Sir Terry Pratchett has died - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-31858156 <comment><USER3> The first celebrity death that hit me hard. I've read all fourty Discworld novels, some of them 4 or 5 times. His books taught me to approach the world with a twinkle in my eye and a smile quick to come out -- a good change from the cynicism of my teens.

So many memories... he wrote amazing characters.

Dorfl, a Golem who figured out how to program himself (via writing his own scrolls to feed into his head). His fireproof nature made him a great firefighter and a constant nuisance on the street of small gods since he'd engage in rational debates and was not deterred by the prospect of hell -- the first fireproof athiest.

Death quipping to his grandaughter, Susan, when asked why people taught kids to believe in lies like the tooth fairy: SO THEY'LL BELIEVE IN THE BIGGER LIES AS ADULTS, LIKE JUSTICE AND EQUALITY.

I could go on forever, but I'll leave with one last quote from Death:

THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS JUST US

<comment><USER4> > THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS JUST US

I don't think that's a Pratchett original. It was a Ruthless Rap Assassins track before Reaper Man, and I suspect it wasn't original then either. If anybody knows where it originates I would like to know.

<comment><USER5> > THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS JUST US

That quote was used in the Discworld novel Mort in 1986, when death was talking to his apprentice. According to Wikipedia, Ruthless Rap Assassins' first album was in 1990 and Reaper Man came out in 1991. I'm sure you are right that other's likely have said it previously.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life." — Terry Pratchett

RIP

<comment><USER7> "The pen is mightier than the sword if the sword is very short, and the pen is very sharp." — Terry Pratchett

<comment><USER8> 'He was the sort of person who stood on mountaintops during thunderstorms in wet copper armour shouting 'All the Gods are bastards.' \- Terry Pratchett

<comment><USER9> If you're encased in copper, wet or not, you have a fair chance. The copper provides a conductive path around you that is better than through you.

Lightning rods and their cables also get wet, and are touching the building, which is also wet.

<comment><USER10> Only if the copper creates a contiguous channel around you. If you wore armour like say the old Greek breastplate-and-shinguards, there's a lot of space to travel with no copper conduit. Likewise the helmet may not be in contact with any of the other armour, so the next port of call for the electron stream is your scalp...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> In case anyone hasn't seen it, Terry Pratchett helped make a documentary, "Choosing to Die", about (and eloquently defending) assisted suicide: [https://vimeo.com/105168003](https://vimeo.com/105168003)

I've yet to see any reports saying this was such a death, but he's been dealing with Alzheimer's for some time now. At any rate, it sounds like he died in a dignified and comfortable manner, as he deserves.

<comment><USER12> If he died at home, it's unlikely to be as it is, unfortunately, still illegal in Britain. Switzerland is the key location where most British people go for assisted suicide.

<comment><USER13> His publisher has stated that despite his public support for assisted suicide he didn't take his own life.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14>
       'Goodbye,' Mort said, and was surprised to find a lump in
       his throat.  'It's such an unpleasant word, isn't it?'

       QUITE SO.  Death grinned because, as has so often been
       remarked, he didn't have much option.  But possibly he
       meant it, this time.

       I PREFER AU REVOIR, he said.

So, goodbye, Sir Terry; or at least let's hope it's just au revoir.

<comment><USER15> Interesting, etymologically.

"Good bye" is a contraction of "God be with ye (you)", which isn't quite so abrupt. "Au revoir", literally, "until (we) see again".

Similar to "Hasta manyana" (until later), or "bis später" (same), Spanish and German, or "zài jiàn" ("see (you) again", Mandarin Chinese) . Farewells (literally, "fare thee well", be well) in many languages share similar attributes.

<comment><USER16> Never mind "bis später", what about "auf wiedersehen"... and "à bientôt" \- see you soon.

Strangely, I don't really say "goodbye" all that often - it's either "later" or "'til next time.".

<comment><USER17> I think "auf wiedersehen" is the same as au revoir, no? re-voir is to "re- see". I'm familiar with this contraction from Italian arrivederci - <USER2> (to/towards) ri- (again) veder (to see) ci (we) - "till we see eachother again".

<comment><USER16> Yeah, that was my point!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Words to live by:

"There are, it has been said, two types of people in the world. There are those who, when presented with a glass that is exactly half full, say: this glass is half full. And then there are those who say: this glass is half empty. The world _belongs_ , however, to those who can look at the glass and say: What's up with this glass? Excuse me? _Excuse_ me? This is my glass? I don't _think_ so. _My_ glass was full! _And_ it was a bigger glass!"

<comment><USER7> That could be a Cave Johnson quote.

        "When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons
        back! Get mad! I don't want your damn lemons, what the hell am I supposed
        to do with these? Demand to see life's manager! Make life rue the day it
        thought it could give Cave Johnson lemons! Do you know who I am? I'm the
        man who's gonna burn your house down! With the lemons! I'm gonna get my
        engineers to invent a combustible lemon that burns your house down!"

<comment><USER9> When life gives you lemons, leave them where they are and demand their equivalent in cash instead. As soon as you drive them out of the GM dealership, their value cuts in half.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> If the site goes down again, here's the text:

It is with immeasurable sadness that we announce that author Sir Terry Pratchett has died at the age of 66.

Larry Finlay, MD at Transworld Publishers:

"I was deeply saddened to learn that Sir Terry Pratchett has died. The world has lost one of its brightest, sharpest minds.

In over 70 books, Terry enriched the planet like few before him. As all who read him know, Discworld was his vehicle to satirize this world: he did so brilliantly, with great skill, enormous humour and constant invention.

Terry faced his Alzheimer's disease (an 'embuggerance', as he called it) publicly and bravely. Over the last few years, it was his writing that sustained him. His legacy will endure for decades to come.

My sympathies go out to Terry's wife Lyn, their daughter Rhianna, to his close friend Rob Wilkins, and to all closest to him."

Terry passed away in his home, with his cat sleeping on his bed surrounded by his family on 12th March 2015. Diagnosed with PCA1 in 2007, he battled the progressive disease with his trademark determination and creativity, and continued to write. He completed his last book, a new Discworld novel, in the summer of 2014, before succumbing to the final stages of the disease.

We ask that the family are left undisturbed at this distressing time.

All enquiries: Lynsey Dalladay, Publicist firstname.lastname@example.com T: 0208 2316793 M: 07920 712543

A Just Giving page donating to the Research Institute to the Care of Older People (RICE) has been set up in his memory: [https://www.justgiving.com/Terry-Pratchett](https://www.justgiving.com/Terry- Pratchett)

1\. Posterior cortical atrophy (PCA) is a progressive degenerative condition involving the loss and dysfunction of brain cells, particularly at the back (posterior) of the brain. alzheimers.org.uk

</comment><comment><USER19> "It is said that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die. That is true, it's called Life." — Terry Pratchett

</comment><comment><USER20>
      "Yes. I know. He's Vorbis," said Brutha. "Vorbis changed people. Sometimes he
      changed them into dead people. But he always changed them. That was his triumph."
       -- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)

I love this book, Small Gods, one of my favorite books by any author. I think the same could be said of Terry Pratchett, he changed people through his books (and as a bonus generally left them alive). Godspeed Terry.

<comment><USER21> Wasn't the audio codec "Ogg Vorbis" named after Pratchett's work?

Edit: yes it is, at least the Vorbis part. Ogg, despite similarities with Nanny Ogg, isn't: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorbis#Name](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorbis#Name)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> AT LAST, SIR TERRY, WE MUST WALK TOGETHER.

[https://twitter.com/terryandrob/status/576036599047258112](https://twitter.com/terryandrob/status/576036599047258112)

<comment><USER23> just in the off case you didn't notice it (cause I didn't): read the follow up tweets, i.e. the whole profile.

[https://twitter.com/terryandrob](https://twitter.com/terryandrob)

<comment><USER24> [https://storify.com/akkartik/best-eulogy- ever](https://storify.com/akkartik/best-eulogy-ever)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Read [http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/sep/24/terry- pratchett...](http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/sep/24/terry-pratchett- angry-not-jolly-neil-gaiman) if you want to understand him.

Read [http://www.lspace.org/books/pqf/](http://www.lspace.org/books/pqf/) if you want a quick reminder of what we have lost.

Goodbye Terry, you will be remembered fondly.

<comment><USER26> I don't think we have lost anything.

I think we gained something incredible over a short time.

Nobody lives forever. What Terry Pratchett has given to us will live longer than any person. I'm not sad that he has died. Everyone who is born dies, and there's an infinite number of potential people who are never born. What is important is that we live, and while we live some of us do extraordinary things.

I'm reading Guards! Guards! to my 2-year old right now, a section each night. She gets me to turn to the inside cover to look at the picture of the "man". I tell her that that's Mr. Pratchett. She calls him "Mister Patchett" because she has trouble with that R. She likes to pretend she's a dragon. She will say "dragon needs her socks on". She talks about the "little tiny dragon Errol". Every night she comes and gets me before bed and asks me to read a story.

Tonight I'll read this to her again. I'm not going to tell her that he has died. She won't understand, and it's not important to her. She will still get excited to read the story. She will still look at the picture of the man. I'll still tell her it's Mr. Pratchett. She'll still be excited to pretend to be a dragon. She'll still want me to read another book when it's done, we're very near the end. She'll still learn a lot from him.

While there won't be any new books written by him, the ones in our collection won't go away. He will continue to help her get excited to read, to give her funny stories, to make her think about the world in a different way. For her, today will be no different than yesterday or the day before.

