Review: The MacBook Pro is an expensive MacBook Air on the inside - <AUTHOR> http://m.arstechnica.com/apple/2016/11/review-cheapest-2016-macbook-pro-is-good-but-its-missing-all-the-cool-stuff/ <comment><USER2> > The Ugly: Really expensive, even in the context of past MacBook Pros.

I find this conclusion, and the article's discussion of Apple's current laptop lineup, to be the most interesting part of the article.

In comparison to the 2015 13" MacBook pro, you get some minor hardware updates, a bit of increased thinness, some changes to ports, and the honor of paying an extra $200.

It doesn't seem like a very good value, especially when it's the bottom of the lineup distinguished more by what's missing (touch bar, touchID and extra ports) than what it adds to last year's model.

I was hoping that the marketplace would punish them, but if Schiller's comments about the new MacBook Pro getting more orders than any previous pro model are accurate, it looks like I'm in the minority.

<comment><USER3> The extra $200 is because the 2016 base model starts at 256GB disk instead of 128.

If you configure the 2015 model with 256GB the price is the same.

<comment><USER4> Lest you failed to notice, the price of SSD's has been falling, right now you can buy a top of the line 1TB SSD for ~$300, and lower end devices are approaching $200.

So, this bucks the trend of the past 4 decades where the new models had more storage for the same amount of money.

<comment><USER3> That's certainly the case, I'm just pointing out that price really isn't a factor in buying the 2015 model over the 2016 one unless you specifically want 128GB disk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It is amazing that a review in Ars recommends—even for a subset of users—getting a refurb last-gen model. But I give them credit for making this honest assessment.

Just yesterday I was thinking that when I upgrade from my current laptop (the recently-discontinued 11" MBA), it will likely be to a used 13" MBP. If money and dongles were no object, I'd take the plunge on a new one. (But cost is a consideration for me, and dongles is a consideration for everyone!)

<comment><USER6> I'm hoping my 2012 MBP lasts another 6 months so I can pick up one of these machines from Apple's refurbished store. $300 cheaper the new models look a lot more compelling.

<comment><USER7> If you're stateside you should check Microcenter. They usually have in stock previous year MBAs or MBPs (new or refurb) - often on huge discounts.

<comment><USER6> I'll take a look. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Everyone seems to either be hating it or hating the haters so far. But honestly I am not biting much on this.

I have a 2013 MBP and I don't see much better performance with this machine, and a lot of friction with the whole dongle thing. Apple went all the way with their dongle love when I just don't see the utility. I am literally only considering it because my computer is old so much that I fear of a hardware failure. With the price I am not really excited to do it.

<comment><USER9> 2013 Macbook Pro really isn't old at all

<comment><USER10> It used to be, but laptops have essentially stopped getting faster. Desktops are innovating primarily with power hungry video cards for VR.

2010 to 2013 MacBook Pros changed a ton (Retina, dropped optical drive, got loads faster thanks to more cores, etc etc).

<comment><USER11> Desktop GPUs have been getting progressively faster, but the difference between a new i7 6700K CPU and a 2011 vintage i7 2600K is about 30%. Unless you're shelling out over $1K for your CPU alone there's not really a lot of compelling reasons to upgrade.

Now if Intel started making more affordable six and eight core mobile and desktop CPUs...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This piece also captures the angst. The openly hostile acts of soldering ram, and glueing batteries is something that kind of made me angry. Ok, I told myself, maybe the device and OS will compensate for the fact that it is not user serviceable anymore.

Nope, for the last 3 to 5 years OSX and now macOS software has been beta (at best) on release day. They finally issued recalls for some older graphics problems the "Pro" models had. All in all they have just iOS-ified everything. Very gimmicky updates... nothing that really got me fired up.

This has all come to a head with the latest release of hardware. I don't need a hands on to know 16gb isn't enough RAM. I don't need a hands on to know that the touchbar isn't going to work for ME. I don't need a hands on to know that dongle hell is coming. I really love the trackpad on the mac (one thing that no windows pc can touch), but it looks like the STUPIDLY large trackpad is going to have issues as well....

I do know that I can't stand the "apple" tax any longer. I am sick of not being able to do "everything" on my computer because there isn't enough power/ram/etc. I should have just run Linux VM's for development while keeping Windows, I don't know... I haven't "gamed" in a long time, because it just sucks on a mac (maybe that is a good thing for productivity?).

<comment><USER13> So what's the problem? Buy a Windows laptop?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> > I don't see the value you could get from an Air in 2012 or 2013 anywhere on > that list.

This sums it up for me. Apple simply doesn't have any product in their Macbook line that I consider to deliver even remotely acceptable value for money right now. It's unfortunate.

<comment><USER15> I'm pretty sure they expect former air consumers to migrate to the iPad pro instead. Sure, it's less capable, but Apple seems to believe the iPad is good enough for those not creating professional programs, movies or images.

<comment><USER12> The iPad Pro is NOT a pro-level device. Turns out, that oversized iPhone apps are not that great. Look at the latest numbers of iPad sales[1]. Everyone that wants one already has one. Everybody else give zero-shits about the iPad.

[1][https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/26/iphone-ipad-and-mac- sales-...](https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/26/iphone-ipad-and-mac-sales-are- down-but-apple-only-cares-about-services-now/)

<comment><USER16> I would like to update my iPad Mini 1 since it seems like it should be so ancient now (it's had 3 iterations since then), but dammit if the thing still doesn't just work fine.

Yeah, it feels a little slow for some things now (especially browsing the internet, can't seem to keep more than one or two tabs in memory), but it's still super solid and gets the job done, and even still works with the vast majority of apps and games.

I might have to soon to be able to iOS dev with the newest XCode, but that's the only reason I have. I've owned that thing for almost 4 years now.

It's probably the most solid piece of hardware I've ever owned.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Excuse me? Unlike the MacBook Air it has a retina display and Thunderbolt 3 ports. Seems like this conclusion was written first, then a narrative was written to fit it. Or the writer of the headline was not the writer of the article, and just made something up.

More broadly (this article and beyond) all the dongle complaining is going to sound pretty backwards in the context of today + 2 years.

<comment> et-al For me and many others, it's about pushing the MBP towards more portability at the cost of power.

Laptop manufacturers traditionally have had two lines: a desktop replacement and an ultraportable one. Prior to the Retina MacBook: it was the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro. Thinkpads had the X-series and T-series.

Now, Apple has released a MacBook Pro that's not quite the total desktop replacement while requiring us to carry a bunch of adapters. I've mentioned this in another thread, but had Apple just called this recent release an update on the MacBook, most people would probably have been enthralled. Yay! More USB-C ports, a laptop you could type on your lap, and more processing power!

For all of us criticizing the new release, it's not because we don't care for portability or USB-C, but because Apple has hindered the user experience for existing Pro customers. Dongles and adapters are mental lines item that a professional should not have to be concerned with. We want a laptop that can handle it all and we just want Cook et al. to make the MacBook _Pro_ again.

<comment><USER17> Mostly I agree, except they're not sacrificing a lot of power compared to competitors, with the exception of not using certain power hungry components (GPU, RAM). Apple is clearly moving, as you have noted, to ALL portable computers prioritizing portability over raw power. This is something I agree with, and something others don't, but it's not a "disappointment" as fact so much as a difference in philosophy.

As a professional GIS user and engineering drawing reviewer I theoretically should have opted for a more powerful laptop to replace my work machine this fall, but instead went with the smallest, lightest machine my company was able to provide that still met my day to day usage needs. I travel a lot and portability was high priority. For me, Apple is on the right side on the portability/power curve.

<comment> et-al You're right, it's a difference in philosophy (and was emphasized in today's Job's email post[0]). Everyone brings a different set of needs to a laptop, and for you, it's worked out alright.

However, I do feel they've left a lot of professional users out in the cold as they try to capture more of the consumer market. How this affects their brand and goodwill remains to be seen; especially when people are already paying top dollar.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12864727](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12864727)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I have been trying to figure out how will Apple survive this crisis and someone's comment mentioning thinness makes me actually get the whole purpose of this MBP release.

This MBP has two immense features: 1) the introduction of a touch interface; and 2) enough thinness to make the MBP mainstream instead of a high-end pro device.

(They could not pack computing power AND make the MBP thinner).

