Micro: Modern and intuitive terminal-based text editor - <AUTHOR> https://micro-editor.github.io/ <comment><USER3> If you are a sublime person, micro is your terminal based editor. Built in sublime style multi-line editing, built in super simple plugin management, intuitive tabs and splits, keyboard shortcuts you are familiar with, clipboard works across apps, shifting the current line up or down one line at a time visually (bubbling I think it's called) etc.

Features that require plugins in sublime also come standard and are incredibly useful, like using it as part of a pipeline or my single favorite editor feature of textfilters, like the sublime filterpipes plugin. Meaning if I know how to do something using a regular cli tool, you just do that without having to do it in some new way. For me that means I can use Micro as an interactive front end for xsv for giant csv files of questionable provenance which require some hand fixing as well as some large scale transformation.

Since 2.0, the stability on enormous files has also been off the charts great. It will open and be ready to work on 1gb+ text files faster than wc can tell you how long they are.

Anyway, as you may have noticed, I am an enormous micro fanboy, sorry not sorry.

<comment><USER4> I don't see it (other than the color scheme). It doesn't come with a file manager or typeahead for the command interface. I've already hit a showstopping bug just trying to save a file. It's been a while since I was actively using Sublime but it doesn't feel like it at all.

It looks promising though. I would love for it to become feature-rich and replace the mess that is vim.

<comment><USER5> > I would love for it to become feature-rich and replace the mess that is vim

I'll admin vim has problems, but unless it supports vim-style keybindings and modal editing, it's not going to replace vim (there is an issue for that though [https://github.com/zyedidia/micro/issues/643](https://github.com/zyedidia/micro/issues/643))

<comment><USER6> Hey if I may suggest a different editor to you then: [https://github.com/martanne/vis](https://github.com/martanne/vis) It is vi like and combines modal editing with a cool regex command language (based on sam) and multiple selections. I've been using it as my daily driver for about two years now and it's been just great so far.

<comment><USER5> vis looks really interesting. It looks like it has a lot of potential, and fixes a lot of my gripes with vim (like non-posix regexes), but both the core application and the ecosystem don't seem very mature yet. I'll definitely give it a try, and maybe contribute but I'm doubtful I'll be able to use it as my main editor.

<comment><USER6> That's definitely a fair point. I just like to point it out to people, since it's flying under the radar quite often. I think it has a lot of the right ideas about what text editing should look like, and there are plans for some really exciting stuff in further develpment (like a client/server architecture and a language agnostic rpc interface).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've used micro for years and I love it because it's feature-ful on local and remote servers without needing to learn vim or emacs. And much more user friendly than nano. I've recommended it to a few dozen people

<comment><USER8> Might give it a try. Been using ne or Nice Editor when I cant be bothered with any of the usual ones. I have used them all and know enough to move around at least. It all depends on the system I am on.

The one benefit Emacs has always had is you can configure it once and edit files over SSH on any system. Not many other editors have this level of editing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Beware: micro sometimes inserts invisible characters into your files. I never figured out why, and it seemed to only be on Debian.

I lost 2 days to troubleshooting weird problems, until less revealed some configs had little droppings of random text sprinkled throughout. I opened them with micro and everything looked fine... then I opened them with nano and I could see and remove the extra characters.

Micro has a great user interface, really. I wish that I could use it, but I don't think it's wise and I will stick with standard nano for quick edits.

<comment><USER10> Do you remember what version that issue happened on? Were you using unicode characters or a non-UTF8 encoding? That sounds like an annoying issue and it would be great to fix it.

<comment><USER9> This was in 2018, not sure which version. UTF-8 across the board.

I don't remember the details, unfortunately. I think there was a pattern to it, like they were control characters or something. But it silently inserted them, and they were not visible within the editor, but they were visible in nano/less/etc.

<comment><USER10> Did they just appear as space characters, or did they actually not take up any cells in the editor? Currently some non-displayable characters are rendered as spaces, which is not ideal. I will look into displaying non-displayable characters in a special way (perhaps as `^@`, similar to how Vim does it, or with �, which is meant for this purpose).

<comment><USER9> I think they were appended to the end of each line, so unfortunately that would make it non-obvious that something was there. If they were rendered as spaces that would explain not being able to see it. Displaying them as � would be an improvement.

Again, this was awhile ago, but I don't think they were single characters, it was a sequence of characters.

<comment><USER11> Is it possible that it was a matter of changing the line endings? Some applications can be quite sensitive to different line endings… sounds suspiciously like that?

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I have a love-hate relationship with `micro`:

When it works i love it. I have used it as my go-to editor for at least the last 2 years for quick edits and remote development. It is distributed as a static binary you can put in your `~/.local/bin`, making it is easy to install on systems you don't have admin access to. It has decent syntax-highlighting, lots of themes, easy to configure and has a very gentle learning curve. I'd say micro is a better alternative to nano for beginner, with the exception that nano works better in more limited terminals like putty and cmd.

However, at times it simply stops being able to access the X clipboard. It doesn't support code folding. And after longer sessions it seems to run out of space on the LUA stack. (Some lua calls don't properly clear the stack when done it seems, though I haven't seen this yet on v2.0). I bring with me my keybindings everywhere, since they seem to have swapped around CTRL and ALT for word navigation and for moving lines of text, (This decision might be due to limitations in some terminal emulators). There is also a history of inactivity of the main author, leaving many PRs ignored for long stretches of time. Some are over a year old and has seen no feedback from the main author.

<comment><USER13> I just tested it, and it uses ctrl+left, ctrl+right to navigate words - <USER2> is the same on most interfaces of linux and windows. I'm not sure if it's reversed for you, or you're expecting the opposite behaviour

<comment><USER14> If I remember correctly, on osx/macos, the relevant keybinding uses alt-{left,right}. GP might be referring to that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Great! Maybe this will serve as an introduction to terminal editors for people who otherwise stray from the more advanced variety (Emacs, Vim).

But I wish people would stop distributing apps via `curl | bash`. It has a number of pitfalls[0] beyond security (there's a case to be made that it's no worse than the alternative on that metric), like the potential to execute an incomplete script download. We should encourage people to download the script first, or at least wrap logic in a shell function and verify a GPG signature on the payload.

[0]: [https://sandstorm.io/news/2015-09-24-is-curl-bash- insecure-p...](https://sandstorm.io/news/2015-09-24-is-curl-bash-insecure-pgp- verified-install)

</comment><comment><USER16> From the about page:

> As the name indicates, micro aims to be somewhat of a successor to the nano > editor by being easy to install and use in a pinch, but micro also aims to > be enjoyable to use full time, whether you work in the terminal because you > prefer it (like me), or because you need to (over ssh).

Personally, as someone who uses nano a fair bit, this really doesn't hit many of the reasons why I use it in the first place. It's much less "standard" and depends on a language that is not readily available on preinstalled on many platforms (like it or not, C is everywhere and comes "for free"). I'm not seeing many additional features compared to nano, either. And a bit of a personal preference: nano's keybindings sorta match readline/Emacs/Cocoa, so it works a lot better with my muscle memory.

<comment><USER17> Well, you don't need to install a compiler for it if your distro ships it (and there is a fully static binary that should just work right about everywhere)

<comment><USER16> I use computers I can't install a Go toolchain fairly often, either because I don't have permission to do so or Go isn't really supported for the platform.

<comment><USER18> No need to compile it yourself, for most common platforms you can download static binaries: [https://github.com/zyedidia/micro/releases/tag/v2.0.4](https://github.com/zyedidia/micro/releases/tag/v2.0.4)

<comment><USER16> That list is sadly a bit short :(

<comment><USER19> Genuinely curious what's missing.

<comment><USER16> I sometimes need to do work on niche and/or cursed platforms: iPhone, Linux 2.something for MIPS, a semi-functional Linux reimplementation, … Finding a Go toolchain for these is not easy, if it exists at all, but one for C with the right set of libraries (as far as I am aware, just ncurses?) if it didn't already ship with the OS or was available in some prebuilt form is not nearly as hard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Micro is excellent as a git commit editor. You don't have to leave your terminal, and you have full mouse support if you want to go back and change something.

</comment><comment><USER21> Looks nice. Being able to use the mouse to select and navigate text is huge for new and old terminal users. Theres a huge gap between nano and vim, and this is a good fit. Good defaults are important for first impressions and keeping users, and micro seems to be fully aware of that.

</comment><comment><USER22> Excellent. Exactly what I wanted: a small static editor that I can leave in my home dir and use in any weird docker image or small server. Common commands like ctrl-s to save, and no modes.

<comment><USER23> It's not exactly small, for a text editor. It's two orders of magnitude bigger than nano, for example.

<comment><USER24> To be fair, it should be three orders of magnitude bigger.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Have aliased micro to `mi`, so I don't have any excuse to use vi / nano over it. And frankly, it's just works — syntax highlighting, intuitive shortcuts, good input controls.

<comment><USER26> And here I would have thought "mu" would have been the preferred short name...

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Looks great! It seems to me like it's somewhere along the path from nano to vim/emacs, possibly at a sweet spot where there's a niche in the market.

</comment><comment><USER28> Do you know if it exists a perfect combination of vim + nano?

As a vim first user, that is what my wait is now only for.

Hope that some days someone creates "milli" that combines both ;)

<comment><USER29> Those two tools seem very different, I'm not sure what a combination of them would be. Would it be a modal editor? Would it support the shell functionality vim has? Would it allow plugins? It's like asking about the perfect combination of a bike and a plane.

Serious question, btw. I'm genuinely curious what you think a combination would look like.

