Whatever happened to kids' chemistry sets? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19050342 <comment><USER2> I can't help but wonder if I'll wax nostalgic one day about the unfettered access I had to general purpose computers that I could make do almost anything as the "think of the children" types of that day tut-tut about how madly dangerous it all was.

<comment><USER3> That is one of the themes in Vinge's _Rainbows End_ : <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbows_End>

It describes a near future where it is a legal requirement that all computing devices conform to a "Secure Hardware Environment" (SHE) standard.

<comment><USER4> That sounds eerily similar to the UEFI Secure Boot system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Being Grounded?

I almost burnt down my house - burnt off my arm hair and eye brows, nearly caused a forest fire in tahoe, blew up numerous model craft from ships to russian migs and sikorski copters...

We built explosives from gallons of hairspray from my best friends mom's salons, to pipe bombs we used to blow up forest stumps, canons made from test tubes and shotgun shells... as well as the solid rocket fuel from estes engines to fill model craft with for spectacular explosions.

We found our fuse from avalanche fuse whilst on ski team at Squaw and Alpine in Tahoe...

The 80s were awesome. The NSA will love this post.

<comment><USER6> Reminds me of the time I used hair spray and a lighter as a blow torch and nearly burned down the woods in my backyard. Thanks for the nostalgia.

<comment><USER7> All I learned was that if you soaked snow with enough hairspray you could burn it.

And that cologne could burn on your hand without hurting you.*

*Don't try this at home.

<comment><USER8> Rumor has it that hand sanitizer on a wet hand has similar properties, at least for short times.

<comment><USER9> ethanol burns relatively cool (as do (some of?) the other alcohols). the problem is that it often burns above the ignition point of its carrier substance, which itself burns much hotter. e.g. calcium acetate/isopropyl alcohol gel (lab sterno) is perfectly safe to burn in your hand, but only until the alcohol runs out--it will light the calcium acetate, which is not remotely safe to burn in your hand.

hand sanitizer is usually an alcohol in water and a thickener (glycerin, etc.). i'd worry a bit about the same effect. (not that i actually know what the ignition and flame temps of glycerin are....)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm only 24, but I remember when I was 12 having a chemistry set that had some pretty crazy chemicals in it. There wasn't anything crazy like uranium or other chemicals that could create amphetamines, but I do recall blindly mixing ingredients in a test tube, blowing the top and bottom of it out and covering a portion of the roof in the mixture which then proceeded to burn through the paint and etch the wood. I remember my dad painted like 5 coats of paint over the top and it kept showing through, those were the days.

Don't get me started on the excitement of burning magnesium ribbon, my kerosene powered Bunsen burner that I almost burned down the wooden front-deck with when I accidentally knocked it over, experimenting with beakers and filter paper... I feel sorry for kids these days who won't ever get to experience the fun in mixing semi-dangerous chemicals together in a test tube or beaker, I believe my chemistry set is what made me become the programmer I am today.

My chemistry set kept me out of trouble as a teenager because blowing things up, playing with chemicals and fire wasn't new to me, I was desensitised to it all when I was young and the thought of blowing up a car battery or soda bulb paled in comparison to magnesium ribbon or an explosive chemical cocktail mixture courtesy of my chemistry set.

</comment><comment><USER11> Sadly as stated in the article alot of the chemicals your dads got to play with are no longer available at a consumer level and in that be it most protect the children approach was not even the main reason were in this state.

It is lamentable and whilst kids in the 60's could build bombs and other fun kids stuff of the time. Well if they did half of what kids back then did they would be labeled terrorists and packaged up as one, which is in many ways very very sad.

I must say the aspect of offering perfume type chemistry sets is a novel approach and I appaud that level of thinking. But for young boys who wish to see things go bang it is sadly not of much use.

Now maybe we could oneday get a digital chemistry set were you can relive all the old wonderful explosions and resctions. It's not like we don't know how every combination fo chemical in a 60's chemistry set will react in every permutation and it is also not like we don't have the processing power to do some of the cleverness in a way that is educational and appealing.

Still at least kids can buy gun-caps still and from those you can make bolt- bombs, bangers (with celotape and electic bang fuses) and also great fun added to the end of a dart with cotton wall around the shaft. So in many ways kids can still have ther bang fun and snappies are still available and great fun in pea-shooters.

But chemisty fun is one they just can't get until at school and then it's overly controlled with most being demostrations without the level of intereaction some need.

Heck if you had a place were us adults could go and play chemistry set like our old days - even if it is in a room were no chemicals can leave, well i'd know alot would be up for that.

But it is a balance between saftly and education and in many ways that balance is overly biased deeming everybody by default to be a mad drig producing, WMD making terrorist and that in itself is just sad.

<comment><USER12> Terrorism is probably not nearly as important in this as the march of legal liability. If chemistry sets ever included all the stuff required for making a serious explosive, it has been decades since then.

If you started a chain of chemical hackerspaces for adults (the neat idea you describe) and did not take strict measures to control your liability then sooner or later you could be sure of a suit from someone who injured himself.

And the days have long passed when you could sell toys like "bag o'glass" to kids without facing epic liability.

<comment><AUTHOR> Speaking of glass, in Texas, you need a permit to own laboratory glassware. See <http://www.crscientific.com/texas-glassware.html> .

<comment><USER11> WOW , thank you for highlighting that. Guess home brewers loved that law.

Another case of everybody assumed to be some major drug lord making drugs again :(.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> In the 60s, kids used to make bombs etc. In the 90s, we used to scan huge IP ranges on the net looking for open netbios ports. I'm sure in the future, kids will find their own stupid and dangerous stuff to amuse themselves with.

<comment><USER14> Ah the memories.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Having done several undergrad chem classes, I'm impressed how much of the article was outright wrong on a chemistry basis, along with lots of the HN comments. Mostly names wrong, but some basic concepts were messed up like you don't make a fertilizer bomb out of potassium nitrate. Its like saying you could make a ipod out of a watch, because both use circuit boards and silicon based chips.

I'm almost 100% certain the article was not run past a chemist before publishing. Note that a chemistry teacher is an ed degree who was hired to teach, chemistry knowledge is a nice to have, but quite optional.

Also funny watching the article dance around the real reason, nobody on the planet works harder than teenagers trying to be cool, and its not cool to be smart, chem sets are for smart kids, therefore chem sets are not popular as a gift, compared, perhaps, to a football. They were never popular anyway, although they did "bubble" for a decade or so in the 50s. In a similar way I expect in 60 years we'll be treated to journalists writing "whatever happened to McMansions/SUVs" and they'll somehow get it entirely wrong.

<comment><USER16> I'm not sure - I was used KNO3 and sugar to make rocket fuel when I was younger, it makes smoke bombs if too much sugar, but I figured fine KNO3 at the right concentration with fuel oil would create an explosive. You still need a primary explosive and detonator though. Is KNO3 + Fuel Oil different than the usual NH4NO3 "AN-FO" bombs?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> > Convincing children and parents that science is safe is a priority for > health and safety executive chairwoman Judith Hackitt.

What bullshit.

Lord forbid the precious little snowflakes burn their finger on the bunsen burner or make a stink bomb. However there are no problems signing them up for contact sports so they go around with concussions, broken limbs and torn ligaments.

<comment><USER18> There's an important difference between these two activities. One trains creative thinking, critical thinking, and respect for science, the other teaches teamwork, following orders and respect for authority.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> A few years ago I bought my daughter the "Sciencewiz Chemistry Experiments Kit". We got it home and opened it and found the chemicals inside... sand and baking soda!

You can't make this stuff up:

<http://www.amazon.com/dp/1886978042>

</comment><comment><USER20> The reason I write software, is that I had access to a computer and I was able to try it myself, and have a seemingly infinite amount of time (my teen years) to learn and experiment.

Computers, are relatively safe, so no one has cracked down on them, yet. Although we see threats all the time with internet censorship attempts, and the like.

It's too bad the curiosity of our youth is being stifled over paranoid safety concerns. It's not making people safer. It's causing them to grow up with no sense of personal responsibility because they have never been exposed to real danger.

