Will single founders please stand up?  (Musical edition.) - <AUTHOR> http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/01/12/the-solo-founder-startup-rap/

<comment><USER2> Thanks, Patrick. I just met with my board of directors and we voted 1-0 to adopt this as our company song.

</comment><comment><USER3> Holy shit, I was going to comment that every time I visited hn yesterday I started singing in my head: alllll the single founderssss, allllll the single founders. This is awesome.

<comment><USER4> I hear "All the single founders, where do they all belong" to the melody of Eleanor Rigby's refrain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow. Taking white and nerdy to a level even Weird Al can't step to. Well done, Patrick!

</comment><comment><USER6> Whenever I read that thread title I always hear that stupid Beyonce song ("all the single ladies") in my head. It's awful.

<comment><USER7> On the contrary, it was quite possibly the best video of all time.

<comment><USER8> _of all time_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Go put it to some dope beat homey!

<http://www.beatslocker.com/download.php>

<http://www.worldwidebeats.net/>

<comment><USER10> _Go put it to some dope beat homey!_

Homey? Seriously?

<comment><USER9> For sure. A HN homey!

<http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=homey>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Cool Patrick, and nice that my vi gang sign got in the song too!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! That was one of my favorite lines in the song -- name checking you keeps the structure of the original intact while cleaning it up and geekifying it in the bargain. It was also the inspiration for hyperlinking everything because I was pretty sure most people would miss that joke otherwise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> that was a horrible song

<comment><USER13> Samir: Yes, this is horrible, this song. </office space>

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> _"For example, you might on listening be under the impression I have not quit my day job, which is not accurate as of last Monday."_

Now _that's_ the article I look forward to reading. Sounds like a big step, so congrats and best wishes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I probably won't make a big deal out of it until I am physically separated from the day job. (I wrote this post at something like 2 AM and that line make it past my internal editor.)

My employers and I are negotiating the details of my departure. They'd prefer if I stayed until August, I'd rather leave in about April. (Strictly speaking my contract allows me to give them two weeks of notice rather than several months but I am quitting a job you just don't quit, and I don't want to burn any bridges or poison the well for their future foreign employees.)

<comment><USER15> _job you just don't quit_

Did you really mean "just don't quit", and not "don't just quit"?

If there really are jobs in Japan that you are obligated to stay at for life, that would seem to be a pretty large impediment to growth.

<comment><AUTHOR> The social norm for men who work in my status (seishain (正社員), company employee) is that we have essentially guaranteed employment to retirement and that in return for this we work extraordinarily diligently for our employers until retirement.

My relationship to this social norm as a foreigner is a little weird.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> You've missed a trick when you decided to be a programmer :)

Coming soon: music bingo !

<comment><USER17> >You've missed a trick when you decided to be a programmer

Not necessarily: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1045758>

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Nice job!

</comment><comment><USER19> effffinnn awesome!!!

</comment><comment><USER20> Groan.

</comment><comment><USER21> Imma let you finish...<http://bit.ly/8J0yxb></comment>


Show HN: Get a bunch of friends and move the blue squares onto the gray squares. - <AUTHOR> http://pixza.com/lite

<comment><AUTHOR> It is a massively multi-player browser based game built without Flash or HTML5.</comment>


Control your Homekit IoT devices using Apple watch and Siri - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/nfarina/homebridge

<comment><AUTHOR> supporting Wemo Coffee Maker, Sonos, XfinityHome out of the box.</comment>


The Prose Garden – Spiritual Child of Dr. Doubs Journal - <AUTHOR> http://theprosegarden.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Just came across this drm free digital magazine that's been published since 2009[1], edited by Michael Swaine and Nancy Groth[2]. Closely associated with pragprog.com.

Apologies for the slightly editorialized title - but couldn't find any record of it on hn previously, and it strikes me as somewhat similar to DDJ - <USER2> magazine I'm sure many hners beside me enjoyed reading.

There's a special for all of 2017 for 15 USD:

[http://theprosegarden.com/store- cart66/#specialsubscription](http://theprosegarden.com/store- cart66/#specialsubscription)

[1] Free back-issues from first four years:

[https://pragprog.com/magazines](https://pragprog.com/magazines)

[2] [http://theprosegarden.com/about-the-prose- garden/](http://theprosegarden.com/about-the-prose-garden/)

<comment><USER3> Maybe have the mods edit the title to "Dr. Dobb's"?

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh dear. I hope so. Curse you, phone touch input.</comment></comment></comment>


Command-line Google url shortener, tasks, discovery services now available - <AUTHOR> http://code.google.com/p/googlecl/wiki/DiscoveryManual googlecl is a great little tool and my primary interface to the big G's services. Nice to see it supporting the Discovery API now. <comment><AUTHOR> googlecl is one of the main ways I use the big g's services. nice to see it supporting the discovery APIs now.</comment>


McDonalds Employees support workers of Aldi Nord and Aldi Süd in Covid19 crisis - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6647053659102289920/ <comment><AUTHOR> Rough translation of the ALDI press release into english:

Together everything is possible

Together with our colleagues from McDonald's we have agreed on a unique step: For the time of the Corona-Crisis the McDonald's employees will support the Aldi employees who cannot work anymore due to the current situation in the Aldi stores. Together, we will give our best to ensure that you are supported. We are extremely thankful for this .

Together we will get this done.</comment>


The benefits of a colors specific style sheet - <AUTHOR> http://hellyeahdude.com/articles/the-benefits-of-a-colors-specific-style-sheet/ Nifty little trick. <comment><USER2> From the article: "For this example, we can see that I have an orange color for when a user hovers over a link. If I ever wanted to change that, I would just open up the colors.css file, change the color, re-upload and boom!"

...but what's the difference between doing that, and opening a single stylesheet and changing the colour, re-upload and boom?

Having different stylesheets for every little thing just means more unnecessary requests to the server.</comment>


Beware the Rise of the Pseudo-Intellectual - <AUTHOR> https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/05/19/tom-wolfe-boston-university-commencement/ <comment><USER2> Amusing stuff. He assumes all of the good virtues of people are what define the class he's lauding. All you need to do, to buy the rest of his pitch, is just accept that.

What an old and pathetic way of viewing the world. Wherever you look, you're going to find a mix of people. Worthless intellectuals and worthwhile "bourgeois", and everything in between. That's life.

Any time someone tries to sell you a bill of goods starting with, "Just agree with me that all virtue/sin is embodied by group X...", run.</comment>


MochiKit.Animator with demos (the end is the best) - <AUTHOR> http://gr.ayre.st/~grayrest/animator/animator.html <comment><USER2> I found writing something like this to be one of the natural steps in a pure javascript client. People can do a lot more than they realize with javascript. On my website, http://www.classbug.com , the fade effects, the transition effects, and the disclosure button rotations are all done with an animating value from 0 to 1 (though not using KochiKit.Animator).

That's only the beginning though. Dynamic tree views, color selectors, etc.. You should build a framework of components to insert into your web application.</comment>


US to demand five years of your social media, email account info in visa app - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/us-visa-agency-will-now-demand-your-social-media-email-account-info/ <comment><USER2> Discussed yesterday:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20078429](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20078429)

Also discussed a few days ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20065142](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20065142)

And discussed a year ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16710838](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16710838)

</comment><comment><USER3> What counts as a social media account? I'm not sure I can remember all the online accounts I joined and abandoned over the last five years.

</comment><comment> La-ang Hilarious. How is the State Dep. gonna be able to verify all profiles cross SM platforms?</comment>


My app is now in the iTunes store.  Besides submitting a lite version, what else should I do? - <AUTHOR>

How do you promote your iPhone app(s)? <comment><USER2> Few quick comments:

It's not available on the Australian iTunes Store. Not sure if this is just a time thing (seems to take 24-48 hours to filter out from the US to other stores)

From the screenshots on your website, the title text is clipped on the top and left of the 'N', on the right of the last 'a', and along most of the bottom.

For iPhone apps, look counts for a huge amount. If you can take the bronzy sort of look you've given the title and apply that as a theme across the whole game I think it would make a huge difference towards how people perceive it. At the moment it screams "I'm new to this and this is my first app". If you could whip up some custom tile backgrounds etc it would change the look (and hence people's impressions) in a big way.

I'm not sure there's much benefit on you doing a Lite version for this. How will you differentiate between the Lite and Full versions? Still, it's probably worth a shot and see if it makes any difference to sales (get figures for the full version for a few weeks, then release the Lite version and see how much it affects things)

Good luck :)

</comment><comment><USER2> How about telling us what it is :)

<comment><AUTHOR> <http://www.numbrosia.com>

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> check out admob - they have a download exchange (basically a link exchange for apps) that a lot of developers use.

<http://www.admob.com/exchange/>

</comment><comment> Devils-Avacado Make it not look crappy?</comment>


Signs of obesity in Arctic people after exposure to instant noodles and pasta - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4241546/Exposure-junk-food-causing-obesity-Siberian-tribes.html <comment><USER2> Not surprising that adding refined carbs to a lifelong low-carb / high-fat diet creates problems. We here in the lower 48 have conditioned ourselves since birth to eat the stuff.

