Galaxy Nexus Review - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2011/11/17/2568348/galaxy-nexus-review <comment><USER2> For anyone with the Galaxy Nexus here, I'd like to point you in the direction of the pressureNET ([https://market.android.com/details?id=ca.cumulonimbus.barome...](https://market.android.com/details?id=ca.cumulonimbus.barometernetwork)) as you are in a new group of Android users that have barometers! I'm the author of this app, and we're building a crowd-sourced network of live- updating Android barometers in hopes that we can improve short-term weather prediction. The app is open source and free, of course! You can get the code at cumulonimbus.ca

</shamelessplug>

Edit: Most of our users are on the Xoom (and some other tablets). I have not been able to test on the Galaxy Nexus yet. If you have bug reports, please send them to firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><USER3> Not in good taste.

<comment><USER2> So, I was nervous of that but decided to post anyway. I think HN seems okay with this post (it currently has 9 points, for full disclosure) but if this type of post isn't welcome here, I will take it down. I'm not profiting off this and the project is entirely open source, so I felt okay about it. Does HN want it deleted?

<comment><USER4> In my opinion, it was dman's post that was in poor taste. Hacker news is and should be about people showing off their hacks. Additionally his post adds no content -- a simple click on the downvote button provides all the information and feedback required.

<comment><USER3> I only kept my post brief to be polite. While I agree that Hacker News is the place to show off hacks hijacking threads is not the way to do it. If parent poster has a hack that is worth showing on HN he should submit it as a news item and if there is intrinsic merit the post will attract an audience. Posting self promotional information on threads that are tangentially related is in poor taste in my opinion. Its a slippery slope - if every iphone post here attracted comments by all of us who were building an iphone app then HN would be the worse for it.

<comment><USER5> If he was pushing a random android app on an article that was about a random android phone then you would have a good point. In this case it is more than just tangentially related, the vast majority (read: pretty much all) android phones don't have barometers, this is pretty much the only phone that can even run it. And it also answers the question of "what would I ever do with a barometer on my phone?".

<comment><USER3> The thing with subjectivity is that it is subjective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is it just me, or is anyone else incredibly impressed with The Verge? Their reviews are incredibly detailed, and yet they still manage to make extremely interesting, short, and informative video reviews for many products. Add to that the fact that the site, at least to me, is absolutely gorgeous, and I think I've found my new favorite gadget site.

<comment><USER7> I must dissent on gorgeous: to me, it's a triumph of style over practicality.

It looks like a magazine page (perhaps one you'd see advertising architecture, or furniture) made flesh in the browser: the pictures are too big, the headlines are too big, the text column wanders from the left side of the page to the right, and it does all of this with highly excessive CPU consumption.

On Firefox it's particularly painful - on an i7 920, merely selecting text takes over a second - while even on Chrome, the fans start up and blare as a core hits 100% for several seconds as the page loads.

It's not down to custom fonts either, as I have those disabled in Firefox.

It all adds up to make me want to avoid the site in future, knowing I'll be assured of a laggy unpleasant experience.

<comment><USER8> Curious, I've got none of those problems visiting the site when running Firefox on a windows 7 PC.

I wonder if it's some kind of plugin issue, Firebug is a monster consumer of resources for example.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Thanks for the kind words about The Verge, everyone! Just a heads up, but we (Vox Media, home of The Verge and SB Nation) are hiring: <http://sbnation.theresumator.com/apply>

</comment><comment><USER10> I can't believe how much everything is still framed around the iphone. I think its crazy to call this phone just 'competetive' with the iphone 4S; especially the screen-- it is clearly a significant step up IMO. ICS is surely at a point where it can, currently, safely be considered to be ahead of iOS- especially in its unadulterated 'nexus' form. And whilst pentile isn't perfect, its 720p FFS. If that wasn't enough OLED gives it vastly better blacks, contrast, and potentially power consumption too, not to mention the fact that it's bigger. Unless you happen to have an irrational love for iOS the iphones camera is the _single_ area where the 4S beats out the nexus (perhaps some app availability, but that works both ways). Oh the curse of being one of the 100 phones vs 1.

<comment><USER11> _single area where the 4S beats out the nexus_

The review doesn't mention it but the GN has a rather weak GPU. Quite a lot slower than the iPhone 4S and actually slower than some of Samsung's other recent Android phones. If you plan to play any 3D games, especially at 720P, the GN is probably not the best choice. We'll have to wait and see what the benchmarks and real world performance are like though.

<comment><USER10> Noted (can't edit anymore). Thats a shame, especially given the high res display.

Having said that, there is really not widespread use of the GPUs out there today. I hope that will change, but 3d gaming on phones (especially that pushes the GPUs to the limit) is very much niche right now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Quite impressive. 10 for performance and software (iPhone 4S received 8 and 9). The device seems to be very good, but ICS is the star here. I am eagerly waiting to receive the update at my Nexus S.

<comment><USER13> Am I the only one who thinks that a 10/10 is... let's say, hard to believe ? What does that mean? In terms of software, it doesn't have bugs, it's completeley optimized and you have days of battery life and tons of available memory ? Is the integration of all functionalities perfect ? You don't need task managers to kill faulty apps ?

Anyhow, we are in a free world where everyone can make reviews and I'm glad we are in that world.

<comment><USER14> You're not the only one hung up on it, no. But I don't see anything strange about a 10/10 score. It doesn't imply perfection, only relative excellence.

This is how it's always been with game reviews, for instance. A video game released in 1996 gets a 10/10 because it's better than other games yet seen. The same game released today would get panned. It doesn't imply any claim to absolute perfection.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I obviously don't have an actual ICS device to test but - a) The emulator that came with v4.0 platform is more usable due to reasons I am not fully sure of. Previously where I would be spooked out by the thought of launching the browser and loading actual sites - it was much more pleasant this time around. Emulator boot up time for ICS AVD was also much faster. b) The browser has made some forward progress as far as HTML5 is concerned - 2.3 got 177 score on html5test.com - ICS one gets 230. Not sure why the <video> tag support and WebM support are still missing - may be just an emulator thing.

[Edit] Boot time improvement are due to SSD - The AVD manager chose my home directory on SSD to create the AVD file - my older ones were on standard HDD. But still the in-emulator navigation is somewhat better. May be improved drawing performance.

</comment><comment><USER16> Complains about the camera's sensor, blames the lens.

Wait, what?

And what is objectively wrong with it? The big red text complains about "color reproduction" - does this guy know anything about photography? Neither camera is color-calibrated, that's what Lightroom is for.

<comment><USER17> I think he means white balance. And since both cameras don't output raw files Lightroom won't help you (much) with that. Besides: Consumer cameras should generally have a good automatic white balance since the vast majority of people will never bother to manually tweak.

That whole sensor/lens mixup is probably an honest mistake. He was talking about software vs hardware and not really going so much into detail as that making a distinction between sensor and lens would matter. He was talking about the whole sensor and lens package as a whole.

<comment><USER16> RAW is good, but you can still get some benefit in crappy cellphone JPGs.

I've had to make batches of personnel photos taken with an iPhone look presentable for a web page on several occasions. A few seconds to set the white balance and normalize the orientation and scale makes a significant difference. It doesn't make it into a great photo, but nothing short of going back with an SLR is going to do that.

Also part of why I think claims about the awesomeness of the iPhone camera should be taken with a pound of salt. It's a fairly nice cell camera, but it's still a cell camera.

<comment><USER17> Sure, there is some room to play but with JPG it's possible that some photos are not recoverable. If you get the raw output auto white balance is basically completely irrelevant (beyond convenience). No matter how badly the white balance screwed up, it's always possible to recover (since it's all software and you are working with the original input data).

But I don't think it's necessary to go that far. Even a budget DSLR that is perfectly capable of shooting raw should have great auto white balance: Most people don't want to endlessly tweak photos. Better auto white balance means better photos, even if theoretically everything could be fixed in post.

Oh, and just because smartphone cameras are nowhere near as good as DSLRs doesn't mean it's not meaningful to compare them with each other, doesn't mean one can't be much better than another one.

<comment><USER16> "it's always possible to recover"

Only if the initial exposure was good.

<comment><USER17> See, I wanted to mention that but completely forgot about it while writing. (Still, you might have been a little more charitable with me. I think the context made it pretty clear what I was talking about.)

I was only talking about color, not exposure. (Of course there is only so much white balance can do – but if you get the raw data you can do just as much with the color as the camera, heck, you can even throw more processing power at the problem than the camera ever could.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Disappointed by the camera though - 5 MPs is fine if the sensors are up to scratch, but the 4S's camera is just so outstanding ( _and_ 8 MPs) that a so- so camera might actually swing it for me.

<comment><USER19> I don't think most people will make their decision between an iPhone 4S and a Galaxy Nexus because of a slightly better camera. Sure, it might be even a lot better, but at the end of the day, they are both far from point and shoot quality.

I think most people would rather choose between them because of each one's software or even hardware. Company allegiances/principles/beliefs will go a long way in making the decision, too, for some people.

<comment><USER20> I agree. Personally, I don't expect great photos from my phone, but I _am_ really excited about how fast the camera is. (This was one of the things that made me really envious of the iPhone 4S.) Because if I want to take really nice photos, I'll bring my DSLR. But the phone camera is for situations when you want to capture a moment, and speed is more important in that situation than quality, at least for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> While I find Topolsky's ultimate conclusion of a 10/10 a bit hard to believe given the plastic case a mediocre camera sensor, I was impressed with the review. It was very detailed without being excessively long and it was presented in an easy-to-follow manner. Look forward to seeing more from The Verge.

<comment><USER19> The overall score is 8.6/10, not 10/10. They gave it 10/10 on software and performance, which has nothing to do with the plastic case and the camera sensor. FYI the for the camera it got a 7/10.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm very curious to see hands on reviews of ICS on the tablet form factor. When are the first tablets supposed to ship with or receive the ICS update??