</comment><comment><USER21> How about creating a chemistry kit with all the necessary instruments and experimentation guides but without any chemicals?

Just add a guide on how to get the necessary chemicals as an adult.

This allows chemistry set manufacturers to stay out of legal trouble and allows parents to decide for themselves what kind of experiments they allow.

Edit: TBH, it should be possible to make a whole DIY chemistry kit guide. Getting the instruments to do microscale chemistry[1] is incredibly cheap. Some glass rods, a few microscale testtubes + holders, some filters, a small glass funnel, a gas burner and maybe a few other things should be enough to do quite a lot of experiments.

[1]<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microscale_chemistry>

<comment><USER22> It is getting harder to buy chemicals. Photographic suppliers have some but more things are restricted or not allowed to be posted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Well, the UK has gone mad about safety, and the US is following them. Chemistry is not _safe_ , no matter how you want it to be. You can generally avoid injury with proper equipment & training, however.

Anyway, this set seems to be relatively complete. <http://chemistrysetstore.com/chem-c3000-chemistry-set>

</comment><comment><USER24> ok, not chemistry, and maybe not quite for kids but <http://diybio.org/> shows that there is something really interesting happening where for a few $100 you can do some amazing physical science.

<comment><USER11> Interesting and something i'll look into more - thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Practical experiments at school have gone through a similar sanitisation. At the same time contact sports are encouraged, though are statistically more dangerous.

</comment><comment><USER26> O'Reilly/Make author Robert Bruce Thompson has been selling a line of science kits. The chemistry kit is a little closer to an old-school chemistry set than the dumbed-down "chemistry sets" of today (though still not quite the same; it's designed for formal academic instruction rather than just fooling around). Unfortunately he can't send them anywhere other than the U.S. and Canada.

<http://www.thehomescientist.com/kits/CK01/ck01-main.html>

<comment><USER27> He also has a pretty good blog - <http://www.ttgnet.com/journal/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> In the UK a child died after drinking a beaker of (I think, my memory is hazy) copper sulphate.

This very rare but avoidable death possibly led to people thinking "chemistry sets are dangerous" and not buying them. Or maybe as makers made sets safer people felt that the sets were not worth the money - not exciting enough.

The toy industry is pretty brutal too. It is a multi billion dollar business, with a limited number of companies in the sector.

The BBC article mentions a radioactive toy. With careful websearching you can find safe versions of similar items. Here's one, a spinthariscope:

([http://unitednuclear.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath...](http://unitednuclear.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=2_12))

EDIT: I'm unable to find the news report of the child dying. Here's a result from Google Books:

([http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=xXVEKN79diAC&pg=PA371...](http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=xXVEKN79diAC&pg=PA371&lpg=PA371&dq=%22copper+sulphate%22+chemistry+set+death&source=bl&ots=IQV_mi4ro8&sig=bTMxZDLyU_ktnBo3OT8we-4Xkpg&hl=en&sa=X&ei=LtEYUPKRNLSX0QXx9oHgAg&ved=0CJ4CEOgBMAQ#v=onepage&q=%22copper%20sulphate%22%20chemistry%20set%20death&f=false))

Here's another result about Cobalt Chloride:

([http://sci.tech- archive.net/Archive/sci.chem/2006-07/msg0000...](http://sci.tech- archive.net/Archive/sci.chem/2006-07/msg00003.html))

<comment><USER29> I don't think the problem was people not buying them. I think the problem was a small bunch of lawsuit-happy parents and probably some trigger-happy regulators that always prefer to forbid first and ask questions never.

It is cool when the kid can experiment with real chemicals, but if one stupid one out of thousands sets the house on fire or drinks something that says "DO NOT DRINK!" and the parents sue and/or whine to regulators - it's not worth it for the maker anymore. And in the age when common sense is not considered common anymore and everything even remotely dangerous, even if the danger is purely theoretical, comes with 9000 warnings, what do you expect?

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> This happened...

<http://www.thejayfk.com/?p=621>

<comment><USER31> That is ... beyond wrong :-(

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Yup ... I still remember going almost blind by throwing Mg in H2O ... and coming back for more, both experimentally an theoretically.

Contemporary parents must learn that it is good for kids to get cuts, bruises, broken bones, infections ... blinding flashes of Mg in H2O ... otherwise you didn't have a childhood ... otherwise you may not become a well-adjusted and curious adult.

<comment><AUTHOR> Don't you mean burning Mg? It does react with water at room temperature, but very slowly (unless it's powdered).

<comment><USER32> Now my most spectacular and explosive mishaps involved Mg, vinegar, and fire. Now, there is some fun to be had.

Vinegar + Mg + dish soap makes a foam that can explode under certain circumstances, That;s not dangerous, but it can make an amusing mess.

You can also make torches whose flames are invisible in daylight or cause small explosions of you know what you are doing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> KOSMOS experimental sets are still somewhat popular in Germany.

[http://www.kosmos- shop.de/Experimentierkasten-640132/Kosmos-...](http://www.kosmos- shop.de/Experimentierkasten-640132/Kosmos-Chemielabor-C-3000/kosmos_5698/)

I only had the electronic sets as a kid, so I don't know how much the chemical ones have been dumbed down since.

</comment><comment><USER34> "... Yes they are safe. Are there some hazards associated with them? Yes, but of a very minor nature. The whole idea of them is you learn from handling real materials, ..."

Hmm I remember doing that & learning about the burn properties of sulphur. I had a lab under the house. My dads vice held an old bent spoon where I could mix things up and burn them. It was the first time I found a noxious gas burning sulphur, looking at the small blue flame. Taking a small breath of the stuff gave me a bit of a fright as the gas (SO2 or sulphur dioxide) literally sucked my breath away. I just discovered my first oxy-philic reaction :) (previous chemistry set Qs: [http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=bootload+ch...](http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=bootload+chemistry+sets))

</comment><comment><USER35> I think I must have been on the edge of the chemistry set rule. One of my uncles bought me one for Christmas, much to the consternation of my slightly overprotective mother, however she let me play with the kit, got me the necessary fuel for the bunsen burner and so on. Didn't blow anything up, had much fun with the magnesium ribbon, all very jolly good fun. That must have been about mid-90s, didn't see many sets after then.

However I do feel sorry for kids who have science lessons without a practical, I had two very excellent chemistry teachers who were very happy to get kids involved in chemistry demonstrations (without incident), and an excellent biology teacher who had nothing but trust with arming a bunch of 15 year olds with scalpels.

</comment><comment><USER36> When I was in middle school I took a class at OMSI (Oregon Museum of Science and Industry) called "explosive chemistry". We made black powder, sparklers, bombs, blew up water-filled pop cans with sodium, and all sorts of other things that would never be allowed today.

It was great fun.

<comment><USER9> i went to academic summer camps basically from sixth grade on (Duke TIP- affiliated stuff), and one year i took chemistry class. one of the three weeks was "uncontrolled oxidation" week. lots of fun. :) the biggest takeaway was that potassium perchlorate plus almost anything equals cool. i think my favorite was equal parts potassium perchlorate and sugar in a half-coke can. take outside and add a couple drops of sulfuric acid--ten-foot cone of flame.

for reference this would be, hmm, i think 1995? somewhere between 94 and 97, anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> > "Most of them are what you could refer to as kitchen chemistry," says Cook. > "Using things you can find in your kitchen - baking soda or vinegar."

Cost savings, a moral high-ground, and buyers who won't use the product themselves. It's an unholy trinity.

</comment><comment><USER38> When I was a kid, several of us in my neighborhood had vials of mercury that we enjoyed playing with. We didn't do any chemistry experiments with it, though--we just enjoyed watching solid metal objects float on it, and taking it out and feeling how weird it felt rolling around in our hands.

This was in the late '60s and early '70s. I don't remember where we got it, but we didn't keep it secret, and no adults (parents, teachers) freaked out if they saw us with it.

I wonder what would happen nowadays if a kid brought some mercury to school to play with?

