Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | threefour's comments login

The OP blames "various idiot web 'designers'" for problems, but in my 30 years of being a web designer I have yet to meet one designer that wants to cause these problems. It's usually people responsible for generating revenue.


The web designers and developers are at the very least complicit. They are ultimately the ones typing in the code and hitting submit, so they at least must share the blame.


True, I'm just saying I don't think that's where the problems originate.

In my practice, I'll try a Jedi mind trick, e.g. "Trying to [state larger goal] makes a lot of sense. An even more effective way to do that is to [state alternate, non-toxic technique]."


In my career of roughly half as long, I have met plenty. Although it’s also true that it’s often people higher up who are amused by design gimmicks.


I was born with one kidney, a condition called renal agenesis. I’m 53 years old and in perfect health. Doctors don’t recommend any particular action.

As an aside, I’m also Buddhist so if the kidney goes I’m going with it. This obsession with prolonging life is just a distraction from living it.


> This obsession with prolonging life is just a distraction from living it.

Does brushing teeth twice a day also distract you from living?

I think the opposite.


It's free.


And otherwise identical?


Demucs did a much better job of isolating the bass on a blues track than LALAL. The bass actually sounded like a bass. LALAL got the note pitches but lost their attacks.



Yes, it's great! I also follow https://culdesac.com/ closely (but I never want to live in Arizona)


This is how I justify the purchase of guitars and bicycles.


As long as the states pay for it. If some people insist on living in the desert, the rest of us shouldn't have to pay for it. Civilization happens elsewhere.


Californians are always eager to remind everyone that theirs would be a top-10 global economy if they split from the US. Seems like this shouldn't be a problem for them to handle on their own.


San Diego has good water policy. Other parts of California would likely catch up if they had to, but I think it will take more drought.


Shouldn’t their massive economy be able to solve their own problems they created?


The problem with letting states figuring it out themselves is that water doesn't care about borders.

If a state unilaterally decided to suspend all contracts, treaties, and convenants on the sharing of hydrologic resources, other states would call on the federal government to step in. If the federal government refused to intervene, you would probably see aggrieved states form a coalition to force the "aggressor" state to cease "hostilities". Worst case scenario, it becomes a free for all and states start invading one another to "open the rivers and reservoirs". You could see local right-wing militias and ordinary but armed citizens take matters into their own hands. This is how civil war happens.


On the topic of getting things done, I’ve applied a bit of software development skills to making music. Instead of creating an increasingly growing body of works I focus on a smaller number of “products” that I improve on over time. I get some ideas that are my backlog and I implement them and release a new version. I think of it as an analog to Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass; one work that he made and just kept improving over the course of his lifetime.


The most influential person in architecture and software whose influence is difficult to point to.


For me it required both dietary and psychological techniques to deal with feelings of hunger.

- During my morning fast if I'm hungry I'll mix two tablespoons of psyllium husk with water and drink it. Fiber helps you feel full and in this form doesn't break the fast https://www.ifbuddy.com/nutrition/does-fiber-break-a-fast/

- Psychologically I remind myself it's OK to feel hungry. I reframed feelings of hunger from a signal that I forgot to eat to a signal that in a few hours I'll need to eat, as if hunting and gathering will take a few hours so my body is telling me to start now :-)



Relevant part: the capturing cups are of metals with high melting points, plus

> The corona through which Parker Solar Probe flies, for example, has an extremely high temperature but very low density. Think of the difference between putting your hand in a hot oven versus putting it in a pot of boiling water

And for the rest of the craft there is a highly reflective heat shield.


Also spending most of it's orbit pretty far away from the sun. You can move your hand though an open flame with no issues, but if you keep it in the flame it will get burned.


I like to remind people that if you could suddenly create a mass of living bodies the size of the sun, it would have a higher power density :D


Not sure I get the oven analogy. If I stick my hand in for a few seconds, sure, but if I was in the oven, I'll burn and die there too.


You got it actually, it's all about how long you leave your hand in. And that is why the probe has a very elliptical orbit, so it "touches" the sun briefly and goes back out into space to cool down.