The next version will be a simple hardware update (cpu, gpu, memory, etc.) but this laptop will now be the defining trend of things to come. More touch, more slim, more mainstream.

The rest of the industry (e.g. professionals) will have to rely on the extension port (usb-c) for everything else.

So stop whining that Apple is abandoning its core customers. Because it is abandoning them. And the future that MBP is taking on is for an entirely different set of customers. (Deja Vu anyone?)

<comment><USER19> >This MBP has two immense features: 1) the introduction of a touch interface; and 2) enough thinness to make the MBP mainstream instead of a high-end pro device.

is there anyone on earth who actually cares about a few mm of thinness? this angle has always boggled my mind, i've never in my life thought 'boy, this laptop sure is great, but i wish it were _thinner_ '

<comment><USER13> I do? I'm a professional user and I used a MBA for years bc I travel a lot. I had a VM, Sketch, Illustrator, and lots of other power hungry tools running. Last year I switched to a MacBook bc I couldn't handle the shitty MBA screen.

It worked, but I'm excited I can now afford, in terms of bad space, a more powerful laptop (with Touch ID, a larger screen, retina, more RAM, faster processor, bigger HD, bigger trackpad, better keyboard, touch bar).

I'm very excited for this release.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Honestly I have always loved 2013 15'' MBP with SSD and as a developer I don't see that changing.

<comment><USER21> People complain, but eventually they will anyways buy another Macbook Pro, because that's the machine the love. The physical outfit, display, operating system, speed, the way it just wakes up when you open the lid, touchpad and so on. It is easy to find compelling alternatives when you are just looking at the specs, but it is hard to believe those in love with their MacBooks would be as happy with any other brand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Click bait title? the air doesn't have the retina display, which is an important differentiator.

<comment><USER23> It does say "on the inside", which at least to me implies things like the processor and RAM and not the resolution of the screen (although I suppose opinions on this could differ)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> A bit off-topic, has anyone replace their desktop setup with just a 15inch MBP(not external monitors) for the sake of simplifying things, how was your experience?

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm seeking a replacement for my early 2011 MBP (retro-fitted with more RAM, an SSD as the primary disk and a 1tb swapped in-place of the DVD drive). I'd like to upgrade for a Retina display and something faster and lighter than 2011 parts, but this refresh left me questioning whether buying this generation will be a mistake given all the blowback. Seems they may rectify some of this in 2017. So I can't wait - but buying a 2015 model seems like it may be the better value to avoid dongle hell and swapping out multiple power bricks for the new connector.

</comment><comment><USER25> Not 1 samsung part in ifixit article.

</comment><comment><USER26> The real question is, does it slice my cheese as well as the Air does? I like it thin.

</comment><comment><USER27> I first read the title as "The $1,499,2016 MacBook Pro" and thought -- wow, things certainly have escalated in the world of Apple's premium pricing strategy.

<comment><USER28> Yeah, I read the same and I was expecting a story about some Arab sheikh ordering gold-plated, diamond-encrusted MacBook Pro :)</comment></comment>


Female shark learns to reproduce without males after years alone - <AUTHOR> https://www.newscientist.com/article/2118052-female-shark-learns-to-reproduce-without-males-after-years-alone/ <comment><USER2> How exactly did she _learn_ to do this? Is there a shark manual on asexual reproduction that she has been boning up on?

<comment><USER3> She probably didn't and that makes the headline clickbait. At the end of the article it points out that we probably just haven't observed this because we aren't looking for it. Sharks are known to produce offspring asexually.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> >One possibility was that Leonie had been storing sperm from her ex and using it to fertilise her eggs. But genetic testing showed that the babies only carried DNA from their mum, indicating they had been conceived via asexual reproduction.

In this form of asexual reproduction are the babies genetic clones of the mother?

<comment><USER5> From BBC via Google's infobox;

      Asexual reproduction needs only one parent, unlike sexual reproduction,
      which needs two parents. Since there is only one parent, there is no
      fusion of gametes and no mixing of genetic information. As a result, the
      offspring are genetically identical to the parent and to each other. They
      are clones.

<comment><USER6> I haven't figured out if it is all sharks or not, but apparently in many previous observances the offspring have only been half clones of the mother. The genes all come from the mother, the offspring just ends up with less genetic diversity than the mother. The technical term is "automictic parthenogenesis". [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthenogenesis#Automictic_par...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthenogenesis#Automictic_parthenogenesis)

<comment><USER7> >just ends up with less genetic diversity than the mother

"just"...

In humans, even a small loss in genetic variability such as cousin mating 1.5% is bad enough that we have laws against it in nearly every society.

Charles II, the last Habsburg king of Spain, had lost 25% genetic diversity and was mentally and physically disabled, and infertile. This genetic loss is equivalent to parent-offspring or sibling mating.

Some animals, like lab mice, can survive without genetic diversity, but they are much less fit and difficult to raise. Your half clone would have lost nearly 100% of its genetic diversity. A near-full clone mechanism exists which would preserves genetic diversity. We'd have to sequence this shark to find out.

<comment><USER8> >In humans, even a small loss in genetic variability such as cousin mating 1.5% is bad enough that we have laws against it in nearly every society.

I thought this sounded suspicious, so I looked it up, and it's not true. Cousin marriage is legal in all of Europe, Australia and New Zealand, South America, Canada, Mexico, the Middle East, Russia, and India.

In The USA, cousin marriage is allowed in 17 states. But 40 out of the 50 states allow cousin sexual relations and cohabitations.

The only places in the world that cousin marriage is illegal is in China, Korea, Japan and some states in the US.

Whatever you think of cousin mating, it's just not true that "we have laws against it in nearly every society." In fact, just the opposite, it is allowed in nearly every society.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Parthenogenesis...

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

<comment><USER10> Parthenogenesis is a natural form of asexual reproduction, though pretty sure it is not the ONLY form asexual reproduction.

My guess is at this point it maybe unclear exactly what is going on.

<comment><USER9> "Mum's genes get passed down from female to female..."

That's the clue. Female to female === Parthenogenesis.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Dr. Ian Malcolm: John, the kind of control you're attempting simply is... it's not possible. If there is one thing the history of evolution has taught us it's that life will not be contained. Life breaks free, it expands to new territories and crashes through barriers, painfully, maybe even dangerously, but, uh... well, there it is.

John Hammond: [sardonically] There it is.

Henry Wu: You're implying that a group composed entirely of female animals will... breed?

Dr. Ian Malcolm: No. I'm, I'm simply saying that life, uh... finds a way.

<comment><USER12> Life imitates Art.

<comment><USER6> The author wrote life into the art. Amphibian DNA was stuck into the dinosaurs to make it harder for critics to criticize the parthenogenesis in the book.

Amphibian parthenogenesis is well documented:

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

<comment><USER13> The book did not feature _parthenogenesis_. It featured _protogyny_. Some individual females became male and bred with the individuals that remained female.

This has been observed in West African common reed frogs ( _Hyperolius viridiflavus_ ), as a result of population pressure. If the pond is a taco fest, some of the frogs bring sausage.

This is actually more common in fish than in amphibians, but the book used amphibian DNA.

<comment><USER14> I'm confused why you are downvoted - you appear to be correct.

<comment><USER15> the taco fest sausage thing might have upset some people, I didn't downvote but does seem somewhat gross.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> While this is fascinating I still can't believe we still have never observed many shark species giving birth particularly Great Whites.

</comment><comment><USER17> Learns how? Horrible title. As if the shark tried many times but finally discovered this one simple trick...

</comment><comment><USER18> (serious question) Do any genetic algorithms take something like this into account? Seems like it could be a good way to increase the odds of furthering successful generations.

<comment><USER19> IIRC, it's common for GAs to have variability as the only source of variation, not crossbreeding. And those that do use crossbreeding usually don't have a concept of the "sex" of an individual algorithm. So, crossbreeding of what are effectively two haploid gametes (a polar body isn't exactly a gamete, but...) from the same diploid individual when mates of the opposite sex are in short supply isn't something that would be directly applicable to most genetic algorithms.

You _could_ build a framework for evolving genetic algorithms where this would be relevant and meaningful, but I'm not sure there is any good reason to bother with all the complexity that would be necessary.

<comment><USER18> Gotcha. It's not that genetic algorithms are meant to emulate the real-world, but rather that they're inspired by it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > _A female shark separated from her long-term mate..._

Aw. Do most sharks exhibit long-term pair bonding?

