We are talking mental batteries here?

1. Sleeping.

2. Getting clean. Swimming in a lake is the best, sauna is second and shower gets you clean too. Clean clothes are needed too for maximum benefit.

3. Reading a novel works. It can get you a feeling of solitude in company. I would not have gotten through military service without military library. Curiously internet does not work, no matter what I read here. And the novel does not even have to be good.

4. Going to a place I can call home.

5. Good company.

Curiously caffeine has zero affect on me in this regard. I think writing this down was really helpful for me, thanks lil. I think I'm next going to log off, shower, read a little and sleep in place I call home.

I really don't see a problem here. This article finds some dick pics, but fails to prove they have taken over Wikimedia. Who's surprised that you find dick pics in internet?

If the majority is somehow usable content, is there really a problem?

Honestly? The guy didn't really say anything insightful.

The deal is this. There is something like 200 million American internet users while there is 400 million European internet users. At the same time China and India are growing.

You can keep serving those 200 million Americans as long as you wish, but if the rest of the worlds privacy is raped in the process, they might opt to use some other services than yours. Good luck with that trade deficit.

As a Finnish my first thought about this was that: "Obama stole all my private data. Can I vote for the next U.S. president now?".

There was already some article in Finnish news paper celebrating that our domestic cloud business might have a growth spurt because of this. But I'd look to Switzerland for that.

HN is only social if you speak hacker.

The release of water vapour at the surface of leaves through transpiration is sufficient to draw the column of water from the roots to the leaves.

Only if the tree is less than 10m tall. 10m tall water column will boil from the top if it's only pumped from the top. The roots and the capillary effect pump it too, he mentions the capillaries but not the effect.

There are other cool features of wood the author does not mention. Wood in nature is prestressed because the inner wood dries more than the outer.

http://www.doitpoms.ac.uk/tlplib/wood/structure_wood_pt3.php

If you compare strength, a good piece of wood can beat some high strength steels (500MPa) in strength/weight ratio. Problem is the high variation of wood.

I've always wondered why kids are "punky eaters".

Personally I remember doing it only once. I had to eat buck-load of hot porridge and my mother didn't eat anything.

My little brother did it all the time. He had some authority problems, and he was hooked to candy. He ate sandwiches before lunch and candy afterwards, so there was no need to eat. He was supposed to grow taller than me but he only got fatter than me.

Do you eat the same stuff than your kid? Does she get candy?

Signed up on HN 1518 days ago.

It used to be so much better. There was insightful articles about everything. It was so good time-sink it might have hindered my studies. Then first Y-combinator companies got some money and it changed.

I used to be scout leader. The most active kids we're always thin and they always ate candy and drank lots of coke.

Could the reason for ADHD be simpler than we think? Just sugar and caffeine. Combine that with no fat reserves, you know how kids go wild when they are tired.

Clockwork orange by Anthony Burgess.

You get to know evil and he is Max. The weird thing about him it is that you'll probably like him. At the same time the book has nice critique of justice system, city life and the society as a whole.

After reading it, I've been certain that moral behavior and feeling s don't have much to do with each other. People need robust principles to guide their morals. Why? You just felt amusement while someone was gang-raped.

Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman.

It's exciting and after you have read it, hobos look little different. For me it was a story about how cool life can be and yet it can look very indifferent to an outsider.

"We are slowing down population growth because of education, gender equality, the rural-to-urban transition, and birth control." You forgot AIDS. And they are developing medicines for it.

"And in order to ensure that the developing world's economic growth continues, we must ensure that we transition to a new energy economy and avoid major nation-state wars." Ensuring economic growth quite probably ensures ecological footprint growth. So we will eat our natural reserves without having tens of billions of population. And why would civil wars be any better?

The western world with modern arms probably would not take population bomb as their own problem. What does it matter then? Human suffering in developing world because of starvation.

They are developing aids medicine, global warming is decreasing arable land area and so is erosion. And fertilizer prizes are probably going to rise.

"Ultimately, technology frees us from one task so we can focus on another. Boudreaux again, “As was true 200 years ago, the falling costs of satisfying some wants (such as those for food and clothing) enable us to turn our attention to satisfying other wants, many of which today were unimaginable to our 19th-century ancestors.”"

My professor told us that you can look things other way around: Automation is not destroying jobs, it's just allowing single person to produce more. Maintenance free factory is still a far fetched dream.

At some point it's not just "more" as a quantity, we have advanced in complexity too. Than one guy spent years to build a toaster from scratch, imagine how hard it would be to produce a smart-phone without automation?

You might think that people doing new stuff would be paid less? What is most important? Food. Are farmers rich? No. Just doing something important matters less and less, being able to replicate it to lots of people matters more and more.

It's legal to buy gasoline, fertilizer and matches. With IED's are potentially lot more hazardous than 3D printed guns.

Barrel is hardest to make. And currently only part that is not easily printed.

I feel about pets just like you. I just never talk about it because I'm interpreted as pet hater. And few people are as fierce as haters of pet haters.

People from north Yugoslavia in 1991 probably thought it would be pointless for the Yugoslavian government to attack them. Actually majority of all Yugoslavians probably thought so. Algerians probably thought so too and Libyans and Egyptians.