By the time she's finished reading through our collection and wants to know why there's no new books, if from nowhere else, she will have learned from him about death. She will have learned in a funny and non-threatening way. But she will heave learned nonetheless. We can talk about him at that point, but I'd rather not lament what we've lost, because claiming we've lost something is claiming ownership, like saying we deserved him, or that it was our right to have books written by him. We've lost nothing, because we didn't have him to start with. But we have gained a lot that he has decided to give the world.

So I don't want to lament his passing. I want to thank him for the things he has given us. I'm not sad there will be no more, I'm happy that he gave us these gifts to begin with.

<comment><USER27> While beautiful, I need to know - how do you get a 2 year old to sit still to listen to "Guards! Guards!"? (or any book without ridiculous pictures, for that matter)

<comment><USER28> Try starting with books like "Press here" or "the book with no pictures"

[http://www.amazon.co.uk/Press-Here-Herve- Tullet/dp/081187954...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Press-Here-Herve- Tullet/dp/0811879542)

[http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0141361786](http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0141361786)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> "No one is actually dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away." ~ TP, _Reaper Man_

An absolute force. I've got a bookshelf devoted to Pratchett, and it's only going to grow. RIP.

<comment><USER30> I always liked the following sentences to that one too.

"No-one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away - until the clock they wound up winds down, until the wine they made has finished its ferment, until the crop they planted is harvested. The span of someone's life is only the core of their actual existence."

<comment><USER31> I suppose we'll have to count my daughter as a ripple. Exposed at a young age, she grew up a Granny Weatherwax fan. I type this now from her cottage in some impoverished mountains where she is the local midwife. So Mr. Pratchett has another 50 years of women without healthcare getting access to a reasonable birthing experience to ripple out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This hits hard. Pratchett has been a constant in my life ever since I picked up my first Discworld book at 13. I'll be reading "Guards, Guards!" tonight in memory of him while eating a hot meat pie of questionable origin.

<comment><USER33> I shall be having sausages. Inna bun.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I had and continue to have a lot of laughs with Pratchett. One of my favourite ones which I only a couple of years ago re-listened on Audiobook while walking about town and was giggling outloud uncontrollably was this quote:

> ...if you haven't smelled Ankh-Morpork on a hot day you haven't smelled > anything.

> The citizens are proud of it. They carry chairs outside to enjoy it on a > really good day. They puff out their cheeks and slap their chests and > comment cheerfully on its little distinctive nuances. They have even put up > a statue to it, to commemorate the time when the troops of a rival state > tried to invade by stealth one dark night and managed to get to the top of > the walls before, to their horror, their nose plugs gave out.

The idea of carrying chairs outside to appreciate it is so hilarious. It speaks a wealth to me about working class pride in whatever circumstance and condition your town and life is in. That "This may be so, but it's _mine_ " attitude.

Terry's plots were fun but his best most memorable things were his insights into every day life; his grandoise fantasy elements were always the backdrop to the characterization and human elements, always witty.

> Rincewind had in any case seen his past life flash in front of his eyes so > many times that he could sleep through the boring bits…

</comment><comment><USER34> "DON'T THINK OF IT AS DYING," said Death. "JUST THINK OF IT AS LEAVING EARLY TO AVOID THE RUSH."

<comment><USER35> Why the quotes?

<comment><USER21> I see you're downvoted, but you're right. The lack of quotes around Death's words was characteristic. Death didn't "speak", his words just existed, imperial, in the narrative :)

<comment><USER36> That and the, well, rather more down-to-earth reasoning that his words were set in small caps and so were easily distinguishable from the rest of the text.

I still wish I could speak in small caps.

<comment><USER37> ᴅᴏɴ'ᴛ ᴛʜɪɴᴋ ᴏғ ɪᴛ ᴀs ᴅʏɪɴɢ said Death. ᴊᴜsᴛ ᴛʜɪɴᴋ ᴏғ ɪᴛ ᴀs ʟᴇᴀᴠɪɴɢ ᴇᴀʀʟʏ ᴛᴏ ᴀᴠᴏɪᴅ ᴛʜᴇ ʀᴜsʜ.

<comment><USER36> I see your Unicode there... and I like it! Nothing more to say, really. Awesome :)

(EDIT#3: I overspoke. Nevermind, beautiful!)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I've never read any of his books, although I've been meaning to for some time.

Can anyone who's read through them comment? According to the Discworld wikipedia article, publication order may not be the best way to go through the series. This[1] page recommends reading a plot/chronological order. Personally I prefer reading books in publication order, since I get to follow the mind of the author. Given that, there are a lot of books here so I'm open to suggestions.

[1] [http://www.co.uk.lspace.org/books/reading-order- guides/index...](http://www.co.uk.lspace.org/books/reading-order- guides/index.html)

Edit: Thanks for the responses, I had already reserved _The Colour of Magic_ (you have no idea how nice it is to type that as a Canadian ex-pat) at my local library, I'm going to hunt down _Guards! Guards!_ now. :)

Edit 2: And... there's a waitlist. Thanks, everybody!

<comment><USER39> Small Gods is a common recommendation from other people, but it is a collaboration with Gaiman. Not that its a bad thing, but it is missing the full Pratchett voice.

My favorites are all Moist_von_Lipwig books. I recommend starting with Going Postal. Its comes much later in chronological order, but is the first Moist_von_Lipwig book and is enjoyable standalone.

<comment><USER18> Although Going Postal is the first Moist book, The Truth is the first "Industry" book and I think it's best of the lot. Going Postal is still great though (much better than the later industry ones).

<comment><USER39> Sorry, I was wrong. Good Omens is the collaboration.

<comment><USER40> I had my copy of Good Omens autographed by Gaiman, whence I remarked that I needed the other half now (this was 2011). Gaiman responded, "You'd better hurry up about it."

Sorry, Sir Terry :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> It's interesting how the last few major deaths I remember on here have been of people that discussed death publicly. Hal Finney, some time ago, discussed cryopreservation after his diagnosis of ALS, and Terry Pratchett discussed his views on assisted suicide publicly.

He had also previously said [0] that he wanted to hear "Spem in Alium" [1] play as he died. I wonder if he was able to do this.

I'm also curious what people would think of a black bar.

[0] [http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/willheaven/100025158/sir-t...](http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/willheaven/100025158/sir- terry-pratchetts-portrayal-of-assisted-death-is-as-fantastical-as-his- discworld-novels/)

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Cn7ZW8ts3Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Cn7ZW8ts3Y)

</comment><comment><USER42> Hs anyone checked for a "I ATEN'T DED" sign?

<comment><USER43> Terry Pratchett's standard author blurb begins: "Terry Pratchett was born in 1948 and is still not dead"

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> One of my bands, the Feng Shui Ninjas, wrote a song about the Nac Mac Feegles, who appear in several of Terry Pratchett's books. In his memory, we're making it available for free on Bandcamp. Any payments for the song or the album will be donated for Alzheimer's research. This hit us really hard.

[https://fengshuininjas.bandcamp.com/track/livin-every-dae- as...](https://fengshuininjas.bandcamp.com/track/livin-every-dae-as-though- yer-deid)

<comment><USER44> The drummer and I also have a side band named Carpe Jugulum, after another Terry Pratchett story. And another bandmate was on the concom for the Discworld convention. Like I said, it hit us pretty hard.

I hope he's drinking, fighting, and stealing his way through the amazing afterlife with the Feegles. He deserves it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I hope "embuggerance" is accepted as an new word this year, in honour of one of the greatest English writers.

<comment><USER46> That word should win all "word of the year" awards this year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> One of my favorite Pratchett books is Nation. It's actually not a Discworld book, but very much in the same vein. My wife and I listened to the audiobook (and then later both read it) and loved it. The Milk that Happens, when Daphne figures it all out, is the only scene in a book that has ever made me simultaneously laugh and cry (not from laughter) at the same time. Every time I read it. Hilarious and heartwarming.

</comment><comment><USER48> We all knew this day would come, but it doesn't make it any easier.

Pterry created some of my favourite characters in the literary world. Nany Ogg, the witch who's keen on drink and singing (The wizards staff has a knob on the end), The Igors and Igorinas, Conina the barbarian hairdresser, DEATH, Nobby Nobbs, the luggage, ... .

RIP Sir Terry, you have enriched my life greatly.

<comment><USER49> Wasn't the "Wizards' Staff" more of Ankh-Morpork song? Nanny was known more for her Hedgehog song.

Although I wouldn't put it past her to hear Wizards' Staff at some point of her long life, and of course she would like it too. :)

<comment><USER48> I am pretty sure the song is first mentioned in 'Wyrd Sisters' when Nanny Ogg is shouting at the night sky.

<comment><USER23> I am not sure it's first mentioned there, but Nanny definitely sings it in wyrd sisters[0].

[0] [https://books.google.it/books?id=t4Djt1RPNiYC&printsec=front...](https://books.google.it/books?id=t4Djt1RPNiYC&printsec=frontcover&dq=wyrd+sisters&hl=en&sa=X&ei=8NoBVaWxIanXyQPtvIDADw&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=knob%20on%20the%20end&f=false)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Site is slow/down, probably due to the amount of traffic.

Got a screenshot of the site, though: [http://i.imgur.com/Ui09H2y.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/Ui09H2y.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER51> poem_for_your_sprog on Reddit produced this sublime poem:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/2ysvzb/terry_pratchet...](http://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/2ysvzb/terry_pratchett_has_died_megathread/cpcp6bg)

The sun goes down upon the Ankh,

And slowly, softly fades -

Across the Drum; the Royal Bank;

The River-Gate; the Shades.

A stony circle's closed to elves;

And here, where lines are blurred,

Between the stacks of books on shelves,

A quiet 'Ook' is heard.