<comment><USER21> Some possibly do ([http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/9/3/20130003](http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/9/3/20130003)), but many of the animals that are said to be monogamous are only ever proven to be 'genetically monogamous'.

It's hard to prove whether one male's sperm simply outcompetes other sperm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Parthenogenesis. A word I first saw in a Canned Heat album ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEaIiB4UV20](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEaIiB4UV20) love the jaw harp solo!). Then I asked my bio teacher about it and she explained it. I figured it was something that only happened in "really simple organisms" but then learned it was not uncommon amongst some animals.

<comment> david-given e.g. the New Mexico Whiptail Lizard, a.k.a. the 'Leaping Lesbian Lizards':

[http://guardianlv.com/2015/06/lesbian-lizards-a-hybrid- speci...](http://guardianlv.com/2015/06/lesbian-lizards-a-hybrid-species-out- of-new-mexico/)

They get the nickname because despite every member of the species being female (and, except for minor mutational differences, clones of each other), they still engage in faux-mating behaviour with each other --- they need the stimulation to ovulate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> this was reported first in 2011: [https://www.jumeirah.com/en/jumeirah- group/press-centre/pres...](https://www.jumeirah.com/en/jumeirah-group/press- centre/press-releases/press-releases-for-2011/jumeirahs-zebra-shark-is-first- of-its-species-to-reproduce-through-parthenogenesis/)

<comment><USER24> The main point in this article was that the shark did this after having had babies with a mate before. That hadn't been observed in this species.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Probably stupid question, but I'll ask since others may have the same question: Would all the offspring in this case be female?

I'm blanking on my old biology knowledge that's stored somewhere in the cold storage of my brain haha

<comment><USER26> Like the other comment said, depends on the sex determination system. Which in fish can get complicated -- there are quite a few types of fish which undergo sex changes as a result of the environment they find themselves in. Anglerfish (which become male if they find an adult female early in life, otherwise female) are one well-known example. Clownfish are another: they live in hierarchical groups where the dominant fish becomes the lone female and breeds with the top male. If the female leaves or dies, the previous top male then becomes female and breeds with the previous #2 male.

<comment><USER27> Sequential hermaphroditism (sex changing) is in a different category. Sex changing fishes still need a partner to have babies. Not the case here.

Another posibilities could be that sperm where provided by other shark species in the same tank (The male DNA being discarded later) or that some chemical compounds where released in the closed water system, triggering the ovocite growth.

Finally, we could hypothesize that some old stored sperm could act as stimulus for oocyte division, even if the male cells were too old and damaged to be functional.

If you want to read some more about sex changing in fishes you can take a look to this article, for example:

 _P.Valdes, A.Garcia-Alcazar, I.Abdel, M.Arizcun, C.Suarez & E.Abellan. Aquaculture International. 2004, Vol 12(4). Seasonal Changes on Gonadosomatic Index and Maturation Stages in Common Pandora Pagellus erythrinus_

(Yes, I'm the same P.Valdes)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Recommend reading [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Red_Queen:_Sex_and_the_Evo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Red_Queen:_Sex_and_the_Evolution_of_Human_Nature) if you are interesting in the topic. It goes way in depth into this and many other common reproduction strategies.

</comment><comment><USER29> Fascinating, some reptiles and plants do the same.

</comment><comment><USER30> Well I'll be damned.</comment>


The CIA sent 4 operators on a spy mission targeting China. None came back - <AUTHOR> https://news.yahoo.com/the-cia-sent-a-team-of-four-operators-on-a-spy-mission-targeting-china-none-came-back-090041816.html <comment><USER2> Wow, this article seems oddly detailed regarding CIA structure? It was an interesting read.

So, this disaster (back in 2008) basically made underwater ROVs look like the answer everyone could have guessed they were. Incompetent management at SAD (SAC) (lol?) basically did their/his incompetent job by forcing unprepared staff into the middle of a tropical storm, where they sadly disappeared, and thus helped ensure that humans were further distanced from missions with such parameters in the future.

> Deployed from the small ship, the two divers would emplace a "pod" disguised > as a rock and stuffed with classified technology just beneath the surface of > the waves. It would then passively monitor electronic signals of Chinese > naval ships.

OK, so it's just about placing a device on one island.

> The mission wasn't just about placing a device on one island, it was a proof > of concept that would demonstrate the continued relevance of the CIA's > Maritime Branch.

...but the mission to place the device on one island _was_ where all these hopes had been pinned? This part wasn't super clear. But yikes if so.

> The CIA's Maritime Branch was essentially in competition with the Navy, and > this mission would help prove its worth.

Phew. I don't envy them this position. SAD (SAC) is like an entire armed forces structure on its own. It's probably easy for the Navy to laugh and claim redundancy. Though looking back to e.g. Vietnam, the deniability for the USG may seem worth the exchange for a little bit of annoying overlap.

I do wonder if people in CIG think they belong in a different organizational structure entirely...imagine running disinformation and propaganda, largely mental games compared to the very physical SOG, fully laden with Delta, SEALs, Russian helicopters, etc.</comment>


A choir decided to go ahead with rehearsal, now dozens have Covid-19 - <AUTHOR> https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-03-29/coronavirus-choir-outbreak <comment><USER2> They have discussed this ad nauseum. It's not airborne. It's designated as "airborne droplet".

I read an article from a epidemilogist that wrote about a very recent study of an isolation chamber for a covid-19 patient. They detected the virus everywhere on surfaces in the isolation chamber. This is consistent with airborne droplet spreading, since the patient was presumably coughing and droplets were being spread throughout the isolation chamber.

What they DIE NOT find was the virus in the air. If it's truly airborne like measles, it would be detected in the air itself, but that was not true. Thus, it is not airborne.

I don't have the source for this, because I probably read 200 articles a day like everyone else so it's lost in my history. But I actively committed this to memory and reassured me that this was not airborne, but rather airborne droplet.

<comment><USER3> This is an important distinction for experts who know the terms of art, but for regular people it is maybe misleading to keep insisting that "it isn't airborne".

It is traveling through the air, you can get it, through the air, if you are near another person.

I have seen this misunderstanding in real life. People who think an outdoor festival is safe because "it isn't airborne"

As well, at least one expert, in South Korea, states that it is possible to become aerosolized and actually airborne in the right conditions (many people, singing, shouting, in a small area). Source: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAk7aX5hksU&t=1559s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAk7aX5hksU&t=1559s)

<comment><USER4> When you tell people who have zero experience or understanding with/of this sort of thing, you end up accidentally convincing them they can only get it through _direct contact with an infected person_. Without the additional context it also conflicts with the explicit guidance for staying at least 1m away from people.

<comment><USER5> The "explicit guidance" is also minimally scientific: it varies from 1m in (parts of) Europe, to six feet in the US. These things are being made up on the fly.

There is no solid science for how far apart people should be, and there are so many complicating factors (what kind of room? how much airflow?) that any such guidance is a rough guideline, at best. Folks who are stringently trying to stay six feet apart from each other while walking down the street in Manhattan, for example, are more than a bit silly.

The GP is a reasonable statement of the current scientific knowledge: it isn't airborne, and you actually do need fairly intimate contact to get the virus "through the air". Spending hours together in an unventilated room is probably sufficient, even if you never get closer than 1m; conversely, it probably doesn't matter much if you pass right next to someone on the street(unless they cough directly in your face).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > One of the authors of that study, Jamie Lloyd-Smith, a UCLA infectious > disease researcher, said it's possible that the forceful breathing action of > singing dispersed viral particles in the church room that were widely > inhaled.

I am a doctor by _no_ stretch of the imagination, but I was a voice major in college and sang in choirs for 4 years. When you sing, you breathe in deeply, from the diaphragm, and hold the air low in your lungs. Properly, your abdomen will expand more than your chest. Moreover, you _hold_ the air in. Singing is not like breathing out at the doctor's office. You take a deep breath and then let that air out in a controlled manner over the course of a musical phrase.

That kind of breathing is exactly—and instinctively—what you would _not_ want to do if you were in some kind of miasma of pathogens. Imagine walking through a sick ward at a hospital, or even a cave full of bats. You would be trying _not_ to breath, taking only shallow breaths.

Again, I very well may not know what I'm talking about, with respect to disease transmission, but I think the forceful and deliberate _inhalations_ are more significant than the exhalations.

