Ditch the Batteries: Off-Grid Compressed Air Energy Storage - <AUTHOR> http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2018/05/ditch-the-batteries-off-the-grid-compressed-air-energy-storage.html <comment><USER3> I was quite excited by compressed air storage when Lightsail came into the picture almost 5-7 years ago. Sadly, they could not make the economics work and ended up pivoting into a company that sells carbon fibre tanks for high- pressure storage.

As someone who follows the energy space closely, Lithium ion batteries now have so much momentum and $$$ pumped into them via R&D work, it's going to be hard for competing energy storage technologies to catch up. Flywheel and hydrogen fuel-cell also often come up but I think we're at a point now where batteries are going to take off simply because of their wide area of applicability. With that economy of scale costs will drive down and even more research and $$$ will flow.

<comment><USER4> Aren't flywheels used in datacenters to cover the split second between when the power goes out and the generators kick on?

<comment><USER5> I toured a datacenter 5 years ago or so - and yes, they had a big flywheel for temporary power loses (until they could get the generators running)

<comment><USER6> That's only if they don't /cant run the entire DC of battery -whilst the gensets come online this is how telco exchanges / central offices work and important ones may have power supplied via different routes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > However, to store 360 Wh of potential electrical energy, the system requires > a storage reservoir of 18 m3, the size of a small room measuring 3x3x2 > metres. The authors note that "although the tank size appears very large, it > still makes sense for applications in rural areas".

This would light a home for an hour, with LED bulbs and careful usage. And all it requires is a room-sized storage tank.

So if I wanted something that ran my house all night, I'd need a storage tank larger than said house.

<comment><USER8> For home use you also have to consider that you're basically making a bomb every time you store energy in the thing.

<comment><USER9> Any kind of high-density energy storage is basically a bomb.

If you charge or discharge Lithium polymer or lithuium ion batteries "wrong" they explode too.

I wouldn't want to be near a flywheel that stores 360 Wh of energy when it breaks.

<comment><USER10> On the other hand, flywheels can be easily buried underground, and easily contained. The max power of a flywheel is known, so it's just a matter of putting enough concrete between humans and flywheel, a straightforward and inexpensive engineering problem. And unlike compressed air, the containment isn't under constant, wearing pressure.

<comment><USER8> You can bury the air tanks too and avoid most of the danger, but that's expensive and makes them harder to maintain. The big advantage of flywheels is that when they fail you know the energy will be discharged in a particular plane. You can orient them such that nothing vital is in that plane (like your house!). With compressed air all bets are off.

<comment><USER11> SCUBA tanks have a "burst-disk" or a weaker part of the tank that is designed to fail first, rather than the whole thing exploding and launching shrapnel. It's still violent and can throw some shrapnel, but it's much less. Also when SCUBA shops fill tanks they usually put them into a container that would somewhat contain that.

I imagine something similar could be done. It's not like there are zero safety mechanisms with compressed air.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> An added benefit is you could power your air-tools with something like this without having to convert to electrical energy. As a former off-gridder, that's actually a really big plus.

Another non conventional way to store energy is using gravity power modules (example: [http://www.gravitypower.net/](http://www.gravitypower.net/))

Storing hydrogen from electrolysis via solar panels also sounds interesting. Basically once your batteries are charged you start making hydrogen.

<comment><USER13> Similar to those gravity power modules: a company called Ares ([https://www.aresnorthamerica.com/](https://www.aresnorthamerica.com/)) is trying to use much smaller concrete 'cars' on rails to store energy. Not sure of the status of it but it looked promising to me.

The direct use of compressed air is interesting. Taking it to the extreme, you could have compressed air as your primary utility piped through your home, and have appliances that run off compressed air. Refrigeration cycle is compression based anyway for example. You would still need some electricity for control circuits for example, but you might be able to keep the heavy lifting air-based.

<comment><USER14> In the midwest, running compressed air through a home is called amish electricity. They do use it for many things. Ive seen air-powered blenders. (Air power is a big thing for woodworking and so its use in the home too is no suprise.)

<comment><USER12> I had no idea these existed, I want these when I move back off-grid. [https://www.cottagecraftworks.com/kitchen-food-prep/non- elec...](https://www.cottagecraftworks.com/kitchen-food-prep/non-electric- kitchen-appliances/air-powered-appliances)

<comment><USER14> It is functional but has many issues. Water/condensation in the lines is a big deal in winter. Running pipes in walls makes leak detection difficult. They are all also very very loud.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> At ETH Zurich, there is a project aiming at scaling compressed air storage to MWhs. [1]

The interesting part is that they are trying to make the storage adiabatic, i.e., they store the heat that is generated while compressing the air in a phase change material (i.e., a material that will become liquid when hot, since a lot of energy can be stored in phase transitions) and get the heat back to warm up the cold expanding gas on decompression.

The issue is that even with the phase change storage, heat will dissipate into the rock within a couple of days, making the whole process inefficient for long-term storage.

[1] [https://www.ethz.ch/content/specialinterest/mavt/energy- tech...](https://www.ethz.ch/content/specialinterest/mavt/energy- technology/renewable-energy-carriers/en/research/energy-storage/elecstor.html)

<comment><USER16> Sounds like a promosing solution for averaging out daily fluctuations though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> When compressing air, a lot of heat is generated, and in most cases wasted. When the air is released, it cools down, and has to take heat from the surroundings. Which doesn't work very fast without additional heat exchangers, and especially not in cold environments. Compressed air storage is only efficient with additional heat storage, which is something that promoters of compressed air storage often "forget" to tell you.

<comment><USER18> They didn't forget - it's addressed in detail. They are advocating "small scale"

 _The low efficiency is mainly since air heats up during compression. This waste heat, which holds a large share of the energy input, is dumped into the atmosphere. A related problem is that air cools down when it is decompressed, lowering electricity production and possibly freezing the water vapour in the air. To avoid this, large-scale CAES plants heat the air prior to expansion using natural gas fuel, which further deteriorates the system efficiency and makes renewable energy storage dependent on fossil fuels._

<comment><USER19> Going "small scale" does not solve the heat problem unfortunately. If it does then the authors did not mention it. All they mentioned is how large scale plants deal with the problem.

<comment><USER18> Come on dude...

 _Small-scale compressed air energy storage systems with high air pressures turn the inefficiency of compression and expansion into an advantage. While large-scale AA-CAES aims to recover the heat of compression with the aim of maximizing electricity production, these small-scale systems take advantage of the temperature differences to allow trigeneration of electrical, heating and cooling power._

<comment><USER20> And then also goes in to detail about small scale iso-thermal setups that have negligible thermal losses. Apparently "author did not mention" actually means "I did not read the article".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I worked for a company that had old underground mines and a power company used them to fill with compressed air when energy was cheap and then release and generate electricity when it is more expensive. My company got a cut.

<comment><USER22> I used to have friends in the oil industry in the 90's, and I remember them talking about the industry maybe using dried up wells the same way.

I don't know if it ever became anything, though.

As much as people consider the oil industry a bunch of evildoers, it is always at the forefront of the absolute latest in tech. Hard problems + money does that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Reminds me of this project from a few years ago: a two-person hot-rod driven at up to 20mph by a 256-cylinder compressed-air engine, constructed out of Lego...

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ObE4_nMCjE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ObE4_nMCjE)

</comment><comment><USER24> Volvo diesel cars avoid turbo lag by storing compressed air. Not very relevant but interesting nevertheless [https://www.roadandtrack.com/new-cars/car- technology/news/a2...](https://www.roadandtrack.com/new-cars/car- technology/news/a27515/volvos-diesel-turbo-lag-solution-is-compressed-air/)

<comment><USER25> And Bosch uses compressed air to keep motorcycles on track (experimental tech) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ERowrZJyfw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ERowrZJyfw)

<comment><USER26> If you could point them backwards for a little extra thrust ...

<comment><USER27> Modern supersports are pushing ~200hp, no need for the extra weight that would generate the thrust.

<comment><USER28> The Spitfire actually used the jet propulsion of the rearward facing exhaust for an extra few horsepower. Many piston engine aircraft do this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> So, I seem to recall that the Amish sometimes use something like this to power their tools. Source: my own unreliable memory of an article I read somewhere. Anybody more knowledgeable out there able to confirm or disfirm?

<comment><USER30> There's an article about it at [http://www.amishnews.com/amisharticles/amish_tech.htm](http://www.amishnews.com/amisharticles/amish_tech.htm) which references some books that might describe it in more detail.