<comment><USER39> Probably old thermostats. Most of them used mercury switches. Also thermometers have a a tiny amount of the stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I'd add: whatever happened to microscopes? I loved getting one of those and a box of slides: bugs, plants, cells, all kinds of cross sections... And what happened to the 160 in one electronics kits from Radio Shack, ala <http://www.radioshackcatalogs.com/html/1987/h104.html>? (Actually, those last evolved into the rather clever SnapCircuits which are pretty fun, sold in Radio Shack and other fine stores).

</comment><comment><USER41> I recently discovered an old chemistry book that is supposedly banned from publication, but since it's not under any copyright anymore we can download it with breaking any rules : [http://openmaterials.org/2010/03/18/banned-the- golden-book-o...](http://openmaterials.org/2010/03/18/banned-the-golden-book- of-chemistry-experiments/) \-- I am finding it really cool to read and learn from.

</comment><comment><USER29> Here's a fresh example: <http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prhtml12/12234.html>

Now buckyballs are mortal hazard and have to be banned. They are marked 13+, but who cares - it's obvious that it's fun, thus has to be banned by federal government.

</comment><comment><USER42> In that same vein, I like Gever Tulley's "5 dangerous things you should let your kids do" TED Talk: [http://www.ted.com/talks/gever_tulley_on_5_dangerous_things_...](http://www.ted.com/talks/gever_tulley_on_5_dangerous_things_for_kids.html)

Kids should _definitely_ be allowed to play with fire.

</comment><comment><USER43> There 'is no demand' for it.

[http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/07/epic-fraud-how-to- suc...](http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/07/epic-fraud-how-to-succeed-in- science-without-doing-any/)

</comment><comment><USER44> The internet? I remember going over to a friend's house in middle school, and him showing me how to make a small bomb using stuff from the chemistry set using instructions he found online...

<comment><USER39> Funny thing about that is that the internet may have saved me in a similar way. I mentioned online that I wanted experiment with anodizing aluminum and I was warned that the household chemicals I was going to use -- sulphuric acid from an old car battery and potassium permanganate (for a nice purple color) for my water supply's iron filter - can form a pressure-sensitive explosive.

I keep forgetting to try it...

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> European legislation interference health and safety BS happened.

</comment><comment><USER18> I think its sad that our society has become so divorced from reality that Uranium- a naturally occurring element- is considered a "crazy" thing for kids to have. It takes huge amounts of uranium and processing and a lot of technology to make a bomb, most of the difficulty has nothing to do with the uranium.

You can get uranium simply by buying old fiestaware. The paint they used in certain colors used uranium as part of the pigment.

If you have a geiger counter you can make noise with it. (not that I think there's much useful to do with uranium in a chemistry set, but then I was always poor at chemistry.)

It is just a real shame that "uranium" has become a scary word.

<comment><USER46> You make a good point, but it's disingenuous to equate 'naturally occurring' with safe for kids to have.

Mercury is a naturally occurring element.</comment></comment>


A 2x Faster Web - <AUTHOR> http://blog.chromium.org/2009/11/2x-faster-web.html <comment><USER2> The whitepaper has more information: <http://dev.chromium.org/spdy/spdy- whitepaper>

Interesting parts:

\- "...make SSL the underlying transport protocol, for better security and compatibility with existing network infrastructure." _Won't this break many caching models?_

\- "...provides an advanced feature, server-initiated streams. Server- initiated streams can be used to deliver content to the client without the client needing to ask for it." _Nice, push without comet-style hacks._

 _EDIT: more items that stand out_

\- "SPDY implements request priorities: the client can request as many items as it wants from the server, and assign a priority to each request"

From the protocol document: <http://dev.chromium.org/spdy/spdy-protocol>

\- "Content-length is not a valid header"

\- "Clients are assumed to support Accept-Encoding: gzip. Clients that do not specify any body encodings receive gzip-encoded data from the server."

\- "The 'host' header is ignored. The host:port portion of the HTTP URL is the definitive host." _I guess this supplants the need for SNI support. Edit: No it doesn't since SPDY sits above SSL. The host isn't known until the secure link has already been established._

<comment><USER3> The future of the internet is ubiquitous encryption. Better to break caching models ASAP so that fixing them can be done incrementally.

<comment><USER4> Provided we're using IPv6 exclusively. SSL removes the ability to do virtual hosting, which is why we didn't run out of IPs 5-10 years ago.

<comment><USER5> Given that IPv6 is a good thing(1) any technology change that brings forward the time line for IPv4 address exhaustion is a good thing.

It is human nature that people don't do things that sound like hard work until they have to, and the continuing use of IPv4 with NAT and other hacks falls firmly into that camp.

(1) Every device becomes addressable again - I remember when it was normal to assume that devices could be reached directly, and would be fire walled if required. That led to a much greater number of people running services from their machine. From the perspective of a startup the idea that a client can run data services without some horrible <nat-related> hack is really interesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I love that Google is focusing on how to speed up the web, but they are missing the most obvious thing they could do that would have a dramatic impact on the speed of the web:

Update their PageRank algorithm to take into account website speed, and then publish this as a fact.

The idea would be that they would have GoogleBot measure the latency, and overall page load time and rank sites higher that respond faster, and slow sites lower.

One of the problems with PageRank is that most of how they measure site quality is a mystery, but making it plain that speed is used in ranking would bring website performance to the front of everyone's minds. They could use similar metrics as YSlow and PageSpeed use, and tell everyone to optimize their sites using those tools as a starting point.

<comment><USER7> This is a horrible idea. Yes, it would result in increased focus by some people on speed, but probably the same people who focus on "SEO". So now content relevancy has yet another adversary in the battle for SERPs. There's a LOT of really incredible, original content out there written by amazing people who do it in their spare time and don't give two shits about their SEO or the speed of their server, and now that content is going to slip further down the rankings because it takes 2 seconds to load instead of 100 ms? No thanks.

<comment><USER6> You are correct that SEO people would latch onto the idea and start producing faster sites. But so will many legitimate sites that want to provide a good user experience. Is that really so bad?

I think that site speed does correlate with a better user experience. A site that loads quickly shows that the person who made it cares about my experience more than a bloated site that takes forever to load.

I will admit that it's certainly not as as strong an indicator as the content, inbound links and other factors that are rumored to be part of PageRank but speed does matter. All other things being equal, I would much rather visit a site that loads in 2 seconds than one that loads in 20 seconds.

<comment><USER8> You wait 2 seconds for a page load? You're amazingly generous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Impressive, how Google are taking on challenges that pretty much no other company could possibly address... replacing email... enhancing HTTP, etc...

They're the only company with the means to take on such massive, unprofitable projects, and at the same time enough street cred that everyone won't immediately assume they're trying to make the web proprietary. The fact that they tend to open up these things from the get go helps, too.

<comment><USER10> _They're the only company with the means to take on such massive, unprofitable projects, and at the same time enough street cred that everyone won't immediately assume they're trying to make the web proprietary._

They are hardly the only company doing this. Microsoft Research do a ton of pretty visionary / far-reaching work, much of which has nothing to do with MS- proprietary platforms. For example, the VL2 architecture for data center networks: <http://sns.cs.princeton.edu/2009/10/new-datacenter-networks/>

<comment><USER11> Microsoft are long past the day when they were evil. It's just that, unfairly or not, if they tried to do this people would be going through the license with a fine tooth comb in the certain expectation of traps.

I wonder if Microsoft will one day redeem themselves to the public like IBM did?

<comment><USER12> Long past?!

I don't regard the shameful approval of OOXML as an ISO standard, and all the questionable things Microsoft did in order to accomplish it, as a particularly nice thing to do. There are a lot of NBs that were formed specifically for that purpose that were never again heard from. As it is now, the damage to ISO seems irreversible.

Also, there is the trolling about "Linux infringes 4 bazillion of our patents" empty threats (because if they weren't empty they would have acted) and the failed attempt to sell some of those patents to trolls that would go after Linux users. The fact if failed (because a non-invited group won the auction and donated the patents) makes it not less evil.

No. Being evil is in their soul.

They may be less evil now - I can agree on that. But it's so much more because they are far less relevant now than they were in the 90s than any particular change of heart.