</comment><comment><USER7> My wife has sung in choir for years there's zero social distancing in them. You normally stand shoulder to shoulder while practicing and there's normally a person less than a foot behind you so, to me, spreading like this makes perfect sense.

</comment><comment><USER8> This seems like poor reporting.

Even droplet based spread (which is not airborne) can transfer over distances on to surfaces. This is why there is advisory for a 6+ ft physical distance.

That does not mean it is an airborne disease, as it seems the virus needs to survive in droplets.

It is no surprise to me that a choir singing could easily spread droplets on to surfaces and inadvertently touch their faces during that time.

Even a heavy breath that expels air and droplets from the lung can cause spread. That doesn't mean its airborne.

<comment><USER9> In the article they explicitly talk about this, the technical term is that it is spread by aerosols (basically, smaller droplets) in addition to droplets. This is similar to TB, which generally requires patients to stay in negative pressure rooms and their caregivers to wear N95 instead of surgical masks.

As with all things with infectious diseases (like asymptomatic spread) it's less useful to ask whether it's possible to spread in a certain way, and better to ask whether that way is a large driver of new infections. For hospital workers, maybe; for the general public, probably not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The public guidance on "airborne" vs "droplet" transmission is deeply harmful. Public health officials have too-narrowly defined the word "airborne". In choosing jargon over plain language, they've misled the public.

<comment><USER11> Just like with the masks and once again it's going to get people killed because when/if they do finally reverse their position/messaging people will not hear the correction or just harbor so much distrust they shut down all together. We are /still/ dealing with "It's just the Flu" people even with the president no longer saying that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This makes me sad and furious at the same time.

Anyone who has sung on staged, or acted, for that matter, knows that _there will be spit_. And it will fly far. Farther than this group separated. Furious because: You kinda should have known, choir leader.

<comment><USER13> Churches remain a huge transmission vector that nobody wants to shut down because it's a cultural touchstone for large parts of the community. Church choirs are probably just the most dangerous aspect of that.

It's much easier to point the finger at millennials on spring break (pro tip: millennials haven't gone on spring break for 10 years now), but this is one of those things where boomers are refusing to stop behavior that is enabling super-spreading.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> In this interview Professor Kim Woo-joo describes a similar incident in Korea, where a choir contracted the virus. He adds that 5um is the min for 'droplet' infection, and that if the droplets remain airborne they can desiccate, and shrink , and then move from 'droplet' to 'aerosol'.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAk7aX5hksU&t=923s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAk7aX5hksU&t=923s)

</comment><comment><USER15> [https://archive.md/n86y3](https://archive.md/n86y3)

</comment><comment><USER16> Can we assume that the virii can be suspended in the water vapor that is exhaled? If so, what effect does air temperature and relative humidity have? It was studied before that the infections spread fastest in areas where temperature is 8.72 degrees Celsius [0].

[0] [https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3074131/coro...](https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3074131/coronavirus- highly-sensitive-high-temperatures-dont-bank-summer)

<comment><USER17> Nit, but it isn't virii (doesn't make sense given etymology) It's viruses :)

<comment><USER18> It makes sense, but it's "wrong" if you're a prescriptivist ...

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plural_form_of_words_ending_...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plural_form_of_words_ending_in_- us) is pretty thorough on the topic I'd say.

<comment><USER17> > However, in computer enthusiast circles in the late 20th century and early > 21st, the non-standard viri form (sometimes even virii) was well attested, > generally in the context of computer viruses.

I think it's pretty funny that the incorrect usage is in computer circles. I have seen many engineer coworkers use the wrong -ii suffix (e.g. virii, statii) in order to sound "fancy" :eyeroll:

<comment><USER19> Computer engineers should start using a regexp like syntax:

1 virus

2 virus+

3 virus+

...

Then the engineer+ can also distinguish between multiple virus+ and no virus*.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A mathematical formula that predicts US elections with 87.5% accuracy - <AUTHOR> https://turingbotsoftware.com/posts/us-election-prediction.html <comment><USER2> Here is a quote from Segre's new biography of Fermi: "When Dyson met with him in 1953, Fermi welcomed him politely, but he quickly put aside the graphs he was being shown indicating agreement between theory and experiment. His verdict, as Dyson remembered, was "There are two ways of doing calculations in theoretical physics. One way, and this is the way I prefer, is to have a clear physical picture of the process you are calculating. The other way is to have a precise and self-consistent mathematical formalism. You have neither." When a stunned Dyson tried to counter by emphasizing the agreement between experiment and the calculations, Fermi asked him how many free parameters he had used to obtain the fit. Smiling after being told "Four," Fermi remarked, "I remember my old friend Johnny von Neumann used to say, with four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk." There was little to add." (p.273)

One can fit an elephant with four free parameters. That's the story of these curve fitting exercises.

<comment><USER3> I ask this in all seriousness- what?

<comment><USER4> In regression and curve fitting, you can add additional, often spurious parameters, and get a closer fit. A better fit does not mean you have a better model, it usually means the opposite, that you've overfitted the model, and that it's completely useless for forecasting and predictive purposes. This is why in machine learning, researchers are careful to separate training and testing data. This is just physicists roasting each other over the same issue.

<comment><AUTHOR> The model shown in the article is cross-validated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I would expect to be able to get 100% (on the training data) on this task. Shouldn't any sequences of election victories be easily represented with multiple sin functions?

I feel like the message I'm supposed to take from this demo is "Look how good TuringBot is! They can automatically find a function to match this data!" But the actual message I'm getting is "Symbolic regression is too hard for TuringBot!"

<comment><USER6> Indeed. Just perform an FFT on the data and encode the resulting coefficients in a closed formula.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> That's nothing, I can generate a degree 44 polynomial that predicts US elections with 100% accuracy!

<comment><AUTHOR> Now do that with cross validation and get a better result than the reported

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This commits the same fallacy that exists all over the place for time series data. This bites almost anybody who tries using time series methods for predicting equities returns.

Since you have a literal dependency between one data point and the next, you can't train your model using randomized data. So the default that people jump to is to segment their data with earlier data being the training set, and later data being the test set.

If your data is the result of a very well understood and controlled process, this works fabulously (see ARIMA and variants). But the more that the data relies on significant noise, whether that is pure randomness or Brownian motion ( _very likely the case with elections_ ), that methodology breaks down spectacularly. All you end up doing is overfitting to your test set instead of your training set.

<comment><AUTHOR> >Since you have a literal dependency between one data point and the next, you can't train your model using randomized data This is why the train/test split was not randomized, but sequential.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Uhhhh...This is the dumbest ad article I've read in a while.

<comment><USER6> Talk about overfitting...

<comment><AUTHOR> This is an out of sample result. 4 formulas were compared. Sure it may be an overfit, as any machine learning model can be, but the procedure that was used to generate this formula cannot be so easily dismissed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I thought this was going to be about Lichtman[0].

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

</comment><comment><USER10> Except that the Democrats of 1940 were much different than the Democrats of 1990, and the Democrats of 2020.

<comment><USER11> Everything is a time series.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Now repeat the same procedure on randomized data and see how often you can match or surpass this accuracy.

<comment><AUTHOR> As a rule of thumb, you cannot. I have tried to fit the Mona Lisa with the software (brighness as a function of x and y) and could not find anything. It performs poorly when no structure exists.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Maybe the other commenters tearing into this are on a higher plane of irony from me, but I want to point out that I'm 99% sure the article is meant as a joke.

<comment><USER14> Well, I really hope so. It doesn't really read as a joke, but on the other hand, they're bringing their impressive software to bear to attempt to predict 25 bits of data, and can't even do that very well. So I hope so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Nicolas Cage movies are missing</comment>


Producing industrial hydrogen from biomass - <AUTHOR> https://www.charmindustrial.com/blog/2019/3/17/making-grass-flow-like-water <comment><USER3> _" Obviously we just needed a steeper cone angle, so we fabricated one at 75° but it still jammed. Perplexed, we increased the angle to 82.5°—practically a straight pipe—and it still jammed. Thus began our surprise introduction to the field of bulk material handling, where entire books have been written and companies have been founded solely to solve this issue known as 'bridging', and the frequently-associated 'hammer rash'."_

This is hilarious I think partly because it's such a common theme in engineering or life in general. For some reason things that initially seem so benign and straight-forward end up becoming absolute rabbit-holes of startling complexity.

