Why Energy Storage Is About to Get Big – And Cheap - <AUTHOR> http://rameznaam.com/2015/04/14/energy-storage-about-to-get-big-and-cheap/ <comment><USER2> One of the best things about the solar/wind + storage combination is that it's decentralized and cheap at small scale. This makes serious electrification of remote and impoverished places viable. It reminds me of the wildfire spread of cell service in places that didn't have phones before, only on a larger and more important scale. Give a village cheap electricity, and awesome things will happen.

This gets to another point that bugs me in these discussions... the pushback against wind/solar dominance by the pro-nuclear crowd. Insisting that nuclear power is the right way to go is western-centric. It's fine for the US, Europe, Japan, and other advanced nations that have the infrastructure to support it. But is it a solution for Peru? For Somalia? Of course not. Wind/solar/storage, on the other hand, is totally viable as a solution for even the poorest nations. This alone is an argument for solar over nuclear.

<comment><USER3> I wrote a couple pro-nuclear comments here. I'm perfectly happy with wind and solar and think we should roll it out as fast as we can, as well as nuclear.

Many of the wind/solar advocates, on the other hand, are strongly anti- nuclear. Given the state of the climate that just doesn't make sense to me. All these technologies have their own advantages, and we should use each where it's most effective.

<comment><USER4> Technologies also have risks. If the risk of a technology is the vast devastation of life it should not be used.

<comment><USER5> Compared with the vast devastation of life which is already taking place as a result of climate change? I'll take my chances with the nukes.

<comment><USER6> Human life? Is it? Remember famines that used to regularly wipe out the peasants in most civilizations? It's been a while since disasters on those scales happened in most countries. Climate change doesn't sound so bad when you compare it to normal life a few centuries ago.

<comment> saiya-jin yes and no... climate change is not about having +2 degrees globally, we can handle that easily even if sea rises significantly. Not even about extinction of a lot of species, which will trash some foodchains around the world. It's more about longer perspective - some effects are cascading, and in longer uncontroleld run, we might end up with pretty much inhabitable planet (at least for mankind). Life itself will handle this easily, mass extinctions happened many times in the past for various reasons, mankind in its current level of evolution would be probably over.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If we do get cheap scalable energy storage, it's pretty much game over (in the long run) for everything but solar and wind. We are basically drenched in free energy, but we can't store it cheaply enough. If that's fixed, we're done here.

Nuclear fission may still have on-paper advantages in some markets/climates, but the high PITA (pain in the aXX) factor would probably mean we wouldn't bother going there. We'd just build transmission lines, more solar/wind, and more storage even if it were marginally more expensive just to avoid the headaches of nuclear energy.

<comment><USER8> Well one stumbling block is that we need to get thousands more people trained to service these energy storage facilities, let alone the windmills and solar panels. There is already a shortage there as the skill set is not one side, part electrician, part mechanical engineer, and so on.

<comment><USER9> Fortunately, solar photovoltaic doesn't need servicing.

Energy is big business, revenue will be there for servicing once market share is there.

<comment><USER10> Solar photovoltaic probably needs more servicing per kWh than any other method. If those panels aren't clean, you don't get the expected return.

<comment><USER11> I predict at some point that something like an roomba for solar panels might spring into existence...

<comment><USER12> They actually already exist. Google "solar panel cleaner robot" or similar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If there's a legitimate arbitrage opportunity for individual homeowners to buy a battery and charge it overnight to cover peak costs, there should be an even stronger case for energy companies to buy larger batteries, install them in low-land-cost areas, and do the thing themselves. If these peak plants are so expensive, then a major utility can save money using batteries rather than peak plants.

The cost should be lower for a utility to do this than for individual homeowners to do so for equal capacities.

So I ask are we seeing this behavior?

On a slightly different note, it doesn't seem that the article is addressing vehicles. Battery powered cars are not yet practical enough for the mainstream, and aircraft are still entirely dependent on the energy density of hydrocarbon fuels.

I could see batteries becoming feasible for cars "soon" with the current rate of advance, but charging stations don't make sense to me. You want easily accessed battery packs in cars and battery-swap stations. This is a huge infrastructure change, but for out-of-city travel (i.e. a trip where you would need to charge before you get to your destination), you want the equivalent of a gas station, which is 1-10 minutes for a stop, not 45+.

As for aircraft, I don't see them using batteries soon.

<comment> mark-r I think you missed the part about studies that make the case that utilities could be doing this today. Utilities are conservative though, I don't expect them to jump in with both feet right away.

<comment><USER13> > This is, of course, speculative. We don't know if the study findings scale > to the whole of the United States. It's back of the envelope math. Atop > that, the study itself is an analysis, which is not the same value as > experience.

Hence my question. Do we actually see any utilities making steps in this direction?

<comment><USER2> They're openly talking about it. Let's look again in ten years, given the lead time, conservatism, and regulatory concerns at this scale. "Fail fast" isn't really an option for the grid the way it is for software startups.

<comment><USER13> I realize I may have come across somewhat pugnaciously above. I am honestly curious about this, though.

What utilities/where are talking about this right now? What level of talk are we talking about? Public statements? Designs? Construction permits in the works?

<comment><USER14> My research has shown that while many utilities have purchased storage (SCE 250 mW in 2014[1]) it's still very experimental and they do it mostly for research purposes or publicity or because the regulator makes them. However, since the electricity business is slow moving, low margin and very capital intensive it's clear why everyone is very interested in any new potentially disruptive technology. Imagine owning a peaker power plant that you've paid for in full using debt and generates a little profit each year under the condition that it can be amortized for 15 more years - if someone built the equivalent of a peaker plant made of batteries, even in 2025, you'd still go under. Scary.

[1] [http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/the- top-10-energ...](http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/the- top-10-energy-storage-stories-of-2014)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> One problem that will surface is that the cost of our transmission infrastructure will have to be covered, one way or the other. Currently, with net metering, customers are able to arbitrage power at the retail price, while effectively making use of the grid for both pushing and pulling load. This would be like flying a round-trip from San Jose to Tokyo and back to SFO, and claiming that you only owe the airline for the Caltrain fare up the peninsula.

The other issue is that our current infrastructure isn't designed for peer-to- peer transmission, with neighborhoods pumping large amounts of power into the transmission lines during peak solar hours. Some areas of Hawaii have had to put a moratorium on installing rooftop solar to prevent potential damage to the branch circuits.

Long story short, it's not simply a matter of storage costs undercutting retail power costs, there are also maintenance costs for the grid that are invariant on demand, which will have to get paid one way or the other.

<comment><USER16> I think you misunderstood something in this article. The only stored power that would be on the grid would be from the power companies themselves, not the end users. End users wouldn't resell the power, they'd use it themselves.

<comment><USER17> The growth of distributed solar + storage (i.e., zillions of residences having 10kW arrays and 25kWhr storage) is accelerating. Projections I've seen suggest that this distributed storage (which doesn't belong to the power companies) will be far larger than utility-scale storage such as discussed in the article. This presents real challenges in how to control that distributed storage and pay its owners for storage-related grid services.

<comment> bjelkeman-again Why can't it just be a feed-in tariff? And if the consumer can consume using the network they can produce, in the other direction. The cable runs both ways, no?

<comment><USER17> It can be, but that doesn't capture the value a consumer with fast response, controllable generation/storage supplies to the grid. Compensating the consumer for power or storage they supply at a particular time is complicated.

Existing net metering pays a fixed rate for power supplied to the grid by, say, a solar-equipped residential grid customer.

But in fact, fast response power delivered to the grid when the grid managers call for it commands much higher prices in the dynamic electric power market. So does the ability to store power on demand (absorb power from the grid), when generation briefly exceeds supply.

So imagine a residential grid customer with local solar + storage that's controllable by the ISO (grid managers). Rather than net metering (a fixed feed-in tariff), the ISO should pay instantaneous market rate for power delivered, or absorbed by, the residential grid customer.

I think we'll soon converge on bidirectional power delivery/sink services that are controlled by either the ISO or perhaps by local smarts on the resident's grid-tie interface. That would engage the resident's system as a grid stability enhancement tool, and would bring more revenue to the resident than simple feed-in tariff schedules. One assumes the resident would participate by an opt-in choice in exchange for enhanced revenue.