<comment><USER23> No proper announcements yet; but Asus seems to be saying early December for the Transformer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Yay, a notification LED!

This tiny feature alone makes it a serious contender for me.

However, I'll definitely wait for the first real-world reviews to learn whether ICS _finally_ does away with the infuriating stalls and input lags that have plagued all of my previous android devices (up to the SGS).

<comment><USER25> > However, I'll definitely wait for the first real-world reviews to learn > whether ICS finally does away with the infuriating stalls and input lags > that have plagued all of my previous android devices ...

I'm really hoping the new hardware acceleration stuff will help a lot. I think I read somewhere they also tweaked MotionEvent handling to decrease input latency (though I can't find the link for the life of me).

From the review:

"As far as phone performance is concerned, however, the Galaxy Nexus feels blazingly, stupidly fast to me. Touch response is excellent on the phone — everything reacts quickly to your movements. Homescreen scrolling was snappy, moving into and out of apps was instantaneous, swiping through long lists was stutter free, and web browsing (even on heavy pages like ours) was super speedy."

and...

"I want to note that moving around all of these screens is buttery smooth. There's no lag, no stutter. Animations are fluid, and everything feels cohesive and solid."

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> No USB Mass Storage support on the Galaxy Nexus. Well, for us Linux (and Mac) users that's some bad news.

<comment><USER27> Really ? That's your dealbreaker ? MTP has been supported for long time on Linux… Just tried it on gnome and kde, no problem.

BTW, MTP has great advantages from an engineering PoV: you don't have to use a crappy FAT filesystem on your eMMC. You don't have to give full control over an essential piece of storage to another OS, so you can continue accessing data/apps installed on the storage.

<comment> eren-tantekin I don't know which device you tried with Linux but Galaxy Tab 10.1 is not working on my Linux even though every library and package related to MTP are installed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Does anyone know how this compares to the Motorola Razr? Is there a good site comparing different Android hardware?

<comment><USER29> Here you go: <http://www.theverge.com/products/compare/2946/3581>

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I might missed an announcement here - but will Verizon load their bloatware onto ICS, or has Google managed to get them to ship a clean Android installation on these phones?

<comment><USER20> Generally these Google flagship devices have little to no bloatware (depending on what you consider bloatware), and one of the more interesting parts of the ICS announcement was that you can easily disable apps (which stops from running and removes them from home/app screens but not from the device) pretty easily from system settings.

<comment><USER30> Nice. As far as I know, this is the first time that Verizon has one of the flagship devices - so didn't know if they were to give this phone the same bloatware treatment as my Droid X.

<comment><USER20> Well, the original Droid was kind of an almost-flagship. It was marketed in conjunction with Google, and it had an unlocked bootloader, unlike subsequent Verizon Motorola Droids. It also wasn't skinned with MotoBlur.

I've owned both the original Droid and the Droid X, and the original one definitely had less crapware, and the vanilla OS was nice, as was the much easier modding.

I've actually really liked Motorola hardware, and I like the more angular, more dinstinctive industrial design of the Motorola devices better than Samsung devices, but I have to admit that I'm drooling over this phone. ICS looks amazing, and seems to address almost every complaint I've had about Android so far.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Arrington's view of the original Droid is what tipped me fully into buying the phone. I think Josh's review of this may have cemented me for the Galaxy Nexus.

</comment><comment><USER31> As an aside, damn that's a good looking website!

</comment><comment><USER32> Anyone from EU here with an information which online shop already has them in stock? Amazon.de says 1 to 3 weeks, meh.

<comment><USER33> They arrive in-stock on the 23rd to the majority of online retailers I believe. I bought mine from [http://www.unlocked-mobiles.com/sim-free-mobile- phones/samsu...](http://www.unlocked-mobiles.com/sim-free-mobile- phones/samsung-galaxy-nexus-sim-free-unlocked-mobile-phone-p-83950.html) and I have been told that I will receive it on the 24th.

<comment><USER32> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Great. Another blindingly fast phone that sucks batteries dry. I love the zippiness, really, but I need a phone that runs longer than 4 hours, K? I actually use my phone TO MAKE PHONE CALLS.

</comment><comment><USER35> And if you bought ANY dock (desktop, car) for your other 200 nexus models, get ready to buy a new one for the latest one.

<comment><USER36> This is the third Nexus; there are only two (not 200) other Nexus models. The form factors are quite different between the devices, so I wouldn't expect dock compatibility in any case.

<comment><USER35> I know but i still have a point.

They decided Not to implement USB host. Create a custom dumb one write port. Its so dumb it doesn't last one single generation (all docks had production ceased ... except nexus one's that are back)</comment></comment></comment>


Julia Language Co-Creators Win James H. Wilkinson Prize for Numerical Software - <AUTHOR> http://news.mit.edu/2018/julia-language-co-creators-win-james-wilkinson-prize-numerical-software-1226 <comment><USER2> I really like the concept of Julia. High performance numerical software that is almost as easy to write as Python with a full REPL, LLVM speed, I can view the code as Assembly or S-expressions, and even wrote macros. In practice, I've had enormous problems with libraries on Windows. The package manager seems to always fail. I've figured out how to get passed some issues, but not all. I'm glad to see they're getting recognition though as it is neat and will only get better.

<comment><USER3> Which libraries? I haven't found such issues and maybe I could help.

<comment><USER2> Hey Chris! Thanks for all the hard work btw. I had a bug originally with the Julia Opt packages. I think the "Cbc" and "Clp" packages had issues on 0.7 & 1.0 builds. This one was relatively easy to solve in that the windows path it was looking for didn't match the directory it was installed in. I actually had trouble with this one on Ubuntu as well.

Just yesterday I tried to install "Plots" on Windows7 using Julia 1.0 and the installer popped out a ton of red errors. I'll have to go look again later today, but they didn't seem as straight forward to fix. I doubt that helps a lot, but I'm curious why these sorts of things seem to happen a lot (or at least in my limited experience). When the package manager works, it is fantastic!

I'd like to use Julia for optimization, sparse matrix math, genetic algorithms, graph theory, and plotting. Having a free and fast tool to do all of this is pretty amazing. GNU Octave is cool, but doesn't seem to have most of what I need. Matlab and Mathematica are powerful, but unreasonabley expensive if you don't need to use them daily. They do have extremely good integration of scientific tools like plotting. Mathematica is an amazing tool btw and I hope Julia gets as many features some day.

<comment><USER3> Ahh yes, optimizers with binaries can sometimes be a pain. Plots should be good though: I don't experience issues with it. Every once in awhile GR's download server goes down, so `]build GR` or `]build Plots` can help re- download the binary.

<comment><USER2> Finally got "Plots" to work. Not sure what I was doing wrong the first time. It takes a long time to run though...maybe some kind of first pass compilation? The Lorenz Attractor demo just complained about not being able to connect to "GKS socket application", but it seems to have written out a .gif that runs in IE and is seriously cool :)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Typedetail.com – featuring Apple's new typeface San Francisco - <AUTHOR> http://typedetail.com/san-francisco.html <comment><USER2> That's not the San Francisco font I remember...

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_%281984_typeface%...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_%281984_typeface%29)

<comment><USER3> [https://twitter.com/jimray/status/534880834025566208](https://twitter.com/jimray/status/534880834025566208)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > The typeface is licensed exclusively to registered third-party developers > for the "design and development of applications for the Apple Watch". [1]

Cool. Another font for web designers to wrongfully assume I have installed on my system.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_(2014_typeface)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_\(2014_typeface\))

<comment><USER3> That practice died out years ago with the rise of browser support for @font- face and the hosted webfont industry. Of course, you'll still encounter legacy sites that assume installed fonts, but no professional designer is going to specify type that way on a new project.

<comment><USER5> Ah you mean yet more stuff to download and slowdown page loading

<comment><USER6> Unless it's cached.

And yes, more stuff to download to make your experience nicer to have design and heterogeneity in our lives.

<comment><USER5> Depends is it worth the extra page weight and slower speed to cater for the designers typographical choices in 99.99% of cases no its not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is it OK to say the emperor has no clothes?

I think this is an ugly, clumsy typeface, designed primarily for legibility in a particular small application (the watch). Now it's now rumored to be destined as the system font in 10.11.

Going from graceful, readable Lucida to ok-only-in-Retina-but-even-then-hard- to-read-and-overused Helvetica to this new San Francisco is just plain frustrating. Maybe readability trumps taste, but in that case, just go back to Lucida.

<comment><USER8> You're unhappy with the readability of San Francisco? I've heard the opposite from most people who have seen it on the Watch.

I think it's quite a beautiful typeface, and I'm glad they're expanding its usage to their new keyboards and iOS/OS X. I think it will work out great for them.

<comment><USER9> It does look good on the Watch. But that doesn't automatically mean it would be a good choice for other uses. In my subjective opinion it looks pretty bad as OS X system font. Take a look: [http://9to5mac.com/2014/11/19/how-to-use- the-apple-watch-fon...](http://9to5mac.com/2014/11/19/how-to-use-the-apple- watch-font-as-the-system-font-on-os-x-yosemite/)

<comment><USER8> We're operating off of rumors and a font hack that uses a font designed for hi-fidelity mockups of Apple Watch apps. I'm going to wait and see what Apple releases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> On a related note, here's a comparison between Apple's San Francisco and Google's Roboto, along with FF DIN and Helvetica: [http://www.fontshop.de/wp- content/uploads/2014/11/comparison...](http://www.fontshop.de/wp- content/uploads/2014/11/comparison.pdf)

<comment><USER11> The lower-case a in the PDFs doesn't display the same as the lower case a in the linked website.