<comment><USER3> Not working that well for us either. Now we are just conditioned to everyone being fat.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Poker Helper – Deep learning backed Poker assistant - <AUTHOR> https://www.pokerhelper.app <comment><AUTHOR> Hi,

I've just launched the beta version of PokerHelper.app - its a deep-learning backed poker assistant for Texas holdem that provides recommendations for the best possible next move, given your current cards and hand situation.

Unlike other poker assistant apps that use maths to calculate hand strength, Poker Helper's use of deep learning is capable of bluffing, and is aware that other AIs may also bluff, too.

Poker Helper is currently completely free while in Beta, as the AI is not yet 100% production ready. It is currently capable of beating average human players and many other AIs, and I've managed to make some money playing poker online with this app already, but it will be refined further before the paid version is launched.

Thanks for looking, Chris</comment>


It's all about the framework - <AUTHOR> http://www.devwhy.com/blog/2010/4/12/its-all-about-the-framework.html <comment><USER2> I think at least this part is a valid and solid reason for Apple's new developers agreement.

"So, if you will indulge my claim that backwards compatibility is hard (even absent the private API issue) it is pretty easy to see why supporting other runtimes is ceding a lot of control to a 3rd party. Imagine if 10% of the apps on iPhone came from Flash. If that was the case, then ensuring Flash didn't break release to release would be a big deal, much bigger than any other compatibility issues. Since Apple doesn't have access to Flash CS5's runtime library code or compiler frontend, they might be put in a position where they would need to coordinate with Adobe to resolve those issues. Shipping a new release where Apple breaks any specific application, even a top seller, is not an issue if the release is compelling, most apps work, and Apple has the option of working with the vendor to help them fix their app. Shipping a release where they break a large percentage of apps is not generally an option. Letting any of these secondary runtimes develop a significant base of applications in the store risks putting Apple in a position where the company that controls that runtime can cause delays in Apple's release schedule, or worse, demand specific engineering decisions from Apple, under the threat of withholding the information necessary to keep their runtime working."

<comment><USER3> And combine that with the fact that Apple is _just now_ shipping a release that depend entirely on application/platform support for its most important feature (multitasking), and the fact that the TOS change is tied to exactly that release.

<comment><USER4> I don't think Apple will mind much if games don't have explicit support for multitasking right away, but they do care a great deal about getting massive uptake of their new GameCenter API, which a full-service cross-platform game framework might have a hard time supporting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is the kind of writing I really like. Insightful on the strategies involved and what is plausibly going on behind the scenes.

All the other articles on the 3.3.1 change have been mostly superficial and overly emotional. Even the Gruber article that Jobs allegedly referenced didn't offer any insights that weren't obvious.

</comment><comment><USER6> > Letting any of these secondary runtimes develop a significant base of > applications in the store risks putting Apple in a position where the > company that controls that runtime can cause delays in Apple's release > schedule, or worse, demand specific engineering decisions from Apple, under > the threat of withholding the information necessary to keep their runtime > working.

Boy does that bring back memories, from the late 1980s, of various Microsoft products running on MacOS. Apple had to bend over backwards to make API improvements, while not breaking Excel (and others). IIRC, there were various kludges that Apple finally removed, causing much distress to the average user. This wasn't about frameworks per se, but it was about the MacOS toolbox during the 6.x and 7.x era.

</comment><comment><USER7> "If Adobe actually wants to persuade Apple to support Flash on iPhone (either as a plugin or compiled to native apps), I know how they can do it. They can get an awesome, high performance, Flash environment working on Android, and get a bunch of great Flash apps running on Android phones"

So true.

Apple has every right to do what they are doing with their new developer's agreement. It's their platform, they own it. Just like it's every developers right to choose whether or not to develop for it. Let's face it, if all the developers stopped developing for it Apple would change their approach.

Adobe should stop complaining and put all their efforts into other platforms like Android. I think they have rode the Flash wave for too long and have become too fat and lazy.

If Android gains a lot of traction and Apple either becomes stagnate or falls behind because of lack of Flash support then I bet you would see Apple either try to make a deal with Adobe or they would build their own SWF player.</comment>


Show HN: Reduct.tv – Watch Twitch Stream Summaries - <AUTHOR> https://reduct.tv <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN, I've been working on this on the side for the last couple of months. It's basically a site that extracts the interesting bits out of streams or skips the boring parts.

Any feedback is greatly appreciated!</comment>


Ask HN: If China develops a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine, what will the US give up? - <AUTHOR> In the event that China develops an effective SARS-CoV-2 vaccine significantly before any US-led efforts succeed, what are the likeliest concessions the US will make in exchange for access? <comment><USER2> In fact, this may be the most likely scenario. The China scientists have the advantage of the origination. Hopefully all research, not necessarily products, will be shared after the products hit the market, so that every country rich or poor will manufacture themselves. The pie is so large there will be enough money to be made by all companies involved, so they should not hesitate in sharing.

</comment><comment><USER3> Nothing, it's in everyone's best interest to share a vaccine with the entire world. A vaccine for this is not something to profit from.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Should" is not "will." Companies will profit from vaccines and world powers will fight for exclusive access to them.

Moderna intends to profit from a vaccine, should theirs prove successful (that is, they will not sell it at cost).[1]

The US has already made efforts to buy up a vaccine supply and withhold it from other nations.[2]

[1] [https://www.ft.com/content/405c0d07-d15a-4f5b-8a77-3c2fbd5d4...](https://www.ft.com/content/405c0d07-d15a-4f5b-8a77-3c2fbd5d4c1c)

[2] [https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-confirms-that- donald...](https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-confirms-that-donald-trump- tried-to-buy-firm-working-on-coronavirus-vaccine/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why do you think a vaccine produced and certified outside of the U.S.A would be approved for use in the U.S.A prior to lets say the Moderna candidate that is currently already in phase 3 testing within the U.S.A?

I think a better question might be:

What will happen if the government of the U.S.A. purchase all (at least the first 100 million) doses of the effective vaccine(s).

</comment><comment><USER2> One country vaccine will not have automatic approval for use in another country.</comment>


Stripe open-sources Einhorn - <AUTHOR> https://stripe.com/blog/meet-einhorn

<comment><USER3> This looks extremely useful. We have several EventMachine proxies that I'd love to make redundant and load-balanced with something like this.

I took a couple minutes to try to get one of them "einhorned"; I lost most of my time to trying to satisfy EM gem dependencies (we use em-http-request, which has a fussy gemspec). I got Stripe's EM built, file descriptors passed to my proxy, and EventMachine::start_server set up with the fd instead of the address; I'm getting accept callbacks, but not received data.

Will tinker later. High hopes. Thank you very much for open sourcing this.

<comment><AUTHOR> No problem! Feel free to ping me (email@example.com) if you run into issues.

<comment><USER4> Are you hanging around in the IRC somewhere?

<comment><AUTHOR> I lurk around #stripe on freenode usually.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Depending on your platform, how many children you've forked, and your rate of incoming connections, this design could expose you to a thundering herd.

You might find that you get better performance by having the parent call accept() and hand off sockets to the children. With sufficient abuse of LD_PRELOAD you can probably do this without making any changes to the child processes -- you just need to override accept() with a function which checks if any sockets have been handed off.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a fair point. Even if your accept() implementation is fine, event- driven workers would instead be select()ing on the shared socket, which can also lead to a thundering herd. I think you'd need quite a few worker threads before this became an issue in practice though.

<comment><USER5> Indeed, it's an edge case... but it's a painful one if people do run into it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> (The following is off-topic:)

I noticed that the Stripe blog doesn't allow comments. I think most people find it odd or frustrating when they can't add their 2 cents to something (for better or for worse!). Any idea which things might have driven this decision?

\- Not wanting to deal with how most people act on the net? (Or maybe they're in a highly competitive space where the juggernauts wouldn't think twice about trying to destroy their image.)

\- To encourage people who want to discuss the blog entry to submit it to their favorite discussion communities?

\- To avoid possible PR issues sitting right on their company's blog? (Related to point #1)

There is a kind of beautiful simplicity to the page that comments would probably destroy.

<comment><USER7> I made the same decision on my personal blog. When there are comments both on a blog and here on HN, the conversation feels unnaturally fragmented to me.

Further, when I did have both, comments that self-selected the blog (vs HN) are - in my opinion - much more likely to be spam/promotional, or generally less 'valuable' (e.g. more likely to be simple questions that are already answered in the post).

<comment><USER6> There's an angle I hadn't considered. The spammy and promotional type of comments would be far more likely to appear directly on the blog since that's where the value (for the commenter) is in leaving them. That's something that moderated comments would control, but you can't moderate your way out of fragmentation.

I would expect more negative comments to be left directly on the blog as well since the commenter won't have to deal with the potential backlash from their community. Which is probably also a good reason to never allow any kind of anonymous of guest comments. (Although that wouldn't stop the truly motivated negative commenters.)