<comment> bjelkeman-again Thanks, very informative. The biggest challenge seem to be that the current people running both te grid and power companies are so conservative that they seem to be the biggest blocker against something line this being created.

<comment><USER14> IMO It only seems that way. They do their best to stay on top of all new technology, but as consumers are used to _very_ high level of service (>99.99%) they can afford few risks if any.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It stands out to me that pumped storage only gets a passing mention. We've had that as a proven energy storage technology for decades. People in the industry love to talk about it and file FERC applications for preliminary permits on the same sites over and over (I would know, I've had to read nearly all of them over the last year at work), but it's never deployed at the scale people expected.

It'll be interesting to see if if PSH ever really takes off, or if it really does get left in the dust by batteries and other things.

<comment><USER19> Pumped hydro _is_ virtually all deployed grid-scale storage -- 90%+ (and plus quite a bit as memory serves).

It's cheap, effective, scalable, and highly efficient.

It's also got limited sites and localized environmental impacts.

Where you been hiding?

<comment><USER18> It is most of deployed storage atm, but the bulk of that wasn't deployed recently. I'm staring at a very informative figure I just made last week that I can't share since it's a draft for a report, but if you glance at EIA 860 data you'll see the breakdown for storage by nameplate capacity is:

Battery - 0.7%

Compressed Air - 0.5%

Concentrated Solar Power Storage - 1.3% (which doesn't always exactly count)

Flywheels - 0.2%

Pumped Storage - 97.4%

You can also see that the average operational year for pumped storage is 1974, not anytime recent. You could weight the years by capacity, but most plants are pretty big, and it shouldn't change it too much. Also, pumped storage capacity only totals 21.6GW.

As for where I've been, I've just been stupidly busy. I keep meaning to jump back in, but I never seem to have the time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> >This leads to what seems to be a paradoxical situation. A battery that is more expensive than the average price of grid electricity can nonetheless arbitrage the grid and save one money. That's math.

Missing in the math is logic. If enough people do this, the price will even out and the arbitrage opportunity will vanish.

It's like an arbitrage trading a model that makes money when paper trading but loses money when live because the effects of live trades on the market wasn't considered.

<comment><USER21> The fact that an arbitrage opportunity will not always be available does not mean that arbitrage opportunity does not exist.

Also electricity companies would be very slow to adjust to reduced demand by lowering prices, making this work for longer than a naive analysis would predict.

<comment><USER22> >The fact that an arbitrage opportunity will not always be available does not mean that arbitrage opportunity does not exist.

Spotting a leftover cookie on the table means you will probably be able to get a free cookie. It doesn't mean that you have found a way to solve world hunger.

<comment><USER21> Everything you have said can be said about literally every possible opportunity to make money outside of those that leverage sweat equity.

If you want to say something about his idea that is specific you could add value.

For instance attempting this arbitrage is a risk transference since you are betting that the technology of batteries won't catch up before you have made back your capital investment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The other reason energy storage could get big in the next several years is an elevated risk of blackouts due to aggressive retirement of coal-fired power plants -- blackouts like the one in Washington last week that shut down several government agencies (e.g. the _Department of Energy_ ) and which was probably related to the shutdown of the Potomac River Generating Station.

<comment><USER24> Either that or more Gen3+ Nuclear. Why not both I would say.

<comment><USER25> Nuclear plants take years to build and have shitty failure scenarios. Best to stopgap coal until renewables take over with combined cycle natural gas plants, fueled by cheap natgas from fracking.

It's not perfect, but those natural gas plants will still be kept around as peaking plants and they're an order of magnitude cleaner than coal plants (as well as producing much less CO2 per unit of power generated).

<comment><USER26> > Nuclear plants take years to build and have shitty failure scenarios

That's only because we won't build any newer designs that don't have shitty failure modes and insist that we keep old reactors with very shitty failure modes online, though.

<comment><USER25> I don't disagree that we can build better designs. I disagree that we can build them quickly and cheap.

According to the OECD:

"As nuclear power plants are complex construction projects, their construction periods are longer than other large power plants. It is typically expected to take 5 to 7 years to build a large nuclear unit (not including the time required for planning and licensing)."

"Between 2002 and 2008, for example, cost estimates for new nuclear plant construction rose from between $2 billion and $4 billion per unit to $9 billion per unit, according to a 2009 UCS report, while experience with new construction in Europe has seen costs continue to soar."

<comment><USER23> All the modern design proposals are to mass-produce smaller units -- sometimes, completely sealed units -- which would then be installed several to a site, and maybe sent back to the manufacturer to be refurbished at periodic intervals. This is the "save money by mass production" economies-of-scale approach, as opposed to "save money by being more efficient with large custom- built plants" economies-of-scale approach which has failed the industry and led to many of those ballooning costs.

(Whether we have the regulatory wherewithal to go with that plan is another matter, but the very idea of reusing the same design over and over does help keep compliance costs down, and you can focus on site-selection costs.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> One thing that kept coming to mind while reading all of this article's details on different methods for storing and selling and buying power at the peaks and valley of pricing was this:

Electricity in our homes is so widespread and popular because it just works. We don't need to think short-term about how or when we use it (although we should and can if you want to). You flip a switch, the light comes on, and you flip the switch again when you're done.

In my mind, there are only two factors that need to be there for widespread adoption: the price needs to come down, and the battery or other storage medium needs to just disappear into the background of in-home electricity usage. Most people will just want to see a lower bill without any costs to their ease of use regarding electricity.

<comment> james-skemp Renters.

Every time I hear about advances in renewable energy I get a little sad. I've rented for the last decade plus, and unless I get married and decide to settle down, will probably continue to rent for the next decade plus.

Homeownership would allow me to take advantage of these sorts of advances, but so would the ability to take advantage of this as a renter.

Looks like only ~35% of US households rent, according to [http://www.nmhc.org/Content.aspx?id=4708%20](http://www.nmhc.org/Content.aspx?id=4708%20) , so perhaps that's why.

<comment> bjelkeman-again Where I live, in Sweden, you can. I purchased shares in a wind power coop. It feeds me all the electricity I need wherever I live in the country, at cost of production. And with interest rates at effective zero here the investment is significantly better than having the money in the bank.

<comment><USER12> Interesting. Would you mind posting details? I would like to know more, if it's possible in Germany, expected ROI etc.

<comment> bjelkeman-again A quick and dirty calculation: I bought 28 shares from OX2 windpower coop, which entitles me to 28,000 kWh at cost price. Which is what our house/home office uses per year. The price is about €700/share. But I bought shares from the market (people that want to sell their shares), which for some reason are cheaper. I paid about €590/share.

Over the last seven years (I haven't had my shares that long), the saving on cost of electricity, which is tax free, would have been about €960/year. Which is about 5.7% ROI /year. Better than bank rates but worse than index linked stock market investments (I think).

[http://www.ox2.com/en/wind-power/private-users/](http://www.ox2.com/en/wind- power/private-users/)

I don't think OX2 offer electricity in Germany, but maybe in Finland and Poland. Even if they did, it would also depend on how the German regulator has structured how this can work, as well as how taxation on this is structured.

<comment><USER12> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Push a train up a hill to store energy. Yes, someone is really doing this:

[http://www.aresnorthamerica.com/](http://www.aresnorthamerica.com/)

<comment><USER29> That uses more-or-less the same principle as pumped-storage hydroelectricity.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped- storage_hydroelectricity](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped- storage_hydroelectricity)

<comment><USER30> Except it takes a really big train to weigh as much as a lake.

Pumped hydro is unbelievable. Tour a pumped hydro facility if you ever get the chance, and ask about the economics. They're buying a dollar of energy at night in Spring and selling it on hot summer days for something like five hundred. (Probably not quite that much, but it was a crazy ratio, to the point where efficiency barely matters - also, free energy from rain!)

<comment><USER31> The ARES website claims that the cost of their train technology is only 60% of an equivalent pumped hydro facility [1]. This is pretty impressive, and I wonder how they do that. Maybe because a water pump is not just a turbine operating in reverse, and thus pumped hydro needs separate equipment for charging/discharging, whereas ARES can use the same?