<comment><USER10> They look the same to me... here's a screenshot of them side-by-side (PDF on the left, website on the right): [http://i.imgur.com/ToQFktD.png](http://i.imgur.com/ToQFktD.png)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm postively surprised. I didn't expect this from Apple, but it actually does look good with the Windows font renderer here (Firefox, so I assume DirectWrite), down to at least 9px. The hinting could perhaps be better on a few letters but I expected none care taken whatsoever. Of course, this could be a lucky accident, not sure if Apple did this intentionally. The thin weights seem OK as well, something else that can not always be expected. Looks decent for general use unless Apple prevents that by licensing.

I never liked Helvetica Neue in user interfaces so I'm happy to soon (hopefully) see it gone from iOS.

Edit: OK, so it's only to be used by either Apple or Apple apps.

</comment><comment><USER13> The Apple Watch Design Resources license where the font seems to have originated is pretty strict about using this font:

 _Limited License. Subject to the terms of this License, you may use the Apple Font solely for purposes of design and development of applications for the Apple Watch. The foregoing right includes the right to show the Apple Font in screen shots, images or mock-ups of an Apple Watch application._

[https://developer.apple.com/watchkit/](https://developer.apple.com/watchkit/) (after clicking on Apple Watch Design Resources)

</comment><comment><USER14> To install it now: [https://github.com/supermarin/YosemiteSanFranciscoFont](https://github.com/supermarin/YosemiteSanFranciscoFont)

</comment><comment><USER15> License confusion here. Isn't that font Apple only? How can that blog ([http://www.nicholastodor.com/blog/use-apples-new-san- francis...](http://www.nicholastodor.com/blog/use-apples-new-san-francisco- font-on-your-website)) make it available for download?

<comment><USER16> I expect it's going to be taken down soon (someone uploaded it to github with some config for OS X, and that got DMCA'd)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Ask type professionals: what are good typefaces for spreadsheets (tabular numeric data), onscreen and in print?

Onscreen I've been switching Excel's default to Consolas, which is more compact yet more readable. Other programs have unchangeable defaults (but they rely more on fix-width, too).

<comment><USER18> If you choose a Opentype typeface with Tabular figures as an option, you could have a high quality typeface that prints out the numbers that are fixed width, but might be significantly more aesthetically considered than standard monospaced font.

Here's some typefaces that are for the most part, _only_ numbers, that I think might look rather nice for just tabbed numerical data: [http://www.typography.com/fonts/numbers/inside/claimcheck](http://www.typography.com/fonts/numbers/inside/claimcheck) [http://www.typography.com/fonts/numbers/inside/greenback](http://www.typography.com/fonts/numbers/inside/greenback)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The font rendering on the linked blog article is pretty atrocious on my PC: [http://i.imgur.com/DL5pZKE.png](http://i.imgur.com/DL5pZKE.png)

This is in Firefox Developer on Linux with the Infinality font rendering installed.

I'm probably doing something wrong

</comment><comment><USER20> For those of you with a Developer Account, the fonts can be downloaded here:

[https://developer.apple.com/watch/human-interface- guidelines...](https://developer.apple.com/watch/human-interface- guidelines/resources/)

The rounded version is missing in the package, though.

The whole font is in the iOS-Simulator[1], but they don't seem to be usable. They have a ".San Fransico …" name.

[1] [https://twitter.com/chockenberry/status/534865299234127872](https://twitter.com/chockenberry/status/534865299234127872)

</comment><comment><USER21> This is a ridiculously incomplete sample sheet. Most of the iOS, OS X, and Watch OS users will need to display characters outside the non-accented English alphabet.

Nerding out about minute-to-nonexistent differences from Helvetica is cute, but how will it actually look in real-life application?! Way to miss the point.

<comment><USER22> Given that the majority of HN is an English-speaking audience, it's all that most folks need.

<comment><USER23> …The majority speak English as _one_ of their languages :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Maybe I'm missing something obvious, but could someone explain why a handful of letters (G, J, K, M, etc.) have emphasis?

</comment><comment><USER25> I like it. It just looks "right" somehow, and it's more optically dense, so it'll look good on all kinds of screens as well. Picking Helvetica Neue was a bit of a brain fart on Jony's part.

</comment><comment><USER26> Can we do away with those s-t ligatures please? They're visually disturbing and serve no purpose. In a font for reproducing ancient text, okay. But not in any modern text please.

<comment><USER13> I don't see an st ligature. I forced ligatures on and off on the Apple supplied font and see none (not even for th or fi):

[http://i.imgur.com/O0jYcKF.png](http://i.imgur.com/O0jYcKF.png)

<comment><USER26> Oops, sorry. It seems the font got blocked somehow, and one of my fallback fonts apparently has them. Sorry again, that was a useless comment of mine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This font sucks.

<comment><USER28> agreed this font sucks</comment></comment>


Level 3 outbid Akamai on Netflix by reselling stolen bandwidth - <AUTHOR> http://www.digitalsociety.org/2010/11/level-3-outbid-akamai-on-netflix-by-reselling-stolen-bandwidth/ <comment><USER2> I still fail to see why a leaf node internet provider thinks they should be paid for receiving the data their customers have requested.

Paying for transits is easy to understand, and in a complicated topology paying for bytes-in as a peer makes sense because they may be transits.

For a leaf node network like Comcast, whose customers pay to receive bytes and pay to have their connections installed to then demand payment from producers for supplying those bytes seems unjustified.

The author tries to hang this on the relatively higher build out cost per customer Mbps of residential nodes compared large commercial drops, but that is just different businesses. The residential providers already charge many multiples higher for bandwidth, this is just haggling about the multiplier.

<comment><USER3> I still find the fact that level 3 decided to pay comcast the most disturbing. I do not understand the long-term financial benefit of that decision in any way.

<comment><USER4> They can still send packets to Comcast through a transit provider without paying Comcast. What they can't do is start sending 5 times as much data through their free peering agreement, and the renegotiation involves Level(3) paying Comcast. Obviously they will be paying Comcast less money than they would pay a 3rd party transit provider.

<comment><USER5> A third party who Comcast would charge to accept their traffic. Let's be honst here; wherever Netflix goes, Comcast is going to chase after them demanding money to handle their traffic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The article does a decent job of introducing the concepts of peering and transit. However, it's pretty long winded and goes through a number of tortured justifications. Here's a much simpler explanation:

Comcast is charging Level 3 _because they can_.

<comment><USER7> Sure, but what I am trying to figure out, as a relative layperson on this topic, is this: Is either party making some outrageous and unprecedented demand that will bring about the end of the internet as we know it? Or is this just business as usual?

<comment><USER5> It's not business as usual, which is why it's a big deal. Comcast is trying to do something new. They used to get a cut of revenue from Netflix traffic because it was on Akamai, who pay to sit in Comcast's datacenters. Now that traffic is going to come from a peer. It's the same traffic, but Comcast isn't getting the revenue, and they're pissed.

<comment><USER8> That may be the case, but if the peer made a contractual agreement that limited the peering to symmetrical traffic, then Comcast should be free to renegotiate or straight up sever the peering under the terms of any contractual agreements....if this is what is allowed by what's on the contract. While people can hem and haw about the moral and ethical implications, it seems like this is something that is likely spelled out on paper somewhere. It seems like one or both organizations is fanning the flames in the media to rile up end users.

<comment><USER9> There's no technical evidence (you can check, quite easily, who's peering with who and if there's a cost associated) that L3 and Comcast are using a purely- symmetric SFP agreement. It's quite likely they aren't (consumer ISPs would never upload enough to large providers to get a symmetric agreement worth their while.)

<comment><USER8> Care to link me?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> In case you're wondering who wrote this, they are closely connected to Comcast.

From digitalsociety.org: _"Digital Society is an independent 501(c)3 non- profit organization, funded by donations from Jon Henke and from Arts+Labs."_

From artsandlabs.com: _"Arts+Labs partners include entertainment companies, software providers, telecommunications providers, artists and creators committed to delivering innovative and creative digital products to consumers."_ (including NBC Universal)

From Wikipedia: _"As of August 2010, Comcast's proposed acquisition of a majority stake in NBC Universal is pending government approval."_

<comment><USER11> Comcast statement - [http://blog.comcast.com/2010/11/comcast-comments-on- level-3....](http://blog.comcast.com/2010/11/comcast-comments-on-level-3.html)

(also crap IMHO - I am not particularly inclined to believe their claim that Level 3 got same terms as Akamai and other CDNs for non-Netflix content)

<comment><USER10> Thanks for the link. I see that the official statement is using much more measured language.

I'm pretty amused by this quote: "what Level 3 wants is to pressure Comcast into accepting more than a twofold increase in the amount of traffic Level 3 delivers onto Comcast's network -- for free."

Isn't Comcast _paying_ Level 3 to deliver traffic to them? If Comcast is not happy with the price Level 3 charges them, can't they switch to a different tier 1 network?

</comment></comment></comment><comment> brown9-2 The discussion of this article over on reddit has uncovered some interesting past articles by the same author, and it seems he has a strong bias on this topic

[http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/edxjp/level_3_ou...](http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/edxjp/level_3_outbid_akamai_on_netflix_by_reselling/c17dvwd)

<comment><USER11> true! every one of those 'Digital Society' paid promo links on memeorandum has the strong whiff of incumbent telecom corporate shilling. I have never seen one get popular there, and am quite surprised to see it #1 here.

The key to this argument is whether Level 3 will have the same the same terms that Akamai and other CDNs do for non-Netflix content. Comcast claims that is the case, but I am not particularly inclined to believe them.