A copper steps the city-street

On paths he's often passed;

The final march; the final beat;

The time to rest at last.

He gives his badge a final shine,

And sadly shakes his head -

While Granny lies beneath a sign

That says: 'I aten't dead.'

The Luggage shifts in sleep and dreams;

It's now. The time's at hand.

For where it's always night, it seems,

A timer clears of sand.

And so it is that Death arrives,

When all the time has gone...

But dreams endure, and hope survives,

And Discworld carries on.

</comment><comment><USER52> "Time is a drug. Too much of it kills you." — Terry Pratchett

</comment><comment><USER53> "It occurred to me that at one point it was like I had two diseases - one was Alzheimer's, and the other was knowing I had Alzheimer's." \- R.I.P Sir Terry Pratchett

</comment><comment><USER54> If you enjoyed Discworld, checkout out Discworld MUD. Probably the most indepth and enjoyable game I have every played:

      telnet discworld.atuin.net 23

</comment><comment><USER55> He will be missed so much ... he was next up to Carlin ... RIP. I just don't know what to say. I grew up with his books and have reread everything more than 5 times ...

Small gods is still one of the best books ever written ...

</comment><comment><USER56> I was introduced to Terry Prachett by watching Terry Pratchett's Hogfather as done by Sky One. Really late to get into his stories, but since then I had started with book 1 of Discworld.

Are there authors who write similarly?

<comment><USER57> > Are there authors who write similarly?

Nope.

But the closest you're going to get is probably Douglas Adams.

<comment><USER58> Maybe Robert Asprin? Same generation and I think his first MYTH books were at the similar level of ridiculousness and brilliance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Man, first Nimoy and now this... I hate being the age when all your childhood heroes starts dying off one by one :(

<comment><USER60> Still better than being at the age where everybody around you start dying.

<comment><USER59> and that is still better than being dead :)

<comment><USER61> Nah, actually being dead isn't that terrible. You hurt the people around you more than yourself when you go. Unless of course you die painfully/violently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Well, I'm glad he's no longer suffering. He had Alzheimer's, and he's been advocating for assisted suicide for years now.

As much as it hurts to lose him, this is what he wanted.

</comment><comment><USER63> +++ Divide By Cucumber Error. Please Reinstall Universe And Reboot +++ (Hogfather)

</comment><comment><USER64> I have to ask, did anyone start on Pratchett with the Nome trilogy? I think I was 8 or 9 when my mum brought truckers home from the library to read together with me. After I went through that trilogy on my own she bought me a copy of Pyramids and it's been uphill since then.

Unfortunately Pyramids was a bit too weird for her, and put her off Pratchett, I can see why that would be.

<comment><USER65> I couldn't say which one I started with, it was too long ago, but the bromeliad trilogy is certainly one of the first of his I read.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> RIP. He brought so much food for thought, smiles and brutal social criticism. It is immeasurable loss for humanity. He was probably one of the greatest humanists ever to live ;(

In a hundred years we'll all be dead, but here and now, we are alive." - Brutha, Small Gods, by Terry Pratchett.

</comment><comment><USER66> Wow, it was only a few years ago I recall him joining our university as creative writing lecturer. He was very well received here in Dublin by both staff and students.

I thought he'd have another five or ten years lecturing before kicking the bucket. 66 seems a little young.

</comment><comment><USER67> From Sep 2014, Neil Gaiman writing about Terry Pratchett:

[http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/sep/24/terry- pratchett...](http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/sep/24/terry-pratchett- angry-not-jolly-neil-gaiman)

</comment><comment><USER68> ... =(

I saw his movie on assisted suicide. I hope he left us with no regrets. RIP

</comment><comment><USER69> Incredibly sad news.

Plenty of people on this thread have recommended some of his best books(Small Gods, The Truth, Monstrous Regiment) but nobody has brought up _Jingo_ yet. It's a wonderful satire of extreme war nationalism, it's part of "The Watch" series of Discworld books so it helps if you've read the previous books ( Guards! Guards!, Men at Arms, Feet of Clay ) but reading it by itself is fine.

</comment><comment><USER70> That's so much faster than I thought... HOPED for. I'm a big fan of his writing style. Clever and funny. He'll be missed. RIP, Sir.

</comment><comment><USER71> Can't say I am familiar with any of his work but I have been reading about his battle with Alzheimer's and his stance on assisted suicide. This makes me think of own mortality and I hope I dont have to deal with having such a disease where my body or mind slowly deteriorates(well ageing does this so I will have to deal with it anyway).

I nearly wish for a swift death that I don't see coming.

</comment><comment><USER72> It's quite a sad day. I loved his books, and he will always be one of the greatest authors to me. Glad he's no longer suffering.

</comment><comment><USER73> We read and studied "Guards! Guards!" at school, and we were fortunate enough that he visited and spoke to a group of us, answering questions. I seem to recall that I asked a fairly dumb question... This was about 25 years ago, but I'm honoured to have met him and will always remember his enthusiasm and charisma.

</comment><comment><USER74> Dear sir,

After all the hours spent in the company of your charming characters, puns, and wit, I have only two parting words:

Thank you.

</comment><comment><USER75> In honor of Sir Pratchett, let us redefine pi to be 3.12

<comment><AUTHOR> 12.3, he's British.

<comment><USER76> A real British pi would never have a decimal point in it - they are newfangled foreign things.

<comment><USER77> Right - we all know that pi is actually three pounds, two shillings and tenpence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> Sad to hear. Guards, Guards! was my first, but Thief of Time is my favorite.

Wen The Eternally Surprised: "… I know the answers to many questions. Ask me."

The apprentice gave him a bleary look. It was too early in the morning for it to be early in the morning. That was the only thing he currently knew for sure.

"Err… what does the master want for breakfast?"

…

"Ah," he said. "One of the _difficult_ ones."

Not many good quotes on LSpace, but Goodreads has many: [http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/46982-thief-of- time](http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/46982-thief-of-time).

</comment><comment><USER79> Perhaps of interest to the hacker community is that Terry experimented with computer-generated text in some of his work.

I don't know to what extent these experiments were involved in his books, the one concrete example we have is "Millennium hand and shrimp," apparently a combination of a They Might Be Giants song and part of a Chinese take out menu [1]

[1][http://www.lspace.org/books/apf/lords-and- ladies.html#p32423...](http://www.lspace.org/books/apf/lords-and- ladies.html#p324233)

</comment><comment><USER80> Thanks Sir Terry! Your books are a comfort to me and you can just add me to the list of fans world-wide whose lives are just that bit richer for your being here. Nicely done.

</comment><comment><USER81> bbc link: [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment- arts-31858156](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-31858156)

</comment><comment><USER82> I'm saddened greatly by this - for many reasons, not the least of which is that we will likely not see any more Long Earth novels in concert with Stephen Baxter.

</comment><comment><USER51> The 25th of May is Towel Day, to commemorate Douglas Adams.

If we keep the 8th of April as Terry Pratchett day, perhaps we could all wear wide-brimmed fedoras?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Towel_Day](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Towel_Day)

[http://www.sfwa.org/2014/04/international-sir-terry- pratchet...](http://www.sfwa.org/2014/04/international-sir-terry-pratchett- day/)

<comment><USER83> 25th of May is also the Glorious Twenty-fifth on the Discworld, where those involved in the People's Revolution wear lilacs to memorialise those they've lost.

Seems obvious what should happen at this point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER84> I met him once.

He came to talk at UNiversity of Cape Town here in South Africa.

I was never really a fan (not for any reason apart from my infatuation with Gibson which kept me more in Chiba City than in Discworld) but I went with a friend who got his copy of Mort signed.

Sir Pratchett gave a great talk and made a funny (yet by todays standards perfectly hideous) comment about fat goth girls.

Just a memory that a total random holds of the man. For what it's worth.

</comment><comment><USER85> Url changed from [http://www.pjsmprints.com/](http://www.pjsmprints.com/), which stopped working.

</comment><comment><USER86> Where is my Discworld augmented reality overlay (from Rainbow's End, Vernor Vinge)? Google glass was supposed to bring us this...

</comment><comment><USER23> STP's books were my favorite for the last 2 decades, it's so sad to know he's gone. So long.

</comment><comment><USER87> A little shocked at how hard this hit me, maybe it was from reading the comments here. It always made me a little sad that I never met anyone in person that appreciated him the way I did. Hopefully his death will spread awareness of his work and his influence will never die.

</comment><comment><USER88> Ook :(

</comment><comment><USER89> I've read most of the books and listened to a great number of the audiobooks which are brilliant in their own right, I'm very sad there'll be no more from Terry but he left a body of work that really touched an awful lot of people.

GNU Terry Pratchett

</comment><comment><USER90> I was first introduced to Terry Pratchett's work at the age of 9.

Much has changed over the years, but not the power of his books to bring forth a conspiratorial giggle as I read them. Consistently confusing bystanders then and today.

</comment><comment><USER91> Ok, something weird here. Link to article redirects to localhost.

<comment><USER85> Can anybody suggest another URL?

Edit: We'll use [http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment- arts-31858156](http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-31858156) via [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9191262](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9191262).

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> I seem to have a habit of only starting to read authors right around their deaths, but for somebody who has not read him, which novel would be the best to start with?