[1] [http://www.aresnorthamerica.com/santa-barbara-energy- storage...](http://www.aresnorthamerica.com/santa-barbara-energy-storage- environmental-integrity)

<comment><USER30> Interesting.

From site: "3GW Regional Energy Storage Hubs. Energy capacity may range from 4 to 16 hours duration at full power output."

The 3GW is big but the duration is small, so I'd guess they're doing short term grid stabilization, competing more with flywheels than hydro. That's just a hunch, but if that were true, it'd explain how you could get something really effective without a lake-sized train. (Some videos online suggest they move a bunch of heavy cars on the same track independently, so they probably also get much more weight than a normal train.)

My limited understanding of pumped hydro specifically was that it really was basically just a turbine operating in two directions, crazy as that sounds. Even so though, I can easily imagine big cost savings just from not having to engineer around water. That stuff doesn't compress, you design or run these wrong and they'll just mercilessly explode: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hVUeNp3o3M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hVUeNp3o3M)

Being able to build anywhere is really neat too.

So, grid storage tends to fracture into a half dozen specific types of storage, all based on duration, spin up time, geography, fuel, etc. There are like 18 different tradeoffs, and you can specialize in any one of them. Pretty much any new grid storage technology is going to add to the field rather than displacing anything, because the grid needs arbitrage in basically all 18 different dimensions.

Thanks for the link. There are some cool ARES videos on youtube too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Let's calculate a bit.

> _Most flow battery companies have $100 / kwh capital cost as a target_

With typical power plants generating e.g. 500 MW 24 hours long, the storage is going to be 100000 $/MWh * 500 MW = 50M/hour. If we assume that a solar plant generates power for 12 hours, and the batteries feed the consumers for 12 more hours, it's going to be 600M for _storage alone_. The solar power plant with a peak power well above 500MW (to feed the day load + charge the batteries for the night) will cost you extra.

I still think that a Thorium molten salt reactor is a strong contender in a price landscape like this. (It also has a nice ability to burn our current stockpiles of radioactive waste from Uranium reactors.)

</comment><comment><USER33> One thing to add: Electric cars. They come with energy storage in-built.

By rough calculation, if 10% of cars in my city (Perth, Australia) were electric, their batteries could supply the entire city's demand for duration of about 2 hours (or 10% of demand for 20 hours etc). This could work really well for demand balancing and peak shaving - overcapacity (which in Perth is massive, since the policy is to maintain supply even on extremely hot days, when demand shoots up and generation capacity goes down) and spinning reserve could be tremendously reduced.

I suspect some good software and a little hardware will be needed to account for the owners' needs optimally.

<comment> bjelkeman-again There is going to be an interesting startup market around this is my prediction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Silly question perhaps… If alternative energy sources in combination with batteries increase independence from those who supply it, and reduced demand during peak times allows rates to fall, isn't there a point where investments in infrastructure (or maintenance thereof) will stop being profitable, etc etc.

<comment><USER17> Yes. This is the grid owners' nightmare at the moment. Their old business model is rapidly dissolving as the price of solar + storage falls ever further and more electricity users essentially disconnect from buying grid power. That revenue loss hits grid maintenance expenditures directly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Random idea, if batteries are cheap enough could we charge them up and ship them on trains back forth instead of building high voltage transmission lines?

<comment><USER36> I had the same thought reading the article, but after some thought, I doubt it.

Grid transmission can be as low as 0.5% per 100 miles already. Batteries lose about 10% of the energy by storing it, that leaves you with needing to go at least 2000 miles in order to make up the battery loss difference, plus needing the energy to move the batteries physically.

<comment><USER37> Float them down a river.

\s

<comment><USER10> True. They float plenty of coal on the rivers here in Pittsburgh

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> If utilities install these batteries near the last mile, would that also cut down on power outages during storms?

<comment><USER38> Probably not since most radial power systems are not designed to support islanded operation for a segment of the system. Grid batteries will likely be designed to automatically disconnect during grid outages just like distributed generation.

<comment><USER14> but grid-edge storage does help a bit to resiliency of grid.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> How lucky for me, I've just finished doing the same back of the envelope calculation for using a home storage system that would take advantage of Time- Of-Use rates, my conclusion was opposite - when he is concentrating on the gap between ~34c peak rate to ~15c minimum rate I've chosen to focus on the gap between the minimum rate to the ~19c standard tiered rate. the 3-4 cent difference means that you can only save, at the maximum, 3-4 cents per kwh consumed your storage. And storage is very far from this range. Nonetheless, I'm still very optimistic about other uses of storage and I am confident that I would find the right company to short, maybe a company that builds peaker plants.

</comment><comment><USER39> Shocked at the amount of support for nuclear here. Use the data - how much solar, wind and nuclear capacity had been installed in the last 5 years?

Nuclear is not getting cheaper, not significantly, so what does this imply for the next five years? The answers are obvious, and non nuclear.

New Zealand, where I live, declared itself nuclear free in 1984. We are currently generating 70-80% of our electricity using renewable/low/zero emission methods.

<comment><USER40> Apologies for the mobile link, but [0] says that in 2014 over 50% of your energy was from oil and coal. Have you a source on your claims? I know that many of the non-nuclear countries in Europe end up importing a lot of their power from neighbouring countries like France, who's main supply is nuclear.

The big advantage of nuclear is it's relatively safe and readily available. How many people have been killed in nuclear related incidents in the past 30 years vs people killed in coal mines, for instance?

[0] [http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_New_Zealand](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_New_Zealand)

<comment><USER41> Energy consumption != electricity consumption.

Regarding France, that argument works both ways.

And whatever advantages nuclear may or may not have, that doesn't matter if it's too expensive.

<comment><USER40> Ah, I missed the electricity part, sorry!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> If you haven't read Ramez's books, you're missing out. Check out Nexus, and then the sequels. Without a doubt, the best sci-fi I've read in a long time

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nexus_%28Ramez_Naam_novel%29](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nexus_%28Ramez_Naam_novel%29)

</comment><comment><USER43> Interesting though the Compressed Air storage could have some "interesting" failure modes.

Back when I was an Engineering Technician my thermo fluids lecturer commented that if the main reservoir for the labs compressed air system burst it would flatten the entire lab block.

</comment><comment><USER44> I don't know about that.

/r/april30th2015

</comment><comment><USER45> There's still more ROI for humanity in changing our consumption behavior.

There's resource limitations on lithium ion, lest we run into the same scenario.

<comment><USER46> Would you care to elaborate? I am not sure I understand your point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Got any real numbers to back that up? I'm guessing that it just feels good to bang on your chest and make that call. The reality is probably a lot different. How are all the megacities going to get enough solar and wind power, for example? Tokyo, NYC, Mexico City, Shanghai, etc. all running from solar? How big will the grid need to be to power NYC? Anyway, I'd love to see a deeper analysis and less chest pounding.

<comment><USER48> HN isn't where you go to _learn_ , HN is where you go to expand the realm of possible information for you to consume.

When you read a comment like the above, your response shouldn't be to demand for sources, your response should be to go research the topic on your own.

This site would be _much_ better if folks understood that HN itself isn't a place for someone to "get wonky".

On my debate team, we had a rule of "no wonking". HN would be a better place if it too had the same rule.

<comment><USER47> It certainly could and should be a place to learn. How do chest pounding statements add value, especially when they fall apart after the first question?

There are definitely a lot of knowledgable people who read this site. Why wouldn't you want them to contribute and take deeper dives? Superficial conversations are essentially noise.

<comment><USER48> If you don't see a qualitative potential difference between a quick reply (HN's comments section), and a well thought out article (HN submissions), then I can't help you.

HN comments sections _cannot_ be more than superficial. Anything more than superficial deserves to be put in a more accessible and readable place, as a topic in its own right.

<comment><USER47> Of course replies can be more than superficial. They can contain facts, historical perspective, personal experience, back of the envelope calculations, or qualitative statements from people with specific domain knowledge.

After a good HN discussion, there would be enough information for another blog.

<comment><USER48> No, they can't, because the folks who are commenting at what you think is that level are actually completely unqualified to do so.