</comment><comment><USER4> Looks like they've got some bad Funnel Flow in the hopper. Mass flow is probably the desired flow regime. Using a non-conical hopper is probably a better idea and would negate the vibration, which can fail.

Typically only change the shape of the hopper in one direction at at time as you move down. This often leads to hoppers with an exit that is a slot and not round.

We've used these powder consultants before and I took a week long course on hopper design: [http://powdernotes.com](http://powdernotes.com)

Edit - another method we use to create empty-able hoppers: fluidization. Not sure if this fits with your processing strategy but it also mixes the powder somewhat which prevents size segregation of the particles. And this video is pretty cool:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=My4RA5I0FKs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=My4RA5I0FKs)

<comment><USER5> Could the grass be blown in? Leaf blowers move grass pretty easily...

<comment><USER6> I would imagine that leaf blowers operate at a much lower density of grass, in an open area where there's nothing for a grass blade to stick on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My initial thought was vibration, so I was happy to see that was the solution!

I've been in bed sick all day with a terrible cold and my sinuses are packed solid.

I had a headache and so out of bordeum tried using my black and decker buffer to massage my head and relieve my headache (I use the buffer as an awesome massager and modded it with a variable speed switch).

To my surprise it worked on the headache and also liquified my sinuses.

A quick google search turned up a few other people playing with vibrators for congestion and at least one patent.

Funny to come across this after experimenting with getting solids to behave at liquids via vibration all day.

<comment><USER8> >I had a headache and so out of bordeum tried using my black and decker buffer to massage my head and relieve my headache

I think the logical next step is to put a boxing glove on a sawzall.

<comment><USER5> Oh god, you just reminded me of this: [http://www.thebaynet.com/articles/0309/update-bloody- tragedy...](http://www.thebaynet.com/articles/0309/update-bloody-tragedy-in- lexington-park.html)

<comment><USER7> DIY Fucking Machines gone wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm skeptical of most bioenergy projects that involve growing things in a field. The best by far I've seen is seen is Brazilian sugarcane to ethanol. Sugarcane is around 8% efficient at converting light into biomass, for comparison corn which the US uses for ethanol is 1-2%. Of course you then have to process those into something else to allow us humans to make use of that energy, so real efficiency is lower.

Compare that to PV solar which is around 18% in a form that humans can use. Of course electricity is more difficult to store than ethanol and hydrogen but there's a big efficiency advantage that has to be made up.

Much better would be to use organic waste. People have to pay to get rid of that stuff so if you can make it your fuel there's money to be made. Hydrothermal gasification or liquification both seem promising for that.

<comment><USER10> (Co-founder at Charm) Fair points. I'm not going to defend corn ethanol - <USER2> process yields 10x more saleable energy per acre than corn ethanol. The energy crop we're currently field trialing is similar to sugarcane, with extremely high yields (and our process uses the entire plant, unlike ethanol). Of course, energy crops are only required at large scale. At small scale, there's plenty of agricultural waste available for cheap, as you mentioned.

PV certainly wins on efficiency compared to crops, but it's also relatively expensive (an acre of PV vs an acre of perennial crops). Also PV is quite unremarkable at removing CO2 from the atmosphere :]

<comment><USER11> Looks like Miscanthus grass. Although shouldn't it not matter? Why not partner with a corn grower and use corn stalk or chopped corn cobs? Or gasify cardboard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> So many questions.

How much geological sequestration capacity exists, how long term is the sequestration, and what is the cost of securing it at the necessary scales? Is feedstock local to sequestration formations, and if not, has the transport been factored in?

Why not biogas as a turbine feedstock and sell carbon neutral electricity on the grid (offsetting extracted hydrocarbon)?

What about hydrogen being (my understanding) an indirect plastic byproduct?

What was the drawback of monetizing bio char volatiles while selling the "waste" as a soil amendment products?

I only ask these because I very much want this to succeed and I'm glad to see this here. I get the feeling that the point is very much finding an economic basis for sequestration.

<comment><USER13> One of the Charm co-founders here. Great questions, and you're correct the point is to find an economically profitable basis for sequestration.

1\. In North America alone we have 32,000 gigatons of geological sequestration storage capacity... about 900 years of global carbon dioxide emissions. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_capture_and_storage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_capture_and_storage)

2\. We looked at generating electricity, and many others have built and operated biomass-to-electricity plants. The economics don't work out... electricity is very cheap. Most of the biomass-to-electricity plants in California are closing up shop now.

3\. Hydrogen may be a byproduct of some plastics manufacturing processes, but not nearly on the scale consumed.

4\. Yes, hydrogen _is_ a (cleaned up) biochar volatile! We consume most of the biochar itself as the energy source for heating the gasifier. Any excess biochar will be sold as soil amendment.

<comment><USER14> "In North America alone we have 32,000 gigatons of geological sequestration storage capacity"

I suspect that is a tendentious estimate, considering no indicative amount of CO2 has yet been geologically sequestered and observed for effects. The wikipedia article has a graphic with CO2 being pumped into a "deep aquifer".

<comment> semi-extrinsic Well, we've had the Sleipner CO2 injection in the North Sea going since 1996 at close to 1 million tons per year, with extremely close monitoring including 4D seismic. There's hundreds of scholarly articles out there with field data and modelling of that case. I think we have some pretty good estimates of how it works by now.

<comment><USER14> Thankyou, then that is one useful test project. I hold doubts towards what seems to be mostly oil company sponsored research. It is one thing to have estimates for massive geological capacity for CO2 storage, a different thing to claim that capacity exists and that an environmentally sound industry could be developed to fill those, seismically sensed, deep subterranean environments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I get the desire to turn biomass into vehicle fuel. I don't get the desire to involve hydrogen.

Biomass-derived syngas has to be substantially better in energy density and efficiency than any kind of hydrogen.

The leading industrial use for hydrogen is in oil refining, so if you outcompete conventional steam reformed hydrogen on price, you're just going to make gasoline cheaper.

<comment><USER10> (Charm Co-founder here) Ultimately our goal is large-scale CO2 removal and sequestration with biomass. This process produces an excess of energy which we can sell in various forms to fund the process. We chose to start with Hydrogen simply because it's quite easy and has a large industrial market.

Also note that the largest use of hydrogen (~50%) is actually for ammonia production as fertilizer, which alone is responsible for 1-2% of global CO2e emissions. Decarbonizing that industry would be fantastic.

<comment><USER15> According to Dept. of Energy:

US annual hydrogen production is approximately 10 million metric tons (1.0E+10 kg), 68% of which is used in petroleum processing.

Given that worldwide production of hydrogen-derived ammonia is 140 million tons in total, compared with hydrotreated gasoline coming in at about 2000 million tons worldwide, it doesn't appear that the U.S. is an outlier.

Decarbonizing the fertilizer industry _would_ be fantastic. Wind-powered and solar-powered electrolyzers are already starting to do that job, perfect uses for intermittent energy sources. I'm skeptical that your process can realistically make more fertilizer than it consumes.

I find it a little disturbing that you boast "Hydrogen's quite easy" with this little public documentation to back up your claims. Be real careful here: you don't want to be the next Theranos.

You have lightning trapped in a bottle because of your luck in landing a YC slot. I encourage you to consider pivoting technologies away from anything involving hydrogen. Since you're such a big fan of ammonia, why not just go straight for that? Getting your nitrogen from the plant instead of from the air might stand a better chance to beat Haber-Bosch.

<comment><USER13> Charm co-founder here...

(1) electrolysis is much more expensive than steam methane reformation, so unfortunately I don't think it's gaining much steam as a real hydrogen production method.

(2) typical ammonia fertilizer application is 0.125 tons/acre/year at a price of $500/ton = $62.50/acre/year. Our grass and gasification process yields $1,750/acre/year worth of hydrogen... so roughly a 28:1 financial return on the fertilizer input which is probably pretty close to the EROI (Energy Return on Investment)

(3) To clarify "hydrogen is quite easy"... not on an absolute basis (which is quite hard), but relative to other products that could be produced. For example, you mention ammonia, but ammonia production has enormous economies of scale benefits from complex compression systems and pressure chambers... if you run the math it doesn't work out as favorably as hydrogen, and it's substantially more complex and difficult.