> Almost any electrical appliance can be adapted to work off of alternate > power, such as compressed air. Some Amish women have been using compressed > air to power blenders in the kitchen for years. In one house, compressed air > powers a water pump, sewing and washing machines, and drills and saws in the > shop. Some Amish businesses have as their specialty adapting such appliances > so they can be powered by compressed air.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'm surprised no one is talking about how scary it is that you are basically making a high powered bomb at your house any time you have one of these. Anyone that has watched Mystbusters understands the incredible destructive power stored in compressed air. I'll stick with batteries, thanks.

<comment><USER10> You probably keep multiple gallons of gasoline nearby, tho.

<comment><USER32> Not to mention the giant propane tanks that many houses in rural areas already have

<comment><USER33> Not the same? Shoot a propane tank, it leaks. No oxygen in the tank.

There is very little outside compressed gas that can explode disastrously without oxygen. A tank of compressed gas is probably high up on the 'bomb in the house' category. Just under the water heater I suppose.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Lightsail Energy tried and failed to bring this to market - not sure whether this can ultimately outperform Lithium Ion Batteries, which have all the pressure of the electronics industry behind them.

<comment><USER12> I feel like they have different applications so they're not necessarily competing. Obviously compressed air systems will never have the energy density of a battery, but they could be much more reliable. It also scales up really easily, and I think that's where the sweet spot is - I've heard of people sealing off caves to make giant air storage tanks for these projects.

<comment><USER35> "sealing off caves" \- would love to see, or hear the facts. Specifically, about safety of the pressure "chamber".

<comment><USER8> I think it is more typically done with old mines. Natural caves are far more complex systems and there are environmental concerns.

<comment><USER12> you're right - it looks like the caverns being used for experimentation are the result of solution mining for salt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Its really interesting that they can get up to the efficiency of led acid batteries in applications for rural areas. I wonder if maintaining that large air tank is more difficult / costly than maintaining the batteries.

Its also interesting that we're only talking about 116 PSI - I'm guessing CFM is more important.

> A simulation for a stand-alone CAES aimed at unpowered rural areas, and > which is connected to a solar PV system and used for lighting only, operates > at a relatively low air pressure of 8 bar and obtains a round-trip > efficiency of 60% -- comparable to the efficiency of lead-acid batteries. > [7] However, to store 360 Wh of potential electrical energy, the system > requires a storage reservoir of 18 m3, the size of a small room measuring > 3x3x2 metres. The authors note that "although the tank size appears very > large, it still makes sense for applications in rural areas".

</comment><comment><USER37> > "they do not require rare or toxic materials"

This benefit alone would make me hope for compressed air energy batteries to receive tons of funding, and become cost-competitive with other forms of batteries.

Also, consider that there are three important elements in a battery "economics":

1) Weight / energy density - how much energy can you store, per weight of the battery? Important for cars.

2) Volume / energy density - how much energy can you store, per volume of the battery? Important for cars as well.

3) Cost / energy stored - how much does it cost to store a unit of energy? This can also be divided into two elements: setup (e.g. the cost of producing the battery and deploying it) vs maintenance (how much does it cost to keep the battery alive, over the years?)

There are also other minor factors, such as reaction to environmental changes (e.g. temperatures, etc).

</comment><comment><USER38> Peugeot is working on this for years but it got frozen last year: [https://www.groupe-psa.com/en/newsroom/automotive- innovation...](https://www.groupe-psa.com/en/newsroom/automotive- innovation/hybrid-air/)

</comment><comment><USER39> An early design for the automobile ran on compressed (liquid!) air.

[http://www.didik.com/ev_hist.htm](http://www.didik.com/ev_hist.htm)

It might work for some applications, but in 120 years we haven't been able to make it work for cars, at least.

<comment><USER40> > ... but in 120 years we haven't been able to make it work for cars...

Ok, but has anyone _worked_ on the problem in the past 120 years?

<comment><USER41> [https://www.mdi.lu](https://www.mdi.lu) tried to make compressed air two person urban cars (Air Pod) but with the main inventor and visionary now dead I don't know if there is much momentum left...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I have argued unsuccessfully in the past that this technique would be an excellent data center strategy. That is especially true if you had your data center near the Columbia river and its near constant winds.

Using wind power to compress into high pressure tanks, then when you need extra energy you pull it out and pipe the air expansion pipes _through_ heat exchanges in the data center. That way heat from the data center goes to warming up the air (better efficiency when you feed it to the turbines) and it cools the data center which is part of what one might use the energy for in the first place.

If you put the air expansion pipes in a conveniently located source of water you could chill that water to freezing.

<comment><USER43> If the entire contents of the data center were pressurized, would it increase the efficiency of air cooling? (Denser air -> more heat capacity?)

<comment><USER42> It would certainly increase the heat capacity of the air.

Compressing air into the data center however would not be a win. During compression the air gets hot. In the system that I was pushing the compressed air tanks were outside in the wind so that they were benefiting from the cooling effects of the same wind that was pumping air into them.

<comment><USER43> Good point. Could allow for low power cooling (once pressurized, venting pressure would drop temperature of the contents without added energy), but probably not worth the trouble.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Seems like a technology that has narrow usecases like where cogeneration is possible. I guess large city's and industrial applications which can use the waste products of the thermal cycle.

For alternatives, my money in the long run is on molten salt batteries [1] for large scale. Technology also has benefit of increased industry knowledge of how to utilize molten salts safely which will benefit LFTR research.

(1) [http://news.mit.edu/2018/metal-mesh-membrane-rechargeable- ba...](http://news.mit.edu/2018/metal-mesh-membrane-rechargeable-batteries- renewable-energy-0122)

</comment><comment><USER45> I would just love a couple of small vertical turbines slowly pumping up my underground storage. I live in a sometimes violent wind location, often just when I could use the energy to run the furnace. I could see easily augering 10-15ft holes , dropping in vertically buried, used, composite tanks bought off Ebay, run at a fraction of their max pressure. Easily adding more to increase capacity, as needed. Yes a little pock-pock noise of the pistons and check valves, but it would only happen when wind blows. Though, a tank failure may mean retrieving it off the roof.

</comment><comment><USER46> This makes some sense in poor tropical nations, where rigging a mechanical system like this is quite feasible locally (instead of having to import advanced lithium batteries, along with usually exorbitant import duties etc), and some of the "inefficiency" can be used to heat, and particularly, cool spaces.

It also makes sense for oceanic wind turbines, which can use periods of high wind vs low demand to pump air into large under-sea air storage bags, using the sea as free cooling/heating towards isothermal operation.

</comment><comment><USER47> Or, don't ditch the batteries. They work fine.

The title of the article strikes me as one of those marketing titles possibly planted by a press release. Position the competing product as if it's somehow bad. "Protein-free!"

I'm not buying it.

</comment><comment><USER48> Also works for vehicles. Hydraulic hybrids capture 3x more of the braking energy.

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

There's a retrofit for garbage trucks that pays for itself in 2 years, or you can buy them new.

[http://www.govtech.com/transportation/Hybrid-Garbage- Miami-D...](http://www.govtech.com/transportation/Hybrid-Garbage-Miami- Dade-040511.html)

</comment><comment><USER49> Joey Hess has been using his fridge for off-grid energy storage... With lots of data around what he's seeing. It's really interesting, and he still gets to keep his food cold.

EDIT: Not really used as a battery, but probably could be.

[http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/fridge_0.1/](http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/fridge_0.1/)

</comment><comment><USER50> Isn't there a loss in efficiency due to heat? Compressing air heats it up, which is lost (this is the basic principle behind refrigeration, though it doesn't use air). And then there's the loss in converting this PE back into electricity. Are these losses less than what's lost in LiON cells?

<comment><USER51> Read the article they go into this in detail.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> This reminds me of perri air from spaceballs

[https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-prQEijRsbNk/Vnq-6GVfO-I/AAAAAAAAB...](https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-prQEijRsbNk/Vnq-6GVfO-I/AAAAAAAABjA/GSEn_ij3AzE/s1600/spaceballs- scrocco-perri-air.png)

</comment><comment><USER53> Also interesting is hydraulic energy storage. Any entrepreneurs want to take a shot with this system?

[http://license.umn.edu/technologies/z07054_hydraulic- energy-...](http://license.umn.edu/technologies/z07054_hydraulic-energy- storage-systems)

<comment><USER54> >Hydraulic energy storage systems store energy by compressing air similar to a battery storing energy in an electric circuit.

Wait, did you read the article? :)

<comment><USER53> Hydraulic systems and compressed air systems are usually regarded as separate things. Maybe the distinction is a bit arbitrary and the former can be regarded as a subset of the latter but there you go. edit: Google says hydraulic transmits power through fluid, compressed air through air/gas.