The folks who _are_ qualified to write articles and papers on the topics that might interest you, do exactly that. There is no inherent value in wasting intellectual effort on an HN comment. The people who comment on HN are not the people who are the most qualified to speak on a topic in depth, or if they are, their efforts within HN's comment framework will be very limited, and most certainly hindered by the medium, not to mention the audience.

I am personally aware of a handful of _genuine_ experts on HN who comment on articles in their "wheelhouse", and they've _never_ risen to the level of their capabilities while doing so. I don't begrudge them this, it's unreasonable to think they're going to put in the level of effort in an HN comment they put into their professional work, but to suggest HN comments could ever rise to the level of what experts are capable of producing is not only naive, but also greedy, and perhaps more than a little lazy.

If you want to know more about a topic, that's _your_ responsibility. There are a _number_ of ways around which one could wander to learn more about what's currently known regarding a topic, and the folks who are experts and are commenting in HN don't have the time to go through the proper motions of releasing new information. Even if they had the time/inclination, they wouldn't do it here.

If you take nothing else away from my comment, consider the following: This (HN comments section) is a back channel, if anything. You don't scrutinize a back channel, you verify it independently.

You're putting HN on a pedestal. Don't do that.

<comment><USER49> > No, they can't, because the folks who are commenting at what you think is > that level are actually completely unqualified to do so.

> The folks who are qualified to write articles and papers on the topics that > might interest you, do exactly that.

How could you possibly know who is qualified and who is not? Given that the authors of submitted articles frequently comment on HN themselves, it must be true that at least some HN comments are made by qualified people. But that assumes that writing an article is the sole requirement for being "qualified". Not all articles are written by qualified people. Additionally, many articles are watered down by journalists, and HN threads can provide broader perspectives.

> There is no inherent value in wasting intellectual effort on an HN comment.

There is as much inherent value as there is in wasting intellectual effort in a conversation at a dinner party. If I am talking to someone whose life experience is completely different from mine, I am _learning something_ even though they are not rising to the level of their capabilities. I am allowed to learn subjects superficially out of curiosity and without the blessing of an authority figure. I have to choose who to listen to and who to ignore just like I do with other sources of information such as HN submissions.

Asking for sources in response to an unfounded claim is common on HN. I've never seen anyone called naive, greedy, and lazy for it, though. At any rate, asking for a source does not preclude one from researching the topic separately.

I agree that HN should not be put on a pedestal. Neither should the submissions.

<comment><USER48> So you think I'm speaking to you as an authority figure?

<comment><USER49> No, but you seemed to imply that one can only learn from certain people in certain contexts. I find that I gain surprising insight from unexpected people at unexpected times. HN is not an exception.

<comment><USER48> I wasn't implying anything, I was directly stating that the folks who are most beneficial to learn from aren't making elaborate posts on HN, and you shouldn't demand that they do.

You're just being lazy by demanding someone to do your research or write an article for you. Think of it from their perspective: why would they? Any reason someone might post on HN with a comment containing original or well- thought content can be better accomplished by putting that effort elsewhere, in a blog post or website article, and then _posting_ that article as a submission to HN.

Only a small fraction of HN users even visit the comments page, not to mention the additional exposure one might achieve by getting their message out to folks who _don 't_ go to HN.

So yes, there are things to be learned from HN comments. Just not the way you're suggesting.

In other words, stop asking folks for citations on HN (or any other comments section, for that matter). You're wasting everyone's time.

<comment><USER50> I believe you should reread the previous parts of the thread, including your own, because it seems like your understanding of the positions in this argument have shifted. melling isn't demanding that arbitrary experts make elaborate posts on HN for his or her education and betterment. Rather, melling seems to believe that people who present information as knowledge in the comments section should be able and willing to explain the source of their certainty.

You're positing that people with expert knowledge have an inherent interest in exposing that knowledge to as large an audience as possible, and that this interest is so significant that they would always preferentially invest the extra effort and resources required to write a blog post or website article that properly contextualized and presented the information.

You're positing that the prospect of writing an article or blog post would preclude the possibility of responding to the comment on HN.

You're positing that the nature of this interest implies that these experts would wish to submit their own writings to HN.

To me, it seems that these terms must imply that this interest is not so much in the distribution of information, but in publicity and the tacit validation of expertise brought by the ownership of the information as an original source.

In my experience, this does not reflect the general behaviour of domain experts, who routinely correspond on mailing lists, usenet, and comment forums, including HN. There are in fact extensive comments made by at least one electrical engineer in response to this HN submission.

There is a subset of experts who already blog, for whatever reason, and stand to gain in some way by presenting themselves as an authortative source of knowledge and thought to the HN audience. However, many such persons (patio11 comes to mind) routinely write extensive responses to comments on HN.

Personally, the specific reason I began to routinely read the comments on HN was precisely because I could read fascinating domain-expert knowledge, presented in dense paragraphs, regarding topics that interested me. I usually read the comments about a submission before reading it.

Personally, I _do_ wish to know whether someone's thoughts on a topic reflect domain expertise, or hobby interest; I _do_ wish to know whether an assertion is established fact within a domain, controversial, sourced from an article or a blog post, et cetera, especially if that assertion seems dubious to me; the alternative is to simply continue believing what I believe, and to disregard such statements. In my experience, however, it is sometimes I who is wrong, and the dubious assertion which is correct.

In closing, I'd like to mention that melling, as the new OP of this now detached comment thread, was censured for describing someone's assertions as 'chest beating', which I think was appropriate. However, in the course of your comment here, you have accidentally or deliberately asserted that he was both "lazy" and "wasting everyone's time." I don't think that this sort of argumentation is useful, and I doubt that it is acceptable in your team debates. dang[a moderator]'s comment in reply to melling about "jabs" ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9378899](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9378899)) is relevant, well-written, and interesting, and I think that you could benefit from reading it.

<comment><USER48> You've taken what I wrote and pushed it much further than I did. If you re- read what I've written, I'm not nearly as extreme as you present.

Your argument hinges on me being extreme in my position, when in actuality I am not. I have not said anything nearly as absolute as you've implied. For example, I don't believe me using the words "lazy" or "wasting everyone's time" were an example of what dang refers to as "jabs" \-- I was describing an activity. My words were not used as personal insults, but as descriptions of behavior. It _is_ lazy to ask for sources on HN comments, and it _is_ a waste of everyone's time, for the reasons I specified. These aren't insults, because they're specific, and directed at an activity, rather than a person, and I provide reasons for why those activities are as described.

I'm sure some SMEs do make the mistake of posting on HN in an elaborate and detailed fashion, as another example. I've never said it's _impossible_ , that'd be an absurd thing to say. I just said it's not in a) their best interest, and b) many won't for the reasons I outlined.

Coming to HN for the reasons you do is an absolute and unambiguous mistake. What you get here is _bad_ quality, for what you're looking for. You can get _much_ better elsewhere, in the form of blog posts, articles, wiki pages, published papers, etc.

I'll repeat my thesis -- HN holds value as a "back room" where experts can speak without the same rigors with which they usually have to speak. There is value in informal discussion, and that's what happens on HN. Citing sources is a waste of time on HN, because you shouldn't take anything you read here at face value.

Besides, next time you're in a conversation, are you really going to say, "a post I read on HN said..." as a way of citing the source of your knowledge?

<comment><USER50> Actually, you used the personal pronoun 'you', which is not used in English to describe an activity, but rather a person. This is unambiguous.

To me, your response on this matter indicates that I'm likely to get argumentation in reply to anything I say rather than discussion or honest reflection.

This is fine, if one likes argumentation for its own sake, which it is established that you yourself do; I, however, do not, so I'm going to disengage from this conversation.

Scanning your points briefly, I would in another context be happy to go back and re-examine my representation of your position, but will not do so, as I can't take the assertion at face value, and would anyways be wasting my time as per above. I will remember it as a possibility. I do not exactly remember your thesis in the terms in which you have now restated it, but it seems likely that we are largely talking at cross-purposes with regards to the nature of valuable discussion on HN. Experts seldom fail to speak with sufficient rigor or mind correction when they do so. And 'citing sources' can be a waste of time, or a courtesy to others, depending on the context.

I would not hesitate to link to information on HN if that was the source of my knowledge. It is more important to me that I be (eventually) correct than that I maintain an appearance of correctness.

<comment><USER48> "You" can also be used as a substitute to "one".</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


IE ad: The browser you loved to hate - <AUTHOR> http://browseryoulovedtohate.com/post/41285259307/i

<comment><USER2> It's not hip indie music and bright colors that make products seem appealing in an ad. Ads succeed when they allow the most appealing parts of a product be revealed simply and cleverly.

Microsoft has always failed on this single issue when it comes to marketing: they are simply too heavy handed and unwilling to let products speak for themselves.

A lot of their products also suffer from simply not being compelling enough, but even when the product is compelling they go overboard on the "forced fun soundtrack" and stock-people.

Stepford advertising at its worst.

</comment><comment><USER3> Apparently the only reason to reconsider IE is because it is old? Could that ad have had any less useful information?

Never mind I'll quickly give IE a go. Oops, doesn't work on Linux. Never mind, I'll try it on the Mac. Oops. How about the most profitable mobile platform? No luck. The most populous? Forget it. Out of all my numerous devices (~8) and computers (5) the only one that can run IE requires using a virtual machine!

</comment><comment><USER4> They abandoned the second largest platform to doom them to a third rate browser.

Sure, there may have been aspects that wouldn't run on XP (new text rendering that Vista+ brings, for example) but both Firefox and Webkit/Chrome/Safari are both gracefully handling the disparate technologies just fine.

<comment><USER5> XP is on it's last dying breath, and Microsoft realizes it. Others should too. The fact that's its last build was released 4 years ago, and the original 11 years ago should show how old it really is and how important it is for people to finally ditch that outdated OS.

It reached EOL almost 3 years ago now! It's just insane to me that people still use it.

It's also only at ~21% install base, so it's not the biggest loss ever to not support it. Just entices people to upgrade to Windows 7/8, and actually be secure.

Anyone defending XP now should stop. It's a horrible idea to actually use the OS in the present day, especially with the much better alternatives out there right now.

<comment><USER3> > It's also only at ~21% install base

You do realise that is around 250 million machines, which is the same size as the entire iOS installed base a year ago? There is still 15 months of support left.

Perhaps the most important thing about a browser is the other stuff it drags with it - for example you are likely to use the identity services (eg using Chrome makes having a Google account more conducive) plus other things (storage, photos, email etc). It is in Microsoft's interest to bring people into that.

> Just entices people to upgrade to Windows 7/8, and actually be secure.

You can't practically upgrade from XP. Well maybe _you_ can, but the general public can't. It is a fresh install which means losing all your apps, settings, and personalization and worrying about what data you will lose (who has perfect backups?) And then you have to learn a new user interface. This still applies if you buy a new device. (Yes Windows Easy Transfer exists, but still has issues.)

If you are going to experience such a shakeup you may as well consider all the alternatives. My dad (as a data point, I mean anecdote) upgraded from XP to an iPad. That is even more secure!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I watched this only to see if Microsoft finally got an ad right.

But the only feeling I had was "there's a reason all these things are no longer around." Either I'm not the target audience, or the nostalgic items they chose were ... wrong.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm not buying a new tablet just to use IE10.

I'll just install Chrome or Firefox. Microsoft is paying for their slowness and attempts at being anti-competitive.

<comment><USER5> ... I don't even... What?

How did you get that you need a tablet to use IE10? It's available in all Windows 8 installations, and there's a Tech Preview out for Windows 7 too.

<comment><USER7> Forgot to add that I'm also not going to upgrade to Windows 8.

<comment><USER5> Going to be released for Win7 eventually. I believe the release preview is pretty close to the final version, but probably needs some optimizations for Win7.

<comment><USER7> I wasn't aware of that. In that case, I'll give it a try.

<comment><USER5> Yeah it was released in November I think, so definitely after Windows 8 was released with IE10. Don't know what's taking them so long with releasing the final version for Windows 7 though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I can just imagine someone in the ad agency saying "We should create a Tumblr blog around the ad".</comment>


Show HN: IssueKit - Drop-In GitHub Issues for your iOS project - <AUTHOR> http://www.github.com/usepropeller/issuekit

<comment><USER2> Honestly I would not want end users creating tickets directly. Imagine the number of duplicates to close. GitHub issues are no replacement for a true customer engagement platform.

For beta builds we mainly use email feedback via hockey. What else are people using these days?

<comment><USER3> I don't think this is intended for end users in the traditional sense. A good use case for this could be coworkers beta testing the company's app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is awesome! Although it's designed for the debug version of your app, this could be really useful for open source apps release builds as well. Built in bug reporting for iOS is a great idea for opening the channel for developer/customer communication.

</comment><comment><USER5> Pretty cool, thanks! Jump started on iOS 7 eh? :-)</comment>


Google AI Contest: Literate version of the top scoring Haskell entry - <AUTHOR> http://jaspervdj.be/posts/2010-03-01-my-tron-bot.html <comment><USER2> love the animation of the flood fill. made parsing of that part pretty much instantaneous.

</comment><comment><USER3> So many of these coding challenges seem to be just straigtforward applications of constraint programming, I don't understand what all the hubbub is about. Install any old prolog/chr or constraint library and you're done. Haskell and c++ are a convoluted way to get to that.

<comment><USER4> There were 708 submissions, and glancing over them, they seem to be implemented in C++, Lisp, Haskell, Python, Java, C#, Perl, JavaScript, Ruby and even one in Go. None, from what I can see, were implemented in Prolog.

When 708 people who spent a significant amount of time solving a problem didn't do what you think is obvious, then perhaps your understanding of the problem isn't as complete as you think it is. Prolog is indeed good for constraint programming, but these programs needed to run in competition with one another. My guess is that a straight-forward Prolog solution isn't fast enough. And once you put enough cuts into the straight-forward solution to help the runtime prune decisions, maybe you'd be better off using something that's faster to begin with.

<comment><USER5> The answer to the question "Why no Prolog?" is simpler, the organizers set up simple default guaranteed-to-compile "starter" packages for several languages. One surprise was that a Haskell package was included, though it used the antique ghc-6.8. The default way of entering the contest was simply to send back the unaltered starter program, and set about hacking and re-entering from there.

(I entered as the completest Haskell noob imaginable, and was surprised that by making the most elementary revision of the package (which gave your bot the bold strategy of going straight north til it crashed) I managed to place in the top 2/3s. Basically I told it, "if it's the wall, don't go there, take the first of the others available" -- maybe one or two other things. Every klutzy attempt at further 'intelligence' ran into time trouble since I don't yet have any feeling for that kind of optimization. So the package would be excluded as _Timed Out_ if was too slow in too many contests. I consoled myself thinking: At least I my entries never suffered the indignity of the other rejection notice: _Garbage Collected_ )

<comment><USER3> Competitions like this should be relabeled as who can reimplement constraint programming fastest and without bugs then.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


QR Code generator for apps on multiple platforms (ex: Android 2.2, 1.6, iPhone) - <AUTHOR> http://omniqrcode.com/

<comment><USER2> Great idea and great execution, Rich! - Dan Choi

<comment><USER3> Thanks Dan!

We built this because I needed it for my own apps and figured we might as well build it in such a way that other people could use it too.

We made at least 80% of it as part of a 2-man, 5-hour HACKBLITZ. Checkout the game plan: <http://i.imgur.com/uYgoO.jpg>

It was fun! Hopefully somebody will get some use out of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Oh, brilliant! I was looking for something exactly like this for a city- exploration thing I have in mind. Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER5> All of my apps are android only but this is a quality site! Good work!

<comment><USER3> Merci beaucoup! - still, you can redirect back to your website for iPhone users!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Looks great. I just signed up to test it out.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is awesome, just signed up.</comment>


Stop Selling Ads and Do Something Useful - B-Con http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2013/02/stop_selling_ads_and_do_someth.html

<comment><AUTHOR> > "People read newspapers, listen to the radio, and watch TV, but they go to > the Web to get things done."

