Show HN: Build a robot with the $9 C.H.I.P. Computer - <AUTHOR> https://www.dexterindustries.com/projects/make-a-chip-robot/ <comment><USER2> Cool project, well done. I'd suggest that instead of instructing users to clone your Github project and then detailing how to adapt the RPi code to the CHIP computer, rather create a Github branch that has the CHIP-specific diffs, and link to that branch for users to clone instead of the original branch. That way, your tutorial is also more condensed (a good thing, imho).

<comment><USER3> Yes, I'd echo that. I teach for a living, and it's amazing the number of different ways people can come up with when interpreting what you think is a straightforward instruction. When I read the "delete lines ...." bit, it didn't seem completely explicit, and in addition, I'd think that alone would put a LOT of people off having a go. Much of this kind of thing is generating confidence in people, and if they fall at the first hurdle, it's game over; possibly for their entire lifetime if it happens at the wrong point!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Love getting people into robotics. The problem is that this kit has two motors and some sensors that go into a car, for $199. Not much you can do other than drive or program the car. With starter kits like this one [http://www.vexrobotics.com/starter-kit-with- controller.html](http://www.vexrobotics.com/starter-kit-with-controller.html) you get parts to build a number of different robots. Granted, it's $280, but the extra $80 gets you a lot more learning.

<comment><USER5> Yep. A better title would be "Build a robot with a $9 CHIP computer and a $100 robotics kit"

Still, this is a very useful tutorial on how to adapt a RaspPi robotics kit to the CHIP computer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Really nice project!

A side note on the chassis. It's similar - not the same - to the ones I've been using in high school classes for a few years. I've bought mine off amazon/ebay for 15$ and while they're good enough to get started they have several weak points: motors are undersized, power supply is too low for 5V boards, assembly is not so good with parts not fitting well. They're certainly not an example of good design. Unfortunately I couldn't find any better option in the sub 100$ range with two DC motors so I understand why OP chose something similar. Does anybody know of a better chassis for these kind of projets?

<comment><USER7> I got this Arduino bot for $70. Has its own battery for sufficient power. The motor gearing is a bit fast, so it's better to use PWM to slow down the motors, except the default pinout disables PWM on the drive gpios when the servo is enabled. The build quality is ok, except there are no spacers for the bolts between the PCBs and acrylic base, so I worry about damaging the PCB during assembly.

[https://www.amazon.com/Elegoo-Four-wheel-Ultrasonic- Intellig...](https://www.amazon.com/Elegoo-Four-wheel-Ultrasonic-Intelligent- Educational/dp/B01DPH0SWY)

<comment><USER6> Li-ion battery is much better but I don't need an Arduino board nor sensors - we've plenty of - and I don't get the 4 motors design... more problems and no particular gains.

Al these kits and chassis look like a different mix of the same - not so good - parts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Does anyone have any experience running some sort of real-time OS on cheap hardware like this? Seems like more high speed control applications could maybe benefit from a really cheap platform to prototype on.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'll just put this here: [https://github.com/laurivosandi/sumochip](https://github.com/laurivosandi/sumochip)

</comment><comment><USER10> I received two C.H.I.P last week, wanted to take that as an opportunity to learn as well as teach my girlfriend about this kind of stuff. I was looking for an easy project to start with, but couldn't find anything.

</comment><comment><USER11> Awesome project John. Glad to see your company doing well and making cool stuff!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you Troy!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is a Raspberry Pi robot kit called GoPiGo[1]. And this is the biggest problem I've found with the C.H.I.P. - everything you do with the C.H.I.P. is something that can be done more easily on a Raspberry Pi.

It's not an indictment of the C.H.I.P., which is a massive effort (although having played around a bit with two I'm sad to say it has too many problems for me to stick with), but more a testament to the Pi.

[1] - [https://github.com/DexterInd/GoPiGo](https://github.com/DexterInd/GoPiGo)

<comment><USER13> The C.H.I.P. has three features I absolutely love compared to the Pi Zero: built-in WiFi, built-in flash, and USB serial console.

Steps to set up a Raspberry Pi Zero on WiFi:

      1. buy the Pi Zero ($5), MicroSD card ($5), USB WiFi adapter ($10), and USB OTG adapter ($1) (total = ~$21)
      2. flash the MicroSD card
      3. either:
        a. mount the SD card on your computer and figure out which WiFi configuration files to edit
        b. buy a serial cable, open a serial console, configure WiFi
        c. buy a mini HDMI adapter + mouse/keyboard, connect to a monitor, configure WiFi

Steps to set up a C.H.I.P. on WiFi:

      1. buy C.H.I.P ($9)
      2. connect to USB, open serial console, configure WiFi

<comment><USER14> One caveat I noticed is that you need to use 'cu' instead of 'telnet' or 'screen' or the console gets garbled during wifi setup, at least on my machine. Took a while to figure that one out.

<comment><USER13> I use `screen` and immediately do `export TERM=ansi` after logging in and it seems to work fine.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Engine Yard takes $15m Series B Round from NEA, Amazon and Benchmark - <AUTHOR> http://brainspl.at/articles/2008/07/14/engine-yard-takes-15mill-series-b-round-from-nea-amazon-and-benchmark

<comment><USER2> It's a little confusing with their branding, but this money isn't really for a Ruby "hosting" company, but for their other software offerings and development (Merb, Rubinus, Vertebrae).

<comment><USER3> Someone gets it ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> <http://engineyard.com/hosting>

      Monthly cost per slice 	$399.00
      Setup cost per slice 	$299.00

_Prices are for a single application deployed on a slice. Each additional application installed on your slice is an additional $50 per month per slice with a $100 setup fee_

Pricey. Is it that hard to administer RoR apps?

<comment><USER5> It isn't that hard to admin an RoR app. It's just hard to be reliable on the web generally speaking.

Most of what EngineYard does has little to do with Rails and it's infrastructure that costs a lot of money.

Examples:

Remote Backups every 24 hours. That means a server in a different data center, the bandwidth, and the work involved in setting up and managing the backups.

Remote website monitoring. That means a server in a different data center hitting the site to make sure nothing is down. Money and time to deal with that.

Database replication. A large PITA is taken care of on your choice of MySQL 4/5 or PostgreSQL 8.2.

If you add that together, the price doesn't seem as steep. Database replication means two boxes. The offsite backup adds another box and you could always stick the offsite monitoring on that same box. So, now you're at three boxes and I don't think it's crazy to be spending $300 on three boxes. Of course, with EngineYard, you don't have to do any of the setup work and you have the ability to scale more easily. In that setup, there is no load balancer so as you need more capacity, you then have to deal with a load balancer as well as another application server.

The price is a bit of a premium, but not as much as you might think. Mostly, it's just more than what most developers are used to. I'm used to setting myself up on a slicehost slice. I don't have database replication, offsite monitoring, offsite backups, or hardware redundancy. If that box kicks, my site goes down until they can get it running on another box. It hasn't happened to me and I've been a customer for over a year, but it is a possibility. EngineYard is about eliminating those possibilities. That's expensive, but if you're trying to deploy a site that is your business and not your hobby, you should probably look at EngineYard.

EngineYard is about being able to tell potential investors that they don't have to worry about architecture - and have the goods to back it up. I'm a decent sysadmin, but not like people for whom it's there job. I can get Apache, mod_rails, mongrel, nginx, etc. up and running, but sometimes you just want to _know_ that things are set up solidly from people who have a lot more experience than you do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Related: <http://www.rubyinside.com/engine-yard-takes-15-mill-951.html>

</comment><comment><USER7> Interesting that Amazon is investing in them... they're sort of an EC2 competitor.

<comment><USER8> If I get the idea correctly, Amazon isn't investing in EY; Amazon is investing in development of general Ruby technology that benefits everyone in the Ruby/Rails communities, including Amazon and EY.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Awesome. My company is in the process of moving one of our apps over to EY now.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is absolutely great.</comment>


Ruby + OS X - <AUTHOR>

Today I wanted to write some ruby. So I decided to install Ruby 1.9.2. But I realized that I do not have the developer tools installed because I just reinstall my mac. After that I realized that Apple will make me pay for developer tools (like make, gcc, etc...).
I know, I can use ruby 1.8.7 and download XCode 3 for free. But in the long term, what will happen?
Any other solution? <comment><USER2> You will pay the lousy five bucks?

What, you don't have five bucks? Where did the at-least-$200 computer come from? Can't you get five bucks the same way?

The other obvious alternative is Linux. I'm told Ubuntu runs fine on your Mac hardware.

<comment><AUTHOR> That not the point. The point is the tools are free/open. And what will happens when Apple will decide to make you pay 1000$ for software package?

<comment><USER2> Xcode is not FOSS. (Cue the world's tiniest open-source violin.)

And if Apple ever were to charge $1k for Xcode -- an event which has not happened and almost certainly will not happen -- it would work approximately like the Windows ecosystem works today. (Have you priced Visual Studio lately?) Casual programmers and many (if not most) pro web developers would promptly switch to Linux or to FOSS development packages on Mac OS; professional Mac OS/iOS devs would pay, just as they pay for tools like Photoshop or Flash. Meanwhile, the signal-to-noise ratio in the App Store might actually go up. (Which is the only reason why I think the idea is merely crazy, not too-crazy-to-contemplate. In the past, I believe I have heard various professional iOS developers state that they would be happy to pay Apple $999 per year for app-review privileges, if the result was faster, better app reviews with better feedback.)

