While it seemed high, if you have a 1 floor building, and a 10 floor building you have floors ((1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 7 + 8 + 9 +10) + (1)) / 11 = 5 floor average height.
Not: Average the building heights (10 + 1) / 2 = 5.5 and then cut that in half = 2.75 average floor height.
PS: Put another way a 1 story building has 1 floor of people a 100 floor building has 100 floors of people so the average person is not evenly split between both buildings. So, 100 1 story buildings and 1 100 story building average to 50 floors. (+/- and off by 1 errors as you go up 99 floors to reach 100th floor, but people also go to basements.)
That random post is way off. I was curious and even if you only include buildings 10 stories and up, the average is under 20. And if you have ever been to the boroughs, you would know that there are many houses and buildings under 10 stories.
The percentages seem more informative to me, since they are meaningful across different locations. If you don't know what 40% of a home price is in your area, do some research.
I believe that they are not meaningful across locations. Things like solar arrays and bathtubs have a similar cost around the country, but house prices can vary wildly.
This is plausible, but would imply that improvements like these would be more common in lower-house-cost areas, since they'd make a "bigger" difference. That doesn't seem to be the case.
Very nice! One thing I always loved about Nintendo games is that you can usually just pop them in and start playing. No dragged out tutorials, setups, etc.
Because atoms that come from a renewable resource that can be sourced locally are preferred over atoms from non-renewable resources that come from distant lands.
Why? What difference does it make? We don't have a shortage of atoms.
From your reply and others I can see why they did this. People actually believe it makes a difference.
The environment is doomed. I'm sorry, but if people can't even tell the difference between something that helps the environment, and something that makes no difference, then I don't see how we'll ever make things better.
It’s like pointing out that electric vehicles are still dependent on fossil fuel power networks for their energy. It’s true, but misses the point that one of the requirements in transitioning to a sustainable economy is decoupling energy production methods from consumption methods. Fossil fuel as the input to a car is bad; fossil fuel as the input to a power plant, that produces electricity that is the input to a car is not perfect, but it is better. Similarly, plastics sourced from biological sources are better.
> Similarly, plastics sourced from biological sources are better.
What makes them better? Seriously. What is better about cycling them through a plant first?
You need hydrogen and carbon to make that plastic. You can get them from anywhere, it makes no difference whatsoever if a plant hold them for a while first.
This is just absurdly overdramatic and frankly, insufferable. Why do you expect the general public and media reporters to know offhand about polymer chemistry? Why does their lack of this knowledge doom the environment?
You had a chance to amicably and clearly educate others about the misleading connotations of the term "bioplastic" and instead you launched into some kind of weird tirade. This is why society needs better science communicators.
Weird tirade? It might be tirade, but it's not weird. I'm just tired of people claiming "I'm green", while actually being worse for the environment.
> Why does their lack of this knowledge doom the environment?
Because people change their behavior based on what they find out. So it looks like legos are now "better" for the environment, because the plastic touched a plant.
But not only does it not make a difference, it's actually worse for the environment.
It reminds me of when BMW used hydropower to make electricity to each ovens for carbon fiber manufacturing.
Guess what? That's worse for the environment! Electricity is a very inefficient way to heat things. Save that electricity for where it's needed and heat your ovens with natural gas.
Instead someone else is making electricity with natural gas, and the total environmental impact is higher. But then of course BMW doesn't get to falsely claim "we're green".
> Why do you expect the general public and media reporters to know offhand about polymer chemistry?
I expect the reporter to ask a chemist. Go check and see if Lego's claim holds any water.
> Why do you expect the [...] media reporters to know offhand about polymer chemistry?
I don't expect that all media reporters have a Ph.D. in chemistry, but it would be nice that they check the information with an expert instead of just copy&paste whatever PR the company sends to them.
After all, there should be a difference between a serious newspaper with real journalist and a random dude with a blog...
I'm not going to subscribe so I can read one article every month or two. If WSJ wants to ignore the long tail of potential readers that's their right, but we shouldn't be condoning it by posting links here on HN.
The mods have been clear on the HN policy regarding paywalls:
From a recent comment by 'dang:
> "The paywalls suck, of course, but banning NYT, WSJ, Economist, New Yorker, and all other such publications would suck worse. I realize not everyone agrees with this, but it seems the right call to me, which doesn't mean I like it any more than you do."
WSJ has changed their paywall policy over time, so I don't expect any policy written in the past to be optimal for the current reality - which is no access without a subscription, period. I know NYT allows a limited number of articles per month, and I'm fine with that. Don't know about the other two but I don't remember having any trouble accessing them.
If you already have a subscription to WSJ I expect that you'd be a heavy enough user that you don't need a HN link to inform you of content to check out.
> "so I don't expect any policy written in the past"
The comment I quoted is from 20 days ago, and the mods tweak policies with some regularity. 'dang commented specifically on the WSJ just over two weeks ago here:
> "WSJ is an edge case, but paywalls with workarounds are ok "
They're well aware of the situation. Yeah, paywalls are frustrating, and the mods are handling it as they deem best for HN. That's not to say it won't change in the future, of course.
