Why didn't the Romans have hot air balloons? - <AUTHOR> http://chronopause.com/index.php/2011/02/07/67/ <comment><USER2> Fascinating article, with just one quip I'd have:

Plutonium-238, the material in nuclear batteries is very different from Plutonium-239, a material for nuclear weapons. There is great stigma against Plutonium, but mainly because of Pu-239. If you remember some of the news around the launch of the Cassini probe, there was opposition because of the Pu-238 pellet powering the RTG.

Compared to Pu-239, Pu-238 is non-fissile and also produces a lot of heat (which is the point, really). Pu-238 poses almost no proliferation risk. Even the radioactivity is in the form of alpha radiation, which needs very little shielding (hardly even penetrating the skin). The only problem with Pu-238 right now is that it's very expensive to produce and also very scarce. If Pu-238 were abundant, it could find many applications and pose very little security risk; building a dirty bomb out of it won't really work (as a matter a fact, neither making one out of Pu-239).

In general, our civilization has an irrational fear of nuclear energy. Even more egregious since there is a variant of nuclear technology that's almost completely proliferation-free, namely the thorium cycle.

<comment><USER3> > _building a dirty bomb out of it won't really work (as a matter a fact, > neither making one out of Pu-239)._

Plutonium is chemically extremely toxic. Even throwing some powdered plutonium in air somewhere would cause serious harm.

Edit : In fact it's not :)

<comment><USER4> Thats actually an urban legend (though one thats often repeated in the media). See <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium#Toxicity> [http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact- sheets/pl...](http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact- sheets/plutonium.html)

The radiological toxicity of plutonium is _way_ higher than the chemical toxicity.

<comment><USER3> I stand corrected. In fact, I just checked and it seems like even Uranium isn't actually extremely toxic.

<comment><USER4> I remember my 8th grade science teacher telling us all about Plutonium's toxicity and I believed it for many years, so I don't blame you. Apparently some researchers had a "Hot Particle" theory that said that because of the way plutonium was taken in by the body it was much more dangerous than just looking at its radioactivity would lead you to believe - concentrating in certain areas of the lungs. Its not surprising that media figures like Nader confused this with chemical toxicity, or didn't notice when experiments contradicted this theory.

EDIT: Edited for horrible grammar caused by rewriting something without proofreading after.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _In hindsight, it seems clear that if humanity had decided in 1939 to colonize space, instead of expending ~$17 trillion and ~74 million human lives on war and destruction, we would have reached the moon in a robust and durable way by no later than the mid-1950s_

He kinda gives away the answer to this earlier in the article, while explaining why the cool edge-case technologies the Romans had never took off:

 _the truth is that all technological advances are dependent upon a complex mix of social, political and environmental factors which we still do not understand, and thus cannot predict_

The implication then is that, had WWII not happened, 1950 would have looked a lot like 1939. Instead, the world saw nearly 10 years of rapid technological advances, with nations inventing amazing new things as though their life depended on it.

Plot the rise and fall of the Space Program alongside the Cold War, and you can see the pattern again.

<comment><USER6> Are you saying that war increases technological growth? That's crappy pop- history that's largely been discredited. Competition invites advancement, blowing up your competitors does nothing.

<comment><USER7> > Are you saying that war increases technological growth? That's crappy pop- > history that's largely been discredited.

That is not quite entirely true, war -- especially long-term -- results in huge funds being funnelled towards things that can blow up the other guy, which can then move into more peaceful realms. Not to mention the requirements for research safety and grants are often quite different.

Without WWII, would we have operational jets in the early 40s? What about rockets? All of rocket science from the late 40s and early 50s came from WWII germany. Likewise for fission and fusion research, how much longer would it have taken without Los Alamos?

> Competition invites advancement, blowing up your competitors does nothing.

That's crappy pop-history that's largely been discredited. Inventors generally don't need motivation, only funds (of time, of money, of equipment, of relations). And the reason for those funds and where they come from is the lowest of worry, as long as they are provided. Competition is irrelevant to invention and advancement.

<comment><USER6> No... just no. :S

If you want to debate, please sign up for <http://arguex.com/> I'm not going to do it here.

<comment><USER8> Are you just trolling? Or are you trying to promote the service? In either case I guess you are doing it wrong - flagged.

Also - I signed up for the service - I love the idea, but if you expect me to sign up to Facebook just to start using your service - then forget it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The Romans did not have the printing press. The press produced a sharp exponential increase in technological progress.

Without the press, the spread of new ideas and techniques is extremely slow, and there isn't much cross-pollination of technologies. Worse, an awful lot gets forgotten.

<comment><USER10> This is begging the question in a way, though. Why didn't the Romans have the printing press? Like the hot-air balloon, the concept of printing is clear and simple, and the technological prerequisites are minimal - you just need metallurgy, which the Romans had in abundance.

The printing press ended up being developed in a culture that was in many ways less technically sophisticated than the Romans'.

<comment><USER11> I vaguely remember that this has to do with more with the paper than with printing technology, the paper being very expensive until recently.

<comment><USER12> I cannot find the source but I remember the same also. As well, "printing press like" techniques were used early in clay pot design and marking, again can't find source, which is the essence of the idea. Only it could not expand to the scale required of modern printing press standards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The informative first half of the article was fascinating, but it slowly deteriorated from there as I read the argumentative second half. In my view, things took a drastic turn for the worse around this sentence:

 _Mature genetic engineering, nanotechnology, strong artificial intelligence, and quantum computing, to name but a few, each hold many times the potential for systemic harm to, or destruction of our civilization; and they do so absent the inherent check on their proliferation that was present in the case of nuclear energy..._

The suggestion that strong artificial intelligence and quantum computing are more likely destroyers of civilization than nuclear energy seems laughable without further argument. As with nuclear weapons, problems only arise in the application of technology by humans, not in the concepts themselves, and I see far more potential for physical and societal devastation in the application of nuclear weapons than in AI or QC.

<comment> Tuna-Fish With nuclear tech, humans have to be the ones pushing the buttons, making pure accidents quite unlikely. If moore's law holds and we make a strong AI, it might theoretically be possible for it to "go FOOM" -- use most of it's thinking power to make itself exponentially smarter, hitting the ultimate physical limits of computing in a relatively short time. If that happens, and the ultimate physical limits of computing are sufficiently far away, the entire human race no longer has any say on it's future -- whatever happens from then on is decided by a singleton entity.

A good overview of the arguments from both sides can be found from the Hanson - Yudkowsky debate on the subject: [http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/The_Hanson- Yudkowsky_AI-Foom_...](http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/The_Hanson-Yudkowsky_AI- Foom_Debate)

Disclaimer: I have not studied the issue deeply enough to be on either side.

<comment><USER13> Even with a rapidly-developing strong AI, though, humans have to give the initial machine the ability to limitlessly acquire resources and alter its own hardware. Despite the likelihood that a highly intelligent AI could easily convince some humans to do its bidding, the resource acquisition limitation gives me some measure of confidence that strong AI will not be the downfall of our civilization.

I would be more concerned about unexpected emergent behavior in our existing networks as more and more intelligence is added to various systems than a purpose-built self-modifying AI.

<comment> Tuna-Fish Assuming it starts at human-level or slightly above, internet access would probably be enough.

Plenty of people make a lot of money over the Internet, and identity theft isn't exactly rare. Anything that's considerably smarter than humans would probably be running on AWS after the first week, without any overt co- operation from it's creators.