<comment><USER55> Pneumatic vs hydraulic is about compressible vs incompressible fluids. (Naturally, hydraulic oil is also a much better lubricator and an exceedingly superior sealant than oiled air).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Off-topic: one of my favourite Ted Chiang short stories - Exhalation[1] - <USER2> about compressed-air-based lifeforms.

1\. [http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/exhalation/](http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/exhalation/)

</comment><comment><USER57> > The low efficiency is mainly since air heats up during compression. This > waste heat, which holds a large share of the energy input, is dumped into > the atmosphere.

Wait... wait... I'm... not sure I believe the extend of this statement. If this isn't wrong it's certainly awkwardly worded.

</comment><comment><USER58> It's interesting to see research done in this space but it's not even remotely practical yet. Their 410Wh system is more complex, five times larger, and has a much higher up front cost than an equivalent amount of lithium battery storage.

</comment><comment><USER59> Highview claims to be able to do this at prices competitive with Lithium batteries. [https://www.highviewpower.com/technology/](https://www.highviewpower.com/technology/)

</comment><comment><USER60> I'm not knowledgeable about any of this, but how does this compare to a Trompe? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trompe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trompe)

</comment><comment><USER61> When compressed air energy storage comes up, it is always worth remembering PV = nRT, the ideal gas law. And then remembering that things are not ideal.

<comment><USER62> Mechanical engineer here. The ideal gas approximation is plenty reasonable for the pressures and temperatures of interest here.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> Silly question - could tires be used to do this? I mean, could one improvise a storage system via a stack of car tires?

</comment><comment><USER64> Afaik, compressed air energy startups come and go since long time, this should be ok for use in enterprise though.

</comment><comment><USER65> I always wanted to have an air compressor running every day on my otherwise quiet property.

</comment><comment><USER66> How about steel springs? Rubber bands? Weights hoisted on cables?

</comment><comment><USER67> I'd love to go nuclear ... charge your phone once a year?

</comment><comment><USER68> Hold on... So if you take a Tesla, remove the batteries, remove the electro engine, and replace that with a trivial compressed air based pneumatic motor it would be more eco friendly, more powerful and have a higher autonomy ?

<comment><USER69> From [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressed_air_car#Disadvantag...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressed_air_car#Disadvantages)

\- A 2005 study demonstrated that cars running on lithium-ion batteries out- perform both compressed air and fuel cell vehicles more than threefold at the same speeds.

\- A 2009 University of Berkeley Research Letter found that "Even under highly optimistic assumptions the compressed-air car is significantly less efficient than a battery electric vehicle and produces more greenhouse gas emissions than a conventional gas-powered car with a coal intensive power mix."</comment></comment>


AppCloudy: Hosting for web apps - <AUTHOR> http://appcloudy.com/ <comment><USER2> What's the differentiation with the gazillion other hosting platforms out there?

</comment><comment><USER3> More info?</comment>


200-year-old ciphers may reveal the location of treasure buried in Virginia - <AUTHOR> http://mentalfloss.com/article/540277/beale-ciphers-buried-treasure <comment><USER2> > That attitude would reign among professional cryptanalysts until January > 1970, when Dr. Carl Hammer, Director of Computer Sciences at Sperry-Univac, > made a startling revelation at the Third Annual Simulation Symposium in > Tampa, Florida. He had analyzed the Beale ciphers with a UNIVAC 1108 > computer and compared the codes to the musings of a random number generator. > The results showed signs of an intelligent pattern.

> "Beale Cyphers 1 and 3 are 'for real,'" Hammer concluded. "They are not > random doodles but do contain intelligence and messages of some sort. > Further attempts at decoding are indeed warranted."

Be careful of concluding that. The human brain is a bad random number generator. A hoaxer trying to write random gibberish in those days would do it by hand, not by rolling dice to ensure uniform randomness, and the handwritten gibberish would inevitably contain patterns.

</comment><comment><USER3> A book code. Someone could run it against every digitized book earlier than the date of the code. With enough off-peak AWS instances...

<comment><USER4> The problem would be to define what is considered a successful outcome, measurable by an automated system.

<comment><USER5> Indeed, even if you decode the supposedly "cracked" Beale letter, you get nearly complete gibberish:

ihaie depos otedi nthec opntt olBed oorta boupf ourmi lesfr ombul ordsi nanep caiat ionor iault sipfe stbel owthe surla csoft hhgto undth sfotl owing artic issbe aongi ngjoi otltt othep artfe swhos lnamf sateg iieti nnumb erthr ffhtt ewith

[https://nibot-lab.livejournal.com/tag/beale%20ciphers](https://nibot- lab.livejournal.com/tag/beale%20ciphers)

It's almost certainly a hoax.

<comment><USER6> It's almost certainly a hoax, but any book substitution cipher is very sensitive to errors both in counting, and in exactly which book. From that perspective, if you remove the spaces, it's almost intelligeble even to a non native speaker. Observe:

      ihaiedeposotedinthecopnttolBedoortaboupfourmilesfrombulordsinanepcaiationoriaultsipfestbelowthesurlacsofthhgtoundthsfotlowingarticissbeaongingjoiotlttothepartfeswhoslnamfsategiietinnumberthr ffhttewith

i haie deposoted in the copntt ol Bedoort aboup four miles from bulords in an epcaiation or iault sip fest below the surlacs of thh gtound ths fotlowing articiss beaonging joiotltto the partfes whosl namfs ate giiet in number thrffhtte with

I have deposited in the county of Bedoort (Bedford?) about for miles from bulords in an epcaiation or vault/fault six feet below the surface of the ground.

Supposedly epcaiation is excavation, that one I didn't get. Some of the latter parts I also have trouble reading without guessing a lot. Like 'joiotltto' and 'thrffhtte'.

<comment><USER7> Also in the past there was no standardized way of writing words so its possible that some spellings are off by today's standards.

I remember when the spellings of words became standardized.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wow!

What is the probability that a trivial variation on the decoding method results in otherwise unreadable text BUT STARTING with "sited at" ??? roughly 26^6?!?

1) I used/fixed Tobin Fricke's (@tobinfricke) doi-decode.c to first fix the indexing/versions of the Declaration of Independence. The result can be found in the thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17337421](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17337421)

2) Due to the quasi alphabetic sequences in beale.1 I came to the conclusion that beale.1 is in fact just scratchpad notes containing fragments of look-up table to use while encrypting, so is not the location file. Bummed at the lack of a location file, I just pressed on out of curiosity for the names file (beale.3)

3) I next tried some trivial variations on the cipher concept (second letter of each word, last letter etc) such that the kolmogorov complexity increase of the decoding would be nearly zero, but always got rubbish.

4) Until I tried a trivial variation (not giving yet, perhaps after convincing myself it is absurd coincidence), giving "sitedat...." with "..." being rubbish text.

EDIT1: the same decoding also contains "twograil" somewhere in the middle, but not as convincing, does "two grail" signifiy something in the area?

</comment><comment><USER9> "As long as a key is available, a substitution cipher is a safe, simple way to encrypt a message." ...quality article

<comment><USER10> I can't tell whether you're being sarcastic, but the article is essentially correct. The security of an encryption algorithm doesn't depend on how complex it is if you never reuse the key, because a uniformly random key produces uniformly random output for any input. Only key reuse can introduce statistical regularities that allow cryptanalysis to be applied. The reason most encryption algorithms are more complex than simple substitution is exactly that they are intended to allow applying a relatively short key multiple times, both to encrypt messages longer than the key and to encrypt multiple messages.

<comment><USER11> > a uniformly random key produces uniformly random output for any input.

This is clearly not true for a simple substitution cipher though, otherwise it couldn't be attacked with frequency analysis

<comment><USER12> A one time pad is a specific case of substitution cipher (it's a generalization of vignere) where the key is the length of the document. It is probably secure - as in it is actually impossible to break.

The reason one time pads are not used in general is that you need a "perfect" rng, and you have to be able to get the random values to the recipient. Those old "person traveling with brief case of secrets" trope was a real thing. Key distribution is the problem solved by public key cryptography. But you can't use one time pads with public key crypto, because the weakness is then breaking public keys (which is probably possible).

Stream ciphers loosely acted like a one time pad in that you generate a "random" stream and xor with the message. But it doesn't reach the actual requirement of security for a one time pad because the key is the RNG seed, which means you can brute force the seed key space and only the correct key will produce a completely sensible decrypted output.

A true one time pad means that a brute force search of the key space for a message of length N will find every valid message of length N.

Eg an 11 letter message would produce (among others) "hello world" and "hello earth" as well as "die planet!".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The first cipher gives directions in yards, in this order: east, south, west, north. When followed in order, this gives a location just north of an old dolomite quarry, 3.95 miles from Buford's Tavern. It's not far off the Appalachian Trail, but not so close that you would stumble on it accidentally.

