It still blows my mind that people on here delude themselves with thinking a pro-conservative piece would ever hit the main page for any meaningful period of time. Not that I care, I'm neither conservative nor do I come into HN thinking it's not heavily tainted one way. But how someone arrives at the opposite result still baffles me.
So? Mark Carney is to the right of the centre by the standards of the G7. Just slashed corporate taxes, environmental regulations, doing privatization, federal service layoffs, and slashing labour rights. Only looks "left wing" to culture warriors. Sits right in the centre of European politics, same vibe as the CDU in Germany or Macron in France.
There's nothing "far left" about the provincial NDP parties. They're centrist neo-Keynesians, pretty pragmatic, they don't even call themselves socialists. Again, it's only smelling "far left" if you're obsessed with cultural politics or "woke" stuff and are frankly politically illiterate and never taken a basic political science intro course? I didn't seeing Eby nationalizing/socializing industries and crap. "Far left" is such a bizarre characterization that it boggles the mind.
The federal party goes through phases of more old school NDP/CCF social democracy. But never governs, so.
The quality of Hollywood movies has gone down substantially.
I can barely watch anything on Netflix due to issues like this:
"Matt Damon Says Netflix Wants Movies to Restate the ‘Plot Three or Four Times in the Dialogue’ Because Viewers are on ‘Their Phones While They’re Watching’"
I remember seeing an old article saying how terrible "Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back" was. Now often regarded as the best Star Wars movie, and featured in many "best movies of all times" lists.
I still think there is a problem with Hollywood movies today, also AAA video games, and I think it focuses on making a small number of blockbusters with insane budgets. These movies are not bad in a sense that they are incompetently made, the problem is that they have to be safe for the investors. So, no crazy ideas, wide target audience, inoffensive, familiar, etc... That's why we get so many sequels and remakes, can't go wrong with these, but unfortunately, you can't go outstandingly right either. Indie, on the other hand, is thriving, though more in games than in movies.
> I still think there is a problem with Hollywood movies today, also AAA video games, and I think it focuses on making a small number of blockbusters with insane budgets.
I highly recommend people watch Wick is Pain [0] because it raises several interesting point:
- The film almost didn't get made until Eva Longoria joined as a producer to help get it financed.
- a lot of the Gun Fu fight scenes were actually developed for Jason Statham but he thought it was too different
- both of the directors were fight choreographers and not seasoned directors
- the guns used in the movies are blank firing but have barrels that are welded closed. This is so that they can be used at close range to other actors (which is a newer technique)
- Chad S. has a great line about the later movies: "We thought 'can we do this next?' but then we remembered we own the IP for this franchise so we can do WHATEVER we want"
I say all of this to point out that I agree with your original point and wish that there were more money available to fund "outside the norm" movies that could lead to great new franchises.
Maybe they could divide movies into a series of standalone segments that tell the story one chunk at a time, and then begin each segment with a short recap of what happened in the previous segments. They could even release the segments sequentially over time, and keep people coming back to it over the course of weeks or months.
Ah yes, the audience is ignoring our low quality content because it's low content and ignorable so we're going to lower the quality even more strategy. I wonder if it'll pay off for them...
there's also way too much woke non-sense in movies. i'm a tan non-caucasian guy, before someone has a micro-aggression.
i prefer watching older movies now where they actually "build the world" the movie is set within, instead of injecting politics from our world into some made up world.
i miss when fantasy and fiction actually met the definition.
Target demographic has shifted from male to female. Your point of view is no longer being catered to because your purchasing power as a demographic is in decline.
actually on that point i’m all in on selling consumerism to as many people as possible. women are actually way easier to retain and far more susceptible to fomo.
What a coincidence, I am working on deploying the https://nolongerevil.com/ on my 2nd Gen Nest Thermostat, my wife has bugging me for weeks to either fix it or buy a new one.
I am actually going to self-host and vibe code my own cloud service on Cloudflare.
Why bother? Block WAN access at the router, put the entire thing behind a VPN (Tailscale or Wireguard, dealers choice), and move on. If you really care, put everything you vibe code or consider security-abandonware on its own VLAN.
Keep it off the WAN and you'll be streets ahead of commercial vendors, and your weird, one-off, vibe-coded app means those same commercial vendors are the easier, more widely-deployed targets anyways.
Could do something like oauth to gmail + OTP (or passkeys) on cloudflare workers with long lived sessions or I could vibe code an iOS app even and side load it. That would be very secure as well. I haven't decided yet.
I have a personal password manager secured like that I vibe coded to replace 1password and so far it is working great.
It's distribution rather than generation which is the problem. Offshore wind farms generate copious electricity and then because of lack of interconnects they end up being paid to switch off on the windiest days. This will all be solved as more infrastructure is built.
There’s a chicken/egg problem, and in practice transmission will always lag generation; you’ll never speculatively build transmission, but even before transmission upgrades happen a wind or solar farm can usually partially operate.
A. I watched a documentary on the plane about SpaceX where they showed the Pez dispenser working and it was amazing.
B. You could have multiple panels operate as a swarm. There could be many "mirrors" that focus images on one central "collector". That would be larger than any telescope that needs to be shipped as one unit e.g. James-Webb.
> B. You could have multiple panels operate as a swarm.
Is that level of precision even remotely achievable with today's technology?
My understanding is that orbital insertion accuracy is in the ±10-50 meters range, with the most advanced formation flying satellite swarms hitting 10 cm to 1 m precision between satellites with the help of optical navigation.
But the precision between the panels on a telescope like JWST is in the sub-mm range, no?