They deserve no redemption.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Regarding the use of SSL by default, they better require the use of the SSL mode which sends the hostname before the crypto negotiation. Otherwise that's a lot of IP addresses required for virtual hosting!

<comment><USER14> We will.

<comment><USER15> Even so, the current certificate issuing process is lengthy and expensive. Requiring SSL would be a major hit to the mom-and-pop type websites that just want a simple webpage on their own domain for their business.

They'd now have to pony up for an SSL cert, which at least doubles the website ownership cost, as well as potentially go through a very complex process to get the certificate issued.

It also completely eliminates the possibility of them having a free website on their own domain, unless an easy and free method to obtain an SSL cert becomes available.

The gain to them in these circumstances is negligible, if they aren't doing any e-commerce.

<comment><USER16> mom and pop brochure sites are not the sort who would be using spdy anyway, they'd just use http.

<comment><USER17> Why? If this is successful, everyone should use it, and the whole web would be faster with default server configuration.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> One imagines djb envisioning a single roundtrip for encrypted HTTP, built on top of DNSCurve.

You have the public key via DNS, you send an encrypted request and receive a verifiable encrypted response that includes content and begins the multiplexed channel.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm impressed that they're able to get such good performance (and latency) while still running the traffic over SSL. For example, average page load time over SSL is 1899 ms ("SPDY basic single-domain / SSL"), compared to 3112 ms for plain HTTP -- they don't show HTTPS, but presumably that would be even slower.

</comment><comment><USER19> Am I missing their explanation of how a SPDY-capable client and server discover and make use of SPDY instead of HTTP?

For this to take hold in the wild, it has to be possible for me to run a combined HTTP+SPDY server, and for a client connecting to it to automatically make use of SPDY if it is capable. This must happen without user intervention (i.e. we don't expect people to type spdy:// instead of <http://>).

It seems like this should be possible. Perhaps there could be a special server response that instantly "upgrades" a TCP session from HTTP into SPDY. But I'm not seeing anything about that in the docs; is this part of the SPDY plan (yet)?

<comment><USER20> This is merely the spec doc for the DVD. The combo VHS-DVD players will come next.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I've a bad feeling of this potentially making the web layer more complex. Also the encryption bit may not be a good idea if you are not Google...

In general I'm more happy with web _standards_. Google doing research on this is great, but if they unilaterally push solutions that will anyway hit the mass market because they are Google is not good.

All the web, the idea of HTTP APIs and so on are based on the fact that HTTP may not be perfect but it's _trivial_ to use, implement, and so forth. Please don't break this fact.

<comment><USER15> I wouldn't be so afraid of Google being able to unilaterally effect change without consensus. Even getting adoption for their Chrome browser seems to be an extreme uphill battle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> <http://www.w3.org/Protocols/HTTP-NG/http-ng-scp.html> had some similar ideas which when combined with <http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc998.html> gives you this SPDY.

But how do you gain adoption of such a tech across clients and servers (which was the problem with pipelining) will be an interesting question to see

<comment><USER22> <http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-natarajan-http-over-sctp-00> also had similar ideas but SPDY is better because of Resource Prioritization

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Am I missing something? How does "55% faster" translate into a 2x speed-up?

<comment><USER4> 2x = Goal

55% = Reality so far

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Is this basically an RFC for HTTP version 2?

<comment><USER25> It's mostly a session framework on top of SSL but under HTTP.

From <http://dev.chromium.org/spdy/spdy-whitepaper>

Q: Is SPDY a replacement for HTTP?

A: No. SPDY replaces some parts of HTTP, but mostly augments it. At the highest level of the application layer, the request-response protocol remains the same. SPDY still uses HTTP methods, headers, and other semantics. But SPDY overrides other parts of the protocol, such as connection management and data transfer formats.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Wouldn't faster internet connections make this whole effort moot?

<comment><USER27> No, because this would make internet faster over those faster internet connections.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I can't help but read "SPDY" as "Spidey"... :(</comment>


Vikings unwittingly made their swords stronger - <AUTHOR> https://bigthink.com/culture-religion/norse-rituals <comment><USER2> It sounds like they quite wittingly made their swords stronger, they just didn't understand the physical mechanism by which this worked.

</comment><comment><USER3> This article completely ignores the discovery of crucible steel use in Viking swords like the Ulfberht, whose isotopic analysis supposedly points to Persian origin, obtained through trade.

There was a great PBS "Nova" episode on this called "Secrets of the Viking Sword"; transcript available at:

[http://www.stickgrappler.net/2013/07/nova-secrets-of- viking-...](http://www.stickgrappler.net/2013/07/nova-secrets-of-viking- sword-2012-full.html?m=1)</comment>


"People think game development means you get to play games all day" - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/mjmcmaster/status/763596145452912640/photo/1 <comment><USER2> People think doing mathematics means you solve equations all day, but they're wrong - sometimes it's about finding that you've drawn the arrow the wrong way in a diagram...

At 4am, in bed, breaking out in cold sweat.</comment>


What People Who Worked at Google Know That You Probably Don't - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@hunterwalk/what-people-who-worked-at-google-know-that-you-probably-don-t-53a88ed64c29 <comment><USER2> No, I will not sign up to read paywalled(?) article.</comment>


The Power of NoSQL - <AUTHOR> http://img860.imageshack.us/img860/6743/nosql.png I don't know if they are rotating those questions, so i took a screenshot.<p>Website: http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html <comment><AUTHOR> I don't know if they are rotating those questions, so i took a screenshot.

Website: <http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html></comment>


Instapaper just became a social network - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/apps/2011/03/11/instapaper-just-became-a-social-network/

<comment><USER2> I've had an Instapaper account for some time. Have to admit though that I much prefer Read-It-Later's way of doing things. Less intrusive.</comment>


Show HN: Rauk.us – Free In-Browser Game of MadLibs and Jackbox Games and Twitter - <AUTHOR> https://rauk.us <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN. Rauk.us is a game I've been playing around with for a while. Each player submits words to a shared word bank and a random one is chosen every 10 seconds. Chosen words are appended to a "story" that can be tweeted by @Rauk_us when the players vote to #end. Users can't submit the same word more than once, but multiple players can submit the same word to increase the odds of it being chosen. When your word is chosen you get a point. Accounts are generated on first connection and are not shared across devices. This is the public alpha and would love to hear your thoughts!</comment>


Hey, Look She's Naked But It's Art, So It's All Right. - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/26/nyregion/26naked.html

<comment><USER2> I don't really understand the whole "right to choice" argument. I don't really have the right to stop people from expressing themselves, but I do have a right to walk away if I don't like it.</comment>


Banyan, the "GitHub of Science", is now in public beta - <AUTHOR> http://blog.banyan.co/banyan-is-now-in-public-beta/ <comment><USER2> How does your product compare with <http://www.openscienceframework.org/>? As a scientist, I'm inclined to trust OSF more, since it's run by other scientists, fully open source, and doesn't need to make a profit. At the moment, OSF seems more focused on tools to facilitate collaboration and less focused on replicating functionality currently available on GitHub, although it sounds like they use git as a backend and eventually plan to implement functionality similar to what Banyan (and GitHub) currently provide.

<comment><USER3> I'm a recovering PhD. OSF looks pretty cool.

By the way OSF costs money if it is done by scientists. Those scientists get paid by someone. They spent shit ton of money (in form of salaries + time) building it + publishing it. Science works on government grants, i.e. taxpayer money. It is actually a fairly profitable industry, and NIH grants are the biggest contributor to capital expenditure of US Research Universities. The 55% overhead coming out of each grant is basically the "profit margin". Calling something by a different name doesn't make it so. Your github profile says you're at MIT, around Cambridge. So am I. What do you think pays for all the shiny buildings around Kendall? It's not just philanthropy.

<comment><USER2> Sure, OSF costs money, but VC-funded startups are under pressure to monetize their customer bases, whereas grant-funded projects just need to make something useful enough to justify continued investment. There's the obvious risk is that a VC-funded company will make its money off of selling your private information. (I don't think this is very likely, but I trust Brian Nosek a lot more than I trust most startups.) The bigger issue is that VC- funded companies need to keep a tight leash on their product, whereas grant- funded projects are free to grow in a distributed fashion. While ordinary people are happy to live within the limits of their software, scientists like to explore new frontiers, and it sucks when our software can't take us there. This is why I firmly believe that software (and preferably hardware) that scientists use to do science needs to be open source.