</comment><comment><USER14> What is point of finding it if the govt is going to claim it?

<comment><USER15> After black swan, it seems like big treasure hunting is close to hopeless [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Swan_Project](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Swan_Project)

<comment><USER16> > "The ineffable truth of this case is that the _Mercedes_ is a naval vessel > of Spain and that the wreck of this naval vessel, the vessel's cargo, and > any human remains are the natural and legal patrimony of Spain."

Legal opinion seems to be fairly solid on this point. Perhaps the lesson instead should be to not pillage national warships.</comment></comment></comment>


Apply HN: Casepad – Better Databases for Public Defenders and Others - <AUTHOR> Potemkin Demo: https://demo.casepad.io
Problem: lawyers, judges, and clerks who work in high volume case environments (public defense, small claims, family, housing, prosecution) at the state and local level need databases to:
(1) Get access to basic information about their cases
(2) Fulfill their sometimes onerous compliance requirements
(3) Run basic analytics on their caseloads
(4) Schedule their work around court appearances, client availability, etc.
Existing tools don't deliver on these four points because: no mobile or web access, onerous amounts of time to generate simple compliance reports, a lack any sort of extensibility, no integration with basic office productivity tools, bad search/indexing, and no automation of the onerous data intake process.
Casepad: is an attempt to solve these issues. We have partnered with one of NYC's institutional defense providers to build a modern database service geared towards these needs. They've provided us with full access to their staff, introductions to other professionals, and some "seed" money to build an mvp.
About us: we're brothers. I'm a '14 college graduate who worked in NYC as a data analyst. My brother is studying CS in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil where we both grew up.
Why We're Applying: two main reasons. First, we could use the money. It would be great if my brother could afford to move to NY with me and we could both tackle this full time. Second, I think we would benefit from the mentorship that YC and its network have to provide. It would be great to learn more from folks who have built great tech businesses.
Prior Work: we've been writing code and interviewing users for Casepad for about 3mo now. Over 60 attorneys, judges, and clerks were interviewed while we validated some of our assumptions about the broader legal market.
If you have any questions, comments, feedback, or interest in the project reach out. We'd love to hear from you! <comment><USER2> I've spent a couple of years in the legal tech industry and this looks like a cool solution, in a lucrative market that are willing to spend A LOT of money on IT solutions but I'd keep in mind

\- Your customers will be running a centralised practice management platform (basically a specialised CRM), you'll need to integrate with it; this isn't easy. In fact it's really hard.

\- Most of the time, the fee-earner/practitioner won't do any of their own data input, they'll have their PA do it for them, consider this when you're building a backend.

\- They live and die by their Outlook calendars and contacts. You'll need to integrate with that; this is easier.

\- You'll have questions about how you're storing and transmitting data and what jurisdiction its being hosted in. Some of these questions will seem naive and obvious, but legal tech is a _paranoid_ market.

\- This is also a CONSERVATIVE market, they fear change, they don't like change. This is a constant uphill battle.

\- The flip side is that 90% of the software in this market is 5-10 years old and "cloud" solutions are novel and strange to them (cf fear about data storage)

\- Focus on mobile. Ignore desktop. Seriously.

\- Don't discount this only being applicable for lawyers, any professional service industry (financial planners etc) will benefit from this.

\- You're right compliance, audit trails, history is EVERYTHING. Pitch it as a record keeping solution for the firm, not a productivity tool for the practitioner.

\- Bake in export. Make the data as easy to get out and easy to get in.

<comment><AUTHOR> First off, thank you very very much for your comments and feedback. This post is amazingly on point based on everything we have seen so far. A few points to elaborate:

-They are. The folks we are developing with use one of these. We are still trying to figure out how to pull the data out of it into a portable format of some sorts, but we haven't had the time to crack the nut yet. Thankfully, our current client has expressed a willingness to run their CRM system side-by-side with our product as we launch and develop. As it currently stands the value of their data falls dramatically over time because its just not easy to get to.

-We've identified a number of constituencies within law firms (clerks, attorneys, managers as broad classes) they all have different use cases and we are doing our best to consider each of them as we progress.

-Yes.

-We think a bit more paranoia about data storage is not necessarily a bad thing. I personally enjoy explaining how this stuff works to people (its not just lawyers, most people don't have a good understanding about how and where their data is stored online).

-Yes, this was one of our biggest struggles starting out. I've been doing the research for a lot longer than we have been coding and trust building has actually been the hardest thing we've had to do.

-Yup!

-We will keep this in mind. We are currently developing it as a responsive web app (so functional on both) but we will definitely keep our eyes open for ways to enrich the mobile experience.

-This is a fascinating and ambitious thought that I will save for later.

-Again, 100% spot on. The managers are the decision makers and what they care about is record keeping and compliance.

-Will do more of this as we continue development. We have it set up for the backend currently, but I can definitely see the value for end users of being able to export bits and pieces of the data as needed.

Thanks again

<comment><USER2> Pleasure :)

This "our current client has expressed a willingness to run their CRM system side-by-side with our product as we launch and develop. " is really important, partner with a guinea pig firm so you can learn on the ground

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've thought about this problem pretty extensively (as a lawyer and software developer).

My question is who are you selling this to? If it's just attorneys, that's fine. But if you want courts to adopt it, you will be competing thru a procurement process. This can be death for a startup - long timelines, complicated bidding procedures, and endless requests for customizations. There's huge amounts of money to be made, but by established players who are familiar with the process, built a basic CMS, and can spend thousands of hours of dev time customizing and installing it. Often for just one jurisdiction. Rinse and repeat for the rest of the country...

What I've proposed in the past is a "Wordpress for courts" \- a free, open source case management system. It will be more quickly adopted by smaller courts with limited budgets. As larger court systems take notice, they will be attracted not just to the cost and better UX, but the extensibility. The country will benefit by having better, faster access to court records, case law, etc.

I've considered submitting it as a non-profit to HN. And you could easily create a for-profit based on implementation and customization services.

<comment><USER4> > (as a lawyer and software developer)

Me too.

>What I've proposed in the past is a "Wordpress for courts" \- a free, open source case management system. It will be more quickly adopted by smaller courts with limited budgets. As larger court systems take notice, they will be attracted not just to the cost and better UX, but the extensibility. The country will benefit by having better, faster access to court records, case law, etc.

This. So much this. Courts are either buying commercial systems which are incredibly expensive and suck, or building their own which turns into a huge political football and results in a product that is ... what you expect. Someone (perhaps a 501c3 or something similar) needs to build a best in class open source court/case management system. Similar to what the 18F people are doing at the federal executive branch. There is still plenty of money for contractors/companies to make implementing and maintaining the solution for the individual courts, but every court in the country from the U.S. Court of Appeals to Mayberry Municipal Court running (or developing!) a different management system is insane.

Imagine if all the Courts had a common API to accept your filings or notify you of case activities?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your comment. It is spot on.

Like I alluded to in the comment above, this was the problem that originally captivated me about the space.

I was retrieving some documents from court and had to go there in person once, and then 3mo later, to get the job done. Started reading about standards, court data practices in all 50 states and was appaled by the absence of good tools and open standards to solve exactly the problem you mentioned.

I've wanted to be a public interest lawyer my whole life, but when I saw how terrible the tooling/public data infrastructure for it was I thought that if I could take a crack at solving this problem it would, for me, be a more meaningful contribution towards helping to improve the lives of the people those attorneys serve.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > If you have any questions, comments, feedback, or interest in the project > reach out. We'd love to hear from you!

Nice project. One comment (as a lawyer) - Have an API. So much legal software out there is a closed island. Maybe the developers think they can lock everyone into using their software for everything (calendar, document management, billing) by not providing an API, but it is infuriating. Chances are we might really like one part of your app (not you specifically, but legal software vendors), but other parts of it are mediocre at best and we don't want to use it. E.g. - all the case management software that also wants to be the datastore for our documents. Really? We already have dropbox, I seriously doubt you are better than them at storing documents in the cloud and syncing to local machines.

I've starting rejecting software at our firm if it 1) doesn't have an easy way to get all of our data out in a reasonable format and 2) doesn't have an API that plays nice with the other software we use.

<comment><USER5> As a lawyer you're storing legal documents on Dropbox ?

<comment><USER4> Yep. Dropbox for Business, but it is pretty much normal dropbox with some auditing and management features.

<comment><USER6> Forgive my ignorance, but does Dropbox for Business support client side encryption? Is this something you even care about, or are there some usability barriers that make it not worth your while?