<comment><USER8> Moderation can also get tricky. Pure spam is simple but you will run into comments where the commenter somehow works in their (product || experience). So long as they provided some commentary it is not pure spam. So the situation becomes a bit touchy.

This is a problem we ran into at PhpPhotoUploadr. In our case we have a very talented team so we hacked together a solution.

PS: We're always hiring 忍者!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Am I to understand that Einhorn doesn't require the use of Unix sockets to delegate work to workers? If so, it could work quite nicely for JRuby apps as Java doesn't support Unix sockets and it's therefore not possible to just plop nginx in front of the Web server (Tomcat or Jetty) instances and have it queue up requests to a shared Unix socket like the typical Unicorn setup does.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's correct. In fact, at the moment Einhorn only supports TCP sockets. (That being said, I might be mistaken, but I think that Unicorn can also bind TCP sockets.)

<comment><USER9> Thank you for the follow-up. Even though Unicorn does support TCP sockets, it is irrelevant for our JRuby apps as I believe (IIRC) it won't even install under JRuby due to being written in C only, with no native-Java or pure-Ruby alternatives available. So it's not a Web server that can be used for serving JRuby apps.

Now, since you've extracted the capabilities of Unicorn out into something that isn't coupled to a Web server (and it's written in pure Ruby, so is portable), we should be able to use it as a shim between nginx for managing Trinidad (Tomcat) instances. Very much looking forward to giving it a try - thanks for your efforts!

EDIT: Whoops, guess I spoke a bit too soon. I get this error:

      NotImplementedError: fork is not available on this platform

I think a typical workaround on JRuby is to use the posix-spawn or spoon gems. If I have some time this next weekend maybe I could test this a bit more and maybe formulate a patch. Example posix-spawn usage [here][1].

[1]: [https://github.com/ddollar/foreman/blob/master/lib/foreman/p...](https://github.com/ddollar/foreman/blob/master/lib/foreman/process.rb#L54)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, interesting. Yeah, would love a patch!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Awesome news. Still waiting for you guys to come to Canada so I can give you all my money!

<comment><USER11> is stripe only available to us customers trying to buy through your site? or only us startups, and all of their customers?

<comment><USER5> Only US merchants. Customers can be anywhere (except North Korea, Iran, etc. presumably).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The logo is confusing me a bit. What's the connection between icosahedral gems and unicorns? Is this some pop culture reference I'm missing or is it basically a stopgap considering that Unicorn itself already has an eponymous logo?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, it's mostly a stopgap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Does this work for long-lived connections? Say I've got 1000 TCP connections open to my backend workers and I want to roll out new workers. Will the old connections die or survive the config change?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, it will indeed work. New workers will be spun up, the old workers will get a signal asking for a graceful restart, and those old workers can hang around for as long as they need. You'll have twice as many workers alive as you might like, but there's not much Einhorn can do about that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm interested to see some more posts about Einhorn. I would like to see some example use cases for it. Looks like a very interesting project.

</comment><comment><USER15> i'm going to fork Einhorn and call it Finkle.

<comment><USER16> Finkle and Einhorn... Einhorn and Finkle... Finkle is Einhorn... Einhorn is Finkle...

<comment><USER17> Einhorn is a man!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I just heard of Unicorn / Rainbow as a way to get more out of Heroku workers/dynos. I wonder if this is also compatible, or a better alternative?

I'm new to this whole concept, so am just about to get my feet wet.

Hopefully, Heroku will implement something like this internally, as it seems it would help them to eliminate the greatest flaw with their system - <USER2> each deployment require 5-10 seconds of downtime as new dynos are started.

</comment><comment><USER19> To my knowledge both FastCGI and Unicorn are not free. This is definitely an excellent alternative to those - and probably even easier to use for some use- cases. I am glad and thankful that Stripe decided to make it open-source.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, Unicorn is indeed free (you can grab the code from git://bogomips.org/unicorn.git -- looks like it's GPL). FastCGI is an open specification, with many free implementations. There's definitely a lot of cool prior art in this space.</comment></comment>


The first solar road has turned out to be a disappointing failure - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencealert.com/the-world-s-first-solar-road-has-turned-out-to-be-a-disappointing-failure <comment><USER2> I never managed to see the advantages of having a solar road compared to just having a normal road with solar panels next to it. Or above it. Or literally anywhere else. In fact I can't think of many areas that still get direct sunlight that would make for a worse place to put solar panels than on the road...

<comment><USER3> The advantage that people wanted to get is that in the end you also get a road.

Roads take up space, cost money to build and maintain. If you build it next to the road the road need twice the amount of space and still require the space, construction and material for the actually road. If you build it above the road you get all the issue of overhead roof on a road (trees that fall on it, wind, height limitation).

In addition to saving money by not actually building a normal road, the idea in most of solar roads projects is that it combines the work of putting internet and power cables into the ground.

That it currently do not work economically is the issue that the article showcase. Maybe it will never work and it always will be cheaper to simply build the road with current construction methods, put internet/power cables under it, buy large lands (farming land?) and construct regular solar parks.

Other concept of combining solar panels and building materials that is argued as more cost effective are roofs on houses. Same concept as solar road, ie that you get a roof and a solar panel in one without spending the work and material for both, but I have no idea if the economics is better than solar parks or if it is cheaper to just build normal roofs and go the route of getting land and building solar parks separately.

<comment><USER4> > That it currently do not work economically is the issue that the article > showcase.

It's more than that. We simply don't live in a world where physics is in favor for doing this.

Many people have done more than back of the envelope calculations to show this simply was a non starter.

Those (people who took money to build ) push this idea are either ignorant at best and dishonest at worst.

<comment><USER5> I do wonder if the concept could work on a sidewalk, given that they aren't being perpetually driven over by 3,000+ pound vehicles.

<comment><USER6> The ground pressure from a truck is around 150 PSI. A woman wearing high heels can match, and even exceed that.

So the sidewalk would need to be just as strong as the road.

<comment><USER7> Common physics example, but it disregards how women actually walk and stand in heels. They walk on their forefoot, rather than balancing their weight on the heel.

[https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/The-higher-the-heel- th...](https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/The-higher-the-heel-the-higher- the-in-ten-healthy-Speksnijder- Munckhof/9547d261aea7401caad230ecca180363ff13f0b4/figure/1)

Shows less than 30 N/cm^2 (40 PSI) for women in heels - and higher heels result in lower heel pressure. Forefoot pressure is higher, despite the larger surface area.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, and a heel surface area of 32.3 +/\- 4.4 cm^2. There are shoes with heel surface area of sub 1cm^2.

I don't think the study invalidates parents claim, if anything it more it less supports it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This was not at all a failure. They built a 1km experimental road. They gained valuable information about real-world performance and technical challenges. It's not as though they built a 100km long six-lane highway with unproven technology. They built a tiny one-lane trial to test a promising idea.

It was overhyped by politicians, but what isn't? Maybe they even steamrolled over engineering red flags. That doesn't mean it wasn't a valuable experiment.

<comment><USER8> The trouble with this viewpoint is that there are an endless number of things we _could_ be trying, and it's more or less a zero sum game.

The idea was terrible on paper, easily falsified by back of the napkin math. The same amount of money could have been spent on, eg, testing the commercial viability of smoothing out grid loads by making ice off peak for cooling.

<comment><USER10> It's _never_ a zero sum game - we can try many things at once, some will work well, some will work poorly, some won't work at all

Trying things helps us move forward

<comment><USER11> And some aren't even worth trying in the first place. Like this idea.

edit: I'm all for trying crazy moonshots. Just not down right idiotic ones that are pushed by pseudo-science and clickbait activism [1].

[1][https://www.vox.com/2014/5/14/5717036/should-we-cover-all- ou...](https://www.vox.com/2014/5/14/5717036/should-we-cover-all-our-roads- with-solar-panels)

<comment><USER12> Excuse my ignorance, isn't this a technical challenge, rather than the idea in itself was stupid?

Isn't that saying shooting sky full of satellite for communication is stupid until SpaceX made loading anything to space 10x less expensive?

I would say the idea isn't worth trying because it clearly wasn't ready, ( I mean if napkin maths already show it is off by a factor of 10 than it really is stupid trying it ) but I don't think the idea in itself is stupid at all.

<comment><USER13> The thing about solar roads is they're covered by cars, and they don't work when covered, for obvious reasons. Then all the road dirt, grime, tire dust, oil, etc, builds up on top of them blocking the light for good. The road is about the worst thing you can possibly try and generate solar electricity from.

<comment><USER12> Thx. Valid Point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "The engineers also didn't take into account the effects of leaves, which caused damage and limited the amount of electricity the panels could produce. They also didn't think about the pressure and weight from tractors, two locals told Le Monde."

They were warned about this.

<comment><USER15> I find it hard to believe they were really unaware. They either overestimated the durability of their devices or were running a quasi scam.