I'm not sure I'd call grant income that gets reinvested in infrastructure and educational expenditures "profit." Not only do private corporations buy shiny buildings, but they also have a legal obligation to make as much money for their shareholders as they possibly can. MIT doesn't.

<comment><USER4> While I can agree with the spirit of your message, OTOH...

 _> Not only do private corporations buy shiny buildings, but they also have a legal obligation to make as much money for their shareholders as they possibly can._

This seems to be a popular belief, but it's simply not true. Private companies have no legal requirement to make profits or pay dividends. Even public companies, do not have to by law, maximize profits ("make as much money").[1] Corporate officers do of course, have an obligation to act in the best interests of the company, and have maintain certain fiduciary duties.

 _[1][http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8146/are-u-s- com...](http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8146/are-u-s-companies- legally-obligated-to-maximize-profits-for-shareholders*)

<comment><USER2> Sorry, you're right, there is no direct legal obligation to make money. However, investors in startups frequently have a large degree of control over the direction of the company, and often care more about the bottom line than any broader mission to change the world. See e.g. Jason Hoyt's blog post on Mendeley: [http://enjoythedisruption.com/post/47527556151/my- thoughts-o...](http://enjoythedisruption.com/post/47527556151/my-thoughts-on- mendeley-elsevier-why-i-left-to-start)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a great idea!

I've been trying to collaborate my professor on academic papers with git. We tried my own git server, github, but they still seem to be too much trouble for people who do not use git regularly. Online LaTex editor integrated with the git service would be great! It would be better if you could add code highlight in the editor though. Also realtime PDF preview (maybe not realtime.. it'll be overwhelming for the server. A compile button?) would be awesome!

And for sure we need a separate community from Github just for academic publications. Mixing softwares and papers altogether is not a good idea. Banyan is really cool!

Congratulations on launching!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks songgao! Drop an email (mine is in my profile) and Ill get you signed up on our git-powered latex editor. It has most the features you just described, and is launching soon =)

<comment><USER6> I would really like access to this too. I have been using sharelatex and the git support is still not there. My email is firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Will do. I will drop you a line this afternoon

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Great to see another product in this space (<https://www.scigit.com/> launched not too long ago). As far as writing papers, my old-fashioned P.I. will probably never budge from Microsoft Word, so Google Docs is the best solution at the moment. The fact that they have "Google Scholar" integration for inserting citations into the editor makes it pretty much a no brainer for writing a draft.

<comment><USER8> Yikes! What field are you in? For most STEM folks, TeX seems to be pretty standard. I'd really love to see a collaborative TeX editor (web based?). Better yet... a collaborative emacs!

<comment><USER7> I'm in biology. The journals Nature and Science both specify that Microsoft Word is their preferred format for submissions and I'd be surprised if lots of others still do. Collaborative online TeX editors have been featured on HN before (<https://www.writelatex.com/>, <https://www.sharelatex.com/>).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN!

We launched a private version of Banyan to a few of you here months ago. Since then, our team has been hard at work trying to make Banyan the future of open science. Todays launch is just the start.

We know we have alot of work to do. Over the next few months we plan to tackle science, reproducibility, and make existing tools more awesome through our API.

I want to be as transparent as possible. Im happy to answer any questions you might have.

<comment><USER9> Congrats! Unfortunately, your server isn't handling the load and the google cache is a SASS error. [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:knsEMz3...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:knsEMz3EwecJ:https://banyan.co/+&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

Got something more descriptive you can link to?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, we cross posted to reddit & HN and the response has been outstanding. Working on getting this fixed right now.

<comment><AUTHOR> Blog is back up! Sorry about that everyone

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Are you planning on releasing a Linux client?

When you say science, git, and LaTeX, Linux is often the next word in the sequence...

</comment><comment><USER11> its kind of tragic that I read that whole post, spent another 5 minutes researching, trying to find some kind of more information, but _I still have no idea what this tool actually does_.

<comment><USER12> Didnt you get the memo? Its like twitter for facebookers using science with github

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't get it. I can't see any information on the homepage that makes it different from just using github.

<comment><AUTHOR> Our main two differences from github is that we built banyan to be version control for "humans". Our mac application for example is extremely simple to use, and was designed with an 18 year old undergraduate/55 year old lab veteran in mind. Banyan was designed to be the middle ground of collaboration for users who know git with people who have no idea what git is (and in most cases, cant be bothered to learn another tool).

Our second difference is our focus on scientific specific tools like latex, ipython, etc.

<comment><USER14> So, are you going to provide built-in things like: IPython viewer (like <http://nbviewer.ipython.org/>), LaTeX viewer for notes (like <http://mathb.in/>), support for slides (this thing would be awesome - to have possibility to view them and view/fork their source; a bit related to <http://slidewiki.org/>) or something in that line?

<comment><AUTHOR> We have similar ideas for integrations with those tools, with the exception of latex. With latex, we have our own online editor with some neat git integration.

<comment><USER15> Do you have any examples of these online? Today, I don't see any reason I would use this over GitHub.

I gather that your Mac app may be simpler, but it's not available yet.

Since I don't already have dozens of projects on banyan, it's hard to see the value.

Perhaps it would be a good idea to link to some repos with examples of the fancy LaTeX or IPython formatting

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Have you thought about easing distributed collaboration for structured data? The use case I'm thinking of is multiple groups submitting data to one central informatics/analysis group (i.e. consortia, meta-analyses). Scientists still throw around data in excel sheets with ever-increasing versioning through file names (e.g., gene.data.v29.201230429.janes.final.Final.reallyFinal.xls). It's a huge time-suck that doesn't help anybody. Support for easy viewing of XML, JSON, or even some sort of hosted RDBMS would be incredible.

I think it's great to target the wider, non-developer audience. They could benefit immensely from version control, distributed systems, and smart editing tools. It could be a big benefit to the whole scientific community.

<comment><AUTHOR> Im really interested in this but have some questions I would like to ask you. Do you mind dropping me an email at toni (at) banyan.co?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Congrats, this looks great! Some of the buttons are a little off (<http://i.imgur.com/9CRvFQj.png>) Mac OS X, Chrome 26.0.1410.65.

I'm very excited to tell people that github for science is now a thing. I'll be signing up for sure.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Just submitted a fix for this. We will push this into production when things slow down on HN a little bit

<comment><USER17> No problem, the firehose that is HN is definitely exciting. Hope you guys are getting good traffic :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Would love to try this but you'd have to let me have at least 1 private project. I don't have permission to share private research data with the world.

Also, I tried to submit my email to be notified for the mac app and was told it was invalid (it was just a standard @gmail address).

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Osmium, thats a good point. We will revisit the pricing model tonight.

The forms are broken unfortunately. I have submitted a fix, but we wont be deploying until later tonight when the HN craziness slows down. In the interim, you can drop me your email at toni (at) banyan.co and I will manually add it to the list

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I don't know if you were inspired by a submission [1] I did almost six months ago, but if not, kudos anyway :) When the site is up again I will check it!

[1]: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4712787>

<comment><AUTHOR> It wasnt! But we should talk. We are looking for engineers who want to change the way science works. We announced Banyan publicly last August [1] during the <http://thegigtank.com>

[1] <http://us-ignite.org/2012/08/gig-tank-demo-day-delivers/>

<comment><USER19> Oh, I see, and I am checking the website right now. It something different from what I thought, but it is cool anyway. My email is on my profile :) Congratulations again!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is there a way to make repository which is partly private? For me it is a common use-case where some data aren't share for any reason (e.g. because they are not checked yet whether they are correct), while other files are public?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not currently, but this is a great idea. We may just have to add this to the roadmap

<comment><USER5> The other thing is that, IMHO, private repo for this is not good for academic, instead, make it temporarily private. People write papers to get published. They surely want as many people as possible to see it. The reason they want it to be private is to hide it from others before getting published so the ideas won't get stolen. So I'm thinking maybe set up a time limit for repos being private would be better? After that time limit, the repo is automatically made public unless requested more time by user.

<comment><USER14> It is one reason. But e.g. in my field (theoretical physics) I am not afraid of theft (well, if someone is smart enough to understand and polish a half- written paper, then (s)he can write much better stuff) but of things that "as of now makes sense only to me" or "there are half-written" (e.g. in some places I changed indices i to i+1, but not in all, making it both frustrating and useless to read) or may simply be false and I don't want to publish it before checking (e.g. plots may be completely wrong because of a typo).

Anyway, a time limit is a good idea.

And anyway, when there are timestamps, it's harder to steal an idea. It actually may encourage people to write notes on things to do, share some partial proofs, etc

<comment><USER20> Why a time limit? Why not a "publish" button that flips it to public? (And maybe submits it to arXiv at the same time, optionally.)

<comment><USER14> Integration with arXiv (i.e. "sent to arXiv" or "get source from arXiv") would be great. And yes, just a button "publish" would be convenient.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Clicking on either screenshot in the blog post takes me to a new page with a smaller version of the screenshot ([http://blog.banyan.co/banyan-is-now-in- public-beta/dashboard...](http://blog.banyan.co/banyan-is-now-in-public- beta/dashboard-banyan/)). Then I have to click the image again to see: [http://blog.banyan.co/wp- content/uploads/2013/04/Dashboard-B...](http://blog.banyan.co/wp- content/uploads/2013/04/Dashboard-Banyan.png)

Wouldnt a better interaction be to display a larger screenshot on the first click? Thats what I would expect?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes it should! Sorry about that. Just fixed it for you if check it now!

<comment><USER21> Cool. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This isn't a publishing platform, right? I'm all about free data, but if some "scientists" decide to "publish" their paper on your site it seems like that would totally evade peer-review. I know that is not your intention, but do you worry that some people my try to put out results that have not been fully tested/peer-reviewed? There are non-peer-reviewed journals (my mom finds them all the time...) out there, but a free easy platform seems like some people might try to take advantage of this system.

<comment><USER23> "some people"

Oh, just call a marketing guy a marketing guy.

I'll have to look into how it manages trust, for things like this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Great initiative! But I find the screencaps on the landing page's slideshow very misleading imho. It displays some code repo... ok, now I'm a coder and just like others I'd be then inclined to ask myself "why would I use this instead of Github or Bitbucket?". And my gf is a neuroscientist and her gut reaction was "well... I don't code, how is this of any interest for me? I don't get it...".

<comment><USER24> Just to be clear: we both are VERY interested by this site, and actually quite excited. It's better than any other related initiatives and we expect to try it out asap! It's just this detail made us tick...

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree we need to clean that up. We use a rake command to seed our test server with test data. We will swap those out for some real screenshots today

<comment><USER24> We're registering. I've passed the word to other fellow scientist in my network. Looking forward to use it fully.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I am hopeful that this works, as my collaborators can definitely not be bothered to learn git. The UI elements are way too big IMO.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi zm. What do you mean by the UI elements? Do you mind snapping a screenshot for me?

<comment><USER6> The nav bar and the commits page are too big I think. There ends up being a lot of space wasted. The commits page especially so. 5 commits should easily fit on a page. There are also two date information fields. One listing how many days ago the commit occurred and the other indicating what date the commit occurred on.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the design feedback. I take ux/ui feedback very seriously. I have passed this onto our designer

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> To Toni & the whole Banyan team, CONGRATS on launching the public beta! I'm excited to see Banyan on the gigabit web. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Will!

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> It's built on top of git?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Maro, yes it is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Within the first 60 seconds your site does not answer the question "why would I want to use this rather than Github?". I'm not sure most people will spend even 60 seconds trying to find an answer to that question, so you might want to figure out a way to show/tell.

</comment><comment><USER28> Is there any way to create an anonymized link to a set of data and experimental results? Right now I'd love to use this, but all the conferences I submit to are double-blind, so there's no good way to let reviewers have access to my experimental data...

<comment><USER23> And, this is the other side of the trust coin. Who's data and is it the "real" data. (obviously I don't mean you personally but more like scientists generally)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Congratulations on launching! I applied to YC a few years ago with a similar concept. Your site looks gorgeous, and I'm excited to see it develop. I hope you succeed in disrupting a space that's been neglected for far too long.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Sorry the blog is down everyone! <http://Banyan.co> can provide a little more info while we scramble to get this back up!

</comment><comment><USER30> How do i delete my account? I created one to check it out, but didnt realise i would not be able to hide my name or email address...

</comment><comment><USER31> This is great. Too often we only get the original researchers' interpretation of the data and not much else. Good luck with it!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks csmatt, I completely agree!

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I first heard of you guys when I read an interesting post about the startup scene in Chattanooga. Congrats on launching.

<comment><USER33> If you haven't checked in lately the scene is Chatt is growing daily <http://noogastartups.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Off topic: Dear banyan blog. I can't read your text!

No greater than #888 on a white background, otherwise you have to bold the text.

</comment><comment><USER35> I tried to leave my email regarding the Windows port and it said my email address was invalid.

</comment><comment><USER36> it looks like this just runs a local gitlab instance on your mac. how do you share with other users?

<comment><USER37> There is a central GitLab server.

<comment><USER36> So the blog post claims improvements to the webapp were made and has an image of the gitlab interface. Gitlab was recently updated and made big changes in the backend to improve performance.

This smells fishy.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi raffenet,

We have used gitlab components & also contributed back to gitlab. Its a great project, but I can assure you we have an entirely different product. Were just leveraging OSS projects like any other startup

<comment><USER38> from what I can see it is a Gitlab 5 install with a skin? What advantage is there for an organisation using your product vs a free gitlab install?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Banayan .. github ..

Hurray - VINES is finally open sourced!

"GitHub of Science"

Aw.

<comment><USER40> I was wondering who else immediately leaped to Banyan Vines!

<comment><USER39> How could I not?

My first job in IT, I got tossed into the deep end of LAN administration - sink or swim - and Banyan was the pool.</comment></comment></comment>


Windows XP Still The Most Widespread Windows OS - <AUTHOR> http://www.techi.com/2010/10/windows-xp-still-the-most-widespread-windows-os/

<comment><USER2> They should rename it Windows Undead...I can't see how they are ever going to kill it off.</comment>


15 Puzzles in 30 Minutes - <AUTHOR> http://youtube.com/watch?v=rczb7yd0XiM

<comment><AUTHOR> BTW, how would you design a twisty puzzle construction set so that anyone can easily invent and play with new twisty puzzles?

<comment><USER2> I would take adenosine, guanine, taurine, and cytosine and pair them into double helices. And I would make sharing them fun. :-)</comment></comment>


Harnessing the energy generated when freshwater meets saltwater - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2017-05-harnessing-energy-freshwater-saltwater.html <comment><USER2> There was actually already a test osmosis power plant in Norway. Unfortunately it wasn't very successful and was shut down in 2013: [http://www.statkraft.com/media/news/News- archive/2013/Statkr...](http://www.statkraft.com/media/news/News- archive/2013/Statkraft-halts-osmotic-power-investments)

<comment><USER3> The output per sq meter at 12.6W seems rather low compared to solar cells at 150-200 W/ sq meter when sunny. It's probably going to be easier to stick up a solar panel than a membrane contraption several times bigger.

<comment><USER4> The benefit of osmotic power/salinity gradient power is that it's a base load. That means it will produce power at a constant rate, regardless of the time of day, which is one of the draw backs of the more common sources of renewable sources of energy (solar, wind, etc.)

<comment><USER2> Base load is not necessarily an advantage in a future energy system. Lots of solar and wind means there will be times when all the electricity can be provided by them. So what's really needed is flexible electricity to complement that.

<comment><USER5> At that point, it's free energy. Are you really complaining?

(Yes, I do know power companies must dissipate that somehow, my own even has times whence the realtime pricing drops below zero as incentive. But a solved problem nevertheless.)

<comment><USER6> The extra energy can be dumped into pumping water up a dam. It is reasonably efficient, at 70-80%.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped- storage_hydroelectric...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped- storage_hydroelectricity)

<comment><USER7> Yes, but excess solar, wind and nuclear can already do that. So introducing a new, so-called "baseload" power supplier doesn't automatically make for good economics, if anything selling it as "baseload" rather than say "cheap" is a bad sign.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is one of those "well why didn't _I_ think of that?" moments. It seems awesome and I hope it pans out.

But really, I came here to comment on the odd phrase I found in an image caption: "...synthetic freshwater or seawater..." I don't think I've ever heard (seen?) anyone refer to anything water-based as "synthetic" simply because the impurities were added by a human instead of by a riverbed.

</comment><comment><USER9> And then use it in a desalination plant to make freshwater again?

<comment><USER10> If the desalination is needed at another place where the power grid extends but water pipes not - might be a useful idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> A significant chunk of the world's population lives near river estuaries, so there's a further possible benefit of this by having the power source near the population and reducing transmission losses in the system.

</comment><comment><USER12> What can be the impact of implementing it to the ecosystem?

I found nothing in the article. I hope they don't want to use it on rivers.

</comment><comment> the-dude Not sure this is new, there are trials running in The Netherlands ( afsluitdijk )

<comment> the-dude Details : company is [http://REDstack.nl](http://REDstack.nl)

RED -> Reverse ElectroDialysis

<comment><USER4> Wow, this is so cool - seeing the place I work at on HN.</comment></comment></comment>


Minimising your attack surface by building highly specialised docker images - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/asos-techblog/minimising-your-attack-surface-by-building-highly-specialised-docker-images-example-for-net-b7bb177ab647 <comment><USER2> There are tools available to strip docker images down to a specified file list. By listing only the absolute minimum of files your application needs you can cut the surface down even further. Do you really need bash on the container for example?</comment>


Six years in the Valley - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13337910 <comment><USER2> here is the link to the "IT doesn't matter" article that is mentioned. i hadn't read it before and found it quite interesting.. [http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2007/01/it_doesnt_matte.ph...](http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2007/01/it_doesnt_matte.php)

</comment><comment><USER3> alot of innovation came out of the last downturn. i watched a lot of people leave then. let them go for all i care. i still believe if you want to get anything done, sv is where you need to be. while this won't always be true, you've gotta have heart.</comment>


Best of Global Game Jam - <AUTHOR> http://www.indiegames.com/blog/2009/02/best_of_global_game_jam.html

<comment><USER2> i haven't played all of them, but there are some sharp designs in there. i particularly like terraqua, despite the somewhat strange choice of silverlight over flash: <http://globalgamejam.org/games/terraqua></comment>


Do Mobile Electronics Really Interfere With Flight? They Could - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/aerospace/aviation/do-mobile-electronics-really-interfere-with-flight-they-could

<comment><USER2> Interesting. My logic says that nearby cell towers would cause more interference (during take-off / landing), because the tower is sending much stronger signal than a phone.

(A tower with high gain antenna can easily pick up a weak signal from a phone, while the phone needs relatively strong signal for its low gain antenna. Or maybe the phone signal is still stronger in the plane due to the inverse- square law?).

Then again, I'm not an EE.</comment>


Show HN: Monodraw for Mac, ASCII Art Editor – Beta Available - <AUTHOR> http://monodraw.helftone.com/?beta-launch

<comment><AUTHOR> First of all, I would like to say a big THANK YOU to everyone on HN. Your support since the announcement has been instrumental in keeping me motivated.

We've got tons of upcoming improvements and features, the launch of the beta is only the beginning of a much longer journey.

If you have any suggestions or ideas, just add a comment in this thread or get in touch. I'll try to answer anything that comes up, so fire away :)

       _____        _               __  __                       _                    _
      | ____|_ __  (_) ___  _   _  |  \/  | ___  _ __   ___   __| |_ __ __ ___      _| |
      |  _| | '_ \ | |/ _ \| | | | | |\/| |/ _ \| '_ \ / _ \ / _` | '__/ _` \ \ /\ / / |
      | |___| | | || | (_) | |_| | | |  | | (_) | | | | (_) | (_| | | | (_| |\ V  V /|_|
      |_____|_| |_|/ |\___/ \__, | |_|  |_|\___/|_| |_|\___/ \__,_|_|  \__,_| \_/\_/ (_)
                 |__/       |___/

<comment><USER2> _If you have any suggestions or ideas, just add a comment in this thread or get in touch._

Do contact them, they've been very responsive and helpful during the private beta!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> There's also Pablodraw ([http://picoe.ca/products/pablodraw/](http://picoe.ca/products/pablodraw/)), which is also cross-platform using Mono. The use cases for these seem very different though. PabloDraw is more like PhotoShop for ASCII & ANSI, while MonoDraw seems more like Vizio?

<comment><USER4> Not forgetting the stalwart JavE ([http://www.jave.de/](http://www.jave.de/)), although it seems unmaintained, and isn't non-destructive/object- based/whatever you want to call it.

I like Monodraw, and I know you're an indie developer, but the price seems bonkers for what it is, even at discount. If others pay it, though, I guess the price is right :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> A nitpick: All the animated stuff in the properties sidebar is distracting and feels slow and annoying.

Also, I might be tempted to pay $29.99, but $49.99 feels like too much to me for such a niche product, especially since that's more than some full-fledged multipurpose image editors like Pixelmator.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback :)

Regarding animations, everything can be turned off (some people love them, others hate them). Check out the options in the Prefs window (Monodraw > Preferences from the menu bar).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Will Monodraw be available on the Mac AppStore as well?

<comment><AUTHOR> We haven't made a decision yet. Obviously, we cannot distribute beta software on the Mac App Store at the moment. Once we have the final v1 version, we will decide whether we will distribute on the MAS or not.

In the mean time, you can just use the free beta (it will run for at least a few months).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Congrats on the launch!</comment>


E Ink touts e-readers with color, capacitive touch - <AUTHOR> http://www.linuxfordevices.com/index2.php?option=content&task=view&id=50045

<comment><USER2> Can anyone answer these?

      That Pearl variant -- how fast page turns?
      Is 80 chars width (code) readable on a Kindle DX? Others?
          If so, how many lines of code?
      Are there open source format converters to AZW?
      Can you make margin notes on a Kindle? Upload the notes?

      (Is E Ink really an alternative to waiting for Pixel Qi in [i]Pads?)

Edit: I googled page turn speed. One second. Too slow to browse, still. (I thought the time had gone down? Sigh...)

<comment><USER3> I don't think it's as slow as this. It doesn't feel that slow, at least.

<comment><USER2> Exact numbers seems to not be in reviews, strangely enough... Which probably means they are bad.

This has some values that supports around a second. (Browsing a book, PDFs are probably slower).

<http://kindle2buy.com/?p=137>

Frustrating for me; E Ink is probably more readable than Pixel Qi. But I want to browse code and generated PDFs from documentation etc.</comment></comment></comment>


How Containers Make Dev and QA Management Easier - <AUTHOR> https://www.sealights.io/blog/how-containers-make-dev-qa-management-easier/?pi_campaign_id=3181 <comment><USER2> Great blog post. Seems like the author knows his stuff!</comment>


Lyft Kills Their Lyft Plus Program, Drivers Stuck with SUVs They Don't Want - <AUTHOR> http://sfist.com/2014/09/22/lyft_kills_their_lyft_plus_program.php

<comment><USER2>
        Lyft has offered to pay the drivers a $10,000 bonus in
        compensation or to help them sell the Explorers and
        cover any depreciation.

So stucked! What a dumb headline.

</comment><comment><USER3> I can't see how they picked the Ford Explorer. It's a big vehicle, but that is all it has going for it. In no way is it "luxurious".