<comment><USER4> It does not. At least not any more than any other filesystem in a cloud type service. For items which we deem especially sensitive we will place them in an encrypted disk image which is then stored as a file in dropbox, however it is a very very rare occurrence we deem it necessary to do this. While a compromise at dropbox is certainly a risk, it is reasonably far down on the list of likely events compared to other risks.

We utilize full disk encryption on all of our machines and MDM type services which allow us to brick/erase a device remotely (now dropbox for business has a similar feature which will wipe a remote device if it connects to the server after such a request). We also force on dropbox's 2FA for all users and every access to a file by a user is logged.

Dropbox also gives us the ability to revert to any version of a file in the event a user makes an unwanted modification (a whoops or something like crypto-ransomware malware).

Obviously there are still risks in this type of setup, but most law firms I have seen have far far riskier setups that have far easier vulnerabilities to exploit if they were a target than Dropbox being compromised. (At least in my opinion).

EDIT: Also, I want to amplify that the information security skills and experience present at any major cloud provider (google, aws, dropbox, box, etc.) is in a totally different league than anything I have seen at even the huge MegaBigLawFirms. There are very few firms that take information security as seriously as they should and even those do not have the resources of the aforementioned companies. Essentially I trust google/dropbox to keep their digital stuff secure more than I would trust any law firm on the planet.

There is one exception to this -- which is some sort of sealed search warrant or national security type letter from a government agency. If there is information you are seeking to protect from an exploit in that realm, then they are certainly vulnerable in that area and you (the law firm) need to implement other precautions to address that vulnerability.

<comment><USER6> Hey, thanks for your detailed response. I definitely wasn't implying that not using client-side encryption is obviously a bad decision on your part. I totally buy that the security expertise of Dropbox et al is in a different league to that of most law firms. I'm a security researcher currently working on secure cloud storage and it's very interesting to hear about requirements of real users, especially for an industry as security sensitive as the legal industry.

Regarding the exception you mention, what granularity would you make this distinction at? For example, would you typically just say that all files related to a particular case must be protected from a government agency, or would you divide up the storage of files for particular cases at a finer granularity (e.g. some files for this case can be stored on Dropbox).

If Dropbox offered a solution with client-side encryption, how much do you think you would be willing to pay for it in terms of cost or performance?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm impressed by your application; it's good that you are doing so much interviewing. Probably the killer feature is automatic compliance reporting; I could imagine that this will sell the software.

But to me this sounds more like bespoke software for a single client rather than a startup.

If you want to apply with this idea, you need to make sure there actually is a market for your software.

I've seen many people attempt a "startup" by writing software for free for one client, hoping to sell it to other clients with similar needs. These other clients then never materialised, since the software usually ended up too specific and was only useful for their original client, who got to use it for free (or very cheap).

<comment><AUTHOR> This is definitely a valid concern to have.

Based on our research we think the guts and functionality of the product are portable to other use cases in the legal system. We might have to tweak the data model a bit, but the guts of the application should stay the same.

Also, although the market for PDs is "small" in the grand scheme of startups we think there is still plenty of money in it to at least generate enough cash flow to start a company that builds this class of solutions for high volume legal practitioners.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Just want to say, basically as an aside, that I find the structure and content of both the original post and the comments here EXCELLENT. Civil, intelligent, thoughtful. Well done OP, and well done HN.

</comment><comment><USER9> If you haven't considered it, I'd strongly encourage you to look into client- side encryption. Lawyers have various opinions on it, but with what various governments are doing these days, storing data in a way where the service provider can't read it would be a big selling point for an industry that deals in confidential information.

<comment><AUTHOR> Will definitely look more into this. We had looked into some encryption options based on our current database solution but will dig more into it re figuring out how to hide the users' data from us.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Start with data standards, and build them transparently. Many state and federal agencies are making calls for adoption of standards in data publication, to save time designing and implementing interoperability, or simply compiling data from different jurisdictions for federal reporting.

See the recent call by the US DOT for agencies to adopt and publish transit data using the GTFS data standards (originally developed by Google for streamlining consumption of transit data )from different agencies. [http://gis.rita.dot.gov/Transit/downloads/DearColleague.pdf](http://gis.rita.dot.gov/Transit/downloads/DearColleague.pdf)

BLDS Specification originally developed by Accela for building permits. Now many competitors are signing on and adopting the standard. [http://permitdata.org/](http://permitdata.org/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comment and the links.

Your point is well taken. We are committed to building transparently and with good standards.

We have looked at some existing legal documentation standards such as LegalXML[0] and are still in the process of evaluating whether or not we should implement them in our work. We are also open to developing additional standards as needed, but need to do a lot more research before we feel comfortable claiming the world needs yet another specification[1]. :)

[0] [http://docs.oasis-open.org/legalxml- courtfiling/specs/ecf/v4...](http://docs.oasis-open.org/legalxml- courtfiling/specs/ecf/v4.01/ecf-v4.01-spec/errata01/os/ecf-v4.01-spec- errata01-os-complete.html#_Toc343512727)

[1] [https://xkcd.com/927/](https://xkcd.com/927/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> How will you make money? You made no mention of it in the post, and it would really surprise me if there's enough money in this market for you to be able to deliver the sort of return VCs are looking for. This may be a better candidate for YC's nonprofit track.

<comment><USER12> There is lots of money in providing services for attorneys/the legal system, so I wouldn't discount it out of hand.

<comment><USER11> Right, but their tagline suggests that their primary customers will be public defenders. I don't know much about that market, but I doubt that they have much of a budget for tools like this.

<comment><USER13> There's a _lot_ of cases available for public defender and the standard bill rate ranges from $50-$100/hour. That easily covers a $10/case fee[1]. Assuming this will save the attorney 6-12 minutes of total time (over the life of the case) it's a net win for them.

[1]: I'm making up the $10 number. No clue what pricing they'll be doing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup! This is the answer that we came to from our research. If we could save the defenders (or courts or prosecutors) even a small amount of time per case then we can generate enough value to charge them a $/per case fee. We're still honing in on what the exact sweetspot for the case fee is, but based on what other folks in the market are doing it seems to be somewhere between $2-10 depending on who and where the client is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Having spent a fair part of my life working in the criminal justice research field, the biggest blocker I see to something like this is political.

I can only speak to Massachusetts, and I can only speak to the time ~ mid 2000s when Rhode Island and Massachusetts were dealing with claims of racial profiling - specifically driving while black - but there was a great deal of friction with having a central store of _any_ aggregate data on specific judges.

The idea that you could easily run an analysis of a judge's decisions cross referenced by, say, race, was such a complete non-starter in most professional judicial working groups where you'd be looking for buy-in on something like this. Having a good deal of these records available in disparate systems, or even better, only in paper form, was actually a concerted decision at that point in time.

I'm really interested to see what kind of traction you see (and where it comes from). Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> This is 100% correct and something that we have considered. If you go and talk to IT managers, chief clerks, and chief judges it quickly becomes clear that the politics of these sales to court clients are tremendous obstacles to overcome. This is the main reason why we decided not to sell to courts first. Once we have a great product and happy user base then we'll take a crack at them.

Thanks for the comment!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm just thinking out loud, but this sounds like one of those services that needs 24/7 customer support. I remember being close to infuriated to have to wait days for a response for my registrar, and I can only imagine the tension involved the day something goes haywire, regardless of whose fault, if any, it is.

Maybe setting up some sort of volunteer customer support in, say, Slack could be the way forward? You could also implement a livechat integration that feeds into your public Slack team.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comment.

This is an interesting idea and something my brother (who has done more IT support than me in the past) has been badgering me about for quite some time. Most likely we will end up hiring someone to help handle this full time once we have more than one client, but for the first go around I just plan to do it myself. (Do things that don't scale says the church of PG)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> A suggestion. Try to take an iPad or other tablet into a courthouse. Those devices are forbidden in the courthouse in my neighborhood, as are mobile phones.

You probably need strong use-cases that DON'T involve in-the-courthouse access. Or you need an influential chief judge or court-clerk department executive in some visible jurisdiction on your board of advisers.

<comment><USER4> > A suggestion. Try to take an iPad or other tablet into a courthouse. Those > devices are forbidden in the courthouse in my neighborhood, as are mobile > phones.