<comment><AUTHOR> You still miss the point. The point is if I want gcc, make for compiling ruby. This projects are supposed to be free/os/shoud-not-paid.

The point is I do not care about Xcode and iPhone development. The point is I want to compile and run the last version of Ruby.

I really frustrating that all easy mechanisms (install developer tools and you have everything) is gone in the paid land.

If I have to leave the Apple ecosystem, fine. But I was looking for less drastic way. Someone who made a "get-all-these-app-witout-apple-xcode-stuff- because-you-shoud-pay-for-that" will be a good solution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> you have to pay to be able to compile software on the MAC??

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually no. But IMO in a near future yes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Does anyone who down voted me gave a shot to compile a c++ program without the developer tools?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't think you need XCode for that. Check this out: <http://www.ruby- lang.org/en/downloads/>

In last instance, like "mechanical_fish" pointed out, you can always use Linux (or event Windows) and run them on a VM.

<comment><AUTHOR> I never said you need Xcode.

The easy way to install the last version of ruby is to compile and install from source. If I want to do that, I need make, gcc, etc... Actually, if I want to install that tools easily I need to install Apple developer tools... and now I have to paid for that.

Okay, I can download and install each software from the apple.com/opensource... put it is such a pain. I can download XCode 3.... but it is not the lastest nor the greatest. Okay, I can change my OS, but I love it. It is sad that I have to move from it.</comment></comment>


DHH's RailsConf 2011 Keynote Live-Blogged - <AUTHOR> http://www.rubyinside.com/dhh-keynote-streaming-live-from-railsconf-2011-right-here-right-now-4769.html

<comment><USER2> >> Rails 3.1 Release Candidate THIS WEEK

Oh man, that made my day. 3.0 was cool and all but mainly infrastructure changes. 3.1 has all the cool new features. Can't wait!

</comment><comment><USER3> Is it being recorded too? Not able to watch it live, but would love see it later.

<comment><USER4> archived on livestream now...youtube later

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm live blogging it there too.</comment>


Ask HN: What do you wish you knew in your early twenties? - <AUTHOR> I ask this question to people in my life who, by my standards, "made it". It's usually a person who successfully sold his startup, is leading research field expert or otherwise distinguished in his career (e.g. a president of huge corporation).
The question is vague for a reason - to not bias the person. I am interested to hear about everything: technical, financial, social, professional, etc. My thesis is that while we cannot look forward in time (well, not yet) it is easy to look backwards and connect the dots. Hence, I ask this question to learn what's ahead and get prepared for it now.
There are few things that usually come up, for example: be humble, work backwards from end-goal, hard work is basis for most things, it's often worth scarifying short term goals for a longer term pay-off, learn to appreciate simple things in life.
So, HN audience, what do you wish you knew in your early twenties? It would also be great if you could tell how old are you, where you are now, how long it took you to get there and how. <comment><USER2> In advance, sorry for the long-winded response. My answer: once you have enough money to allow you freedom in life (different definition for everyone), you're set and do not need a penny more - with the exception of funds for charitable purposes.

I earned a business degree from a top program. I don't mention this to boast, but rather because this was an unknowing introduction to the greed hammered into young college students' lives before their minds have fully matured (not to mention the media and literally everywhere else you look/hear). I entered the real world with a limitless need for more - see George Carlin's view on "stuff". It just becomes habit.

Fast-forward to the market crash - suddenly, unemployed, broke after failed idealistic business attempt, and negative net worth (food stamps suck). Did I mention I bought a condo at the exact peak of the market with almost $0 down? My area of specialization was financial planning/wealth management and I found myself bankrupt. Don't get me started on the masses who aren't even fortunate enough to receive a single lesson in personal finance.

Fast forward to last year, when I semi-retired. I'm still pinching myself. I went through a bleak period in 2009/2010 when I couldn't find work, was broke, and experienced that all-too-typical loop of becoming less and less hirable. I finally found a commission-only job as a technology recruiter - that's right, your favorite professional is posting on HN (let's try and keep it civil, we're not all the same!). The combination of being broke, hungry, and finally understanding the value of a dollar & folly of my ways was the perfect formula. I worked my tail off and saved $ like a madman, which brings me to this incredible point today.

<comment><USER3> What point is that today? Just curious as I am also a technology recruiter in my early/mid 20's. Shoot me a message if you can!

<comment><USER2> Howdy. Just the point I started with in my reply: once you have enough money to allow you freedom in life (different definition for everyone), you're set and do not need a penny more - with the exception of funds for charitable purposes. That'll be different numbers for different people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Don't back out of anything – shy of walking into a dark alley in downtown Winnipeg at night – just because it scares you. Your ability to take risks and just shrug off the bad results will diminish with age.

So use this time to do the stupid shit that scares or embarrasses you. You'll think you can keep that youthful, playful and joking spirit you now have throughout life because that's what you believe you are. But society will shape you into its dull, conforming image and it's hard not to let it happen. So fight to mitigate it now by experience as much as you can.

</comment><comment><USER5> That before you know it, you will be a decade older. And if you were partially insane (according to Einstein's mis-attributed definition) and did the same thing over and over for years (not just in your career), you've not done much for you.

Time is the most important thing we all have. How you spend your time determines if you are investing your time or, rather, as we all do - from time to time - just wasting it.

Since you are old enough, look at your Gmail account - the old emails from years and years ago - how many of those people do you still keep in touch with? projects? ideas? trips? plans? What is still the same?

</comment><comment><USER6> Two categories: now and future. First, future. This is where most people give advice. Develop your passion and follow it, etc. This is important. You must dedicate time and effort to becoming good at something--hopefully something that pays well or can be turned into an asset.

With regard to startups, I suggest working for a larger company for a short time to learn how larger companies operate, then maybe joining a startup. This step can be skipped if you have your own ideas or drive. Finally, start your own. Building an asset that you own part of is the only way to get ahead in a meaningful way in a shorter amount of time. Note that while doing this, you should max out a 401(k) or other retirement vehicle as a hedge. This may not be possible during certain stretches of the startup cycle, but minimize them.

Now the now. Enjoy your youth. That is the one thing you don't get back. Develop an interest in one or more sports. Exercise. Meet lots of people and date before or until you settle down. Finish your education. It gets harder over time. Travel.

</comment><comment><USER7> Your body deteriorates. I still stay fit, which I thought would be enough. I mountain bike and kayak. These days every time I fall, it hurts. And it takes a longer time to recover (as do the hangovers). Enjoy the physical advantage that you have now while you are young as it won't last forever. I say that as someone in reasonably good shape, just turned 40.

</comment><comment><USER8> Previous discussion:

What do you wish you'd known when you were 18? - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1899847](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1899847)

What do you wish you knew when you were 25? - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6756729](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6756729)

<comment><AUTHOR> Whoa, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Debt is for suckers. Pay cash.

<comment><USER10> Could you expand on that?

I like to pay with credit card, get air miles.

<comment><USER4> I also try to pay in plastic as often as possible for travel and cashback rewards. Assuming you pay your card on-time, we're the minority. For most a credit card is just a debt machine and if those same people had to pay with tangible cash they'd probably think twice about spending more than they earn (which I assume is the sentiment of the OP).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> While it is true that you cannot "connect the dots" looking forward, you can improve your future prospects by making sure that the "dot" you're on today is a meaningful one.

</comment><comment><USER12> I wish I had known what C's assert() macro was. I spent a lot of useless time in debuggers. While assert() won't replace a debugger, using assertions reduces the need for tedious debugging.

<comment><USER13> I love how everyone is all about life lessons, and here you are talking about asserts :)</comment></comment>


Cello made from Lego - <AUTHOR> http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/09/cello_made_from_lego.html

<comment><USER2> I was immediately reminded of this: [http://www.amazon.com/Acoustica-Alarm- Sound-Performs-Aphex/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Acoustica-Alarm-Sound- Performs-Aphex/dp/B0009XT8KQ)</comment>


Analysis of expected number of recurring encounters with strangers on transit - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@transitapp/montreal-s-familiar-strangers-6b224f3cc9c3?=a6

<comment><AUTHOR> Disclaimer: I made the underlying analysis (but did not write the text). Usually I do coding for Transit App, but I was given this analysis to do for sort of fun.

I was given a large database of (userId, timestamp, busNumber), and a scrape of the website with the schedules and and the task to figure out how often strangers would keep meeting each other on transit, as a sort of global missed encounters search.

It's basically a big exercise of combining probability distributions. It's impossible to infer what stop people get on because there are no vehicle ids; the only possible way to infer anything is to look at transfers (i.e. the time the user enters another bus, or the metro). The time is the time of the tap.

I figured out whether people do the same trip at around the same time of day on multiple days during the observation period, then record that as a 'recurring trip'. I assume that a recurring trip is always done from and to the same approximate stops. From the schedules, I know how many buses are operating at any given time. For the rest it's all probabilities

a) a probability distribution for how long people spend on different buses. This is calculated based on the transfers, i.e. when people tap into the next bus or metro station.

b) a probability distribution of which bus a recurring trip may fall on. It's based on the time distribution of the recurring trips; and the headways waiting passengers are expected to encounter. If there's few buses an hour, and the recurring trips happen at the same time, a user will use each of few buses with high probability.

c) the probability distribution of a passenger being on a certain (but unknown) bus at a certain (known) time. If it's more than 20%, it counts as once per week encounter, if it's 40% it counts as twice a week encounter, etc.

d) assuming you take the same bus every day, the probability that another passenger is on that bus at the same time. This depends on the number of buses operating.