Temperature is not what burns you, it's heat flow that does the burning. A boiling pot has a lot of molecules densely packed together, so heat transfer happens fast. The air inside the oven is hot but will not be as effective in transferring heat to your hand. There is more "thermal resistance" between your hand and the air inside the oven than your hand and the water inside a boiling pot.


Imagine sticking your hand in the oven for 1 second. Now imagine sticking it in a pot of boiling water for 1 second. One you do every day, the other is an immediate trip to the hospital. What’s the difference? Water is far more dense than the air in the oven thus will transfer much more heat to your hand over that same duration.


> if I was in the oven, I'll burn and die there too.

Eventually. Not momentarily.

It would take you much longer to die in the oven than if you would dive into boiling water. I didn't tried both so I cannot be sure, but I suspect that one can live in a boiling water just for a several seconds, while it is possible to live a few tenths of seconds in the oven.


Finnish saunas regularly go to 100°C (210F). I can personally attest that fifteen minutes in dry 100°C air is very survivable, you just get sweaty. Meanwhile 100°C water burns you almost instantly.

Though it's worth noting that when talking about humans in air the humidity plays a huge role. Sweat cools your body through evaporative cooling, which works better the drier the air is. At 100% relative humidity you can't cool down and eventually overheat, at 10% humidity we can survive some ridiculous temperatures for as long as we can keep sweating.


Yes, some sauna's need you to wear the key of your dressing locker on an arm bracelet. While relaxing nicely in the heat you can instantly burn yourself severely the moment the iron part of the key presses into your skin. (Talking from experience here)


It's in an elliptical orbit that also flies by Venus so it's like putting your hand for a few seconds twice a year.


are you saying this protects you from Corona? why isn't this in the news?


Putting your head in a hot oven continuously will probably prevent you from dying of the coronavirus indeed.


As does flying to the sun, for that matter. Can't catch corona if you're ~150 million kilometers away from the nearest other person.


The vacuum probably also helps. I'd also expect a few mm of vacuum might do the trick of avoiding contracting covid, though I'd not (as the Dutch say) put my hand in the flame for it.

(Equivalent expression in English might be that I'd not wager a lot of money on it, i.e. that I'm not completely certain given the consequences if it's wrong.)


You'll probably die from the vacuum before any corona will kill you. or is that not 'prevent'?


Corona is dangerous.


I can’t believe you want to make light of it!


Sorry, it’s not sunny.


Basically not much heat is transferred because there's not many particles to do the transfer, like a hot oven.

What I didn't understand was the coolant. It's got to dump whatever heat it picks up somewhere? Just a big radiator?


The thing about space is, heat transfer is all radiative. The "dark" side of the probe, which is in its own shadow, faces the darkness of space (which is very cold indeed). Therefore you can put insulation on the side facing the sun, and a radiator on the dark side to remove any heat that gets through the insulation.


But space is a vacuum which is a pretty good thermal insulator. How are they dumping the heat?


The physical mechanism is radiative cooling: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiative_cooling

More details about the specific mechanism on the Parker Solar Probe’s cooling system: https://blogs.nasa.gov/parkersolarprobe/2018/09/14/parker-so...


Pick a material for the surface of the radiator which has high emissivity.

That is, when the material gets warm, it will convert the thermal energy to electromagnetic energy (light). Some of this light will escape, leading to a cooling effect.

This is known as “incandescence” or “black body radiation”, and it’s why metals glow red hot when they’re heated to a certain temperature. (Though it’s not always red, it can be white, blue, or even UV. Animals are warm enough to glow in infrared, which is what thermal cameras detect).


IR radiation, in a nutshell.


The article puts some numbers on it, as well:

> That means that while Parker Solar Probe will be traveling through a space with temperatures of several million degrees, the surface of the heat shield that faces the Sun will only get heated to about 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit (about 1,400 degrees Celsius).


I'm a little curious how they were able to determine this before even sending a craft there and measuring it and have a high degree of confidence in its accuracy.


> It's got to dump whatever heat it picks up somewhere? Just a big radiator?

Yes. The absence of any medium in space makes radiating the only way to get rid of heat.


They're going at night, duh


Consider applying for YC's Spring batch! Applications are open till Feb 11.

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: