shoesfullofdust

Joined 17 years ago

Karma
85
Submissions
30
Member since
Jul 29
View on Hacker News

Recent submissions

Comment · 3 years ago
I think we watched a different video. They are harvesting parts and the disassembly plant is 75% powered by solar.
Comment · 3 years ago
Fascinating! Thanks for sharing this!
Comment · 4 years ago
thought the news would be of interest. that's all
Comment · 12 years ago
In my world, AA batteries are all about door locks. There are a lot of card-reading door locks that depend on them.

Whenever a lock fails, step one or two or three is replace the batteries. That's 4-6 batteries per lock.

As a maintenance/security procedure, once every couple of years, every battery in every lock in the entire building is replaced. Doesn't matter if they are dead, weak or brand new. That's hundreds/thousands of batteries.

That's a lot of batteries. And Duracell has multiple levels of "pro"/"industrial grade" batteries. We buy them by the case.

I'm sure the markup on consumer batteries are huge, but I'd also think the commercial use of double-As must dwarf the consumer market. Smart buy by Warren is my guess.

What's needed in this space is a door lock that winds itself much like a "perpetual" watch. Something that takes the mechanical energy used to turn the door handle and turns it into stored energy that can be used to read the card and unbolt the door.

And there you go. Make this thing :)

Comment · 14 years ago
The people I work with (about 900 of them, all <20 yrs old) do not check their email. The only reason they have email is to create an account with a service that has little or nothing to do with email. Forget about email.
Comment · 15 years ago
Nixon's bold stance(?!) predates P.S. Lang's invention of a synthetic replacement by a number of years.

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=3731

Of course, he could never use the term "sperm whale". But this is what led to the Endangered Species Act that granted the whales a reprieve. Lang's invention was only a reaction to this. It's still a good read.

Comment · 15 years ago
Comment · 15 years ago
Comment · 16 years ago
The technical details were great. And I'm sure other devs can learn from your predicament. But, as a user, you didn't answer the question, "When can I use this again?"

It broke. You fixed it. But, "Can I expect this to work again?" "Reliably?" All I heard was that it was broken.

It sounded a lot like, "something broke, it took a long time to fix."

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