From then on it's a matter of summing up the probabilities to get the number of expected strangers with n=1,2,3,4 or 5 encounters per week; assuming you take the same bus every day. There's a little bit of fuzzing going on, but not too much.

EDIT: added how the analysis was done.</comment>


As more developers flee PrestaShop, its fork thirty bees is starting to thrive - <AUTHOR> https://thirtybees.com/new-releases/thirty-bees-1-0-1-released/ <comment><USER2> It's just awesome what this small developer team did in a couple of weeks. Including a module for seamless migration from PrestaShop 1.6.</comment>


Executive resigns after website redesign debacle (Finish Line/Sports gear Co) - <AUTHOR> http://www.ibj.com/finish-line-exec-resigns-after-website-redesign-debacle/PARAMS/article/39452

<comment><USER2> really, chief digital officer? Sounds like some made up title.</comment>


How Congress unknowingly legalized PRISM in 2007 - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/06/06/how-congress-unknowingly-legalized-prism-in-2007/

<comment><USER2> What is up with the names of these bills? "Protect America Act"? Do people not feel their intelligence is being insulted when asked to support something with such a title?

<comment><USER3> Generally, it's pure insidiousness. When Congress wants to push something through they always give it either an innocuous name like the PAA, or something nobody will publically disagree with, like a "Keep Pedophiles Away From Children Act," which mandates things more mundane and far-reaching than the title's goal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Congress unknowingly legalized"?

I'd say the U.S. has serious problems.

</comment><comment><USER5> This always happens when people without any knowledge and understanding have the power to approve and impact so many lives.

Re: names of government bills, it's all a "marketing gimmick" to make sure the bills get approved. If you call it "Spy and monitor everyone (just in case)", no politician will have the balls to vote in favour and the press will have a field day. The moment you call it Protect America Act, everyone is screaming "yea"!</comment>


U.N. Report Declares Internet Access a Human Right - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/06/internet-a-human-right/ <comment><USER2> I was about to get up in arms about this, but it turns out they didn't really declare internet access a human right. The human right is the right to proportional punishment. Their claim is that cutting someone off from internet access just because of copyright infringement is not proportional punishment. At least, that's my reading. Someone please correct me if I am wrong.

<comment><USER3> "The Special Rapporteur considers cutting off users from internet access, regardless of the justification provided, including on the grounds of violating intellectual property rights law, to be disproportionate and thus a violation of article 19, paragraph 3, of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights."

The important part is "regardless of the justification provided", in my opinion.

<comment><USER4> So they mean that if you already have internet access and it's taken away due to _any_ condition on purpose, then your human rights have been violated.

<comment><USER5> Great, so I don't have to pay my Comcast bill anymore and they can't take my internet access away?

<comment><USER6> That's not how human rights (usually and also in this case) work. You yourself are responsible for getting internet access.

Newspapers that don't pay their bills have no right to be bailed out. One reason for this is that freedom of speech and freedom of press are negative rights: the government is not allowed to stop you from publishing your newspapers but they also don't have to provide you with the means for publishing newspapers[#]. That's your own responsibility.

The second and related reason is that private entities like companies or people are (usually) not limited by human rights. Those rights (usually) protect people from the government, not from each other. A journalist can't sue her editor for not allowing her to publish an article. (Well, she can sue but wouldn't win.) Only governments have to respect human rights. (Again, usually.)

[#] As always, plenty of funny and interesting edge cases are worth discussing. What if the government bans paper? Or requires all print products to be printed on super-expensive paper that's not economical for newspapers?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Do governments care about human rights? How is canceling someone's Internet connection for downloading a movie worse that putting someone in a metal cage for 30 years because they made some drugs?

There is only one human right: the right to kill yourself. Everything else is a privilege that can be taken away for no reason.

<comment><USER8> "There is only one human right: the right to kill yourself."

That would seem to be more easily taken away than, say, the right to think.

<comment><USER7> That's true. Thinking about it more than I want to, it's probably possible to take away everything.

A long time ago, I asked on HN how to kill myself if I was, say, tied to a chair. The answer is to bite your tongue off (so you bleed to death), but I suppose that someone who has tied you to a chair can simply put a gag in your mouth (or cauterize off your tongue). Similarly, there are plenty of drugs that can be injected into you to stop you from thinking.

Anyway, with this in mind... I don't think I'll be able to ever sleep soundly again. Thanks! :)

<comment><USER9> I was going to say the best way to take away your right to kill yourself is to kill you first. You can't kill yourself if you're already dead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wonder what consequences this is going to have for countries in the long run with big firewalls or filtering. UN doesn't have much jurisdiction and can't do much, but these maps always paint an interesting picture: <http://map.opennet.net/filtering-pol.html>

</comment><comment><USER11> That's awesome. This should have been done a while ago, though.

The record/music industries must feel pretty screwed right about now. A judge declared that an IP address != a person, and now they can't unfairly cut people off. I'd say that's a win for free speech.

</comment><comment><USER9> I don't see why some people dislike this idea. If you think about it, this is really just an extension of the right to speech and the right to assembly. The only new thing is officially recognizing the Internet as an avenue for these things.

</comment><comment><USER12> There's a lot of other stuff I would much rather see "declared a human right".

I'd also like to see what we mean by "human right" defined more clearly. It certainly doesn't seem to mean that everyone has a right to it, or that depriving it from someone is a crime against humanity.

</comment><comment><USER13> As with many things, I don't think the U.N. advances discussion as much as it obscures key issues.

I firmly believe we are all moving toward a transhuman time when connectivity is king. My computers and connections are a part of my brain -- or at least will be -- and governments' role in my life end where my brain begins.

But making everything in the world a "right" is totally fracked.

It concerns me that well-meaning people are trying to create more and more controls on top of rapidly-advancing technology using terms and concepts they don't fully understand. In this game of "where's humanity going?" You don't get extra credit for good intentions. I don't mean to selectively pick on the U.N. The same is true for dozens of governmental and treaty efforts around the globe.

The way to deal with these governments cutting off internet access is in the streets, which the protesters are doing.</comment>


Hackers Gain Direct Access to US Power Grid Controls - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/hackers-gain-switch-flipping-access-to-us-power-systems/ <comment><AUTHOR> What is somewhat alarming about the security of electric grid systems is that the industry seems to be going to a "security-through-procedural-compliance" attitude. Let's hope the NERC-CIP people are codifying the right principles in their standards [1].

[1] [http://www.nerc.com/pa/Stand/Pages/CIPStandards.aspx](http://www.nerc.com/pa/Stand/Pages/CIPStandards.aspx)</comment>


Show HN: Oyga – Simplifying Online Advertisement - <AUTHOR> https://www.oyga.me <comment><AUTHOR> Hi people!

We're a young advertising agency, and we've been building this product to help our own clients during the last few months. We received good feedback so, we decided to share it with everyone.

We're trying to make online advertisement easy to understand for everyone, one step at a time.

First we tried to simplify insights and metrics, by cutting out complexity and marketing jargon, and consolidating Google and Facebook data into one single dashboard.

Then we built an online investment simulator that works for Google, Facebook and Instagram. It's based on statistical data, but it can also be fed by your own data for better accuracy.

Our goal is to simplify digital advertising at every level. And we're planning what comes next ;)

Hope you like it and find it useful! Any comment or thought is of course welcome!</comment>


Alphabet's Eric Schmidt: Why Google can have trouble ranking 'truth' - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/21/alphabets-eric-schmidt-why-google-can-have-trouble-ranking-truth.html <comment><USER2> Well, at least they are starting to admit it. But their "zero-rank" answer at the top of the search page has been a _completely contradiction_ of that. But they seem to be getting rid of it (can't find the link right now, but I read about the story on a SEO site yesterday), which I think is a net positive decision.

Now, I wonder how they'll fix this for Google Assistant, which will likely continue to give people the One And Only Truth™, when asked something.</comment>


Mylan's EpiPen price hike was a scheme to stifle competition, rival claims - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/04/lawsuit-mylans-epic-epipen-price-hike-wasnt-about-greed-its-worse/ <comment><USER2> I take issue with the title. Screwing some other corporate conglomerate is not worse than screwing people at risk of their lives.

<comment><USER3> Same result here? By raising prices then offering deep discounts, Mylan prevented the cheaper alternative from being offered to millions of people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I always advocate that medical service providers and pharma should be required to charge the same price to all customers for a given service. Different providers/doctors would be free to charge different prices of course. Discounts, rebates, and any other special pricing should not be allowed. The only possible exception would be a charging LESS for someone (an individual) who is not insured or has some other financial hardship.

<comment><USER5> A more elegant solution in my mind, barring price fixing, would just be price transparency. Let people see the costs and use their own judgement to pick what they value more.

<comment><USER4> That's exactly what I'm talking about. Transparency just adds the idea of publishing the price up front.

