The Future of Wind Turbines? No Blades (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/2015/05/future-wind-turbines-no-blades/ <comment><USER2> From wikipedia [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vortex_Bladeless](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vortex_Bladeless)

>> In late 2016 and after validating the technology on computational simulations and tech demonstrators, the company reached the prototype stage with a geometry that can harness a nice amount of energy from the wind with this principle. On this stage Vortex was able to apply for funding from the Horizon 2020 for research and innovation programme of the European Commission.[19] Being the greatest funding that the company had, Vortex built a big wind tunnel for testing their turbines (the tallest wind tunnel in Spain) and started the development of their patented concept of an oscillating alternator with tuning system. On this phase, the company won the "Seal of Excellence" of the H2020 programme.[20]

>> All along 2017, the company kept developing their alternator and tuning system. Since this technology is considered as new in many aspects intervening (geometry, movement, energy conversion system), it has been a harder development than the company expected. The collaboration on this stage of the Microgravity Institute of the Technical University of Madrid and the European University of Madrid, alongside CDTI, Altair, Birdlife and BSC were the key to obtain a feasible technology that can harness energy from the wind on this particular way. In this year the company obtained the "Innovation SME" seal of the Spanish government.[21]

>> In 2018 the company started to plan the industrialisation of their aerogenerators. On this point the company faced many problems due to the lack of feasible industrial processes to mass-produce some of the pieces that use Vortex technology. The geometry and the materials were almost definitive on this stage so the company started a certification process for their current prototypes and obtained the ISO 9001. This certification is a regular process for every wind turbine in the European and American market but the normative is written for blades based turbines or rotating turbines, so the normative may need to be rewritten in order to certify Vortex devices as wind generators.[citation needed]

>> The goals of the company for the future are to obtain the certification needed to start selling, to set up a feasible method of production and logistics of shipping so they can start commercializing first Vortex turbines for 2020.[2]

</comment><comment><USER3> Vortex had been Busted in 2017 already: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9VjJ1e1nIY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9VjJ1e1nIY)

Apparently, they seem to be disingenuous about the state of their technology and their fundraising strategy. It seems there are no working prototypes which produce a reasonable amount of power.

However - I'm not certain about this myself - I'm not a mechanical/power systems engineer.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's a nice idea and I'm glad to see it investigated, however the efficiency of kinetic energy generation from a regular turbine is always going to be greater.

Oscillation from vortex shedding behind a cylinder depends on separation of slow moving air and the subsequent imbalance in lift on either side. You're using some of the kinetic energy of the flow to induce the vortex shedding.

A regular turbine on the other hand uses very efficient airfoils where you can at attempt to maintain laminar flow and maximise energy extraction.

I see this technology as being great for energy harvesting on existing infrastructure. Put vibrational energy harvesters on pylons and poles in windy areas and you could power traffic lights, street lights etc.

<comment><USER5> Will this be safer for bird life?

<comment><USER6> The risk that wind turbines pose to birds is already very small. Wind farms kill 440 thousand birds per year. Meanwhile, building windows kill about 500 million, and cats another 500 million. A standard wind turbine kills 4.27 birds per year, so of course you shouldn't build a massive wind farm in an area with endangered birds.

Outside of that case, what if the whole US was powered by wind energy? That would mean 315333 wind turbines, causing 1.34 million bird deaths per year. That's still negligible compared to cats, windows, hunting or communication towers.

sources:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_wind_p...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_wind_power#Birds)

The US uses 473 GW on average, A standard wind turbine produces 1.5MW. 473000/1.5 = 315333. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_States#Co...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_States#Consumption_by_source)

<comment><USER7> It's not all about numbers. Wind turbines kill rare, and threatened species, such as birds of prey and bats. Cats and window accidents mostly kill very common species.

<comment><USER8> ...which is why, as the parent states, they shouldn't be built in the habitats or flight paths of endangered species. Environmental impact studies are now a routine part of the wind farm development process, and have been for over a decade.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It is claimed that the oscillating pillar creates no audible sound, making it attractive in rural communities sensitive to noise pollution. I hope they are right but remain fairly skeptical on whether this will hold outside clean lab settings, especially when the constructs age and wear.

</comment><comment><USER10> I skeptical that this system can scale to decent power output. A 100W conventional turbine is not a threat to birds either, because it's tiny. Modern wind turbines produce something like 10MW. That's 100000 times more power. Even small residential turbines are in the kilowatt range.

<comment><USER11> And the bird threatening factor of one wind turbine compares to one cat (at least in Germany).

<comment><USER12> Cats don't kill large migratory birds. But wind turbines do.

<comment><USER13> There was a 2007 legal case that, though the jury ended in deadlock (as to whether or not the shooting of a cat was legal), suggests that cats do in fact kill migratory birds. Stevenson v Galvestone, I believe.

<comment><USER14> That's interesting, and I'm curious why someone would know this. Are you in the field?

<comment><USER13> I started getting cluster headaches a couple years ago, so it isn't true anymore, but I used to have a photographic memory. Useful for picking up lots of entirely useless information.

<comment><USER14> I see. Thanks for sharing that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> In one of their videos [1] the mast can be seen vibrating at a high intensity. There is for sure lots of tension in the material produced, I wonder how durable the masts are. I have the feeling they would instantly break during a storm.

Wind turbines have pitch control to reduce the speed of the rotor and blades. This allows wind turbines to survive most storms. I don't see an equivalent control mechanism with Vortex Bladeless masts.

[1] [https://youtu.be/Mf-gps4r2L0](https://youtu.be/Mf-gps4r2L0)

<comment><USER16> From their FAQ ([https://vortexbladeless.com/faq/#question6](https://vortexbladeless.com/faq/#question6)):

"Vortex wind turbines are designed to have high performance with most common wind speeds (between 3-12 m/s) and to has a quick response to turbulent airflows changes.

If wind velocity exceeds the device's working threshold, it will stop by itself due to physics principles."

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I can't see how this design improves over a traditional three bladed turbine. Kinetic energy is still extracted from a large moving structural element and the forces involved will be much larger to generate the same amount of energy. Turbines are extremely efficient in extracting large amounts of energy while using the lightest weight components.

<comment><USER18> According to the company:

\- It's cheaper per KWh (they claim 40%, IIRC, but that was in 2015)

\- It requires less maintenance (no moving parts)

\- It doesn't kill birds

\- It's silent (no frequencies >20 Hz)

\- It's 30% less efficient than a blade design but you can put twice as many in the same area

\- It doesn't cause the alternating light/shadow effects that huge blades do

<comment><USER17> I'm skeptical about the cheaper per KWh. A 100W conventional turbine can be purchased for around $200 and has 3 blades around 50 cm in length. The 100W vortex device is 2.7m tall and I doubt can be purchased for less than $600 since the structure is much wider and weighs around 3 times more. 14kg vs 5kg for a conventional turbine.

A 100W conventional turbine also only has a couple of moving parts, won't kill birds and is effectively silent. I'm unsure on wether these claims are still true as the device scales up. A device 100m or so tall will have a fast velocity at the tip perhaps as much as 50m/s at a few Hz which is similar to the blade tip speed of a conventional turbine thus having similar potential to kill birds and make noise.

<comment><USER3> While I also doubt their claims - the price you want to look at is :

(purchase + installation) / average_life_span + maintenance per time unit

So, even at triple the cost it could still be worthwhile.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> With this article being four years old, it is safe to assume they did not meet their economic goals, right?

Nevertheless, technology like this might still be useful in very special environments. As an extreme example, consider Mars. Completely different economical conditions.

<comment><USER16> Curent status of the project - [https://vortexbladeless.com/faq/#question10](https://vortexbladeless.com/faq/#question10)

They still appear to be updating the website at least.

<comment><USER20> wish they would update it to not hijack browser scrolling

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Well, bladeless low-speed generator's been around for some years already. It's directly driven, i.e. no multiplier too

[http://d.intellect-labs.com/our-projects/88-slow- generator.h...](http://d.intellect-labs.com/our-projects/88-slow- generator.html)

</comment><comment><USER22> A few days ago there was already another article here about new wind tech, I could repeat my comment [1].

tl;dr looking at historic patterns I've seen many new forms of wind energy, they all didn't make it. What stays successful is doing almost the same thing more efficient and at larger scale.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20895000](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20895000)

<comment><USER23> > tl;dr looking at historic patterns I've seen many new forms of wind energy, > they all didn't make it. What stays successful is doing almost the same > thing more efficient and at larger scale.

This is the main reason: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betz%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betz%27s_law). Wind turbines are already very close to max efficiency, the only thing you can do is make them bigger and cheaper.

<comment><USER3> Betz' law is not a restriction. The challenge isn't extraction of more of the energy. The challenges are:

* Production cost $ * Production cost in terms of resources (e.g. renewable organic materials vs metal, rare earth etc.) * Maintenance $ * Complexity of maintenance * Necessary area / turbine * Necessary area / turbine * Necessary volume / turbine * Noise level * Usability in extreme environmental conditions

... and maybe other things I've missed.

<comment><USER23> That's still a big restriction, other technologies could have a breakthrough which makes them 10x more efficient, this will never happen with wind turbines.

<comment><USER3> We're talking about harnessing wind power. There is no "10x more efficient".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Discussed at the time: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9555293](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9555293)

</comment><comment><USER25> Would there be efficiencies in combining this with a 3 blade fan? Your already putting a mast up, could you include this as part of the mast?

<comment><USER16> The actual mast is lightweight and and wouldn't be able to support anything. Also it seems the foundations wouldn't be able to support a traditional wind turnbine:

"Instead of the usual tower, nacelle and blades, our device has only a mast made of lightweight materials over a base. This reduces the usage of raw materials and the need for a deeper foundation."

On the upside it must make for easier deployment, opening up more areas to installation.

<comment><USER25> I was thinking more wrapping this around a standard 3 blade fan mast. So the structural integrity is there but your taking advantage of an existing structure (obviously with some modification to suit) to generate additional power. This additional lower while maybe not as efficient as the fans, it might be cost effective since the base structure is there and systems to collect the power.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The Future (2015) - well, we live in the future and these turbines are nowhere to be seen :-(

<comment><USER27> The other future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Wouldn't these be ideal to address a rooftop or backyard market?</comment>


Ask HN: They say no one knows all C++ so what parts do Game Devs need to know? - <AUTHOR>

I recently heard the expression: "If you think you know C++ then you don't know C++". I take that to mean that C++ is sufficiently large and complex that it is not very common for someone to be deeply familiar with all of its facets. So this made me wonder what parts of C++ are really essential to know to become a solid indie game developer. Are there any dark corners that a developer would do well to learn? <comment><USER2> First, go read "Inside the C++ Object Model" so that you can have a firm grip on how the compiler implements everything under the hood.

But, you are looking for dark corners full of gold... Here's where to look:

Policy-based design using templates can make generating optimal code for lots of different situations only slightly harder than hand-writing optimal code for a specific situation. "Modern C++ Design" is full of examples that take this to the extreme. Don't go that far. Just figure out why std:sort with a functor solidly outperforms qsort (or std:sort) with a function pointer. Also: type traits are tasty when applied sparingly.

Knowing how to override and augment malloc, new, etc... is critical for instrumentation and segmentation of allocations. In-place new and destructors- without-delete can be handy occasionally.

STL's algorithms are great, but the containers are often overkill. binary_search() and insert(lower_bound()) on a sorted array will often beat a std:set because most common datasets are small enough to fit in cache when stored in a contiguous array. Similarly, a sorted array of key-value structs is usually a better idea than a std:map. If you are on the PC, it is possible to write large amounts of fast, beautiful code using only pre-reserved std::vectors (rarely needing new or delete). Boost is soft, warm quicksand.

Don't get wrapped up counting instructions. Memory accesses and cache misses are 20-200X more important. Most algorithm educational materials ignore this. Data-oriented design trumps OO. Component-based design trumps inheritance --it leads to better composability and it is easy to get good Data-OD by batch- processing arrays of uniform-typed components. Most load screens are 90% disk seeking. Not reading. Not processing. Seeking...

As a systems programmer, I'm a big fan of C++0X. static_assert is my best friend. I'm loving auto and lambdas. Move semantics are great for libraries, but if you need it you might be being a bit too liberal with your allocation patterns. btw: it's easy to make a pre-c++ox

#define staticAssert(x) typedef char[x:1:-1] _assert_type

that you can use anywhere.

Multithreaded design is important. Done well, it can make everything simpler. I greatly prefer share-nothing + message passing. Semaphores are handy, but mutexes usually smell bad. If you think you need to call sleep() you are doing something wrong.

<http://www.codeproject.com/KB/cpp/FastDelegate.aspx> is handy. Just don't look under the hood. Scary...

Return value optimization is nice. Compiler intrinsic functions (and out-of- order execution cpus) are slowly making writing assembly unnecessary (reading assembly is still important). Getting functions to inline away in optimized builds is nice, but getting debug builds to run fast is nicer. RIAA can be nice. Dependency injection can be worth it to not depend on globals (singletons are self-deception). Careful project structure and #include design can mean a 10x difference in compile times. Short (preferably instant/continuous) iteration time is the key to quality.

There's a dozen doors for ya. Take your time stepping through each one. Just be aware that elegance makes it easier to ship, but shipping is the goal. I've seen big, awesome games full of gross, bloated code. They were horribly painful to ship, but they shipped like hell and that's why they won.

<comment><USER3> I like your point of data oriented design. Do you have any suggestions/links on how I can learn more about it? Thanks.

<comment><USER2> Unfortunately, not much. The first page of google hits are all pretty good, but short. Also, Mike Acton of Insomniac has ranted about it a couple of times.

[http://cellperformance.beyond3d.com/articles/2006/04/perform...](http://cellperformance.beyond3d.com/articles/2006/04/performance- and-good-data-design.html)

[http://cellperformance.beyond3d.com/articles/2009/08/roundup...](http://cellperformance.beyond3d.com/articles/2009/08/roundup- recent-sketches-on-concurrency-data-design-and-performance.html)

There are a lot of component-design links here: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1901251/component- based-g...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1901251/component-based-game- engine-design)

I don't know if any of them address batch-processing though...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> For game development you can safely avoid dealing with exceptions and RTTI. You can probably avoid most template magic, too.

Most game developers use C++ as C-with-classes and generally keep the inheritance and OOP-ness fairly simple.

<comment><USER5> This is my experience also, _especially_ with indie games. The crazy dark corners of C++ tend to come out more often in larger teams than at indie-game studios.

One approach to finding out more details is to pick a specific engine and see how it uses C++. For example, take Unity3D, and figure out what parts of C++ you'd need to know to use and understand its API (by reading the docs, looking at example games, trying out a small project, etc.).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> True. So true.

The thing is c++ is a vast massive monster. Most likely whoever deeply worked on it, knows there's so much stuff left to learn, and so many deep dives, that whoever claims expertise is likely to be a newbie who hasn't been close enough to the edge to see what's ahead.

I remember once, spending like a couple full days along with a graphics researcher, who worked on that stuff full time, trying to get to work some rendering done with OpenGL on c++ which just didn't behave when compiled in MSBuild. Only on MSBuild. We found way later the solution from a guy in a forum, which was hacking the opengl implementation , overriding some macros ,and doing some other obscure thing on the library as well.

Even today we're both baffled at how that dude came up with that hack.

</comment><comment><USER7> Virtual methods are widely used, though heavy use of inheritance seems to be on the decline.

I'm a big fan of const, including const methods, though the places I'm especially fond of using it are more MMO specific, (probably) not quite as relevant for a "solid indie game developer".

It's good to know the basics of templates, for things like lists, hashes, trees, and maybe vectors, matrices, etc. Using stl or boost is probably fine, though larger developers always seem to invent their own libraries. I think that's mostly due to historical lack of support on consoles.

Like another poster said, exceptions and RTTI are virtually unknown in game development due to performance considerations.

</comment><comment><USER8> Everything except exceptions and RTTI.

STL/boost are debatable.</comment>


AI Can Transform Anyone Into a Professional Dancer - <AUTHOR> https://news.developer.nvidia.com/ai-can-transform-anyone-into-a-professional-dancer/ <comment><USER2> I could see this being used in the same way that auto-tune type effects are added to singers voices. The editing of music videos could include a tool like this to make sure all of the dancers behind the main one are moving _just_ right.

And just like auto-tuned voices, it will come off as janky and fake.

<comment><USER3> The autotune you refer to as "janky and fake" is when autotune is used with intention to create that sound as an artistic syle. Autotune is used across most pop (and other) music, but in such a way that that you never realise it is there.

It is similar to special effects. People complain about how bad and fake they look, but this is only for the effects that are bad enough that they are noticible. People don't realise the sheer amount of special effects being used in scenes they never realise they are being used for.

<comment><USER4> There is nothing "artistic" in overusing autotune. It is just a tool to "mask" that that person can`t really sing at all and is overused in popular/commercial genres where there is an abundance of untalented musicians. I can`t imagine anyone saying that obvious autotuned songs sound good.

<comment><USER5> Kanye West used autotune to great effect in 808s and Heartbreak, one of the seminal albums of this century

<comment><USER6> Very true about using it to great effect in 808s and Heartbreak! I remember hearing one of those tracks and finding it fairly nice to listen to. Then I heard him live on SNL and his singing voice was close to non-existent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Oh man, the first company to put this in a mobile app is going to blow up.

(I guess it might take a few years for the performance to get there)

<comment><USER8> Isn't there a patent / copyright or something for taking all the algorithms / structures in the tech stack that this relies on? (GAN , densePOSE , etc)

Is any tech that is published in arxiv just free game immediately? Seems unfair to the researchers

<comment><USER9> It's their choice to publish.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Funnily enough, I think this technology would be better demoed by people doing more natural motions like walking around and doing basic gestures, or dancing in a style that is more fluid. This type of dancing is made to look intentionally "unnatural" (ie: you rarely see people moving like this in your daily life), which makes it a bit difficult to tell how much of the strangeness/unanny-ness comes from the dancing style vs imprecision in the algorithm.

<comment><USER11> That might be intentional. We're used to seeing people walk, so it would be easy to point out flaws in transformed video of people walking. With the unusual movements, we attribute it to the moves because we're not used to seeing them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Nice save way not to say "New Deeper Fakes - now full body!". This is hardly just about dancing. This can be used to create anyone doing anything. The quality will improve, far beyond the quality levels of the hands now and the other interpolated body parts far past the quality necessary for games.

<comment><USER13> Yep.

The real consequence of this is that video footage is no longer a reliable source.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Very impressive!

I'm a bit disappointed though that they didn't also include results for a synthetic source video with "impossible" poses (e.g. joints bending backwards, stretching, separating from the body or performing full rotations). That would have been pretty interesting (though perhaps a bit unsettling) to see.

<comment><USER15> I'm really impressed that the shadows behind in the window are reasonably realistic too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I loved watching the movements in the "Detected Pose" corner. I felt like I could see the forms of the dance more clearly. I wonder if ML could learn aesthetically pleasing dance forms, then perhaps we could get some generative choreography!

<comment><USER17> Interesting. If we could grab audience wide fmri at the next nutcracker for training, right ?

<comment><USER17> Edit _for labeling_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The title seems poorly worded.

Using AI to transform anyone into a professional dancer might include using AI to process live video (webcam) of someone dancing and then giving them some feedback for improvement. In a word: coaching.

However this is using AI to produce composite videos of people dancing.

<comment><USER19> We actually kinda already have the first, in the form of the Dance Central games for the Kinect. You dance, the software detects which of your limbs aren't moving the right way, and it display visual feedback (highlighting the limb in red, reducing your score, etc) to show you what you're doing wrong, so you can perform the dance more correctly next time.

It's not good enough to produce professional dancers, but it has definitely improved my dancing as someone who just dances for fun.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> So this is a cool demo --and it has applications in cinema, MVs, etc. But, this is being presented as something which could allow Jane Q User to portray herself as an accomplished dancer --just transfer a style onto herself.

Maybe I'm in the minority, but I think if we take this idea and walk with it, it has the potential to trivialize actual accomplishment. Maybe I'm overthinking it.

<comment><USER21> I think that's all it's intended to be right? A cool demo. And it looks pretty amazing for what it is really.

We're not going to see The Running Man style/quality fake videos any time soon, and the media kinda runs with this an exaggerates; making people wonder if camera footage may one day no longer be considered evidence.

We're far from that. At the most, the quality of the transfers here is about the same as what you'd see with Deep Fakes (celebrities imposed on top of pornographic models using computer vision and AI algorithms).

<comment><USER22> Are we really that far?

<comment><USER12> We ARE that far. Any deep fakes you see in the wild are the hobbyists applying the tech to the lowest common denominator. There are professional state sponsored groups creating serious fake video, easily manipulating presence of people at news worthy incidents.

<comment><USER22> I think you misunderstood my comment. The comment I replied to said we are far from realistic fakes. I was saying "are we really that far from realistic fakes?", not "are we really that far along?"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> So things can AI do now

\- Mimic a target's body motions (this link)

\- Mimic a target's facial expressions (deepfakes)

\- Mimic a target's voice (lyrebird AI, etc)

related video, digital animation puppeteering

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiOByO8J7xg&t=2s&list=LLI462...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiOByO8J7xg&t=2s&list=LLI462thar4CFee8GIqXwEPQ&index=143)

Its not perfect by any means, but we're seeing a new age of CGI. Once perfected, I wonder how the entertainment industry will change as a result (Faster rendering times, less time to make scenes, puppeteering, not needing expensive famous actors or stunt doubles, digital identity copyrights, etc)

<comment><USER24> I'm worried about the social ramifications and moving us one step closer to "post-truth". Not much we can to do stop it at some point, but if a certain pee tape came out in the next year, there'd always be a reasonable doubt to its veracity.

<comment><USER25> Yeah, I don't think people are lending enough weight to how big of a deal that is.

We're heading into a world where it would not be very hard to bombard the public with a large number of long form videos of highly convincing videos of anyone in the world ranting on any topic and acting out anything they want, and we would have borderline no idea if it was legitimate.

Combining that with our media climate and already runaway problem with monetary and political incentives for fabricated stories seems really dangerous.

You could make a video of Neil Armstrong and Nasa execs talking about how they faked the moonlanding, or even much more nefarious fake content confirming conspiracy theories for political ends.

What will we use as a scalable filter to know what is actually going on, and how will we keep that content from manipulating public discussion?

<comment><USER23> We've had digital and video manipulation for years, it leaves behind pixelated artifacts though and can be spotted (E.g. see captain disillusion on youtube).

But yes there's going to be a big market for tracking fake data sources in the future. We're already seeing tools to track fake twitter accounts, fake instagram followers, fake amazon purchase reviews, this is an ongoing trend.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Its a bungee jump into uncanny valley: exciting, but how many times would you pay, and who has more fun? you, or your friends watching?

</comment><comment><USER27> As a dancer & instructor of over 18 years, I think this technology is fascinating. I actually think it would be most effective as a teaching tool for my students. Often times, since the kids are so focused on the physicality of the steps, I find a disconnect between the visual and physical experience as they train, i.e. the kids don't realize that the steps/movements they make are in attempt to create visual shapes and lines. They run around the studio 'feeling themselves' (precious), but at the end of the year on-stage, the choreography suffers from this visual connection.

I appreciate that the detected poses and motions create clear pictures for what different parts of the body are doing. Particularly for ballet, if I had access to this technology (in a way that was user friendly), I'd love to see the difference between ballet styles (Vaganova, Cechetti, ABT, ect). I think it would be much clearer from a students' perspective, to see the stylistic difference in lines, shapes and movement.

This AI reminds me of Happy Feet, where they took Savion Glover's movement and choreography and applied it to the animation penguin. It doesn't seem too far- fetched. And lastly, for those who say this seems unnatural--dancing is unnatural to the body, hence the training and years put into it. So having an AI applied to it will only make it look more unnatural.

Artistically, this can be debated (as it has been), but in search for 'real life application,' I'd love to get my hands on this as a teaching tool.

 _sorry for the long post--this is my first time on this site--my boyfriend sent this to me & warned me that if i blabbed too long, this post would not be successful._

</comment><comment><USER28> As many other comments have said, the title is misleading; the key quotation is:

"(...) allows anyone to portray themselves as a world-class ballerina (...)"

Moreover, after AlphaGO took away Go from us, I started to wonder "what is left" for humans, and I believe that we are centuries away to have machines that achieve world class dancing level. My reasoning is than in things like Go, image or speech recognition, it is easier to "encode" the information for the ML to actually learn. On the other hand, encoding the movements of professional dancers is already quite difficult. Consider for example in the video linked here, the whole human body is mapped into ~20 points. Sure, this may be enough to portray someone as a dancer. But good luck making a dancing robot.

So, maybe I quit my programming career to become a dancer, it is less likely to be a job that the machines will take away ;-)

edit: grammar

<comment><USER29> > I believe that we are centuries away to have machines that achieve world > class dancing level

People said the same about Go. There are AIs that can compose enjoyable music already.

<comment><USER30> Robotics is a bit harder than board games.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> AI can make anyone appear to be a professional dancer. There is a difference between what is real and what is fake.

<comment><USER17> Good thing we often accept versions of reality as far away as snap filters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Here's an unpopular opinion: such applications aren't going to trivialize art.

Like competitive sports, art is all about display of human ability under constraints. This is why even in the age of photographs, we still value hand- painted canvases. Such techniques are simply going to make people more discerning between real effort v/s automated means of generating the same outcome.

Rather than thinking AI-assisted style transfers are the end of art, we should think that these are new tools for artists to do even more interesting stuff. See this upcoming tool for example: [https://runwayml.com/](https://runwayml.com/)

<comment><USER33> I entirely agree with you. It's one thing for computers/AI to emulate the creative work that humans have already achieved, essentially copying, or porting, or manipulating prior art, but it's something else entirely to genuinely create something new and fresh and connects with people emotionally, and I have yet to see any evidence that AI is close to this.

<comment><USER34> Most modern art isn't made to great something new and fresh... it's mass produced pastoral stuff like Thomas Kinkade or connected to a multimedia franchise (book covers, movie posters, game art, etc.) and a lot of that is certainly formulaic and derivative.

Maybe AI isn't able to copy human technique well enough yet but whether it succeeds or fails will have little to do with whether or not it creates work that resonates emotionally like classic art, because that's no longer the purpose of the vast majority of art that people encounter.

And I would argue that human beings, for the most part, copy other human beings anyway. Working within a "genre" and using cultural references and even recognizable techniques are all essentially copying or at least adapting what came before.

<comment><USER33> I guess it depends on how broad a definition of "art" we are using.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I'm sure that this will, at no point, be used for evil.

<comment><USER36> Indeed. It's still in the uncanny valley, but then evil is uncanny valley too. Goodness has always been linked in our minds with beauty and grace, including grace of movement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Need to send this to theresa may

<comment><USER38> Exactly my thought!

[https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/aug/30/theresa- may...](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/aug/30/theresa-may-busts- out-dance-moves-africa-trip-guides-scouts-nairobi)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> We should think of something like a blockchain to mark all this sh*t as fake though, because in five years time there will be no way to distinguish reality from invention and we will all be under constant blackmail from malicious agents and rogue governments showing up at our door with whatever made-up accusation they want.

<comment><USER40> How would blockchain solve the issue?

<comment><USER39> Link a blockchain app made with IOTA (for example, but this is the best and most manageable protocol I can see out there just now) to your unique ID in the form of something like your heartbeat plus your physical location plus your actual body shape, then perform a mini-transaction every 30 seconds or every minute or the granularity you need, finally store the transactions linked to that data as an alibi against any accusation that you were somewhere else doing something fake an AI created to blackmail you.

<comment><USER40> Or you could just be critical, and be aware of the limitations of media as it pertains to representation of truth and reality.

Besides, techniques for identifying fakes is likely to lag closely behind the techniques for producing them.

The first time we talked about "DeepFakes", someone I know pointed out that there is nothing inherently new in this issue. Media has been faked to manipulate the truth as long as there has been media.

Wether you trust the medium, a person, or a blockchain, trust is only as good as the information you base it upon – and there's always ways to circumvent it, or otherwise deceive you.

Also: There are some pretty big privacy issues (from what I understand) with what you describe.

<comment><USER39> Unbiased courts or at the very least your legacy as an innocent person if you get however smothered need a bullet proof you did not do what deepfakes claimed you did. As for privacy, again, blockchain makes your data fully available to you only and you only need to disclose the relevant bits against the time-space accusation you face. Trust cannot be delegated but reliable technical means would help a lot.

<comment><USER40> Why not just put less trust in video?

The courts should know that videos can be doctored, just as images can be photoshopped.

As the burden of proof lies with the accuser, it is they that would need a bullet proof argument that you did in face do what the video claims you did – and video is not alone in and of itself to establish truth.

As for the data gathering: the existence of the proposed data presents a threat for the subjects (and society) in and of itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Oh boy, those hands at 0:14 are a no for me.

<comment><USER42> Technically impressive, this is. Canny, it is not.

<comment><USER43> Is it uncanny then?

<comment><USER42> That... would be the implication, yes.

<comment><USER43> Ok you meant the movements of the 'dancers' were uncanny, as opposed to the technical prowess demonstrated? I thought that the not canny comment referred to the tech, not the result, and it didn't seem sensible given other things to describe the tech as uncanny.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> This is incredible!

I wonder if seeing yourself dance like this might speed up learning to actually dance like this...

<comment><USER45> I doubt it. Almost nobody learns to dance without a coach. It's because what you think you see is not what the movement actually is. Much of dance is playing with your perception of the movement (the moonwalk is the most obvious example, and very, very few moonwalkers can pull off the illusion).

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I'm itching to make this. Would this be a good intro ML project for a solid software engineer (with a decently strong math background) or would it likely be far over my head? Seems like reverse engineering it from the paper would be tough, but maybe doable :p

<comment><USER47> it would be expensive in terms of hardware, you'd need to shell out for quite a few GPUs or else budget a lot for expensive cloud instances.

plus this is just a very complicated thing, in that it's gluing together multiple new techniques to do various things.

some of the pieces that went into this work (like GANs) have lots of tutorials online and might be a more manageable, and budget-friendly, place to start. you could do something interesting on Google CoLab with free GPU time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> No, not "transform into". It's "make look like, in a video".

I mean, who cares what you look like in some video? When you actually meet people, they'll know that it's bullshit.

Now, if you could manage it in meatspace, _that_ would be cool!

<comment><USER49> _who cares what you look like in some video?_

Everyone who watches television, movies, YouTube, etc. I know that's only _a few_ people, but hey, it's a start.

<comment><USER48> I suppose. But then, what would be the hiring criteria? Lowest bid? Nice ass?

And the focus here is "anyone", not professionals.

<comment><USER50> The biggest worry here, is where instead of hiring 20 dancers for a music video, they only hire one, and use AI to AutoDance[1] a bunch of low-cost actors instead. This could destroy the jobbing dancer-for-hire market.

\--

[1] AutoDance™ - Like AutoTune. I hereby claim it as a term. ;)

<comment><USER48> OK, I get that. But then, why bother hiring meat at all? Just CGI it entirely.

<comment><USER51> CGI could do it for quite a while now, just not at a price competitive with actual dancers. I'd think of this more as CGI automation than dancer automation. For dancers, only the video production part of their market is threatened, the stage part remains unaffected.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Anyone want to get rich developing this for android /w me? haha

<comment><USER8> Can't nvidia and the papers authors sue you or claim a takedown / charge licensing or something ?!? How is it legal for people to take cutting edge tech from universities for free and use it for their own software/profit?

<comment><USER47> same as it's legal to use open source licensed software to profit. a lot of academics don't care, and their work might be built very strongly on other work. there might or might not be a patent on this research, but I would guess probably not?

<comment><USER8> I thought github projects were only ok to use if the author provided a LICENSE file e.g. MIT or APACHE 2.0 , do these papers include a license clause at the bottom? Usually no right , so it seems to be a 'grey' area

<comment><USER47> well, is it legal to do a "clean-room" implementation from the descriptions in the papers themselves, without looking at any provided code?

(this should almost always be feasible, and is commonly done for non-IP- related reasons e.g. someone might make a PyTorch version of something when the original version was done in Tensorflow.)

i'm not a lawyer but I would have assumed "probably", unless there's a patent. i mean, if it's not this would suggest it's illegal to attempt to replicate scientific experiments.

also, in many cases even for the code provided by the researchers there is an actual LICENSE file included, and it's often BSD or MIT. (Which sort of makes sense -- these two permissive free software licenses are named after the universities they came from. they reflect the academic CS culture around stuff like this.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Does this mean that we can manipulate videos programmatically in the future? I don't see why not. Maybe we'll see games that are literally undistinguishable from reality.

</comment><comment><USER54> My kids would pay any amount of my money to play this as a game.

<comment><USER43> So would my kid, but that's because she does not seem to understand money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Some time ago there was a submission saying that the adult industry uses similar algorithms to put arbitrary faces on videos of actors.

</comment><comment><USER56> The title is clickbait...It doesn't turn anyone into a better dancer. It's just about CGI stuff. A kind of future of emoji.

<comment><USER30> Or the future of fake news.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> What is going here, the world is looking more and more like a movie! Apocalypse soon?

</comment><comment> rm_-rf_slash Massively underwhelming read from the headline. This is basically just deepfakes for dancing. When machine learning can actually _teach_ someone how to dance, then we'll have something interesting on our hands.

</comment><comment><USER58> AI couldn't be used for critical task, in which mistakes are not allowed at all. What's its real use cases ?

</comment><comment><USER59> Very impressive!

</comment><comment><USER60> Looks as fake as dinosaurs in 1993.

</comment><comment><USER61> > _Using NVIDIA TITAN Xp and GeForce GTX 1080 Ti GPUs, with the cuDNN- > accelerated PyTorch deep learning framework for both training and inference_

> _the team based their algorithm on the pix2pixHD architecture developed by > NVIDIA researchers_

Is it me, or is NVIDIA trying very hard to take credit for this UC Berkeley paper? (they're almost taking credit for Pytorch as well). Sure, this kind of work wouldn't be possible without their hardware, but in that case Intel could probably take credit for most of science in the last few decades.

<comment><USER62> It's a company blog. It exists to highlight applications of the company's products. I don't see why you are bothered, both of those statements are factually true.

<comment><USER61> Normally I wouldn't be bothered, but in this case I saw people being misled into thinking Nvidia did this work. Given Nvidia publishes a lot at computer vision conferences, there's a higher than usual potential for confusion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> It looks impressive, I just don't understand why computer games don't use these techniques to feature realistic human bodies/faces.

<comment><USER64> You appear to be shadowbanned. Most of your (reasonable-looking) comments are showing up as dead to me.

<comment><USER63> Sounds interesting, thanks! I had a few informative but controversial comments in the past... that may be the reason.

<comment><USER50> Seconded, I just had to vouch for you in the above comment to un-dead it.

Aha, it was when you said this:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15725493](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15725493)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> This issue was already solved with invention of booze and soft drugs.

<comment><USER66> No, this changed only the self-perception of one being a great dancer.</comment></comment>


SpaceX founder Elon Musk speaking about future plans to Mars - <AUTHOR> http://www.livestream.com/aiaa

<comment><AUTHOR> The talk is time sensitive, as it is live, but there are other commercial space talks being given as well (Pacific Standard Time):

      2:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.: Commercial Space Panel
      Gwynne Shotwell, President, SpaceX
      Jeff Greason, President and CEO, XCOR Aerospace
      Ronald Ramos, Vice President, Exploration and Launch Systems, Pratt & Whitney
      Daniel J. Rasky, Director, Emerging Commercial Space Office, NASA

      4:30 p.m. - 6:30 p.m.: Opportunities and Challenges for Small
      Businesses in the Energy and Aerospace Technology Fields
      Chair: Michael F. Pisczor, NASA Glenn Research Center

EDIT: I seem to have submitted the talk at the very end of his presentation, here's to hoping there will be a recording soon.</comment>


I Created a Startup Aboard a Bus from SF to Austin: Pairwise Launches at SxSW - <AUTHOR> http://pairwise.posterous.com/startup-created-aboard-a-bus-from-sf-to-austi

<comment><AUTHOR> Me and Brandon have been working tirelessly since Tuesday aboard a bus with spotty wifi to create Pairwise. It's an app that lets you broadcast and receive a short message in a very small area (say, conference center). We solve the problem of not knowing who to connect with at a conference, party or gathering, or not having the right introduction to make that connection. Users can use Pairwise to meet customers, fill hiring needs, connect with others in the same space, etc. Eventually, the goal is to turn downtime into business networking opportunity, maybe say, at airport waiting areas. We still have lots to iterate on the product (like switch to LinkedIn instead of Facebook), but have been learning lots from talking to people here. It's be really great to meet and get feedback from readers of HN here at SxSW, you can connect with me through @euwyn. Any tweets to help spread the word to enable us to learn more about our proudct would be huge: "@pairwisemobi launches location-based networking for new business connections, created in 72 hrs aboard the startupbus: <http://pairwise.mobi> Phew, it's been a crazy week, any words of encourage are certainly appreciated.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a great idea for an app -- I've occasionally found myself in this exact situation -- and an impressive turnaround from idea to functional. Congrats!

That said, the fact that you label it a "startup" instead of an "app" is a pet peeve of mine. You created an app on the bus, not a startup business (though perhaps one will develop around the app).

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup, totally agree. Just a marketing thing I guess, the "App Bus" wouldn't have sounded quite as good, and I just wanted to go along with the naming. There's a real business model in this, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's a cool idea. I think pigeonholing it as a business networking tool might detract from a lot of other potential use cases. Some comments on the execution:

1) I don't understand why it uses FB Connect but still forced me to enter a name, e-mail and password.

2) I understand that this iteration is closely tied to SxSW, but it shouldn't have automatically populated the Austin and SxSW tags for me because I'm nowhere near there.

3) It would be cool to see the global public stream, or the stream for any particular tag.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER5> Hey Andrew, thanks for the feedback. Although the site is formatted for the mobile screen, it actually works just fine in a browser. Your location can be sent through FF, among other browsers, and our site will work just as it does on the mobile version. We ARE thinking about the best way to allow people who don't have location enabled devices to use the site and we'll have some solutions rolling out shortly.

</comment><comment><USER6> i like the idea that it can be used to meet people at conferences - <USER2> solves a problem i've had in the past.

personally, i would like the ability to use openid, or just a simple password, and also to be able to use, say, a laptop (eg via a maps or lat/lon interface). but i guess i may be a technical luddite.

</comment><comment><USER7> Very compelling use case. Got to meet the guys down here at #sxsw. Very cool p33ps.

</comment><comment><USER8> really cool idea. we tried on the flight from Fort Lauderdale to Austin to build a simple app, but the battery of my laptop didn't make it through the all flight so we'll finish it and launch it today :)

<comment><AUTHOR> what are you guys building? would be cool to check it out.</comment></comment>


Biology's 'dark matter' hints at fourth domain of life - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20265-biologys-dark-matter-hints-at-fourth-domain-of-life.html <comment><USER2> Although there may not be a fourth domain of life, I am pretty excited about what the metagenomic studies that use next-generation DNA sequencing will fish out from the depths so to speak. There have been some crazy papers published that use this approach. The title of one: "Windshield splatter analysis with the Galaxy metagenomic pipeline." I imagine there is lots of interesting stuff living in the oceans that is about to be revealed using the high-throughput approach.

It is also interesting to think about what this approach will miss: if somewhere on Earth, perhaps near thermal vents deep in the ocean, however unlikely that may be, there exists a non-DNA-based life-form (which would easily be the most interesting result ever), metagenomic studies will miss it because by design they can only analyze DNA sequences. Similarly, if a probe gets sent to Europa, for example, DNA sequencing would be useless.

<comment><USER3> Unfortunately, metagenomics is currently the lowest hanging fruit of genomics/biology right now. Sequencing has gotten exponentially cheaper to the point that these types of projects are feasible (the paper you cite is actually a proof of concept for their metagenomics pipeline), that everyone is just sequencing this shit out of everything. That said, there are quite a few pitfalls with this current approach:

1\. Big data in biology is still lacking comparable analytical capability.

2\. Most high throughput sequencing technologies (next gen sequencing) is using polymerase based technologies that have short reads. Polymerase (the basis of PCR) requires a primer to start the reaction - and the choice of primer can introduce non-trivial bias into the obtained results. Short reads are pretty good in dealing with most bacteria, but the reaction gets pretty hairy with hyperthermophiles (bacteria with regions high in GC content) and more complex eukaryotes (long stretches of repeated regions are difficult to resolve with the shotgun approach).

3\. We will probably only see DNA reads that are slightly different from what we know to exist already. The generalization they make that 99% of species cannot be cultured with current methods is true - but an analogous scenario with DNA can be made. The sequencing reactions will probably be optimized for sequences with similar composition to what we already see. The task of extracting DNA from bulk material is not trivial - this can remove large swathes of species from view even if the sequencing is trivial. Complex 3D RNA and DNA structures such as hairpin loops and noncanonical pairing makes sequencing hard.

It's definitely still a difficult question to tackle, but more difficult than doing it are answering the questions "What can we learn from this?" and "What should we sequence?"

<comment><USER2> "Sequencing has gotten exponentially cheaper to the point that these types of projects are feasible (the paper you cite is actually a proof of concept for their metagenomics pipeline), that everyone is just sequencing this shit out of everything. "

Well that's exactly why I'm excited, but your phrasing makes it seem as if this is just a matter of course. Game changers in many fields often arise because some previously expensive resource becomes economically more accessible (cheaper). You make it sound like "The Model T Ford is just a low- hanging fruit of cheaper gasoline." Nothing is exciting if you pull that angle.

Regarding (1): Yes, and that "lack" is why I currently have a job (employed as a computer scientist helping analyze big data). If nothing was "lacking", analysis would be as easy as a biologist pushing a few buttons in a spreadsheet-like program, and nobody would need a computer scientist helping them.

Regarding (2): That's only a technical issue that is the main contributor to (1) -- were it not for short reads, analytics would be much easier.

Regarding (3): From some reports (can't confirm right now but can look for a citation if you're interested), I have seen exactly the opposite -- that the estimates of biological variation from metagenomic data are actually skewed towards higher diversity than expected. Could be due to errors in the pipeline, and is being worked on, but some of that variation could also be explaining legitimate biodiversity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4>
      > "There is still debate [over] how to clearly distinguish the
      > three proposed domains of life, and how they are interrelated,"
      > Gupta says. "The suggestion [of] a fourth domain will only add
      > to the confusion."

Yes. We should keep this 'dangerous' information from them. It will only confuse and enrage them.

</comment><comment><USER5> 99 percent of single cell organisms can't be cultured in a lab, and they're starting to get some DNA sequences from this 99%.

So a researcher says "They really are the dark matter of the biological universe."

I thought the article was going to say that dark matter was related to some unknown form of life.

<comment><USER6> 'Ring' by Stephen Baxter explores the idea of a dark matter form of life. It's a good hard scifi read if you're into that.</comment></comment>


Amazon releases the rumoured large-screen Kindle - <AUTHOR> http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-DX-Amazons-Wireless-Generation/dp/B0015TCML0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1241620598&sr=8-1

<comment><USER2> The killer feature is that it reads PDFs natively now (i.e., without having to convert them). For someone who prefers to read on screen and who has to read a lot of PDFs, this is very exciting.

<comment><USER3> Where can those PDFs come from? Can I just send it files from my computer's hard drive and then read them on the Kindle, like an iPod for PDF?

<comment><USER4> You get a kindle email address. You email PDFs to it and they automagically appear on your device. Although this costs $0.10 a pdf. You can also plug it in and it opens as a flash drive, then you just drag and drop. (In the case of the Kindle 2 you also have to convert to the right format, DX sounds like it will be easier)

<comment><USER5> Not anymore. [http://pragdave.blogs.pragprog.com/pragdave/2009/05/amazon-t...](http://pragdave.blogs.pragprog.com/pragdave/2009/05/amazon- tighten-their-grip-on-kindle-distribution-.html)

To summarize: The price of e-mailing your Kindle is now 15c/MB, rounded up.

<comment><USER6> Much less attractive.

<comment><USER7> The USB drag-and-drop still works, right? That's not quite as trivial, but still not particularly difficult.

<comment><USER8> the kindle 2 supports downloading files that you navigate to via the kindle's web browser. i would imagine the new one still lets you do this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This looks like it will be a great product, especially for all the technical pdfs I've built up over the years.

Still not wild about the DRM though -- I made the mistake of buying DRMed music that I can't listen to anymore. I'm not going to do the same with books.

Anyone else trying to justify a $500 pdf reader? :)

<comment><USER10> Yes, I am.

I'm salivating over the idea of replacing all of my textbooks with pdfs. But unfortunately I doubt I could get all of my textbooks on the kindle right now. And price is an issue. Checking on Amazon, there is not a large price difference between kindle textbooks, and real textbooks.

So the only reason I would get a dx is if the textbook and the kindle pdf were bundled together for a reasonable price. But I doubt that will happen.

<comment><USER11> I'm not sure if it's obvious or not, but PDF's of many popular textbooks are widely available either free as in beer:

<http://infolab.stanford.edu/~ullman/focs.html> <http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~vazirani/algorithms.html>

Or free as in money from a bank robbery:

<http://thepiratebay.org/browse/601/0/7>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Even though I probably won't buy one anytime soon, I'm much more excited about the big one for $500 over the little one for $350.

</comment><comment><USER13> Looks great but does anyone else think the price is a bit expensive? Not that this is a great comparison, but I can buy a netbook for $299 or less these days.

Why such a up-front hardware cost when Amazon will get recurring revenue from Kindle books? Are they taking a loss on the book sales to boost downloads?

<comment><USER14> Because I believe Amazon is losing money on each ebook sold. They want people to move to their platform so badly that they're willing to accept a loss on each ebook and make it up with the hardware costs.

<comment><USER15> That makes no sense - the more books they sell, the more money they lose. No business should sell below their marginal cost for any length of time unless they're _really_ desperate for market share. What's more common is selling the hardware at a loss, and reaping the profits on the e-books.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I hope there is a way to disable auto-rotation for reading in bed. That is a big pet peeve with my iphone.

<comment><USER17> There seems to be. From the manual at <http://s3.amazonaws.com/kindle/KindleDX_Users_Guide.pdf>

_The screen changes automatically when you rotate your Kindle from portrait to landscape or vice versa. Or, you can lock your screen to a particular orientation to fit your reading position._

However, since this is a much bigger device, I am not sure if reading in bed is going to work the same way it does for the iPhone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I wonder how Safari Online would look/work on it. It would be great to have this display in combo with an online bookshelf.

<comment><USER19> This would be my dream combination. Right now I'm using an OLPC XO to read Safari Books, which works ok but could be better.

[http://tlrobinson.net/blog/2009/04/06/using-olpc-xo-as-an- eb...](http://tlrobinson.net/blog/2009/04/06/using-olpc-xo-as-an-ebook-reader- for-oreillys-safari-books-online/)

<comment><USER18> Will have to try your hack out on my OLPC as I was trying to use it for the same purpose and was frustrated for the same reasons. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I wonder how PDF in larger paper formats (A4, US Letter) look on the bigger screen. They get rendered with illegibly small text on my Sony Reader (which has the same-size screen as the normal Kindle).

Too bad again, that the Kindle is US only.

<comment><USER21> I plan on getting Kindle DX even though I am based outside US presently. The wireless features are not that important to me, nice screen and native PDF support however is.

<comment><USER22> With the first kindle that was very difficult unless you had a US credit card with a US address.

<comment><USER23> My dad just bought a Kindle 2 with his Indian credit card and Indian billing address (although he used my Amazon account and shipped it to my American address)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'll consider getting one of these things when TAOCP looks decent in it.

<comment><USER25> How does TAOCP look in it? I'm curious to know what the limits of what this device can display are.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> The kindle is in a strange position now.

The more features they add (like native PDF) the more people will clamor to make it more input friendly (like the talk of a wacom-esque interface below).

Here's hoping Amazon knows where to draw the line and it just remains a damn good way to read text.

<comment><USER27> To me, that's the killer feature that it's missing. For a small reader, it doesn't matter, but for the large one, I want to be able to take notes, sketch out ideas in the margin, and so on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Based on the price of this one, I think we'll see the small Kindle go down in price soon. Because right now it doesn't make any sense to buy the small one.

I still wont' buy one, chances are they'll release a color version in a couple of months, thats the next obvious step

<comment><USER29> Are there even any color e-ink type displays in the lab?

<comment> patrickg-zill Supposedly Fujitsu has one, using their own e-ink like screen (they call it "FLEpia"). It has Wifi, has a web browser, and runs Windows CE.

[http://activitypress.com/2009/02/22/fujitsu-trials- colour-e-...](http://activitypress.com/2009/02/22/fujitsu-trials-colour-e-ink- reader/)

Supposedly, will be out in 2010.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> You know what would be awesome? The same thing ... but even bigger. Gotta love creative engineering and lazy product evolution.

No in all honesty this new Kindle looks pretty awesome, but also a little ridiculous when held compared with other electronics.

<comment><USER31> I just want them to get rid of the keyboard. Isn't there some rule about size vs time-you-actually-spend-using-the-feature? At its present size, I'd say that if you're not using the keyboard 1/4 of the time you're using the Kindle, then it's too big.

<comment><USER32> Not having a keyboard would make it a pain in the ass to search for content. Amazon is highly vested in making it easy for you to get more content. Yadda yadda, the keyboard aint going anywhere.

<comment><USER26> they could always go with a virtual keyboard now that the refresh times of the screen are getting better.

<comment><USER8> and you would push keys on that with what? it's not a touch screen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> You know, if this wasn't iPod white, I'd swear I'd seen something just like it on TV before...

[http://www.slipperybrick.com/wp- content/uploads/2008/01/stpd...](http://www.slipperybrick.com/wp- content/uploads/2008/01/stpd.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER34> Can you load your own .txt files onto this? This is actually big enough to carry & review my source code without booting up a laptop.

<comment><USER35> How often do you browse your source code without the intent to edit it? Just curious if you have an interesting code review or development process because I don't think I've done that before.

<comment><USER36> As a debugger, I always browse source code without ever editing it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Goodnews. When is this going to be available in the UK?

I'm there if I can read PDFs on it (check), subscribe to Le Monde (check), the New York Times (check), The Economist and The Guardian. I can see a device like this making me spend more on subscriptions than I currently do because of the convenience and lack of paper to recycle.

I guess I might buy the occasional book, although I really like paper books.

</comment><comment><USER38> Does anyone know of a similar reader at about the same price point which supports annotation of the text (for example with a stylus)?

<comment><USER39> iRex Iliad - <http://www.irextechnologies.com/products/iliad> ... a bit pricey though, 599 Euros

<comment><USER40> Also (with bigger screen), the iRex Digital Reader 1000S: [https://www.irexshop.com/product_info.php?cPath=22_35&pr...](https://www.irexshop.com/product_info.php?cPath=22_35&products_id=69) (has wacom-style input)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> My, this is going to be a hit. I sorely desire a wacom on it though :(((

</comment><comment><USER42> I live in India. So probably the EVDO / 3G connection won't work here. Does the Kindle DX also support vanilla WiFi so that I can still buy books from Amazon?

</comment><comment><USER43> It looks great. Now let's compare it to the competition... Amazon's web page for the Kindle shows only one entry under 'Browse similar items in Electronics': 'Kindle DX'

<comment><USER44> (retailers must love you ;-)

iRex Digital Reader 1000S, 699 EUR; <https://www.irexshop.com/>

        10.2 Inch (diagonal) electronic paper display
        1024 x 1280 pixel resolution at 160 pixels per inch
        16-level grey scale
        Mini-USB connector
        Wacom® penabled® touch sensor input with Stylus
        ...

More data and opinions over at <http://mobileread.com>, etc.

P.S. I tossed this in because iRex is not using the same screens as most everybody else: <http://www.eink.com/products/matrix/High_Res.html> (found via MobileRead). I had nearly forgotten that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> "Kindle DX will be released this summer"

Amazon is just afraid of the incoming Apple iPad.

Very afraid...</comment>


An attack of carnivorous Sea Fleas at a Melbourne beach - <AUTHOR> http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/flesheating-bugs-at-brighton-beach-what-really-ate-sam-and-why-20170807-gxqsab.html <comment><USER2> Well, that makes a bit more sense - I thought it was odd that they said it was sea slugs, because they generally don't eat any flesh unless it is dead already. Sea lice look like they are not so fussy if you are still kicking around.

Listening to a friend of mine who works in the Sea Police here in the North of Australia - it sounds like if you ever needed to bump off anyone with little chance of getting caught, then throwing them off your boat in the Arafura Sea should do the trick.

Usually when people drown, their bodies tend to bloat and they tend to float until found by search parties, but in this particular sea, the sea slugs will usually bore holes in a dead body so that the gases escape, and the body sinks to the ocean bed. They almost never find anyone who has gone overboard accidentally or intentionally in these waters, according to him.

<comment><USER3> The first reports talked about "sea lice", which are quite different.

The sea louse (or one type of it) is a parasite that famously eats the tongues of fish and "replace" the tongue by lodging themselves in the mouth of the fish. [1]

They also had an "expert" speculating about jellyfish larvae, which are colloquially (but incorrectly) also called sea lice, but they are not capable of biting, only stinging.

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

<comment><USER4> Huh, I've always known a sealouse to be the aquatic equivalent to a woodlouse: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ligia_oceanica](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ligia_oceanica) . Looks like I was wrong, or at least I learned a local name.

<comment><USER5> There's also the crustaceans known as sea lice: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_louse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_louse)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Australia? Who could have thought...

Reminds me of that joke website (is it poisonous?). The first question was "Are you in Australia?" and if you confirmed you are, the answer was automatic "YES"...

<comment><USER7> > Reminds me of that joke website (is it poisonous?). The first question was > "Are you in Australia?" and if you confirmed you are, the answer was > automatic "YES"...

I think Australia must be unique in having at least one venomous/poisonous species of fish, amphibian, reptile and mammal.

<comment><USER8> Maybe you mean venomous in a way that threatens a human.

That's true of every continent.

<comment><USER9> Are there venomous mammals in North America? I can't think of one.

<comment><USER10> Apparently the northern short-tailed shrew, native to North America, has venom:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_short- tailed_shrew](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_short-tailed_shrew)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > and said the creatures were sea fleas, not sea lice as first thought.

Not sure what authority suggested sea lice first. Growing up in South Florida, I can say sea lice are much more annoying than these blood sucking fleas he ran into. The former are basically mosquitos of the ocean. Hours after swimming, you're itching for days from tiny bug bites. At any rate, sounds like the kid has some sort of hemophilia that made matters worse and created a viral scare. He got off easy.

</comment><comment><USER12> Both feets were harmed when he went to the water to attract so many slugs? Doesn't sounds quite right.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> A follow up to my earlier post [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14944815](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14944815), not sure if this is the correct etiquette

</comment><comment><USER13> What the hell australia</comment>


Snapchat valuation remind you of this story? - <AUTHOR>

http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1941-press-release-37signals-valuation-tops-100-billion-after-bold-vc-investment
i understand the upside of this platform but this appears to be a classic scenario where fb fked itself by paying too much of a premium to acquire instagram and then naturally, the market re-set that acquisition as a precedent premium to apply for subsequent acquisitions.  now fb has to set a premium to that premium since their own internal crappy tools like poke and chat aren't working in their favor and they've shown their cards.
if you think about it... something smells fishy. fb was valued at 100bn for fb. now people will realize that it has to make over-priced acquisitions just to stay competitive in its own market that it created, not to propel growth and valuation from when it ipo'd.
chasing deals is what happened to the private equity markets back in '05 - '07 and look what happened. as for snapchat, assuming rev. to be similar to other platforms in its space is a mistake; other platforms are based on "social graphing / data" whereas snapchat is based on "deletion of data." moreover, the expectation that the engagement rates will continue is asinine - easy pickings of core users have already been had and incremental users will only lower engagement, not increase engagement. plus, at some point the fad nature will run its course and fatigue will sink in for many (e.g. groupons to omgpop - who the fk still plays that game).
i hope i'm proven wrong, but i wished the lemming investors and fb was a bit more level-headed instead of putting the entire start-up industry in jeopardy.
thoughts? <comment><USER2> I mostly agree with you, but disagree that snapchat is about deletion of data. They may delete the content of the data, but who you interact with, when, and when those messages are retrieved, may have some value. The idea that you are sending messages that can't be retrieved when compared to messages that are kept, may have some value as well, but likely only if you have the ability to compare these 'secret messages' to 'non-secret messages'.</comment>


Show HN: StreetComplete, an OpenStreetMap Editor for Humans - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.westnordost.streetcomplete <comment><AUTHOR> StreetComplete is an OpenStreetMap[0] editor directed at people who want to contribute and want to do this using their smartphone, without learning how to edit things[1]. It is available as an Android application.

It is intended to be used as one walks, with quests appearing as markers on the map. Selecting a marker allows one to answer a simple question. The answer will be added to the OpenStreetMap database, with app handling selecting objects for editing, transforming answer into OSM tags and making edits.

OpenStreetMap account is needed to apply edits, but it is possible to start without it, make some edits and login/register later.

Note: I am not the main author, but I am one of the active contributors. Github page is at [https://github.com/westnordost/StreetComplete](https://github.com/westnordost/StreetComplete)

I checked with the main author and HN admins, they are OK with posting this.

[0]OpenStreetMap is a Wikipedia of maps, available on the open licence. This dataset is already used for many interesting or useful projects. And new mappers are always welcomed!

[1] JOSM, Vespucci I use them heavily but describing them as newbie friendly would be a blatant lie. iD is more newbie friendly but still is quite complex to use and unusable on mobile. Most of difference is caused that all of them are general purpose editors, for example it is quite hard to make iD even easier to use.</comment>


Tricki: A Wiki-style store of mathematical problem-solving techniques - <AUTHOR> http://www.tricki.org/

<comment><USER2> Isn't a "wiki-style site" by definition just a wiki?</comment>


Ask HN: Best way to learn web dev? - <AUTHOR> My wife wants to learn web development for making her own web apps. She has no prior programming experience. She would like to start with the simple stuff. What's the best way to get started?<p>Thanks! <comment><USER2> Go to Udemy, type in "web development" and pick any course under $15 that includes the words "for beginners" in the title and has 4+ star ratings.

</comment><comment><USER3> The App Academy (top rated) boot camp has open sourced their curriculum. zero to hero. it can be free if you don't want a mentor.

[https://open.appacademy.io](https://open.appacademy.io)</comment>