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Comment Re: The reason I got it (Score 1) 93

It’s not. Literally through the 60s all the way to the 90s improper construction methods caused widespread destruction and unaffordability in Florida and its suffering to this day with no one wanting to insure those homes. In my state stucco homes in the 80-90s were built with a sealed style of construction that worked well in dryer/warmer areas but caused billions in damages to the point around here a stucco home is considered garbage and has a bad name to this day. It’s not that homes can’t be built with stucco even here, it’s that when you build without understanding the environment then practices that work quite well can fail systematically and catastrophically.

Comment Re:The reason I got it (Score 1) 93

A problem (or rather a lack of a problem) in my state are fixed rate utilities. kWh are the same price during peak usage as middle of the night and the rate is quite low compared to much of the US so batteries don’t make sense from a power savings perspective. About the only thing it provides is uninterrupted power during outages but the problem there is infrastructure around here is well regulated and down times are exceedingly rare and when they do happen statistically last only a few minutes. In two decades we have only lost power twice that lasted over 24 hours.

Comment Re: The reason I got it (Score 2) 93

again though, you're kind of gambling that a hurricane isn't going to trash your panels).

Haven't they invented home insurance in Florida yet? I guess then no one should build anything.

Getting insurance dramatically changes depending on home construction. If you have a ground level 60s style house where they took regular building practices and simply put it on a beach or within a hundred or so miles of the ocean then you get total destruction and unaffordablity. However, if you put it high on stilts that are 18’ above high tide on the coasts to avoid surges (height depends on location), use hurricane proof windows, siding, roofing, and internal bracing, etc. The cost may go over double per square foot but it will survive hurricanes largely without substantial damage the majority of the time. You can actually see aftermath videos where ground level old construction homes are completely absent and modern construction stilted homes are unscathed and they used to be neighbors after a major hurricane.

Comment Re:Probably for the better in the long run (Score 3, Interesting) 111

I'm not sure, but pretty confident, the new image of what we're dealing with will be actually worse than what's been generally presented as the "consensus" so far.

I have been following climate science from the 80s and the most consistent thing has been what we’re dealing with actually is worse than what’s been the “consensus” so far. Not to say an administration hostile to inconvenient facts and logical reasoning isn’t a problem, but science in general across all fields tends to resist change in ideas. Going against the established precedent is difficult (and this isn’t always bad), but it does take a long time and when it impacts how people live their lives this change always seems to greatly lag behind where logical reasoning from facts places us. It’s part of the human condition.

Comment Re:skeptical astrophysicist (Score 3, Interesting) 21

The big deal here is the signal to noise ratio was close to 70, whereas most mergers are 20 or less. This lets scientists see the merger, or chirp signal, with much better fidelity. While it’s true it’s not necessarily a smoking gun of any particular new insight, getting cleaner and stronger measurements is what will ultimately show what spacetime is actually doing so that it can be compared to theory.

Comment Re:Better description, please (Score 4, Informative) 21

What’s left off this article is the technicality of what an event horizon is, for there are several types depending on how you look at it. For example, there is the formal event horizon, which is the boundary across which light rays internal to it won’t reach outward but this is nebulous and spread out across space and time. Then there is the apparent horizon, which is the colloquial one people are more familiar with that is the schwarzchild radius static in a moment of time and space that is the boundary where light rays can’t escape from. When two black holes merge, as the two separate horizons approach each other, the localized spacetime can become closed off from the rest of the visible universe without passing either of those two radiuses and before they merge because the average mass in that spacetime vicinity forms a horizon around the two merging black holes. PBS Spacetime has a nice episode on it. Detailed measurements of mergers will give us a better understanding of the entire picture of how these events play out and shape spacetime.

Still, without being in the gravitational-wave field, it's still pretty hard to see what all the fuss is about.

Ha, just like being close to a supernova can cause such extreme neutrino flux you can actually die of radiation from it interacting with your body, being within a couple of horizon widths of the merger can probably put such excessive stress on your body from the force of sloshing space time as to actually kill you. Which is kind of insane.

Comment Re:Forget it, Jake (Score 2) 74

it's Slashdot.

User name checks out, plus that’s correct. This is a purchased ad to raise investment for a 3m dollar ultrasonic emitter array to replace a 5k dollar chunk of high resistance conductor. It’s also the reason why it’s unlikely to make it to coffee shops or homes until the emitters become fantastically cheap. It’s also why ultrasonic cleaners (this is a glorified one) are so damn expensive.

Comment Re: Caveat emptor (Score 1) 57

For accuracy's sake the people in Titan didn't drown. Given how fast it happened they would have been simultaneously roasted and crushed.

This isn’t specifically accurate. The intruding water proceeded at the speed of sound in the sea, far faster than the speed of sound in air (1500 m/s+). From the ideal gas law (which holds up until molecular bonds break or are made in this case and even then is mostly right if you add that back in) means half the volume is twice the absolute temperature meaning the air temperature would definitely reach insane values. However it’s even less time than the event which was, given about 1m from the walls tops for passengers, much less than 1 millisecond. Air is clear until it reaches insane temperatures so it’s a poor absorber/emitter of thermal radiation at those volumes/distances meaning it had to be direct thermal transfer for a good chunk of the heat transfer. All in all it’s not much different from tying someone to a cannon and firing, you might find some slight evidence of singeing but only after you find enough pieces.

Comment Re:Wait a minute (Score 1) 69

This is the same line of thinking behind why the monument reflection pool was painted blue, despite actual experts saying it would only warm the water and make the algae problem worse without major infrastructure improvement to the water filtering. Well, they don’t believe in glowpool warming. Instead, it was a scam no-bid contract for massive profit to the same company who flooded mar-a-lago so the security footage couldn’t be used. Just assuming stupidity or contradiction of belief isn’t going to give the full picture when they don’t care about anything but money.

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