Hacker News: slavik81

New comment by slavik81 in "Fossil Fuels Are 40% of Freight Shipping Tonnage, but Half Its Fuel Use"

slavik81 — Sun, 21 Jun 2026 20:54:47 +0000

Natural gas burns at ~2200 K. Ambient temperature is ~300 K. 1 - 300/2200 = 86% as the Carnot limit?

New comment by slavik81 in "Fossil Fuels Are 40% of Freight Shipping Tonnage, but Half Its Fuel Use"

slavik81 — Sun, 21 Jun 2026 20:37:00 +0000

If you slide off the road and get stuck in a ditch in the middle of the night, an EV is a lot more comfortable. Standard advice for keeping warm is to run the engine for ten minutes every hour and keep the window cracked open due to risk of carbon monoxide poisoning. By contrast, you can leave the EV with the heat on all night.

New comment by slavik81 in "Canada to order military plane fleet from Sweden in shift from US suppliers"

slavik81 — Wed, 27 May 2026 21:31:26 +0000

Americans were our brothers. We had been partners for over a hundred years.

New comment by slavik81 in "Erin Brockovich made a map to track data centers around the country"

slavik81 — Wed, 27 May 2026 08:38:40 +0000

I keep thinking back to that e-card, "once you hate someone, everything they do is offensive."

I don't think tech companies appreciate the extent to which they used to get the benefit of the doubt just because people liked them.

New comment by slavik81 in "Iran starts Bitcoin-backed ship insurance for Hormuz strait"

slavik81 — Tue, 19 May 2026 05:39:30 +0000

China is the world's largest exporter of alternatives to oil. This adventure has done nothing but strengthen their relative economic position.

New comment by slavik81 in "Good ideas do not need lots of lies in order to gain public acceptance (2008)"

slavik81 — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 17:31:44 +0000

Options are a bit riskier than RSUs. If you have RSUs issued at $100 and the stock goes down to $50, then your RSUs are worth half. If you have the option to buy stock at $100 and the stock goes down to $50, then that option is worthless.

New comment by slavik81 in "Why Doesn't Anybody Realize We're Going Back to the Moon?"

slavik81 — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 07:46:47 +0000

Not everyone was so optimistic. Many people argued that the money spent going to the moon would be better spent on problems here on Earth.

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Tom_Lehrer_song_lyrics_(...

New comment by slavik81 in "Axios compromised on NPM – Malicious versions drop remote access trojan"

slavik81 — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 12:01:06 +0000

That had more or less been the explanation in the books for decades, and even in George Lucas' notes from 1977:

> It's a very simple ship, very economical ship, although the modifications he made to it are rather extensive – mostly to the navigation system to get through hyperspace in the shortest possible distance (parsecs).

New comment by slavik81 in "A Journey Through Infertility"

slavik81 — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 09:50:33 +0000

In our case, it was suggested that the first transfer of the first cycle had a 15% chance of success. Whether that's "very rare" is perhaps a matter of perspective. It was low enough we assumed it would be a failure and we were surprised when it succeeded, but to a doctor it's a frequent occurrence.

New comment by slavik81 in "A Journey Through Infertility"

slavik81 — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 08:15:38 +0000

The total number might be a little out there due to her non-medical treatments, but the general sentiment is accurate for IVF. My wife filled up an entire sharps box with the injections she needed to take and that was with success on the first try of the first round (which is very rare).

As someone who is a bit squeamish around needles, I don't know if I could have done what she did.

New comment by slavik81 in "4Chan mocks £520k fine for UK online safety breaches"

slavik81 — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 06:57:49 +0000

Taiwan's biggest problem is that the average age is currently ~45 and in 15 years it will be ~55. It's going to be hard to keep the economy going once half the country's retired.

New comment by slavik81 in "Ageless Linux – Software for humans of indeterminate age"

slavik81 — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 06:30:19 +0000

It's understandable that parents are upset, but tech companies are not the ones harmed by these laws. When we've outlawed privacy, it will be the public who suffers.

New comment by slavik81 in "The changing goalposts of AGI and timelines"

slavik81 — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 19:02:37 +0000

Do you mean Dory, the fish from Finding Nemo?

New comment by slavik81 in "System76 on Age Verification Laws"

slavik81 — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 13:16:31 +0000

> instagram and the like are uniquely and disastrously harmful

Could we perhaps regulate them to require that they be made less harmful for everyone?

> anything the reduces the power those companies have over our lives (and our politics)

If we're concerned about politics, I presume we're talking about the impact on adults, but these age-based restrictions are not intended to change anything for adults.

New comment by slavik81 in "A Pokémon of a Different Color"

slavik81 — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 12:32:18 +0000

It was in the manual and the Player's Guide. You can find ditto on page 47 of the latter.

https://www.scribd.com/document/586237858/Pokemon-Red-Versio...

https://archive.org/details/NintendoPower1998PokemonRedBlue/...

New comment by slavik81 in "Banning lead in gas worked. The proof is in our hair"

slavik81 — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 22:32:06 +0000

The £700M (960M USD) spent on fish protection measures at Hinkley Point C would be a topical example [1]. It's expected to save an average of a few hundred twaite shad, six river lamprey, and eighteen allis shad per year, plus one salmon every twelve years, and a trout every thirty-six years.

https://www.salmonbusiness.com/nuclear-plants-new-700-millio...

New comment by slavik81 in "Finland looks to introduce Australia-style ban on social media"

slavik81 — Sat, 31 Jan 2026 19:08:03 +0000

If manipulative algorithm are the problem, then perhaps we should consider regulations that would protect everyone.

New comment by slavik81 in "In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels"

slavik81 — Fri, 23 Jan 2026 02:44:17 +0000

The comments on Reddit from folks who claim to have worked for Northvolt are pretty wild. I would take them with a grain of salt, but they're interesting to read. https://www.reddit.com/r/electricvehicles/comments/1fl8d4y/c...

New comment by slavik81 in "In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels"

slavik81 — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 16:25:49 +0000

Shade on older solar systems would impact energy production disproportionally. You would typically see dramatic reductions like 50%-80% reduced output due to 10-20% shade. New shade-tolerant solar systems are closer to being proportional.

New comment by slavik81 in "In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels"

slavik81 — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 15:53:34 +0000

The Greener Homes Grant and Greener Homes Loan you describe have ended, but the 160% tarrif on imported solar panels remains. Solar prices in Canada are still quite expensive, and regulations are needlessly strict. Solar fencing is illegal in many jurisdictions, balcony solar is illegal everywhere, and utility-scale solar is effectively prohibited in the regions with the most sunlight.

Solar production in Canada will continue to grow, but we're not doing nearly as much as Europe to encourage it.