<comment><USER12> My understanding is that Level 3 (and Akamai and Limelight and soon everyone) has to pay Comcast for _all_ traffic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Personally, I would take three extra network hops and a slower internet if it meant Comcast got screwed. Having been practically forced numerous times to use Comcast as a home internet provider because there were no other options, spent days (when you add it all up) on their stupid support line and having been bit by not calling after 3 or 6 months "trial" (or actually them putting you on hold enough - like 1+ hour), I dont care. This article is asking me to be worried/sorry about the equivalent of a child molester of ISPs. Sorry. NO

</comment><comment><USER14> _"Now it makes perfect sense how Level 3 managed to outbid Akamai since no CDN provider operating legally could outbid hot goods."_

I think he means _contractually_ rather than _legally_ , very big difference and suggests that this story is a beat-up. There is no way in the world that Comcast (a dedicated end user provider) was almost equal with L3 (almost dedicated to providing first-tier backbone to private networks and colo)

Peering is interesting in that you can get a lot of free hosting if you find a company that does a lot of inbound but no outbound. We hosted all of the OpenBSD, FreeBSD and 100+ other projects au mirrors for 10+ years for free hitting peaks of gbits+ because of the provider having to make up peering arrangements. I imagine Comcast would be the same (we did it with a similar company - home broadband provider)

This is definitely a case of Comcast attempting to double-dip and feeding a story to a journalist to get their side of the argument out (the journalist even put a hit on one of his competing publications for 'getting it wrong')

</comment><comment><USER15> Level 3 found itself in Comcast's shoes back in 2005. They felt that Cogent Communications unfairly taxed its network and made the exact same argument that Comcast is making today, and even temporarily pulled the plug on its connection to Cogent, cutting off some parts of the Internet for millions of Cogent customers.

</comment><comment><USER16> How exactly could an ISP ever match the upload volume of a downstream contract?

It's technically impossible.

Even without netflix, the download to upload ratio is huge.

<comment><USER17> Many (most?) large cable providers, such as Comcast, have co-location and hosting businesses. After all, they have significant server facilities and a serious traffic deficit to make up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> utterly stupid.

comcast is a customer of level3, not a peer. even though marketing has blurred the lines (i blame overly ambitious hosting companies), there is a very large difference between peering and being a transit customer.

what applies here is a transit agreement, even though george ou completely skips over that in his analysis by assuming comcast is not a customer.

to be redundant: this is not a peering spat, because comcast and level3 DO NOT PEER, comcast is a level3 customer.

customer.

customer.

<comment><USER19> Right, where comcast pays L3 to deliver what comcast has to send. L3 still needs to pay someone (either comcast or someone else) to take the what they have to offer. No one wants traffic, thats why L3 has to pay to send Netflix to customers.

<comment><USER12> Usually in a transit relationship the customer pays for the whole pipe; there isn't accounting of incoming vs. outgoing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Lots of people seem to be forgetting that content providers want to connect to customers just as much as the customers want the content.

Comcast:"L3 you want to connect to all my cable customers fast and you don't want to pay even more to get to me through AT&T so lets make a deal."

It makes perfect sense that Comcast should be paid for access to their customers.

<comment><USER20> "It makes perfect sense that Comcast should be paid for access to their customers." I disagree, heartily. Comcast's customers are paying Comcast for access to the entire internet, not just to the little segment of the network that Comcast owns.

<comment><USER21> Exactly this, especially in markets where there isn't consumer choice (which is something I don't see anyone talking about on HN).

Conceivably an ISP could charge customers for a connection AND charge providers for access to that base. For instance, magazines charge for both the subscription and the advertisements.

However, I can decide if I want Harper's or US Weekly. If one provides value and the other doesn't, I get to pick. With ISPs, the same feature isn't at play: I either use Road Runner or I don't get high-speed bandwidth. At that point, ISPs have a larger obligation to protect the customers by not doing things like what Comcast is doing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The article talks about 5 times increase in volume of the traffic. Wouldn't it mean Comcast gets to make extra bucks even though number of Comcast customers who access Netflix will not increase that much? Right or wrong, Comcast wants a cut every time Netflix (or any one else) changes CDN provider.</comment>


A mushroom extract might save bees from a killer virus - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/a-mushroom-extract-might-save-bees-from-a-killer-virus/ <comment><AUTHOR> I posted this article partly in response to the recent one about Glyphosate affecting bees' gut microbes.

One hypothesis about the cause of colony collapse disorder is that a number of environmental factors (possibly including glyphosate use) are combining to weaken the immune systems of bees, as well as increasing the number of disease-carrying parasites they are exposed to.

The studies done by Stamets, while small-scale, show remarkable decreases in virus load, making for healthier bees. This article is both recent and a good write up of the whole tale. You can hear Stamets tell it himself in any number of videos, but he takes about an hour to do it. He does show more in-depth data than what's in the article.</comment>


Energy Efficiency Across Programming Languages (2017) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://greenlab.di.uminho.pt/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/paperSLE.pdf <comment><USER2> There is also the energy of the programmer driving to work. If a code base takes him one week in one language and one month in another it could be a factor if the software use is ultimately limited. Not to mention lunches, keeping the monitor lit etc.</comment>


Ask HN: How bad is the decision to work as a co-founder without legal contracts? - <AUTHOR>

Thanks for reading.
Hi all, this has been biting me a bit.
I've been invited to be a coder ( me + 2 coders and the organizer as ux ) to a startup, and was verbally promised a share of the revenue ( equal ). The organizer is not a close-friend, but merely someone who invites me because I suited the capabilities.
The idea is quite nice, not era-shifting though, and looks like there are going to be a lot to learn side-by-side, too : lega, marketing, business stuffs I don't know and never did before. However, all of these said future have no legal contracts until the formal registration of the company ( where names are formally noted, and registered to the government ), which is when revenues start pumping in.
The startup requires devotion other than my full-time day job, which I can use to do other stuffs ( meaningful and constructive ). It's going to be a year or so. I am thinking without a legal contract guaranteeing the benefits of each member, it can be dangerous to me ( and the other memebrs ), as "coders are expendable". There will be no salary.
My best case : Idea goes live and launches. Profits come in, I get my shares. I learnt how to do business. And promising future.
Best case out of bad cases : Idea goes live and launches. Died soon, I get my shares. I learnt how to do business.
Bad case : Idea dies halfway. Initial projection of time dragged too much. I learnt how to do business, albeit at a cost of time and more.
My worst case : Idea goes live. Initial projection of time dragged. But the organizer plays dishonesty and kicks me / other coders out, taking the whole share.
My questions :
1. Without the legal contract, how bad will things be if things blow up?
2. From past experiences of you, do people really respect verbal agreements?
3. Could there be any legal issues on me?
4. What could I do without a written agreement witnessed by a lawyer?
5. What could I do without an informal written agreement ( no lawyers involved )?
I understand there is a risk to take, and I also understand that "getting excited by the future" could be the height of a folly, but then I might be wrong. I also understand that despite the risk, this failing in most cases could teach me a good deal of lesson, too.
I appreciate any smart advice from you all experienced people.
Thank you very much.
[edited linebreaks of questions.] <comment><USER2> I have represented founders as a startup lawyer in Silicon Valley since 1984. I have done a short write-up on this issue focusing on the risks from a company standpoint of relying on early-stage verbal agreements (<http://www.grellas.com/faq_business_startup_009.html>).

From your standpoint, without proper documentation: (1) your biggest risk is getting ripped off for your labor; (2) you would have leverage in that any IP you would develop would belong to you and not to the company until you assigned it by formal documentation; (3) if you did get ripped off, you could bring a legal claim either for breach of a verbal agreement or for fraud; (4) such claims are difficult and expensive to bring and thus not practical in most cases; (5) a lawsuit almost always leaves you worse off than does almost any other alternative; (6) therefore, get some reasonable understanding up front of what you can expect to get from your efforts and use at least informal means to document it.

You may or may not learn from this experience, depending on whether the other founders bring you into their inner circle.

Finally, I have seen this pattern work just fine very often in spite of the legal risks. In most of the good cases, though, the founders know each other and have a relationship. The cases where most of the problems arise are ones in which the founders do not previously know each other (what might be called opportunistic teaming). From your description, and from the length of time they want you to do work without documentation, I would say your case falls in the higher-risk category. Your legal downside would very likely be limited to losing your labor while getting cheated of any promised equity. The company has the greater legal downside from failing to document, mostly relating to its IP.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi grellas.

I have a question I hope you may help answer. Roughly how many percentile in the number of startup cases do have formal legal documentation?

<comment><USER2> A high percentage when founders believe they have something valuable to protect. In early formative stages, probably only a small minority.

It is all cost/benefit, though. What does it cost to use lawyers? What is at stake? In my experience, it is the rare case where founders will sink large resources into something (significant labor, etc.) without some legal documentation.

Some do LegalZoom, but this has its own problems (failure to use restricted stock and to capture IP being the most important). I have written about this elsewhere.

My general guideline: if a startup has real prospects, it is usually worth investing in legal resources as soon as practicable, even if it means doing a deferred-fee deal with the lawyers. The initial setup itself is usually not that expensive. At the very least, you should go as a team to a qualified lawyer for an initial meeting to get advice about the process - then you will have a basis to make a more informed decision.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you Grellas. It is really insightful and informative advice, and immensingly helpful for me to think more.

I will incorporate your suggestions and guideline into my decision. Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> How bad? Bad. Very bad. _Bad, bad, bad._ Did I mention "bad"?

I'm not allowed to talk (much) about it, but the short version is: _been there, done that,_ to the tune of several million bucks that are currently missing from my pocket.

So, the answers to your questions (in order):

1) Worse than you can imagine.

2) Some do, but not all. Which means, to be safe, you have to pretend no one does.

3) Yes, undoubtedly. There's only two ways to find out: a) lawyer up, or b) roll the dice, and pay the price. I'd _strongly_ recommend the former.

4) Not much. You might get lucky and draft an agreement that is as good as a lawyer would write. You might also get hit by a meteor made out of twenty- dollar-bills. I wouldn't count on either.

5) Diddley-squat, if your goal is to protect yourself.

To sum up: _pay the damn lawyer._ View the expense as something like health insurance-- it's a pain in the ass to pay for it when you don't need it, but it's a zillion times worse to really need it and not have paid for it.

<comment><AUTHOR> It seems it's an overall very negative position to be in, aggregrating all the replies.

thanks. I think I need to re-consider again very very seriously.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > My worst case : Idea goes live. Initial projection of time dragged. But the > organizer plays dishonesty and kicks me / other coders out, taking the whole > share.

