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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • Kale has a naturally high pH, so it’s basically just an antacid.

    I have mild reflux, but know what triggers it after what time of day and can make easy diet adjustments to avoid those triggers too late before bed. For whatever reason, I never considered looking at the alkaline level of the foods I eat. In just doing so now, I see a whole bunch of my regular diet. Have I been unconscious choosing these to mitigate my reflux? I mean, I seek out these foods (that I now know are alkaline) because I like them, but do I like them more than just for their taste?



  • Only 4% of marketers overall think X ads provide “brand safety” — certainty that their ads won’t appear alongside extreme content —

    The 4% may represent lumpy pillow manufacturers, sellers of freeze dried survival food, random cryptocurrency products, and Trump 2024 flag/tshirt providers.

    The spokesperson added that X’s “brand safety rate is on average 99%, as validated by DoubleVerify and Integral Ad Science,” companies that analyze the value of digital advertising placements.

    “But that 1% remaining will have your products featured next to ads denying the holocaust, hate speech against LGBTQ+ communities, and ads discrediting proven science in favor of, oh I don’t know, phrenology or something” -the spokesperson probably


  • I thought exactly the same thing. If they’re not a 3D printed rocket company then they’re just another of a field of rocket companies? Why would a customer choose them. The article enlightened me to who:

    In a private letter to “investors, advisors, and friends” summarizing the company’s operations after the first half of 2024, Relativity said it currently has a backlog of $2.6 billion in commercial launches and is in discussion or has signed a contract with many major megaconstellation providers (but not SpaceX). Ellis would not confirm this, but multiple people have told Ars that Relativity recently signed a deal for multiple launches with Amazon’s Project Kuiper constellation.

    There is at least $2.6 billion worth of customer that wants a SpaceX like launch product, but is unwilling to buy from an Elon Musk company. With how toxic Musk’s behavior is these days, I could see that customer market growing. The US government is putting LOTS of payloads into orbit in SpaceX’s Falcon 9 because there’s nothing even close to it in price and performance. If Relativity can even get close to Falcon 9, they’ll almost certainly pick up a large chunk of US payload contracts as the government doesn’t like to have a single supplier for nation security reasons.



  • To people joining this thread later asking where a commercial product of this is, or pointing out that 10% solar efficiency is way below other existing products, you’re missing the point.

    This is basic research to prove one single aspect of solar panel construction. That question apparently was: “We currently know that PET backsheets work for solar panels, but can we use a different material which may have less CO2 impact and still produce a working solar panel?” The answer being “yes”. That is a big step that other people doing other research and product development can build on. It may be years (or never!) that a product comes to market with sisal fiber backsheets, but the answers from the work done here are integrated into the body of knowledge that will produce the next improvement in solar panels.





  • California announces that the policy is going to expire. People who paid more and had an expectation of never-ending special road access are angry.

    This is the step where your comparison to solar (at least in California) breaks down. I’m not a California resident, but from what I understand under the NEM 1 and NEM 2 rules there is NO expectation the preferential net metering will last forever. Solar customers were specifically told that putting in solar during NEM 1 would guarantee those terms for 20 years from install date. Same thing for NEM 2, the rules would apply for 20 years from the install date. After the 20 year period, you’d be subject to whatever net meter would be offered to new customers, which could be none. source

    What this proposition proposes is cutting that 20 years to 10 years from install date:

    "Convert NEM 1.0 and 2.0 accounts to the NBT either upon sale of a home or after 10 years of interconnection. " source

    So customers that took a large financial risk installing solar that are coming out ahead may now have the deal shifted out of their favor. How is that fair to the solar customers? Worse, the knock on effect will destroy the trust in state government incentives in the future. Why would any citizen risk a long term outlay based on policy if the state government may decide one day they don’t want to hold up their end of the deal anymore?




  • Which is why hydrogen is so interesting to me, especially solar-generated hydrogen. It’s a pain to store, but if it’s used relatively quickly, the losses should be small enough to make it worthwhile.

    The pain with hydrogen storage isn’t just leakage (which is a huge problem because of how small the molecule is), but energy density. Gaseous hydrogen needs either extremely large containers or really extreme pressures (meaning thick, heavy, expensive) and even then its not very much energy storage. To get even higher density requires liquification, which means which is only reached at −253°C (−423°F), and that also requires large expensive machinery and energy to run it.

    Unless you’re changing hydrogen into something else (like ammonia), hydrogen isn’t a great solution for energy storage or transportation.