Disqus - Latest Comments for Daniel Haran

Re: Saving Money On Startups

Daniel Haran — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 18:54:54 -0000

Any thoughts on his advice to fire anyone that isn't a workaholic?

Re: Diplomacy By Humor

Daniel Haran — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 12:08:09 -0000

Wow, Hulu is lame: "We're sorry, currently our video library can only be streamed within the United States."

Re: Paying Lip Service to Failure Is Not Enough

Daniel Haran — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 19:47:56 -0000

If we reduce this to a lottery, failure is useless. In this case Phil learned a lot, and he won't do things the same way. No doubt there will be fewer founders next time, and one of them will have technical expertise. He'll do more market research, and know his target market has money and will be repeat customers.

His odds for next time went up.

Re: Standout Jobs Goes Live!

Daniel Haran — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 11:02:30 -0000

Hi Rebecca- we have that coming soon! :)

Re: Introducing ActivePresenter: The presenter library you already know.

Daniel Haran — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 11:17:00 -0000

@Eric Anderson: If you can avoid multi-object creation, then more power to you. This is indeed only for rare cases - although I think you confuse things by calling it a mixin. Check out the link macournoyer to get a better sense of what this encapsulates.

Re: Introducing ActivePresenter: The presenter library you already know.

Daniel Haran — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 11:17:00 -0000

Re: Sharp's 24-Hour Kitchen Composter

Daniel Haran — Wed, 02 Mar 2005 22:49:27 -0000

Is it just me or does "Plasmacluster Ions" (TM) sound rather silly?

The environmental cost-benefit is probably not great (95W per composter!), but it sure beats sending it to landfill. There you still end up with methane in the atmosphere, and leachate that's hard to deal with. I don't mind burying plastics and paper, but organics have to be separated.

It would be interesting if these could be built big enough for an entire neighbourhood.

Re: Sharp's 24-Hour Kitchen Composter

Daniel Haran — Thu, 03 Mar 2005 11:54:29 -0000

Environmental accounting is an interesting proposition, however we can't simply count CO2 equivalents alone. The mainstream environmental thinking as far as garbage goes is simple: (rethink), reduce, separate the toxics (batteries, paints, cleaners), move on to large volume and easily separated items (household organics, paper, glass, metals). Considerations of habitat, cost of alternatives... the environmental cost-benefit isn't straightforward accounting if there ever was such a thing.

Putting benign items in a landfill to be able to sequester carbon simply isn't worth making a toxic mess. The best solutions simplify the problem into smaller parts rather than make it intractable.

This gadget is interesting in that it does keep nearly half the garbage out of landfills. That reduces a lot of unnecessary transport, and increases the useful life of landfills, making them less stinky, hazardous and easier to "mine" later on.

It is hardly an optimal situation- the cost of producing and running the units is probably too high compared to larger scale alternatives. The neighbourhood approach is one I suggested after being disappointed by the smell of green bins in my city- a convenient drop location that did not smell or require as much transportation would be great.

Overall, this is impressive gadgetry, and I hope it will get people thinking more about alternative ways of dealing with half our garbage.