More likely - organizer claims that your contribution is worth significantly less than you think that it is. (Perhaps he'll say something along the lines of "it was my great idea and organization while anyone could have done what you did".) You get a pittance and walk away, mad. On the way out, you'll sign over what you did.

Point out that you own everything that you create until there's a formal agreement otherwise and that that will make it impossible to get investment. The organizer will probably then decide that such a formal agreement is necessary. At that point, you point out that said formal agreement needs to include "consideration" for you. (It actually doesn't, but ....)

<comment><USER5> Not entirely true -- the presumption now is that the company owns the IP for stuff done on behalf of the company. Of course, this is just a presumption, so it's easily rebutted, by example, showing that you received no compensation (no one works for free).

But the legal uncertainty would discourage investment.

<comment><USER4> > Not entirely true -- the presumption now is that the company owns the IP for > stuff done on behalf of the company.

Where is this presumption?

Copyright and patent law in the US specifically says that folks earn what they make outside of an explicit agreement otherwise. (And, that agreement can be for no pay - you can work for free.)

BTW - What company? He said that it was unregistered.

<comment><AUTHOR> Right. The point is whether someone would register the company only after revenue starts pumping in, which looks odd to me now.

<comment><USER4> Note that a "company" can exist without registration (which I took to mean incorporation or the creation of some other legal entity). A sole proprietorship, where the "idea guy" personally owns everything, is one such type of company. Partnerships can be another.

In short, I probably shouldn't have asked what company. Or, I should have been more paranoid and asked if there's actually a legal entity and it's just not writing any contracts with the help.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've spent upwards of $9k in the last few months on legal fees because I didnt have a written contract with an old business partner.

At the very very least, get a specific list of deliverables, your profit share percentage, and his ownership rights to your code on paper, then get him to sign and date it. Be as explicit about everything as possible. Not being able to afford a lawyer is no excuse for not getting your general agreement on paper.

If he resists, remind him that the paperwork protects him as much as it protects you.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks grellas. This is really great advice. I read your article. Really good one. I am aware legal actions seem to be less practical, and a bad direction towards and position to be in. And I agree it is a high risk, that so much I can sensed it.

Thanks keltecp11. I am still thinking.

</comment><comment><USER7> Also, not trying to be rude, but is English your first language? If not, and assuming the venture is located in an English speaking country, I would say that as a non-native English speaker you are more likely to be treated unfairly.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi ctb9,

No, I don't take it rude. It's ok. Thanks.

All of the involved people are Chinese in China. I am sure the law differs but the actual smarts might share common attributes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's not worth it. Why not just get a contract before the company is registered? You can draw up a document that says what will happen after registration.

Otherwise, don't start working until the registration is complete.

</comment><comment><USER9> >> How bad is the decision to work as a co-founder without legal contracts?

In my experience? Pretty bad... A better financial decision is to make a bet with the other coders. $2000 says he doesn't pay up.

</comment><comment><USER10> if you don't mind the clear and obvious risk, you don't _need_ a contract. the second you feel like trying to secure yourself from risk or trying to ensure yourself profit/shares/etc., its time to grab a contract.

</comment><comment><USER11> don't do it. legalzoom.com at the very least.</comment>


Perl levels up with native subroutine signatures - <AUTHOR> http://perltricks.com/article/72/2014/2/24/Perl-levels-up-with-native-subroutine-signatures

<comment><USER2> I'm glad to hear they are planning to add more features. I've been using Function::Parameters quite a bit lately, and I can say it's made a _huge_ difference in how easy it is to handle parameter sanity checking. I was disappointed to see what 5.20 implemented WRT signatures, but if it's being added to over time, I can deal with that.

Since much of this is back ported Perl 6 concepts, I have a lot of thanks for Perl 6.</comment>


FTC to probe Spokeo, a site that sells inaccurate consumer info to anyone - <AUTHOR> http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/63154

<comment><USER2> Spokeo is exceptionally creepy, but I'm not sure how it's any different from InfoUSA which has been doing something similar to this for years.</comment>


Are new IETF switching, routing specs needed? - <AUTHOR> http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/080910-ietf-switching-specs.html?hpg1=bn

<comment><USER2> The article says TRILL may be redundant with capabilities already on the market, like Cisco's FabricPath. But FabricPath is based on TRILL, is likely Cisco-proprietary, and Cisco says they will upgrade it to be compatible with TRILL once that spec is complete.

Isn't this like saying "Who needs 802.11n when we have draft-n right now!"</comment>


A Mysterious Song on the Internet (2019) - <AUTHOR> https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/most-mysterious-song-on-the-internet-885106/ <comment><USER2> This reminds me of the search for Q Lazzarus. She and her band are famous (or maybe some would say notorious) for writing the song played during Silence of the Lambs when Buffalo Bill does his infamous "dance" in front of the camera. For decades, folks couldn't find any information on her and weren't even sure that she was still alive. Jonathan Demme, the director of Silence of the Lambs happened to be in her cab one night and she played some of her music and he really liked it. He put it into several of his films. It's someone's dream to be discovered like that - and then to fall almost faster back into obscurity?

[https://www.stereogum.com/2009727/mysterious-goodbye- horses-...](https://www.stereogum.com/2009727/mysterious-goodbye-horses- singer-q-lazzarus-breaks-her-silence-30-years-later/news/)

<comment><USER3> When I was a teenager in Massachusetts in 1982 I bought the album "Tragic Figures" by a band called Savage Republic on a lark, based solely on the hand- printed album cover. It turned out to be very strange post-punk industrial music. I almost fell out of my chair at the movie theater watching "Silence of the Lambs" when the song "Real Men" from that album came on.

<comment><USER4> There's an amazing demo called 'A Mind Is Born':

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWblpsLZ-O8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWblpsLZ-O8)

Amazing principally because the whole thing is 256 bytes:

[https://linusakesson.net/scene/a-mind-is- born/](https://linusakesson.net/scene/a-mind-is-born/)

I never meet anyone who has even heard of the demoscene, let alone come seen this particular work.

I was at a film festival watching a programme of short films, one of which was the well-made AI-box escape romp 'Watch Room':

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=th5uJNB7VU8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=th5uJNB7VU8)

And similarly found my interface with my seat disrupted by the closing credits using the music from 'A Mind Is Born'. This being a festival, the director was there, so i could tell him how much i appreciated the reference!

<comment><USER5> Sadly Andrey Kolmogorov is dead. Because I'd loooove to see his face.

Fantastic, solid thanks for that, I love it for what it is.

Edit: technical question for audiologists. The underlying pulsing heartbeat of this track, which is most clear right at the start, has a kind of 'furry' quality to it. How is this done? I guess it's a sample of a ~60Hz sine wave but I'm just guessing.

<comment><USER6> It's a c64, there are no samples*.

[https://linusakesson.net/scene/a-mind-is- born/](https://linusakesson.net/scene/a-mind-is-born/) has a full breakdown of what is going on.

What you call the "heartbeat" is, I think, what Linus thinks of as "drums", and is a rapidly descending tone in (probably) a rectangular wave - the c64 cannot generate sine waves, just sawtooth/triangle/pulse, and random noise (and some combinations of these that were not intended by the sound chip's designer). In addition all three voices of the sound chip are being pushed through its subtractive filter, which is a hard-to-emulate bit of analog circuitry that gets noisier and noisier if you out more than one voice through it.

If you really want a close look at what's going on you could download the "SID tune" version of it and run it through a c64 music player, most of these have oscilloscope views and the ability to selectively mute voices.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you enjoyed this, you might also like Reply All's recent episode:

Reply All #158: The Case of the Missing Hit

[https://overcast.fm/+TKZKtgdaw](https://overcast.fm/+TKZKtgdaw)

[https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/o2h8bx/158-the- case-...](https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/o2h8bx/158-the-case-of-the- missing-hit)

<comment><USER8> Ha, I posted that a minute after you. That episode is a fantastic musical story about finding a song that seemed to only exist in one persons mind. I don't know anything about that podcast in general, but this episode is delightful and has that same feeling as the Most Mysterious Song on the Internet!

(Also, an "if you liked that, you might also like...": Finding Drago ([https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/finding- drago/](https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/finding-drago/)) is a short but excellent podcast series about searching for the author of a mysterious book about Ivan Drago from the move Rocky IV!)

<comment><USER9> I loved this episode and was really impressed with how much work went into it -- all the way down to recreating the song with a band from that guy's head.

<comment><USER10> And how it infected the band members to the point they couldn't get away from it. It's amazing how close the recreation was and how it compelled so many people

<comment><USER11> I woke up this morning with this song in my head after listening to it a week ago and then playing it to my wife yesterday. I wonder how many brain-hours that song has consumed already ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There are millions of demo tapes and CDs from endless ad-hoc bands that were never known, I have myself at least a dozen catchy songs that get in my head from bands I've played in and some I can't even remember who they were, others are on dusty old demo CDs and tapes from 1993 in my basement. The "catchy song that can't be traced" is more than just one song in Rolling Stone, for me it's a whole world of music that existed for only a few months somewhere decades ago that lives only in my mind.

<comment><USER13> I've played stuff from Song Fight[1] in the car, or been signing along at my desk and been asked about the songs. There's so much good, "catchy" stuff out there if you take the time to look. At least w/ Song Fight I can usually trace down the original artist.

I have the same thing w/ old tunes from MOD files. I have a couple melodies I whistle that I know came from MODs I downloaded and listened to 25 - 30 years ago but I have absolutely no idea which ones they are. I still have most of that stuff (the benefits of kicking your data onto new media every few years), but slogging thru all of it just to find a few bars of melody just seems like a chore. I also thought that, if I ever chose to do that, I should record my current interpretations of the melodies to see how they changed over the years vs. how the original actually sounded.

