to have electric cars. This will serve as emergency power, no need to buy a separate gas generator.

Ideally, we would all live close enough to free-of-cost to the rider public transit but yes, we should allow power going back and forth between car and house. Maybe we can skip the battery in the house altogether, send all power from house solar panels to (in order of priority) the car if connected, the grid if car is not connected, the house locally if grid is not connected. This could be implemented practically with the right infrastructure and technology.

> (4) Indoor air needs a lot of work, in addition to heat pump for heating and cooling, we have to consider heat recovery, enthalpy recovery, humidity, UV and most importantly particulate matter. And mold prevention. Recent discussion on mold, lots of people reporting problems: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38543229

I don’t have a link but I remember reading a few years ago about how in places with low pollution such as Colorado and where days are hot but nights are pleasant in the summer, perhaps one way to cut costs could be to over ventilate at night in the summer (after measuring temperature) forcing (filtered) cold air from outside into the house and forcing the existing warm air out. This would also require a good insulation system to maintain the temperature balance. Thoughts?

> (5) Homes can be built with solar shingles. Right now, we install a roof, then we install a structure to support panels and then panels. If we can just install solar shingles, it is just 1/3 of materials and far more importantly 1/3 of labor and a lot less than a third in time. We now have nailable solar shingles: https://www.gaf.energy/timberline-solar/

I am all for it if solar shingles are cheaper than solar panels on top of roofs. While the upfront cost of solar shingles might be higher, the long-term savings and aesthetic appeal could make them a worthwhile investment.

> (6) Electric utility (or the city) can lay electric and fiber at the same time. Either the city or electric provider can provide internet or give equal access to providers. We don’t need any gas connections, homes can be completely electric.

Yes, absolutely agree. I used to love gas until I learned that gas leaks and gas connections going to homes leak A LOT. Now, I am all for all electric. And yes, we need fiber everywhere please. High-speed internet access for all is especially important in the context of remote work and online education.

> (7) Ongoing discussion on 48V POE for cars (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38557203). Wny not 48V POE for most of home wiring? Most everything can be smart by default.

Does this mean we don’t need step down transformers? Is it simply moving the step down transformers from the street into the house? The potential benefits of 48V POE could include increased efficiency and safety.

I don’t understand the way of thinking of people millennials and later who aren’t at least millionaires who choose to (not counting accidental pregnancies) have children.

SD card is just not nearly as fast as NVMe storage or even UFS 3.

I think of myself as a technophile but element/matrix/riot made me eat the humble pie.

My first thought was ExxonMobil when I read this comment.

> In July 1977, a senior scientist of Exxon James Black reported to the company's executives that there was a general scientific agreement at that time that the burning of fossil fuels was the most likely manner in which mankind was influencing global climate change.

> According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, "The funding of academic research activity has provided the corporation legitimacy, while it actively funds ideological and advocacy organizations to conduct a disinformation campaign."

Nothing has happened to Exxon Mobile. None of the executives are in prison as far as I know. You'd think the company would be bankrupt by now...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExxonMobil_climate_change_cont...

That is an excellent point that I think deserves expanding.

I submit that files and directories ARE difficult concepts. Pretty much everything is difficult when you look into it enough.

I remember of the time they pointed the Hubble Telescope into a seemingly empty patch in the sky and with long exposure or something, we saw tens of thousands of galaxies from billions of years ago.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Ultra-Deep_Field

Back to the subject at hand, I tried installing gentoo one time and it prompted me for something. I only vaguely remember the word "inode". Here is the first paragraph from the wikipedia from the article on inode:

The inode (index node) is a data structure in a Unix-style file system that describes a file-system object such as a file or a directory. Each inode stores the attributes and disk block locations of the object's data.[1] File-system object attributes may include metadata (times of last change,[2] access, modification), as well as owner and permission data.[3] Directories are lists of names assigned to inodes. A directory contains an entry for itself, its parent, and each of its children.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inode

Files and directories may be an easy concept to understand if you have been exposed to them long enough (not sure how long is long enough) BECAUSE we have a good abstraction. I never had to learn what inodes are or how a filesystem works to use a computer. Can we accomplish something similar with version control?

College was a lot less productive than high school in terms of academics for me but it was also a lot more fun.

Even high school wasn’t so bad. I’d realized toward the end of high school that I never had an original idea of myself and was at peace with being mediocre.

I agree that power corrupts but it doesn’t follow to me that power corrupts more at the top than at the bottom. I’ve heard some horror stories about small towns in Texas. I’m sure there are similar stories everywhere.

I think this is a problem with or feature of our democracy. If eighty percent of the voters want gun control but only half of them show up (forty percent) and vote for one of four different candidates but twenty percent of the population makes it their single issue and votes reliably for the same candidate, the candidate wins in first past the post.

If you’ve only used thin and light laptops for the last ten or so years, you’ll find that desktops, almost any* desktop will run circles around you.

That is the real travesty.

I don’t know much about regulations. What stopped Intel from dropping prices the moment Ryzen was available in the market? It isn’t like Intel hardware wasn’t good enough. It was just way massively overpriced. Four ish years in we are starting to see sales in the latest generation Intel processors.

What prevented them from doing this sooner?

I would have trusted Intel to know what they were doing in 2015 with market segmentation. Not anymore.

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/12/15/camels-and-rubber-...

A quick search shows Wyoming is the smallest state by population with 578,759 so if we decreased the apportionment from seven hundred thousand something to that 578,759, how many more seats would we need?

If a state with a population of 578,759 gets one seat does a state with population of 578,759 * 2 - 1 get two seats or one seat?

We still have a problem though: how many seats does each state get? Do we still continue to apportion seats each state gets every ten years on a census?

I’d imagine that anyone spending real money is always thinking of ways to get off of something like this?