<comment><USER92> There is a handy Discworld Reading Order Diagram available at the following link :)

[http://www.lspace.org/books/reading-order- guides/](http://www.lspace.org/books/reading-order-guides/)

<comment><USER36> I can only second these recommendations. My first one was "Mort" which truly _excellent_ since TP had found his stride by then. I can't say I remember much about "Guards! Guards!" but IMO this story arc is the best one. The whole Vimes/Vetinari "storyline" is truly masterful. (Might be coloured by Vimes and Vetinari being my two favorite characters in the entire Discworld oeuvre.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER93> Life long Pratchett fan. Only thing comes to mind is a quote that I don't know who to credit for

"Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened"

:/

<comment><USER94> I've always heard that attributed to Dr. Seuss, but it looks like that's disputed: [https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Dr._Seuss#Disputed](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Dr._Seuss#Disputed)

I like to think it was Seuss, but to be honest it doesn't sound very Seuss- ian.

</comment></comment><comment><USER95> I'm in the middle of Feet of Clay - he'll be in my heart as I finish it.

</comment><comment><USER96> This makes me want to log back into the discworld MUD and pay my respects

</comment><comment><USER97> This makes me very, very sad.

Goodnight Sir Terry, we'll always remember you.

</comment><comment><USER98> I hope he remembered to shoot the missionaries.

</comment><comment><USER99> Death finally catches Rincewind.

R.I.P. Greatly missed

</comment><comment><USER100> RIP, Sir.

</comment><comment><USER101> I resent this! :,-(

</comment><comment><USER102> He was a great man.

</comment><comment><USER103> Lol redirects to 127.0.0.1

</comment><comment><USER104> Damn! Won't some millionaire here get him the cryogenics treatment. The world should not lose a man like Terry Pratchett.

<comment><USER104> Apparently that's pissing people off. Too bad for those who feel offended. I'll stand by my statement.

Pratchett has had a profoundly positive impact on the world including my life in particular. I wanted to see him cured and flourishing to a ripe, very old age. If I could have brought about even a moonshot possibility of having that happen eventually I would. But I failed. I was too late. Some others needn't have been.

Shit. I don't know that I've ever been this sad at the death of a public person...

<comment><USER105> Alas it's too late, for his brain is dead and warm. There was a nice 'translation of a song' on today's _Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality_ chapter ([http://hpmor.com/chapter/120](http://hpmor.com/chapter/120)), I'll repost here:

        Even if the stars should die in heaven,
        Our sins can never be undone.
        No single death will be forgiven
        When fades at last the last lit sun.
        Then in the cold and silent black
        As light and matter end,
        We'll have ourselves a last look back
        And toast an absent friend.

<comment><USER104> Thank you.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: My first iphone app was accepted - <AUTHOR> http://elfga.com/LottoCalc/

<comment><USER2> You might want to hire a designer before charging money for this. I hardly think anyone will pay $1 for something that looks like this.

<comment><AUTHOR> There's a version with a slightly updated UI waiting for approval right now. I tried a couple of other designs and was told that the target market would respond better to something more "gaudy". There were a few sales before any advertising, so I guess we'll find out :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> How did you develop it? Looks fairly simple, but the idea is clever.

Did you use native language or any tool like Phonegap?

<comment><AUTHOR> The core is in ansi C (with the intent of an android NDK port), and native ObjectiveC for the interface hooks.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Promo codes: EEKNXK637WLK M74436973NXX K4FWAE9E33YH W74H634HXWAA Y9TXTXR96FEW JRKW399JYWAT</comment>


Why Every Terms of Service Page Needs Summaries - <AUTHOR> http://uxmovement.com/content/why-every-terms-of-service-page-needs-summaries/

<comment><USER2> The reason lawyers don't always OK this: contracts are lengthy and precise because the law values precision and negotiations/cases can _literally_ turn on the position of a single comma. _People don 't naturally write like this._

If you write a contract with In Laymen's Terms next to the actual legal code, a court may in the future find that someone's inaccurate interpretation of your Laymen's Terms is _controlling_ over the actual, unambiguous legal code.

Also: practically speaking, few enough people read ToS documents that, for the typical app, the only important audiences for it are a) in-house lawyers and b) people who want to sue you. It is probably unwise to optimize for the experience of people who want to sue you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, precision is important so that people don't bend terms in their favor. But a court ruling that the summaries take precedent over the actual legal terms won't happen if it's made clear that they are summaries, and if the summaries are accurate to the legal terms they're summarizing. So your fear of summary misinterpretation is unwarranted. You're overlooking the huge benefit of term summaries for both websites and users.</comment></comment>


The Uncanny Valley of User Interface Design: Why web apps shouldn't look like desktop apps - <AUTHOR> http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/05/the_uncanny_val.html <comment><USER2> The most pertinent Bill Higgins quote is this one:

Gmail uses Ajax to accelerate common operations (e.g. email address auto- complete) and to enable data transfer sans jarring page refresh (e.g. refresh Inbox contents) but its core look and feel remains very similar to that of a traditional web page. In my view, this is not a shortcoming; it's a smart design decision.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm in agreement with the article. Most of the desktop-mimic web apps I've used just plain suck. They feel like really slow, crappy desktop apps, as if you were running Lotus Notes on a 10-year-old windows machine, only worse.

This isn't to say that 'web'-style interfaces don't have room for improvement, but it's a different ballgame than the desktop. On the web we have load time concerns, a different toolset for building the interface, and different considerations in terms of color and space.

Not to mention the precedents set by every other web page that has come before which people are used to. Geez, we have to do a scriptaculous hilite on every xhr just so people will notice what's going on.

<comment><USER4> ugh tell me about it....I think it was 37Signals who invented the yellow highlight or whatever they call it. For me I believe AJAX is a precision tool much like a scalpel, if used as such it will create rich user experiences. On the other hand if swung like an axe, it will only introduce a world of hurt to the users.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think this is also a big reason why flash hasn't become more common for interfaces. It just doesn't feel like the web.

</comment><comment><USER6> Good points, but then again, oddpost got acquired specifically _because_ it was so much like a desktop app.</comment>


Tim Cook: users will be able to turn off iPhone battery performance throttling - <AUTHOR> https://9to5mac.com/2018/01/17/turn-off-iphone-battery-performance-throttling/ <comment><USER2> This is great but I doubt that it will fix all of the slow apps out there.</comment>


Apple, Anticompetition, and Censorship - <AUTHOR> https://en.greatfire.org/blog/2020/jul/apple-anticompetition-and-censorship <comment><USER2> So in short they want Apple to do it the way of American customs and laws everywhere, including in China no matter Chinese customs and laws. Somehow I doubt this goes both ways and that they will agree that Russian and Chinese companies should follow Chinese laws and customs in th US. If they don't they are hypocrites. This smells of someone thinking the US is a shining beacon of light that others should follow while in fact most of Europe would be a better lead. So how about forcing GDPR on Apple inside the US for its American customers? Or how about if selling Lego to children in the US has to follow Danish laws?

</comment><comment><USER3> By this logic, no Chinese company would be allowed to operate in the US.</comment>


Parallel GCC: a research project aiming to parallelize a real-world compiler - <AUTHOR> https://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/ParallelGcc <comment><USER2> There are so many tools to parallelize compilation, but comparatively little effort has gone into reducing the vast amounts of redundant work that compilers do. A staggeringly large percentage of compilation time is simply wasted duplicating work that was already done hundreds of times over.

Tools like ccache are really primitive compared to what is possible. Change one bit in a header file and you have to recompile your whole project, even if the output ends up being bit-identical.

Zapcc[1] is more advanced, but still far from ideal. What I really want is a compiler that can incrementally update the binary as I type code, and can start from a snapshot that I download from someone else so that nobody ever needs to do a full recompile. It would require a radically different compiler infrastructure, but I don't see any reason why it would be impossible.

[1] [https://github.com/yrnkrn/zapcc](https://github.com/yrnkrn/zapcc)

<comment><USER3> First time I spend a day on a partial-compile-only bug I switch if off and it's good old full recompilation from that point :)

<comment><USER4> Why not just do a full, clean build when you hit strange bug? If your workflow is anything like mine, partial-compile and tools like ccache have saved months of hours I would have wasted waiting for the compiler.

<comment><USER5> >when you hit strange bug

Any bug is strange until you figure it out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I look forward to this. One that that will be important for reproducible builds is having tests for non determinism. Having nondeterministic code gen in a compiler is a source of frustration and dispair and sucks to debug.

<comment><USER7> My understanding from the article is that the code gen will still be deterministic--independent operations will be performed in parallel instead of in sequence, but data dependency will still be respected.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The old-school approach to this was "distcc". At the company where we used it for C++ we had a small compile farm and usually did "make -j 50".

<comment><USER9> distcc can be useful, but requires that the local build environment matches the remote 100%.

<comment><USER10> No it doesn't, it sends preprocessed files just to not depend on remote env.

<comment><USER11> > it sends preprocessed files just to not depend on remote env.

to then be compiled by the host compiler ..

<comment><USER10> Sure, one compiler can't be egcs 2.95 and the other clang 8 (at least not in most cases) but the target compiler system doesn't even have to have include files, libs, libfoo-devel packages installed or they can be, but from old versions. As a proof of concept I once had a linux with gcc4.2.1 make c->.o files that later ran on OpenBSD. Would I trust that resulting binary? Sure not.

But in cases of "lets spin up 10 compile boxes with <same ubuntu within a week of updating>" or have something along the lines of Xcode which allowed you and your colleagues to help out each other with small work units in order to make a single compile run quite much faster, that is a definite possibility.

For that final release build, you might consider running it on one of those 10 VMs in the example above and have 'only' 9 others help out with the sub-parts in order to get some kind of .. guarantee.

If it takes a minute for a full build on one box, getting a hint after 10 seconds that you misspelled something and that it won't ever link decently is worth something too if you value your time as a developer.