I do not hold this to be particularly likely, because I think that the software side of making a mind capable of recursive self-improvement is likely orders of magnitude harder than people seem to think it is. However, if we do succeed in making one, the argument "it needs help from it's creators" is a very weak one -- even a human level one with access to any networking would likely be able to _take_ the ability to improve itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The article mentioned:

"The Montgolfier brothers came up with the idea while lying beside a fire and watching hot ash and embers float upwards – and they thought about this in a military context – namely how to take Gibraltar from the British."

And later

"However, Hero of Alexandria (10–70 CE) was well known for constructing complex automata, had powered a pipe organ using his wind-wheel (windmill) and developed a variety of steam driven devices using his aeolipile; a primitive turbine type steam engine with surprising motive capacity."

From wikipedia <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_air_balloon> "Unmanned hot air balloons are popular in Chinese history. Zhuge Liang of the Shu Han kingdom, in the Three Kingdoms era (220–80 AD) used airborne lanterns for military signaling."

"In fact, von Braun was engaged in designing and building the V-2, and much more sophisticated rockets, solely because he wanted to achieve the exploration of space; both personally and for the human species."

In each example above where technologies were invented / discovered, you can see that these innovations were driven by individuals and their purpose. In the case of the automata and the hot air balloon, both were invented by a leader of their own respective society - "Hero of Alexandria" and "Zhuge Liang" - the chinese military genius. Von Braun wanted to invent rockets for the purpose of space exploration... but his effort was redirected into war and destruction.

Comparing to innovations we've made in the past, say, 30 years, you can see the same. Bill Gates commoditized hardware and brought computers onto many desks cheaply. And Steve Jobs... you know the rest.

Each story of humans' invention seems to just as much be a story of the individual who led its discovery, rather than the environment surrounding him/her, and when the environment is taking into account, it seems it does more to stifle innovation than to foster it.

<comment><USER15> What you are ignoring is that while the individual is definitely the catalyst for the innovation, the environment is equally important.

Considered another way, there are countless people around the world with the intelligence and drive of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, but they live in impoverished villages in India and Africa and struggle just to stay alive. They may do better than their neighbors, but without the support of a technologically and financially advanced society, what they can accomplish is severely limited.

<comment><USER16> Even people living in affluent societies may be steered from the path we imagine them to take. Bill Gates was very lucky to have access to a computer at an early age. If he'd lived in, say, San Antonio, would have have achieved what he did?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "Such rapid and direct application of biomedical advances to humans is now inconceivable, not only in the US, but virtually anywhere in the world."

This is true, but for one very simple reason: at the time of these inventions, there was _no other option_. If someone needed a heart operation that required stopping the heart, they would die. If someone needed dialysis after kidney failure, they died. Rapid applications come in the face of dire consequences. In these cases, almost _anything_ was better than death.

<comment><AUTHOR> The guy who wrote this post used to be president of Alcor (<http://alcor.org>), one of the two cryonics organizations in the US. Cryonics is in fact certainly a procedure where people will definitely die if they don't get it, particularly because it can only be done after 'legal death'.

Its efficacy can't be established conclusively right now, but it's certainly more likely you'll be revived if you undergo cryopreservation than if you are cremated or buried underground.

But because of various mostly psychosocial factors, practically nobody gets cryopreserved. I think this is the specific example he was trying to point out.

<comment><USER18> The main reason why practically nobody gets cryopreserved is that Cryonics is a form of scientific scam.

It sells people confidence that their mind can be preserved by freezing it.

<http://aidevelopment.blogspot.com/2008/12/cryonics.html>

That said, the author seems to be a true believer in Cryonics (however that does not make Cryonics legitimate).

The article has interesting points, but cannot really be trusted, because of multiple outrageous statements.

For example, the author states: "In hindsight, it seems clear that if humanity had decided in 1939 to colonize space, instead of ... war [WW2], we would have ... very likely self-sustaining outposts on the moon and Mars."

As of today, the humanity does not have self-sustaining outposts even in Antarctica. Self-sustaining outposts on Mars are totally unrealistic in the next 100 years. Not only because of technological impossibility, but mostly because of no need for that.

The bottom line: the author is unrealistic dreamer. His ideas might be unusual (which is good), but it's better to be very skeptical and not to trust these ideas by default.

<comment><USER19> I don't think (mostly) self sustaining outposts on the Moon and Mars are technologically infeasible. See for example the studies Robert Zubrin did for NASA.

Whether there are sufficient economic incentives to actually build them is unfortunately a different question.

<comment><USER18> It's technologically feasible to send a mission to Mars.

It's unfeasible to have self-sustaining colony on Mars.

Mars Direct proposal does not even try to cover self-sustaining part.

<comment><USER19> Actually it does, at least as outlined in his book.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> " _Transhumanists must come to realize that in order to control history, and thus their own destinies, they must leverage their way into a position of control over the ideology, morality and direction of this civilization. To fail to do so at this juncture in time is to accede to the end of our history – not by the practical abolition of death, but rather by its universal application to humankind, and perhaps to all life on earth._ "

The followers of hate, fear, and superstition spend virtually every waking hour attempting to leverage such control. Why not visionaries?

But there is a counterpoint too. The ideology of _some_ sectors of the transhumanist/visionary community is uncomfortably reminiscent of superstition itself. I am referring to Ray Kurzweil and his Singularity University cult, and others. It looks very much like a religious movement reminiscent of Scientology or flying saucer contactees in the 1950s. It doesn't strike me as being much more rational than many other superstitious religious movements.

<comment><USER21> If we work on the assumption that the majority of people aren't rational scientists, then harnessing the superstition towards such things as progress and invention rather than conservatism seems a very brilliant move by those persons trying to leverage political discourse. Its likely much easier to convert the followers of hate, fear, and superstition on their terms than to convince them that rational science is better.

<comment><USER20> You have a point, but what I'd really like to see is something more "meta."

First a little background.

I had a discussion with a business guru around MIT once about marketing. He related a story (possibly apocryphal) about Larry Ellison of Oracle and how he would run into meetings of Oracle's sales guys in the early days and berate them for _not lying enough_. "If you don't lie nobody will believe you!"

Anyway, this guy was saying that this is exactly true. If you don't lie people won't believe you.

I've kind of seen it myself in the business world. I also think that it explains much of what we see in the world with regard to religion, political ideologies, superstition, etc.

The problem is that the primate social part of our brain interprets uncertainty, skepticism, doubt, and even caution as signifiers of low primate social status. Huge, gargantuan claims, boldness (even if wrong), and certainty are seen as signifiers of alpha status.

Thus a certain-of-themselves idiot or nutjob is of higher social status than a cautious, skeptical, rational person.

Salesmen exploit this by intentionally telling audacious lies (of a sort) in order to elevate themselves socially in the perception of potential buyers. People buy from alphas, not betas.

What I want to see is a detailed neurological and psychological deconstruction of this. I want to see it hacked, targeted, dismantled. That would be progress.

To give an example, a spray-on pheromone that fucked with this subsystem of the brain in some way would be awesome. (Not sure if that's possible since humans might not react this way, but just an example of the sort of thing I'd like to see.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> There's a somewhat negative cast towards the end of this article where the author discusses "the fundamental inability of most humans to handle such technology responsibly" and how "psychosocial factors" retard progress. And then you have some dire, terminal outlook for humanity. This reads like correspondence bias to me. At first, it seemed contradictory to the first paragraphs of the article, which seemed to be leading up to, "this is another engineering problem and we must analyze it for a solution before we can continue to progress technologically." So I reread the whole thing... and it seems that was just my own bias inserting itself between the lines.

And I still don't understand why the political components of the dynamics of social and technological progress cannot be approached as an engineering problem.

<comment><USER23> Engineering requires some coherence of vision. Coherence of vision in society is hard to achieve and probably undesirable -- the best systems of government, in my opinion, are the ones that protect difference and function in spite of it. In other words, if you successfully solve the engineering problem of designing a system of government, the resulting society will not be amenable to social engineering. If society and politics are amenable to engineering, then the system of government is almost certainly poorly designed. In a democratic society you can only achieve coherence through perceived ethnic and cultural uniformity, but that perception is manufactured at great cost to everyone who doesn't fit the imposed national identity.

<comment><USER22> All governments appear historically do have been designed by a small group of people with coherence of vision. All of these systems, based on idealism, fail to account for the complex requirements of administrating a functional society. As a result, our "democracy" is incessantly patching itself -- ask any law student. Despite being currently the most popular ideal, democracy is a terrible design. The result is that countries like the United States are definitionally socialist, despite what we prefer to beleive.

I have no criticisms of any form of government. Criticisms have the net effect of polarizing people, which is counterproductive at best. Unfortunately, any discussion of the political component of any dynamic is perceived as criticism, if not an outright attack. The intensity of the reaction to perceived criticism varies greatly from culture to culture. This is horribly unfortunate, because it discourages critical thinking and contributes to these 'psychosocial factors' that retard progress.

Of course, the author assumes that his concept of progress is what is desired. There are a thousand ways one could pick this article apart.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I don't think this question is as profound as it seems. Basically, it is asking: If a civilization had access to the resources to create a technology, why didn't they?

Take perspective, or drawing things so that they look real. Closer things are bigger, further things smaller. Until it was invented around the Renaisance (1400/1500), all art was flat and kinda clumpy. Why couldn't people draw nice things until then?

That's what new technology is. A profound change in how we use resources.

<comment><USER25> _I don't think this question is as profound as it seems. Basically, it is asking: If a civilization had access to the resources to create a technology, why didn't they?_

But it is a profound question. The turnaround version of it is: what do we have the resources to create, but aren't doing? What aren't we looking for? What aren't we seeing?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> The governmental analysis around 1997-99 concluded that nuclear fusion power woulnd't be cheaper than 4c/kwt (i.e. than coal based electricity) and thus it wouldn't make an economical sense (thus that close to 0 investment in that research - only LLNL's NIF which is deep in petty managerial fights (and laser driven approach isn't really the one what will get it) and Sandia which finally got back to the experiments at the level they left in 99 (though now they use different target which allows for a lot of new articles on plasma behavior (deja vu of Tokamaks, one can spend whole life looking at and describing patterns of flowing water under the bridge), yet that type of target is much worse for the fusion than the type used 10 years ago) .

It is easy to imagine an outcome of the battlefield maneuverability analysis by a Rome DOD bureaucrat of horse driven chariot vs. hot air balloon and the resulting decision on the development of the balloon technology.

</comment><comment><USER27> A 17th century attempt: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartolomeu_de_Gusm%C3%A3o>

</comment><comment><USER28> Best example of a technology that we have not followed is Nuclear powered space flight project Orion. One such launch would lift more material into orbit then all the rockets we launched so far. Flight to Mars would be trivial, staying on it would not but thats another issue

</comment><comment><USER29> There are some good theories on this in social science; <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_determinism> and the book "The co- construction of users and technology" [http://www.amazon.com/How-Users-Matter- Co-Construction-Techn...](http://www.amazon.com/How-Users-Matter-Co- Construction-Technology/dp/0262651092/)

</comment><comment><USER30> The Greeks and Romans were societies of slavery, with very little need to industrial innovation.

<comment><USER31> Oh come now, there was certainly abundant industrial innovation in those soceties.

The sawmill (like at Hierapolis), grainmill, shipmill, cranks and connecting rods, roman cranes, the first book (codex) had many advantanges over scrolls...

The first recorded (buttress) dams, cements, camel harnesses, foot-powered looms, force pumps, glass blowing, hydraulic mining, hushing (flood mining), reaper, lateen sails.

Almost all of these were not toys; they filled a very real need.

<comment><USER30> Some of those where invented there, but, not unlike Hero's turbine, never enjoyed a widespread adoption. A lot of other is non-machinery processes that can't really be easily replaced by manpower alone (sails? dams?)

Industrial innovation (as in replacing manpower with machines) was not really catching up in ancient times, mainly because there is little incentive to save on labor if you have a steady supply of slaves.

Perhaps the best illustration of social dynamics at play there we have is North vs. South states, pre civil war. Same people, same starting point, but such a dramatic difference.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> The problem is their numbering system which makes it difficult to do countdowns.

ex, eye-ex, eye-eye-ex, ve-eye-eye-eye, ve-eye-eye, ve-eye ve, eye-ve, eye- eye-eye, eye-eye, eye

now what's next ? What's less than eye?

don't know - we have to wait for somebody to invent zero...

</comment><comment><USER33> "Research into stem cell therapies, cloning, and gene therapy technology have also been greatly slowed by psychosocial concerns."

Dear humanity: you are simply too dumb to have nice things.

</comment><comment><USER34> Any idea how the air for first baloons was heated?

</comment><comment><USER35> Kudos to the Montgolfier for inventing the hot air balloon based on a need to invade a strongly held fortress.

But when did the idea of slowly floating towards your fortified, gun-toting enemy in a giant gas filled balloon seem a good idea?

<comment><USER36> >But when did the idea of slowly floating towards your fortified, gun-toting enemy in a giant gas filled balloon seem a good idea?

You don't fly in the balloon your soldiers do. That is what makes it as good an idea as trying to climb to the battlements whilst having rocks, hot pitch, arrows and sword blows rain down on one from above.

Even if the balloon simply diverts attention from your siege ladders then it might give enough advantage, it could also probably be used at distance to gain information vital to a successful siege - can you starve them out quickly, how strong are the numbers, where are cannon or arsenals located, etc..

<comment><USER35> "You don't fly in the balloon your soldiers do."

Strangely, I wasn't suggesting the Montgolfier brothers were going to take Gibraltar single-handedly.

There is a huge difference between climbing a wall with seige ladders where once you get a few men across everyone else can follow, and 2-3 men floating in a wooden basket and trying to land (!) in a fortress.

Granted reconnaissance may have been useful, but if after 4 years of seige you haven't worked out your enemy through espoinage and being shot at, a balloon is not going to help.

<comment><USER36> >Strangely, I wasn't suggesting the Montgolfier brothers were going to take Gibraltar single-handedly.

Lol, nor I, I was assuming that creation of one balloon would allow creation of multiple balloons for use in any given battle.

I'd imagine the access a balloon gives, with the addition of surprise and maybe a steering fan, to be pretty good. You could send up some test balloons and then send up some huge ones with bombs on the bottom and shoot them down over the target for yourself. Or perhaps a pile of diseased food to a hunger- stricken garrison, or ...

You can't readily break down a whole castle with a single trebuchet either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I wonder what history would have been like if the Roman empire had gunpowder and bronze cannons? Just like with hot air balloons, they had all the necessary basic technology but never thought to put the pieces together.

</comment><comment><USER38> Yeah, well I'm still waiting for my flying car.

</comment><comment><USER39> I came to read about Roman hot air balloons, instead everyone is talking about plutonium and nuclear weapons. Thanks guys, I am probably on a watch list now.

Reported.

</comment><comment><USER40> Bleh. The moment you start thinking "one of the most powerful and off putting military advantages that could have been deployed, in either Ancient, or Renaissance times, would have been hot air balloons." is the moment you start thinking 'What if sharks had lasers?"

The breathless "and then I thought"s and stupid hypotheticals: "How would the technological arc of the ancient world have been changed if Archimedes, and not Edison, had invented the phonograph?" are just another series of what ifs.

The universe didn't fucking happen that way. Archimedes doesn't have access to those ideas. You can't just wonder what would have happened if people had discovered the internal combustion engine in the bronze age, because that question is meaningless.

<comment><USER13> The entire genre of steampunk is devoted to asking the "What If?" of alternate technological history. Clearly the question is slightly less than meaningless. Understanding the history of technology and why certain things did or did not happen can help us to optimize our societal approach to technology and progress in the future.</comment></comment>


The Case for SoundCloud - <AUTHOR> http://www.thembj.org/2016/04/the-case-for-soundcloud/ <comment><USER2> As a heavy EDM listener, Soundcloud is an amazing resource. Unfortunately, I see a variety of problems with the platform.

* The company was founded eight years ago but only added subscriptions to the artist side two years ago (I think?) and to the listener side in the last three months. Ads were added to the listener side a year ago, with no option to subscribe to remove them until the last few months. I basically stopped listening to Monstercat given how pervasive the ads were (every two tracks when skipping after a few seconds? Come on...)

* No way to buy music from them directly. Here's a recent release from Pegboard Nerds: [https://soundcloud.com/monstercat/sets/pegboard-nerds-heartb...](https://soundcloud.com/monstercat/sets/pegboard-nerds-heartbit-remixes) . First five lines on the description: buy on iTunes, Bandcamp, Beatport, watch on Youtube, listen on Spotify. Not being able to sell music and have an online library of purchases seems like a lost opportunity.

* Speaking of libraries, you can like or repost songs. Beware though - if an artist removes a song or makes it private, it'll be gone from your lists. And I mean GONE - there's no record it existed, no track name, no artist, nothing. I only found out because I'm familiar enough with my likes that I noticed songs weren't playing in the right sequence. This is extraordinarily frustrating - at least if I bookmark music on Youtube, the artist and track name are in the bookmark, even if the video gets removed, making it possible to find/purchase elsewhere. Until a day arrives where I don't have to add the title of every track I like to a local text file, there's no way I'd sign up for their listener side subscription.

I've felt like Soundcloud could become a tremendous force in the music scene if they did things right - a one-stop shop for everything; uploading, sharing, listening, purchasing, collecting. Doesn't seem like they're pulling it off though.

<comment><USER3> And their podcast service is so nice, especially integrating with Twitter cards. But, I don't know how long they can last.

<comment><USER4> >their podcast service is so nice

As far as I can tell, there are no RSS feeds for SoundCloud pages. This fails the fundamental definition of what makes content a podcast.

<comment><USER5> A couple friends and I made this (UI still a work in progress) to solve this exact problem: [https://www.soundcasts.net](https://www.soundcasts.net)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Serial reposters have killed my soundcloud stream. Even artists I like, I offen do not like their taste. Discoverability is also a major problem. Lack of search filters, and arbitrary sorting of results in particular. Hashtag spamming and fake playlist naming to try and pump up play counts are rife.

Don't get me started on the mobile app..

I'd love to see some kind of subreddit like channels built into the platform which could encourage discussion and interaction - between artists especially .. There's so much good random music out there on the platform, but it just feels lost to the ether sometimes. To be honest, the platform which did this best while it lasted was MySpace artist pages.

Edit:

There's so much more they could be doing to become a place for artists. Special curated playlists - pay trendsetters / djs / weirdos to create awesome playlists out of the current content. Something I can set and listen to, look forward to updates on. The fact that Youtube is a better radio than Soundcloud is depressing to me.

Also, something like the RBMA[1] could easily boost the sense of community and respect for the platform. At the moment it just feels like.. plumbing. No love whatsoever. The official soundcloud blog[2] is so sterile and detached from the music they host. If I was them I'd be going _insane_ over Desiigner's Panda[3] becoming No. 1 on Billboard [4] after having such a meteoric rise within the platform - feels like Solja Boy - Crank Dat moment for Soundcloud, yet there's pretty much nothing officially acknowledging it.

[1] [http://www.redbullmusicacademy.com/](http://www.redbullmusicacademy.com/)

[2] [https://blog.soundcloud.com/](https://blog.soundcloud.com/)

[3] [https://soundcloud.com/lifeofdesiigner/desiigner- panda](https://soundcloud.com/lifeofdesiigner/desiigner-panda)

[4] [http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/chart- beat/7341870...](http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/chart- beat/7341870/desiigner-panda-billboard-hot-100-number-1)

<comment><USER7> Agree with reposts killing the stream. I made this as a hacky solution to keep my using the service:

[https://github.com/kyranb/SoundCloud-Feed- Cleaner](https://github.com/kyranb/SoundCloud-Feed-Cleaner)

Many friends/other people online have all expressed the same frustration. I've reached out to Soundcloud but have had no response. If any SC engineers are lurking here, can you shed any info on why there's no built in toggle or navigation pane to only show original content and not reposts?

<comment><USER8> Why not just use the Tracks tab? Isn't that the same thing?

<comment><USER7> A few reasons:

1\. Tracks only shows on an artists page, not your stream of all artists you are following. 2\. Tracks wasn't there originally when this extension was made. It was only added somewhat recently. 3\. Often artists will use the repost feature to share their own tracks that have been posted to their label's or another artists account. This is especially true when it comes to remixes. This extension will still consider these to not be a repost :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm so sick of all these businesses starting out humble and bespoke and then suddenly chasing growth and trying to take over the world.

Soundcloud is a tool for artists to host their music with a minimum amount of hassle. It's also a tool for fans to discover said artists. But it should be nothing more than this. There are other competitors that have already taken over other aspects of the music space, and own it completely -- but nobody owns artists'-hosting-their-music like Soundcloud.

It was the beginning of the end when they were bought by ABC or whoever-it-is. I wish there was some way for a business' customers to block acquisitions, maybe we'd fewer entrepreneurs with reckless exit strategies messing with the good things in life.

<comment><USER10> Soundcloud was launched in 2007, and raised €2.5M in VC cash in 2009. Soundcloud charged nothing and had no real business model.

Seems like to me they were chasing growth for the beginning. The " _tool for artists to host their music with a minimum amount of hassle._ " was subsidized by VC money.

<comment><USER9> Art has, for thousands of years, flourished under a system of patronage. Sometimes patrons really wanted art, sometimes they it was just a selfish indulgence, but unless they were commissioning something specific the art was generally left to its own devices. I could see Soundcloud thriving under such a system.

And how much of this money lost was due to technological vs. human costs? How is it that a streaming site needs nearly 200 employees anyway?

Soundcloud could be thriving, but then they seem to have put people at the helm who prioritize spending money above all else.

<comment><USER11> >I could see Soundcloud thriving under such a system.

You could see Soundcloud thriving by spending VC cash as "patronage"? Sure, so could I! But I doubt that any VC is interested in that.

<comment><USER9> Yes, because many believe art to be a higher calling than some stupid new gadget or cloud service.

While I don't really want patrons or VCs ruling the scene, and would much rather let the artists reign, artists generally don't have jobs (VCs took 'em) and so they don't have much money, so they can only do so much to support themselves. Enter the patron.

<comment><USER12> Cool why don't you go ahead and do that instead of expecting someone else to do it?

It's easy to say "someone else should pay for this without expecting anything in return but the glory of art". People would rather make more money from their money than not. If you feel that strongly, go and break the cycle. If your personal wealth is not enough to make a difference* by doing so then I don't see how you can go giving out your "solution" which is just getting someone else to pay and them not have any say in how their money is being spent.

*Disclaimer: mine is not either

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Soundcloud is a terrible mobile app and a slightly better website. I love that I can access vast troves of undiscovered house music - but you couldn't design a worse UI if you tried.

Soundcloud is lame now that the ads have come. Listening to a taco bell ad come on in the middle of my favorite playlist really kils the vibe.

<comment><USER14> I'm kind of surprised to hear that. It's one of my most used and favorite mobile apps. I'm sure I could make a worse one.

If you want to hear ads, you could subscribe to Soundcloud Go like I do. I can't stand ads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> New artists often just want people to hear their music, so they can build a following.

There are millions of people who want to sift through new music to find the next gem.

How can it be so hard to build a platform where these kinds of demand and supply meet?

There is a separate, market where established artists want to monetise mainstream listeners, and I can see that's what iTunes etc provide.

Maybe I'm overestimating the size of the 'sifting' market, because I'm one of those people?

<comment><USER16> Check out [http://libre.fm/](http://libre.fm/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's interesting for me as a long-term Soundcloud user to hear a predominance of listeners here, when my experience of the site is that it focusses on producers and performers.

Sure, once in a while someone with a YouTube mindset uploads an album that they clearly didn't write, or an indie label learning about PR reposts their own back catalogue, but not that often. Mostly, artists upload tracks they wrote or are working on, and people repost a curated taste of what they are inspired by.

That's what I found about six years ago and my community on there have helped to keep me publishing music occasionally - not just writing bits and pieces but actually finishing music and hitting upload.

I think I'm fairly central for Soundcloud's target audience. You'll find download links on my tracks (full quality) and no Beatport, iTunes or Bandcamp links, because it's something I do for fun, not profit. I've never reached my upload limit because I'm not exactly prolific - or because the limit is generous.

The service has value to me, but I simply don't need anything that going pro offers.

</comment><comment><USER18> People are very particular about their music. Doesn't it make sense that a service built for niche genres doesn't have broad appeal? I fucking love soundcloud and they nailed their product years ago, so I'm really excited to see what deals they've been cooking up the past year or so.

I bought Soundcloud Go the day it was available.

<comment><USER4> >service built for niche genres

There is nothing inherent in the structure of SoundCloud that limits its usefulness to only niche genres. Mainstream genres simply have access to more established avenues of promotion, like radio and YouTube.

<comment><USER18> Correct. Soundcloud is built for musicians that don't have access to radio and the like, aka niche genres. That doesn't mean anyone can't use it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I used to love Soundcloud, but with growth and licensing concerns, mixes and remixes/edits started going missing. Then they deleted the Balearic Social account.

A lot of the better balearic types are posting at hearthis.at now, but the website is pretty rough, and their android app is terrible. Mixcloud seems a better choice.

</comment><comment><USER20> I use SoundCloud when I don't have any other options, but I try not to make a habit of using websites that depend on Adobe Flash.

<comment><USER4> SoundCloud has offered an HTML5 player for years.

<comment><USER21> How dose one enable it? I only get the "something went wrong" page when visiting the site and all the help docs only reference an HTML5 embedded player.

<comment><USER4> All I had to do to "enable" it was not have Flash installed. Their site has continued to work properly with no issue.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Nokia: Sorry Apple we beat you by a mile - <AUTHOR> http://latestgeeknews.blogspot.com/2010/02/nokia-sorry-apple-we-beat-you-by-mile.html

<comment><USER2> Revenue, revenue, revenue.

Apple haven't even bothered to talk about market-share, because they _don't_ care. They only care about how much revenue they get. Market-influences that obviously, but they're willing to remain in a smaller portion of the market -- smart-phones -- if it nets them greater revenue.

Which is does. As Jobs pointed out in his last keynote, Apple has made more money than Nokia. He didn't mention market-share.

End of the day it's the company with the most money that wins.

So, with a big war chest of money, strong revenues and an intention to gain more market-share; Apple is only just beginning it's war on the phone market. If I were a gambling man, I'd bet on them releasing a cheaper version of the iPhone in the future -- this is a no-brainer, since it would be the same pattern they've followed with the iPods and Macbooks. Nokia and their peers should be freaking out.

<comment><USER3> You mean "profit, profit, profit", surely? Revenue means nothing if your margin is 0.00001%.

<comment><USER2> In this case I point out revenue because that's the number Apple has been touting and not market-share. And although we can only speculate on margins, they're doubtless very good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The analysis is pretty wonky. What were Nokia's numbers the year before? And Apple's? And the rest of them?

Nokia only gets to keep bragging rights if they've /increased/ their share of the pie in the last year. If the trend instead shows that Apple's been eating up their margins, especially in the smartphone category, Nokia's execs would instead have some serious reasons to sweat.

<comment><USER5> Exactly. Its about _trajectory_. Nokia is loosing the mind war. More and more teenagers (ok, just one market segments, but others show similar trends) are holding out for a 'cool phone' which less and less carry Nokia logos. Ask people who work in phone shops (at least in the UK), people come in excited about LGs / Samsungs / iPhones NOT Nokias any more.

<comment><USER6> losing not loosing</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Education startup with note-taking collaboration - <AUTHOR> http://www.indiegogo.com/jotpot

<comment><USER2> In university now, I've wanted this for a long time. It would be fantastic to have a group of friends in the same classes who each have assigned roles for capturing different parts of the lectures to help each other learn. Someone to draw the diagrams, someone to record the audio and set tags/timestamps with the notes, and others to transcribe and condense the lecture notes into notebooks, study guides, cheat sheets, and flash cards. I'm really curious if this platform can make a difference in education.

In higher education, collaboration of LaTeX writing can save a whole lot of time, which is why I was really excited when sharelatex.com came around.

<comment><AUTHOR> The team of colleagues use case sounds interesting.

We're quite at the beginning right now and we try to focus on very specific burning pains; but in the future some of these things could become part of the product - if there is significant demand for them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Smart idea but some of the exiting note sharing platforms have been heading this way too. Interesting to see if an indiegogo funded startup can keep up.

</comment><comment><USER4> The idea is cool but the execution is even better. From what I saw the prototype itself is pretty awesome. Can't wait for a complete product.

</comment><comment><USER5> Whats wrong with Google docs?

<comment><AUTHOR> Google Docs is really awesome, and I use it every day.

But the key difference is that JotPot is made especially for students - so it does things like automatically sharing the slides with everyone taking the same course and sorting your notes by subject.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I find this interesting and really useful too!

</comment><comment><USER7> Great idea! Hopefully you will succeed!</comment>


JMESPath – a query language for JSON - <AUTHOR> http://jmespath.org/ <comment><AUTHOR> This actually originated in boto.

</comment><comment><USER2> Is this compatible with jq?

<comment><AUTHOR> This tool [0], which accompanies JMESPath, is simply amazing!

[0] [https://github.com/jmespath/jmespath.terminal](https://github.com/jmespath/jmespath.terminal)</comment></comment>


Multiply Labs (YC S16) Puts All Your Supplements into One 3D Printed Pill - <AUTHOR> http://themacro.com/articles/2016/08/multiply-labs/ <comment><USER2> Hey guys! Co-Founder of Multiply Labs here. We want to make staying healthy and energized a lot easier with your own personalized supplement pill! Happy to answer any questions here!

<comment><USER3> As someone who has to take a LOT of supplements under supervision of a doctor, this would be great. Unfortunately, of the 7 supplements you offer that I actually take, you can't even get them in a high enough concentration to replace any supplement that I'm taking. I guess these are just for healthy people without any actual deficiencies? B12 for example, is basically impossible to overdose on but your 100mcg is useless to me when I inject about 2CCs of it a week, and your 100mg of Vitamin C is useless to me when I take 2 grams a day. Can't take the B9 because my MTHFR problems make me require Folinic Acid instead. I take 5,000IU/day of D3, and I have no idea how much "0.05 mg" is since D is measured in International Units.

The other, less common supplements I take like Acetyl-L-Carnatine, L-Arganine, and R-Alpha-Lipolic-Acid, you don't offer.

<comment><USER4> Hello! Thanks for your detailed feedback! For all of the vitamins and minerals that we offer, we can put 100% of the recommended daily value in the Multiply Pills. These values are determined by the National Institutes of Health, and they can be expressed either in mg or in IU (there are equivalence tables).

<comment><USER4> About Vitamin B12, if you need to inject it for medical reasons you should definitely continue to use your medications. About Vitamin C, 2g/day is 2000% of the recommended value. We plan to include the possibility to increase the dosage beyond 100%, but we will not reach such extreme values as they are not recommended for the vast majority of the population. Finally, about the additional supplements that you mentioned, we do let our customers suggest us new supplements to include in the Multiply Pill. Our list of supplement is not static, and we will expand it including the supplements that meet our scientific standards (validation in the medical literature) and have sufficient demand!

<comment><USER5> > _they are not recommended for the vast majority of the population_

> _meet our scientific standards (validation in the medical literature)_

There is mounting evidence[1][2][3][4][5] that only people with known vitamin deficiencies and the supervision of a doctor should take vitamins. They're not even just a placebo -- in many cases they can be dangerous.

It seems as though you'll be capitalizing on what is increasingly revealing itself to be a shady, snake-oily industry. You actually have irresponsible, untrue, and potentially dangerous statements on the front page of your website, including the ideas that people should take vitamin D[6] or that Omega 3s boost brain function[7].

1\. [http://www.webmd.com/vitamins-and- supplements/news/20131216/...](http://www.webmd.com/vitamins-and- supplements/news/20131216/experts-dont-waste-your-money-on-multivitamins)

2\. [http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/dont-take-your- vitamins/](http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/dont-take-your-vitamins/)

3\. [http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevensalzberg/2014/01/13/the- to...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevensalzberg/2014/01/13/the-top-six- vitamins-you-shouldnt-take/)

4\. [http://greatist.com/grow/why-you-dont-need-a- multivitamin](http://greatist.com/grow/why-you-dont-need-a-multivitamin)

5\. [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/09/opinion/sunday/dont- take-y...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/09/opinion/sunday/dont-take-your- vitamins.html?_r=0)

6\. [http://theconversation.com/the-sun-goes-down-on-vitamin-d- wh...](http://theconversation.com/the-sun-goes-down-on-vitamin-d-why-i- changed-my-mind-about-this-celebrated-supplement-52725)

7\. [http://www.mayoclinic.org/drugs-supplements/omega-3-fatty- ac...](http://www.mayoclinic.org/drugs-supplements/omega-3-fatty-acids-fish- oil-alpha-linolenic-acid/evidence/hrb-20059372)

<comment><USER4> I am sorry, but your post is inaccurate. You are literally claiming that we said or wrote things that never appeared on our website (nor in our minds, for that matter). Here are our actual positions, explained in more detail. In order: 1) Our position is that the privileged source of nutrients should be a healthy diet, whenever possible. In many cases, though, customers who have a healthy diet still want to integrate their nutrition with supplements (for example, getting all of the daily recommended omega 3 from fish is sometimes impractical). For this reason, we offer customers the possibility to personalize their supplements, so that they will add to their Multiply Pill exactly what they need, and nothing more! This approach is completely different from the standard multivitamins, that just overload their products with high quantities of supplements in the "one-size-fits'all" approach. 2) The number of people with some sort of vitamin deficiency is surprisingly high, even in the US (one example: [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0271531710...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0271531710002599) ). In these cases, once more, our approach can provide these customers with exactly what they need, without unnecessary additions. 3) We do not claim that vitamins or omega 3 boost brain function. Please review our website. You are confusing us with other products/companies, that are less careful about their sources. 4) The supplement that we include for productivity is caffeine. As with all of the other supplements, rather than suggesting a pre-fixed dosage, we let customers pick exactly the quantity they want. And we can also add our unique control of the release time of the caffeine (the release performance of our functional containers is backed by our peer-reviewed, award-winning publications: [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1773224715...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S177322471500132X) and [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378517316...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378517316304161) ). If you can't access these publications because your institution is not subscribed to ScienceDirect, we'll be happy to send you the pdf's!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Very nice... Just browsed out the site. Now, you seem to have a lot less vitamins, etc. in your selection compared to what is on most off the shelf products. Is that by design (or researched evidence) or just that you haven't found a way to print them into the pill yet?

<comment><USER2> The current list is based on extensive research that we have done. We can fit additional supplements in the pill and are continuing to research additional supplements. We welcome any additional recommendations from our early customers!

<comment><USER7> I was surprised to not see Creatine available, given it's popularity among the bodybuilding/gym community!

<comment><USER2> We looked into the supplements taken into the bodybuilding community, and found that the bodybuilding community prefer to take their supplements through shakes! We currently are focusing on other forms of exercise, such as endurance exercises!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Lanetix engineers bring case to NLRB claiming firings were illegal retaliation - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-26/coders-want-to-unionize-with-help-from-trump <comment><USER2> I hope they prevail. What kind of sociopath company fires its entire technical staff?</comment>


Ask HN: Are you interested in what companies use Functional Programming? - <AUTHOR> Here is a place you can check out, as well as contribute!<p>Link in comments <comment><USER2> [Shameless plug] I also created [https://github.com/lucianghinda/programming- languages-in-sta...](https://github.com/lucianghinda/programming-languages-in- startups) where I tried to add programming languages for top 100 companies from YCombinator and top 50 companies from Techstars.

You can find there under /results the list for Scala, but I don't have information how exactly are they using it.

Please be advice that the list is based upon resources available on the internet so probably some of them are wrong.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> [https://github.com/elamje/FP-over-OOP-list](https://github.com/elamje/FP- over-OOP-list)

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://www.zimpler.com/](https://www.zimpler.com/) is pure clojure, with some haskell I think

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your recommendation, added to list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> just out of curiosity, what's the benefit of using functional programming in companies? productivity? I think the cost to find engineers proficient in functional languages would be more expensive than losing cost by using normal language such as java, python, etc.</comment>


Pinterest Is a $7.7 Billion Company - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/thestreet/2012/04/16/pinterest-is-a-7-7-billion-company/2/

<comment><USER2> Can anyone provide a resource for how these types of valuations are actually thought of? I assume it's a per user calculation but how is a per-user value found?

<comment><AUTHOR> the author uses visits as a metric..... Compares Pinterest uniques to Linkedin's uniques....

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> bubble love</comment>


The Most Mysterious Star in Our Galaxy - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2015/10/the-most-interesting-star-in-our-galaxy/410023/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> The article dismisses natural explanations as "wanting", but then goes on to dedicate half the article to aliens?

It claims that another star having a close encounter with KIC 8462852 (the star discussed in the article) and stirring up its comet cloud "would be an extraordinary coincidence". There is, in fact, evidence that such an encounter happened in our own solar system, "only a few millennia before humans developed the tech to loft a telescope into space." Calculating the speed and trajectory of a particular star, astronomers found that it would have crossed within the radius of the Oort Cloud approximately 70,000 years ago, producing exactly the scenario that "would be an extraordinary coincidence."[1]

Additionally, astronomers have checked stars in the galaxy for the possibility of a close encounter with our solar system, and find dozens of such candidates to come close to our solar system, sometimes within the radius of the Oort cloud, within the next million years (some as close as 240,000-470,000 years from now).[2]

The idea that a passing star would stir up the comet cloud of KIC 8462852 should not be dismissed as a coincidence, especially not to give leeway to discuss the potential for intelligence to build megastructures, when we see that such a coincidence is not even that rare for our own solar system.