I'm so ashamed right now.</comment>


Ask HN: Best way to operate multiple Gmail accounts - <AUTHOR>

I have 7 Gmail accounts and I need to administer them all. What would you recommend? Do you have a similar problem? <comment><USER2> That's a bad idea. For handling multiple accounts (even across multiple domains) in one place cleanly, check out Google Apps.

For your situation, I think one option is to have all those accounts forward to a central account, and have the central account filter the emails in to different labels/folders depending on the destination address.

</comment><comment><USER3> Set up forwarding to one central account, and rules to label them. You can also set up rules about what the "FROM" address should be when replying.

There have been rumors about multi-account support in Gmail for a while, but who knows if that ever will be made public, so for now the above seems your best option.

<comment><USER4> I have been using multi-accounts from Gmail for several weeks now. You need to go into preferences to enable it. Gives you multiple tabs/windows to see your e-mails.

<comment><USER3> Found the link: <https://www.google.com/accounts/MultipleSessions>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> there is a multiple sign in option with gmail... go to google.com/accounts once u r logged in... u can access multiple accs pretty easily... now i say its easy if its 2-3, 7 is gonna be a good try!

<comment><USER6> I use this for my 5 accounts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have 10 Gmail/Google Apps accounts so I had the same issue as you. Here's what I did: <http://bit.ly/bSv0Sv>

</comment><comment><USER8> For multiple email accounts, why don't you use thunderbird?

<comment><USER9> I'm using Thunderbird for 3 gmails accounts (+1 hotmail which I stopped using lately).

I don't think I could've done it without Thunderbird, you should give it a try.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I access my gmail with a standalone email client. This works great for any number of accounts from different servers. I use Eudora.

</comment><comment><USER11> Pine

Alpine

</comment><comment><USER12> Same here!

I have 7 Facebook accounts ...

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I do use Thunderbird, and it's working OK I guess. I just really like the UI of web Gmail. I'm not so sure if I like the idea of forwarding all of my mail places.</comment>


GitHub launches Issues 2.0 - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/blog/831-issues-2-0-the-next-generation <comment><USER2> These guys produce an entire awesome startup's worth of development every couple months. Definitely need to be paying more attention to the how of what they do. Luckily Tom's quite the excellent speaker and writer. When he talks, I listen.

<comment><USER3> Issues went from almost nothing to a full featured issue management system on one step. I really like how everything is integrated with commits.

I just got a GitHub paid account, not because I need private repos but because the company is so darn awesome.

<comment><USER4> I agree. As soon as I can afford to, I am doing the same. This is definitely a service, that I don't necessarily use a lot now, but if they went away I think the industry would suffer for it.

Everything they do inspires me to continue pressing on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I like how a reputable company still has screenshots with bug comments like "Ship the fuck out of issues2". I love GitHub.

<comment><USER6> It's like having a mohawk in the IT dept.

<comment><USER7> mullethawk: the long-tail of punk.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The cool part is that Kyle Neath deployed Issues 2.0 during his lightning talk at CodeConf. Quite badass.

<comment><USER9> With a command to bot in Basecamp chat none the less.

<comment><USER10> Campfire, not Basecamp.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> We're using FogBugz now and this functionality comes dangerously close to being a real alternative.

I'm glad, because I think Fog Creek has stagnated and FogBugz isn't developed much anymore — competition is good for everyone :-)

<comment><USER12> Surely the development efforts on Kiln have been to counter this assumption, no? Have you used Kiln, and if so, what are your thoughts?

<comment><USER11> Unfortunately, Kiln was never an option for us. We are a git shop, and while I do have a lot of respect for hg, we just do not want to use it. But VCS integration in FogBugz was never the main problem.

We currently use FogBugz with GitHub (private repos) and it works very well. I wrote a bridge that connects both APIs together, so we get fairly good integration. Information about commits and branches gets attached to FogBugz cases and we get a smooth workflow out of it.

The problem with FogBugz is that it is slow and has a number of minor annoyances, which grow to be a pain in the long term. Such as Fog Creek refusing to make the software automatically mark "#1527" as a linkable case. You have to write "case #1527". Quite annoying, especially if you don't run your FogBugz installation in English!

There are other things, such as obsolete Windows-based character encodings they insist on using in E-mails sent from FogBugz. Also, hosted FogBugz is slow. We spend a lot of time waiting.

Oh, and the default "VCS integration" features in FogBugz are from the CVS/RCS era and they still haven't been modified, even though they sell Kiln. The "Checkins" field in every case is file-based, so there is no way you can attach modern DVCS changesets to it.

I reported all of the above problems more than a year ago, and nothing has changed.

All in all, while we do use FogBugz (and pay quite a bit of money every month for the pleasure), we are looking for alternatives.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Anyone care to give their thoughts on GitHub Issues 2.0 vs Pivotal Tracker?

 _(sorry, I know question-in-a-question is a little poor form, but I only really care for the opinions of the HN community on this rather than asking more widely)_

<comment><USER14> I haven't used Pivotal, although I understand Pivotal is more of an agile project management tool. It measures burn down rates, velocity etc... even if it does do issue tracking as part of that, it's probably not reasonable to compare.

A like-for-like issue tracker would be Jira or Lighthouse

<comment><USER15> Indeed Pivotal Tracker and Github Issues focuses on two different things - Pivotal is about planning, Github Issues is more like a registry. They may actually complement each other although I haven't checked if Pivotal provides integration with Github Issues already (it certainly does with Jira and Lighthouse).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> While I really, really like the new Issues 2.0, I think the biggest news I got out of the article is pointers to PJAX. I may be behind the curve but I've never heard of it and its so cool I think I'll use it in my next project. :)

<comment><USER17> That part seemed really interesting. Has anyone used it outside of GitHub?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The milestones are a welcome addition, but the removal of priorities and voting is a real pain. I had a bunch of issues painstakingly sorted into priority order and they're now essentially shuffled.

The UI is still a little bizarre as well - no bulk select? No way to go to the previous/next issue from the actual issue? Colours of tags not displayed in the issues list view? I can sort by number of comments but not order them myself? I guess some of these might be considered bugs which will be fixed with time but others are really strange choices which don't quite seem to fit with the rest of the GitHub UI.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can bulk select — try it. Check one issue, hold shift, click one further down.

Colors of tags are definitely displayed in the issues list view - right to the left on the label itself, or full width in the case it's selected.

<comment><USER19> Did you mean "shift" instead of select? That's the only way I could get it to work.

<comment><AUTHOR> Blah, yeah. Maybe we should add a select key to keyboards (kidding)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Hopefully this means search results that link to issues will stop being completely worthless and incredibly frustrating.

<comment><USER21> Did you try it? Seems that your hopes have been fulfilled.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> OT, I wish Github would start offering unlimited private repo + limited collaborators say 5 or 10 for a reasonable price

</comment><comment><USER23> Congrats guys! Can't wait until the API to bring <http://githubissues.heroku.com> up to date with all the new features :)

</comment><comment><USER24> hmm, am I the only who wishes that issues where simply files in a directory inside the repository?

It seems crazy that when you fork an old version, you have no idea which bugs have been fixed and if you later merge again you have to manually track down which bugs have been fixed.

<comment><USER25> You might be interested in: <http://ditz.rubyforge.org/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is great. Milestones and assignees are the only things I've found myself missing in Issues besides file attachments.

Now I just wish there were a way to mass edit issues without checking each one individually. It's going to be a pain to migrate every issue in our 1.0 tag to Milestone 1.0.

<comment><USER19> I also was looking for a way to select all.

The fastest way I can find to do it is through the keyboard shortcuts.

      - Move down with "j"
      - Select issue with "x"
      - Move down with "j"
      ....

<comment><USER27> pentadactyl

<http://dactyl.sourceforge.net/pentadactyl/index>

<comment><USER19> I run pentadactyl, and vimperator before pentadactyl was around.

What does that have to do with the keyboard shortcuts on github's home page?

<comment><USER26> I don't run pentadactyl but it looks like it supports vim-style macros. I assume it would be something like qAjx to create the macro and 25@A to use it if j and x pass through to the page properly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Is there some up to date comparison of github / bitbucket now? It seems like they fixed the issues view already and the last big difference is the number of private accounts allowed without paying. Is there any other outstanding problem with any of them?