I tried to clarify - different doctors are free to charge different rates for a given service (say 15K for an appendectomy), to make them charge the same is price fixing and should not be allowed. What I advocate is that Alice, Bob, and Charlie all get charged the same price by Dr. Sam regardless of insurance coverage or any of the other deals that take place today. Dr Alfred is free to charge a completely different price than Dr Sam.

<comment><USER5> Sorry, but I'm not sure I understand. I was under the impression that different doctors could already charge different rates for the same procedures. Insurance companies could just refuse to reimburse after a certain percentage, though.

<comment><USER4> The problem is that a given provider (doctor or hospital) charges different rate to patients for the same service (procedure). Now lets not confuse what the patient pays with what the provider receives because insurance can be involved. the thing is the insurance companies "negotiate" lower rates in addition to paying their portion of the bill.

Say two people get their appendix out and the hospital bill is about 15K. One person is uninsured, so they get a bill for the full amount. The other is insured, so their insurance company gets a bill for 15K. The insurance company has an existing agreement with the hospital and says "We're only going to pay 12K" and that's what the hospital gets. Then they pass on the 30 percent of 12K to the patient and get that. This is seen as a bonus the insurance companies provide - negotiating better prices - 12K vs 15K. But what's really happening is the hospital is going to try to get 3K more from the uninsured guy.

My argument (how I think it should be) is that the hospital has to demand the same payment from everyone for that procedure - you will be responsible for whatever portion your insurance company doesn't pay, which is full price for the uninsured. Now the other hospital across town is free to offer the same procedure for 13K or 8K or 25K - whatever they think they can get, but they have to charge that price to all patients. This promotes competition between providers AND insurance companies and it will result in lower prices for both.

<comment><USER5> So how granular can the price be? Say you need stents for your coronary artery disease. Do you price at the number of stents? The number of catheters used? Just a flat rate for a procedure, regardless of the complexity?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So Mylan is more evil than Satan's pet vulture for hiking the price of EpiPen to $600, and the good guys just released a new version of their device for $4500? Or am I reading TFA wrong?

<comment><USER7> Yeah I don't understand the $4500 price. Is that per dose? Or is it some sort of reusable device? Either way it is hard to see that being a viable competitor.

<comment><USER5> It's for 2 pens I believe, last time I checked on their website. The company is trying to get insurance to cover the costs, so cost for you wouldn't technically change, but it just increases healthcare costs all around for no reason other than profit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> EpiPen price in the UK: £89.99 [1], or US$115.

[1] [https://onlinedoctor.lloydspharmacy.com/uk/allergy/epipen](https://onlinedoctor.lloydspharmacy.com/uk/allergy/epipen)

</comment><comment><USER9> So what are the chances that a US federal court is going to rule against a US company with a near 100% marketshare versus a French company that no longer sells the product?

<comment><USER10> Please don't spread the idea that courts practice economic nationalism, at least not without some proof.

<comment><USER11> There's a sucker born every minute...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Ah yes "free markets".

<comment><USER13> Except there is very little "free market" about the medical device industry, which is heavily regulated and also able to abuse the patent system.

<comment><USER14> Probably the most regulated market we have.

<comment><USER15> Drugs combine the intensive quality regulations that medical devices have with _production quotas_ so those probably edge out medical devices.

<comment><USER14> Isn't this a medical device that contains a drug?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> tl;dr Sanofi filed a lawsuit against Mylan alleges antitrust behavior. Essentially the article says that Mylan jacked up prices but offered steep rebates to "third party payors" on condition that they do not reimburse Auvi-Q (made by Sanofi) effectively shutting them out of the market.

To me though the kicker was at the very end -- "The list price of the newly released Auvi-Q is set at $4,500." That is for the device now being sold by another company (Kaleo). I just don't understand what is going on here. EpiPen is priced at what $600? CVS sells a generic for about $100 (Adrenaclick).

<comment><USER17> This 'Auvi-Q' thing... I don't get it. It's just a rectangular EpiPen.

Oh wait, it talks to you. Why do you need an EpiPen to talk to you? You literally just take the cap off, whack it to your (or their) thigh, and count to 5.

<comment><USER18> > You literally just take the cap off, whack it to your (or their) thigh, and > count to 5.

In at least one study[1], admittedly funded by Sanofi, ~1/3 of people stuck the wrong end into their thing and ~1/2 didn't keep it in long enough. Just to emphasize on the second item, you said "count to 5" when the EpiPen instructions say 10 seconds. Only 35% of people completed all the steps correctly.

[1] [http://www.jaci- inpractice.org/article/S2213-2198(13)00125-6...](http://www.jaci- inpractice.org/article/S2213-2198\(13\)00125-6/fulltext)

<comment><USER19> > ~1/3 of people stuck the wrong end into their thing

Ow...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> rm_-rf_slash Another day, another clear example of the "free" market ossifying into monopoly absent effective government regulation, while common people suffer.

I yearn for the day that humanity reaches Star Trek ideals, and looks back on people like the Milan CEO the way we regard magnanimous tyrants and bloodthirsty war criminals.

<comment><USER20> The current state of EpiPen is a direct result of free will of the original inventor and the company he worked for when he developed it. The company which is currently an "evil monopolist" acquired the rights to it as result of free- market, mutually beneficial transactions. Yes, they offer the tech for a lot of money - but you are _free_ not to purchase it and use older medicine instead.

The problem with your type of logic is illustrated best not by the complicated reality, but (as usual with philosophical problems) a corner case. Imagine that I invent a fantastic new medicine - and being an evil genius, leave it in my lab, never announcing it to the world, knowing perfectly well that millions of people around the world could be saved if I did.

In your logic, this absence of action makes me evil - although these poor sufferers would suffer just the same if I didn't invent this new medicine to begin with. The same is true for EpiPen: it's their inaction you condemn, not action.

The medical industry is not making the world a worse place through it's actions; it just isn't doing it a better place to an extent that you would want them to.

<comment><USER21> Mylan bought it after someone came up with a minor improvement to the needle cap and it could be marketed under a patent.

The ridiculous price has little to do with the original inventor.

A not stupid regulatory system would evaluate the value of the improvement to the market (likely hugely negative in this case). The idea wouldn't be to deny the company the right to the patent, it would be to deny regulatory approval for the patented version of the device.

(the argument being that decreased access to the patented device costs more than the benefit provided by the minor safety improvements it offers).

<comment><USER20> When you got a regulatory system that evaluates value, you got a complex, corruption and bug prone system.

I'd take my systems stupid and simple, please.

<comment><USER21> A simple implementation would force them to market the new pen under a different name.

They would of course argue that this confuses the marketplace. But they are sitting there exploiting the confused marketplace, so not much of an argument to be made along those lines.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Even Sundar Pichai's Mom Wants to Know Why Google Has Two Operating Systems - <AUTHOR> http://allthingsd.com/20120531/even-sundar-pichais-mom-wants-to-know-why-google-has-two-operating-systems/

<comment><USER2> "...organizations which design systems ... are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations."

\-- <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law>

If Android is one building of people with its own secret space and locked doors and ChromeOS is another, then you shouldn't be surprised when you get two different operating systems.</comment>


Why People Pirate Game of Thrones, a Global Cost Breakdown - <AUTHOR> http://torrentfreak.com/why-people-pirate-game-of-thrones-a-global-cost-breakdown-140413/ <comment><USER2> I'm in the fortunate position of receiving HBO 6 months for free with my new upgraded digital TV/internet subscription. Only it hasn't been activated yet; I hope I can still see the previous episodes.

But once the free period ends, I don't think I want to keep paying EUR 15 per month for it.</comment>


How to Get the Attention of a Venture Capitalist - <AUTHOR> http://blog.guykawasaki.com/ <comment><USER2> Wow. Great article.

I'm so glad he mentioned this - my eyes glaze over every time I hear stats like "yeah, we're awesome, we're in a X billion dollar market":

"[Don't] claim that you're in a multi-billion dollar market. Isn't every company in a multi-billion market according to some study? At least every company that's ever pitched a venture capitalist."

</comment><comment><USER3> No. 5 is important, as well as a corollary: make sure they've not already funded a competitor or similar firm.</comment>


The United States badly bungled coronavirus testing, but things may soon improve - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/02/united-states-badly-bungled-coronavirus-testing-things-may-soon-improve <comment><USER2> The CDC has a strong reputation and this would be a rare disappointment.

I think they still deserve benefit of the doubt for now but also owe the public a clear explanation, especially when professional epidemiologists are also puzzled by the situation.

The misstep if true would be particularly regretful for a couple reasons. First, the underlying technology isn't complicated: PCR [1] is for molecular biology what the hash map might be for software engineering, not simple _per se_ but well understood and widely used. The coronavirus test requires a variation to detect RNA instead of DNA [2] but that still isn't rocket science. Second, the article points to alternative tests [3] that could probably have been performed safely by many labs in the US if they had the approval.

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

[2]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_transcription_polymera...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_transcription_polymerase_chain_reaction)

[3]: [https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel- coronavirus-2...](https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel- coronavirus-2019/technical-guidance/laboratory-guidance)

( _Edit: It should be noted that PCR can be finicky. But given that labs around the world have been sharing which primers they use, I would hope that the CDC had access to that information, could test those primers in parallel, and pick the ones that performed the best._ )

<comment><USER3> It's impossible to argue that there wasn't a misstep here. They test kits were recalled, and they simultaneously banned states from developing their own local tests - something multiple other countries were able to do with ease.