As a counterpoint, all the courts and jurisdictions I practice in permit attorneys to bring an electronic device into court. (Although may god have mercy on your soul if it should make a noise in court). Several have implemented e-filing and provide wifi in the courtroom for attorneys. One has laptops provided by the court on counsel tables to access the court's filing system and in another the prosecutors have computers in the courtrooms which are on their office's network. Come to think of it I can't think of ANY court I've been in the last 5 years which doesn't permit attorneys to bring in electronic devices. Non-attorneys -- yes, they are not allowed to bring in electronic devices.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The social benefit out of this is irrefutable. Our criminal justice system can use all the help it can get. Two comments: i) it would be good to include some database support with smart query to allow public defenders across locations to work seamlessly with each other if needed, ii) create a repository for evidences and relevant information for each case.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comment.

i) Data portability is a key feature for us. As the excellent comment above noted users have been burned by fairly complex and locked-down in house CRM systems so we are doing our absolute best to make sure that the data can be accessed and ported in an easy way. ii) This is an interesting idea, especially with regards to evidence, care to elaborate a bit more? Do you think there is room for something beyond the regular database to track these case features?

<comment><USER17> I just noticed the "documents" feature in the demo. It allows the user to upload relevant documents for each case to the system, which is basically what I was going for here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm unclear on what this is - is this something like [https://github.com/ChrisZieba/LogicPull](https://github.com/ChrisZieba/LogicPull) (that someone opensourced on HN incidentally) .

Or are you building indexing + collaboration on existing databases ? Kind of a collaborative LexisNexis ?

<comment><USER19> LogicPull appears to be (and correct me if I'm wrong) and advanced intake system. Never used it before, but it looks like an amazing solution to collect form data and create documents, even allowing JS in the editor to control flow of the questions. The repo looks pretty active as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is a tough market. The money is there, but in my experience Law offices are like Real Estate offices in that they are willing to spend big money on one or two solutions, but are skeptical to spend on anything without existing significant market share.

How are you going to approach sales?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, thanks for the question.

I think your intuition here is correct. Like a few other comments mentioned the buyers are very very conservative.

Our first step to sales will be to deliver on what we've promised to the firm that has taken a bet on us. The market is very trust driven, since the outcome of a criminal case can change a persons life, so we need to make sure that we can deliver on our promises above anything else. That being said, firms really want a solution to this problem. We have started talking to a few other firms in NYC who have a use case that is identical to the one we are building for so once the product is ready we'd hope to follow-up with a few more sales wins.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> 1) What legal risks are you taking on in providing this service, and how will you offset them? Providing the wrong information (two people with the same name, user input error you didn't validate, analytics calculation error, etc.), downtime at a critical moment, client or other confidentiality issues, etc.

2) Where do you get the data from, and how scalable are those sources (e.g. does it vary by municipality)?

Just want to echo others saying it's great to hear how many customer interviews you've done.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the questions:

1) Not much so far as I can extrapolate (IANAL though). The data is provided by the attorneys and they will be using this as a service. We will have to have some sort of uptime guarantees stipulated in our agreement as well as support, standardized backups and safety policy etc. I'm not going to lie and say that we have figure this all out already, but we are thinking about it.

2) Starting out it will come from the users themselves (hence the 'New Case' tab in the demo). Eventually, for municipalities that allow it (NYC criminal courts are not among them), we'd like to get our hands directly on the case starting documents (Accusatory instruments, rap sheets, etc) and have them be piped straight into the system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> "Existing tools don't deliver on these four points because..."

What are the existing tools and/or your competitors?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for calling out my straw man!

For the public interest space: LegalServer [0], PDCMS [1] (NY only), Defender Data [2], Pika Systems [3], CaseBox [4] (notably open source and AGPL), among others.

[0] [https://www.legalserver.org/](https://www.legalserver.org/) [1] [http://www.nysda.org/?page=PDCMS](http://www.nysda.org/?page=PDCMS) [2] [http://www.justiceworks.com/](http://www.justiceworks.com/) [3] [http://www.pikasoftware.com/](http://www.pikasoftware.com/) [4] [https://www.casebox.org/](https://www.casebox.org/)

For the down the line court space the companies are much larger: Tyler Technologies [5], File&Serve Express [6], ImageSoft [7], among others.

[5] [http://www.tylertech.com/solutions-products/courts- justice-s...](http://www.tylertech.com/solutions-products/courts-justice- solutions) [6] [https://secure.fileandservexpress.com](https://secure.fileandservexpress.com) [7] [http://www.imagesoftinc.com/](http://www.imagesoftinc.com/)

I have a large spreadsheet with what I think is almost every company in the space, but don't want to post them all here so as to not overwhelm.

I think this is a fair-ish representative cross section of the kind of stuff that is currently out there though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I was wondering how this is different from what Westlaw from thomson reuters is doing.

[http://thomsonreuters.com/en/products- services/legal/large-l...](http://thomsonreuters.com/en/products- services/legal/large-law-firm-practice-and-management/westlaw.html)

May be you could compete on price? Or what is your strategy?

</comment><comment><USER24> Why do you care about the height and dob of a judge? (As present in the demo)

<comment><AUTHOR> This is more an artifact of how our data is currently organized more than anything else. It's on the list of things to fix once the guts of the whole system are set up.

We track height and weight (as well as a few other characteristics of a persons physical appearance) to give attorneys more data points on how to distinguish two people who have different names. Who knows, it might also be relevant to a case someday.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This could work in other countries, without the need to change many details of the program, or is just an USA startup?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, thanks for the question!

The short answer is, I am not sure. We haven't really had the time to examine the demand/need for this type of service outside of the US.

The longer answer is that if we were to expand abroad the data model would need to be tweaked to adapt to each country/local jurisdictions' particular needs for compliance and automation. This is something that we will already have to do across different jurisdictions in the US and are accounting for as we build the software so, from a purely technical perspective, it should be feasible.</comment></comment>


U.S. blocks Philips' $3.3B sale of Lumileds to Asian buyers - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/us-philips-lumileds-sale-idUSKCN0V02D4 <comment><USER2> Philips partners with Cisco to install distributed hardware and lighting into corporate institutions and high end hotels. Cisco[0] is a known entry point for embedded surveillance techniques. The lighting system, on top of being entirely contolled via remote, is networked into the buildings infrastructure. Also, as a focal point[1], it connects with cellphones and other networked sensors to provide the amount of lighting, temperature, occupancy and other data which it uses to automate functionality.

The temperature sensors map the entire building, as likely would motion sensors. This tech provides realtime data about who and where people are within a building, control of the actual lighting, and mappings of every structure they are installed in, some of which are high end hotels, corporate offices, research labs and medical facilities.

[1][http://www.lighting.philips.co.uk/systems/connected- lighting...](http://www.lighting.philips.co.uk/systems/connected- lighting.html)

[0][http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/photos-of-an- nsa-...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/photos-of-an-nsa-upgrade- factory-show-cisco-router-getting-implant/)

<comment><USER3> Lumileds, the division of Philips for sale, does not make connected lighting. That is made by Philips lighting. That is, Lumileds makes LEDs. Philips lighting makes light bulbs, that have LEDs inside. Any other sensors and connected portion of the product are also built into the bulb, but not by Lumileds.

<comment><USER4> For now maybe, but as we've seen with most LED lighting, the trend is to incorporate ASICs into the LED packages. So Lumiled's products would presumably be capable of all kinds of interesting things. If not immediately, than in a year or two.

<comment><USER5> Any company could pivot to anything in the future. Why would that be relevant to a national security intervention like this?

<comment><USER6> Not to mention - if the US was afraid of chinese ASICs in general, well... it's a little late to get picky.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Just a note: There is an obvious, non-technological bias in this thread at the moment of posting. The top-voted commented is objectively proven to be incorrect and dissenting opinions are being downvoted.

I would like to call on the HN users to think and vote on this on a technological, rather than a selfish nationalistic perspective.

The alternative discussion to be had is: Is Hacker News thought to be a global site or a US site with foreign guests? What would the consequences be if the conclusion was that it is the latter?

<comment><USER7> > Is Hacker News thought to be a global site or a US site with foreign guests? > What would the consequences be if the conclusion was that it is the latter?

It feels like it's the former, but I dont' have the data to actually back that up. Most stories seem US-centric with occasional posts about China and Japan. Either 1. there's not much going on in the EU (or HN users aren't interested in it), or 2. I'm not able to notice the origin of many of the companies and projects.

<comment><USER5> "'Former' means first and 'latter' means last."

Did you confuse the two? I'm confused by your comment. :)

<comment><USER7> Sorry, you're right. I meant the latter. (slightly dyslexic apparently)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I understand that the USA have a lot of leverage against any global company and you don't want to displease them, but what are the actual legal foundations for the USA to approve that deal? I mean, the headquarters are in San Jose but the company is Dutch and Lumileds have other offices around the world.

<comment><USER9> The key issue is that Lumileds itself is organized as a U.S. corporation; its current ownership is inconsequential, whether it's a U.S. citizen or a Dutch conglomerate. CFIUS has had the legal authority to investigate -- and the president to block -- any transaction involving control of a U.S. company by a foreign national since the 1950s.