<comment><USER3> I'll take a crack at it. It would be vim under the hood but big changes to the defaults in favor of first time users over experienced users to allow using it for basic features wihout knowing ANY of the eccentricities or history of terminal based editors or even modal editors. As a starting point, think evim defaults which smothly allow you into regualr vim when you are ready or feel like it.

Vim does things that I can't imagine many other editors doing, and the pletora of less obvious features like editing over ssh, vimdiff, TOhtml, print to PS, etc are just lovely.

Many would never learn those features at all, and power uers would be less likely to develop, but that seems like a starting point.

As a bonus for all you experienced vimmers, if you want to feel the real excitement of learning how to use an untuitive new tool, like back when you were green, open up easy vim in a terminal.

        vim -y

Now exit after writing something.

<comment><USER29> That makes sense to me. I only picked up vim a couple years ago and just bit the bullet and bought Practical Vim because I was drowning. Easier defaults, or a 'beginner mode' seem like a perfectly reasonable evolution.

Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Has someone built an LSP frontend for this editor? I'd be really interested in it since I mainly use nano but I'd like to add auto completions.

<comment> _-david-_ It doesn't look like it, but there is an issues asking for it: [https://github.com/zyedidia/micro/issues/1138](https://github.com/zyedidia/micro/issues/1138)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15360509](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15360509)

</comment><comment><USER32> Sadly no Vim keybindings plugin ;)

<comment><USER33> Seriously, though. I do like the simplicity and the overall approach, support for the mouse, and so on. I would use this. But I don't know if I can give up mode based editing... need to delete 3 lines? d3d. Search with /string. Get the next result with n. It's just so much faster than learning a million modifier keys. Maybe there's room for something in between this and Vim?

<comment><USER34> Just to play devil's advocate, these 3 examples don't seem much faster than Shift+(Del,Del,Del), Ctrl+F,string, and F3, respectively.

<comment><USER35> They are easily reachable from the home row. Thus less finger/arm movement.

<comment><USER34> It depends what you call the "home row" and where you keep your fingers.

If you expect to use these shortcuts (typically with the outer fingers of your hands) your hands will rest at a slightly higher position in your keyboard, with the pinkies near Esc and Del, and the thumbs near the spacebar. (Other fingers over the letters.)

I guess it depends on what you've trained yourself to do.

<comment><USER32> I don't think I've seen anyone with their fingers stretched out or diagonal like that as a 'home row' position, though. It makes much more sense to 'default' to having your hands somewhat straight and on the keys you're likely to press more regularly (the (center) letter row).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I was intrigued by what it meant by "modern", but I read the description and didn't find anything. Anyone have an idea of what that was?

<comment><USER37> Keep in mind they refer to modern for a terminal-based editor, not editor in general. Have you used any other term-based editors? They lack most of micro's features unless you install tons of plugins and extra configuration.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Really nice. I wish I knew about it before.

</comment><comment><USER39> The big questions, should I invest time in learning a new CLI tool?

I am not sure what is the use of Micro that I can't already do.

Do we really need an editor inside the terminal? My current setup vim + sublime.

<comment><USER40> Micro is more suited for people that are used to the Windows/Notepad-CUA workflow (Use Ctrl-C for copy Ctrl-V to paste, Shift-Arrow to select, etc.) and want to use that workflow inside the terminal instead of a full blown GUI application.

If you are already learned how to use vim Micro doesn't make much sense.

<comment><USER18> I'd think people used to Windows/Notepad/CUA editors would be most comfortable with the venerable Midnight Commander editor (mcedit).

The main issue is probably that Windows editors rely heavily on modifier-arrow combinations. It's quite fiddly to get them all to work correctly inside the various terminals, and there is not much that a application running inside a terminal can do about that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I've been using this for a few years as my primary text editor. It does such a good job at adapting modern VSC/sublime macros to a terminal.

</comment><comment><USER42> Micro is my favorite editor, I use it for everything.

</comment><comment><USER43> This looks nice! Has anyone created BRIEF bindings for this editor?

</comment><comment><USER44> Reminds me of Textadept.

</comment><comment><USER45> micro > nano

<comment><USER46> Well 1e-6 > 1e-9

<comment><USER47> Nine is bigger than six.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Why would I use this instead of Emacs?

<comment><USER49> It's probably much more intuitive when you come from editors like sublime / atom and similar.

<comment><USER50> "Intuitive" means knowing something without having learned it anywhere; it doesn't matter where you come from.

There used to be a very popular, though shamefully ignorant phrase going around decades ago that "the only intuitive interface is the nipple; all else has to be learned". Maybe people still spread this, but I haven't heard it in a very, very long time. Whoever came up with it clearly didn't know about the latching difficulties that newborns can have, and how we have full blown breastfeeding clinics to help moms.</comment></comment></comment>


To Trend or Not to Trend - <AUTHOR> http://blog.twitter.com/2010/12/to-trend-or-not-to-trend.html

<comment><USER2> Good post but sadly the title isn't very informative. I'd change it to, e.g. "Twitter response to allegations on censoring #WikiLeaks in trends"

</comment><comment><USER3> Maybe this will shut up the conspiracy theorists?</comment>


High frequency cryptocurrency historical raw market data replay API - <AUTHOR> https://tardis.dev <comment><AUTHOR> Hi, founder of [https://tardis.dev](https://tardis.dev) here. Happy to answer any questions you have.</comment>


Can Software Make You Less Racist? - <AUTHOR> https://blog.codinghorror.com/can-software-make-you-less-racist/ <comment><USER2> The article seems to reflect the prejudices and fears of a generation of Westerners who say the most absurd things for fear of being branded bigots. Same-sex marriage is an oxymoron (replace with correct word here) in most societies outside the Western world, because in the view of the cultures marriage is a relationship between couples and families which has the creation of children as its most important aspect and as we all know couples of the same sex can't _produce children between them_.

The simple truth is Western world have _redefined_ marriage in a way that suits the LGBT people, some would say they have _devalued_ or even _perverted_ the notion or definition of marriage. [https://youtu.be/ZVc1ab2RcMs?t=1m35s](https://youtu.be/ZVc1ab2RcMs?t=1m35s)

There is also the fact of many of the young generation having racial prejudices inspite of not being opposed to inter-racial marriage.

As to the question of whether software can make people less racist, if it tells them to think carefully about what they are telling the authorities it might make them less racist _to the authorities_ , but how much everyday communication is with the authorities?</comment>


Show HN: Medication Adherence and Healthcare Management App - <AUTHOR> https://mycoralhealth.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone! My team just launched our free medication management and healthcare tracker app on Product Hunt ! The app is designed to:

1) Promote medication adherence through customizable reminders 2) Keep you on top of your and your family's health by compiling all of your medical records in one place

We're eager to hear any thoughts or feedback that you have!

Let us know what you think! [https://www.producthunt.com/posts/coral-health- manage-your-m...](https://www.producthunt.com/posts/coral-health-manage-your- meds)</comment>


Our first data centers in Asia are up and running - <AUTHOR> http://googleasiapacific.blogspot.com/2013/12/our-first-data-centers-in-asia-are-up.html

<comment><USER2> Good news. Hope this also mean Google Compute Engine / App Engine will soon have regions/zones in Asia.</comment>


SEC Charges Rothenberg Ventures in Fraudulent Scheme - <AUTHOR> https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2018-160 <comment><USER2> "Without admitting or denying the allegations in the SEC's complaint, Rothenberg and Rothenberg Ventures agreed to settle the charges. The settlement is subject to approval by the federal district court for the Northern District of California which would determine the amount of disgorgement and civil money penalties. Rothenberg also agreed to be barred from the brokerage and investment advisory business with a right to reapply after five years. An SEC order imposing the bar will be instituted following court approval of the settlement" [1].

Besides blowing investors' money on lavish staff events, which is a dick move but not necessarily illegal, Rothenberg also invested "$5 million from Rothenberg Ventures' second and third funds in his own startup company, River Studios" [2].

[1] [https://www.sec.gov/news/press- release/2018-160](https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2018-160)

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

<comment><USER3> _blowing investors ' money on lavish staff events, which is a dick move but not necessarily illegal_

I'm not an expert on this topic, but if a limited partner agrees to something like "2 and 20" fees doesn't that imply that the other 98% of the money is to be invested and not used for expenses? 2% management fee on $64M assets is only $1.2M which is pretty small considering the size of staff they had.

It's less bad if the investors agreed to high fees, but it could still be embezzlement if the money was spent on personal stuff.

<comment><USER4> There is something called fund expenses. A GP can allocate part of the fund to pay towards expenses they deem to be fund expenses. For example, the audit would be classified as a fund expense. Most funds have an outside administration company that handles the money and approves/rejects these decisions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The "0 lawsuits filed" stat on his website now seems a bit foreshadowing

        150 Investments Made
        175 Limited Partners
        5 Years of Experience
        0 Lawsuits Filed

[http://mikerothenberg.com/](http://mikerothenberg.com/)

Maybe he can post a "Days since last SEC action" sign in the office.

<comment><USER6> From the page's title:

> The Actual Mike is not quite the virtual Gatsby

Jay Gatsby was a criminal. Of course he says he's "not quite the virtual Gatsby." But he's still essentially likening himself to a fictional criminal.

<comment><USER7> _Jay Gatsby was a criminal._ That's gray. It's hinted and perhaps likely that he was a bootlegger. As that was legal before prohibition and after, it's hard for me to morally judge him a criminal what with his character never having been charged and convicted of any crime.

<comment><USER8> But legally...he was a criminal (probably).

Just like people who drove 80mph were criminals during the Emergency Highway Energy Conversation Act, but they weren't before or after that.