<comment><USER16> I know nothing of the details here, so this is total speculation, but I can imagine value in going with a solution you know wont "succeed", if the data you get from the failure is valuable. Like, no need to spend money trying to fix the tractor problem if the leaf problem is too severe. If in practice the leaf problem only deteriorates things by 30%, that's different than 80%, etc.

Spending the money to solve problems on your first run is likely to not actually solve all of them.

Then again, this could be a bold exercise in fraud and/or incompetence.

<comment><USER17> That's a pretty expensive experiment, and they could have tested each independently (install a few meters of panels near a tree and near a farm). Instead, they installed 1km of road and the minister of energy hoped to drastically increase the amount of these roads within a fairly short time frame (5 years), which tells me they didn't consider it an experiment (just a conservative rollout).

This feels like fraud to me, and some lack of reasoning on the part of the government officials who accepted this project.

Yes, $5M isn't _huge_ by government standards, but it's pretty big compared to simpler testing options available to a company who plans to fall back to powering CCTVs (hopefully not with parking lot panels...).

<comment><USER18> As a proof of concept trial it wasn't very expensive. Unrelated, but just for comparison it cost about a much as Uber lost every 2.5 _hours_ in 2019Q2.

They built a Minimum Viable Product for a trial and found out that it wasn't actually viable and didn't provide the hoped for value. They probably also learned a lot with real world experience (that they wouldn't have been sure to have in a staged setup) and may come back with something different in the future.

Personally I'd be curious about the math on how much these panels pick up, whether some kind of contactless power transmission would be viable at highway speeds, and whether in 15-20 years we'll see interstates paved with these providing trickle power to fully automated electric trucks running as "road trains" across the country.

<comment><USER19> Have there been any trials on creating a solar roof over highways? It seems like a much better option as the panels don't need to be reinforced, and they can be angled towards the sun to aid cleaning. We already know how to build stable metal framed structures (and panels aren't that heavy). In somewhere like Spain it would reduce the requirement for AC while driving, making it even more green. During rain it would increase visibility and reduce water on the road, making the road safer.

<comment><USER18> If you're building new structures I'm positive that the economics work out better for simply doing separate solar farms. Building them above a road has no major advantages and potentially both increases construction costs and increases the chances of unfortunate interaction (eg an accident taking out panels).

The sweet spot for solar roads would be in places where the generation benefit outweighed the extra cost when a road was being redone anyway - and even then only if the materials were up to the task.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Most solar panels are very inefficient at converting the sun to electricity so they need all the help they can get. Two things solar panels require is to be clean and to be perpendicular to the sun. A solar road achieves neither of those things.

<comment><USER21> Panels at the side of the roads?

<comment><USER22> panels above urban tunnels, maybe powering some air filtering system ?

<comment><USER23> Aqueducts have been suggested as siting locations.

Benefits:

\- Reduced evaporation losses.

\- Extant rights of way / property rights.

\- Extant technical infrastruction, including power transmission for pumps, etc.

Not that this is the _only_ siting location to consider, but it's a reasonable candidate.

<comment><USER22> Never thougt of them. Great indeed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Help me understand the logic behind taking a PV and stepping on it in the worst possible way, leaving dirt , rubber etc, when every PV that is exposed only to the open air needs regular cleaning / maintainance. And its being frequently under the shade of cars

<comment><USER25> I'm curious how you arrived at that conclusion? Common wisdom, at least a few years ago, was "cleaning isn't worth it".

([https://phys.org/news/2013-07-solar-panels- worth.html](https://phys.org/news/2013-07-solar-panels-worth.html))

<comment><USER26> Self-cleaning glass is a fairly mature technology and will work effectively on a rooftop solar installation. That won't work on a solar roadway, which a) needs a textured surface to provide adequate grip for vehicles and b) can't retain any sort of coating due to friction and c) is constantly being covered in axle grease, tire rubber, brake dust and the innards of various wild animals.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self- cleaning_glass](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-cleaning_glass)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> For some reason, solar roads are a very aggressive meme (in the classical sense of the word). They capture the imagination and blind people to engineering reality.

Solar roads do not make any sense whatsoever, as you wrote pretty much any other place is better for panels.

<comment><USER28> They capture the imagination because there are plenty of places you _don't_ want to build solar panels. Namely places that you want to leave alone for ecological or recreational purposes. If you can take a piece of infrastructure that is pervasive throughout a built environment and give it additional purpose, then you can save on or reduce the land you specify for this purpose.

Does it work? Apparently not, or at least: not yet. We have not successfully accomplished this, but it remains to be seen if this is a case of not yet, or never will. Experimentation yields useful data, even when the experiment is a failure.

So where were the failures? The road was less durable than expected. They didn't account for falling leaves. They didn't produce as much electricity as they thought it would. Thunderstorms also damaged the road.

But! It _did_ produce a decent amount of electricity, it did successfully transmit it, and it did function as a road. Colas has given up and chose not to pursue this route anymore, but it isn't a death sentence for the idea in its entirety. It is a failure of execution, and there will be a lot of failures before there is ever a success. I'll end this with the caveat that there might not ever be a success, but it is too early to decide that and further experimentation might yield other interesting road construction technologies.

<comment><USER29> It's not an experiment that can yield anything or teach us anything if there is no paper and no data. A fraudulent startup maybe.

<comment><USER28> How big is your laboratory? Is it a space you rent out, or is it all the known Universe and all of its history?

We've been learning things by trial and error a lot longer than we've been practicing the Scientific Method. You don't always get the data you want. You don't always get someone to summarize the data in a nicely formatted paper published in a respected journal. You get what you get and if not quite like it, make do.

If this sort of thing, Solar Roads, doesn't interest you, that is fine too. Maybe you even have credible reasons to be Anti-Solar Roads. It's certainly shaky enough ground to start on, but I wouldn't discredit this road in France as a useful experiment simply because there wasn't a paper at the end. Thunderstorms and fallen leaves! Maybe they should have known, but they didn't, and because they didn't consider that, it's exciting because now how can we go about addressing the problem if we wish to try this again? Maybe someone can build a road and _let_ it get hit by Thunderstorms just to analyze the rate of fire, so to speak. Maybe someone can build one somewhere else to figure out how it differs from one location to another. Maybe we build a third, and start figuring if a solar road is more likely to attract strikes from a storm than other types of roads? Can we mitigate this with some kind of lightning rod? How many do we need and how spaced apart should they be? Can we _capture_ the energy from the lightning or are they too infrequent even in the vicinity of the solar roads to be worth the bother?

A lot of those questions might already be answered or answerable without having to build all of those roads to figure it out, but at the very least, a little roadway in France can spark a lot of questions that are _worth_ answering for anyone trying this anywhere else.

<comment><USER30> It's simply a waste of money if we can do the maths and see that it's always going to be vastly worse than putting them on roofs, on gantries over roads, or literally almost anywhere else but on a dirty, flat surface with huge pressures on what we already knew were fragile and durable cells.

There are several factors, each alone that make this idea a non-starter. All these were known from previous experimental results so this never needed to be done. For example - 1\. Placing cells flat reduces the power output by 30% over putting it at an angle and facing north. The angle varies with how far you are from the equator. So putting solar in roads will always yield at least 30% less power than putting it in an appropriate location. 2\. Roads are extremely dirty. There's dirt, brake dust, rubber, etc., not to mention shading from buildings, the natural geography and cars while they are driving over it. This will mean at least another 10-20% less power per solar cell, which will degrade as it gets dirtier. So you're probably throwing up to 40% of your power away unless you're cleaning them every week or so.

Then factor in damage, etc... a basic engineering assessment shows that it is infeasable, and even with massive improvements, _rooftop solar and solar farms will always be correspondingly better_.

But since you seem to be so big on experimentation, do you want to send me a few million dollars and we'll put solar on the biggest area of all - the sea floor? Think of how much space there is! I mean, we can calculate that basically no light reaches it, but that's not important, right? It'll be valuable data!

<comment><USER30> (Note that when I say panels need to face north, that's because I am in the southern hemisphere. Obviously in the northern hemisphere it's the opposite so should face south).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This was obviously never going to work; I think it's far more interesting as a piece of morality theater and/or a psychological ink-blot test. Because who looks at a system like this (individual humans carted around extravagantly in an energy-intensive, 4,000-pound CO2-belching murder machine, on an expensive and space-intensive road created _just for them_ ) and thinks, you know what's wrong with this system? _It doesn 't generate enough energy._ Mmm yeah, you're almost right. Sort of like how a violent person doesn't generate enough not- punching-people. Keep going with that reasoning. See if you can use the phrase "in the first place" in your answer.

It's fascinating. Obviously they seem to grasp the system has something wrong with it, and the problem has something to do with energy. But when that line of thought begins to lead them inexorably toward the conclusion that _they should actually probably stop driving immediately, like today_ , they take a quick left turn into something else, anything else, whatever's available and "green" \- SOLAR, let's do the solar. That'll absolve our sins. Hence, where do you place the panels? In the road, where the sin occurred.