(4) We are funded by an amazing group of angel investors, but that does not include YC.

<comment><USER15> (1) You should check out [https://wcroc.cfans.umn.edu/wcroc-news/ammonia- wind](https://wcroc.cfans.umn.edu/wcroc-news/ammonia-wind) (the title specifically mentions "gaining momentum"). (Bear in mind this technology works by making H2 first from electrolysis). There's a half-dozen more of these research groups. Wind and solar electrolysis are sensible because they can be placed next to ammonia consumers that currently have to have ammonia shipped in from thousands of miles away. Unfortunately, your technology is tied to CO2 injection wells, which aren't all that common outside the western US.

(2) I'd love to see your math, but assuming it's not available, let me show you my math: Assume 6000 pounds per acre per year yield of wet grass. Say that's 5000 pounds dried. Model grass as 100% cellulose, which is 6% by weight hydrogen. Assume 100% process efficiency, where you get all the hydrogen out, and it's magically compressed. 300 pounds of hydrogen sounds like a lot, but according to wikipedia, is only worth about 32 cents a pound at the pipe. So my numbers show $100/acre/year. The value goes way up at the "pump", but that's because of transportation infrastructure that neither you nor your competition provide. That also assumes free injection of low-pressure waste CO2, which is not only a fantasy, but presumably ties your process to a location far away from your target market for the H2.

(3) Ammonia solves your hydrogen storage and transmission problem, so my math shows it's way favorable, especially since you're triply tied to a CO2 injection site, fertile acreage to grow your grass, and an H2 consumer. Picking ammonia makes cost-effective transportation to the consumer possible. Realistically, you'd react the ammonia with CO2 to make urea, which is way better than ammonia for both transportation costs and market demand.

(4) Didn't say YC funded you, but you were in their demo day, hence my mention of the YC slot.

<comment><USER13> (1) When we investigated this last year the ammonia synthesis capex looked untenable and we didn't see a path to lower that capex. Re:injection wells... they are super common in Texas/Louisiana region as well, which happens to be where most of the US refining capacity and ammonia production is located, so we're very near customers there.

(2) 6000 dry lbs/acre/year = 3 dry tons/acre/year which is an extremely low yield. Even miscanthus and switchgrass get over 10 dry tons/acre/year, energy cane gets to 20 dry tons/acre/year and our grass gets to 25+ dry tons/acre/year. So that brings your $100/acre/year up to $800+/acre/year. Then for the chemistry it's important to note that much of the hydrogen gas produced is actually coming from H2O that reacts with carbon in the cellulose to produce 2 H2 + CO2. So, stoichiometrically you get significantly more than the elemental hydrogen content of the grass itself. That gets you another factor of 2 or so... and then we're at the $1750/acre/year mentioned in the parent comment.

(3) Agreed the transportation costs are better for ammonia, but we aren't actually transporting the hydrogen except over a feeder pipe into a refinery or ammonia plant. It's cheaper and simpler to transport the grass as opposed to the hydrogen, mostly because you get to avoid the pre-transport compression energy and losses. Again, as in (1) the issue with ammonia is the heavy capex based around Haber-Bosch pressure vessels and compressors... we didn't have any good ideas for reducing those costs, so there's no sense in competing there.

(4) We weren't at YC's demo day... not sure what you're referring to ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

<comment><USER15> (1) Since you're limiting yourself to the gulf region, it'd probably be responsible to disclose your CO2 injection costs, including the cost of compressing the CO2 to the necessary pressures. It'd also be responsible to either disavow or embrace enhanced oil recovery vs. other injection approaches: you're either devoted to reducing carbon or making gasoline cheaper, and you have to choose.

(2) If these numbers are accurate, you're doing yourself a disservice by burying them. 25+ dry tons/acre/year is amazing. And I thought the crab grass on my lawn grew fast. I seriously doubt your chemistry, however. Let's look at your three possible approaches (2b sounding the most like what you're claiming to do):

(2a). Charring: Hopefully using all that free low-grade heat from the refinery you colocate with, the cellulose cooks until all the hydrogens join with the ample oxygens in the cellulose and you end up with a char and steam. No hydrogen this way.

(2b). Steam Reforming: This tech works with natural gas because the C:H ratio is so low, and no oxygen is introduced that doesn't bring its own "dates". Because the C=O bond in carbon monoxide is so strong, you can leach off some of the H2. However, as soon as you raise that C:H ratio, or up the available oxygen, steam reforming fails and just becomes combustion. C:H in cellulose is 6:10 vs. methane's 1:4. And that's before the 5 oxygens (vs. methane's 0) ruin it further. No hydrogen this way.

(2c). Fischer-Tropsch (the original Hans and Franz): In a chamber about as expensive as your Haber-Bosch capex, you somehow convert dried grass and catalyst to a mix of H2 and CO, the latter of which you can convert into more H2. Doesn't sound like you're using this approach, though it could technically work if pressure cooking your grass didn't require ridiculous amounts of energy, and you had a way to separate the H2 from the syngas. How many MJ of energy is that? So, maybe Hydrogen this way.

(2d) What'd I miss?

(3) Ok, so your co-founder's protestations about making gasoline cheaper were unnecessary, and you co-locate with oil refineries. Instead of downplaying it, own it: grassoline is trademarked but not for the type of product you'd make. Makes sense to leverage someone else's existing capex, as long as they let you. Those oil guys are flush with cash, why are you distancing yourself from them? They'd love to have your CO2 if it's at high enough pressure.

(4) My mistake. Your timing was highly coincidental with Demo Day, technology looked like it could have been part of it, and the faulty assumption was mine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This article is about getting chopped up grass to flow through a hopper (so that it can be gasified for fuel).

If you want to read it don't get stuck at the top (the start makes it seem like the article is about gasification instead), keep going till the images start.

Side note: From read this article they desperately need some experts. They are re-solving solved problems, and not working on what their startup is actually about. (I should add that them seem to be aware of this.)

<comment><USER17> > Side note: From read this article they desperately need some experts. They > are re-solving solved problems, and not working on what their startup is > actually about. (I should add that them seem to be aware of this.)

That was my thought as well. These guys may have a viable business idea, but they don't appear to have any engineering experience at all, nor do they appear to understand that one can research for existing solutions, or hire/consult with experts. It doesn't bode well for the entire enterprise.

<comment><USER11> Looks like they forgot to proof read their website too.

"If you are want to consume carbon-neutral hydrogen, please reach us at email@example.com"

I wish them the best of luck, but I've seen the first wave of biofuels fail and pivot to selling cosmetics or go under (Amyris, Solazyme, LS9). Sure, this is different, but the economics haven't really changed. It's damn hard to compete against something you can pump out of the ground and has no price tag on its externalities.

Personally, I think more effort put into lobbying and activism is better spent. I know we have the technology to make carbon-neutral fuels. I sincerely hope that we transition to using something like EVs for all ground-based transport and biofuels for applications like jet travel that need the energy density.

However, it's the market and the economics that don't work out. And they don't work in a way that prevents you from having easy stepping stones to scaling up. There's basically no-one who will buy this commodity at small scale for a much higher price. You have to succeed completely or fail.

You can even look at startups using conventional approaches and cheap feedstock (Siluria with methane). 10 years and still working on their tech. These big commodity markets have huge players who have huge competitive advantages.

<comment><USER16> Hydrogen is a mistake anyways, they should make syngas instead. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syngas](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syngas) and then Substitute natural gas (SNG) [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substitute_natural_gas](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substitute_natural_gas)

And if you check the articles people already make those. I guess their "new thing" is using grass? switchgrass is usually considered the best plant for this.

I don't really understand why they are reinventing things that already exist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> In case anyone is curious as to how bio-gassification compares to electrolysis (or a hybrid process), I found this 2009 paper [1] that sums it up decently (at least with the technology available at the time):

(Note: SEK := Swedish Krone; currently ~$0.11USD and was roughly the same in 2009)

Abstract: "An integrated system for the production of hydrogen by gasification of biomass and electrolysis of water has been designed and cost estimated. The electrolyser provides part of the hydrogen product as well as the oxygen required for the oxygen blown gasifier. The production cost was estimated to 39 SEK/kg H2 at an annual production rate of 15 000 ton, assuming 10% interest rate and an economic lifetime of 15 years. Employing gasification only to produce the same amount of hydrogen, leads to a cost figure of 37 SEK/kg H2, and for an electrolyser only a production cost of 41 SEK/kg H2. The distribution of capital and operating cost is quite different for the three options and a sensitivity analyses was performed for all of these. However, the lowest cost hydrogen produced with either method is at least twice as expensive as hydrogen from natural gas steam reforming."