<comment><USER7> No, legally people who are convicted of crimes are criminals.

<comment><USER8> Hm, then there should be a name for someone who commits a criminal act.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I had two meetings with Rothenberg in 2016 before their troubles started and the whole vibe of the place seemed off.

The people who asked me to come in were "partners" who I had good conversations with, but when I came in it was only interns who took the meetings. Now, that's not crazy in the valley, but what is crazy is that the interns had no connection with the partner, had no idea the meeting was going to happen, no background on our company and absolutely no technical or market knowledge around Augmented Reality, which is what they claimed to be experts in. This was in both cases.

After the blow up at the end of 2016, I received an email from yet another "partner" in 2017 asking to meet up. I asked them if anything had fundamentally changed and this was the response:

"In many ways, everything has fundamentally changed haha.

If you're available though, I'd love for you and your co-founder to join us for a Warriors game next week. We're still waiting on the other series to wrap up, but we expect to have a home game Monday night. We have a box at Oracle Arena, and it would be great if you guys could come along."

So clearly they had no problems throwing money around. Seems nothing changed.

Really sad honestly.

</comment><comment><USER10> _Without admitting or denying the allegations in the SEC's complaint, Rothenberg and Rothenberg Ventures agreed to settle the charges. The settlement is subject to approval by the federal district court for the Northern District of California which would determine the amount of disgorgement and civil money penalties. Rothenberg also agreed to be barred from the brokerage and investment advisory business with a right to reapply after five years. An SEC order imposing the bar will be instituted following court approval of the settlement._

Fascinating, but not surprising, that it settled right away. I am curious whether the settlement details would be made available in any way.

<comment><AUTHOR> Whistleblower here. It took 25 months from when I reported the fraud until the settlement.

<comment><USER11> I hope you were well compensated for going out on that limb. Thanks.

<comment><USER12> the whistleblower gets some significant % of settlement

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm curious to know:

\- Does the firm and/or the individual have enough money? i.e. will the settlement, once paid, make investors whole?

\- Why does stealing $7 three times get someone a life sentence, but stealing $7MM once get zero jail time?

<comment><USER14> > \- Why does stealing $7 three times get someone a life sentence, but > stealing $7MM once get zero jail time?

It doesn't--stealing $7 isn't a felony, and no three-strikes state predicates a life sentence on three non-felonies.

But to address your general point: there are two different kinds of things. Criminal law isn't just about the effect, but the culpability of the offender. Is the offender a "bad person?" How bad is she? The outcome of killing a person can be anything from no crime at all to murder depending on the mental state of the person who did it--accidentally, recklessly, or intentionally.

"Stealing" is easy to prove and easy to understand as something intrinsically wrong, so we draw a harsh, bright-line rule against it. Financial "fraud," however, is much more complicated. With fraud, the actual transfer of money is voluntary. The crime instead relates to the _circumstances_ surrounding the transfer. What representations were made, etc.? In this case, the $7 million was "excess fees." What exactly is "excess fees" and why are they such a clear violation of social norms that the person belongs in prison?

That's why we have civil actions. Civil actions address a broad range of conduct that we want to discourage, but which isn't so obviously intrinsically immoral that we want to send people to jail over it (even when they involve lot of money). As folks correctly point out below, the underlying conduct _could_ support criminal prosecutions, which may still come. But the SEC's civil suit serves a different function.

<comment><USER15> Old news at this point, but there are probably plenty of people serving life for small theft in CA on the old law:

[https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Stealing-one-slice-of- pi...](https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Stealing-one-slice-of-pizza- results-in-life-3150629.php?utm_campaign)

<comment><USER14> California used to invoke the three strikes law where the first two crimes were serious felonies, and the third was anything. But not three misdemeanors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I went to Founders Field day in 2016, and I have to say from the vibe of that event this doesn't surprise me at all. It was literally like being in an episode of Silicon Valley.

I do worry what this means for their incubator program though. They've been one of the few funds willing to throw a lot of dumb money at VR projects that just sound cool, and I'm all for that.

</comment><comment><USER17> I think if you steal millions of dollars you should go to prison. And a fraud like this should have the same type of punishment as other types of theft.

<comment><USER18> > I think if you steal millions of dollars you should go to prison

Not in corporate America

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Can somebody explain whether this can still lead to criminal prosecution?

As I recall from the Theranos stuff - the SEC reached a similar settlement with Elizabeth quickly [1]. My understanding is that they want to protect the markets and get bad actors banned without years of trials. But then, the DOJ came in filed separate charges that will likely take much longer to prosecute, but have the potential for more severe punishment such as prison term.

So - is this a sign that more significant trouble is coming for Rothenberg?

[1] [https://www.sec.gov/news/press- release/2018-41](https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2018-41)

[2] [https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/theranos-founder-and- fo...](https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/theranos-founder-and-former-chief- operating-officer-charged-alleged-wire-fraud-schemes)

<comment><USER20> SEC cannot prosecute criminal charges. What they can do is build a case and hand it over to DoJ/FBI for actual criminal prosecution (which as you said can take years).

The taint of an SEC investigation is enough to scare away most investors from the entity though. Which is really helpful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I wonder if this precocious racket will pay out over Rothenberg's lifetime vs. just banking his pedigree and network on some boring low risk career track. He's currently ahead a few million but his reputation is toast.

<comment><USER22> I keep a file on my Dropbox titled "Where Are They Now?" for exactly this purpose. Whenever I get curious about this sort of thing I add their name, a brief description, and the date to a list.

I don't just do it for "bad" people, but for all sorts of people that become notable for one reason or another. For example I (somewhat) recently added David Hogg & Emma González to the file.

I'm hoping that it will prove to be interesting reading in 10-20 years.

<comment><USER23> Please share this in 5-10 years :)

Always interested in this kind of analysis. Even if it's just your opinion/anecdotes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> They seemed like clowns to me (including calling to ask us to come pitch, setting up a time, and then forgetting about it when we showed up). Seeing them at industry events they didn't seem like they knew what they were doing. So how did they get LPs?

<comment><USER25> _So how did they get LPs?_

I don't know what the pitch was prior to "I turned $100k invested in Robinhood into $20 million of paper gains" but I think I have a pretty good idea of the conversation after.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Sounds fun! Anyone move to IC engineer to tech VC without being part of a startup exit?

</comment><comment><USER27> There's also [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17804063](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17804063), which has a bit more background info.

</comment><comment><USER28> Did he really leave lorem ipsum text under his testimonials?

Cause google translate returns garbage... blah blah blah "Nam mourning for the Playstation notebook" ... what?

</comment><comment><USER29> 7 million sounds like a drop to settle for, plus likely a small fine.

<comment><USER30> yeah I've pretty much given up on the justice system.

if you have money regardless of how you obtained it, the law always favor those with capital for the most part. Unless you try to fight back against government's monopoly on violence....drug traffiking being a major competition, it makes sense why harsh sentences are handed out for drug dealers while white collar criminals that inflict damage to millions of people all over the world gets a slap on the wrist.

<comment><USER31> > government's monopoly on violence

Can I get a source on this?

<comment><USER32> This is a sort of tenant of the modern state if you look at it a certain way. Ultimately the threat of violence is invested in the state to ensure the law is followed.

It is not a pitchfork and torch mob that should come after you should you appear to have committed a serious crime, but rather the government's police agencies that will come to arrest you, very physically if need be.

See also [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence)

<comment><USER31> I see, monopoly on violence is a legitimate concept in the political/public sciences. I think "monopoly" has several definitions depending on the field.

Thanks for the clarification + source.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> %s/Rothenberg/Rothstein/g</comment>


The Coming Ice Age: A true scientific detective story (1958) - <AUTHOR> http://harpers.org/archive/1958/09/the-coming-ice-age/ <comment><USER2> Why is this something to bring up? I ask because a standard practice in climate warming denialism is to argue that scientists are undecided about the issue, or change their minds frequently, and point to the handful of scientific articles which postulate a coming Ice Age.

In this case, research after the intriguing hypothesis of Ewing and Donn shows that it's not what happened.

For example, from Science (1964), [http://www.sciencemag.org/content/145/3633/707](http://www.sciencemag.org/content/145/3633/707) :

> Pollen analysis of radiocarbon-dated samples from the arctic coastal plain > of Alaska shows that vegetation of 14,000 years ago reflected a climate > colder than the present, and that there has been a progressive warming, > culminating in the present cold arctic climate. The record indicates that > the Arctic Ocean has been covered with ice since the time of the Wisconsin > glacial maximum, suggesting that the essential condition of the Ewing and > Donn hypothesis for the origin of ice ages, that the Arctic Ocean be ice- > free up to 11,000 years ago, cannot be met.

Ewing and Donn write (quoting from Harpers):

> "The answer, we believe, is chat [sic] until a million years ago, the North > Pole was not in that landlocked Arctic Ocean at all, but in the middle of > the open Pacific, where there was no land on which snow and ice could > accumulate, and ocean currents dissipated the cold.

Remember, this is shortly after we realized that the continents _could_ move. They based their conclusions on the magnetic record, but the magnetic pole also wanders and flips. The actual movement is nowhere near what's required for their hypothesis to be true. See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_polar_wander](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_polar_wander) for some background. See [http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/JB090iB09p07737/a...](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/JB090iB09p07737/abstract) for a paper which says that paleontological records show about 1 degree of shift per million years for the last 7 million years.