If you wish to look at democracy that fell to junta, check out Burma. And here is story about failed junta. It failed because of widespread civil disobedience.

Now if you think about the year 2015 or 2030 I think you are completely right. But your constitution has stood for more than 200 years. What will U.S. look in the year 2213? What kind of laws you should now have to ensure a nice democratic state? You don't have marines vs. army and air force vs. navy just because it's handy to separate these things. You have your force divided to four sectors so that it would be difficult for military junta to form simultaneously at every military sector.

Here in Finland the setting is completely different. Government doesn't have that bad monopoly of violence as it relies on civilian reserves for defense. And we don't have two party system.

PS. Then there is bad stuff that doesn't require an actual attack. How would you feel if government would issue obligatory surveillance cameras to every household?

Wikipedia may get you long way these days.

I'm studying to be a mechanical engineer because I'd like to be a product design engineer someday. What have I found from wikipedia?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoekens_linkage

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maraging_steel

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_metamaterials

I may not use any of these ever, but stuff like this keeps me motivated and helps me to know what can be done.

Toys and TV already effected the last.

I guess it's about smart parenting. When I was young our computer only had one game on it. After I got bored to that, I invented my own games using microsoft paint. First I draw this miniature submarine in minecraft style. Then single clicks of that spray paint tool were depth charges. I think I should thank my parents for letting me wait a year for Age of Empires.

I guess my point is that it's not bad to have tools, it's bad to have too much entertainment.

I've heard many times something like: "Russia is always better armed than Finland, they win anyhow so I'm not going to armed service."

Personally I feel it's not matter of winning. It's matter of not being a sitting duck. Being able to do at-least something works probably as a deterrent.

Yes it's different with U.S. government vs U.S. civilian population. But how much and for how long?

Umm. I'm from the country of the strict gun law.

Shotguns are here often semi automatic. As semiautomatic shotgun with a clip of two is lighter than double barreled shotgun and easier to operate than pump action. Two quick shots are sometimes very important when shooting birds to ensure quick death.

Target shooters sometimes like semi automatic. Imagine playing darts with single dart. Doesn't it seem kind of frustrating to walk to the board after every throw? Target shooters might wish to concentrate making a good series without loading movement breaking their sight picture between every shot.

By any chance did you mean "full-automatics"?

PS. Personally I don't understand who the hell needs a muzzle loader. Or a bow. Or a Bowie knife. And baseball to me doesn't seem fun enough to justify baseball bats. And I certainly don't understand why anyone ever would need a Dodge Viper.

That is really crap AK-47. Are you suggesting that there should be some minimum standard on riffle accuracy? I could not agree more.

There is group A. who don't want anyone killed and who don't own arms. And group B. who want to go to the range blinking any now and then, and who don't either want to get anyone killed.

Everybody agrees that people should not die because of guns. I don't think anyone really believes that guns would actually save lives. But I have not seen any reliable data that legally owned guns would cause statistically significant damage. And you have to remember that everything has a price, people die in traffic because it's nicer to travel 60mph than 30mph. In traffic, convenience of many is more important than lives of few.

There are the illegal weapons. Everybody agrees that these are a problem. Something could be done with decent firearm registration, so there would be a way to track if a gun is illegal or not. The group B doesn't want this to happen, as it's afraid that once group A knows the exact amount and location of their weapons, they are going to get and destroy those legal firearms. So group B throws around all kinds of shit arguments to divert group A. And inside group A the totalitarian gun stripping nuts are the most vocal dudes. I think the group B last stand plan is to simply hide much of their now legal weaponry if the law changes suddenly. So the group A does not want to move quickly.

The 2. states quite clearly that Feds can't do much about it. This should be played as a good thing for group A. If group A would say that it's completely fine that government doesn't interfere with civilian gun ownership, that would calm down group B. Then take the whole thing to state level. If some state would actually organize some sort of militia and arm that militia, could the feds anymore have any say about guns in that state?

If state gun politics is to be considered, one should remember that banning something is same as giving up all control over that thing. You can't tax, track or regulate something that's illegal. (yes this goes for drugs too)

It's the politician who passed it who is speaking. Surprise he finds it success?

Here is a chart from a study about gun deaths in Australia. The major thing here is lack of mass shootings. Otherwise violence trends were falling already.

Here is current Australian gun law: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_Australia

Finnish gun law has been as strict since or stricter 1998. Gun ownership has required permit since 1933.

1969 Pihtipudas cop killings. Four dead.

1998 * law changes *

2007 Jokela school shootings. Legal weapon. Seven dead.

2008 Kauhajoki school shootings. Legal weapon. Ten dead.

2009 Sello shots. Illegal weapon. Four dead.

Mass murders seem to follow some sort of weird fashion. When there is one, second is on it's way. Strict gun-law did help in Finland. The police knew that both these school shootings happened with .22lr semiautomatic pistol, and as that cannot penetrate body armour SWAT could have made a charge. But it was too late. I did not include bombings to keep this clear.

I think they might be from here. http://nikneuk.deviantart.com/gallery/