It's like the dim awareness of our actual transportation/energy predicament, is in the cellar of their subconscious, knocking at the door to enter conscious awareness, but not quite managing to get the person's attention. The mental contortions required to actually like this idea, remind me a lot of the ones required to maintain various states of denial. The fact being desperately avoided of course is that a set of changes far more sweeping and less pleasant than they're willing to admit or allow, are going to be necessary.

<comment><USER18> _This was obviously never going to work_

Could be, and I suspect that a lot of the actual engineering folks involved would agree 100% on this point. They'd probably also tell you that 5 million for real - world experimental data on the exact ways in which it failed was very much worth it.

Was there anything else worth responding to in the wordy pseudo-psychological insults?

<comment><USER32> May I please read the real-world experimental data that will save other companies millions of dollars?

<comment><USER33> Go right ahead.

Scientific papers are probably easier to access than anytime before.

Start by looking for optimal angels for mounting solar panels. Last I heard, unless you have movable panels the only correct angle is where they catch most of the sun in the middle of the day.

<comment><USER34> 1.) I think the OP was asking where they can find the insights obtained from this failed solar road test that would allow others to save money. Not general photovoltaics stuff.

2.) Angling solar panels is a more complex problem than you might have thought: [https://www.eupvsec- proceedings.com/proceedings?fulltext=mun...](https://www.eupvsec- proceedings.com/proceedings?fulltext=munzke&paper=33024) :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I remember at the time this was announced, I was working at a startup in the solar PV industry. Our collective response on the workfloor was, "wow, that's an incredibly stupid idea for so many reasons". Surprised it took them so long to admit failure.

<comment><USER35> If they had admitted failure earlier, then they couldn't milk as much money from suckers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Seems like you'd be much better off floating them on a lake. There was a project a few years ago to do this both for power and to reduce evaporative loss in reservoirs, but I don't know if anything has come of it.

<comment><USER37> Wouldn't you kill the lake, unless you only covered a small proportion of it.

<comment><USER38> Depends on the lake. There is a reservoir near LA covered in millions of black balls. Apparently this is a side effect of water quality regulation, direct sunlight triggers a chemical reaction that produces harmful byproducts. As a bonus, evaporation is also reduced, which matters in semi-arid climates like Southern California.

[https://www.veritasium.com/videos/2019/5/23/why- are-96000000...](https://www.veritasium.com/videos/2019/5/23/why- are-96000000-black-balls-on-this-reservoir)

<comment><USER37> I saw that story surface again recently, it's a perennial pleaser. Those balls are used to cover lakes of processed water which is eventually used as drinking water; that's not a living lake.

This NatGeo article from 2015, [https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/08/150812-shade...](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/08/150812-shade- balls-los-angeles-California-drought-water-environment/) , notes for example that they kill algae and microorganisms, and inhibit water-fowl.

I'm almost certain they'd kill lake-born fish too, preventing growth of water- borne oxygenators (which also serve as a food source, and place for eg snails to live).

Whilst the purpose appears to be to prevent plant and animal life, at least in part, it's possible a stable eco-system might still survive; but it seems highly unlikely to me -- do you have something to show me I'm wrong in my assumption?

<comment><USER38> While I'm not an expert, I suspect you're right. Point being that some lakes serve a different purpose than supporting a thriving ecosystem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Solar roads seem like a really cool technology. Like, if they worked great and were affordable and everything, then awesome!

But, practically speaking, they seem to violate the [single responsibility principle]([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_responsibility_principl...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_responsibility_principle)). By coupling a solar panel to a road, we're forcing the physical entity to comply with competing objectives.

Seems like the future's prone to be different, anyway. For example, how long are we going to really need roads that're driven over at-random like today? Seems like self-driving cars could be designed-and-programmed to drive over just specific parts of the road meant to handle their weight, while the gaps between those load-bearing parts can have solar panels.

<comment><USER40> You know you kind of described how trains work? :)

I just did a quick calculation for Poland - we have 11k km electrified train tracks, with ~1.5m of space between the rails. If I calculated correctly, putting solar panels there would give us ~8-15tWh energy per year, which is 5-10% of the required electricity production for the nation.

I've never been a fan of the idea of solar roads, but solar railways might actually make sense...

<comment><USER41> I don't know how they do it in Poland, but in some countries when you flush a toilet on a passenger train going above a certain speed, the nasty stuff just evacuates to the space between the tracks.

<comment><USER39> Seems like any sort of solar panel on the ground is going to be prone to get nasty stuff on it.

I guess they might just have them at an angle, then trust the rain provide some light cleaning, while a street/rail-cleaner could go by for more thorough cleanings periodically?

I mean, I dunno what exactly their strategy is, but I'm assuming that they're not counting on a road to not get dirty. Cars leave rubber from their tires, drip oil, drop trash, etc..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Solar Freaking Roadways! Do you guys remember this viral youtube viral video? [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlTA3rnpgzU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlTA3rnpgzU)

<comment><USER43> When I first saw that video I thought, "this has to be a joke right? They can't actually think that is feasible." And here we are…

<comment><USER42> The video attracted so much undeserved attention that many engineers felt that they had to produce a corresponding debunk video explaining why it is such a useless idea and why asphalt is currently our best option on building roads.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> You know, I always wondered why they didn't go for solar covered sidewalks, which would provide shade to pedestrians and power to everything that needs it. Roads seem like a better place for pressure-based generation (of anything, frankly).

Still, just for the enthusiasm they garnered and the continued push toward making renewable energy generation interact with the everyday, the idealists should be commended. The engineers... not as such, no.

But, silly question, knowing very little about this field, couldn't it be possible to (co)generate power from the heat and pressure that roads endure on a near-constant basis?

<comment><USER45> Solar roads and sidewalks are a PR stunt. Abrasion is no joke, nothing optically transparent survives on the ground. You can see this easily in the cellar "pavement lights" common in NYC and other old cities. Light still passes through after a century, but maybe 20% and very diffuse. Bad for solar panels.

Roads don't absorb enough energy to generate power, they're not flexible enough. They're designed to not absorb energy since it hastens breakdown. Potholes are a good example of a road surface energy absorber :) .

Solar roofs are a far better bet. Elon is onto something there, but time will tell if costs can be brought down enough. Besides the good PR, solar roofs substantially reduce heat absorbtion, important in the sunny climates solar works well in. And we have a ton of wasted roof space. Many companies would willingly allow roof panels to be put up for free if the economics for power generation were good enough.

<comment><USER37> I think you misunderstood the parent, they said "solar covered sidewalks" that shade pedestrians, so roofs.

Solar roofs on car parks seem good to me; better than using pasture land converted to solar farms which I'm seeing more and more in UK.

<comment><USER45> Somewhat. OP also mentions generating energy from the pavement, which I don't think will ever be reasonable.

Solar car park covers are a great idea. Easier access than roofs, don't need to be water proof. Good cooling airflow underneath. Tend to be close to cities where power is easier to transport.

Solar parking lot covers are the best ROI solar installations I can imagine.

Surprised Telsa isn't doing this with their SuperCharger stations

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Who would've guessed? Getting a kilometer of solar panels installed as a road (sic!) in a region that has a cloudy skies most of the time. It's borderline genius. How did it get any approval at all? Who treated solar panels being used as a road (probably to spend some more tax money on casing?) as a good idea? How is it not just obvious that it will not even get close to the easier and cheaper (rooftop panels) options? This imitation of environment care is so hilarious that I don't have the proper words to describe it.

</comment><comment><USER45> This was a PR stunt from the beginning.

We can't even make roads last 20 years with the most durable materials we can find. We make them out of rock and they still fall apart.

Car windshields are scratched to hell after a decade. Grocery checkout scanner windows are made of Sapphire, nearly as hard as diamond, and still need to be replaced.

Solar roads will never be a reality. Optically clear material hard and malleable enough seem a physical impossibly. Metals are the only suitable material and they cannot be made transparent due to hard physical constraints.

</comment><comment><USER23> There is one and only one bright spot I can see in this test: the concept was trialed under ideal conditions according to its proponents, and failed spectacularly.

There's a high probability that true beleivers still won't be convinced -- their faith transcends reason and experience. The rest of us can point to this as a Provably Bad Idea.

My only regret is that there aren't similarly conclusive demonstrations possible in all such cases.

<comment><USER47> [http://www.whenprophecyfails.info/Conditions.htm](http://www.whenprophecyfails.info/Conditions.htm)

<comment><USER23> Interesting, though I think there's more to it than just this.

Belief tends to become _identity_.

Moreover, belief becomes an _ordering principle_. The refutation of a belief creates the problem that _there is no longer an ordering principle_. This isn't always clearly obvious, but if the belief is itself part of a complex chain of interconnected beliefs, then removal of one, even if quite clearly false, creates discord within the entire structure. You've got to break down and rebuild the whole thing, which can get complicated.

(Compare, by way of technical analogue, the task of refactoring a particularly messy bit of code or kit, where it turns out that a specific feature has interactions across a wide number of other areas.)