From what I understand, global warming entered the popular awareness in the 1970s-1980s. This aricle from the 1950s shows awareness even then:

> Although scientists do not agree on its significance, they have observed an > increasingly rapid warming and rising of the ocean in recent years. Warm > water flowing north has driven the codfish off Cape Cod to Newfoundland; > annual temperature has risen ten degrees in Iceland and Greenland; down here > winters are warmer; the Hudson River no longer freezes over as it used to. > It is part of the Ewing-Donn paradox that the next Ice Age will be preceded > by such a warming of climate.

<comment><USER3> It's interesting for a number of reasons, not least of which is it shows how the popular press gets science badly wrong, packaging it as a "just so" story that seems to a) explain everything and b) leave very few loose ends.

Concern that the natural cycles were taking us toward a new ice age was quite common in the 60's and '70's, and reasonably justified. We didn't know that people would be still burning coal in forty years time, much less such vast quantities, because nuclear was still a politically viable option despite various hysterical claims against it. And we had even less clue then as to how the climate system would respond to any perturbation than we do today, and we have relatively little clue today.

But a huge number of people think "the science is settled" with regard to climate change because the popular press tells them so. With regard to the _existence_ of anthropogentic climate change that's reasonably correct, but with regard to the _consequences_ it's complete nonsense, and this article from the '50's suggests why that is so: because popular accounts just don't convey the messy uncertainty of the real science. They pull a coherent thread out and make it sound as if we understand far more than we actually do.

This is not to say we shouldn't be building new nuclear capacity, and ignoring all the "green" groups who are protesting solar, wind, geothermal and biomass development (search for "environmentalists against $X" where $X is any industrial-scale green power and you'll see what I mean). We should be doing all those things, and we should be shifting taxes from income to carbon emissions. But we should remember that the science is a lot messier than it gets portrayed in Harpers and the like, and we shouldn't be so afraid of Denialists as to want to avoid acknowledging that.

<comment><USER2> There are any number of articles which give examples of how the popular press got it wrong on a scientific topic. If your conjecture is correct, then the submitter did a grave disservice by dropping a link to a 1950s article without any context. How do you conclude it wasn't an example of climate change denialism, meant to muddy the waters and instill confusion, or a case of simple trolling?

"Concern that the natural cycles were taking us toward a new ice age was quite common in the 60's and '70's, and reasonably justified"

Concern by whom? Among the scientific papers of the 1960s and 1970s, the majority view was for global warming. Quoting from [http://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/131047.pdf](http://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/131047.pdf) , "The Myth of the 1970s Global Cooling Scientific Consensus"; "The survey [of papers from 1965 through 1979] identified only seven articles indicating cooling compared to 42 indicating warming. Those seven cooling articles garnered just 12% of the citations." This is why I mentioned there were only a 'handful of scientific articles which postulate a coming Ice Age'. Thus, that stance _in the scientific literature_ was uncommon.

Among some of the popular press, there certainly were articles by Newsweek and Time on the possibility of a new ice age. (Or in SF, Larry Niven wrote "Fallen Angels" (1991) on the premise that anthropogenic warming was actually preventing an ice age from coming.) Then again, some of the recent popular press also had a lot of articles about the 2012 phenomenon, based on reaching the end of the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar - "The Crazy Years" of Heinlein. On the gripping hand, science popularizers like Issac Asimov understood the global warming topic correctly back in the 1970s.

Regarding 'the messy uncertainty of the real science', what you've said applies to everything the popular press reports. When the NY reports on the situation in Ukraine, they leave out a lot of the messy details. The same when Sports Illustrated reports on a doping scandal, or the WSJ about a recent merger, or the latest weather prediction in the local paper. It's odd that you think people treat science reporting as the final, conclusive word on a topic. I don't agree.

I believe the rest of your comment pivots into your views on nuclear power. This is not related to the Harpers piece or the presumed reasons for why this link was posted on HN, and I decline to follow up on it.

<comment><USER4> What do you think about tjradcliffe's comments "...we had even less clue then as to how the climate system would respond to any perturbation than we do today, and we have relatively little clue today...With regard to the existence of anthropogentic climate change ["the science is settled" is] reasonably correct, but with regard to the consequences it's complete nonsense"?

<comment><USER2> I think that statement about less clue/relatively little clue is true about nearly every field of active research, including nuclear fusion power, hurricane path and strength prediction, understanding the brain, designing new drugs, and the life of pre-Clovis peoples in the Americas. In 20 years we'll look back and comment about how little we knew of the human genome, or how wildly wrong we were in predicting the effect of autonomous vehicles on daily life.

Also, "relatively little clue" can still enough to make useful decisions. Therefore I ignored it.

Without knowing which consequences, what am I supposed to say? I see no reason to think the Dutch are misspending their money in building up their sea defenses against likely sea level rise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This was a really interesting read. Unfortunately I wasn't able to find any followup information about the underlying theory.

In the grip of record snows in Boston, and an extra long winter here in NY its easy to imagine being on the cusp of another ice age, but at the same time the theory seems at odds with the idea of global warming. On the one hand we have global warming as a one way operation of sorts accelerated by mankind, on the other hand we have temporary warming followed by a super ice age, powered by the Arctic Ocean.

I really want to know if this fascinating theory has been investigated further for confirmation or if it has been debunked in the 50+ years since this article was published.

<comment><USER6> The key thing to remember is 'global': while the East Coast of the US has had one of the colder, snowier winters in recent history, the West Coast has just come out of a hot, dry winter. Local weather is a terrible guide to global climate.

<comment><USER7> Adding to this, my (limited, apologies climatologists) understanding of one theory is that global warming reduces the temperature gradient between the temperate zone and the arctic. This destabilizes the jet stream, causing bifurcation. That builds a high pressure zone over the northwest, sending weather north and then down through Canada to the eastern seaboard, bringing a brutal winter and leaving California dry.

Weather is complicated, and hard to prove anything about.

<comment><USER8> > Weather is complicated, and hard to prove anything about.

Which is why not all people skeptical of AGW are right wing anti-science nutjobs. A great many are I'm sure, but scientific skepticism may well be warranted when the system is so complex.

<comment><USER7> Well, being skeptical of an entire field of study is different than being skeptical of the predicted outcome. One often sounds like the other, and it is 99.99% likely that _something_ is happening, even if we don't do a good job understanding it.

For example, regardless of "warming", we'll still have to deal with ocean acidification and all of the fallout from that.

<comment> kuni-toko-tachi Something is happening, its called weather. And before weather was co-opted by political agents with an agenda to control people to enrich themselves, that's all it was.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Incredible that this research from 60 years ago explains much of our current weather events. The Article ice shrinks, northern North America gets more snow.

It also explains why both global warming and impending ice age are linked.

This doesn't deny, of course, that mankind hasn't done his bit to accelerate the natural ebbs and flows of the global climate and the pace at which they are occurring.

<comment><USER10> I was thinking the exact same thing. :)

If someone had told me this article had only been published in the last couple of years, it would not have been implausible.

The basic idea that melting of of the polar ice caps could result in drastically colder weather in Europe and the northeastern part of America not really new to me, but the idea that this might at the same time mean much warmer weather around the arctic circle is certainly fascinating.

<comment><USER2> The hypothesis is that 1 million years ago the "North Pole [was] in the middle of the Pacific, and the South Pole in the open southern Atlantic", and that the Ice Age cycles started because of a sudden shift that brought the poles to the current alignment.

If someone presented that scenario now, it would be considered very implausible, because it goes against the evidence and mathematical models of the physics of the Earth.

Pollen studies carried out within 10 years of the publication of the hypothesis shows that the Arctic was colder during glaciation. See [https://books.google.com/books?id=N0mzl3c6g6kC&lpg=PA83&ots=...](https://books.google.com/books?id=N0mzl3c6g6kC&lpg=PA83&ots=p_CA7XOcE1&dq=arctic%20ice%20age%20pollen&hl=sv&pg=PA83#v=onepage&q=arctic%20ice%20age%20pollen&f=false) , [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17754671](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17754671) and [https://books.google.com/books?id=8OWQTJP8oFkC&lpg=PA230&ots...](https://books.google.com/books?id=8OWQTJP8oFkC&lpg=PA230&ots=nrgyBsxcwD&dq=arctic%20ice%20age%20pollen&hl=sv&pg=PA230#v=onepage&q=arctic%20ice%20age%20pollen&f=false) , which say the evidence was enough to make the hypothesis implausible.

This research was done after the model was published. While it was viable in the 1950s, it no longer fits the evidence.

<comment><USER10> True enough. But I am not a geophysicist or a geologist or anything even remotely close to that.

Is the article talking about the geographic poles (the rotational axis of earth) or the magnetic poles? Because I think I remember reading that the magnetic poles of earth have been moving around quite a bit over time, that the magnetic poles are (slowly) moving today at a speed that scientists can measure, and that at some point, the magnetic north pole was rather close to the rotational south pole. (Although I do not know if the location of the magnetic poles has any impact on climate.)

<comment><USER2> The hypothesis is that the geographical North Pole was in the Atlantic 1 million years ago, and rapidly shifted to where it is now.

The problem with the hypothesis is it doesn't answer the question (quoting from page 7):

> What started off the first Ice Age cycle?

> "We know that during the past million years, the world has swung back and > forth between ice ages and weather like today's," Ewing and Donn told me. > "Before then, the whole earth was much warmer. There were no zones of > extreme heat or cold; palms and magnolias grew in Greenland, and coral > around Iceland; subtropical plants thrived within eleven degrees of the > North Pole. Why didn't the Arctic Ocean-glacier 'thermostat' work then? What > suddenly turned it on one million years ago?

(We now know there have been multiple periods of glaciation. We are now in the Pliocene-Quaternary glaciation, which started 2.5 million years ago. The previous, the Karoo Ice Age, was 360–260 million years ago.)