It's worth noting that while (as far as I'm aware) there are relatively few CFIUS-equivalent _organizations_ worldwide, most countries have some kind of mechanism for similar actions. That they rarely use them is a different issue entirely.

<comment><USER10> They can always just change nationality. That's a pretty common thing for companies to do. So nationality doesn't matter; it's a flag of convenience at best.

The real issue is that the US government has the final say on which products are legal to sell in the US. If the USG says that no lumileds or products containing lumileds can be sold or imported in the US, then Lumileds is fucked. You don't want to lose the US market. Same goes for the EU.

<comment><USER9> You can't just pick up your company and move it from one country to another, especially when you're the size of Lumileds. The process for changing domicile is called inversion, and to make it work the U.S. corporation must either be acquired by or merge with a foreign corporation -- and that transaction would, again, be subject to review by CFIUS.

Market access is a big carrot, yes, but it's not the stick in this case.

<comment><USER11> <You can't just pick up your company and move it from one country to another>

This has happened several newsworthy times in the past few years via the "inversion" mechanism, e.g. Medtronic, Pfizer, Applied Materials...

<comment><USER12> What's stopping this becoming a new business model for SeaLand? Registering corporations as international entities undercutting the most favorable combinations of incentives from all current countries?

<comment><USER9> SeaLand isn't recognized by any nation, and corporations can't operate as stateless entities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Not a reliable source but more plausible then what is being speculated ITT:

>The sale stalled over the transfer of semiconductor technology involved in making LEDs, a device that emits light, one person familiar with the situation said last year.

[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-22/philips- sc...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-22/philips-scraps- lumileds-sale-to-go-scale-on-u-s-opposition)

</comment><comment><USER14> How can lightbulbs be national security issue?

<comment><USER15> national [ _economic_ ] security

<comment><USER16> They are the same thing, as Russia will shortly re-learn. I guess they have forgotten why they lost the Cold War.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Please excuse my ignorance as I am but a student starting to learn more about the world, but it seems as though the more I learn about the power and policies of the US government, the more I see potential (and indeed realization at times) of an abuse of that power and law for money.

For example things like the Iran Contra and war on terror seem awfully protracted and conveniently secures oil while selling weapons. At the time it might've merely been suspicious but certainly looking back we should be wary of the excuses of "security" and "democracy". Now, it seems quite convenient for the US to deny sales of resources (such as this technology, but also in positions such as Canadian gas) to China, with nebulous "security" reasons.

Well, perhaps tying US involvement in the Middle East with this sale is speculative. But I am wary that the US tends to exercise powers such as military and "law" in what should otherwise be a "fair" global economic system.

<comment><USER18> The US is like any other country in that it will act on its own self-interest. That is basically all there is to it. Now, whether the policies that it pursues to that end are meaningful or not depends on a lot of things, including, but not limited to, the State Department, White House, CIA etcetc. So, there will be some amount of inconsistency in US policy over time, depending on the nature of people who run the ship.

<comment><USER19> The US is hardly the only country to block foreign investment / sales/mergers with foreign corporations on "national security" or "national interest" grounds. Here in Australia we have the Foreign Investment Review Board (FIRB) which does much the same thing. I guess one difference is that the US is a much larger population and economy than Australia's, so when the US does it is more likely to be newsworthy on a global scale. Also, there are many high tech firms headquartered in the US, relatively few in Australia; most of the similar stories in Australia tend to revolve around mining, agriculture, and public infrastructure such as ports (and are thus less interesting to a site like HN).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This obvious overstep (LEDs? really?) will give the EU some serious (internal) ammunition in future trade deal negotiations. It also makes the US a less attractive region for foreign investment.

<comment><USER20> The EU's increasingly aggressive attacks on US tech giants has given the US some serious ammunition. It's going to get a lot uglier yet. The US just nearly bankrupted VW. The DOJ is seeking up to $48 billion in their lawsuit; settling for a likely fraction of that will hammer VW. They could have easily let them off with a modest slap on the wrist, and instead chose to put on the full-court press. It's retribution and likely just the start of a back and forth between the US and EU.

<comment><USER5> The EU might have started it (Microsoft, Google - I felt that was a measured response though), but the US is currently stepping up the game with a 10x magnitude difference in force. This feels somewhat aggressive to us Europeans.

The VW stuff seems way too aggressive. Particularly with the very recent history of bailing out US car makers in mind.

<comment><USER21> Your comparison is clumsy. US car makers didn't intentionally break the law to increase the amount of poison gas entering the environment. The GM ignition switch or Taketa air bag cases would be more apt.

<comment><USER5> I think Elon Musk's ideas around VW were more sane:

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/elon-musk-volkswagen- emi...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/elon-musk-volkswagen-emissions- scandal_us_5674686de4b014efe0d56bba)

(His idea was essentially: societal rehabilitation rather than the electric chair.)

I brought up the bailout because it establishes an anti-competitive pattern. Yes, I am aware that various European nations have done various similar bailouts as well, but I'm proud that my country (Sweden) resisted that when Volvo and SAAB were in financial danger a few years ago.

<comment><USER22> I can see why Musk would like this alternative remedy.

<comment><USER5> Yes, but the point is that we would all benefit.

Now all that happens is that the other traditional car manufacturers get a leg up. They are all businesses run by profiteers rather than technologists. They have no interest in dramatically changing the scene.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Perhaps Lumileds are components in the assembly of vulnerable military equipment? Or Don Fanucci didn't get his action yet?

<comment><USER5> There's an easy way of safeguarding against that:

Estimate the amount of units you (Lockheed Martin, Boeing?) will need during the next ten years. Triple the amount. Order that amount from mouser.com. :)

Seriously - LEDs are commodities nowadays.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Great move by the US, Europeans wouldn't even dare to do such thing.</comment>


ClearQAM - What It Is And Why It Matters - <AUTHOR> http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2012/02/clearqam-what-it-is-and-why-it-matters.html

<comment><USER2> I work in the industry, and this article is quite... misinforming.

For one, the sentence "Getting rid of QAM isn't a bad idea in the long run" is crazy. QAM is a general-purpose modulation technique used in numerous technologies. It has nothing to do with the evil cablecos trying to lock down their signal, or something.

Next, the sentence "the cable industry is currently lobbying the FCC for a rulemaking that would allow them to encrypt QAM" is hopelessly misinformed.

If you plug a QAM tuner into a cable subscriber's coaxial outlet, you'll be receiving data for a few hundred cable channels, but all but a dozen or two are _already encrypted_. The ones that aren't encrypted are you local ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, PBS, etc. The ones that are encrypted are "expanded basic" services.

Why are these encrypted? In part to prevent signal piracy to protect revenues, but also in part because the content providers require it. If you're a cableco, you can't offer ESPN or HBO without encrypting the signal - ESPN and HBO won't let you.

I can't speak for my cableco employer, but I have never had a conversation in which someone said "I wish we could encrypt our clear QAM channels" - it's always been the opposite. It's much easier to offer service if you can get the signal to a customer without having to buy some crappy converter box or spend a lot of money on a high end settop.

<comment><USER3> The whole point is that cable companies are lobbying the FCC to remove the requirement that lifeline be unencrypted, with the ostensible purpose of "reducing truck rolls".

So, maybe your cableco isn't one that is lobbying, but several of the major ones are actively currently lobbying the FCC to remove the clear-lifeline requirement.

<comment><USER2> Yeah - the idea is that the cablecos could avoid sending a truck to activate or remove services.

But this isn't mentioned in the article, and the article is actively wrong in the ways I mentioned above, plus others (e.g. "There is no reason to change this policy now just because the cable companies want every home and apartment to have one of their set-top boxes..." No they don't. They want people who don't want more than basic packages to have a settop at all, and avoid that up-front investment).

<comment><USER4> I assume by the last sentence you mean they DON'T want people who don't want more than basic packages to have a settop. Considering everyone usually "leases" their cable box from the cable company (at least in NYC) for something like $10-13 a month, it seems like in a matter of months the boxes have paid for themselves and then they are making profit. I've had my box for 2 years. Do they really not want people to have settops in their houses?

<comment><USER2> They do eventually pay for themselves ($13 per month! Geez.), but they (a) cost more than you might think to begin with, (b) require a lengthy setup and provisioning process that is quite labor intensive, (c) lock you in to old technology - you can't move to, say, MPEG-4 or IP delivery if you've got a million legacy boxes to deal with.