A PCR test is one of the simplest tests a lab can perform, and while there's some value in centralizing tests - it's ridiculous to tie the hands of local labs while simultaneously stalling the central test kits.

Whenever possible, in massive nation-wide problems like this, we need multiple teams working in parallel. We cannot afford single points of failure like this.

The same is true for vaccine development.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > _China had five commercial tests on the market 1 month ago and can now do up > to 1.6 million tests a week_

China, for all of their faults, is showing what a omnipowerful central government can do in an emergency. Forced quarantines (welding of apartment doors closed), emergency food distribution, hospitals built in 7 days, and instant ramp-up production of tests and drugs

<comment><USER5> I'm not convinced it's effective considering people across the globe are still being infected. This is just Chinese government dealing with problems in the only way they know how: through inhumane brute force, flailing until the rest of the world solves it for them.

<comment><USER6> Cases outside China are, indeed, growing at an exponential rate.

Cases inside China are growing at a sublinear rate.

As far as I can tell, it's the rest of the world (sans a couple countries like Singapore and Taiwan) that are flailing.

<comment><USER7> Cases in China are growing at a sublinear rate according to the Chinese government.

<comment><USER6> China is loosening up quarantine regulations, bit by bit.

If their numbers are faked, then they're also being faked to internal decision makers.

And, for what it's worth, the WHO confirms the numbers are broadly accurate.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Boston Student wrote 'I'm from Hong Kong' An onslaught of Chinese anger followed - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/a-student-in-boston-wrote-i-am-from-hong-kong-an-onslaught-of-chinese-anger-followed/2019/05/24/298ea3ee-719a-11e9-9331-30bc5836f48e_story.html <comment><USER2> During my stay at various research institutes throughout Europe where I met a lot of Chinese PhD students and Researchers, it was surprising to know that many of these highly educated intelligent people didn't see anything wrong with Chinese leadership. And insisted Tibet is theirs and Hong Kong is part of China. I was really shocked at first but a friend from Hong Kong explained me that many Chinese are highly patriotic and brainwashed from Chinese media to distrust western media. And anything bad western media says about china they think it's all false.

<comment><USER3> Israel is very similar. After several decades of "this is ours", people don't even remember what the world used to look like before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> China is a terrifying dictatorship extending control to every part of life for their citizens.

</comment><comment><USER5> Semi-relevant anecdote: Back in my first year of university (in the UK), I remember coming back from the Christmas break to find my Chinese flatmate, disheveled. Turns out he had spent the holiday in the library reading up on Tiananmen Square and the like and was very eager to share with me his astonishing discoveries. He was surprised when I told him that people outside of China know about all that stuff. I can't imagine how confused it all must've made him feel, especially since he returned to China after his studies.

</comment><comment><USER6> This article is very impressive to me. China is able to project cultural power to US universities.

That's incredible. The West has no comparable. We're too confused these days with the myriad of identity politics in our democracy and China has realized that that is a weakness and is going to exploit it.

</comment><comment><USER7> Those sinofascists also tell ethnic Chinese citizens of other countries that they are Chinese, and owe allegiance to the People's Republic. Not much different from Nazi Germany's expectations of ethnic Germans living abroad.

Except that the Chinese citizens feel extreme offense and hurt feelings when told that some Chinese are not citizens and don't owe a damn thing to the People's Republic.

<comment><USER8> Could this article be provocative on purpose? This seems like something that is written to provoke outrage, and exactly what I would do if I were running anti-chinese propaganda. It's unconfirmably anecdotal, the victim is a female Boston college student (very easy to sympathize with), and fits in the "China is expanding their fascist policies" narrative.

In the same vein, if I were running Chinese propaganda, I'd probably write a story about how a fat American in China demands a Chinese laborer give up their seat because they are inferior.

<comment><USER9> Yes, it could be. It could also be a sincere journalistic attempt to report their understanding of a situation.</comment></comment></comment>


Rice University researchers propose a way to boost solar efficiency - <AUTHOR> https://polyarch.co/rice-university-research-heat-into-light/ <comment><USER3> The title is misleading. The full title is:

> Researchers at Rice University developed a method to convert heat into light > that could boost solar efficiency from 22% to 80%

The conditional tense signals that the researchers didn't actually do so, but that the study might enable it. The article re-iterates that this is speculation:

> The implications of their discovery are significant. Research from Chloe > Doiron, a Rice graduate student, revealed that 20% of industrial energy > consumption is wasted through heat. It could also mean an increase in the > efficiency of solar cells, which are currently only 22% efficient at their > peak. Recycling the thermal energy from solar cells using carbon nanotube > technology could increase the efficiency to 80% according to the > researchers. ...

<comment><USER4> Maybe speculation should not be presented as a statement of fact in the title.

<comment><USER5> "invent" is the key misleading word

<comment><USER6> perhaps "hypothesize" would fit better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As far as I can tell, this is functionally just a coating with low emittance in the IR outside a narrow band. A matched PV device that is kept cool can, in principle, approach the Carnot efficiency for the temperature difference between the emitter and the PV junction. If the emitter is the sun, then the source temperature is very high and the Carnot efficiency isn't a major limit. If the source is a solar panel, I'm having a hard time seeing how this is useful.

I can see this being somewhat useful as a no-moving-parts heat engine for something like a solar concentrator, but there's another relevant thermodynamic limit: even if this magic material has emissivity 1, it won't radiate at a greater power per unit area than the blackbody spectrum predicts. At non-crazy temperatures, this is not very high, which will limit output for small things like solar concentrator targets.

So I can see this being useful to convert waste industrial heat, or maybe as a bottoming engine for a combined cycle plant, but I am having trouble understanding how it could be useful for solar.

<comment><USER8> One sketch of such a system is to physically mate an effective high T solar absorber to an effective narrow spectrum photon emitter (as described in this work). Then that can be coupled with a typical solar cell with bandgap matched precisely to the emitter wavelength. So your solar cell is near ideally efficient for the photons it receives. As I understand the emissivity of these materials can exceed blackbody radiation in the near-field but not the far- field (or something like that? Search "Superplanckian emission").

The devices as I am familiar are often called thermophotovoltaic cells: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermophotovoltaic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermophotovoltaic)

See eg [http://xlab.me.berkeley.edu/pdf/259.pdf](http://xlab.me.berkeley.edu/pdf/259.pdf) for a great overview, esp section 3.3.

I saw this video recently that I found accessible from an undergrad physics background and got me interested: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnVVyTD7CzM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnVVyTD7CzM)

<comment><USER7> > Then that can be coupled with a typical solar cell with bandgap matched > precisely to the emitter wavelength. So your solar cell is near ideally > efficient for the photons it receives.

One way or another, once you've converted sunlight to heat, you are limited by the Carnot efficiency. For the 80% efficiency they claim, if all of it comes from thermophotovoltaics, they need a hot side temperature at least 5x ambient, which is over 1000 C. I wish them luck getting anything resembling a solar panel up to 1000 C. (I'm not, in any respect, saying it's impossible -- I'm saying it's very hard. You'd need excellect spectrally or directionally specific absorption to avoid re-radiating all that heat out the top of your panel, and you'd need conventional transparent insulation to stop conduction.)

On top of that, super-Plankian emission or no, if it's limited to the near field, then the PV cell is very, very close to the hot surface. That PV cell needs to be kept near room temperature to get that efficiency.

This whole thing seems extraordinary complex for something that wants to be cost-effective.

<comment><USER8> The absorber/emitter assembly doesn't really resemble a solar cell. Demonstrated tungsten emitters have exceeded 1500K - it's not really that wild, it's what's in incandescent light bulbs. You concentrate sunlight typically.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> That really needs some editing, it reads like gibberish.

Just go to the source: [https://news.rice.edu/2019/07/12/rice-device-channels- heat-i...](https://news.rice.edu/2019/07/12/rice-device-channels-heat-into- light/)

<comment><USER10> I am especially infuriated by how it repeats a common misconception of infrared light as the epitome of "heat", as if it was some kind of separate particle.

<comment><USER11> What is the accurate model of infrared light vs. heat?

<comment><USER12> It's a bit complicated, but taking a stab at it:

All physical objects emit electromagnetic radiation corresponding to their temperature (as opposed to reflected, reaction-induced, or stimulated radiation, more below), with a corresponding blackbody radiation curve. Note that blackbody emissions don't have a _specific_ frequency (say, unlike laser light), though the curve has a _peak_ emission.

Traditional incandescent light bulbs are blackbody emitters, as is a hot coal, the Sun and other stars, or the glowing elements of an electric radiant heater. Human eyes see blackbody radiation, in the visible range, as having a characteristic colour, which paradoxically gets _bluer_ as the temperature gets _higher_ , so the ruddy tones of low-voltage incandescent lamps are _low_ colour temperature, and the intense white of halogen lamps are _high_ colour temperatures. Blackbody radiation and colour temperatures are given in Kelvin, with typical visible light corresponding roughly to ~3,000 - 8,000K. You might also recognise these values from gamma or colour correction values on monitors and video equipment.

(Colour temperatures were used to judge processing for ceramics and metal processing / firing / smelting processes as well. They're also used to classify stellar temperatures, and in conjunction with brightness and/or distance estimates can be used to find stellar sizes.)