It only explains why there are cycles, but if the planetary conditions were the same 3 million years ago, and there were no cycles, then the hypothesis would be in error.

Remember, in the 1950s the new theory of plate tectonics was only just coming into wide acceptance. The quote from the Harper's piece assumes that the crust moves a lot faster than the evidence found though the successive decades of research.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Did anyone else happen to notice this article's byline is "Betty Friedan" ? Is that _THE_ Betty Friedan?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I believe so. She was a freelance writer at the time, and she wrote articles for major magazines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I vaguely remember reading this article before. It's clear our planet is changing, I don't see how anyone can deny that. We can argue all day long about how much CO2 produced since the industrial revolution is affecting it, but the melt's happening either way. Even partially wrong, I think there were a lot of interesting points in that article. Thanks for posting it.

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy- environment/wp/201...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy- environment/wp/2015/03/16/the-melting-of-antarctica-was-already-really-bad-it- just-got-worse/?wprss=rss_homepage)</comment>


For Addicts, Fantasy Sites Can Lead to Ruinous Path - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/23/sports/fantasy-sports-addiction-gambling-draftkings-fanduel.html <comment><USER2> It's gambling in the same sense poker is gambling.

There is skill involved in both, but if you are in it for the short term you will face variance and could lose money regardless of skill.

If you have skill AND play for a long time, then the variance is lowered and it is positive EV.

It is in the site's best interests to actually decrease the skill portion and increase the luck portion. The main reason is because new user's will try it out a few times, lose all their money to the site's sharks and say they cannot win and give up.

</comment><comment><USER3> While the article is okay, the headline is tautological --- 'For addicts, the thing they are addicted to causes problems'.

<comment><USER4> Agreed. In fact, it was only your comment that got me to go back and read deeper than the first three paragraphs, where I found an interesting article.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> FanDuel said in a statement: "In any nascent, disruptive industry, important questions are often raised about how the industry should operate. Fantasy sports is no different, and we are reviewing our policies and practices to ensure consumers have a positive experience on our site."

This statement, and the attitude motivating it, is extremely irksome. If your disruption is plowing VC money into user acquisition and legal fees, while you skirt (or break) existing regulations and exploit your users and employees (oh sorry I meant independent contractors), I want no part of it.</comment>


Advertisements from Japan's Golden Age of Art Deco - <AUTHOR> http://www.openculture.com/2015/02/advertisements-from-japans-golden-age-of-art-deco.html <comment><USER2> This is interesting. I've always been a fan of Art Deco, but I didn't know there were any Japanese examples; I've mostly seen French and American. I feel like some of these have a more timeless appeal than some of the typical western examples.

</comment><comment><USER3> Somewhat off-topic, but font can really have a huge impact on non-native readers. I rarely have problems reading things in Japan these days, but some of the typography here is downright cryptographic.

<comment><USER4> I was thinking the same thing. The bottom two posters are much easier for me to read than the top ones because the fonts are more like the ones in my textbooks or in the newspapers.

That said, the top two posters' typography is much more interesting and a native Japanese reader would have zero difficulty reading them.

<comment><USER5> For what is worth, I'm not a native speaker but the only one I find hard to read is the top poster. The second poster's typography is stylized but not harder to read than the average handwritten sign or menu. It says 近代乙女心.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you're into this kind of stuff and you're in Tokyo I suggest you check out the ADMT (ADverising Museum of Tokyo). It's in Shiodome, walking distance from the Shimbashi station (and many other stations). Last time I was there they had a large collection of ads from that period with similar styles.

[http://admt.jp/en/index.html](http://admt.jp/en/index.html)

Also it's re-opening in 2 months at/near the Tokyo SkyTree but the Tobacco and Salt Museum used to have books and books of old cigarette covers which lots of art from that period. I assume the new one will too.

[http://www.jti.co.jp/Culture/museum_e/index.html](http://www.jti.co.jp/Culture/museum_e/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> So many kanji.As Chinese, i can understand almost 90% of them, while modern Japanese definitely beat me to it.</comment>


OSM condemns recent anti-semitic vandalism - <AUTHOR> https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2018/08/30/osm-condemns-vandalism/ <comment><USER2> I'm Jewish so I can give you my point of view, but there are many other people who may feel differently. For me this is simply a troll doing something that he thinks is funny and slightly inconveniences the mods at osm. Calling certain areas "Jewish" is not antisemitic in the way that is in any way dangerous. Here is a joke from Jews about how Teaneck is Jewish [1], nothing antisemitic about that. Here is a joke about Israel being Jewish [2] .

But lets just say that this was antisemitic. So what? Trolls do offensive things online all the time. OSM was properly alerted to it and quickly reverted it.

[1] [http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/3613/1194/1600/teaneck.jp...](http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/3613/1194/1600/teaneck.jpg)

[2] [https://johnjohns1.fjcdn.com/pictures/ish+conspiracy+could+m...](https://johnjohns1.fjcdn.com/pictures/ish+conspiracy+could+mozart+still+be+alive_b9dcf9_4771899.jpg)

<comment><USER3> There were a few other edits by the same person which were a little more extreme and anti-semetic

<comment><USER2> Oh, well then that might change my opinion. I will try to find a better source when I have some time. I find it stage that the osm letter didn't mention exactly what happened.

<comment><USER3> > _the osm letter didn 't mention exactly what happened._

What do you mean? It's quite clear what happened. Someone logged into OSM, they edited the "place node" for New York and changed the name.

<comment><USER2> That is what I thought, but you replied saying that he made other edits ... What happened? Did he just change the title (not so bad) or did he do something worse?

<comment><USER3> They changed the name of some other things. Roads in New York being renamed after a certain dictator with a small moustach. That kind of thing.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Some Day, You'll Have a Telephone with a Screen and Be Able To Dial a Book - <AUTHOR> https://quoteinvestigator.com/2019/01/09/ebook/ <comment><USER4> Similar prediction of ebook readers by Stanisław Lem in 1961 book "Return from the stars". He called them "optons". He also predicted audiobooks and called them "lectons". And Amazon :)

> I spent the afternoon in a bookstore. There were no books in it. None had > been printed for nearly half a century. And how I have looked forward to > them, after the micro films that made up the library of the Prometheus! No > such luck. No longer was it possible to browse among shelves, to weigh > volumes in hand, to feel their heft, the promise of ponderous reading. The > bookstore resembled, instead, an electronic laboratory. The books were > crystals with recorded contents. They can be read the aid of an opton, which > was similar to a book but had only one page between the covers. At a touch, > successive pages of the text appeared on it. But optons were little used, > the sales-robot told me. The public preferred lectons - like lectons read > out loud, they could be set to any voice, tempo, and modulation. Only > scientific publications having a very limited distribution were still > printed, on a plastic imitation paper. Thus all my purchases fitted into one > pocket, though there must have been almost three hundred titles. My handful > of crystal corn - my books. I selected a number of works on history and > sociology, a few on statistics and demography, and what the girl from Adapt > had recommended on psychology. A couple of the larger mathematical textbooks > - larger, of course, in the sense of their content, not of their physical > science. The robot that served me was itself an encyclopedia, in that - <USER2> > it told me - it was linked directly, through electronic catalogs, to > templates of every book on earth. As a rule, a bookstore had only single > "copies" of books, and when someone needed a particular book, the contents > of the work was recorded in a crystal.

> The originals - Crystomatrices - were not to be seen; they were kept behind > pale blue enamel the steel plates. So a book was printed, as it were, every > time someone needed it. The question of printings, of their quantity, of > their running out, had ceased to exist. Actually, a great achievement, and > yet I regretted the passing of books.

[http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=1024](http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=1024)

<comment><USER5> That's incredible.

<comment><USER6> I have always thought science is inspired by fiction.

Cellphones are nothing less than a better communicator, Bluetooth badges are even available on thinkgeek!

<comment><USER7> But a communicator is primarily a voice communication device. If I were to say a cellphone is like a star trek device, I'd say it's more like an undersized PADD

(and yeah, I maybe agree that the Apple engineers may have a lot of TNG. The 'too lazy to make actual buttons' set designers, I think, actually inspired apple; it really is a lot easier to design a muti-use interface if the "buttons" are all behind a glass touchscreen.)

<comment><USER8> Feature phones still exist. The Motorola StarTAC was very much like a communicator.

I think the iPhone was more inspired by existing products and their obvious drawbacks. The Newton was more like a PADD than the iPhone is.

The story I've heard about the TNG set design is "Gene Roddenberry thought it looked more futuristic". Calling it laziness is insulting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nancy Bass Wyden, the daughter of the Fred Bass (who gave the prediction in question) is now the owner of her father's bookstore. She is the wife of senator Wyden and an outspoken critic of the tax breaks given to big tech, particularly Amazon: [https://cnn.com/2019/01/08/opinions/amazon-big-tech- threat-c...](https://cnn.com/2019/01/08/opinions/amazon-big-tech-threat- cities-bass-wyden/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER10> At my university there are several ironic and funny posters with quotes about mispredictions on display at the walls of the big lecture hall of the mechanical engineering building.

My favorite one is from Gottlieb Daimler 1901:

 _" The global demand for automobiles will not exceed one million - at least because of a lack of available chauffeurs."_ [1]

He is the founder of the predecessor of todays Daimler AG, which owns Mercedes-Benz.

[1] losely translated from German: _" Die weltweite Nachfrage nach Kraftfahrzeugen wird eine Million nicht überschreiten - allein schon aus Mangel an verfügbaren Chauffeuren."_

<comment><USER11> "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."