Not saying it's perfect, only chipped in on the "must be 100% or it can't ever work", hopefully without needing to go into the "coach says we need to give 110% this game, and 120% if it's the finals" nitpicking.

<comment><USER12> This doesn't work for C++, as there is no standard ABI and thus no safe way to link object files from different compiler versions into the same binary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> FWIW, MSVC has had this ability for a few years now. It helps with both normal compilation unit compiles and with link-time code generation. See for instance Bruce Dawson's notes: [https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2014/03/22/make-vc- compile...](https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2014/03/22/make-vc-compiles- fast-through-parallel-compilation/) .

</comment><comment><USER14> OT but why isn't there a compiler that simply does absolutely basic passes to get the IR into a 'normalized' form then apply optimizations based on a 'database' of super optimized 'chunks'? For unoptimized parts run the super optimizer.

<comment><USER15> So basically a code lowering engine that works a bit like [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashlife](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashlife). Interesting!

(NB. Googling "lowering" turned up the seemingly-random [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14422944;](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14422944;) that page isn't such a bad set of starting links, so I figured I'd include it.)

<comment><USER16> Please, read this idea regarding use of superoptimizers: [https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GSv89tiQmPDcnFEu4n4CqfaJcUJ...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GSv89tiQmPDcnFEu4n4CqfaJcUJxVmL5KrSCJ047g4o/edit)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The use case is really niche.

The only time it comes in handy is when:

1\. You have enormous files AND 2\. You have a little number of files.

<comment><USER18> I'm not sure about that. The traditional way of exploiting parallelism for large builds is to work on a per-file basis. Want more parallelism? Fork more jobs. But this can fall apart in a couple of ways:

1\. It can get extremely expensive in memory use. Your parallelism limit can be dictated by the memory your machine has. Spending your available cores over fewer simultaneous compilation units could also have benefits arising from data locality, even in situations where a machine's memory headroom isn't a concern.

2\. Many large build processes have serialized steps which are currently unable to benefit from any form of parallelism. This is becoming even more the case with the rise of IPO & LTO.

But as ever, we'll probably have to wait to find out how large the practical benefits end up being from this work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Huh, I thought compilation was already quite parallel even on many core machines. I guess that's only true for larger software projects (or ones with many small compilation units, at least). The step that could use some TLC and increased parallelism is _linking_.

On the other hand, maybe this project will help improve whole-program LTO link time. I see that is mentioned as future work for this effort:

> Parallelize IPA part. This can also improve the time during LTO compilations

Big kudos to Giuliano Belinassi, who seems to be the one driving this effort.

</comment><comment><USER20> A tricky job to say the least

</comment><comment><USER21> Llvm already has one process per compile unit I believe.

<comment><USER6> Which is not parallelization. There's always the question of should I parallelize my compilation at the compiler level, or the build level (ie. Multiple translation units in flight). I think there's room for both, so you hopefully can get faster incremental compiles of a few number of TUs, but still have the old data level parallelization of multiple TUs.

<comment><USER22> From my observations multi-threading the linker would be more useful, since for small changes in bigger projects the linking step usually takes a lot longer than compiling a couple units.

<comment><USER23> There exists a multi-threaded linker called gold.

<comment><USER6> LLD (llvm's linker) is also threaded but much faster than gold.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> > _This page introduces the Parallel GCC -- a research project aiming to > parallelize a real-world compiler. This can be useful in many-core machines > where GNU Make itself can not provide enough parallelism_

Huh? One wants a fast compiler even for a single compilation, not just for multiple ones that parallel make can handle as implied here...</comment>


Study Reveals Traits in Youth That Signal Future Profession in Computer Science - <AUTHOR> http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20150930005384/en/Code-School-Study-Reveals-Traits-Youth-Signal <comment><AUTHOR> I had my first computer at 13 (Commodore 64), ran a Bulletin Board System as a hobby, never did my assignments until the last minute, dropped out of college, and I'm either earning a lot or very little. I certainly fit the profile.

I wonder what this means? Maybe Larry Wall was right [http://threevirtues.com/](http://threevirtues.com/)</comment>


Why energy storage sucks - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@atilev/why-energy-storage-sucks-in-practice-3d80d80320de <comment><USER2> Very limited view of energy storage tech frankly. Quick list of things I am aware of (some deployed and some in labs)

\- Pumped hydro, by far the most widespread

\- Flywheel storage, used at grid scales for frequency regulation

\- Thermal storage used in conjunction with solar power using various materials - molten salt, HTF, hot dry rock

\- Many different battery chemistries:

        - High temperature batteries (e.g. ZEBRA batteries specifically developed for cost effective grid scale storages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium%E2%80%93sulfur_battery)

        - Sodium-ion batteries

        - Metal hydride batteries

        - Redox flow batteries such as zinc-air systems

\- Compressed air storage

\- Phase change storage, including hybrid compressed/liquefied air storage

\- Seasonal thermal storage [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasonal_thermal_energy_storag...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasonal_thermal_energy_storage)

\- Water electrolysis + hydrogen fuel cell cycle

Probably missed a bunch too. All to say there are a lot more solutions then lead-acids and lithium batteries- although in fairness those are the most accessible options in small scale systems

<comment><USER3> Some interesting products utilising PCMs in the domestic hot water markets... Replacing traditional hot water cylinders which suffer from very high heat loss even when insulated.

<comment> semi-extrinsic The economics aren't great for replacing a hot water cylinder with something more efficient.

According to this [1] a typical hot water cylinder wastes less than 2000 kWh per year. That's a yearly expense of less than $400. This means a replacement system aiming to break even over five years must cost less than $2000.

Replacing a hot water cylinder with a bog standard new one costs at least $1000. Thus the PCM heater must be essentially as cheap as existing solutions, and so it faces the challenge of not being able to get enough initial volume to get the cost below break-even. Government subsidies are probably the only way to make it work.

[1] [http://www.solarblogger.net/2012/11/heat-losses-from-hot- wat...](http://www.solarblogger.net/2012/11/heat-losses-from-hot-water- cylinders.html?m=1)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> There are broadly two types of energy storage. Grid scale and domestic. This article is about the latter as it focuses on certain batteries. It's actually pretty interesting but the scope is narrow.

Domestic is important as it can leapfrog other tech in places without a reliable grid. Much like mobile phones leapfrogged fixed lines in Africa. There are lots of options for the grid but only batteries really work at a small scale.

For more on this watch this recent video from Al Gore: [https://www.ted.com/talks/al_gore_the_case_for_optimism_on_c...](https://www.ted.com/talks/al_gore_the_case_for_optimism_on_climate_change)

At grid scale you can have exotic types of batteries, pumped storage and other things. For example, there are plans to double Cruachan: [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-35666993](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-35666993)

</comment><comment><USER5> Pumped hydro is much cheaper than batteries per KW (max storage rate) and KWh (storage capacity) is limited only by reservoir size. The roundtrip efficiency is about 80% and it's able to store for months at a time.

Heindl Energy in Germany is developing hydraulic storage, which can work even on flat ground (basically, raising a rock formation with pumped water). They've designed capacities up to 120GWh:

[http://www.heindl-energy.com/hydraulic-rock-storage/idea- fun...](http://www.heindl-energy.com/hydraulic-rock-storage/idea- function.html)

<comment><USER6> Pumped hydro is interesting but the reservoir requirements are huuuge. This post makes a very convincing case that scaling it up is not that simple:

[http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/11/pump-up-the- stor...](http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/11/pump-up-the-storage/)

There is some discussion about the German rock variation in the comments. The density doesn't seem to help THAT much compared to water only.

<comment><USER7> Density isn't the only benefit of this system. At these scales, the water requirements alone are significant. This replaces many cubic meters of that water with rock.

<comment><USER8> The other big advantage is that you don't need a tall hill to put a reservoir on top of.

Sadly it seems the project has been at the "plan to get funding for a pilot" stage for at least 5 years now, and I still don't see how it'd seal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Surprised there's no mention of Vanadium Redox as an alternative that solves several of these problems even better than Lithium Ion.

They can be fully cycled over 100,000 times (compare to Li-ion's 400-1200, lead's 500-800) and are expected to last 20 to 30 years. They can stay in a single state for long periods of time without degradation and can be rapidly and efficiently charged or discharged. There's also no fire risk.

The biggest downside is size and weight. A refrigerator sized VRB in the attic of a house would work, but that is a dealbreaker for some/most people. These certainly won't go in cars, but as stationary appliances for those with the space, they would work extremely well for solar storage.

DOE factsheet: [http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/VRB.pdf](http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/VRB.pdf)

Wikipedia: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanadium_redox_battery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanadium_redox_battery)

<comment><USER8> > A refrigerator sized VRB in the attic of a house would work, but that is a > dealbreaker for some/most people.

Even a refrigerator-sized VRB doesn't store that much energy, that's ~650 liters so about 40MJ, under 1.5L worth of fuel. And more importantly it weights _half a tonne_ and (assuming it has the same shape as a standard fridge) has an area density of ~1.5t/m^2.

<comment><USER10> 40MJ is a bit over 11kWh, which should be enough to run a typical house overnight. My house uses something like 500W average, not counting the car, so it could run almost a full day on this.

For a stationary application, half a ton doesn't seem like a big deal. Surely a normal house can hold up that much weight? That's equivalent to only six or seven people. If the weight is a problem, put it on the ground level or in the basement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I really want to read this article, but there are too many spelling and grammar mistakes or lack of punctuation. Please consider spellchecking it?

<comment><USER12> Spellchecking? What about innumeracy?