Infrared light is characteristic of peak blackbody emissions of bodies at or near "room temperature". So IR is _not_ heat, but is _associated_ with hot objects. Heat itself is ... thermal energy, which is its own complex thing.

Since _all_ EMR carries energy, all EMR heats objects in which it is absorbed. A sufficiently intense emission above the IR range will _also_ heat an object. However hot objects in near proximity transfer a great deal of thermal energy directly as IR emissions. The _illuminating_ capability of "white" light (typical solar emissions) allows a small amout of EMR energy to provide a high degree of visual information without imparting much heat on the illuminated objects (though it does impart some). Consider that even an (inefficient) 100W incandescent bulb, whilst hot to the touch, does not significantly heat the objects it is illuminating, and a far more efficient equivalent LED lamp, drawing about 15W of electrical power, accomplishes the same illuminating power with vastly less heat. We _don 't_ have to toast things to be able to see them, just bounce a small amount of (high-energy) visible light off of them.

Not all light (or more accurately, EMR) is blackbody radiation. There can be chemically-emitted light, directly from chemical reactions. The blue glow of methane (natural gas) combustion is a chemical emission, contrasted with the yellow-white glow of a candle, actually blackbody emissions of suspended soot particles in the smoke plume. (There's a blue region of chemical emission at the base of the flame.)

Chemical emissions are based on specific frequencies of EMR emitted as electrons transition between energy states, if I understand correctly are a quantum phenomenon. Fluourescent and LED lamps also work based on chemical / valance emissions, and operate in far narrower bands than blackbody emissions -- one of the reasons these lamps can appear harsher than incandescents. Similarly various chemical lamps, especially high- or low-pressure sodium vapour, formerly popular as street lighting, which emit in narrow bands (low- pressure especially).

Some forms of ionizing radiation are also EMR emissions, at far higher energy levels, triggered by nuclear rather than electron emissions. Typically gamma- rays.

And stimulated emissions such as lasers and masers are ... another phenomenon I understand only poorly, but are also tuned to very tight frequencies. Radio and microwave emitters are somewhat similar.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black- body_radiation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-body_radiation)

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

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

<comment><USER11> Thanks, very informative!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> original article: [https://news.rice.edu/2019/07/12/rice-device-channels- heat-i...](https://news.rice.edu/2019/07/12/rice-device-channels-heat-into- light/)

Sounds like 80% is a theoretical prediction for this method, not an experimental result:

 _Naik said adding the emitters to standard solar cells could boost their efficiency from the current peak of about 22%. "By squeezing all the wasted thermal energy into a small spectral region, we can turn it into electricity very efficiently," he said. "The theoretical prediction is that we can get 80% efficiency."_

</comment><comment><USER14> I get the maybes and the caveats, the misleading title but the direction seems clear - solar efficiency is a tractable materials science problem - and "we" should see this as a penicillin moment - invest hugely into the research and development until we find the right processes and approach to make cheap ubiquitous solar. Manhattan project levels of finding is what I mean - <USER2> the pay off is humans cutting their carbon output.

Some projects have really big ROI

<comment><USER15> The penicillin moment happened because penicillin actually came into existence and became widely available pretty rapidly.

Research and speculation is awesome stuff, but the hard part isn't discovering new concepts. It is actually making those concepts into a marketable and affordable good.

The evidence for this is that even though there is essentially a new 'breakthrough' discovery every other week for solar panels, or electric motors, or batteries.. We are still using what amounts to cutting-edge tech from the late 90's.

In the modern era this means we generally have to wait till the patents expire and market competition kicks in in order to get the price low enough and the product perfected enough to see widespread usage. If it goes anywhere at all.

It's also worth noting that Florey, the man who is largely responsible in making penicillin practical drug, refused to patent his early innovations to make it widespread as possible.

<comment><USER14> Penicillin had to undergo decade long R&D to go from Fleming's petria dish to a cheap practical drug - I cannot find the article now but I believe the investment levels from the US Military were compared to Manhattan (obviously poorly compared) but the point is this was not the "gosh what luck" story it is in mass media.

Having made that first breakthrough, world class teams across the globe fought to bring the efficiency up from "froth on the top of a brew" to "gallons of the stuff"

Florey was a big part of the story but so were teams in US and Europe and then the US military scaled it up beyond belief.

We spent money, targeted money, on the best teams globally and then put serious industrial might to it once they found the answers.

That exact approach is what I am calling for again.

And as for patents - if enough global effort is put in, with enough government funds, the pressure to put the results "in public hands" rather than hold out for patents is really strong

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> While this is a very interesting and ingenious development, what's needed for greater deployment are lower costs per unit of energy. Increasing efficiency will reduce the cost of land, but land isn't typically a huge factor in solar deployments. In this NREL analysis, land acquisition gets put into "Other Soft Costs" along with permitting, inspection, interconnection, sales tax, engineering, procurement, construction, developer overhead, and net profit:

[https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy17osti/68925.pdf](https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy17osti/68925.pdf)

And that broad category is ~25% of costs.

<comment><USER17> We shouldn't discourage progress just because it doesn't fit exactly into todays model of the world.

<comment><USER16> I certainly didn't mean to discourage this at all!

But I think it's important to point out that even though people often disparage solar photovoltaic for having low "efficiency," that metric is not an impediment to its broad deployment or great utility to us.

<comment><USER18> Sure it is. Lower efficiency means you need more panels, larger panels, and more support infrastructure. It limits where it can be deployed and makes it less competitive.

<comment><USER16> And the need for more/larger panels and support structures will only be a win if overall, the costs decrease.

The cost is what makes the decision for deployment, not the efficiency. Perhaps this efficiency makes 2-axis tracking economical enough to justify, and then it gets deployed, but in the end the efficiency wasn't as important as the improved costs.

<comment><USER19> To use a Computer Science paradigm. Performance (Efficiency) is not the end goal, but performance (efficiency) acts like currencies so that you can 'buy' other things from it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Interesting work - seems like this could also be used to create a thin film that could yield thermal vision, if indeed the nanotubes upshift IR frequencies to visible light. But I'm not a physicist.

<comment><USER21> This is essentially the same principle behind current night vision tech.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I wonder if the process of changing heat into light can be used for transferring heat more efficiently than current AC units.

<comment><USER21> This has been discussed in several previous threads on HN. From what I've been able to gather, creative ways to reduce the energy consumption of A/C will require a change to building designs, and/or increase the cost and complexity of new buildings. Whereas the cost of running the A/C is up to the future tenant(s).

This is why you see some companies applying eco friendly tech to some new buildings (Apple) but not in general commercial development.

Again this is just what I've surmised from reading threads like this. YMMV

<comment><USER23> Interesting to contemplate what could be done to shift those incentives around. Obviously there are certifications (LEED), and there's straight-up regulation, but would there be a way to mandate that a builder or landlord is responsible for a portion of future HVAC expenses such that they are motivated to get this right upfront?

<comment><USER24> The market should (and has in the past) figured this out. Energy costs money, tenants want to spend less money. Tenants will pay more money up front to save themselves money down the line. Therefore landlords should have an incentive to build energy efficient structures even if they aren't paying for the energy.

The problem is when an energy source with an high externality (climate related or otherwise) isn't priced in. This isn't a hard problem for the government's perspective though: just price in the externality through some free market system. Carbon credits are a good example of this.

<comment><USER25> Part of the reason is that it is hard to gauge what the energy bill of an apartment will be before you start renting. That is where certification should come in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > turning heat into light

> channel mid-infrared radiation (heat energy) into light energy

> absorbs thermal photons and emits light.

Goddamnit, no! None of this is "heat", it's just one range of light being converted into another! This is shitty "science"-journalism parroting a common misconception.

After all, the only reason we associate infrared with "heat" in the first place is that it's useful for detecting things which happen to be at a range of temperatures, temperatures which _just happen_ to be slightly warmer than the operating state of self-reproducing bags-of-mostly-water on a small rocky planet.

<comment><USER26> Yeah it seems more like it.. fluoresces (?) around the infrared spectrum. Fluorescence might actually the right term for what is happening.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> On topic of the HN title, there is research being done into carbon nanotube rectennas. Theoretical efficiency is in the upper 90's%. Problem is that they have very narrow bandwidth. Also as far as I'm aware, no one has even built lab samples that do decently.

<comment><USER28> > there is research being done into carbon nanotube rectennas. Theoretical > efficiency is in the upper 90's

I googled optical rectenna.

"An optical rectenna—a device that directly converts free-propagating electromagnetic waves at optical frequencies to direct current" [1]

[1] [https://www.nature.com/articles/nnano.2015.220](https://www.nature.com/articles/nnano.2015.220)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> This sounds great, but for some years we hear of various discoveries that will greatly increase solar panel efficiency. Why are we still at 22%-ish?

<comment><USER30> The primary issue with everything in this category is that plenty of things are possible in the lab or in theory which just isn't possible when applied in reality and at scale.

Blame journalists for hyping this because of the climate change focus.

I am involved in actively looking for better materials and better sources of energy. The reality is that there are no fundamental breakthroughs since oil and nuclear.

No matter what you hear we just haven't had anything that fundamentally changes the game.

So instead of actual breakthroughs in the fundamentals, we get marketing, branding, and communication. But this is not something that can be fixed with that, it's physics, not product innovation

We will most likely get fusion (far out) fuel cells (even further out) before we get any fundamental breakthroughs here.