[1] [http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2041-8205/800/1/L1...](http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2041-8205/800/1/L17/meta;jsessionid=6790524B4362615599182851A33352EC.c1)

[2] [http://www.mpia.de/~calj/stellar_encounters/stellar_encounte...](http://www.mpia.de/~calj/stellar_encounters/stellar_encounters_1.html)

<comment><USER3> It sounds like you've concluded that because comet-cloud stirring happened in _our solar system_ , it is "not even that rare" elsewhere. What's special about ours? Intelligent life also happened in our solar system, but you seem to consider it unlikely elsewhere.

It seems hasty to extrapolate either way without more data.

<comment><USER4> > Intelligent life also happened in our solar system, but you seem to consider > it unlikely elsewhere.

Occam's razor, plain and simple.

If the strange variations in that star's brightness turned out to be caused by an alien civilization, that would be way, way cool. But before we jump to conclusions, we should explore more mundane explanations; given the unusual observations, it should still be very interesting, whatever the cause.

<comment><USER5> Nobody, not the article or any of the comments, seem to have jumped to any conclusions.

The article suggested possibilities, including comets. And reasons why it might not be that. And it included aliens, and some things that would be expected if it was that. All depending on more data which the article explained, they are waiting to collect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm not sure we should expect only cold, sterile data and the most banal hypothesis from a magazine targeting the general public.

Moreover, I think it's good to spark the public's imagination through informed speculation. Yes, maybe what lies over the horizon is not a mysterious land full of strange wonders but -- you know what? -- maybe it is. So to all those out there who feel it is their duty to defend the orthodoxy that we're alone in the universe from the human imagination I say just let others have their dreams. One day you may live in a very different, more wondrous world because they refused to accept the limits you seem so eager to impose on them.

</comment><comment><USER7> And here a somewhat more mundane anti-clickbait article...

"Citizen scientists catch cloud of comets orbiting distant star"

[https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn28191-citizen- scienti...](https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn28191-citizen-scientists- catch-cloud-of-comets-orbiting-distant-star/)

</comment><comment><USER8> [http://arxiv.org/abs/1509.03622](http://arxiv.org/abs/1509.03622)

The paper. Basically Kepler, or to be more precise the Planet Hunter crowdsourcing effort, found a star with a rather strange light curve and the Atlantic jumped the gun and babbels of aliens.

<comment><USER9> While they are prematurely speculating about intelligent life, it certainly warrants further investigation. Given that the Atlantic's target audience is lay-people, of course they would play up the "extraterrestrial" hypothesis, because that's how they grab readers' attention.

<comment><USER8> Well, there are a lot of stars and some fraction has anomalous light curves in one respect or another. I am not against investigating, but I believe that overhyping science does more harm than good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> «But that would be an extraordinary coincidence, if that happened so recently, only a few millennia before humans developed the tech to loft a telescope into space. That's a narrow band of time, cosmically speaking.

After all, this light pattern doesn't show up anywhere else, across 150,000 stars. We know that something strange is going on out there.»

It would also be an extraordinary coincidence if we find another planet with life on it, so quickly after humans started to look for it. 150'000 stars is a narrow band of universe, cosmically speaking.

<comment> david-given If this _is_ life, in a life-as-we-know-it sense, then it tells us that there are two species within a couple of thousand light years in about the same stage of evolution; which suggests that life's going to be _everywhere_.

Assuming one civilisation within a sphere 1000ly in diameter, that makes 16000 in our galaxy alone!

<comment><USER11> _If this is life, in a life-as-we-know-it sense_

It's much weirder than that; after all, there's been life on Earth for at least 3Bn years, but space-going life for only the past 57 of them! Stack it all up: if this _is_ some sort of life-created megastructure then it's not just evidence of life, but of presumptively-multicellular tool-building life that can get off its planet and survive in an intensely hostile environment that it didn't coevolve with.

With an estimated 100Bn stars in our own galaxy alone, this would suggest we can expect to see on the order of a million interplanetary-capable life forms in the process of carrying out mega-engineering projects, and yet _none_ of them have come calling on us? Fermi Paradox calls bullshit.

<comment> david-given The Fermi Paradox is predicated on the principle that aliens would actually want to come here. I'm not sure this is a valid assumption.

For a hot and fast civilisation like us to exist for serious amounts of time in space, it's going to have to adapt to living in space --- because, as you say, it's intensely hostile. One of the key adaptations is to stop being hot and fast. If you can live on small energy budgets you're way more likely to survive. If you live slowly then travel becomes much easier, as well as costing less.

But if you become a cold and slow civilisation, inner solar systems aren't going to be very hospitable --- hot, radioactive, space is so bent that travel is enormously difficult, everything's at the bottom of cripplingly expensive gravity wells... why bother? The gas giants are rich, but are even more expensive (to get from low orbit around one of the moons of Jupiter to low orbit around another takes about 10 km/s. You can launch from the _surface_ of Earth for that). But further out... the Kuiper and Oort clouds are peaceful, cheap, hospitable, and chock full of light elements with interesting (if slow) chemistry.

Estimates of the Oort cloud density predict that there'll be a 20km body every 30 light seconds or so, and that there's about five Earth masses in Sol's Oort cloud alone. And Oort clouds of neighbouring stars overlap...

So I'm expecting any successful civilisation to start colonising the spaces _between_ the stars, rather than the star systems themselves.

In this model, our own solar system could already be colonised, and we'd never know. They'd probably have noticed our radio transmissions by now, but it may not have occurred to them to answer yet. They may not bother; if we survive long enough to adapt to space, we'll be out there soon. Or they may not be able, depending on their energy budget. Or maybe they are, and we just haven't noticed. (New Horizons has a 12W transmitter and we would have to be looking in exactly the right direction to spot it. And it's way closer than the Oort Cloud.)

Of course, this doesn't explain why our hypothetical civilisation has built a hypothetical megastructure around this star. I wouldn't know why they'd want to do that (except for noting in passing that interstellar travel for hot-and- fast creatures like us basically requires a Dyson sphere for the energy requirements).

I'm planning a book. Can you tell?

<comment><USER11> _So I 'm expecting any successful civilisation to start colonising the spaces between the stars, rather than the star systems themselves._

Before you start writing your book, you might want to familiarize yourself with the prior art in the field: start with the short story "Swarm" by Bruce Sterling, then the novel "Permanence" by Karl Schroeder, "Blindsight" by Peter Watts, and maybe "Diaspora" by Greg Egan. That's assuming that by "planning a book" you're thinking in terms of fiction rather than SETI-oriented non-fic, but even if you're writing non-fic it's worth noting that we SF authors have been all over the topic for decades. (As for non-fic, the prior art goes all the way back to J. D. Bernal's "The World, The Flesh, and The Devil", if not further: I don't read Russian but I gather Nikolai Federov wrote on the subject, as did Konstantin Tsiolkovsky.)

<comment> david-given I've read all of those! (I actually discovered Karl Schroeder from your blog; for which I thank you. I gather _Lockstep_ addresses the same subject, but haven't read it yet.) Although they're very much focused on going substellar objects, e.g. brown dwarves or dark giants, while I'm thinking of the vastly more common asteroidal bodies. It's not a subject I've seen addressed very often.

Here's the paper that crystallised the idea for me:

[http://arxiv.org/pdf/1201.2687v1.pdf](http://arxiv.org/pdf/1201.2687v1.pdf)

Also, yes, fiction --- I'm not enough of a scholar for non-fic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> So what's the star called? Even if it's just a boring numbers-and-letters name it'd still be nice to know.