The Kubler-Ross model of grief is, I'm increasingly convinced, actually a response to _belief changes_. The original research was based on patients _informed of their own pending mortality_ , by way of fatal diagnoses or conditions, and how they responded.

Such information is a massive disruption to belief systems. And absent some mechanism for supporting transition to a different one, the classic KR response (denial, anger, depression, bargaining, acceptance) is highly probable.

The interesting question to me is what happens in cases where such responses _don 't_ develop. Where we can and do change beliefs quickly and fluidly. What do _those_ circumstances have in common.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> If you can cope with the swearing, this is an interesting debunking of an other (US) solar road project with preposterous claims: [1]

[1] [https://unreasonablydangerousonionrings.com/2016/07/18/4-rea...](https://unreasonablydangerousonionrings.com/2016/07/18/4-reasons- solar-roadways-are-fucking-stupid/)

</comment><comment><USER49> As a side note, falling leaves is one of the most dreaded problem in rail transportation. Not only does it obstruct things very efficiently, including the passage of light, but it also makes the rail surface very slippery, making it sometimes impossible for trains to actually brake using mechanical means. Much much worse than snow or rain. One sympathizes.

</comment><comment><USER50> _French officials said the road, made of photovoltaic panels, would generate electricity to power streetlights in Tourouvre, a local town._

I don't know how reliable they are, but solar-powered streetlights are already common in some areas --- and being mounted high above on the lights themselves, the panels are far less likely to be damaged.

<comment><USER51> Wonder if that would also help reduce light pollution if the panel was wide enough compared to the lens over the light.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> It was a failure but I'm glad they tried it. Hopefully something like this comes to fruition and we learn more and more with every iteration. Solar roads are a great idea. Maybe it means it needs daily sweeping with electric vacuum trucks or something but if it's producing enough electricity then it's worth it.

<comment><USER53> > It was a failure but I'm glad they tried it. ... Solar roads are a great > idea.

It was a bad idea. Even in theory. The only positive thing about it is that it captured the imagination of lots of people who know nothing about solar or roads.

<comment><USER51> The frustrating thing was that pretty every problem that arose during these trials were already known. Those who spoke up were ridiculed for being naysayers. There's a balance between those who reflexively oppose everything and those who have an informed opinion based on experience and knowledge. There was quite a bit of overlap between those who strongly supported solar roadways and the "I f __*ing love science! " crowd that have turned science into something indistinguishable from magic.

The original installation in Idaho ran into predictable problems almost immediately. The much larger installations had very little justification for going forward other than it was very popular with a rather vocal group of voters. Doubt any of the politicians, celebrities, or their fans who pushed this and dumped all over those with credible objections will apologize for their part in the boondoggle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> > The French minister for energy said she wanted to have solar panels on one > mile of road every 621 miles in the country within the next five years.

You can still do that! Just put them on a rail off to the side, angled to get lots of sunlight.

</comment><comment><USER55> Why wasn't that strip of land right by the road converted into a solar strip instead? It looks like that shoulder has almost as much physical area to it and would take a lot less wear and tear.

I never understood this idea to begin with.

<comment><USER56> I think the idea was to take advantage of land that cannot be used otherwise.

<comment><USER51> Most roads are in rural areas with plenty of room next to them. The inventors were very aware of this, being from Sandpoint, Idaho.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> As was foretold. This is all very, very simple.

Solar panels above heavy vehicle traffic: Good Idea.

Solar panels below heavy vehicle traffic: Bad Idea.

If you want to solar panel anything more heavy duty than a bike path, make a roof.

</comment><comment><USER58> Does anyone but me have the suspicion that the animosity towards solar roads was something to do with a 'nerve being touched', some kind of 'triggering'? Sure, they might not work out, but lots of stupid-sounding ideas ('a horseless carriage? Whatever next?') have turned out to work, just as much as lots of somewhat futuristic but nonetheless sensible sounding ideas have turned out not to be here yet ('flying cars are just around the corner'). Who knows, at some point in the future, with different technologies and materials, different efficiencies and performance, we might indeed find solar energy being collected from roads. Just as we are laughing right now at the current, ludicrously oversold and patently unsuccessful efforts, future generations may be laughing at our arrogant dismissal of an idea that might ultimately have just turned out to have been ahead of its time. Let's applaud the audacity of the solar roadways hubris in the spirit of uninhibited innovative endeavour, just as much as we pat ourselves on the back for having successfully spotted its obvious shortcomings and predicted its seemingly inevitable struggle for survival.

<comment><USER59> Yeah I don't know why the article is so negative. Any engineer would look at this and say, "cool, a few more problems to solve" not "well golly, I guess there's nothing we can do about a few leaves".

<comment><USER60> Like placing the panels above roads, for example. It helps to get optimal inclination of panels too, and reduce stress levels, and eliminates losses from cars' shadows, and simplifies maintenance, and reduces pavement costs.

Some ideas are just plain stupid.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> It is the dumbest idea to use a solar road when there are roofs; like bus shelters. train stations or even sound walls that can be converted. Cars would literally rip these roads apart due to dirt and grind.

Even EENblog made several videos about this in the last few weeks. Just have a look:

* [https://www.eevblog.com/2019/08/07/eevblog-1233-the-demise-o...](https://www.eevblog.com/2019/08/07/eevblog-1233-the-demise-of-solar-roadways/)

* [https://www.eevblog.com/2019/08/07/eevblog-1234-more-epic-so...](https://www.eevblog.com/2019/08/07/eevblog-1234-more-epic-solar-roadways-fail/)

* [https://www.eevblog.com/2019/08/18/eevblog-1236-german-solar...](https://www.eevblog.com/2019/08/18/eevblog-1236-german-solar-freakin-roadways/)

</comment><comment><USER62> There was a fairly ridiculous promotional video going around YouTube circa 2014 about a couple who "invented" solar roadways. I've placed a link here for your amusement.

[https://youtu.be/qlTA3rnpgzU](https://youtu.be/qlTA3rnpgzU)

</comment><comment><USER63> Yes, solar roads were always the answer to the question of "where is the absolute worst possible place to put solar panels".

This was 100% predictable.

<comment><USER64> Could be worse.[1] Remember the schemes for recovering energy from traffic on sidewalks and roads?

Pavegen pivoted to collecting info about people walking on their sidewalks, rather than energy.

[1] [https://pavegen.com/](https://pavegen.com/)

<comment><USER65> >Pavegen pivoted to collecting info about people walking on their sidewalks, rather than energy.

Wow. Switching from saving the world, to spying on everybody in it. That's almost a perfect microcosm of how the tech industry seems to have morphed in the last decade.

<comment><USER66> The four stages of technology:

\- innovation

\- productization

\- marketing

\- milking IP

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> Anyone who bothered doing the math knew this was a horrible idea from the very start.

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=obS6TUVSZds](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=obS6TUVSZds)

<comment> brian-armstrong For those who don't watch him, EEVBlog has had excellent videos on the feasibility of solar roadways.

<comment><USER29> To summarize his videos: solar roadways were never feasible even in theory with quick back-of-the-envelope calculations and all of the known solar roadways projects in the world have failed or are nearing failure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> I can't imagine how hard it must have been, in France of all places, to try something that bold and risky and obvious to oppose beforehand.

We're the country of ruthless self deprecation coupled with perfectionist universalism.

I hope something was learnt here (other than learning not to do it again), and I'm absolutely confident the people who cluelessly pushed for it will go on their public careers unaffected while the innocents are punished.

We've done more insane stuff and survived to tell the tale.

But really, PV in Normandy ? Come oooooon....

<comment><USER26> _> I hope something was learnt here (other than learning not to do it again)_

I'm afraid not - the trials played out exactly as the naysayers predicted. Most of the panels cracked under load and failed due to water ingress; those that didn't became woefully inefficient due to soiling. They were dangerously slippery even in ideal conditions, they cost much more than a conventional rooftop installation and they never generated as much electricity as a rooftop installation even when they were brand new.

The whole exercise was a complete waste of time and money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> I think the best for societies is solar roofs. Much better surface availability. Solar roads, filled with thousands of cars cannot suck energy from sun so well as houses' roofs.

</comment><comment><USER70> I'm not sure I'd put "doesn't generate enough energy" in the failure category.

It's a road. It normally doesn't generate energy anyway.

Anything here is a plus, especially when it comes to research.

They just have to take what they've learned from this and apply it to the next attempt.

And from the sounds of it, the only thing they have to really focus on is ensure the next one lasts long enough to pay for its own construction.

Solar sidewalks might be a better idea.

</comment><comment><USER66> If anybody is disappointed here then they have only themselves to blame. This was dead obvious to anybody with half a working brain and a basic idea of the concepts of road construction, photo-voltaics and general power infrastructure. Doomed to fail and should not have passed the first phase of review for feasibility.

Many of the projects that have not seen the light of day are in that state because they were dumb, not because nobody thought of them before.