Also, I'd assume stuff like orbital decay, atmospheric drag, gravitational perturbations, and solar radiation pressure would make it difficult to maintain precision over time.
I'm sure/hopeful there's some people here at HN working on stuff like this, please fill in and correct me!
Interferometry can be used to effectively combine multiple telescopes into one large imager. The technique becomes much more difficult at higher wavelengths, but there has been recent advances in infrared systems.
It would be nice to see a swarm of satellites advance astronomy for once!
If this remains a long term design limitation it'll be interesting to see if people design satellite hardware that consists of multiple individual rectangular slab sized things (generally same size/shape per piece as starlink v3 test satellites which have unfolding PV/antenna), that can latch together once dispensed, and further unfold.
Such an architecture might not be an impossible design consideration if the goal is to have something big like the sun-shade/cold side of the Webb telescope.
I can't imagine that there will not be other versions. The Pez dispenser is just solving the problem at hand. Eventually, I wouldn't be surprised to see cargo bay doors similar to the shuttle's.
Yeah, they'll have more versions for sure. There are two main designs that have been discussed / shown before (one where the entire nose hinges "backwards" and exposes the payload, and one that looks like the shuttle bay doors). And I think that for NASA decadal projects (i.e. JWST-like big telescopes) they could even go with a non-reusable Starship, with "regular" fairings that get dropped.
That seems likely. Best guess is the relatively small slot sized door is a cautious design while they're working out issues with re-entry heating and stresses and sacrificing ships into the ocean. Once they're very confident they have the configuration for the 'hot' side of the starship working well on re-entry (and probably after they've returned and caught a few), it could be expanded in size.
It is not a long term limitation. One might design any number of stages to fly in place of Starship on top of the Super Heavy booster.
Also, large science payloads can be launched by SLS. Back in the days of the Ares program, there were proposals to launch an 8 meter reflector (ATLAST-8m)[1] using Ares V. SLS anticipates payloads of such size as well.
So there are at least two viable platforms on which enormous space mirrors might launch, and one of them is likely to be highly cost effective. It's up to the science establishment to propose such missions and get them funded.
Not the OP, but I'm on the same program in NC. You can set a minimum level to keep your battery that will cover at least short power outages (mine is set to 20%). You can also decline to participate with a limited number of VPP events a year.
My utility doesn't have a program quite like this, but they do have a peak power rate that incentivizes similar behavior. I have our system configured to charge up to 90% at 12pm, and then consume no grid power until 7pm (peak rate is 1-7pm), or if the battery gets down to 35%.
I also have it configured to charge to 100% if there are any weather watches or warnings. That overrides the time-of-use configuration.
We do also have a generator that I can hook up if the batteries get too low. We have enough battery to get us through the night, but we don't have enough solar to keep up in an outage during the darker months, or if we want to run the A/C.
They can, depending on storage and outage duration you plan on mitigating. For example, a friend in ComEd's Northern Illinois service territory has quite a bit of rooftop solar. They subscribed to Base Power [1], who came and installed battery storage on site. Base Power became their power provider, which is a few cents/kwh cheaper than ComEd, because they charge the batteries at night when demand is low and Constellation Energy's nuclear fleet is still pumping out power (Illinois has the largest merchant nuclear fleet in the US [2]). Their daily solar generation is sufficient that if utility power fails, daily solar generation is sufficient (with batteries for coupling to enable continued solar production when utility sync is lost) to not need a fossil generator; the battery will carry them from sunset to sunrise until the solar panels are producing again during daylight hours. "What is your risk model?"
If you cannot install residential solar, don't have enough solar, or have to defend against outages lasting for days or weeks, having the infra available to support an exterior fossil generator is certainly something to consider (main load center transfer switch, receptacle on structure exterior for genset supply to the load center or a subpanel of critical loads).
What is a generator if not a battery that charges with fossil fuels? As long as the battery has enough energy to cover the outage the end result is the same.
Combine it with rooftop solar to get the equivalent of free fuel for your generator every time the sun shines.
> As long as the battery has enough energy to cover the outage the end result is the same.
That is the key—having enough battery to cover an extended outage is very expensive.
My generator can run on natural gas, which is piped to our house and only had one outage in the fourteen years we've lived there (when the gas company replaced lines as part of preventative maintenance). So effectively, we have a redundant electricity source coming into the house. If that was also down, I could also run it on propane or gasoline.
That being said, if I had to pick batteries _or_ a generator, I'd prioritize batteries. We have both, and the batteries cover the majority of outages, while also providing other benefits.
>having enough battery to cover an extended outage is very expensive
It sure used to be, but I think battery backups that cover a whole house for 24h is cheaper than a diesel generator that can do the same now. Depending on your situation you can make it back in savings even without solar panels. (Charge when electricity is cheap, use when expensive).
Piped gas generators is a thing I had no idea existed until now! Edit: Curious to learn if they are a common thing?
25 kWh covers maybe 1-2 hours in a worst-case scenario, and that’s with only a peak eleven-kilowatt output. You’d need ~24 kilowatts peak to cover a full 100-amp old-style mains feed for a house. This is just basic math — 100 amps times 240VAC == 24 kilowatts.
Most houses here in Texas are now built with 200-amp mains feeds. So, you’d need ~50 kilowatts peak. And if you really can get two hours of runtime for 25 kWh, then you would need 300 kWh to get 24 hours of runtime.
Check the prices for batteries and inverters. 50 kilowatts peak and 300 kWh runtime is a lot more expensive than you realize.
Maybe one day, when batteries get much, much, much cheaper than they are today, you will be able to afford that kind of system. But today, a 24 kilowatt natural gas generator is a lot cheaper.
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