</comment><comment><USER29> I love the attention to detail such as their label foreground/background colors when selected (it seems that some have white foreground, some have "letterpress" effect, depending on the contrast).

</comment><comment><USER30> I abuse GitHub by using private repository just for my TODO list management.

</comment><comment><USER31> I chuckled when I read the word "triforce" near the beginning of the article. I assume they're either referring to the Legend of Zelda or an offensively- named 4chan meme.

<comment><USER32> Offensive? As chan memes go it's pretty benign.</comment></comment>


Sea of Crises - <AUTHOR> http://grantland.com/features/sumo-wrestling-tokyo-japan-hakuho-yukio-mishima-novelist-seppuku/ <comment><USER2> _Mishima: a life in four chapters_ is a film by Paul Shrader (writer of _Taxi Driver_ and _Raging Bull_ , among others) chronicles Mishima's last day alive interspersed with memories from his youth and three of his most famous stage plays presented in stylized format. It was a complete failure commercially but a film of rare artistic quality, and is fortunately available on YouTube in full. If you found this article absorbing, I can't think of a better way to invest 2 hours of your time.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is the best of new and old-world media. The animations and colors and typography are subtle yet beautiful; I greatly enjoyed the writing. This hits a certain medium between gaudy and bland in terms of taking advantage of new JS / media techniques – where Snowfall [0] was confused, and traditional news seems bland, this somehow hits the spot. Reminded me a lot of the other longform piece on the frontpage right now [1].

[0]: [http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2012/snow- fall/](http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2012/snow-fall/)

[1]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8565459](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8565459)

</comment><comment><USER4> Breaks the scroll wheel.

</comment><comment><USER5> Marvelous.</comment>


Virtual Reality: Soon gamers will be the fittest people around - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ajjames_technology-innovation-virtualreality-ugcPost-6588724257474338816-XkWe/ <comment><USER2> I remember when I used to play WOW like 10 years ago and every time when I had the loading screen before getting into a PVP arena I would do push-ups from the second the loading screen starts until it finished

After few months I start looking like The Rock</comment>


A choice of containers: There's far more than Docker - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.csc.com/2015/04/27/a-choice-of-containers-containers-today/

<comment><USER2>
        BSD Jails: One of the oldest container technologies is still supported today. It seems to have few commercial deployments.

Haha, you can skip reading this one.</comment>


How TwitchTV Is Changing the Game - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/johngaudiosi/2011/09/09/starcraft-ii-pro-gamer-steven-destiny-bonnell-explains-how-twitchtv-is-changing-the-game/

<comment><USER2> One very unique thing I've noticed about Justin/TwitchTV is that many of the viewers are willing to, and actually want to watch commercials to support the casters.

I remember a big part of the whole Warp Prism controversy on Reddit having to deal with it blocking commercials. That alone is a really big positive sign in my opinion that this is really going somewhere.

In no other channels have I seen people so dedicated to watching something that they want to watch the commercials. I think it has to do with the fact that viewers know it directly supports that caster alone (and a little to JTV of course). The money isn't all collected by the TV channel or network and then given out in contracts to writers/actors as they see fit. It's literally, you get paid on how many viewers you get. The correlation is direct.

I think that alone is a really new and awesome concept in media advertising that nobody else (that I know of) is capitalizing on in quite the same way.

</comment><comment><USER3> Kind of a weak article, but the TL;DR of it is:

Professional gamers can now earn a decent living from streaming their play, even if they don't win tournaments and what not. You just need to play the game and gain a viewership.

<comment><USER4> You need to be a celebrity of sorts still. If you are good but boring, your viewers will flock to likes of Destiny who is also an entertainer.</comment></comment>


Optical 'rectenna' converts light directly into a DC current - chris-at http://phys.org/news/2015-09-optical-rectennacombined-rectifier-antennaconverts-dc.html <comment><AUTHOR> We pinched the title from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10309647](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10309647) since it's more readable.

<comment><USER2> original source url:

[http://www.news.gatech.edu/2015/09/28/first-optical- rectenna...](http://www.news.gatech.edu/2015/09/28/first-optical- rectenna-%E2%80%93-combined-rectifier-and-antenna-%E2%80%93-converts-light-dc- current)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Technical Blogging (2nd Edition) - <AUTHOR> https://pragprog.com/book/actb2/technical-blogging-second-edition <comment><AUTHOR> After many months of work, the second edition of my Technical Blogging book is finally in print.

I wrote a few more words about it in this post:

[https://technicalblogging.com/technical-blogging-2nd- edition...](https://technicalblogging.com/technical-blogging-2nd-edition-in- print/)

Please let me know if you have any questions.</comment>


Empire Interactive to Produce Mensa-Licensed Video Games - <AUTHOR> http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=22264

<comment><AUTHOR> "Mensa approved", or how to advertise more on the "2% of intelligent people" sectarism. "Buy this game, it's dedicated to smart people only!" ... I predict nice success, you know "Mensa level", how to prove yourself smart, playing same games as "the elite"...

Not much more comment needed.</comment>


Newest Victim of DMCA: Here Comes Another Bubble Video - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/12/15/misunderstanding-copyright-law-and-ruining-everyones-fun/

<comment><USER2> I would say that more than victim of the DMCA, the video has been victim of a stupid, greedy photographer without knowledge of how the copyright laws work.

I think the real problem is that given the expenses of a lawsuit, lawyers behave like blackmailers.

</comment><comment><USER3> Photogs are a notoriously conservative bunch when it comes to this sort of thing. Witness the wedding photographer basically holding hostage the wedding pictures for extremely high "print fees" and denying the bride and groom any rights to reuse the pictures of their own wedding. This has been the "industry norm". We were unable to find ANY wedding photographers who were willing to allow us to produce a CD containing the photos from our wedding for the guests, at any price. A few high quality digital cameras and some volunteers solved this problem, yielded outstanding results and saved a ton of money. One more industry bites the dust thanks to greed and an unwillingness to change with the times. Good riddance.

<comment><USER4> One alternative approach (prob too late for you) would be to put a "Wedding Photographer Wanted" in your local Craigslist with the stipulation that you must be able to buy the digital negatives. Let photographers know that current practice is unsatisfying and there is an opportunity they're missing.

Unfortunately, people easily buy into the FUD about not "capturing the magic moment" and will pay almost any price to "ensure" perfect pictures. If these guys weren't so flush with bookings, they would have a reason to be more flexible.

<comment><USER3> This was a "pre-craigslist" affair. There were still dinosaurs roaming the earth!!! Instead we took a "the more cameras the better" tack. Not only did we have several volunteers with expensive high quality digital cameras, we also handed out bags of disposable cameras to all of the guests and encouraged them to snap away at whatever they found interesting. At the end of the night, they returned the cameras. 99% of all of the pictures were crap but among the nearly 10,000 pictures there were astonishing gems that no professional could have captured. It all came out to be less than half of the cost of the lowest price "professional" that we found.

The CD was mailed to all of the guests a week later and everyone was captivated by the participatory nature of it all.

Everyone has heard horror stories about the pro going out of business, or losing the pictures. When you have 300 cameras, this is not a fear that you have!

There's a startup in there somewhere I feel it! Anyone game to develop it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here is the photographer's flickr page where she posts her story: <http://www.flickr.com/photos/fetching/2090802706/>

<comment><USER5> I'm all for photographers/artists/etc getting paid for their work, but "her story" is basically her being whiny and greedy:

 _...has founded a new company called YieldEx, which is still early, but aims to help Web site owners maximize their ad revenue. He's mum on the details, but VentureBeat hears he has $3 million...

so these guys expect me to work for free? Are they serious?_

How much does she expect to get paid for a low resolution photo shown for a fraction of a second in a _silly web video_?

<comment><USER6> This is going to be an unpopular opinion, but the photo was protected. It is not protected by fair use because the video is not a parody _of that photo_ , but of something else entirely. The photographer took the picture for Wired (where the video creator apparently downloaded it after a Google search), and Wired licensed the picture for use. In the page which includes the picture, there were several links to the original photographer's page.