<comment><USER31> Why do you consider cheap solar not a breakthrough? If I 30-year mortgaged some solar cells, I could put them on my house right now and save $20 a month on net because of reduced electricity costs

<comment><USER30> And you can use them to power your watch perfectly fine too.

That doesn't mean it will work at scale for society which is the primary issue.

The key thing to look for is energy density as that will be more likely to give society a bang for the buck.

Distributing solar cells out with the capacity factor of solar isn't economically feasible for society and neither possible as a main source of energy.

Nuclear and Hydro to some extent Thermal none of them are in vogue.

<comment><USER32> These are arbitrary metrics, why does energy density matter for anywhere which has the space? Even in Northern latitudes and high density countries you can generate a lot of electricity with a nominal amount of land. All the more if they can be fitted on rooftops. For sunny places near deserts it can absolutely provide a big percentage, even a dominant percentage of power. The main issue is matching demand to supply, production density is a distant concern.

<comment><USER30> Energy density isn't arbitrary. It normally means something can be used in compact form (batteries, oil, gasoline, coal, uranium) and deliver energy at will.

Look at the capacity factor of wind and solar, add to that the huge areas they need and the fact that they are intermittent and you start to get a glimpse of the problem.

This is neither economically nor technically feasible. You can't generate as much as you think and you can't do it at a cost that makes it feasible generally for society not even with lowered cost.

Currently, we are talking 1% of world energy consumption not expected to be much more than 3-4% in 2040 and that's despite huge investments and all the political goodwill you can ask for [1] Keep in mind that the numbers you normally see displayed is for electricity not for energy. Electricity is only a subset of energy.

Furthermore, investments in solar and wind is decreasing especially when you take china out of the equation. [2]

And again. Lab results or theoretically possible advantages most of the times aren't feasible in reality and at scale.

[1] [https://www.iea.org/weo/?fbclid=IwAR3eH1AFcRSPSEit8JINLCMvE_...](https://www.iea.org/weo/?fbclid=IwAR3eH1AFcRSPSEit8JINLCMvE_UmZAsNNdxRRpIepIGqCz_rILNEHHwLtNw)

[2] [https://www.globalresearch.ca/growth-renewables-stalled- inve...](https://www.globalresearch.ca/growth-renewables-stalled-investment- falling/5678889?fbclid=IwAR0Sd3mRotIjpUDmwO-6M1t9lQ4buvB8BW8ceQBlJesRA5b4rgUW23Af7FU)

<comment><USER32> Those IEA renewable projections are comically wrong every year:

[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DsX2rpPW0AIVORG?format=jpg&name=...](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DsX2rpPW0AIVORG?format=jpg&name=large)

<comment><USER30> Ate they wrong about the current situation?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Is solar efficiency the new "battery breakthrough" that will transform our lives "in 10 years", for 25 years straight now?

</comment><comment><USER34> Nano tubes are super expensive

<comment><USER35> They have no use at scale yet. Expect prices to drop exponentially once a use at scale is found.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Very cool! Let's see if it reproduces experimentally, and then let's see if it scales.

</comment><comment><USER37> I'm really curious as to what this will do for waste heat from other processes.

</comment><comment><USER38> I hope this means that my computer fans will be replaced by a laser show

</comment><comment><USER39> ive always wondered why leaves all generally evolved to be green instead of black. wouldnt black be more efficient?

<comment><USER40> The short answer is that absorbing a narrow band of energies is more efficient than a wide band.

See: [http://scienceline.ucsb.edu/getkey.php?key=4979](http://scienceline.ucsb.edu/getkey.php?key=4979)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> For anyone curious: Carbon Nanotubes, so this will likely not see the outside of a lab any time soon.

<comment><USER42> Why not? Nawa's ultracapacitors are based on carbon nanotubes and they're going in to production:

[https://newatlas.com/nawa-nanotube-ultracapacitor- production...](https://newatlas.com/nawa-nanotube-ultracapacitor- production/59684/)

Vantablack is based on carbon nanotubes and you can buy it now:

[https://www.surreynanosystems.com/vantablack/science-of- vant...](https://www.surreynanosystems.com/vantablack/science-of-vantablack)

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> "This light can then be used as electricity."

No. One cannot use light as electricity. One can use light _to make_ electricity. This is not just a minor typo; it's flat-out wrong.

<comment><USER44> If you want to get pedantic, you can't "make electricity" either because 'electricity' isn't a defined concept. Usually when people use words such as "make electricity", they actually mean to refer to energy or power transferred using electromagnetic fields interacting with a conductor. But a purely chemical reaction that charges a battery could be said to "make electricity" without even involving that.

More info: [http://amasci.com/miscon/elect.html](http://amasci.com/miscon/elect.html)

<comment><USER43> I was going for a simpler idea: Light is photons, electricity is moving electrons. And yeah, if you're talking about electromagnetic fields we're back to photons again. It just struck me as a sentence that was very misleading to lay people.

<comment><USER44> It's only simpler because "electricity is moving electrons" is not a meaningful claim.

What is the physical unit of 'electricity'? There's not one, because it's not a thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> This is what we need before we're all fucked.

<comment><USER46> probably too late but we should never give up.

<comment><USER47> Best that we prepare a smooth transition for our robot overlords.</comment></comment></comment>


In Wisconsin, a Decade-Old Police Shooting Leads to New Law - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/2014/12/13/370592433/in-wisconsin-a-decade-old-police-shooting-leads-to-new-law?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=2040 <comment><USER2> And in UK police officers don't even carry guns anymore. It's impossible to shoot anyone by accident(or deliberately) if you don't have a gun in the first place. If there is a situation which requires using guns, backup force with them can arrive within minutes. There is simply no need for a policeman who does routine patrols to be carrying a lethal weapon on him.

Is there a statistic clearly showing that more deaths are prevented than caused by police officers having a weapon on them at all times in the US?

<comment><USER3> There's two things that seems to be missing here with regards to routine patrol officers being armed in the US. First, Great Britain is smaller than many US states. The population density of ~780/sqmi is higher than all but 3 of US states. The majority of US states are under ~200 persons/sqmi. Outside of major cities and suburbs the nearest backup officer can routinely be 15 or more minutes away. As well, many areas have dangerous wild animals to deal with. Bears, coyotes, wolfs, etc. that Britain has mostly eliminated.

Secondly, in the US, we have the right to keep and bear arms, which means every one the routine patrol officer encounters should be assumed to be legally armed as well. It would put officers at a severe disadvantage to be unarmed when regularly dealing with armed suspects. In many states 5-10% of the population has a concealed carry permit, and in the majority (40+) of states open carry of a rifle is legal without any permit. Whether you agree with this or not, it's a fact of life in most of the US that a large percent of the population is legally armed, so there seems no reason to arbitrarily limit police from also being armed as any individual citizen could be.

<comment><USER4> >> As well, many areas have dangerous wild animals to deal with. Bears, coyotes, wolfs, etc. that Britain has mostly eliminated.

This is only true for a very small handful of remote areas where few of the US Population live.

<comment><USER5> Let me chime in and say that there are credible reports of coyote in Washington, DC, and that bears are spotted now and then, mostly in the close- in suburbs, but once in the city itself. But let me also say, that I don't think I'd care to take on a bear with a handgun.

<comment><USER6> I certainly wouldn't want to take on a bear with a handgun and load that's optimized for incapacitating humans!

And avoidance is generally the best policy, but it's not an option for the police. So it's better than nothing, and there have been successful stops of bear attacks with these sorts of handguns.

Hmmm, a downside of replacing the police shotgun with "patrol carbines" (AR-15 variants, generally), you could always use slugs in the former, which are effective against bears.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I really like the attitude of the father of the kid who was shot. To not vent his anger, but use it to come to a constructive solution that will hopefully reduce the chances of such unnecessary deaths in the future... that is amazing. And a great use of settlement money as well.

<comment><USER8> What solution?

Do we have any evidence that when another police agency investigates such things that the conclusions are different? It already happens, some PD will have an incident that is investigated by the Sheriff or state police. And yet, in those cases, we see the same thing... everyone's cleared of wrong-doing, and maybe some mandated "use of force" training.

It's bizarre and depressing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This strikes me as something that should have been a law since day one. We have checks and balances (and we can argue their effectiveness some other time) between the different branches of government, yet when it comes to the police departments (under the executive branch) there is no check or balance when the police departments screw up like when someone in the federal government screws up. tl;dr: We need to have this law in every state.

</comment><comment><USER10> This should be standard in every state.

It's unfortunate that many laws have corporate origin and can get picked up by tons of states due to lobbying but ones like this that make a difference don't get that same sort of attention or promotion.

<comment><USER11> Bit of an aside, but the "horizontal" propagation of laws from state to state has some structural reasons that it favors certain kinds of laws more than others. Mostly the large role of the Uniform Law Commission (ULC), which draws up model laws and organizes campaigns for them to be passed: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Law_Commission](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Law_Commission). It has no formal power, but it has a well-established set of supporters, working relationships with legislators, staff to do the actual drafting work who are familiar with the law of all 50 states, etc.

