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just sent you a note Carter . . . this is something close to my heart :-)


Yeah. . . on vacation and can't stop listening. My gf is a doubter. I'm not :)


Nice job. . . I looked for kite boarding spots in Puerto Rico and everything showed up. I really like the clean UI too.


Hey Chris. . . given the novel nature of your product (it looks very sleek btw) and you're looking to gather feedback, maybe we can talk using askhumans.io to gather feedback at scale? also, many years ago, I worked on compressed air energy storage on the demand side and we looked at co-generation opportunities to drive the caes turbines. anyways, would love to connect.


It seems like the reporting is that two out of three objects are said not to be balloons. I don’t know of any terrestrial technology that can be that large (size of car) aloft for multiple hours/days that hovers. Am I correctly groking the news here?


No, you're not. The descriptions are consistent with these objects being balloons or dirugibles. The terrestrial technology that can keep a cylinder the size of a car afloat for days is called "hydrogen".


I don’t think this is correct… a thousand cubic feet of hydrogen is 68lbs of buoyancy at sea level.

A cylinder that was 20’ long, and 5’ in radius (which is a lot bigger than my minivan - would be about 1570 cubic feet.

That could lift about 100lbs at sea level… at flight level 400… that’s going to have to be a huge balloon to lift 100 lbs or the payload has to be tiny tiny - which is possible but I don’t think something the size of a car is adequate.


Which do you think is the most likely explanation?

1. A lighter than air craft or drone with a small payload

2. A man-made object that uses unknown physics

3. Aliens

I know everyone wants a cooler answer, but I see way too many people being irrational here.


> A cylinder that was 20’ long, and 5’ in radius

Your are dramatically underestimating the size of these things:

The Chinese high-altitude balloon shot down over the Atlantic off the coast of South Carolina over the weekend was 200 feet tall and carried a payload the size of a regional airliner, a U.S. Air Force general said in a briefing on Monday.

The balloon's superstructure and hardware weighed "in excess of a couple thousand pounds," said Gen. Glen VanHerck, commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command.

https://www.newsweek.com/china-spy-balloon-size-200-ft-jet-a...

Here's a similar sized one NASA put up a few years ago: https://remus.jpl.nasa.gov/balloon.htm


I wouldn't make any conclusions yet given that they haven't recovered the wreckage yet.

That being said, ultralight glider technology is actually really good. It is plausible with ultralight materials you could build a car-sized thing, put it on some kind of solar-powered glider and keep it in the air for a long time.


this is what I'm seeing as well.

pilot selection of aim9 over guns due to difficulty/risk of engagement is concerning. would really like recoverable intel, or at least some more detailed assessment prior to engagement.

I'm assuming this information is just not being released, but it begs for obvious scrutiny.

we want a picture


Car sized balloons. Gliders. "Hover" is conjecture.


I say hover because the pentagon is saying the same object was seen twice in two days. . . The day before it was in Montana then 24 plus hours later in Michigan.

“A unidentified object has been shot down by U.S. forces over Lake Huron, according to the Department of Defense. The object appears to be the same object that had been detected over Montana a day earlier, said officials.“

https://www.npr.org/2023/02/12/1156428862/us-shoot-down-ufo-...


"Hover" implies more directional control than a balloon would have, the ability to stay in one spot. So far all the descriptions are consistent with just regular floating.


Funny, we're literally launching a new project today that allows for distributed focus groups. We haven't changed over the DNS -- here's the Heroku link (https://opinion-graphs-website.herokuapp.com)

How we got here: for a while we had been struggling with breaking through on another project that user voice input to measure sentiment for office space.

Last week, we took a step back and thought that having a tool that could allow start-ups to ask opened ended questions where people could just "talk" and what they said is analyzed for sentiment would be valuable. So that's what we're building with OpinionGraphs. IMHO this is directly in the vein of PG's points about learning from users.

With whatever you're building, if you're interested in trying a new way to connect to users or targeted customers along the lines of PG's advice, please dm me or just leave a comment here and I'll reach out.


I've looked into getting a place in Mexico and one thing is financing. The only option is 50% down -- which is a big bummer.

Are you offering any financing that's more similar to a 15 yr or 30 yr mortgage?


Ya financing in Mexico is a big challenge. We do offer a financing option, but not for the entire amount unfortunately. We are actively looking to partner with banks and funds to be able to offer longer financing options. Stay tuned!


This might be a solution: https://www.carrom.io


Anyone know how long it takes for your general $2000 laptop to have the power of a past super computer?


Wow. Would have thought that reporters would have done the lookup that you did. And explained their absent record. Several other outlets are running with the story too.


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