[1] [http://songfight.org/](http://songfight.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> If you like this, you might like "Searching For Sugar Man" a documentary where 2 guys in South Africa search for this legendary musician from the US who was rumored to be dead. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Searching_for_Sugar_Man](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Searching_for_Sugar_Man)

<comment><USER15> And now the director of that movie is actually dead :-(

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> My "white whale of the internet" is a 4-track EP from mid-1990s by a band called The Mark Kramer Band (not _that_ Mark Kramer) with track titles _Dust Bowl Rain_ and _Wild Prairie Dog_. It sounded like a bluesier Jeff Buckley, I think. I had a copied tape, so no pictures or other info, and of course it's long gone. If you Google it you'll see my previous pleas on other fora.

<comment><USER17> Mine is an odd, backwater website hosting a few tracks of surrealist noise (music) by someone/some-people called "The Waxwing Slain".

I found it when I was 13 or 14 while I was trawling the backwaters of the internet. I downloaded all the tracks and listened. It was odd, surreal, satisfying to listen to. Eerie, even. I've lost the HDD those mp3s were on. And the website has disappeared into the dusts of time.

<comment><USER6> [https://archive.org/details/MusicUnderTheMoon2018-10-16](https://archive.org/details/MusicUnderTheMoon2018-10-16) contains a track with that title, by someone calling themselves The Golden Oriole. Probably not your lost tracks.

<comment><USER17> You are correct, that isn't it. It isn't nearly surreal enough.

Thanks for poking around, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Some people and I have similarly been looking for a classical piece that appears in the movie Brewster's Millions for about ten years now:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/tipofmytongue/comments/4nvuyp/tomt_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/tipofmytongue/comments/4nvuyp/tomt_5_years_standing_string_quartet_song_in_the/)

</comment><comment><USER4> My much smaller version of this relates to the Italo-Disco classic 'Comanchero' by Moon Ray (Raggio di Luna in Italian). Here's the song, with its distinctive 1984 video:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_pLleIU41A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_pLleIU41A)

And here is a painstaking shot-for-shot remake of the video (but the original audio - this is not a cover, just a fan video):

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89LuYwBckr4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89LuYwBckr4)

Who made this? Why?

<comment><USER19> Definitely a film school assignment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I actually have my own personal Mystery Tune which I'm been trying to find the owner of for years.

I'm offering a cash reward for help identifying the song:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qK8l0pkyiy0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qK8l0pkyiy0)

Its posted SoundCloud too:

[https://soundcloud.com/davidpfarrell/cool-unknown- techno](https://soundcloud.com/davidpfarrell/cool-unknown-techno)

<comment><USER21> I don't have a direct lead for you, but this sounds like it's tracker music (music written on Modtracker, Screamtracker, Impulse Tracker, Fasttracker, etc.) - I'd hazard a guess that it was recorded in the mid-to-late 90s.

Unfortunately, the only clue you have to its origin - "candyman" \- is the name of a film being actively promoted right now, so it's going to be even more difficult to chase down than it was even just a few months ago.

It's possible that the name of the MP3 is a reference to the person who wrote the music, or it could be the name of the song they wrote. I've found at least five different "candyman" musicians doing tracker music, demoscene music, cracktro music, etc., the actual files are hard to come by, and the music I do find is techno, but not the same genre.

I could see the tune you linked being played over the end credits of some demoscene disk.

Anyway - I'm pretty sure that what you're listening to is an MP3 of a tracker file.

Every little bit of information helps :)

<comment><USER20> I hadn't thought of that - I'll into the idea of musicians named "candyman" in the tracker scene.

Thanks for the lead, and for having a listen of the track !

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> _she was still concerned about the legalities_

I thought uploading to YouTube and seeing who tries to claim the rights might be one way of identifying it, but then again, the flakiness of the automatic copyright identification system would probably make that pretty useless for even slightly obscure music.

<comment><USER23> Reminds me of the way at my workplace of identifying who does the machine under given IP or webservice belong to - the easiest way is to turn it off and see who comes to complain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The simplest way: make video, insert this song, post to youtube, see where DMCA claim come from :)

</comment><comment><USER25> IMHO: probably a demo from a short-lived band that never made it big. It's not bad, but not that striking and original either. It sounds familiar because it's derivative of lots of things that were happening at the time. This is common, many good bands take a while to find their own voice, so in the early demos you hear echos of the bands and songs that influenced them.

<comment><USER26> Exactly! I don't see why the obsession amongst all the people who are trying to trace it down. There are millions of songs like this that are lost in obscurity. In other news, I have a cool looking pebble that no one knows which beach it came from. Off to starting a subreddit about it so people have something to do with their time :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Fascinating. In this time when everything is seemingly discoverable online, these odd mysteries that seeking have no _link_ seem vaguely disconcerting. But the pre-internet world was mostly like that. We just didn't know it then.

It reminded me of the search for "The Footage" in William Gibson's book _Pattern Recognition_.

</comment><comment><USER28> Back in the 1990s, I made music on my computer. My friend was a DJ on a late night show and he'd play one of my tracks one night a week, just because he could. If anyone recorded those broadcasts they'd have no way of finding out who made that music.

This could be a result of a similar situation I imagine.

</comment><comment><USER29> Production, instruments, vocal ..sounds like eastern Europe/Russia region.

<comment><USER30> (Obviously it isn't them, but ...) it sounded like Laibach to me, so yes Eastern European.

<comment><USER25> > it sounded like Laibach to me

What? how does this

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=70&v=zPGf4liO- KQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=70&v=zPGf4liO-KQ)

Sound like this [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Glu9wA4HjE0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Glu9wA4HjE0)

to you?

The guitar in the first sounds more this:

[https://youtu.be/_guOyN2wmkM?t=78](https://youtu.be/_guOyN2wmkM?t=78) Or, IDK influenced by Foreigner and those kind of bands.

<comment><USER31> to be fair, Laibach of that era (1984/1985) alternates between sounding like Coil (State) and random new wave music (1st Generation TV), but is still usually dominated by Milan Fras' vocal style.

so, I guess it's possible?

<comment><USER25> The "mysterious song" has a more of a generic "alternative guitar band" sound to me, which Laibach never were.

Something about the riffs makes me want to say "Foreigner" (or that school of 80s US hard rock) which again, is a genre that Laibach never imitated (although they might just have parodied).

<comment><USER31> > which Laibach never were

again I point to their 1984/1985 work, which had undertones of sisters of mercy in a couple of their songs. generally not their signature work, but somewhat close in some cases.

> Something about the riffs makes me want to say "Foreigner"

personally I was more thinking something like xymox or sisters, without the haunting vocals of either (it actually reminded me most of a local band from the late 80's and early 90's, but definitely not them). but I guess we hear what we want from it :)

<comment><USER25> > thinking something like xymox or sisters

I would agree with that suggestion more. As in it sounds derivative of those, not that it could be one of those bands. It definitely suggests "local band" to me.

Although, what I was thinking of might be the guitar riff at 10-12 seconds in, not totally unlike this from 1982 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmOLtTGvsbM&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmOLtTGvsbM&feature=youtu.be&t=65)

Again, in the sense of it might be derivative of that. Any kid who had a radio in 1982 would have heard it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> tokamak-teapot For twenty years I kept daydreaming the melodies and 'feel' of a couple of songs I'd heard at the ends of a cassette tape that had another album (by a different band) taped over the rest.

I probably heard about 40 seconds of 2 different songs.

I couldn't remember any lyrics, and couldn't remember the melodies well enough to play on an instrument - just the basic way they 'felt'.

Eventually I heard one of them again and ... well, SoundHound or Shazam existed by then and saved the day. I'd been hearing part of Big Empty and also the hidden track from the Stone Temple Pilots' album Purple.

I understand the need to know!

</comment><comment><USER32> That reminds me of all the obscure stuff DJ Shadow incorporated into his Boiler Room set, especially for me the song starting at 25:50 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ArSb3lCc28&t=1552s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ArSb3lCc28&t=1552s) \- you can understand the whole text very well but google yields nothing.

</comment><comment><USER33> The easiest way to get the answer to a question on the internet is to post the wrong answer. Simply record the song with your band and claim it's yours.

If nobody comes up to claim it, then the original authors died, and couldn't make it to the final recording. You would have to look for bands whose members died together at the same time.

</comment><comment><USER20> Growing up, an impossible to find tune was "I'm old enough to rock and roll" from Iron Eagle.

I used to hit up the internet a couple times a year trying to find the track.

Finally, Rainy created an official release:

[http://www.raineyonline.com/id17.html](http://www.raineyonline.com/id17.html)

</comment><comment><USER34> The subreddit dedicated to this song maintains a spreadsheet of possible leads and sound-alikes.

Personally, the first thing that came to mind when I heard the vocals was Type O Negative. Sounds a lot like Peter Steele, but I'm sure a lot of vocalists at the time were going for that style.

<comment><USER25> > I'm sure a lot of vocalists at the time were going for that style.

Well, that's the thing. It's not identifiably any band that I have heard before, but it's generically like a lot of them. What's the point of listing all the influences of this band that didn't make it to the big time?

It sounds familiar because it's derivative of lots of things that were happening at the time. New bands take a while to find their own voice, so in the early demos you hear the bands and songs that influenced them. Some (maybe most) never make it past that.

I can picture it as a band played gigs for a year around their home town, made a demo or two, one of which got played on local radio and there it is. It's not in any way uncommon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> This looks like hoax to me.

<comment><USER25> I disagree. it sounds like a real, OK sounding single or demo from some unknown band in the mid 80s. The fascination with it now is the odd part.

<comment><USER25> To be clear, I expect that there were lots of local bands in the mid 80s playing decent-but-generic songs like this to appreciative local audiences.

Most of them are lost to the mists of time. This one is not. Others here have said the same in comments: "There are millions of songs like this that are lost in obscurity. "There are millions of demo tapes and CDs from endless ad- hoc bands that were never known"

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22637580](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22637580)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I don't know how/why it's listed there, but it is listed now on Shazam as "Like the Wind" by Antwon01 on Shazam.