 _As you can see if you only drain your battery to 75% (meaning you only use 20% of your capacity) you get tremendously more cycle's (more than double!) then say using 50%. So when systems are designed for energy storage you generally want your batteries to last a long time (since they're expensive) so you want the maximum amount of cycles for them, which means that you should only discharge them 80%. As you can see this is getting quite frustrating, as now simply to power you're off-grid system at night you need to purchase 80% more battery capacity than you actually need._

75 + 20 = 95. Okay, close enough to 100. But discharging to only 20% means you need to buy 500% the capacity, not 180%!

<comment><USER13> Yeah, I was hesitant to click on the article based on the title. Thanks for confirming my suspicions.

<comment><USER14> I did learn a few things from the article, though. The big one has to do with why the car batteries I use on a hydraulic and winch system have been failing fast. It has to do with the way I run them all the way down before charging them back up.

In my shed delivery business, I have a custom designed trailer with a hydraulic lift for the tilt bed and a winch for loading and unloading the buildings. They are 12 volt and I just run them with a car battery.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> For medium.com would it make sense to include the username in the title, like this:

        Why energy storage sucks (medium.com/@atilev)

</comment><comment><USER16> Energy storage not only consists of batteries… Pumped hydro, for example, works well and does not decays over time.

<comment><USER8> Pumped hydro is absolutely great, but it's an option for tremendous (grid- level) scales, and requires convenient locations (e.g. a hilltop you can "blow up" with a large stream nearby, or a standard dam with a lake or lake-able location close to its foot). It's way, way beyond the scales the article is talking about (note the picture from a health clinic in Rwanda).

<comment><USER17> How big of a tank on your roof do you need to replace a box of lead acid batteries?

<comment><USER18> A 12V deep-discharge lead-acid battery is typically 120amp-hours. That's 1.4kWh. Suppose you only 50% discharge it for longevity, that's 700Wh. I'll assume your box of batteries has ten of them, so a usable capacity of 7kWh. 1kWh = 3.6MJ, so 7kWh = 25MJ

How high is your roof? Lets say 10 metres. Potential energy U = mgh. (m=mass in kg). h=10, g~=10, so U=100*m.

So, to equal those batteries, assuming 100% efficiency, the mass of water needs to be 250000 kg, or 250 tonnes. Probably going to need to reinforce the loft.

<comment><USER19> So 'roof' is clearly out of the question. Now let's look at basement. I install a 4x4x2 meter tank, then drill down 100 meters to create another such tank. 32 tonnes lifted 100 meters gives me 32MJ, perfect.

Now how expensive is it to build a water storage area underground? Is this a 50 thousand dollar project or a 50 million dollar project?

If the ground water is at the right depth, you would only need to drill a well. So this should be practical somewhere, at least.

<comment><USER20> Your 100 meter channel is going to get flooded.

<comment><USER19> That's your biggest objection to the idea? A 100 meter waterproof pipe is the easiest problem to solve here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The comment I was writing turned into a blog post, so I'll just post the links. IMHO these are trending towards solving many of the problems faced by alternative energy generation and storage:

[http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo- way/2016/02/04/465568055/...](http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo- way/2016/02/04/465568055/morocco-unveils-a-massive-solar-power-plant-in-the- sahara)

[http://www.wsj.com/articles/energy-storage-startup- lightsail...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/energy-storage-startup-lightsail- plots-long-term-game-plan-1456110323)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel–iron_battery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel–iron_battery)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium–sulfur_battery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium–sulfur_battery)

[https://www.littleboxchallenge.com](https://www.littleboxchallenge.com)

[https://www.littleboxchallenge.com/pdf/finalists/56568-Tech....](https://www.littleboxchallenge.com/pdf/finalists/56568-Tech.pdf) <\- PDF

</comment><comment><USER22> So what happened to the idea of using some modern version of flywheels to store power?

<comment><USER23> They were deployed in Formula 1: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_energy_recovery_system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_energy_recovery_system)

I'm not aware of any building or utility-scale systems.

<comment><USER18> There are a few utility-scale flywheel systems deployed: [http://beaconpower.com/stephentown-new- york/](http://beaconpower.com/stephentown-new-york/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> No mention of Ni-Fe batteries, they are significantly more robust than LA or Li and have 30+ year lives.

</comment><comment><USER25> Great article from a practical standpoint of what is actually deployed and small scale.</comment>


When Trading in Bitcoin, Keep the Tax Man in Mind - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/18/your-money/bitcoin-irs-taxes.html <comment><USER2> Or move to Malaysia, or buy residency and citizenship in Saint Kitts and Nevis.

<comment><USER3> If you're a US citizen, you're responsible for paying tax on your worldwide income regardless of where you reside. Also, there is an exit tax to renounce your US citizenship.</comment></comment>


Search Engines are Parasites - <AUTHOR> http://www.searchengineblog.com/interviews/interview_ralph_tegtmeier.htm

<comment><USER2> This guy is selling software that generates "topical fillertext related to your targeted keywords and search phrases, implementing predefined keyword densities, randomized page descriptions"...

In other words, he's the parasite here. Instead of saying "make things people want" he's saying "don't do any work, just be really loud and leech content".

<comment><AUTHOR> "In other words, he's the parasite here. Instead of saying 'make things people want' he's saying 'don't do any work, just be really loud and leech content."

That's interesting. Where did you get that from? If you had read the entire article, you would not have reached that erroneous conclusion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The search engines are the parasites. They are making billions of $$$ using other people content.

<comment><USER4> Without search engines how would you find that content?

<comment><USER3> I don't say that they are useless. Point is that they are crawling the content, wasting bandwidth without paying for it.

The engines make the big money, not the webmasters.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Yeah, you _probably_ won't get banned from Google, but who really wants to take that risk?

<comment><USER6> When people start being afraid of one company, that's the best indicator that the said company really needs some serious competition in the market.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sounds like a lot of dodgy rationalization for some pretty shady practice.

<comment><AUTHOR> "shady" refers to a moral or legal issue . . . these are technological issues, and need to be thought of as such.

<comment><USER8> He's talking about lying to search engine operators to trick users into seeing different content than they actually wanted. That's not capital-E Evil, but certainly unethical, wasting those users' time and making everyone's search results less useful.

<comment><AUTHOR> No, he's not talking about that. Please quote him on it if he is.

<comment><USER8> > a technology that serves different content to search engine spiders and to > human visitors, based on visitors' (human or otherwise) IP address. This > requires special software (such as the stuff we have developed, hint, hint!)

> You can now optimize those phantom pages for better search engine rankings > at your own discretion, and noone will be the wiser.

Deceiving the search engine to tamper with its decisions is an explicit goal, as is not getting caught.

> users can always, and actually will, vote with their mice on whether your > site's high ranking was justified and relevant to their search

They acknowledge causing bad decisions from the search engine and irrelevant results for users.

> Ethical behavior only makes sense amongst equals.

And they're untrustworthy scum, which is why they're eagerly participating in another tragedy of the commons.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, I finally got a reply link to your post.

"Deceiving the search engine to affect its decisions is an explicit goal, as is not getting caught."

Indeed. Yet that obviously does not automatically imply deceiving the users, as you erroneously stated earlier. Doing so would be stupid, as in serving up porn for bridge search results, for example.

"They acknowledge causing bad decisions from the search engine and irrelevant results for users."

Incorrect. You misunderstood what he stated. By saying "vote with their mice" he is referring to whether or not users purchase products or otherwise "convert". Granted, this interview does not cover his stance on DECEIVING the users. The following one does:

<http://www.searchethos.com/fantomaster-response.html>

"Deceptive cloaking (again: solely viewed from the surfer's perspective) is self-defeating"

"And they're untrustworthy scum, which is why they're eagerly participating in the tragedy of the commons."

Interesting that you would drag morality into an exclusively technological issue. I won't address this, as it has no place in this discussion.

<comment><USER8> They are deliberately making search results less useful. If this became widespread we would have to abandon search engines entirely. That's the same as the ethical argument against spam.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Map of all professional baseball team in the U.S - <AUTHOR> I have started working on a side project and would love for ya'll to take a look and provide some feedback. I built a website that maps all of the professional baseball teams across the U.S. b/c there was no existing way for me to see this. http://www.thebaseballmap.com is what I have as of right now. Currently the map plots MLB, AAA, AA, A, and Rookie level ball. Those are all the blue dots. I'd love for the map to also plot historical baseball locations, which I've started doing with the red dots.
If you are a baseball fan and I can have 2 min. of your time for some feedback, keep reading! Otherwise, Happy Fourth!
Some questions I have:
Should the app focus more on plotting all of the teams of the past/present or on plotting the stadiums of the past/present? Similar. but not the same.
Specifically, would you be more interested in viewing info about the stadiums, and leaving comments/ratings for those stadiums?
If I implemented user submission, would you contribute a baseball related location to the map?
What sort of related locations would you be interested in contributing/viewing? <comment><USER2> Looks good. I would make make different colored dots (or styled differently) for MLB, AAA, AA, etc clubs. It would also be cool if I could select a major league team and its minor league affiliates light up.

<comment><AUTHOR> go check out v2.0- you might like what you see!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've really got no deeper knowledge of baseball, but could it really be possible that several states have no professional team? (Wyoming/North Dakota/South Dakota/Rhode Island) Not sure how much an absolute scale makes sense, but isn't at least one of the top 3 US national sports?

Minor nitpick: for some of the states it's really hard to discern the borders. And for foreigners like me who don't have all of them memorized... maybe slap the 2 letter abbreviation there as well.

Edit: Cool project, btw :)

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for the suggestions! The Pawtucket Red Sox are actually listed in RI, but the other states do not. It definitely feels wrong. I have not entered independent league teams nor college teams, so this will hopefully change! Could you clarify what you meant when you were referring to an absolute scale?

