uranium

Waymo's usually something like 50% more expensive than Lyft in SF, in my experience. But the drivers don't tailgate, have colds, listen to your conversation (AFAIK)...I'll generally opt for Waymo now if I have a choice. The biggest problem I have is that it's usually a longer wait due to the smaller fleet size, but if I'm planning ahead, I'll just book one for a given time, and that takes care of it.

It was the same in the '90s. Something like a third didn't make it through in 4 years, although a long tail managed it in 5 or more.

Yep. Bright light does the same thing. Also, in dim light, I'd expect this to make it pretty hard to see. My optometrist mentioned it to me, but neither of us could see the point.

"Downtime for maintenance is part of normal operations, making this a far more forgiving early application of fusion, unlike the grid where every down hour is lost revenue."

Planned maintenance, sure, but unplanned maintenance means the same lost revenue, plus you're stuck floating in the middle of the pacific ocean, possibly in need of parts or debugging expertise that only exists half a planet away or, for that matter, food. It's certainly a good idea to find a niche to make market entry easier, but I would guess that reliability requirements are actually higher for ships than for microgrids. Find some isolated town or island running off flaky diesel generators on shipped-in fuel and negotiate a reasonable SLA.

This ignores, of course, the bigger problem: making fusion work at all at Q > 1. If it were me, I'd work on solving that before worrying too much about optimizing market entry. So far every single fusion effort has failed to clear that hurdle, and any effort on the other parts is wasted if you can't actually make power.

As one ridiculous-pong writer to another, I love your work. I really enjoy this kind of technical performance art, both to write and to view. It may also be part of why I juggle: "There must be a harder way to do this."

TANSTAAFL

After spreads, tracking error, and overhead, it'll be really hard to beat a Vanguard index fund.

They still have to renew your prescription for you. If you're running out in 5/7 of a month, but only getting renewed monthly, you're just changing the granularity, not the dose.

That's a great list; while not explicitly writing them out, we raise our kids by similar rules, and I think it's been a huge help. #1 is huge. We also explicitly answer any question they ask (barring privacy concerns). The answers vary based on how old they are, and what they're capable of understanding, but they can always ask for more detail if we guess wrong. It lets them know that there are no taboo subjects with us, and they can always come to us with their hard questions.

It did mean nuanced conversations about how not to ruin the "Santa Clause game" for other kids, etc.

This is beautiful; the motion of the legs reminds me of some giant scuttling insect. I'd love to have a coffee table like that. I wouldn't even want the motor, actually. It looks like you can just push it and have it walk smoothly, as if pushing a table with fixed-orientation wheels.

It's a name-brand fan bought at a local showroom a decade ago. IIRC it was under $1000 at the time.

Efficacy is also going to vary with usage. I've got a 900CFM fan, but I can still smoke up the kitchen pretty badly if I sear on the front burner, even with the fan on high. However, if I use the back burner, even with the fan on low, the air stays pretty clear.

It's a cheap portable, with no calibration possible. I have no idea what effect pressure would have on it, unfortunately.