</comment><comment><USER37> Honestly wouldn't surprise me if it eventually turned out to be part of a long-term ARG for Half Life 3 or something.

</comment><comment><USER38> Probably Satoshi Nakamoto :)

</comment><comment><USER39> Article headline is really incorrect, should be "The Most Unremarkable Mysterious Song on the Internet."

There's a reason why people didn't put their name on it.</comment>


How To Turn $5 into Your Dream Company - <AUTHOR> http://www.supermoney.com/2014/05/how-to-turn-5-into-your-dream-company/

<comment><USER2> The last paragraph is all wisdom.

</comment><comment><USER3> Great article</comment>


Why you should stop looking for your passion - <AUTHOR> http://finotto.org/entrepeneurship/why-you-should-stop-looking-for-your-passion/ <comment><USER2> Very good article. Reminds me of this Cal Newport gem:

[http://calnewport.com/blog/2010/10/16/the-passion-trap- how-t...](http://calnewport.com/blog/2010/10/16/the-passion-trap-how-the- search-for-your-lifes-work-is-making-your-working-life-miserable/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Going to read that article now</comment></comment>


Outsourcing clicks - a solution to Twitter's bulk unfollowing/following removal - <AUTHOR> http://manageflitter.com/account-management

<comment><USER3> I just wrote a script to do the follow/unfollow thing myself. When tweetadder removed their auto follow/unfollow system due to pressure from twitter - <USER2> weren't any other options left in the market.

So, I ended up doing exactly what I should've done long ago myself. Wrote a python script to connect to the twitter api and do the exact same thing. Sure, it's not as interactive as tweetadder [no excel style tables of who was followed, etc.] but it works fine for me. Most importantly, it'll continue running on my Linode even while my own computer is off, so it runs 24x7x365. Works pretty well :] The other advantage is that I don't really pump through an unrealistic number of followers per day so I fly much lower than twitter's API limits. This doesn't attract any attention and works better in the long run.

Also, at least for the niches I use it in this is an extremely effective method of getting very high quality followers.

EDIT: For those who are unfamiliar with this kind of software - this is a pretty simple method to gain a lot of followers. Run twitter searches on things relevant to your niche, follow people who tweet about those things, some of those people will follow you back, unfollow the ones who do not follow you back - gain net followers. (some niches turn out very high quality followers with this method..) There was software that automated this for you (say, you could run auto searches and follow 200 people a day) but twitter barred these companies from allowing automatic functionality sometime earlier this year..

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Disclosure; I'm ManageFlitter's Co-Founder/CTO

Twitter recently stopped apps from offering any kind of bulk management services for Twitter accounts. We completely support Twitter trying to stop spam, but this action does nothing of the kind. Here's my full thoughts; [http://blog.manageflitter.com/twitter-drowning-spam-why- thei...](http://blog.manageflitter.com/twitter-drowning-spam-why-their- current-approach-wont-save-us-and-what-will)

Anyway the point of this service us just to point out how ridiculous the restrictions are. We will really be delivering it, however - the economics work. We're just finalising how we'll prove it's real people, most likely with a live stream going at all times.

<comment><USER4> > Just by measuring a few simple indicators, and plugging them into a baysian > probability algorithm, we've been able to detect spam accounts with a very > high accuracy.

slight nitpick: the word is "Bayesian", not "baysian"

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Can someone explain what this is about? Why would you need this? I know nothing about Twitter and have never heard of bulk unfollowing before.

<comment><USER6> Back in ze old days, you could follow a ton of people, wait a while to see how many follow back (it used to be quite a lot), and then unfollow all the ones who didn't. Rinse and repeat and you get a lot of followers.

Eventually you'd unfollow a ton of people so that your follow/follower ratio looks healthier. For example, an account following 10000 people with 10000 followers doesn't look very authoritative. An account following 40 people with 10000 followers looks quite serious/valuable.

The reason this works is that people are notified of people who follow them but not of unfollows (they may have changed this but the fact is fewer people are notified of unfollows if at all).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Correct me if I'm wrong, but can't every service claim to be a "human manager" like this, then run a well built scraper to emulate a human? Unless they're going to have a camera on the humans, Twitter could just as easily shut them down on this premise alone. There's no way to prove there are humans there.</comment>


Is an Incubator Right for Me? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.sparkmuse.com/is-an-incubator-right-for-me

<comment><USER2> I find the title misleading. 'Is an incubator right for me?' leads me to believe this is going to discuss what types of people or characteristics are ideal or not for a person to join an incubator.

The article doesn't answer the question of 'me', it just points out the reasons incubators exist and what they can do for you.</comment>


Wind Turbine Makes 1,000 Liters Of Clean Water A Day In The Desert - <AUTHOR> http://www.treehugger.com/wind-technology/wind-turbine-makes-clean-water-desert.html

<comment><USER2> "Air is taken in through vents in the nose cone of the turbine and then heated by a generator to make steam. The steam goes through a cooling compressor that creates moisture which is then condensed and collected."

Um what?? Why are they heating air? And you don't make steam if you heat air.

That's either a huge typo, or whoever wrote that has no idea what they are talking about. Maybe they tried to summarize the source without understanding it?

You could either cool the air to condense the water, or compress the air, which heats it temporarily, then you cool it back down and collect the water. It's ideal to recover the energy either way though and this process doesn't seem to do that.

And in any case what does this have to do with a wind turbine? This is basically a de-humidifyer. You can power those with anything - wind, electricity, gasoline.

I suggest they use the wind turbine to make electricity, and then power the de-humidifyer from that. That way you can pick and choose what you want to power, and you can power the de-humidifyer from something else when necessary.

BTW the link they have on the words "simple process" in fact has nothing whatsoever to do with this process. Who writes this stuff? Someone who never learned any science?

<comment><USER3> Forget the stupid writing in the article. The reason why they may be using the wind turbine directly is if they're using mechanical energy to fire the compressors, etc to run the process.

Compression of the intake air is likely best served mechanically. Cooling the air could be served mechanically, although an air conditioning compressor is likely better designed to run electrically, but again it depends on the scale used to determine if mechanical would be better or not.

Although I'm wondering if the compressed air itself could be used to power the condenser. If the air is compressed enough, would an appropriate design allow the expansion of the compressed air to cool the condenser it's escaping from? Because I know air compressors for air tools build up water inside, and they are purposefully designed to inhibit this.

Also the reverse-osmosis, or whatever filtration used, is likely best served by producing the water and letting it filter down through gravity pressure under the 30+ft drop from the unit to the holding tank.

Although, it would be more ideal to produce say 200L a day and produce energy too so that a few of these would provide water and electricity to a village and everyone won't die when their water producing turbine breaks down and takes a month to get repaired.

<comment><USER2> > The reason why they may be using the wind turbine directly is if they're > using mechanical energy to fire the compressors, etc to run the process.

The gearing would make this too complicated. A compressor wants a constant force, with a varying speed. But a turbine produces a varying force. (This can be adjusted somewhat by angling the blades, but not enough.) Older turbines run at a constant speed, the extra force allows more electricity to be generated. Newer ones are more complicated running at varying speeds. But in both cases the force varies, which would not work for a compressor.

You don't need to both compress the air, and refrigerate it - it's either/or.

If you compress the air, the cooling is just ambient cooling. A way to capture that energy is pretty important. It would be easy to capture the energy in the compression of the air, but once you cool it the pressure drops which is a waste. Maybe dump the heat after the expansion to increase the pressure of the air before using it?

The gearing of this system would be pretty complicated - you have energy from the turbine, then energy from the compressed air releasing. I guess a differential gear would work.

Refrigeration is a lot simpler in some ways (after condensing the water, use the cold to help cool the hot side) but designing a refrigeration pump to run at varying speed is really hard. And varying force is no good either.

You don't need reverse osmosis for the filtration - the water is quite clean, it just has some dust in it which a simple filter could handle. May be easier to filter the air instead.

<comment><USER3> > You don't need reverse osmosis for the filtration - the water is quite > clean, it just has some dust in it which a simple filter could handle. May > be easier to filter the air instead.

I was thinking the same when I read the article. I assumed they didn't intend to filter the air because an air filter may become clogged by sand particulate - especially in a sand storm. I said reverse osmosis for the filter, merely because this setup is actually well suited for it, and if these turn out to be mass produced (hopefully cheaper for more litres of water a day) that they may become used in more urban areas where pollution is a bigger factor. It would also make bacterial contamination less of a concern as mild chlorination of the holding tanks would likely make a long term potable water source with low maintenance.

However, the advantage of compressing over refrigerating is that the compressed air could be vented to periodically clean any air filters. It's important that these turbines be very low maintenance if they're to be installed in remote areas. A self-cleaning air filter _and_ a simple water filter might be ideal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I had this idea in high school! I thought it wouldn't work in the desert though, or surely it would already have been tried.

Basically, we were reading about just how difficult it is to get water out of saltwater in coastal communities, and the massive power costs involved, and I just thought, "well, we sometimes have to use a dehumidifier at home, and I know that that runs on the mains power and could generate easily enough water for two or three of us to survive. Coastal environments have very wet air, so just let the Sun act on the ocean to do the hard part of desalination, and we reap the benefits of clean water?"

I gave up because I'd calculated that this would also probably cost more money than poor coastal areas had, but yeah, wind turbines have grown amazingly in the past several years and the principle is pretty sound. (It is not clear what the longer-term environmental impact would be, but it's possible that if we deploy too many of these things, inland droughts could become more severe due to lack of cloud formation.)

I'm glad to see that someone has paired renewable energy and automatic solar evaporation with the problem of desalination. Well worth some charity money, though the company as it stands appears to be for-profit. Would be nice to see if a charity could set some of these up in Wajir, Kenya, as a politically safer experiment towards deploying them into the drought-ridden Jubaland in Somalia.