<comment><USER3> Sorry, I meant: When people are talking about a nation's favorite/national sport there are often so many measurements that people will probably never agree. So, Baseball, Basketball, Football and Ice Hockey are all pretty big - I would've thought there'd be at least one team per state in the premier/uppermost league :)

<comment><AUTHOR> gotcha! Yeah it's disappointing, but it's all about supply and demand. If there's no baseball market, no baseball teams for hundreds of miles. Whereas you can see on the map the gulf coast of FL, NYC, and even LA have multiple teams within miles of each other.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable Link: [http://www.thebaseballmap.com](http://www.thebaseballmap.com)</comment>


Spark Plug - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spark_plug <comment><AUTHOR> Submitted with the quote:

"Polonium spark plugs were marketed by Firestone from 1940 to 1953. While the amount of radiation from the plugs was minuscule and not a threat to the consumer, the benefits of such plugs quickly diminished after approximately a month because of polonium's short half-life, and because buildup on the conductors would block the radiation that improved engine performance. The premise behind the polonium spark plug, as well as Alfred Matthew Hubbard's prototype radium plug that preceded it, was that the radiation would improve ionization of the fuel in the cylinder and thus allow the plug to fire more quickly and efficiently."</comment>


Show HN: Dead simple state management for React - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/bcherny/undux <comment><USER2> Reminds me of recompose's withState higher-order component. [https://github.com/acdlite/recompose#lift-state-into- functio...](https://github.com/acdlite/recompose#lift-state-into-functional- wrappers)</comment>


Ask HN: Why isn't Japan's asteroid rover landing the top story in the US? - <AUTHOR> That was a monumentous achievement for mankind, all but glossed over in my news feeds.<p>https://www.space.com/41957-japan-amazing-asteroid-photos-hayabusa2-rovers.html <comment><USER2> I have some slight experience with the PR world. The thing I think went wrong here, is that the news slowly came in over the course of several days. Each one adding slight excitement, but individually insignificant. First there was a story about a landing going to happen and the first pictures from space. Then there was a story of landing going on but they would only have results a couple of days later. Then there was a story of the landing seemingly successful and now they have images.

If you compare it to a Tesla launch. One clear moment defined in time, various completely superfluous but amazing details for the stories. Most importantly: high quality photogenic imagery! All leading to a giant one day peak of excitement which does take the frontpages.

<comment><USER3> That's a great take on the question (and relevant to anyone trying to generate hype for their start ups or projects)... I'm reasonably interested in space, and am regularly excited to watch the launches etc - but the way this story played out I ended up seeing a few photographs, going "wow, that's amazingly cool... ok, next story..." There was nothing to explore, nothing to be swept up along with.

It is amazingly cool though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Different Strokes for Different Folks.

"News" is harmful because out of billions of things going on every day it has to pick out just a few and those few things have to have enough coherence that somebody who watches CNN at 5:25 has a similar experience to someone who tunes in at 7:10 later on.

Communities have shared truths and falsehoods. Here in the US I think many people are following the Kavanaugh supreme court nomination. If you reload Google News every hour you will probably see nothing new, but some bombshell seems to drop every 1.5 days or so.

It is not irrational that people care about it, but the way in which people are irrational is particularly irrational.

For instance Kavanaugh could just withdraw him nomination and the Republicans have a long list of other conservative judges that could do that job but no they can't stand losing at all so they will wind up losing something bigger all while warning the Democrats that they risk looking like crazy fools who are out of touch with the American people.

And you know that gets people right back in it and keeps the ratings high and you'd better believe all those anchors on CNN got a bonus at the end of 2018 because if it bleeds it leads.

Can you tear it down for everybody? Good luck.

Can you protect yourself? You can.

<comment><USER5> >For instance Kavanaugh could just withdraw him nomination and the Republicans have a long list of other conservative judges that could do that job but no they can't stand losing at all so they will wind up losing something bigger all while warning the Democrats that they risk looking like crazy fools who are out of touch with the American people.

No they couldn't, the Democrats would try to delay any vote to after mid terms. Kavanaugh was announced July 9th for example (of course if the Republicans win again, it wouldn't matter).

Worse, you'd be setting a precedent that you don't need any evidence to take down a supreme court judge nomination, which would of course carry over to politicians as well.

<comment><USER6> > Worse, you'd be setting a precedent that you don't need any evidence to take > down a supreme court judge nomination, which would of course carry over to > politicians as well.

You mean like refusing to even have a confirmation hearing at all? We're already there.

<comment><USER7> Not to mention Robert Bork well before that even. There is no need for evidence in the first place - just like Congress can technically impeach the president for wearing an ugly tie.

<comment><USER8> _" On October 23, 1987, the Senate denied Bork's confirmation, with 42 Senators voting in favor and 58 voting against. Two Democratic Senators, David Boren (D-OK) and Ernest Hollings (D-SC), voted in his favor, with 6 Republican Senators (John Chafee (R-RI), Bob Packwood (R-OR), Arlen Specter (R-PA), Robert Stafford (R-VT), John Warner (R-VA), and Lowell P. Weicker Jr. (R-CT) voting against him.[34]"_

and

 _" On October 20, 1973, Solicitor General Bork was instrumental in the 'Saturday Night Massacre' when President Richard Nixon ordered the firing of Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox following Cox's request for tapes of his Oval Office conversations. Nixon initially ordered U.S. Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire Cox. Richardson resigned rather than carry out the order. Richardson's top deputy, Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus also considered the order "fundamentally wrong"[15] and resigned, making Bork acting attorney general. When Nixon reiterated his order, Bork complied and fired Cox."_

from [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bork](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bork). Bork got a hearing. He just was unable to get approved - by a wide margin - because of his disgraceful conduct during Watergate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Because US media reports only things that have a direct relationship with the US.

<comment><USER10> If the US media only likes US news stories, why was there a huge following for the soccer team in Thailand who were trapped in the cave? It's just a matter of how many other things are in the news right now, and the news cycle right now is being hammered with the SCOTUS nomination. If people want to complain about US news being myopic, this is a really bad example.

<comment><USER11> To reinforce "think of the children".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Because, while it is a landmark achievement, it has little relevance to which people have access to health care, which people are confined to cages their entire lives, or which people are allowed to make decisions about their own bodies -- and, in the US, other stories are very relevant to these questions right now.

I would love for Hayabusa to get more attention, but the problem isn't that it's being drowned out by nothing. It's being drowned out by stories that will have real and long-lasting effects on people's everyday lives.

<comment><USER13> And, yet, a billionaire launching a car into space, or a tiny hole in the ISS both received significantly more press coverage than this, but are equally as unimportant compared to the other things you mentioned.

<comment><USER14> That's just how the news cycle goes. When things are happening, important stories get pushed aside. When nothing is happening, less 'important' stories get featured.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Even here in Japan, I don't recall seeing any news outlets cover this as top story material; in fact, the first place I heard about this was from non- Japanese news sources...

<comment><AUTHOR> This is very interesting insight. As a US citizen I often marvel at the apparently strongly principled value system of Japanese culture. Specifically, it's a sense of acting for 'the greater good' as opposed to acting for what I call the 'look at me' factor (which I find both repugnant yet rampant in the US today).

I wonder if it's these values that simply led to Japan letting the story take a natual course rather than wasting funds to pumping up a PR campaign. If so, I wish Japan all the best in being the first to tap into the virtually limitless space mining resources. They deserve it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's not controversial; it cannot generate outrage.

</comment><comment><USER17> The purpose of news is not to inform, but to make money. Divisive and emotionally charged issues get people to share, respond, and take a more active part in issues. This, in turn, can be monetized -- clicks are money. And it also tends to be easy to keep milking these sort of divisive and emotionally charged issues for days/weeks at a time.

I was even more disappointed in the coverage of the Falcon Heavy. Most news outlets gave it little more than basic coverage, even though it was one of the most significant achievement in space in decades. And that landing footage of multiple rockets separating and autonomously landing, simultaneously, is something that can give anybody goose bumps. And that was a US achievement, which goes against the hypothesis of 'because it was Japanese' many are stating in this thread.

It's pretty sad. We are currently living through what will undoubtedly be seen as one of the most important times in the history of our very species as we develop the technology and ships that will one day go from being just rockets to outright space ships. And you could ask the average person what they know about it, and it would be next to nothing. Yet ask that same person about whether somebody might have drunkenly groped somebody else 35 years ago, and they'll have all the details and dirt. I suppose when it comes to clicks, gropes beat hopes.

<comment><USER18> > The purpose of news … … … …

You conflated 'news' with 'for-profit news agencies'

<comment><USER13> I think he got it right, I think you've assumed that just because a news organization is legally given a "non-profit" tag that they aren't all about making money. The people that work there are still paid a salary just like the "for-profit" agencies, and they still base funding on ratings and how much money a given program brings in. My main news sources are PBS News and NPR News, and I can't tell much of a difference in coverage compared to NBC News or ABC News when I watch those.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> dr-detroit Journalism is dead in America. We have clickbait and we have people who share videos typically the length of a vine maybe a bit longer. Traditional journalism has been vilified by expensive slavic viral marketing firms quite successfully. Footage of forest fires is shown on national news every time it happens because its engaging to the typical video clip consumer. Anything spectacular. If a fireworks factory in China explodes its a top headline but if were engaged in a very serious trade war with China that's just nerd stuff left to the eggheads on public media(reviled by at least 30% of the country and even more would see it defunded). Also internationalism has been vilified to the point it is despised by at least 30% of the country probably more. Also many content providers have been scrambling to pander to the emerging Nu Right demographic who explicitly don't care about the achievements of Chinamen.