Thomas Watson, president of IBM, 1943

<comment><USER10> 1889: _"Fooling around with alternating current (AC) is just a waste of time. Nobody will use it, ever."_ — Thomas Edison.

<comment><USER12> 2019: I have a 100% DC powered datacenter, but the power certainly gets to its location via AC.

<comment><USER13> Transmission could be done via DC too, and there are quite a few benefits to it. The only field left to conquer is generation of electricity, looks like that's going to be in AC.

<comment><USER12> It is, but rather difficult and expensive for short to medium distances. Submarine power cables are often HVDC.

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

<comment><USER14> Great article. The thing's grounding system is lustworthy:

The Sylmar grounding system is a line of 24 silicon-iron alloy electrodes submerged in the Pacific Ocean at Will Rogers State Beach[4] suspended in concrete enclosures about one meter above the ocean floor.

The grounding system at Celilo consists of 1,067 cast iron anodes buried in a two-foot trench of petroleum coke, which behaves as an electrode, arranged in a ring of 2.02 mi (3,250.87 m) circumference at Rice Flats (near Rice, Oregon), which is 6.6 mi (10.6 km) SSE of Celilo.

<comment><USER15> Incredible! I've always been fascinated when driving by the Sylmar station (many times in my life) and never knew that I was driving by connecting infrastructure when on PCH in that area.

And even more interesting is they are replacing/replaced it! [https://www.circlingthenews.com/terminus-of-sylmar-ground- re...](https://www.circlingthenews.com/terminus-of-sylmar-ground-return- system-being-replaced/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> By 1969, this was already a common meme. One example from 1967 was from the "Court Martial" episode of Star Trek:

KIRK: Yes. (Notices the piles of books everywhere) What is all this? COGLEY: I figure we'll be spending some time together, so I moved in. KIRK: I hope I'm not crowding you. COGLEY: What's the matter? Don't you like books? KIRK: Oh, I like them fine, but a computer takes less space.

[http://www.chakoteya.net/StarTrek/15.htm](http://www.chakoteya.net/StarTrek/15.htm)

</comment><comment><USER12> If this quote is from September 1969... The movie 2001 was released in late spring 1968. In it the astronauts are using a color tablet computer laying on a table, no thicker than a modern iPad, to watch video.

[https://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/features/did- st...](https://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/features/did-stanley- kubrick-invent-ipad)

<comment><USER17> Those working in the industry often know what's coming. What they often get wrong is how it's economically deployed, when it arrives, or what effects it will have.

<comment><USER18> E.g. the first articles on capacitive touch screens dates to the 50's, and the "flat-panel" Aiken tube display dates to the early 50's as well:

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

Article on the Aiken tube from 1958 with pictures that predicts future models may be flat enough to "hang like picture frames":

[https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=r98DAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA104&re...](https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=r98DAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA104&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false)

Seing the potential of going from normal TVs to that, it's certainly not a big leap to assume they'll get even thinner and smaller.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I always have to mention Paul Otlet, when the topic of early predictions of technology comes up. Too bad he was all but forgotten.

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

[http://www.doi-toshin.com/paul-otlet-s-vision- documentation-...](http://www.doi-toshin.com/paul-otlet-s-vision- documentation-global-information-network-envisaged-100-years-ago-helped-shape- modern-internet/)

<comment><USER20> You should add more context to your comment

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> And here's Isaac Asimov predicting a few things about the (best part of the) Internet of today in years when most people in the world had not even heard of it yet.

[https://www.wimp.com/isaac-asimov-predicted-the-internet- of-...](https://www.wimp.com/isaac-asimov-predicted-the-internet-of- today-20-years-ago/)

(the interview is from 1988, so it's now dated over 30 years)

I believe there are much older references to a worldwide library accessible by anyone from home in his writings, but I can't recall where. I admit having been a huge fan of his teaching about science (I was reading a book by him when the muted TV showed the news about his death) and I also loved his short stories, even those not related to scientific information or science fiction, but never liked his bigger novels, the Foundation that I quit after not even finishing one book etc. so my knowledge is very limited in that context.

<comment><USER22> In similar vein HG2G [0] has always reminded me of Internet + (proprietary) Wikipedia, and it's from 1978.

[0] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Bell had a video telephone demo at the 1964 Worlds Fair in NY[0] some five years prior to this NYTimes story

I think a lot of public ideas of the future sprung out from that

I don't think the quote refers to a _portable_ telephone but rather of the style that was demonstrated at the World Fair

[0] [http://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/history/long-before- facet...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/history/long-before-facetime-or- skype-there-was-the-picturephone)

</comment><comment><USER24> The idea of a telephone with a screen wasn't really new in 1969, since Ma Bell had been promoting the idea for decades. The Jetsons made fun of it on TV in the early 60s.

</comment><comment><USER25> It is fascinating what people did predict and what they didn't predict. Smartphones, smartwatches, e-books, face-time calls was all predicted. What people didn't predict: Clickbait, e-mail phishing, viral fake news and people preferring SMS to a voice or facetime call.

<comment><USER26> > What people didn't predict: Clickbait, e-mail phishing, viral fake news

Didn't need to predict those. Analog equivalents always existed.

> and people preferring SMS to a voice or facetime call.

Who wouldn't ;-) Thanks to the transition to asynchronous message based communication I can have more and more meaningful communication with a larger part of my family than I would if I had to FaceTime or call them.

In business it is even more useful as it provides a trail of who did what in addition to the other advantages.

<comment><USER27> Here's something else that they didn't predict: that sales of books printed on paper are at their all-time highest now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This is an odd quote to latch onto as an example of profound foresight.

Predicting a telephone with a screen in 1969 required no great skill at prophecy, since the AT&T picture phone debuted at the 1964 World's Fair. Really the idea of being able to remotely dial up information and services on some kind of telephone/computer console with a screen was all over the place by 1969. There were, after all, commercial time-sharing computer services.

I don't see any evidence that the quote refers to cell phones, since it doesn't mention portability. But even if it did, to predict that in 1969 was likewise not so impressive, since mobile radio-telephone service had existed since the 1940s, and the cellular concept for frequency re-use was conceived in the same era.

</comment><comment><USER29> I must mention my favourite sci-fi short story, "The Machine Stops" by E.M. Forster[0]. It is from 1909 and is chillingly prescient.

Essentially, a machine provides all necessities of life in a persons' pod, so they need never leave. People spend their time making essentially YouTube videos about their opinions. Nobody cares about facts or knowledge anymore. Spoiler, it doesn't end well for them.

[0] [http://archive.ncsa.illinois.edu/prajlich/forster.html](http://archive.ncsa.illinois.edu/prajlich/forster.html)

<comment><USER30> Thanks for sharing this -- I happened upon this HN thread at just after midnight, and decided to read the story before going to bed. It's amazing, giving when it was written, and finding it like this reminded me about how I used to find things on the internet (having just read through the Ask HN comments[1] on what t'internet used to be like :) )

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18897109](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18897109)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> He perhaps had read the novelization of _2001_ , published a year earlier:

\--begin quote--

There was plenty to occupy his time, even if he did nothing but sit and read. When he tired of official reports and memoranda and minutes, he would plug his foolscap-sized Newspad into the ship's information circuit and scan the latest reports from Earth. One by one he would conjure up the world's major electronic papers; he knew the codes of the more important ones by heart, and had no need to consult the list on the back of his pad. Switching to the display unit's short-term memory, he would hold the front page while he quickly searched the headlines and noted the items that interested him.

Each had its own two-digit reference; when he punched that, the postage-stamp- sized rectangle would expand until it neatly filled the screen and he could read it with comfort. When he had finished, he would flash back to the complete page and select a new subject for detailed examination.

Floyd sometimes wondered if the Newspad, and the fantastic technology behind it, was the last word in man's quest for perfect communications. Here he was, far out in space, speeding away from Earth at thousands of miles an hour, yet in a few milliseconds he could see the headlines of any newspaper he pleased. (That very word "newspaper," of course, was an anachronistic hangover into the age of electronics.) The text was updated automatically on every hour; even if one read only the English versions, one could spend an entire lifetime doing nothing but absorbing the everchanging flow of information from the news satellites.

It was hard to imagine how the system could be improved or made more convenient. But sooner or later, Floyd guessed, it would pass away, to be replaced by something as unimaginable as the Newspad itself would have been to Caxton or Gutenberg.

There was another thought which a scanning of those tiny electronic headlines often invoked. The more wonderful the means of communication, the more trivial, tawdry, or depressing its contents seemed to be. Accidents, crimes, natural and man-made disasters, threats of conflict, gloomy editorials - <USER3> still seemed to be the main concern of the millions of words being sprayed into the ether. Yet Floyd also wondered if this was altogether a bad thing; the newspapers of Utopia, he had long ago decided, would be terribly dull.

</comment><comment><USER32> "The best way to predict the future is to to create it."

[https://i.giphy.com/media/l3vR6aasfs0Ae3qdG/giphy.webp](https://i.giphy.com/media/l3vR6aasfs0Ae3qdG/giphy.webp)

</comment><comment><USER33> What I find funny is that, even by the time we got to Star Trek TNG, people still couldn't fathom having a device with _multiple_ books. Each reader on TNG and DS9 appears to be a single title that you have to loan/share with people instead of them just pulling the title from the cloud to their own device BUT they're like "oh yeah, we can totally replicate matter and teleport people"...

</comment><comment><USER34> remimds me of francis ford coppola predicting youtube [https://youtu.be/iSePbQVR284](https://youtu.be/iSePbQVR284)

</comment><comment><USER35> One of the heuristics I use when evaluating whether to build a new product is to answer the question: "will people be solving this problem the way they currently are in 5 years?" If the answer is no, that means there may be an opportunity.