The real lesson here is to ask for simple permission when including other people's content in your own. With e-mail, this is easier than ever. Either that or make sure that it's licensed under a "sharing" license. Failing both of those, you'll just have to find another image.

This is really how it's designed to work. It's not right to be able to just take someone else's work and slap it into your own with no permission or credit.

<comment><USER7> Do you know how many _other_ photos were in that video? No one else complained because they realize it's a fun little video that's not making _any_ money anyway!

"The real lesson here is to ask for simple permission when including other people's content in your own."

They didn't realize this would be so popular. If it wasn't so popular, do you think this photographer would have complained? No she wouldn't have even noticed.

She's turned herself into the Grinch all because of a 1-second showing of one of her photos. I hope she gets coal in her Christmas stocking!

<comment><USER3> Perhaps someone should start a "nuisance registry" that tracks so called "artists" that abuse the spirit of the legal system in this manner. That way the rest of us can systematically ignore their "art" and they can quickly fade into the obscurity that they so richly deserve.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I really don't know what to think. On the one hand, that video killed a bunch of my brain cells and I don't care what happens to it; on the other hand I hope the plaintiff loses for the sake of copyright.</comment>


USBTypewriter - new and groundbreaking innovation in the field of obsolescence. - <AUTHOR> http://www.usbtypewriter.com/ <comment><USER2> This is a cool hack, but what I _really_ want is a hardware calculator keypad that interfaces with the iphone. There are some great calculator apps but it's just not usable at speed without physical keys. You could do a nice case with the keypad on the inside and the phone in landscape.

<comment><USER3> Is that something you would pay for? Physical interfaces and keys are something of an obsession of mine (I don't use any keyboards that don't have Cherry MX switches, for example).

<comment><USER2> Yep - I'd definitely pay for a stylish hardware icalc keypad over a whole calculator. Im studying mech engineering. So it needs to be more than just a numeric keyboard - a scientific calc layout with brackets, exponents, logs and trig functions at a minimum. I guess the ultimate would be e-ink keys that you could relabel, but it wouldn't be too bad to use the screen for rarely used functions and just have a sensible set nicely laid out in hardware.

<comment><USER4> It sounds like someone needs to introduce you to computer algebra systems. I recommend Mathematica, Maple, or Matlib.

<comment><USER2> Slightly different issue. Entering equations quickly and accurately is very hard with a virtual keyboard. I'd like to use my phone rather than a calculator in situations when i dont have a full pc handy. I've used Maple extensively and it's a great tool. But I'm not looking for a pc replacement, I'm looking for a calculator replacement. The app side could certainly work like Maple or Mathmatica.

<comment><USER4> So you are willing to carry around a full mechanical keyboard to attach to your phone and type complex equations, but you can't carry around a netbook or something for that purpose?

I have to say, I'm a little baffled. Phones are for phoning. Computers are for computing.

<comment><USER2> Smart phones _are_ computers that are capable of phoning too. Netbooks and laptops aren't ideal for entering a lot of numbers either because they don't have a numeric keypad. Calculator keyboards are laid out better for working with equations.

Let me put it another way - do you think calculators are completely redundant?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'd like to get a device the other way around - a daisy-wheel printer with simple parts and a serial or USB interface.

<comment><USER6> It should be easy to adapt any modern (must put spaces between these two words) typewriter. After all, they are all nothing more than very small computers with a daisy-wheel printer built in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Love the carriage return. Love the music in the video. Love the whole project.

Quaintly antique machinery and DIY — this is probably going to be a hit with the steampunk community.

<comment><USER8> The music is the reason why I can't watch it. Germany's music industry apparently had YouTube block the video.. Pity.

<comment><USER9> Dragging this offtopic a bit, but is there any reason why YouTube couldn't add an upload flag of 'audio optional' so that in situations like this, it just muted the audio stream in the specified regions?

Then, if someone owns the copyright to the soundtrack, they file a complaint against only that, and the video remains up. Or, they can file against the whole thing, and have it completely blocked (assuming sufficient rights).

<comment><USER10> Since the audio and video streams are muxed into a single file, and the copyright "check" is done based on location this would mean YouTube encoding every video twice (and for each resolution), effectively doubling YouTube's storage requirements.... most people will then re-upload their video in a non- infringing manor anyway, so it would be quite wasteful.

<comment><USER9> I was imagining something more along the lines of a server-side filter that stripped the audio chunks out of the stream as it sent, although I have no idea if such a thing is practical.

They've already re-encoded their entire library once (for WebM support), so in theory they are capable of it. The storage requirements might be a killer though.

I suspect it's technically possible, but maybe the potential revenue from the effort wouldn't make economic sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I still use a typewriter. It's quicker to just bang out an address on an envelope than it is to load the sticky labels into the printer, open the word processor, type the address, then print it.

but this does seem expensive.

<comment><USER12> Why can't you just write it on the envelope? It's simpler and cheaper.

<comment><USER13> Perhaps his penmanship is not the best? I've known several people that have had crippling arthritis, making them unable to hand-write legibly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If I ever miss typewriters I just pull out my Model M keyboard, play on it a bit and then put it away.

<comment><USER15> I just threw mine away, after basement flooding from Hurricane Irene. But it was time anyway. To hook it up I needed too many adapters:

big keyboard connector --> small keyboard connector --> USB

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Looks to be a very interesting idea. In fact, I do want one. Buuuuut, I'd have to wonder with those prices for the full models and DIY kits if he is not overcharging by several hundred dollars. True, you're buying a piece of tech for its look and feel more than functionality, but as a guy who's actually bought, played with, and used old style typewriter, $700 is a bit much for anyone.

Could any enthusiasts (I consider myself an amateur) weigh in?

<comment><USER17> Looks like for your money you get a typewriter (presumably refurbished), a display and the electronics. As you noted, he sells a DIY kit if you want to provide your own screen and typewriter (with an estimated assembly/install time of 6-7 hours for an experienced person.

Actually sounds like a fair price to me. But perhaps you are used to getting your electronics assembled overseas on a massive scale by (essentially) slave labour.

<comment><USER18> Display? No. Those are iPads in the Etsy store. The typewriters are essentially USB keyboards. For $600-$800 you get an old typewriter and an pre- wired-up Arduino board. You're paying for the integration of this [http://www.etsy.com/listing/62642931/diy-usb-typewriter- conv...](http://www.etsy.com/listing/62642931/diy-usb-typewriter-conversion- kit) into the typewriter.

<comment><USER17> My mistake, thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Now if this was done for a keypunch we could create hard copies of our code too!

</comment><comment><USER20> Ooooh! Cute overpriced retro vintage hipster bait!

More power to you for selling these things for $500! Ha!

<comment><USER21> You can buy a kit, for $30^H^H79. Looks like the attention of the project made him change his mind about cost...

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Cache[0] for those of us getting database connection errors.

[0]: [https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http:/...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.usbtypewriter.com/)

</comment><comment><USER23> I may be in the minority that actually might purchase one of these.

I still use a typewriter for all my prose (currently an Olivetti) for the one dumb reason that it's the only way I've found to stop myself from editing my writing as I write it.

I'd been contemplating picking up a refurbished Selectric (as just the hum that emits after turning it on brings back wonderful memories), but this would have the added benefit of also making a digital copy (which I do at some point want for editing).

</comment><comment><USER24> video is blocked in germany :(

</comment><comment><USER12> This seems to be a nice project todo in your spare time. Buying it? No thanks, I don't see how this will benefit me. Selling these for 500$+ ? You must be joking.

</comment><comment><USER25> Nice hack, probably inspired by the movie _Brazil_.

</comment><comment><USER26> Forget typewriters. I want a Bluetooth IBM model M keyboard for my iPad.

<comment><USER27> You probably want to start here: <http://pckeyboards.stores.yahoo.net/cus101usenon.html> (or with one of there other models)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow, a bunch of switches that work like a bunch of switches. Groundbreaking!! If there are 101 keys, there must be like 102 wires involved in this project! Call NASA! Hire this guy!

<comment><USER28> No wires, just many reed switches. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reed_switch>

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Not a windows key to be seen :)</comment>