Hacker News: notact

New comment by notact in "Tracking Starbucks' 'widely recyclable' cups: none ended up at recycling"

notact — Wed, 20 May 2026 22:24:55 +0000

TIL incineration can involve power generation. I am familiar with the term, but had assumed incineration was basically endothermic and wasteful.

New comment by notact in "Tracking Starbucks' 'widely recyclable' cups: none ended up at recycling"

notact — Wed, 20 May 2026 21:45:40 +0000

We are already burning coal for power generation, whether we like it or not. I have wondered why we don't "recycle" plastic by shoveling it into the same furnace and a) get some energy out of it, and b) solve the landfill problem. That should be carbon neutral, since burning X tons of plastic is X tons of coal we didn't burn.

New comment by notact in "Minnesota becomes first state to ban prediction markets"

notact — Wed, 20 May 2026 17:10:00 +0000

My question wasn't so much about the contradiction between regulating & banning authority, but questioning the authority to do either in the first place. I.e. I don't understand why gambling must necessarily be considered to be inter-state. But I now think this is unrelated to the point you were trying to make.

New comment by notact in "Minnesota becomes first state to ban prediction markets"

notact — Wed, 20 May 2026 11:40:59 +0000

Why is this nonsensical? Gambling is not necessarily inter-state?

New comment by notact in "America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back"

notact — Tue, 15 Apr 2025 15:22:31 +0000

> And why would “manufacturing”....prepare us for anything else even ignoring that we’d have to regress to do it?

The American production machine (aka manufacturing) is a major component of what won WWII.

New comment by notact in "Automatic braking systems save lives. Now they’ll need to work at 62 MPH"

notact — Wed, 20 Nov 2024 15:50:32 +0000

My VW has lane-keeping assist. In general I like it, because it had nudged me when I wasn't paying as much attention as I should have. But one failure mode is that it can detect shadows or other artifacts that it decides are lane markers. For example, at the right time of day hanging power lines will create a smooth curved shadow line on the road surface that the car will want to follow where ever they lead. It's not strong enough to yank the wheel out of my hands, but if I were briefly holding the wheel with my knee while reaching for something, it could get messy.

New comment by notact in "NASA says Boeing Starliner astronauts may fly home on SpaceX in 2025"

notact — Wed, 07 Aug 2024 20:52:26 +0000

After all of their technical failures, and known cultural problems leading to them, I am astonished Boeing has the nerve to insist it is safe. Seems like they are betting the whole space business farm on astronauts not dying on the way down.

New comment by notact in "In many cases we need something less like AI and more like a basic algorithm (2023)"

notact — Sun, 14 Jul 2024 17:14:40 +0000

My friend is a tax accountant. I hope I am wrong, but I am worried for her entire profession. It seems more about memorization of the massive & enormously complex tax code, and less about actual problem solving. This seems very well suited to an AI. I suspect such professions will be decimated in the near future.

New comment by notact in "To Serve His Country, President Biden Should Leave the Race"

notact — Sat, 29 Jun 2024 18:27:16 +0000

This is a perfect example of why half the country does not trust the media, including myself. To be clear, I am not a Trump fan. But when newspapers endorse the same party for decades and write editorials like this, TV networks broadcast morning talk and late night shows making it clear who they do & don't favor, etc, I have a hard time believing they are feeding me objective data. They are partially responsible for the massive public distrust that they decry.

New comment by notact in "POV-Ray – The Persistence of Vision Raytracer (2021)"

notact — Tue, 11 Jun 2024 12:53:27 +0000

Make it opt-in, please.

New comment by notact in "Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico"

notact — Thu, 06 Jun 2024 16:03:09 +0000

I guess this sorta makes sense - the slightest slowdown starts to deorbit the vehicle, at which point a particular descent rate becomes difficult to maintain?

New comment by notact in "Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico"

notact — Thu, 06 Jun 2024 15:54:29 +0000

I'm not sure why people are misunderstanding my question as "Why not bring more fuel and burn the rockets in reverse". I am simply asking: why not reenter the atmosphere at a shallower angle, spreading the atmospheric braking friction over a longer period of time, which I'd expect would allow more time for the accumulated heat to radiate away before it becomes catastrophic.

New comment by notact in "Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico"

notact — Thu, 06 Jun 2024 15:48:07 +0000

I understand the atmosphere is used to slow the vehicle - it's basically free brakes that you don't have to carry with you. I never suggested using rockets in reverse to slow the vehicle down. What I am asking is, instead of effectively standing on the breaks and generating enormous amounts of friction in a short period of time, why can't the vehicle ease onto the breaks and spread the friction out over time so it can be more safely dissipated (via a more shallow reentry angle).

New comment by notact in "Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico"

notact — Thu, 06 Jun 2024 15:08:01 +0000

Can someone explain why reentry must be so hellish? The energy gained during the rocket burn into orbit must be bled off during reentry, and that energy is enormous. However, why must reentry occur so quickly? It seems if the descent into the atmosphere was slower, the heat shield would be able to radiate the heat energy away more effectively, thus lowering skin temperatures, and significantly reducing the engineering challenge.

New comment by notact in "The European Union's remarkable growth performance relative to the United States"

notact — Wed, 01 May 2024 13:56:32 +0000

sapiogram made no assertions or arguments, just asked a simple, reasonable and good-faith question. Your response was disproportionately negative.

New comment by notact in "David Frankel is a man on a mission against robocalls"

notact — Thu, 25 Apr 2024 15:08:46 +0000

I see a lot of calls for being able to block an area code. That does not seem to be useful to me, living in a major metro area lots of legit calls (doctors office etc) share the same area code as spammers/political organizations.

What I think would be useful is to be able to block based on incoming carrier. During the last election season, most calls were coming from various VoIP services (Twilio, etc), none from normal retail cell carriers. If I could block an entire carrier who specializes in providing text/voice marketing services, problem solved? Legit business users of those services would hopefully migrate away to more ethical providers when their calls start failing to connect.

New comment by notact in "Are We Living in the Roaring 20s?"

notact — Wed, 27 Mar 2024 13:33:43 +0000

The stock market may demand never ending growth, to keep generating positive returns. But how does capitalism itself (private ownership of production) demand never ending growth, any more than a planned economy would?

New comment by notact in "Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants"

notact — Wed, 20 Mar 2024 20:02:12 +0000

What are the conditions and steps necessary to engage autopilot during landing? What are the failure conditions, and the steps necessary during a malfunction when autopilot is engaged?

New comment by notact in "How I replaced deadly garage door torsion springs (2002)"

notact — Tue, 19 Mar 2024 00:37:06 +0000

Sure it gets progressively easier as more and more of the door rides horizontally on its rails. But those first few inches where the door is nearly entirely vertical, must be some significant fraction of the total weight, probably >90%.

New comment by notact in "Estimating Software Projects: So you messed up. Now what? (2021)"

notact — Thu, 14 Mar 2024 14:21:04 +0000

The "No?" portion of the hypothetical you quoted is designed to filter out your examples. A few lines down from that clearly addresses the need for OT in critical situations.