Bass was remarkable prescient, but also recognized the inevitable macro forces that would create change in his business.

</comment><comment><USER36> In 2008, I submitted a talk titled, "What if you could ask a book a question?", where I planned to show how it's technically possible to create a query layer around (seemingly) unstructured content. The idea was chaffed as silly by organizers.

</comment><comment><USER37> [https://www.google.com/search?q=En+lan+2000&tbm=isch](https://www.google.com/search?q=En+lan+2000&tbm=isch)

</comment><comment><USER38> > Newspad evidence was subsequently ruled out by the judge

I'm curious about this. What was wrong with the Newspad evidence? Seems convincing and relevant enough to me.

</comment><comment><USER39> The rest of the quote is admirably tenacious...

> What then? he was asked. "Then I go into the antiques business — books will > be antiques," Mr. Bass said.

<comment><USER40> And if you visit The Strand in NYC (on Broadway and 12th) the top floor is indeed an antique shop. First editions, rare books and the like. It's a special place to hang out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> How long until AirPods(or its case) have eSIM?</comment>


Depression-era color photos - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.denverpost.com/captured/2010/07/26/captured-america-in-color-from-1939-1943/ <comment><USER2> Makes me wonder how today will be remembered...

"An unemployed hipster tweeting from his iPhone outside a shuttered financial firm. New York, New York, April 2010. Reproduction from JPEG. Photo by Jack Smith. Holographic Storage Division, Library of Congress."

</comment><comment><USER3> It's funny how the documentary technology affects how we view the past. These photos seem much more cheerful than the black & white images that we usually associate with the Depression and WW2. If it weren't for the car & clothing styles, they could be taken today.

I wonder if our grandchildren will view our still, color photos the same way. Life was so drab and depressing before motion & 3D!

<comment><USER4> I agree - although I view it a bit different. I always feel a disconnect with black and white photos, as if it's something that happened centuries ago or not at all. These photos somehow make it feel more "real".

<comment><USER5> Oh dear. There are black-and-white photos of my childhood. I didn't think I was that old -- until now!

<comment><USER6> My dad always took black and white photos, even through the 90s. So I suppose you're not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Some of those images are almost haunting. The family living in the dugout home... those meals look just like the ones my great grandmother prepared everyday. One mason jar of green beans, a jar of milk (she always transferred store bought milk into jars), home made biscuits (key ingredient was lard :|), and a portion of rice. She was a nurse during the time of the depression. It almost gives a glimpse of where she got some of her habits. When you're the poor all you know to do is work and grow your own food... she had an excellent garden! She lived like this until she died at 93 in '98. (She was filthy rich from investing during the time of the depression and cashing out... no one even grasped how much money this woman had)

On a side note, the locomotives reminded me of the visual imagery that crossed my mind while reading Atlas Shrugged.

<comment><USER8> "On a side note, the locomotives reminded me of the visual imagery that crossed my mind while reading Atlas Shrugged."

Exactly what I thought when I saw them. These images are great and would do great as a coffee table book to flip through while reading Atlas Shrugged.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> 70 slides, and not a single overweight person to be seen.

Just an observation.

<comment><USER10> Not sure which slides you were looking at but 3(old guy on the left is arguably larger than he should be), 12(portly gent on the right), and 66(a fine double chin if ever I saw one) have overweight people in them. Also it was the great depression not exactly known as a time of plenty.

<comment><USER11> Yet we're in an economic downturn, which is supposed to be a time of lacking as well and people are fatter than ever.

<comment><USER12> snacks and heavily processed foods are cheaper than healthy fresh vegetables and fruits. the easy path...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Not very many smiles.

Maybe this was before the convention of, "Say cheese!"

Or more likely, I suspect, because life was hard and people had little.

Makes one appreciate how good we have it now.

</adjusts air conditioning> </shifts butt in Aeron> </grabs Red Bull>

<comment><USER14> We view it as hard compared to what we have now. However, not having that comparison -- did people back then actually think life was hard? Or was it just normal?

<comment><USER15> I guess some cultures and countries regard photographs as just documentary evidence of what the subject looks like. Or what the situation is like. If everyone is dancing and singing, then there would probably be lots of laughing people in the shot. But is accidental, not because the photographer is trying to tease out a smile by saying something silly like "cheese". And then, if it is just a portrait, then it makes sense to have a neutral expression...

I encountered this clash of cultures when I came to America from Eastern Europe. Everyone looking at my family photos immediatly assumed everyone was very unhappy because the subjects don't smile. I usually got the "Oh so sad, everyone was so unhappy, it was probably because of communism...?". Nevermind that it is a picture of a large family picnic, with plenty of food, kabobs grilling in the background -- basically all the indications that everyone was having a good time (and I know they were because I was there as well). Yet, I always get the "unhappy people" sympathy comment. It always baffles me...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The source of the photos, library of congress set on flickr is amazing

<http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/>

</comment><comment><USER17> This article is just a small subset of the photos available. The Library of Congress has many more on Flickr:

[http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/sets/721576...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/sets/72157603671370361/)

</comment><comment><USER18> One thing that's always piqued my curiosity is the old handwriting seen in these photos. Look at #6 and #30.

You see a lot of this style of handwriting pre-WWII, then it disappears. What changed?

<comment><USER19> Cursive became bigger. If you look into the various "italic" schools of handwriting/calligraphy, you can still find courses and books on writing that way, though.

I've got that on my things-to-do after this summer...

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Reminds me of these images of Russia made with Digichromatography:

<http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/>

</comment><comment><USER21> If it weren't for the "hard-times", our perceived happiness levels are likely to be pretty similar. The people from 1940 probably looked at the black-and- white photos of the Civil War era, and thought how hard it must have been to live in a world without cars and planes.

For all we know, the next generation will think back on us 2010-folk and think "could you believe it took 5 hours to cross the country by plane?!"

</comment><comment><USER22> Photo number 6 is Twitter circa 1940.

<comment><USER23> Twitter circa 1935:

[http://gizmodo.com/5254222/olde-timey-notificator-machine- tw...](http://gizmodo.com/5254222/olde-timey-notificator-machine-twitters- like-its-1935)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Contrast, compare: <http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/02/at_work.html>

Not exactly the same (only work themed photos, international) but offers some additional perspective.

</comment><comment><USER25> Great pictures, but I have a technical gripe: while waiting (and waiting) for these to load, I took a look at the HTTP headers of one image: [http://denverpost.slideshowpro.com/albums/001/496/album-1251...](http://denverpost.slideshowpro.com/albums/001/496/album-125171/cache/color021.sJPG_950_2000_0_75_0_50_50.sJPG?1281011079)

Given that URL I thought I'd see some flickr-style years-in-the-future Expires and Cache-control headers. The article is dated July 26, but 1281011079 (assuming this is an 'epoch time') is today, August 5. It's almost like they went out of their way to defeat caches by tacking on that query string.

</comment><comment><USER26> This reminded me of early 20th century photographs of Russia at the Smithsonian:

<http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/>

They were constructed due to the photographer foresight of using different lens filters.

</comment><comment><USER27> Those are some amazing photos. Such a treat to have them in color.

</comment><comment><USER28> era check: photos taken 1939-45, which was WWII. Depression ended in the late '30s/early '40s.

</comment><comment><USER29> My dad has a picture of him sitting in his one-room school house around 1942 that looks almost exactly like the one in this post. He has his shoes on in the picture which I guess was a rarity - the teacher used to make him take them off at the door because of all the cow crap he stepped in milking the cow before school.

</comment><comment><USER30> It's kind of strange to see these - but it is especially striking as I share the surname "Caudill" with the #1 and #17. I never thought of it as very common, so perhaps I'm related somehow.

Some very neat photos in there though, and interesting to see the world/country in a different phase.

</comment><comment><USER31> [http://denverpost.slideshowpro.com/albums/001/496/album-1251...](http://denverpost.slideshowpro.com/albums/001/496/album-125171/cache/color045.sJPG_950_2000_0_75_0_50_50.sJPG?1280949536)

is that snow in new mexico?! is that normal there?

<comment><USER32> Quite. The lowest point in the state is something like 2,500 feet and average is around 5,500. Been in snow there myself and I've only been twice. It's gorgeous.

<http://www.google.com/images?q=new%20mexico%20snow>

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Wow. I've actually been written up in the newspaper in picture 6. That's kind of a trip.

</comment><comment><USER34> wow. i clicked the link expecting to see how much has changed, but after viewing i've realized how little has changed. #6 (save for the lady walking in the back) looks like it could have been shot yesterday somewhere in NY.

</comment><comment><USER35> Did you notice the 1 cent oranges? Inflation is amazing.

</comment><comment> cunard-n Thank you. I love these.

</comment><comment><USER36> Is that Jason Calacanis in picture 10?

</comment><comment><USER37> Not Depression-era. 1939-1943. WWII.</comment>


Finished with FaceBook - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/17/AR2009041702619_pf.html

<comment><USER2> I had a phone call with a Japanese friend the other day, and she told me she also quit (deactivated her account) Facebook. Since their traffic is still on the climb, it seems the birth rate is simply outpacing the death rate as we are starting to hear about more and more people quitting. There will be so many lessons learned from Facebook 10 years from now.

<comment><USER3> Did she quit Mixi too?