</comment><comment><USER4> But they helped disrupt a trillion-dollar world-wide industry! That's a small price to pay out of their own pockets.</comment>


Unanswered emails were the bane of my life - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/feb/08/unanswered-emails-inbox-nirvana-bane-of-life <comment><USER2> 16k unread emails? What a waste of time. My inbox is only filled with messages that are critical (KoT waiting list for example). Everything else gets replied or deleted immediately. Tasks go on to do lists for scheduling.</comment>


Ask HN: Simple idea to generate revenue - <AUTHOR>

It seems like the panacea for many developers is to come up with a simple idea that can be monetised effectively. There are a few success stories (e.g. Buffer), but it seems that there are even more ideas that crash and burn.<p>What I find really difficult is to determine whether or not an idea is going to be a success quickly. Sure you can develop a 'lean' prototype that you release and iterate on, but then how do you know if that concept failed because it was too incomplete and you stopped the development too early? <comment><USER2> I think while monetisation is incredibly important it is a differentiator of a tech product if monetisation actually adds to the product for the user rather than have the appearance of just being tacked on.

Invisible to the user monetisation is the dream to allow for a developers to 'just really make good product', but that is quite difficult without a movement behind your product or service.

</comment><comment><USER3> Try building stuff for yourself. If you like and it find it useful, then it's a success! If it makes money, then that's just a bonus; but even if it fails financially at least you built yourself something practical that you can be proud of.

</comment><comment><USER4> Instead of trying to figure out what people will pay for, why not find out what they're already paying for and build a better/cheaper/faster/easier version of it?

</comment><comment><USER5> Shouldn't your key metrics indicate to you whether or not your product is succeeding?</comment>


Loginboard – iOS 8 Password keyboard - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/loginboard/id923856009?mt=8

<comment><USER2> I'd really like to see this functionality built into existing password vault apps.

<comment><USER3> 1Password said they are working on something that will allow you to enter passwords for apps. Maybe it's something similar?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Your data will not be analyzed or send.

Is not a particularly good promise.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Loginboard is free for a short time

</comment><comment><USER5> Fabulous idea.

Price seems a bit steep though.

</comment><comment><USER6> Anyone know how this works technically?</comment>


Why Google Style Guide for C++ is a deal-breaker - <AUTHOR> http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140503193653-3046051-why-google-style-guide-for-c-is-a-deal-breaker

<comment><USER3> I think that Google style guide is too detailed for being enforced company- wide, and it actually has a few portability problems (i.e. Visual Studio doesn't support constexpr yet), but I actually agree with about half of the points, and none of them occur to me as a deal breaker.

I'd rather have a very small company-wide style guide of maybe 10 points which mainly cares about the public interface of a project. One project might not be able to switch to C++11, but another new project from scratch might decide to make use of all the C++11 bells'n'whistles.

When choosing 3rd party libs to integrate with my own code I have made the experience that the simpler the better. Please don't use exceptions or make them optional (some platforms don't have support for exceptions or got them very late, some still have a performance penalty), provide a way to override threading, timing, file i/o, dynamic memory allocation and other platform- specific functions with my own versions, bonus points for providing a C interface so that I can write my own C++ wrapper which fits my own style guide.

</comment><comment><USER4> I worked on a project that used the Google C++ Style guide for a while - <USER2> found it quite painless and mostly sensible.

Conversative style guides are useful when you are coding in a team of people with various abilities.

</comment><comment><USER5> Very good summary. I understand the reason why Google has these restrictions: they have a lot of old C++ code and they try to play it safe, maintain the same code style, etc. However, the modern C++ is a much nicer language than it was 15 years ago. By imposing these restrictions, Google limits the developers productivity and quality of the code. I've had experience integrating large old C/C++ project into the modern C++ world and while it is not a simple task, it can be done with relatively low pain (the biggest challenge was related to making the code exception safe).

</comment><comment><USER6> I didn't read all of his examples, but I read a few.

I'm confused by his issue with calling virtual functions from the constructor. Because of the order in which C++ calls the constructors in a base/parent class hierarchy during construction, calling a virtual function can be dangerous.

This is a valid restriction in my opinion. I get that it doesn't have to result in problems, and it can be useful, but in general, the guidelines in that section of the article coincide with whats generally considered good C++ code anyway.

The example about the copy constructor being disabled by default. That's pretty sane in my opinion, some of the downsides to C++ are that sometimes you can't tell what's going on when looking at an innocuous statement such as 'a=b'. This policy just greatly tamps down on the possibility of C++ hiding a heck of a lot of 'magic' from you by doing things you didn't necessarily expect.

I'm sure there are others, but honestly it feels more like the guy has a problem with Java than C++.

<comment><USER7> > I'm confused by his issue with calling virtual functions from the > constructor. Because of the order in which C++ calls the constructors in a > base/parent class hierarchy during construction, calling a virtual function > can be dangerous.

He wasn't complaining about not calling virtual functions in ctors/dtors; he said that was understandable. He was complaining about two-stage initialization being required for any non-trivial initialization.

<comment><USER6> He didn't say it was understandable, he said he "wasn't completely against it". That is not the same thing by far.

But the point is that he's misunderstanding, the guideline he posted was the following:

> Avoid doing complex initialization in constructors (in particular, > initialization that can fail or that requires virtual method calls). ... > Constructors should never call virtual functions or attempt to raise non- > fatal failures. If your object requires non-trivial initialization, consider > using a factory function or Init() method

 _consider using_ is a far cry from *required to use. It also explicitly spelled out the situations in which you should consider using something like a factory method.

\- When you need to call virtual methods since a factory method implies the full construction of the object

\- When you want to indicate non-fatal failures since a factory method implies being able to do so without exceptions.

If your code doesn't require virtual methods and doesn't need to indicate non- fatal failures, then there is nothing in that particular guideline that's relevant to you.

It's a sensible guideline, especially in an environment where you need to be able to avoid using exceptions.

He also took issue with the following:

> Provide a copy constructor and assignment operator only when necessary. > Otherwise, disable them with DISALLOW_COPY_AND_ASSIGN.

The entire point of this guideline is to disallow the compiler from doing anymore magic than is completely necessary. Especially surrounding things like construction and operator overloading, C++ does a lot of 'magic' to keep the user syntax relatively clean, but it can also make the code misleading/hard to understand.

The point is that both guidelines are actually sensible, and nothing in them explicitly prevents you from doing anything the author complained about. The idea of "only when necessary" is not even close to "always" or "never".

I didn't read the entire thing, but a lot of the complaints appeared to be related to his misunderstanding the intent, or taking it to the extreme.

<comment><USER7> > Constructors should never attempt to raise non-fatal failures

That essentially requires two-stage init for almost any non-trivial initialization.

<comment><USER6> That's untrue, and for you to make that claim is ridiculous, but it does mean this conversation is no longer worth engaging in.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Internet statistics of 2011 - <AUTHOR> http://www.writemania.net/internet-statistics-of-2011/ The Statistics below may give you a full view of the developments of the Internet over the past year.. These statistics were prepared by a web site called: Pingdom relying on dozens of sources that came to 8 statistical rankings: e-mail, Web sites, servers, domain names, the number of Internet users, social networking, Internet browsers, [...] <comment><AUTHOR> Thanks</comment>


JavaScript – What is non blocking I/O - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/me/stats/post/a2acb5b7594c <comment><USER2> Since when is medium completely inaccessible without logging in?</comment>


TypL – The JavaScript Type Linter by Kyle Simpson - <AUTHOR> https://typl.dev/ <comment><AUTHOR> I learned about this project by YDKJS author Kyle Simpson in the latest episode of JavaScript Jabber[1]. A few folks on the episode, Kyle included, seemed to hold a somewhat negative view of TypeScript, since they seem to like JS's dynamic typing (note, I do too), as well as other some other reasons they go into in the episode.

Kyle mentioned this project he's been working on (Github[2]) which aims to add type checking at both compile time and runtime. Curious what you all think about this project, and its merits of downsides over vanilla JS or TypeScript.

[1] [https://devchat.tv/js-jabber/jsj-438-you-dont-know-js-yet- wi...](https://devchat.tv/js-jabber/jsj-438-you-dont-know-js-yet-with-kyle- simpson-special-announcement-at-the-end/)

[2] [https://github.com/getify/TypL](https://github.com/getify/TypL)</comment>