Viewing profile — sapote

This is a topic that has a lot of noise but there are two relatively easy to explain things to tell people (I am discounting the usual 27% of the population who will never be inter…

There are studies that have found that the net carbon impact of such desert solar arrays can actually be detrimental -- that is, installing the solar arrays in the desert causes an…

That's correct.

Credit where I think it's due -- Bruce Schneier was one of the first to introduce the metaphor of feudalism in this context: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/12/feudal_s…

Two things: * Sure, seeds germinate with water and warmth. But that's true today. In the words of an Australian farmer quoted in a research paper a few years ago: "Mate, we don't n…

And largely these sensors are unnecessary. Such "precision agriculture" efforts are just doubling down on a broken agricultural paradigm.

Hmm. I think I'd agree only to the second half of that. Just considering Kennedy's examples alone there are many things that cannot be bought at any price: consider the joy of a ch…

I was responding to this statement: > Everything that is desired takes resources to get Kennedy made the good point (as others have, less eloquently) that there are many things tha…

In my view that's a misconception, one that's quite common in the tech world (and also to a certain extent in the broader culture). Robert Kennedy commented on this (in a different…

> It's a moving metaphor but of course cells within us have the same genome whereas different humans have different genomes. So it's hard to consider them part of one living system…

>And my favorite group, the ones confusing technology with science This. It's far too common here at HN.

That's actually a feature, not a bug -- 11th hour news stories are rarely accurate, seldom have sufficient context, etc.

Given that, I wonder how has Oregon has managed to have such smooth elections.

I remember someone saying here that a key shift in framing in Germany was to call them voting computers rather than voting machines (since the broader public understands that compu…

I was expecting that response. The only solution, then, is to ban all mail in ballots. Right now California, for example, has optional mail-in voting. Wouldn't you expect that anyo…

Agreed. And to add to it, we should switch to a system in which we have: * 100% mail-in paper ballots, like Oregon -- no long lines, no games about which districts get which machin…

"The anti-use would be in any sort of cryptographic implementation, since any "entropy" you'd be gaining by using this data as a source of randomness is completely counteracted by …

Organic food raised like industrial food will often take more land. But organic food raised in polyculture can sometimes take dramatically less space. Look up Land Equivalent Ratio…

Agreed. I'm surprised at the support for this article... I somehow got downvoted for saying that growing one's own food is a great alternative to the narrow perspective the article…

It is free. The time you spend in the garden is time you would have otherwise spent exercising in some other form and (to a lesser extent) shopping.

This article smacks of narrow-minded contrarianism for its own sake. The cheapest thing one can do -- and healthier than the option of eating Lucky Charms daily -- is to grow one's…

Yeah, like I said in another comment, I'm focused on CS research -- this other stuff, while it might be called research for the sake of the story, isn't the same thing. And the sto…

I'm talking about CS research. I don't really consider law research and public policy research as real research -- that's lobbying and conflating the two is just for a headline. Ed…

That's absolutely not the case. Government-funded research review processes are actually more prescriptive and restrictive and political than Google is. I know this first hand. It …

This reflects a lack of understanding about academic research. All researchers look for future funding from the same sources, and the same effect occurs. Oddly, given the small siz…