Similar to how phone companies wish they wouldn't have to subsidize new phones, there are lots of people in the cable industry who wish that every TV had a CableCARD slot and IP connectivity (for PPV/VOD services), or that there was a peripheral you could plug into an Xbox or something that would let you get/decrypt cableco signal.

Obviously opinions will differ from company to company, and we are all actually evil.

<comment><USER5> This comment is one of the best demonstrations of why an Apple TV set will be such an easy sell to cable providers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _"Putting direct IP access to the broadcast channels on the cables is a much better approach"_

And how is that supposed to work? Everyone needs a DOCSIS box/router and some kind of multicast-IP-to-HDTV converter? That seems a lot more complex and equipment-heavy.

Or is that where portfolio-company Boxee steps in to save the day?

<comment><USER7> Not necessarily. This could be done through most of the existing equipment customers own. An iPad app just needs the right IP address to tune a digital video stream that's arriving via your existing cable modem / router. Same thing for a stand-alone IP set top. I saw a demo a few years ago at Cisco on this exact configuration that was part of their early 'TV anywhere' development. The box they were using was about $50 and available on NewEgg.com at the time. Worked beautifully.

<comment><USER6> First sentence in the article:

 _"There are millions of homes and apartments around the country that have a TV connected to a cable but have no set-top box and no video service from their local cable provider"_

If we need to provide these users with boxes, fine. But that's not what we're talking about here.

<comment><USER7> Also from the article:

 _Putting direct IP access to the broadcast channels on the cables is a much better approach._

I agree it's a better approach and offers more benefits to consumers in the long run.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wonder, how would the author change his argument if he was talking to people who take the position that the faster the TV industry dies, the better?

If people get cut off from traditional TV, they will seek other media, likely through the Internet. This is a good thing.

<comment><AUTHOR> As much as I'd like to see the cable co's die, not the TV industry entirely. The internet is not a truly viable alternative for now.

I'll say this as someone who lives last mile (half or even a quarter if you want to be technical). Television provides higher quality(lower latency) and more stable transmissions. Unfortunately, we're situated just outside of the cable co's reach, so have to deal with a satellite provider for TV and a Telecomm for phone/internet.

We spend $80 a month on a 756kb/s ADSL line and phone service. At one point, we had 4 rooms with televisions, this isn't something that could be handled with internet speeds such as that. When the digital transition happened we went from 7 basic channels down to 2 OTA; up until that point we had no need for an outside provider. If we could access the cable co's infrastructure, the bills would be much lower, 60-70%, and the internet access would be much better.

We need to fight against the communications industry for adequate infrastrucure before dismantling them under the assumption people already have adequate access.

Edit: I'm not the author of the post, I just shared it.</comment></comment>


High Velocity Data Ingestion: Lessons We Learnt - <AUTHOR> http://thevivekpandey.github.io/posts/2017-09-19-high-velocity-data-ingestion.html <comment><USER2> I like how it was built in a day and then rebuilt in two years... Nice Article!</comment>


New Singularity Documentary Interview Excerpt: Ray Kurzweil - <AUTHOR> http://www.thesingularityfilm.com/videos/kurzweila.mov

<comment><AUTHOR> you can read more about the documentary here:

<http://singinst.org/donate/singularitydocumentary></comment>


Show HN: Write a 3D modeling software from scratch - <AUTHOR> https://dust3d.readthedocs.io/en/latest/origin-and-future.html <comment><USER2> Nice!

This is the one I made from scratch many years ago. Maybe I should write it down too.

[https://github.com/shi-yan/pillow](https://github.com/shi-yan/pillow)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, we shared a same dream, pillow looks nice, stared.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I love these "reinvent the wheels to learn" series. Not only does it move you to the right direction, the kind of person that takes actually going through these have spent many hours just to learn, so the post typically is high quality.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Awesome, love the UI. Writing software from scratch is such a rewarding experience in so many way and it shows recruiters you can code and are self- motivated and have a deep understanding of something. Good luck on the job search.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks :-)</comment></comment>


Confessions of a Slacker - <AUTHOR> https://putanumonit.com/2017/11/07/confessions-of-a-slacker/ <comment><USER2> Nice formalization, this has been rattling around in my head for a long time it's good to see numbers put on it!

</comment><comment><USER3> I think I've found my new religion.</comment>


Show HN: Learn by Doing Projects for Engineers – Real Dev - <AUTHOR> https://real.dev/ <comment><USER2> So I have to pay to solve other peoples' problems?

<comment><AUTHOR> These tasks are created by us from square one. It helps people really learn important backend and frontend engineering skills.

<comment><USER3> Then the show HN title is a bit confusing / misleading.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yea, that makes sense. It's hard to think of a one-liner to accurately describe what Real Dev is about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What's the logic behind the current pricing model? Shouldn't you derive much greater LTV from a subscription model?

Also, isn't it too early to monetize? Don't you want to accrue users before introducing premium?

For a Show HN I would have expected the ability to create tasks out of the box.

Also, instead of discouraging users from sharing code, you should embrace it via curation -- let people see other's solutions after they've submitted a solution of sufficient grade, let people code review each other's solutions, lots of low hanging fruit there that could be as simple as some automation on top of a private Github organization.

<comment><AUTHOR> We have launched it for a while. Thanks for the feedback. The reason we don't show others' solution beforehand it's because it will demotivate people to think hard and solve problems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> >If you're a company agreeing that philosophy, we would love to connect. Join us by contributing a task, or let us know about your ideas.

Do these companies who "contribute" tasks get to see the source code for the submissions?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's an old model that we used to plan to work with companies to contribute. Now we're focusing on self-learning and want to help people learn and master real engineering skills.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> A little more information would be great. Very bare bones website. Sounds like something my wife who's learning to code would enjoy but I have no idea what this really is.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting. Seems like you're an engineer, how would you learn new technology in practice?

The website aims to provide a list of projects for people to learn these skills (like uploading a file to AWS).</comment></comment>


Chord – $1300/meter Ethernet cables for audiophiles - <AUTHOR> http://www.chord.co.uk/blog/new-chord-ethernet-cables/

<comment><USER2> Well they can give the rest of us a good laugh - and only the rich, who can afford to lose the money, will get taken in.

I love the idea that an Ethernet cable could be presented as "directional" \- made my day.

</comment><comment><USER3> I tried these. Wow! I can't tell you what a difference they made!

<comment><USER4> Nice. Perfect phrasing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Do Ethernet cables have an effect on sound quality? Yes. Particularly when > connected to a streamer. We did a lot of listening with various streaming > devices, and every time changing the connection to the streamer made a big > difference. We also experimented with the connection between router and hard > drive, and yes this bought improvements, but the most important connection > is the one to the streamer. This difference was noticeable regardless of > whether we were running the cable directly to a router or via a pre- > installed Ethernet cable network or a system where the Ethernet signal is > carried over the mains.

This bit appears to break UK advertising regations about legal decent honest and truthful. So if anyone wants they could send a letter to the regulators of adverts (and websites count) in the UK - the Advertising Standards Authority.

</comment><comment><USER6> Don't higher layers( or even physical layer ) make sure that every packet reaches the destination?

As far as I can remember the problem is packet loss, which will cause a delay, but never an actual loss of data.

<comment><USER7> I believe that's part of what makes this website "the joke".

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't know. I like the warm sound of older (vintage) linux kernel versions. These would probably ruin it for me.

[https://lwn.net/Articles/542664/](https://lwn.net/Articles/542664/)

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm actually surprised it's taken this long for this con to show up, considering how willing the "audiophile" crowd is to fall for these things.

</comment><comment><USER10> Well at least there's some innovation here. The cord is _unidirectional_. Let's see those cheap USB cables try to beat that.

</comment><comment><USER11> The good part is that at $1300/m, you probably aren't going to use cable that is long enough to cause any signal problems.

<comment><USER12> I'm not sure where the headline came from, but the website lists three cables, one that is 850 pounds for the first meter, another is 1600 pounds for a meter. And the "cheap" one starts at 40 pounds (for .75,?) The two expensive ones are over 1400 and over 2600 USD!

<comment><AUTHOR> I was being generous to them and using the price per additional metre of the most expensive one... indeed, the first metre costs £1,600! Amazing...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Nice! I want to see some data on packet loss compared to bog standard Cat6.

</comment><comment><USER14> 1100 GBP for a power cord. unbelievable.</comment>


Intergalactic spreading of intelligent life and sharpening the Fermi paradox [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/intergalactic-spreading.pdf <comment><USER2> This probably also forwards the simulation argument. In that there are no other life in our supposed universe because it's a simulation like No Man's Sky. You can generate literally billions of planets and galaxies programmatically but it is inhabited by only a few billion players. And they all tend to bunch together in places with other players because there is more stuff going on there.</comment>