</comment><comment><USER19> It was for about 0.2 seconds before the SCOTUS thing blew up

</comment><comment><USER20> In the US, there are a number of us that wake up every day and feel like our hair is on fire. We read the news, hoping that at some point our elected leaders will do their job and rein in the madness, so we can, for a change, sleep well at night. Anything not related to the circus that is currently running our country is pretty much back-page.

</comment><comment><USER21> News programming uses a hierarchy if it bleeds, it leads.

> [https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/two-takes- > depression...](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/two-takes- > depression/201106/if-it-bleeds-it-leads-understanding-fear-based-media)

<comment><USER22> Is that supposed to be a bad joke about yesterday's senate hearing?

<comment><USER23> No, it's a common saying. I've also heard the saying "blood sells newspapers, not ink".

<comment><USER22> I know it's a common saying. I'm trying to poke the bear here.

<comment><AUTHOR> On this subject, if you folks haven't heard about the evolution of "mexican blood tabloids", which is so disgusting I can hardly stand it, you need to see this [please know that the irony of this statement is not lost on me - I'm not saying you need to read these tabloids, but am suggesting you need to see how this machine is working and why it evolved]: [https://www.npr.org/2018/06/29/622275371/working-the- night-s...](https://www.npr.org/2018/06/29/622275371/working-the-night-shift- for-mexico-citys-bloody-crime-tabloids)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> didn't someone (EU Space Agency) already land on a comet and everyone was excited etc? Seems too similar.

<comment><USER13> Comet/asteroid landings have been done, but this is the first time rovers have been deployed on one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is not groundbreaking news because USA was the first to land on comet twenty years ago...In the movie Armageddon.

</comment><comment><USER26> Now that you ask this, I have a similar question on my mind. Why are there so much news about China in US and UK?

<comment><USER27> Maybe because its population is 4-5x as much as the US and UK's population combined and its economic growth is an unstoppable force? Especially given how both the US and UK are a political clusterfuck at the moment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> The public doesnt care about nerd shit like, space, science, climate change, their own survival, etc.

</comment><comment><USER29> Hardly a monumentous achievement

Venera venus missions was a far more important achievement for mankind

</comment><comment><USER30> Why is landing on an asteroid a monumentous achievement? It seems like a nice one, I guess a first-of, but monumentous? No. Second, it was Japan, not the US, that probably meant there was less coverage than if NASA had done it. Third, we had some other news over the past few days which has riveted the nation.

</comment><comment><USER31> Because it's Japanese, not American.

</comment><comment><USER32> It was the top of my personal news feed.</comment>


The Flame Explained - <AUTHOR> http://theairspace.net/commentary/the-flame-explained/

<comment><USER2> This is amazing. I remember being a kid and asking the question, what kind of matter exactly is a flame? Is it plasma?

The first satisfying answer I've ever seen. (And please, if you've seen other good resources, post them here too!)

<comment><USER3> Hopefully somebody will eventually help to curate all of these great teaching aids / resources and help educators discover and use them too...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> TIL I learned about what actually makes a flame. I never really asked myself what makes up a flame. I kind of took it for granted.

</comment><comment><USER5> Despite being a top science student at school, I learned more in those 7 minutes than any given 7 minutes of a science class in my life.

Could more of education look like this? Why doesn't it?

<comment><USER6> While everything the video was talking about is correct, this also only scratches the surface of what is going on (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redox>). Science at school has to go into much more detail to prepare you for when you chose chemistry as your topic for University.

A comparable video that actually gives all that detail is very hard to do (if it's at all possible) and it's also likely to be very boring - unless you are into chemistry at which point you don't need a video like this in the first place because the books are perfectly fine for you (they were for me and I have nothing but interest into chemistry - no education aside of what you'd get in High-School).

<comment> guard-of-terra But why does school have to prepare you for every college there is, including those you aren't going to attend?

95% high schoolers aren't going to any college requiring chemistry. Why not teach the fun and memorable flame to them, instead of boring chemistry flame they wouldn't understand or remember?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> ...Came expecting a detailed interesting dissection of the recent Flame virus... left disappointed...

<comment><USER8> Came expecting a detailed interesting dissection of the recent Flame virus, left even happier. After all, I'll encounter fire much more often than Flame.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I was 100% sure this was going to explain the Flame virus.

<comment><USER10> Same. I was thinking an explanation of Flame that an 11 year old could understand might help Fox News figure out what the hell they're babbling on about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> National Public Radio Science Friday segment about the flame explanation challenge, with interview of the creator of the winning video:

[http://www.sciencefriday.com/video/06/08/2012/what-is-a- flam...](http://www.sciencefriday.com/video/06/08/2012/what-is-a-flame.html)

I heard this on air on Friday 8 June 2012 in Minnesota.

</comment><comment><USER12> This is a surprising and refreshingly entertaining video. I have always been curious as to what flames really were, but it has always been on my "Things to look up _eventually_ list" that I never get around to. The song at the end was a nice touch too (though I'm not a fan of the M83-esque yelling in it).

</comment><comment><USER13> The blog has crapped out does anyone have a direct link to the video?

<comment><USER14> video: <https://vimeo.com/40271657>

info: <http://flamechallenge.org/></comment></comment>


Researchers Release Genetically Engineered Mosquitoes - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/editors/27304/?ref=rss <comment><USER2> Oh man, this is good news. We lived in Puerto Rico for five years, and a year after we came back to Indiana, one of our son's classmates died of dengue. It was nearly under control in the 70's, but "nearly under control" just means you can stop paying for control measures - so it's come back with a vengeance in the past decade or so.

Nasty stuff. Acts just like a bad flu, and in a bad case they hospitalize you - mostly for dehydration; it's a viral disease so there's not much specific they can do. Then, after you're better, if you're not lucky, you're home from the hospital a day or two, suddenly don't feel so well, and fifteen minutes later you're dead of shock. Just like my son's friend. He was 11.

<comment><USER3> I had it a few years back. I had fever with headaches and couldn't eat much because I kept puking after every meal. I got admitted to hospital and they found that my platelet count was dropping as well. They were preparing for the possibility that I would need to get a blood transfusion when it stabilized and started improving. Apparently, they were waiting for the count to drop below a certain threshold and mine started recovering just above that value.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _A second concern is that the engineered lethality gene could somehow be transferred to other environmentally-important insects, such as those vital for pollination._

I'm not sure why this is a concern, but inter species horizontal gene transfer (in insects) isn't really something that happens. In bacteria sure, in plants maybe, but this is very much not a case of, "Eat a mosquito, get a gene".

<comment><USER5> I have to speculate since the article is short on molecular details, but I would guess the mosquitoes carry simple knockout mutations which prevent them from manufacturing some essential compound, maybe an amino acid.

Therefore, there's nothing of consequence to transfer to another species. You'd be transfering a gene that doesn't do anything.

Even if, in addition to transferring to another species, it somehow replaced the working gene in some individual, then the gene would simply die out due to the heavy selection pressure against it, leaving the rest of the population unharmed. (To counteract that with the mosquitoes, I take it fresh supplies of the engineered males are going to be repeatedly introduced?)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> 3.5% of offsprings between these mosquitoes and "normal' mosquitoes survive. I wonder if these offsprings are immune. If they are then that means the experiment failed - In a few generations the population will be back and you might not be able to use the asme trick as before - those immune offsprings will mate with the engineered mosquitoes, whose offsprings _may_ be immune also.

</comment><comment><USER7> How could that possibly work? If off-springs of these genetically modified mosquitoes die, then only original, non-modified genes would propagate.

I would understand if genetically modified genes gave mosquitoes some advantage such as ability to resist infection. I believe Bill Gates released such mosquitoes on TED talk.

But modifications that cripple mosquitoes are doomed.

<comment><USER8> Presumably the plan is to keep breading them in captivity and releasing them, such that those genes are constantly being reintroduced.

<comment><USER7> It's a compelling reason to charge taxpayers in perpetuity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> So far, the only real successful method of removing mosquitoes has been massive spraying of insecticide, along with draining swampland. The Panama Canal owes its existence to these efforts, for instance.

Genetics may be a second way to do it now. What would be a worst-case scenario in these Cayman Islands trials?

<comment><USER10> Worst case is the genes do something unexpected and advantageous to mosquitoes and a breeding pair their find their way on to an airplane.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The only concern I have with this is the impact this may have on the eco system that is hard or impossible to predict. I guess that it's very hard to impossible to go back after the fact.

</comment><comment><USER12> _A second concern is that the engineered lethality gene could somehow be transferred to other environmentally-important insects, such as those vital for pollination._

Really? And they still released them into the wild? What about the consequences for other species that consume those mosquitoes as part of their diet?

I'm still amazed at how we humans consider ourselves so wise to keep messing around with nature in this way, just to keep one disease under control.

<comment><USER13> Nature has been messing with _itself_ for billions of years. It's called evolution.

The whole point of human intelligence is _control over our environment_. Yes, there are risks, and always will be risks. But that does not mean we should not _act._

<comment><USER14> Da truth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I have a feeling zombie apocalypse is coming.

</comment><comment><USER16> Maybe they could genetically engineer a mosquito that is a superior mate that can carry the aids virus which mutates to become airborne. Have it populate the wild and have it find a home on every continent. We could finally get a cure for aids because the 30 year survival of mankind depends on it.

Let them into the wild and publish how you did it. So Kim Jong II can make it too.

Regulating the introduction of new lifeforms designed to subdue others is what Congress should be debating. Not sopa.</comment>