<comment><USER2> I don't think she was on Mixi -- she's been in USA for the past 6 years. Another one of my Japanese friends is on Mixi, though, and she simply never uses it. Interestingly, she (the girl who uses Mixi) knows the wife of a Japanese official who sent her a Hi5 invite. Not sure if she joined.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I quit Facebook about a year or so ago, which as an expatriate Australian in London was quite painful due to my friends being far more frequently seen on FB than on email or Skype. Still, I don't regret it - they seem to push the privacy boundary every once in a while and sometimes they get caught. I don't miss it.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm glad we have dead-tree media to remind us of how trivial and narcissistic our online lives are.

</comment><comment><USER6> If you have an addictive personality then you probably should be very wary of using websites like this, I have facebook and check it for maybe 10 minutes every day or two, I couldn't use it for longer because it's so bloody boring.

<comment><USER7> I check it a couple of times a day, but never for more than a minute. I don't get many notifications. Email is much more important to me and through trial and error I've set things so that I get emailed about important things, and nothing else. That said, it would be very hard for me to go for a few days without having Gmail open.

<comment><USER6> That's more of a necessity rather than anything else, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Anyone here on HN using Facebook successfully to promote their startup and/or personal website? I'm actually curious, and know of people in general who use it effectively but I'm more curious about the results from fellow Hackers.

<comment><USER9> If Facebook was a useful promotion tool, they wouldn't have revenue issues.</comment></comment>


Bill Gates Invests $23 Million in Opposing-Piston Engine - <AUTHOR> http://www.greencarreports.com/blog/1047122_bill-gates-backs-ecomotors-new-opoc-engine-with-23-5-million-investment <comment><USER2> Compare with the Junkers Jumo 20x design -(one of?) the only succesful aircraft diesel engines:

<http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junkers_Jumo_205>

Also, this led to the development of the Napier Deltic which avoided having twice as many crankshafts as cylinders by arranging three cylinders in a triangle with a crankshaft at each corner:

<http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napier_Deltic>

These had extremely good power to weight ratios - eventually eclipsed by gas turbines.

<comment><USER3> As to aircraft diesels, USSR had a few bombers in its fleet equipped with diesels (TB-7). Some of them actually took bombing raids over Germany in autumn of 1941.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Previous two-stroke designs were quickly banished as emissions standards started to get tougher. The design is such that unburned fuel and lubricating oils are released through the exhaust, causing emissions to be much higher. However, EcoMotors believes its design has overcome this challenge."

The article seems woefully vague on the details here. How do they overcome this challenge? Having lived in a country where there were some two stroke cars allowed on the road, believe me it is no fun. A two stroke subcompact used to generate more smoke and fouler smell than a freaking 18 wheeler (and yes I am talking about the Trabant).

So one would have to be extra sure that they have overcome this challenge before believing any of their hype. I would be very suspicious of any car that actually burns lubricant.

<comment><USER5> Exactly.

Color me skeptical.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I would be excited to see an engine based on solenoid and using magnets as springs. Has anyone ever tried to make a cylinder whose piston is composed of a highly durable magnet at one end, which is encased in a coil. The bottom is basically a magnet which repels the piston, and a mechanical spring is also used to keep the process going.

When the fuel will ignite and expand there will be a huge change in EMF, perhaps that could be used to charge a capacitor which can then offload it more slowly into a battery. In this way mechanical parts are reduced and frictional losses are kept at a minimum since I am not driving a crankshaft, which then feeds into a dynamo with gearing.

I've heard about solenoid engines, but has anyone ever undertaken something like this? I am sure that tons of people must have this in their heads, but has anyone also used a tesla coil with a variable AC to control the motion of the piston? That is we can also remove the bottom magnet and the mechanical spring. This would be something awesome to make, and I wonder if it is feasible to do so.

One of the biggest worries would be the lack of appropriate magnets. Neodymium (NdFeB) start losing magnetic strength above 60 C and it becomes completely demagnetized before 90 C. So, one of the reasons why someone hasn't done this might be lack of an cost effective alloy which can remain magnetized at those temperatures. I really can't think of another reason.

<comment><USER7> I'm working on a design in the same ballpark as this, and I found that NASA has something similar as well (if not a bit more mechanically complicated than my design); I couldn't find a nice overview but I did find a couple of links to PDF's describing the test and analysis of their sterling-powered linear- alternator design:

[http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/1994001...](http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19940019829_1994019829.pdf) [http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/1992002...](http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19920022018_1992022018.pdf)

...and a bit of an overview on the sunpower site (partner) [http://www.sunpower.com/lib/sitefiles/pdf/publications/Doc00...](http://www.sunpower.com/lib/sitefiles/pdf/publications/Doc0083.pdf)

<comment><USER6> Wow.

Thanks a lot for the links! They are awesome!

It will take me time to go through them properly as there are some concepts in them which I don't know about. (I just graduated out of high school a few months ago)

Do you mind if I email you questions about what I've read? I have lots and lots of them.

Thanks again.

P.S. - I am quite dumb. I tend to ask stupid questions so please take that into account. :)

<comment><USER7> I'm no expert either, but you're welcome to drop me a line and I'll do my best to help.

You can reach me using the contact form here:

<http://www.gullicksonlaboratories.com/about/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Two-stroke engines are what you find in lawnmowers (the non-riding kind), weed whackers, leaf blowers, chain saws, etc. because they're lighter than 4-stroke engines.

As mentioned in the article, the ones in those devices are terrible for the environment. They burn the oil as well as the gas, which for whatever reason means they emit _way_ more pollution (not CO2, but stuff like carbon monoxide) than car engines. From Wikipedia:

> _A 2001 study showed that some mowers emit the same amount of pollution > (emissions other than carbon dioxide) in one hour as driving a 1992 model > car for 650 miles_

It sounds like this engine is a 2-stroke engine that does not do that, which has serious potential. Some of the fuel efficiency gains probably come from the fact that, as I said before, 2-stroke engines are lighter for a given desired power.

<comment><USER9> Lawn mowers are mostly 4 stroke now.

Weed whackers, leaf blowers, and ESPECIALLY chain saws remain two stroke for a special reason- they can be operated at virtually any angle. This is because the lubricating oil is carried in the air/fuel mix; if you turn a 4 stroke on it's side during operation, it will become oil starved and quickly seize.

<comment><USER10> There are 4-strokes that can operate at any orientation:

[http://www.hondapowerequipment.com/products/trimmers/content...](http://www.hondapowerequipment.com/products/trimmers/content.aspx?asset=tb_4StrokeEngineAdvantage)

<comment><USER9> I haven't any evidence, but I suspect those motors use a dry sump, which results in significant added complexity. You are right, it can be done, but it's usually reserved for racing engines.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> unboxed-value Unfortunately the article doesn't say _why_ their design uses fewer moving parts. Opposing cylinders is not a new idea (look at any Porsche or Subaru), although on the picture the combustion chamber is located on crankshaft side... The lack of valves isn't new: diesels don't have them neither do 2-stroke motorcycles.

So I'm eager to see what's the secret ingredient here?

<comment><USER11> Maybe the new design solves the problem traditional 2 strokes have that makes them pollute so much. The intake and exhaust valves are both open at the same time, which puts part of the fuel right into the air.

I can't really tell from the flash movie on the ecomotors site whats happening with the valves. I do see some slits that could serve as the intake port when the cylinder is fully open. And a tiny round thing which could be the exhaust port sits at the center of the cylinders length. Maybe the exhaust port is electronically operated and is closed by the time the 2 cylinders open as far as the intake ports?

<comment><USER9> Actually, making a 2-stroke that doesn't require both valves be open solves _two_ problems. There's the fresh gas flowing right out the exhaust, and there's the limitations in compression ratio. Higher compression ratios result in higher efficiency, but the 2-stroke doesn't work right at high enough compression ratios.

Observe:

2 stroke: [http://www.yamaha- motor.com/sport/products/modelspecs/30/0/s...](http://www.yamaha- motor.com/sport/products/modelspecs/30/0/specs.aspx)

4 stroke: [http://www.yamaha- motor.com/sport/products/modelspecs/12/0/s...](http://www.yamaha- motor.com/sport/products/modelspecs/12/0/specs.aspx)

As a side note, do not conclude overlap (both valves open) is inherently bad. A little bit of overlap is sometimes used even in passenger cars.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The horizontally opposed engine (aka flat N) is nothing new. More specifically I know it has been in Honda motorcycles since the 1970's. Cars and other devices likely too but I have no first hand knowledge of that.

Here they are giving it a new name and say they can reduce the amount of moving parts by 50%. There is no information on what "parts" they are removing which I would find to be the most interesting piece of information. The comparison of two and four strokes engines is also misleading.

After a quick dig: If you go to eco's website they specifically say this is a two stroke engine; the article linked has incorrect information.

They are reducing the amount of parts because they are using a two stroke instead of a four cycle.

It seems the only real cool part of this engine, to me, is that it is designed "modular," it should be more cost effective to add on additional cylinders instead of having multiple facilities dedicated to different configurations.

Flat configurations have been used in cars and motorcycles for decades.

<comment><USER13> The type of engine you are referring to is called a 'boxer', and it has been in use in many other places from well before Honda ever used it.

Most notably in motorcycles probably the BMW brand, in car engines there was the Citroen 2CV and the VW beetle as well as many others, but that's not the same kind of engine as the one depicted in the article.

<comment><USER14> Not to mention the majority of light aircraft engines made in the last 40 years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> There was a thread about Bill Gates applying for a patent on an Electronic Engine: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=561057>

</comment><comment><USER16> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressed_air_car> also looks interesting

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm rooting for the cyclone engine myself:

<http://www.cyclonepower.com/better.html>

</comment><comment><USER18> Also known as 'The DDR Engine'

</comment><comment><USER19> Video of the engine in action

<http://www.endlessyoutube.com/watch?v=UesbkO3NvoY></comment>