</comment><comment><USER71> Made me think, what roads would actually be suitable for this?

They have to be:

1) cleaned often

2) have very little traffic

3) have a very large surface

And one of the solutions that pops up is: airport runways! They have a huge area, way larger than necessary to land a plane. The surface is always kept in good condition. The traffic is minimal, except for a few very busy airports. Some airports handle just a few planes a day, the rest of the time they stay unused, when they could've been producing energy instead.

<comment><USER72> Why does it have to be roads?

All airports have more than enough free space as it is, which can be used to set up solar panels in the most optimal way.

<comment><USER73> I'm not an expert, but I expect that a lot of that seemingly free space to the sides of runways is kept deliberately clear in case of emergency landings and whatnot. Cluttering it with solar panels would probably be a no-go; imagine a plane crash-landing into the middle of a huge electrical installation not easily accessible for firefighters.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> The only thing roads have going for them as a location for solar is that we (humans) have a lot of road area to work with. Wouldn't it be great if roads did double duty supporting our tires AND making some energy?

I've always wondered if there were some way to use the space above (as in you drive under them) the roads instead. Is there a mass-efficient-enough design to make putting panels above the road a profitable thing.

</comment><comment><USER75> Hmm...

Can we just applaud that people are trying something new?

Or are we going to shoot it down because of pessimism?

If you know so well what works, then do your best and make it happen or write a guide on how to do experiments that almost always lead to success.

They didn't fail fast, but they failed with relatively little costs. What is 5 million to the national GDP of France?

It seems to me they were trying something new, were brave and paid the price. In most cases you get nothing back.

<comment><USER76> Yeah, this is how I see it too. It was an experiment. It failed. Things were learned from deploying it into a real-world environment. This may contribute in some way to a future technology, as often happens.

HN of course is full of people who are experts on every topic, so naturally there was no need to actually perform this experiment. They could have just accurately predicted its faults and performance from theorizing alone after reading just a few articles about materials science and the properties of modern roads.

While we're busy talking about the obvious and predictable failure of this experiment, we should also take a moment to also revisit the obvious and predictable failure that was Dropbox: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6625306](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6625306)

<comment> roar-of-time The comments on that page are overwhelmingly friendly. And regardless, how can you even compare the two?! Dropbox fulfilled an obvious need and fulfilled it very well, whereas "solar roads" don't seem to be a solution to any problem at all!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER77> Solar roads seem like a very expensive and thus fixed alternative, when we have a big enough expense ahead of us moving HVAC, transportation, manufacturing, etc. to green sources. Keeping solar generation separate is more flexible.

It's also worth considering that we may choose to move away from big, expensive, fossil-based roadways to more compact, inexpensive and 'smart road' options.

</comment><comment><USER78> This article from 4 days ago says a solar road in the Netherlands is doing well, so it seems like the French road is just a bad design? I don't know if they are in fact different hardware:

[https://www.businessinsider.com/worlds-first-solar-road- turn...](https://www.businessinsider.com/worlds-first-solar-road-turned-out- colossal-failure-2019-8)

<comment><USER56> The one in the Netherlands seems to be a 70m solar cycle lane. Cars will destroy a surface a lot faster than bikes. Maybe (dedicated) bike lanes would be a good place to start with this.

<comment><USER79> It's not obvious to me that cars will destroy a surface faster than bikes. Yes, cars weigh a lot more, but that weight is distributed over a larger area. The force on a given square millimeter of the surface that the vehicle is on is actually 2-4 times as high for a bike than from a car. This is why bike tires typically are inflated to 2-4 times the pressure of car tires.

<comment><USER14> It's not the point load, it's the total load. Which bends the road. Bending brittle things like solar cells cracks them. Movement of the car also causes compression waves to move through the roadbed.

Roads need regular resurfacing because bending the roads constantly causes them to crack and crumble.

<comment><USER56> Also wider tires on cars are able to catch and drag small pebbles that add to the damage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER80> Well, that's hilarious. A solar-panel road. As if obtaining power efficiently from solar energy wasn't difficult enough. No you have to also build it into a road, which is also completely useless, even if it worked. We don't have a space problem. It's not like you couldn't place these things somewhere else...

</comment><comment><USER81> Outcome perfectly predicted at the time. And no, you do not need to eat a dog feces sandwich to know it tastes bad.

</comment><comment><USER82> One could question (like the article did) the wisdom of building a PV project in Normandy, which has to be one of the rainiest and most cloud-covered area in France, unlike somewhere in the Southern half of the country, where the climate get a lot more sun year-round

</comment><comment><USER83> It was "unprecedented" in 2016 mostly because it was kind of a sketchy idea.

I mean, the road will get car-exhaust-sediment on it, like any other road; and all sorts of mechanical trauma. Roads wear down, after all, one way or another. Why have panels on the roads? Is there no land available in France?

</comment><comment><USER84> _They also didn 't think about the pressure and weight from tractors_

I mean, the hell? I wouldn't put solar panels in a playground, because I would assume 50 pound children running around would destroy them. Obviously, motor vehicles will. And very quickly.

Is this some sort of insane joke?

</comment><comment><USER85> Why would this even be tried? It's an obviously terrible idea for lots of reasons.

</comment><comment><USER86> Fortunately we didn't give up on flight after the early airplanes.

Maybe expectations need to be adjusted, but experiments like this are worth doing! We don't know exactly what they will lead to, but they often add to progress.

<comment><USER87> > Maybe expectations need to be adjusted, but experiments like this are worth > doing!

No they are not. Solar roads do not make sense, not for a looooong time anyway.

So far, all of the currently failed solar road projects have failed in utterly predictable ways[1][2][3], and I'm certain nothing novel has been learned.

There are so many better places to put solar panels than beneath roads. If anything they should put water pipes to utilize the heat. But solar panels, that's like trying to optimize a function for another 0.03% speed while there's still order of magnitudes of trivial improvements laying on the table elsewhere.

[1]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dM50P4K9UVk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dM50P4K9UVk)

[2]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ngWjH0jdRo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ngWjH0jdRo)

[3]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ngWjH0jdRo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ngWjH0jdRo)

<comment><USER14> > they should put water pipes to utilize the heat

Missed by most people is that roads flex under the weight. (Stand next to the train tracks when a train goes by, you'll be startled at how much the ground moves.) Flexing of the roads it the primary cause of road maintenance - cracking and crumbling.

Silicon chips in the roadbed, wires, pipes, etc, are all very vulnerable to cracking under bending loads. Putting water pipes in the roads mean you'll get innumerable leaks in short order.

<comment><USER86> I know there have been some applications of piezoelectric floors put in places people walk (to generate small amounts of electricity). I wonder if this could have some practical value in roads. The energy would be small, but perhaps it would be enough to keep some distant electronic systems fed.

<comment><USER88> The problem with piezoelectric flooring is that the power generated is "stolen" from the person crossing it. Take too much power, e.g. by having a perceptible deformation of the surface, and the person will have the feeling of walking on soft sand or snow and may avoid walking on it. Take too little and the exercise becomes pointless: even with a very generous set of assumptions the PaveGen system produced 1/5000th of a person's power need.

[1] [https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/05/26/pavegen_the_company...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/05/26/pavegen_the_company_that_cant_make_energy_out_of_crowds_tries_to_make_money_out_of_them/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER89> Pretty sure the only people who wanted solar roads were people who wanted roads and wanted to avoid protests from environmentalists.

A road is only the 2nd worst place to put solar panels after a cave.

</comment><comment><USER90> Solar roads are a prototypical example of an idea that looks/sounds cool to regular people, but is in fact totally useless.

Why not just build a solar ceilling?

</comment><comment><USER91> Solar panels and roads have different properties for all sorts of good reasons. Why people want to compromise both is beyond me.

</comment><comment><USER92> Why aren't sidewalks being turned in to solar sidewalks? I wondered how robust solar roads could be given that even concrete roads fall apart when you have thousands of cars driving on them. But solar sidewalks, that could work.

<comment><USER93> It's been done with bike paths. Also got a terrible track record with a lot of failures.

</comment></comment><comment><USER94> Lets test in production!

</comment><comment><USER95> Lets not forget that the first electric car was also a disappointing failure.

<comment><USER96> The first X was a failure for many good ideas X. But that does not mean that every (or even most) failures are _just bugs being worked out of good ideas_. Sometimes a failure is just a bad idea.

<comment><USER95> That was entirely my point.

<comment><USER96> Was it? It seemed like the opposite of your point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER97> Thunderf00t says _Solar frickin ' failure._

Maybe solar tracking panels _above_ parking lots would be better, and there's zillions of Walmarts with enormous parking areas the size of some airports that could co-locate solar farms.

</comment><comment><USER98> "Cracks have appeared, and in 2018, part of the road had to be demolished due to damage from wear and tear." as opposed to regular roads which never crack

"the road was only producing half of the expected energy" - great, so just 2 km of a solar road could power the streetlights of an entire city the size of Tourouvre, 3700 people.

