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I use private windows in Safari, where each tab automatically behaves like its own container.


It’s not the same. All my uMatrix anc cookie auto delete rules are container specific. Private windows are like very simple containers that destroy themselves once closed.

AFAICT private Firefox windows are also part of the same container so you don’t get true separation (can’t open multiple Firefox private windows and log into different google accounts — does that work in Safari?)


Yes it works in Safari private tabs. I do that sort of thing regularly.




> Blacksmiths were one of the few professions who could make their own tools and consequently any experienced smith would likely have a wide range of tools produced to fit his needs and preferences.

Just like software engineering


But software engineering has an even more special characteristic: easy and accurate tool duplication. That's why our tools are so much less personal than those of a historical blacksmith. Combined with liberal licensing this ease of duplication easily makes software engineers less connected with the tooling they use than any tool user before them. Sometimes (often?) we wouldn't even know the exact version of the tool we are using (no, "latest stable" isn't an exact version)



Interesting to see that the largest input by an order of magnitude is trees.

Reminds me of the infographics showing that only a small fraction of our water usage is direct (lawns, showers, ...) and most is indirect (meat, almonds, ...). In both cases, supply chains abstract over the inputs "embedded" in the outputs.


The whole Central and Western Europe used to be heavily forested. The reason almost none of those forests remain is largely the iron and steel industry’s thirst for charcoal during the early modernity and the industrial revolution.


In chemical engineering school I learned that water is the biggest input to most chemical plants. Even oil refineries take in more water than oil (mainly for cooling).


Fracking also uses a substantial amount of water.


Even in rockets, where weight is extremely critical, SpaceX chose to use kerosene/methane due to the problems of working with LH2 (very low density, very cold temperatures, hydrogen embrittlement).

Depending on energy density and power density requirements, I think a combination of batteries and traditional fossil fuels will win in the short term. In the long term, when we have stopped burning fossil fuels for electricity, then we can use electricity to manufacture them. Under this path, hydrogen will have limited importance.


Preventing explosions in the event of H2 leaks is difficult too. H2 has one of the lowest ignition energy curves of any gas. Electronics used in areas with H2 must follow very strict regulations (worse than medical requirements in many ways).


The explosion happens when you cross the ignition energy threshold. So having a low ignition energy threshold can actually be an advantage as then much less fuel is available to drive the explosion.

Agreed that doing intrinsic safety for H2 is hell. I did once design a LED sidelight for the relevant class with significant current (redundant electronic energy regulation). So it is possible to do stuff, it just takes more work. The tendency for modern electronics to be very low voltage helps a lot.


More likely: A small amount of the leaked hydrogen encounters an ignition point, igniting the primary mass.

The ignition zone is larger, risk is higher.


Pure hydrogen can’t burn without oxygen, so you generally get a tiny flare and then a flame based the size of the crack. It’s really about the same risks as using gasoline which almost never causes a significant detonation.


With vehicle, heating, rocket, or aviation applications, quantities involved are nontrivial. Hydrogen's flammable and explosive ratios with oxygen are large, and contrast starkly with other fuels; kerosene (jet/rocket fuel), bunker oil, and deisel, which ignite with difficulty, petrol, which ignites readily but not explosively, and even natural gas which deflagrates rather than explodes under most circumstances.

Add in hydrogen's extreme tendency to leak, metal embrittlement, and high pressures and/or low temperatures, and the risks are immense. Particularly at scale, in widespread use, with poor maintenance and inspections.


It’s technically explosive in many situations where the location or net energy released makes that irrelevant. Being significantly lighter than air you might hear a loud bang above the vehicle where gasoline’s foof ends up being significantly more deadly.

It’s not strictly better or worse, just different. Diesel for example can be very dangerous in a large open topped container, hydrogen just doesn’t stick around in that environment.

PS: Consider what it would take to make a large hydrogen fuel air bomb that’s as effective as it’s hydrocarbon equivalent.


> Even in rockets, where weight is extremely critical, SpaceX chose to use kerosene/methane due to the problems of working with LH2 (very low density, very cold temperatures, hydrogen embrittlement).

That and they have very few missions where the increased ISP from LH2 would actually benefit them. The other upside of LH2 and LOX is that you can run it in engines, but you can also run it in fuel cells directly and generate a surprising amount of electricity from a very small package -- the other benefit there is that the Fuel Cells produce pure water as a byproduct.

The Space Shuttle had three fuel cells which provided more than enough power for a full mission. Most missions could be run on two without any compromises. Also, when it was visiting the ISS, it was a convenient means of supplying water to the station.

On non ISS missions, so much water is generated that they have to dump it overboard.


Agree that the raw data is easily available. However, I couldn't find any great free interactive maps/tools combining this data at a national level.

In addition, going from price and rent to cap rate is already relatively complicated, as expenses (such as property management, homeowners' insurance, repairs, ...) have a sub-linear dependence on price or rent. This sub-linear dependence is included in the map. Using a fixed-percent model for these expenses will artificially inflate C-class cap rates, while artificially deflating A-class cap rates.

Planned additions:

1. Filters - To answer more complex questions

2. Landlord/Tenant-Friendly States (also fiscal solvency of states ... to estimate risk of property taxes rising rapidly)

[edit: formatting]


Created this to help new out-of-state real estate investors find a great place to start building their real estate portfolio. Feel free to email me at kalki [at] plathq.com.


Similar to will forgery, deed forgery is still a problem today. In fact, it is a growing problem, as forgers have the information and access they need through online land records. While online land records have greatly simplified real estate closings, this is one downside. County recorders are unable to stop these forged deeds, as they are legally required to record all deeds that are appropriately formatted.

Many counties have deed recording alerts that alert property owners to documents recorded against their name or property. However, many counties do not offer this service, leaving property owners unaware of these forged or fraudulent deeds, until they receive an eviction or foreclosure notice. As such, we are offering a Title Watch service to inform you about potential forged or fraudulent deeds recorded in your name or against your property. Please visit us at https://plathq.com


(1) Interesting connection to the original story. This is the sort of not-exactly-an-ad-because-it-is-related mention that I find cool about Hacker News.

(2) Let me see if I get this right: you offer a service that simply monitors deeds and mortgages recorded against a specific plat and sends an alert to to the subscriber if something is recorded (which is an extremely rare event). And you charge $10/month/property for this service? What about the problem makes it so expensive? Why aren't you likely to be disrupted by someone like Zillow offering this $10/month service for FREE (and making money off the address list they develop from it, plus advertising to all the homeowners)?


Glad you liked the “not-exactly-an-ad-because-it-is-related mention.” While the probability of a forged deed is relatively low, the impact is not. In addition to the risk of a thief just forging a deed to a property they have no connection to, there is also the risk of intra-family deed/mortgage forgery. This intra-family forgery is likely substantially underreported, and causes the family to lose the property it has acquired through hard work because of one bad apple.

In addition, people are (rightly) highly risk-averse about anything that affects their family, their home, or the assets that they built over years and decades. For example, real estate investors commonly put their property into an LLC (which costs $800/year in CA) or buy liability insurance, even though the probability of incurring a large liability is low.

With respect to costs, even though land records are public, machine-parseable title/recorder data is expensive. Data from the tax assessor (even machine-parseable) is relatively cheap, but is not as complete as recorder data. For example, it does not have mortgages. We intend to achieve economies-of-scale with respect to recorder data. At that point we intend to offer additional value at the same price (for example, insurance) and add a free-but-sell-leads service.


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