In addition to a dollar-to-dollar comparison, however, I think a Carbon-to- Carnon byproduct comparison is also warranted. If you don't have to pay for geo-sequestration (or the messy supply of grass compared to piped in water), is the small cost increase of electrolysis over bio-gas more than compensated for?

As an H2 advocate myself (as an industrial transportation battery alternative), actively looking to boost H2 fuel supply infrastructure, I would be interested to hear from Chimere (OP co-founder) on this point. I ask, because I don't know the answer.

1.) [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S036031990...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360319908014481)

<comment><USER10> Interesting question - I'm not sure I know the answer but happy to speculate. Electrolysis certainly is a much tidier process than gasification, but everyone seems to assume it's powered by 100% renewable energy. What incentives exist to make H2 production decarbonize faster than the rest of the electricity grid? I'd expect electrolysis to only be fully carbon-neutral when the rest of the grid is, which will take some time.

On the other hand, our process is close to carbon neutral from day one (we've confirmed this with an external life cycle assessment), and will become significantly carbon negative when we begin sequestration. And as I mentioned elsewhere, sequestration is the primary mission and electrolysis is unremarkable at it :]

<comment><USER18> Thanks for the response!

So, my point is that in the bio-gas process, you are generation H2 + CO2 and using some proceeds from H2 sales to sequester the CO2 you produce.

However, with electrolysis (from renewable elect. plants), you aren't generating any CO2, so any profit that you spend on Carbon sequestration (from somebody else's process) would be a much more Carbon negative proposition overall.

All this depends on the H2 production cost as to which is a mor effective Carbon sequestration scheme, right?

In the paper I cite (I convert SEK to $): bio-gas costs ~$4/kg H2 (let's say this produces 5 kg of CO2), and electrolysis ~$4.50/kg H2 (producing 0 kg Carbon).

Now say it costs $0.50/kg for CO2 sequestration). In the biogas process, because of the cost to sequester the CO2 byproduct, your actually spending ($0.5×$5)+$4 = $6.50/kg H2 produced just to get Carbon Neutral. However, for electrolysis (without the mess) you're only spending $4 to be Carbon Neutral, and if you want you can spend $2.50 (which you avoided by chosing elect. over gas), to go Carbon negative.

These are rough numbers I guessed at based on a little googling. Am I far off on the real numbers?

I'm really not trying to be a pain. What you're proposing is still light years better than the greedy bastards reforming natural gas and pocketing 100% of the profits without giving a second thought to the environment. I'm just wondering if there might be a way for you guys to do even more good, more easily.

<comment><USER13> The economics you're looking at for biogas and electrolysis look roughly right to me. But our models suggest that thermal gasification of biomass can get down to $1/kg. So then you're looking at $4.50+/kg for electrolysis or $1/kg for gasification... and you can see how all that math changes.

Electrolysis also typically costs more than you'd expect as soon as you add the requirement of renewable energy supply. Usually the renewable energy supply is solar, which has a ~30% duty cycle. So 70% of the time your electrolyzer is sitting idle. This _crushes_ your economics and makes solar- powered electrolysis untenable in all of the analyses I've seen. We didn't have any clever ideas for how to change that situation, so after looking at it ~1.5 years ago we decided to look elsewhere.

<comment><USER18> Good answer, thank you. Like I said, it all boils down to the cost of H2 production for a given process. If you have a path to get to $1/kg H2, that is truly awesome!

Working very peripherally in this sector, I applaud your efforts, not only for the ingenuity, but also for the guts to consider environmental impact as opposed to stock-holder happiness from a profit margins perspective.

Honestly, it would be cool if on your site you showed a side-by-side comparison on your profit model compared to a competing natural gas reforming competitor's profit structure to demonstrate to customers how you are sacrificing some profit for environmental benefit, whereas the competition simply pockets the profit and turns a blind eye to the environment. For me, that would help me decide to buy potentially higher cost H2 from you, just like I choose to pay a higher premium for energy I know is renewable sourced.

The world needs more innovators like you folks. Good luck!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I remember seeing a video demoing how to make sand flow like water by bubbling air into it: [https://youtube.com/watch?v=My4RA5I0FKs](https://youtube.com/watch?v=My4RA5I0FKs)

<comment><USER10> (Charm co-founder here) I love that video! That fluidization phenomenon is commonly used in large-scale gasification or combustion processes, see: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluidized_bed_reactor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluidized_bed_reactor)

<comment><USER18> You probably know, but don't forget that compressing air is energy intensive. I'm not saying that the extra expense can't be marginalized - especially if you can dramatically increase production, I'm just pointing out that it's far from free. Just another fun engineering problem to tackle:)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I was just talking with a coworker about how we could theoretically modify our espresso machine hopper to avoid blockages. This is a great survey of bulk material handling options.

</comment><comment><USER21> How advanced is the hydrogen production prototype?

Looking at the Wikipedia page [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_reforming](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_reforming) this looks like a difficult process, even when using methane that is a very small molecule and is easy to purify. Big molecules in grass are more eager to produce soot that would block the machine, and grass also has other elements like Nitrogen and Phosphorus that may react with the catalyzer, and there is the ash problem.

Is using a grass more efficient that burning the grass and use the energy to produce Hydrogen with the standard method?

What about producing ethanol from the grass and then using the ethanol to make the Hydrogen? (Both parts are somewhat proven technology.) And ethanol is easy to move and purify than grass.

</comment><comment><USER22> "With the addition of geological carbon dioxide sequestration it becomes carbon-negative."

LOL, easy peasy then

Can you make "grass charcoal"? If so, just pile the grass high and cover in a layer of clay before burning, as is done with wood. Then bury the charcoal, which also improves the soil

<comment><USER10> (Charm Co-founder here) Certainly - you're effectively describing biochar ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biochar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biochar)) which historically has been used as both an energy source and a soil amendment. Using it as a sequestration method has gained some attention recently, though I have reservations.

For one, biochar is typically produced in small, low-efficiency reactors without proper emissions control (though this is solvable). The bigger issue is the high energy content of biochar (~30MJ/kg). Simply burying all of this energy isn't economical - it makes much more sense to store carbon in its oxidized state, and sell the energy that's released in the process (in various forms - we're starting with Hydrogen).

<comment><USER23> Did you try blowing air through the mass from bottom up? It can help loosen the grass chips, reduce moisture and prevent agglomeration and is useful as long as the air flux doesn't prevent the grass from funneling down.

<comment><USER10> Certainly we considered it. The problem is that on this prototype system we were operating with a sealed hopper. Thus any gas injected into the hopper would travel through the system and dilute our output gas stream. Also any oxygen in the injected gas would result in combustion rather than gasification.

<comment><USER23> The inside of the funnel can be lined with a tube punchered uniformly and use pneumatic nitrogen piped from above and outside of the sealed hopper? I'm getting these weird ideas in my head.

<comment><USER23> punctured^

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> If you want to have the grass flow like water, could you take a stream of water and add grass to it? The water could carry it down a wide pipe for example, you filter the grass from the water at the destination, then send the water back to get more grass?

<comment><USER4> Things start happening to grass when you put it in water. That might be OK depending on your other processing steps. A similar idea is pneumatic transport, where you add material to an air stream and then use a cyclone to separate the air and the grass.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Looks like the issue is the feed stock, non-uniform particle size distribution and significant differences in aspect ratio. All the different pieces are clumping up because of the particle interlocking. Maybe consider a grill sorter on the outlet of your size reduction system, allow <1cm particles through and rehandle larger particles back into whatever is chopping, or add secondary size reduction.

</comment><comment><USER26> Where is the evidence that carbon sequestration works?