We shouldn't raise the white flag so quickly. I think we need a second iteration at least before we call it a failure.

<comment><USER99> Cracks don't cause a regular road to fail entirely, while if a solar panel cracks in half, it will most likely stop working.

Also I don't see how solar roads make any sense when there is so much unused roof space and parking lots. Putting panels over a parking lot is much easier since you don't have to build them to withstand many-tonne automobiles, they will always be in full sunlight instead of being covered by dirt and vehicles, and they can be angled towards the sun. Even in theory, I think solar roads are a failure.

<comment><USER98> So after my erroneous comment, i have learned that roofs, parking lots and bike lanes are better candidates. I just dint want to give up on converting asphalt to energy generators.

<comment><USER51> Think the person you responded to meant for the solar panels to be above the parking lot, not the parking lot surface. IIRC, Google has quite a far solar panels in their parking lots, where they not only generate electricity but also provide shade for the cars parked there. I've also seen a couple of rather massive solar panels in central Atlanta near CNN. I was told they were installed by Ted Turner because he has a penthouse nearby. No idea how much power they generate but it does provide some nice shade.

<comment><USER98> There was a different comment recommending parking lots, and i summed up all my thoughts in the comment above. To me it sounds like France could use some shade as well as some clean energy. Calling it quits is just not an option given the crazy heat waves of recent in Europe, and we should hold onto to anything that improves what we have right now even if by 1%.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER100> The silliest thing about this road is that France already has very low carbon electricity, only 7.2% of electricity produced in 2018 was from fossil fuels...

</comment><comment><USER101> This is not a fiasco, it is progress! I am sure they learned a lot. This is how science and engineering works. We keep forgetting that. Next time, I am sure they will do better.

<comment><USER102> It is a fiasco in the sense that it didn't work as advertised, or anywhere close.

</comment></comment><comment><USER103> The fact an idea this stupid was actually implemented is fucking mind-blowing.

But, we should all be paying "carbon taxes" so that these same idiots can save the world.

</comment><comment><USER104> When I walk through a forest, it is full of life. There are dozens to hundreds of critters living above and below me everywhere I walk. When I walk through developed areas, it is lifeless pavement. Anything that reduces humanities footprint, leaving more land to Nature, is probably a good thing. I hope people don't give up on solar paneled roads.

<comment><USER105> If solar panel roads cause more waste and carbon emissions, while supplying less actual power, I certainly hope we give up on them. The ecological calculation requires science and engineering, not vague feelings about what's probably good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER106> Solar roadways failed for the same reason Tesla will NEVER outsell gasoline cars: bad technology that's orders of magnitude worse than existing solutions.

That being said, a huge leap forward in technology would make BOTH viable.

A better road-based electricity generation plan would have been to use piezoelectric panels instead of photovoltaic ones.</comment>


Ruby 2.0 Refinements in Practice - <AUTHOR> http://yehudakatz.com/2010/11/30/ruby-2-0-refinements-in-practice/ <comment><USER3> It's worth reading Charles Nutter's thoughts on the performance of implementing this language feature:

[http://groups.google.com/group/ruby-core- google/msg/7ccc3759...](http://groups.google.com/group/ruby-core- google/msg/7ccc375905dda23c)

JRuby seems rather important these days. I wonder if that gives the project an effective veto on (bad) language features?

<comment><USER4> Ruby is already the slowest widely-used programming language, by a fairly significant margin. Ruby 1.8.7 routinely runs a 1/200th the speed of C code. For comparison, other dynamic languages run at 1/2th to 1/60th the speed of C. This is better in Ruby 1.9 (getting up into the 1/60th range). But Ruby is still a painfully slow language. Some unscientific benchmark plots here (note the log scale!):

[http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32/which-programming- lang...](http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32/which-programming-languages- are- fastest.php?gpp=on&java=on&luajit=on&ghc=on&sbcl=on&racket=on&v8=on&jruby=on&python3=on&yarv=on&ruby=on&calc=chart)

JRuby and Rubinius have been working to improve Ruby performance. In theory, it might possible for Ruby to run at 1/2th to 1/10th the speed of C using an aggressive tracing and optimizing compiler similar to LuaJIT.

But this proposed feature really makes me cringe: If refinements require frequently invalidating method caches, Ruby performance will _always_ be horrible. I'd rather sacrifice a tiny amount of expressiveness and have my code run 50x faster, thank you. :-)

EDIT: Note that there are some very cheap ways to implement a similar feature, including the way Common LISP supports package-scoped symbols.

<comment><USER5> It amazes me when I go to conferences and I see how many people are still using 1.8 rather than 1.9 or JRuby, which may not be comparable to LuaJIT but offer __much __more respectable performance.

I also really sympathize with the notion of sacrificing some degree of expressiveness for performance. If this feature is to be added, it __needs __to be done in such a way that it does not set back the hard-earned performance improvements of the last few years.

Then again, expressiveness __is __Ruby's niche, and DHH's famous quote about "sacrificing CPU cycles in favor of developer cycles" is quite valid, IMHO. If you need raw performance you should look to another language because I don't think that will __ever __be too high a priority for Ruby.

Github uses Node and (IIRC) Erlang for some stuff, and Twitter uses Scala - <USER2> you're lucky enough to have the kinds of problems those guys have, then the best bet is usually to use Ruby where it gets you a developer speedup and another language for the parts of your app where performance is absolutely critical.

<comment><USER4> _If you need raw performance you should look to another language because I don't think that will ever be too high a priority for Ruby._

I reject this philosophy: Lua is also a highly expressive programming language, and LuaJIT runs 75 to 100 times faster than Ruby 1.8. There's no reason why the Ruby community should settle for lousy performance.

I'm trying to track down a bug in the Rubinius JIT as I speak. Rubinius may be faster than 1.9, but I can still see dozens of really obvious optimization opportunities. If nobody screws up method caching, Ruby will eventually be 10 times faster than it is today.

<comment><USER6> Ironically compay is a huge Lua proponent, having brought over some ruby-born projects like HAML into Lua... :)

<comment><USER5> Well, I'm very glad there are people who are willing to do the hard work to improve Ruby's performance. If ekidd can help bring it up to a significant fraction of LuaJIT's, I'll line up in the pouring rain to be the first one to buy him a beer. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Part of my interest in _why's project Potion was the use of scoped mixins. Seeing that Ruby will have a similar capability soon is exciting to me, as I can think of several instances where I've wanted to avoid leaking a localized monkey-patch.

</comment><comment><USER8> I remember the proposal of "ruby behaviours" from david black about ten years ago[1] which allowed doing the same.

Nice to see it finally being implemented in the core language.

[1]<http://www.wobblini.net/ruby/behaviors/>

</comment><comment><USER9> Looks very interesting and this could finally address the biggest gripe against Ruby, which is uncontrolled monkey patching leading to interactions between libraries.

</comment><comment><USER10> What interests me personally, also in light of this snarky comment here <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1924487> is whether Ruby 2.0 will do away with reopening classes and only allow the much better Refinements.

This will break most of the code out there, but in light of doing it cleanly, it would probably need to be done. On the other hand, a change like that will make sure that we might never see significant adoption of Ruby 2

<comment><USER11> I don't think that editable classes and modules will go away, since they allow to spread the definition of a class to multiple file and/or serve as namespaces.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Can anyone please explain why ruby-core prefer refinements over classboxes?

<comment><USER13> I'm no expert on classboxes, but there's some info here: <http://timeless.judofyr.net/refinements-in-ruby> (control-f for 'classb')

I'd imagine that some of the reason is due to the fact that this is already implemented, but classboxes are not. I don't know anything about ruby-core, so I don't know how much that'd matter to them, but an almost identical but implemented feature seems much better than a more pure but unimplemented one.

<comment><USER12> The proposer suggests here <http://goo.gl/4P4Wa> (slide 39) and here <http://goo.gl/p7ReQ> that local rebinding violates the expectations of the callee, but it just seems to me to be very unintuitive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I recently and very reluctantly switched from Ruby+Rails to Python+Django. I really preferred Ruby's syntax: to me, it's just prettier and cleaner than Python. I really preferred Rails' organization: less flexible than Django means faster development when my projects fit into Rails' organization...

... but YKatz's article gives me comfort that I made the right decision. While you can accomplish many of the same bits of magic in Python, it's much harder to do so. Clearly, I'm not a Ruby ninja, but I am someone trying to get stuff done and the pervasiveness of monkey-patching in Rails bit me a number of times (track down some function only to find out that I was looking at the wrong, un-monkey-patched version). I hadn't really realized how much I _don't_ miss Ruby until reading through YKatz's article on how Ruby 2.0 will handle monkey-patching. How about just making monkey-patching harder?

Python has plenty of complexity, but you __don't need __to know about it: you can use Django just fine without paying much attention to the richness of Python. Ruby also has plenty of complexity and you __need __to know about it: use Rails or add a plugin to Rails and you'll quickly be reading through complicated Ruby classes that monkey-patch Rails.</comment>