Recent submissions

Comment · 5 years ago
To be honest I think you should go ahead and delete that account (and this, my main). Upon further reflection I think my engagement with HN has become unhealthy.
Comment · 5 years ago
Hydroelectric storage is geographically dependent. You need the right topography and access to water. Likewise, hydroelectric storage takes a long time to build.
Comment · 5 years ago
And then we'd have to continue that production for two and a half decades to get to 1 day of storage. And we'd also have to drastically increase our battery recycling capacity to match (remember most lithium ion batteries last 1000-2000 cycles).
Comment · 5 years ago
The cause is that more people moved into the city than there were housing units constructed. It isn't an either-or question, it's both. San Francisco has more demand than supply precisely because an insufficient number of housing units were constructed relative to the rising population. Had the city built sufficient units to accommodate the new residents there would be no shortage of supply. Had there been no influx of residents there wouldn't be either. But we can't just outlaw people from moving into the city, so the solution is to increase the supply of housing. And NIMBYism is a big obstacle in increasing the supply of housing.
Comment · 5 years ago
The factor that drives up price for grid level storage is scale. Only ~300 GWh worth of batteries is produced globally each year. The world uses 2.5 TWh of electricity each hour. If anyone tries to install battery storage at a significant scale, demand will vastly outstrip supply and drive prices up.
Comment · 5 years ago
Even achieving just one hour of storage globally amounts to 2.5 TWh of storage. By comparison the entire world produces ~300 GWh worth of lithium ion battery annually. That leaves geographically limited options like pumped hydroelectricity, and solutions not yet deployed at any significant scale like hydrogen fuel cells, synthetic methane, thermal batteries, flywheels, etc.

Realistically we should saturate daytime energy demand with solar, and if there aren't any scalable storage options by then switch gears and proceed with hydroelectric where it's viable and nuclear where it's not.

Comment · 5 years ago
I think you're taking the response a very narrow set of people have to this dynamic and assuming a substantial contingent of readers are sharing this response. When I discuss the observations made in the original post with people, the overwhelming response is "of course" without a hint of controversy.
Comment · 5 years ago
If you're not well equipped to refute the claim, why do you feel equipped to call it horrible, a conspiracy theory, and a harm to society? The notion that women are more selective than men is something I consider neither harmful, nor particularly far fetched.
Comment · 5 years ago
This output of this kind of test is determined by the order in which the categories are presented. Put male on the left and humanities on the right first, then put male and science simultaneously on the left side and it will produce the opposite result: men associated with liberal arts and women with science.
Comment · 5 years ago
It didn't just ask about censoring specific words or terms, or staying polite. It asked about censoring beliefs.

Say someone who is very much in favor of legal abortion stays silent as one of their co-workers goes on about how abortion should be banned, for fear of offending said co-worker. Is the fact that this person held back from sharing their beliefs an example of inclusivity? I'd say that this is not only false, it is the opposite of what is true. The fact that this person self-censored out of fear of causing offense is evidence of an environment intolerant of pro-choice people.

Inclusivity is a worthwhile goal. That is why such extensive self-censoring beliefs is a prominent concern, it's strong evidence that we are not being inclusive of people of different beliefs.

Comment · 5 years ago
> There are so many literary authors that aren't white men, that arguing that he should have the right to decide to only teach works from white men (if he deems them to be the best works), does seem to me like arguing that we shouldn't teach the history of marginalized people.

No, it does not remotely seem like arguing that we shouldn't teach the history of marginalized people. How do you go from "I should be able to decide to only teach works from white men" to "other people shouldn't teach anyone other than white men"? To go from "I should be allowed to _____" to "nobody should do anything except ______" is a massive leap.

A course in classics is going to have overwhelmingly male authors, likely exclusively so. The reality of the ancient Mediterranean was that patriarchy was extensive, and women were not afforded the opportunity to contribute in that space. This is in now way saying that other courses in other fields should feature women or minority authors.

Comment · 5 years ago
I know a lot of people (mostly white, mostly men) don't think that's true, but these types of attitudes can easily allow harmful messages to fester in academic classrooms.

> 88 percent of students agreed or strongly agreed with the statement that “the climate on my campus prevents students/faculty from saying things they believe because others might find them offensive.” Sixty-three percent of faculty agreed or strongly agreed with the same statement.

No, it's not mostly white men, 88% is a figure large enough that it necessarily includes large swathes of other demographics.

Comment · 5 years ago
Google certainly has more monetary resources. But in my experience large companies like Google are the ones that can't afford to do something like this. The logistical benefits of white-boarding interviews and the accountability gains are much more important to large companies. This interview process was for a smaller company.

But you're absolutely correct that the more time-consuming the interview process is for the candidate, the more likely they'll interview somewhere else. In fact, that's exactly what I did: I received an offer partway through this git-based interview process, and the offer was good enough that I didn't see value in completing it.

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