<comment><USER5> You were probably not the first with this idea: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tatooine#Moisture_farms>

I'm surprised this article has been on HN for 10 hours already without any Star Wars references.

<comment><USER6> Star Wars stole the idea from the Dune series, actually, so the idea is even older than that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There's a slight disconnect between the PR and spec sheet, which predicts an output of 1,000 L/day in a "temperate zone" (60% relative humidity, 25 ºC), or 350 L/day in a "desert zone" (30% r.h., 35 ºC).

[http://www.eolewater.com/assets/files/PDF/Specification%20Sh...](http://www.eolewater.com/assets/files/PDF/Specification%20Sheet%20WMS1000%20WT%20light.pdf)

<comment><USER7> Another observation from the datasheet: this seems extremely energy-intensive, even compared to desalination. Modern desalination ranges from about 3 kWh/meter^3 (reverse osmosis) to 13-25 kWh/meter^3 (multistage flash distillation) [1] [electricity-equivalent kWh]. The wind turbine's spec sheet says it has two scroll-compressors rated 30 kW combined. I'm not sure about the capacity factor these compressors operate at (no data given), but _if_ it's basically that of the wind turbine itself (should be about ~20%), that's ~140 kWh (mechanical energy)/day for 1 meter^3/day water, or 140 kWh per m^3. Triple that for a desert zone (same energy, one-third the output).

[1] <http://www.desware.net/desa4.aspx>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is a better use of wind power than generating electricity for the grid. Since the wind doesn't always blow, use wind power for systems where it's easy to store the product. Storing water is easy. Storing electricity is not.

</comment><comment><USER9> Nice, and I thought this was good: [http://www.bbc.co.uk/learningzone/clips/living-without- water...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/learningzone/clips/living-without-water- atacama-fog-catching-nets/11949.html)

</comment><comment><USER10> I went to the article expecting a "windtrap" design. I came here expecting a "Dune" reference. Got disappointed on both counts.

Anyway, shouldn't this thing use a bigger collection area?

</comment><comment><USER11> What if you combined these: [http://sizedoesntmatter.com/wp- content/uploads/Picture-92.pn...](http://sizedoesntmatter.com/wp- content/uploads/Picture-92.png) with the wind turbines? Free heated water... Am i missing something?

If this is possible i will be the first proud salesperson of this in Israel.

<comment><USER9> I doubt you'd care for hot water in the dessert. You could just fill a black bag. Cool clean water is probably preferential.

<comment><USER12> It gets pretty cold at nightime I've been told...

<comment><USER9> You could use solar water heating as a vector to trap the suns heat in an underground heat store, that you then release at night. How cold does it get?

Edit:

I just tried to find out about night time temperatures. On the wikipedia page 'desert', it suggests it only gets as cold as 0 degrees C. Although I did find a remark that Antarctica was technically a desert.

I just camped out in temperatures below 0 weekend gone, and it wasn't that comfortable, but I was staying under a thin piece of plastic. If I'd have been a bit better prepared it would have been much more bearable.

<comment><USER13> There are hot deserts and cold deserts. The Gobi has a yearly average temperature of 2.8 °C, with a January average of −26.5 °C and July of 17.5 °C . Red Desert, Wyoming averages -7°C in January.

My relatives in Michigan mentioned that there's a Polar Bear scouting award for camping when it's below 0°F, or -18°C. My own sleeping bag is only rated for -2°C.

<comment><USER9> I must add then that it was just below 0 degrees C! Don't fancy minus eighteen at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Great story.

Check out a recent podcast from Stanford e corner. Jeff Church - The Wave of Social Entrepreneurship.

He talks about encouraging startups to look at social causes. His own Nika bottled water give their profits towards clean water.

Positive way to go about building your startup.

</comment><comment><USER15> Is this water a virtually unlimited resource or can it dry up if these turbines are implemented on a large scale ?

<comment><USER16> It uses the humidity in the air, so it's possible that with a larger number of these in the area, the humidity would be reduced to a point where there is none left to remove.

<comment><USER2> Nah, there's wind, and the ocean. Less humid air evaporates ocean water quicker, and the wind will circulate the air till it eventually reaches the ocean.

The Earth is enormous, it would take a staggering number of these to make any dent in humidity, and even then it would be a local dent only.

Don't forget water is a closed loop - this water they consume is also eventually returned to the environment (sweat, etc.), where it evaporates and restores the humidity.

<comment><USER9> I like the idea of taking the water back out the sea and placing it in underground aquifers. Some are are seriously depleted through industrial agricultural farming.

Would be nice if you could just pull a cloud or two down from the sky.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Next step will be to transform the condensed water into hydrogen for energy storage.

<comment><USER2> No, that is not the next step. That is a silly step.

You need a lot more water as water than you do as hydrogen. For hydrogen sea water is more reasonable, and transporting it isn't a problem since you don't need much.

In any case, hydrogen can not be energy storage since it leaks too easily. It also damages any metal container it's stored in (and leaks right though plastic). Glass might work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Yeeeah, that's a heck of a lot of water in a desert. I'm a bit worried about the cost, though.

They don't mention per-unit cost anywhere, but they're comparing its size to 300-500kW turbines. If memory serves, those are a few hundred thousand a piece? So maybe we can assume these will be ~$300k...?

Supposedly, minimum health and sanitation is 20 litres per person per day. Assuming these last the 30 years stated on Eole's website, and consistently output 1000 litres/day, and not counting any maintenance costs, $200/person/year.

Can the areas that need these things the most afford $200/person/year?

<comment><USER7> Try per unit of water, so you can make meaningful comparisons. Desalinated water apparently costs/is priced at USD $2-3/meter^3 in the UAE [1,2] (0.2-0.3 cents/liter), so 1,000 liters/day => $2-3/day or ~$1,000/year.

A large UAE desalination plant for comparison [3]: natural-gas fired CCGT piped to an offshore gas field, 1,430 MW electricity, and 380 million liters desalinated water/day (~$1 million/day or ~$300 million/year), presumably from waste heat.

Average per-capita water consumption in the UAE is 550 liters/day [4] (so ~$400-$600/year?) -- actually among the highest in the world, comparable to the US. The point probably being that their GDP/per capita is also comparable to the US, so the desalination cost isn't that big of a disincentive.

[1] [http://www.zawya.com/story/ZAWYA20100808044642/UAE%20Spends%...](http://www.zawya.com/story/ZAWYA20100808044642/UAE%20Spends%20Dh11.8%20Billion%20On%20Desalination/)

[2] [http://gulfnews.com/news/gulf/uae/general/dubai- introduces-n...](http://gulfnews.com/news/gulf/uae/general/dubai-introduces- new-rates-to-curb-use-of-electricity-and-water-1.85172)

[3] <http://www.power-technology.com/projects/taweelah/>

[4] [http://www.thenational.ae/news/uae-news/thousands-of-abu- dha...](http://www.thenational.ae/news/uae-news/thousands-of-abu-dhabi- buildings-face-cuts-in-water-usage)

<comment><USER18> As you notice, the UAE is rather wealthy. I seriously doubt they located the prototype near Abu Dhabi because it was a location in dire need of safe water, rather than convenience and publicity.

A few other middle eastern, and numerous African countries, with GDPs so small you'll think there was a typo, both desert and not, have serious clean water shortages.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> That is an exceptionally good idea. As far as green tech goes, I reckon a load of these combined with polytunnel aquaculture could be on a par with the seawater greenhouse, it would probably produce less water per hectare but then it doesn't need the big pipe to the sea - <http://www.seawatergreenhouse.com> \- would be interesting to see a proper comparison.</comment>


Ask HN: Why hasn't there been open source hardware? - <AUTHOR>

Why hasn't there been a viable open source hardware project? <comment><USER2> There is. [http://www.oshwa.org/](http://www.oshwa.org/)

There are quite a few synthesizer projects that are totally open. [http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/open-source-hardware- synths/](http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/open-source-hardware-synths/) lists 5, I think this one is OS too (or is that just the firmware? I forget) [http://www.sonic-potions.com/lxr](http://www.sonic-potions.com/lxr)

Also look around on Hackaday and related sites. There's a lot of them in the synth community because audio nerds are sort of obsessive and like tinkering, plus synthesizers are relatively easy to build. I think the first of these projects was the X0Xbox 303 clone, though I don't know if that was 'officially' under oshwa.

</comment><comment><USER3> Additionally there is [http://www.opencompute.org/](http://www.opencompute.org/), which was initially created by facebook. I also think arduino may have some open hardware as well.

As for why they're rarer? Hardware is expensive, has a smaller margin of error and has had good vendors for a long time. Few companies build their own hardware, and many that do consider it a competitive advantage (Google certainly does)

<comment><USER3> Better yet: [https://www.tindie.com/](https://www.tindie.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Why hasn't there been a viable open source hardware project?

Because hardware isn't like software, its got longer cycle times, higher capital investments to work with it, etc., which means:

(1) You can't get lots of contributors, (2) Even once the design's done, you've got to get someone to build it -- which takes a substantial capital investment, and the people making those investments are more able to recoup them when there is a barrier keeping other people out from identical replacements, which doesn't exist with open source.

If automated manufacturing ever gets to the point where a fabricating device that takes in cheap raw materials and prints out computers is something that is no further out of reach that a decent development PC is now -- or even, was in the 1990s -- then open source hardware will be a lot more common.

</comment><comment><USER5> Well, there is [http://www.ohwr.org/](http://www.ohwr.org/)

<comment><AUTHOR> no, when I said viable, I meant, buy on Amazon. cheap.

<comment><USER6> Probably because, for all that we complain endlessly about the evils of capitalism, if someone isn't making enough money off of it, there is no motivation to make it available.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> [http://blink1.thingm.com/](http://blink1.thingm.com/) Blink(1) fits your requirements.

</comment><comment><USER8> By hardware do you mean open at the chip level? Most of the stuff at Sparkfun is open.</comment>