<comment><USER13> Stanford Prof. Sally Benson's talk here is a great overview: [https://youtu.be/lIVwbSnD0AI?t=127](https://youtu.be/lIVwbSnD0AI?t=127)

Specifically, she talks about the results of the Sleipner Project in the North Sea, where they've measured leakage rates, etc: [https://youtu.be/lIVwbSnD0AI?t=1199](https://youtu.be/lIVwbSnD0AI?t=1199)

<comment><USER26> Still seems like this is a big guess that sequestration works over long periods, or at all at the scale necessary to be industrially significant. I'm inherently sceptical of anything hydrogen related due to the fuel's association with delay tactics from the carbon industry. Chevron would prefer we all not buy electric cars in hopes of HFC becoming a real thing which, obviously, is just a farce to keep paying them to produce, transport, and sell solid fuel. I think we are better off as a society not burning carbon at all, not looking for places to put carbon polution.

<comment><USER13> Charm co-founder here... We are not betting on hydrogen fuel cell cars. There is an existing $120B/year market for hydrogen used in the production of ammonia fertilizer and oil refining. That hydrogen is currently produced from fossil natural gas, and we are replacing that.

The Sleipner Project for geological carbon sequestration has been ongoing for 20 years with extremely rigorous measurement. We also know that natural gas is stored in geological deposits for millions of years, and in _vast_ quantities. I don't see a strong reason to be skeptical of long-term sequestration a slightly different gas in those same geological formations.

<comment><USER26> Natural gas wasn't injected down there by man. I can tell you're sincere but those are not the same things. This still seems like a giant guess. We're better off burning as little carbon as possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Couldn't they use a manure spreader to throw the grass onto a conveyor belt at a steady rate? Manure spreaders come with variable flow rate and beaters to shred the manure. If you threw a bale of hay in there it would tear it up and throw it nicely.

Here is an example:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhvMMK91P-8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhvMMK91P-8)

</comment><comment><USER28> Is there a reason you need to make it flow as opposed to simply conveying it mechanically? It seems like you came up with a complicated solution (making solids behave like liquids) when there are plenty of simpler solids handling techniques that could be used. For example a belt or screw conveyor.

</comment><comment><USER29> I like this. Slightly related, I am planning on building a house eventually and I really want to incorporate a domestic biogas generator for cooking. Something like [https://www.homebiogas.com/](https://www.homebiogas.com/)

</comment><comment><USER30> Can the ash be used as a concrete additive?

[https://precast.org/2010/05/using-fly-ash-in- concrete/](https://precast.org/2010/05/using-fly-ash-in-concrete/)

<comment><USER13> Charm co-founder here... possibly, but it's likely more valuable being sold as potash.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> you want to mix the grass with air so you have grass suspended in a flow of air just like a fluid. since you need to avoid oxygen blow this grass nitrogen suspension through some pipes and into your gassifier.

</comment><comment><USER32> 'Charm's mission is to return the atmosphere to 280 ppm CO2 profitably'.

i.e., 2,130,000,000 metric tons of CO2 (= 1ppm) * (410ppm - 280ppm) or some 276 giga tons. Evidently a modest goal.

</comment><comment><USER33> I would have loved to be there the moment they first tried a funnel and failed. Bulk material handling seems pretty interesting to solve.

</comment><comment><USER34> I wonder what dampening the grass might do, as this might reduce the volume of the grass (increase density).

<comment><USER35> First guess is it'd make it mat together worse by adding surface tension into the mix.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> what % of the generated H2 is currently consumed by the sequestration?

If no other energy source is available, does this % change?

</comment><comment><USER37> So how does the sequestration work?

</comment><comment><USER38> wouldn't it be easier to pelletize the grass before feeding it?

</comment><comment><USER39> why not blow the grass?

</comment><comment><USER40> > _Naively, we assumed that grass would flow somewhat like an ideal fluid,_

Perfect sustenance for spherical cows.

> _allowing us to use a simple, funnel-like hopper._

But, since that one didn't vibrate, it could hardly be called a grasshopper.

<comment><USER8> >Perfect sustenance for spherical cows.

Engineering students discover that real world specialized solutions are in fact optimized for what they do. Water is wet. More breaking news at 11.</comment></comment>


The Vatican joins the search for alien life - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/6536400/The-Vatican-joins-the-search-for-alien-life.html

<comment><USER2> "However, just as the Church eventually made accommodations after Copernicus and Galileo showed that the Earth was not the centre of the universe, and when it belatedly accepted the truth of Darwin's theory of evolution, Catholic leaders say that alien life can be aligned with the Bible's teachings."

Well, colour me surprised! Anything that we will find in the future, no matter how much it will totally demolish the bibles teachings, will be (and shall be) aligned with the bibles teachings, it doesn't matter how contorted the alignment will be.

To _not_ align with reality would be the end of the church, and since that would mean all these cats would have to get day jobs instead of picking peoples pockets you can bet that they will align.

The day the pontiff gets up, tells his following it was a sham all along and apologizes without reservation for all the past and present misdeeds, and then abdicates will be the day hell will - proverbially speaking - freeze over.</comment>


A list of April Fools' Day RFCs - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_Fools%27_Day_RFC

<comment><USER2> Ah, love that list! My favorite, though, is still RFC2324...

...and now, through the magic of Rack, you too can have an HTCPCP compliant web app: <http://github.com/toolmantim/teapot>

:-)

</comment><comment><USER3> Somewhat arbitrarily this brings LOLCODE to mind.

<http://lolcode.com/examples/hai-world></comment>


Languages a well-rounded programmer ought to know - <AUTHOR>

There's obviously a lot that goes into making a well-rounded programmer.  Examples include, but are not limited to, having a deep understanding of multiple programming paradigms, knowledge of different data structures and algorithms, understanding of computer architecture and operating systems and networks, knowledge of higher mathematics, and lots of experience actually writing code.
However, this post isn't about those things.  This post is just a very subjective sampling of very useful languages that are either useful for the ways of thinking they help you acquire or for the application domains in which they excel or for both.  I consider these the bare minimum of languages that a hacker should know.
Here they are (with double newlines because I couldn't figure out how to do single newlines on HN):
A LISP dialect (preferably either Clojure, Common Lisp, or Racket)
Python, Ruby, or Scala
Haskell, ML, OCaml, Erlang, or Scala (don't pick Scala twice)
C
A Bourne-derived UNIX shell (Bourne, ksh93, or Bash)
HTML/CSS/JavaScript (at least basic proficiency)
Optional: Any logic programming language
Agree?  Want to rip my eyes out?  Let me know! <comment><USER2> My take on the list would be to merge LISP with the other functional languages (even though I realize LISP in not a pure functional language, but then neither is Erlang, OCaml, ML, or Scala), and add a list of prototype-based language, like JavaScript, ActionScript, and Io. However, I do recognize LISP's significant cultural impact on hacker culture, so I'm torn about not requiring it.

Cool list, though. Will probably inspire me to go back and try to further my understanding of Haskell, which hands down has had the most disproportionate effect on my understanding of programming.

</comment><comment><USER3> my list is pretty different. i'm gonna totally exclude the functional language category. functional languages can do some really cool things and some people swear by them, but none of them are things that you _should_ know for professional purposes.

a low level language - C is the most important one by a million miles

a high level enterprise oriented language - Java or C#

a high level scripting language - Python, Ruby, Perl

Unix Shell Scripting (bash is the most popular i guess)

the frontend web stack - HTML/CSS/JavaScript

obviously people will have widely varying degrees of proficiency between those categories, but everyone should be at least familiar with those categories if not an expert in all of them. you probably should be an expert in one of them though. having a "native tongue" is a useful thing.

<comment><USER4> _functional languages can do some really cool things and some people swear by them, but none of them are things that you should know for professional purposes._

Thinking "functionally" has tons of holistic benefits for a programmer. It can also shrink your code base significantly.

Why ignore these gains if they can make you a better professional coder?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> C, C++, Java, C#, F#, some good version of BASIC. Anyone who discounts BASIC out of hand is a wanna be.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't believe C++, Java, and C# do anything positive to affect the ways a programmer thinks. That's really the purpose of this list.

I could add F# to the functional languages since, from what I understand, it almost exactly is to Scala what C# is to Java. But I don't view Microsoft- specific languages as languages a hacker needs to know. XD But what mental growth would BASIC facilitate?

<comment><USER3> Java and C# do facilitate the way a programmer thinks, but maybe not in the way you're thinking of. they won't make you a more genius hacker that comes up with the cleverest code. they'll make you think longer and harder about your engineering decisions and the ramifications they have on a large project.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> C?

<comment><AUTHOR> Whoops, was in the original before I discovered a single newline doesn't provide any whitespace on HN. Thanks!</comment></comment>