The ULC in principle is interested in a lot of areas of harmonization of what they consider well-written laws. But its biggest political support is from multi-state companies that want a uniform commercial operating environment, so it has been mostly successful there, via the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC), a set of model regulations for commerce. Businesses can get some of what they want in this respect more directly, by lobbying the federal government to directly pass uniform national laws, enforced via federal preemption. But it's possible to achieve a more comprehensive degree of uniformity, avoiding constitutional issues with federalism, by going the UCC route. It formally preserves federalism (each state voluntarily enacts the UCC), while still producing the desired outcome due to the heavy pressure states feel to conform to the UCC, lest they be perceived as "bad for business" (every state has passed it, though in a few cases with modifications).

The other area they've been somewhat successful in is family law, due to widespread concern over problems that arise in cross-state divorce and child- custody proceedings if the states have very different family-law regimes. So many states are willing, absent some strong lobby in another direction, to sign on to a "national best practice" in that area.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The problem with many of these "structural reforms" is that they are very susceptible to capture by police unions. Take for example civilian complaint review boards - often appointed by the mayor. Except the mayor often relies on police unions for votes - and they care who is on that review board - where as the typical person (I'm including myself) doesn't even know if there is a review board, let alone who is on it.

Definitely think it's a step in the right direction - but think more time needs to be spent ensuring an "adversarial" relationship that is not prone to capture.

</comment><comment><USER13> A Federal law along these lines would do so much more, but this is an excellent first step. It is also an example of how a realistic solution can be built, with the consent of officers, for the crisis of police accountability currently happening in the US.

</comment><comment><USER14> Putting billboards up and working to pass a new law is a much more sensible course of action than rioting. I wonder what the difference here is.

<comment><USER15> You are being racist.

<comment><USER14> If the shoe fits... I'm simply being curious.

<comment><USER14> Why am I being downvoted for a racist person projecting their personality onto my remark?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Europe sees warmest winter since records began - <AUTHOR> https://www.euronews.com/2020/03/06/europe-sees-warmest-winter-since-records-began <comment><USER2> In case somebody is wondering about the significance of a temperature record

[https://books.google.com/books?id=N0FLSOmeFPsC&pg=PT59](https://books.google.com/books?id=N0FLSOmeFPsC&pg=PT59)

Bottom line: records are extremely rare if events occur at random. If new records become far more common than the harmonic series predicts, then this is telling us that annual climatic events are no longer independent annual events but are beginning to form part of a systematic non-random trend.

</comment><comment><USER3> from post "1924-25 was similarly warm, with a couple of degrees above the climate at that time"

so was it or was it not the warmest since records began ( and by how much) ? i don't get it..

<comment><USER4> It was the warmest since records began.

'24-'25 was just similarly much warmer than average at that time. Winters that are 3-4 degrees above average happen every so often. However, since the average is now much higher than a hundred years ago, it was still much warmer than back then.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> They did just switch from ERA-Interim to ERA5 data source, April 2019.

[https://climate.copernicus.eu/era5-new-dataset-monthly- clima...](https://climate.copernicus.eu/era5-new-dataset-monthly-climate- bulletin)

</comment><comment><USER6> Have we considered doing something about global warming?

<comment><USER7> Europe is doing quite a lot compared to others, especially China, USA and India.

<comment><USER8> Not really, Germany for example, knows the plans they decided on won't work.

Austria has afaik still growing co2 emissions.

Don't know about other countries but at the moment if feels like europe talks a lot but doesn't do much.

<comment><USER9> [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/15/World_fo...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/15/World_fossil_carbon_dioxide_emissions_six_top_countries_and_confederations.png)

EU stands out as the one line that has been trending down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I tried hard to resist how unusually warm March (and February) has felt.

</comment><comment><USER11> Can anyone explain how the Northern Hemisphere has snow mass more than two standard deviations above median this winter, despite the local warming in Europe?

[https://globalcryospherewatch.org/state_of_cryo/snow/fmi_swe...](https://globalcryospherewatch.org/state_of_cryo/snow/fmi_swe_tracker.jpg)

<comment><USER12> More snow falls just below 0C than in -10C or -20C because air can hold more water vapor the warmer it is.

If it's -20C the water from the ground doesn't go into the air as much and doesn't fall back as a snow.

<comment><USER13> Yes, and it's snow _mass_. If you do manual snow removal in your yard at 0°C or -5°C you feel a huge difference. And even if the mass is there, it melts earlier.</comment></comment></comment>


No Technology – Not Even Tesla's Autopilot – Can Be Completely Safe - <AUTHOR> http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/no-technology-not-even-teslas-autopilot-can-be-completely-safe/ <comment><USER2> Humans can't be completely safe either. The important question isn't whether the technology can be "completely safe", but whether it's safer than humans.

Even in the example given in the article of Three Mile Island: "and somehow, during that test, the workers had failed to reset it properly.". The technology absolutely should have detected and reported this human-caused issue; however, that doesn't make it a technological error, but rather a human error not mitigated by technology. (Of course, when talking about a nuclear reactor, you want to mitigate as many human errors as possible, just as you have technological components independently cross-check other technological components, to push the likelihood of a failure even closer to 0 than any one component could manage alone.)

It's not possible to make _anything_ "completely safe"; see also "0 and 1 are not probabilities" ([http://lesswrong.com/lw/mp/0_and_1_are_not_probabilities/](http://lesswrong.com/lw/mp/0_and_1_are_not_probabilities/)).

Self-driving cars will be safer than human drivers even when interacting with unpredictable human drivers, and will be even _more_ safe when they only have to deal with other self-driving cars. Hopefully cases like this don't slow the adoption of technologies that will, long-term, save lives (in addition to all the other improvements they may provide).</comment>


4.3" Trio Stealth Lite Android 4.1 Tablet - $29.99 - <AUTHOR> http://www.biglots.com/p/c/tablets-tvs/43-trio-stealth-lite-android-tablet-and-mp3-player <comment><USER2> My grandmother bought these for all my younger cousins (claiming she got them an "iPad"). They were horrible. Everyone kept coming to me for "tech support", wondering why it's not working or why it's so sluggish or unresponsive or why they can't install Angry Birds on it (it doesn't come with the Play store).

At $29, you're overpaying.

<comment><USER3> Can it be used as a digital photo frame?

<comment><USER2> The resolution is really low, and you can only install apps from their own app store -- so probably not worth the trouble.

<comment><USER4> Is it possible to root it and install CyagonMod + Google Play Store + Google Apps?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's in-store only, on clearance, so good luck finding one, they're just clearing out stock. Even if you do, 4.3" is smaller than the screen on new phones -- that's hardly what I'd call a tablet. It has pretty terrible reviews online; bad screen, slow responses, high failure rate. I don't think this is particularly interesting for HN either way.

<comment><USER6> It's pretty interesting when technology that was 2-3 years ago pretty novel costs now the same amount of money as a dinner at a slightly better restaurant. Given idk how usable it really is.

<comment><USER7> Similar to the HP Touchpad, I don't think this price is representative of how much it cost to manufacture it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I got this for a friend in February. I followed these instructions to root and add the google play market:

[http://forum.xda- developers.com/showpost.php?p=37295457&post...](http://forum.xda- developers.com/showpost.php?p=37295457&postcount=2)

[http://www.slatedroid.com/topic/65866-trio-machspeed- stealth...](http://www.slatedroid.com/topic/65866-trio-machspeed-stealth- lite-43/page__p__749986__hl__stealth__fromsearch__1#entry749986)

</comment><comment><USER9> What I'd really like to see happen is for one of these very cheap tablets to be given a set of ports for interfacing with motors and instruments. It could become a sort of Raspberry Pi that's already in a case with a screen and battery. It would then function as a kind of extremely flexible Lego Mindstorms competitor that could be put into the middle of home automation, robots or garden automation.

</comment><comment><USER10> I think it was just six or seven years ago that 4gb of flash storage would have cost $30 by itself

</comment><comment><USER11> how can something like this reach HN #1 ? Its a terrible terrible product, so whats the point if its cheap? Like on low-end android smartphones, the user experience is horrible and that "tablet" is smaller than many modern smartphones.

<comment><USER12> If only my flag link hadn't been taken away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Capacitive touchscreens are the devil, ugh!

<comment><USER11> Capacitive touchscreens are used in all modern tablets/smartphones

i think you are confusing that with resistive touchscreens.</comment></comment>


Ron Conway Pledges to oust Senators - <AUTHOR> http://blog.sfgate.com/techchron/2013/04/17/ron-conway-pledges-to-oust-senators-who-rejected-background-checks/

<comment><USER2> "America should imagine, when they go to bed tonight, if they were a Sandy Hook parent," he said. "How betrayed would you feel if your kid was gunned down and the U.S. Senate could care less?"

I'm not necessarily against the idea of more gun control (though I haven't spent the time to analyze my beliefs on this in depth), but it seems Conway's spewing just as much illogical rhetoric as the Senators are in his case against them. I wish it were possible to stir passion in large groups of people with sound logic instead of metaphorical and obviously overblown imagery.</comment>


Three Reasons Why the iPad WILL Kill Amazon's Kindle - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/27/three-reasons-why-the-ipad-will-kill-amazons-kindle/ <comment><USER3> So let me get this straight. I want an ebook reader so I will buy an iPad which is not one but could be used a bit like one (if I did not mind the fact that it was not actually an effective ebook reader).

Erm... I don't think so.

"And One More Thing" - The Kindle is about reading - which sort of correlates with books. The iPad is about Steve Jobs which is about something else - <USER2> some other sort of media but not books.</comment>