<comment> david-given Apparently it's just KIC 8462852, unfortunately, also known as TYC 3162-665-1 and 2MASS J20061546+4427248. Snappy names.

The paper says it's 12th magnitude so it's way, _way_ dimmer than is visible to the human eye.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KIC_8462852](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KIC_8462852)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Just supposing we really are seeing the space construction projects of a distant civilization, it seems not impossible that ironically we might be seeing them before they can see us.

<comment><USER5> That's a good point, I'd never really thought of that! Almost any life we could find in another system, we'd see before our first radio waves got to them.

On the other hand, if I was some ancient super advanced civilization, I'd have probes all over the galaxy, and they'd report as soon as anything interesting happened with evolution on a planet. So they could know what life was like on Earth about 1500 years ago, and extrapolate from that.

Not that I can guess what a super advanced civilization would think like :P

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> There is so much cool science out there, I wish we could accept it as cool without it being aliens. The phenomenon that lead to this odd flux observation is more interesting than hypothetical alien megastructures.

Another cool citizen science project was the observations of the epsilon Aurigae transit. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epsilon_Aurigae](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epsilon_Aurigae)

<comment><USER15> _The phenomenon that lead to this odd flux observation is more interesting than hypothetical alien megastructures._

Discovering a previously unknown natural phenomenon would indeed by insanely cool, and I would want to know all about it in as many frequency bands as possible.

But alien megastructures are just about the most interesting thing I can think of short of proof that we live in a hologram, or a simulation, or some new and robust fundamental theory of matter.

<comment><USER14> I agree actual alien megastructures would be awesome. But hypothetical ones are the worst.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16>
        > Jason Wright, an astronomer from Penn State University, is set to publish an
        > alternative interpretation of the light pattern. SETI researchers have long
        > suggested that we might be able to detect distant extraterrestrial
        > civilizations, by looking for enormous technological artifacts orbiting
        > other stars. Wright and his co-authors say the unusual star's light pattern
        > is consistent with a "swarm of megastructures," perhaps stellar-light
        > collectors, technology designed to catch energy from the star.

I guess the theory is that an advanced civilization would be building particle accelerators on the scale of solar systems, or maybe constructing wormholes?

<comment><USER17> By " __swarm of megastructures __" and " __technology designed to catch energy from the star __" I think he's referring to a Dyson Swarm: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere#Dyson_swarm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere#Dyson_swarm)

<comment><USER16> I'm just not entirely convinced of the premise that energy consumption on that scale would be necessary for an advanced civilization. Particle accelerators would be a reasonable possibility though.

<comment><USER18> Not sure if I agree with this blogpost, but it's not a crazy idea if you extrapolate from economics on Earth: [http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the- math/2012/04/economist-meets-...](http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the- math/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist/).

<comment><USER16> The math is essentially correct, but it oversimplifies some things, and it skips a number of factors.

Larry Summers recently shared his opinion on the topic [https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-global- economy-i...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-global-economy-is- in-serious-danger/2015/10/07/85e81666-6c5d-11e5-b31c-d80d62b53e28_story.html).

<comment><USER18> I'm not sure I understand the relevance of what Summers is saying. He's talking about a current slowdown in growth, and arguing for expansionary monetary policy. This article is claiming that there's a limited amount of growth that we can expect in the longterm, because we'll run out of sources of energy. But Summers isn't talking about energy as a limit..indeed, he's saying commodity prices are depressed.

Am I missing something?

<comment><USER16> The other article isn't entirely arguing that energy is a fundamental limit, although the example it gives is pretty hilarious. It's ultimately arguing that there are fundamentally limited things for capital to invest in and grow.

<comment><USER18> The only argument I see is that energy places a limit on growth. Now, one might think that if energy is one limit, there must be others, but I can't find that argument actually presented.

<comment><USER16>
        > Economist: But I have to object to the statement that growth must stop once
        > energy amount/price saturates. There will always be innovations that people
        > are willing to purchase that do not require additional energy.

...and so on

<comment><USER18> I think you're getting this backwards--this is not an argument that there's more limits, it's an argument over whether limited energy actually implies limits to growth. What the economist says is "even if energy is limited, growth is not" and the physicist goes on to rebut that claim.

<comment><USER16> The rebuttal has to do with the definition of economic growth (assuming it isn't connected to energy consumption and gdp), which the economist argues has to do with quality of life. The rebuttal is that quality of life can only objectively improve to a certain point, and that the remaining measures aren't really quantifiable.

So the last, albeit minor, argument is that there would be a point where there isn't anything to invest in to grow, which essentially describes the ultimate form of secular stagnation. I think the economic counter-argument goes something like the money supply isn't inherently finite. I could see that being an interesting argument.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> awinter-py Maybe they stopped transmitting because a bacterium ate all their room- temperature superconductors.

<comment><USER19> Possibly a bacterium that initially formed on unsanitized telephone handsets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Hmmm, looks like somebody threw Occam's razor in the trash...

</comment><comment><USER21> I know I shouldn't get excited about this, as a more prosaic explanation is far more likely, but my heart still skipped a beat when I read "stellar-light collectors".

<comment><USER22> When I read the title I wondered if they had found a star that turns off for 215 of every 250 years...

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Following up with radio telescopes in hopes of finding evidence of technologically emitted radiation seems pretty hopeless. Encryption of signals, advanced tech, too many things get in the way of getting a conclusive signal. Just point the James Webb at it once it's up and running to get a better picture of what's observable.

</comment><comment><USER24> Yes but, how many light-years away is that star?

<comment><USER25> I had the same quesiton. It looks like it's only 1500 Light Years [1].

1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KIC_8462852](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KIC_8462852)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> just hypothetically speaking: wouldn't a dyson array need to beam energy to the planet where those aliens live?

we should be able to pick up that high energy stream with current technology, but we'd need first to guess at which frequency it transmits to (if it's there)

edit: ok scratch that I stand corrected I was still thinking in earthling terms

<comment> david-given They wouldn't necessarily live on a planet --- planets are a really inefficient may to make real estate. Much easier to live on the collectors themselves.

Assuming that 'live' is a useful term; thing about aliens is that they're going to be alien. Star Trek has conditioned us to think of aliens as humans in rubber suits, but real aliens are going to be anything but. We don't even know if it's a 'they'; it could be an 'it'.

If this _is_ an artifact, then all it tells us is that they (or it) builds tools and likes energy. This suggests an inner-solar-system species like us, as living where things are fast and hot. But that's not necessarily a given. It could be a cold and slow outer-solar-system species doing something uncharacteristic. Or a plasma-based solar species. Or maybe it's something that's actually _weird_.

I know this is going to turn out to be rocks moving oddly, just like everything else, but I'm still really interested to see what the results of the radio telescope survey's going to be...

<comment><USER2> I don't think a planet would be an inefficient way to make real estate. Look at the benefits we get from living on a planet: free gravity, free protection from UV radiation, free life support, huge storage of water. I would assume that a civilization capable of constructing huge light collectors would also have no problem escaping the gravity field of a planet.

<comment><USER9> That assumes that these hypothetical beings are made of matter and not pure energy. It could be that these beings are energy "parasites" that consume energy directly from stars. They may even be an artificial intelligence that seeks to saturate the known universe, in which case a planet is unnecessary and even inefficient for their real estate. Maybe they just want to construct more interstellar data centers to propagate ;)

<comment><USER27> What would it mean for something to be made of "pure energy" in scientific terms?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This is great. I always thought an advanced et would want to build something like a dyson hemisphere around its star.

</comment><comment><USER29> Love the last sentence.</comment>