Photos show evidence of life on Mars, Ohio entomologist claims - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2019-11-photos-evidence-life-mars-ohio.html <comment><USER2> This is a really weak article, right from the opening paragraph

> Romoser's research shows that we already have the evidence [of life on Mars]

A single blurry picture of what might look like a bug is not evidence of life on Mars, any more than the "Mars Man Face" is. This seems like Pareidolia but for someone who looks at insects all day. Wikipedia article itself shows another Mars example...

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

</comment><comment><USER3> Noooooo... This is an old man with pareidolia.

However, see "I'm Convinced We Found Evidence of Life on Mars in the 1970s" [https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/im- convinc...](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/im-convinced-we- found-evidence-of-life-on-mars-in-the-1970s/) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21229390](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21229390)

The atmosphere of Mars is not in chemical equilibrium. (Cf. Lovelock, Gaia hypothesis.)

</comment><comment><USER4> I want to give the benefit of the doubt because this person seems like a legitimate scientist, but this is an extraordinary claim and the evidence seems a lot like cloudgazing to me. Is there a source with more detail on this?

Edit: Found this ([https://www.dropbox.com/sh/cd3gmtja551h6l1/AAABGYzMsjlN7Uemk...](https://www.dropbox.com/sh/cd3gmtja551h6l1/AAABGYzMsjlN7UemkHecQqmfa?dl=0))...still looks like cloudgazing to me, though.

<comment><USER5> That is stunningly bad, as far as "evidence" goes.

I find it amazing that the rocks are so clear, and the snakes and bugs look exactly like the rocks. It's interesting that the snakes and bugs don't actually look like snakes and bugs, and in order to see what he sees, you have to forget how clear the rest of the picture is and except his analysis at (blurry?) face value. Just like backward masking in music, or the word SEX toasted into your Ritz crackers and wrinkled into some girl's socks, it requires text arrows, shape outlines, and highly specific descriptions before you can just almost see/hear it.

Imagine if National Geographic had to go through such extremes before we could see bugs and snakes in their pictures of them.

On Mars, sometimes a rock is just a rock.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is beyond a reach and doesn't even make sense. What would tiny wings do on a planet with a thin atmosphere roughly equivalent to being over 100,000 ft high on earth?

That last article about life on mars was much more compelling: [https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/im- convinc...](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/im-convinced-we- found-evidence-of-life-on-mars-in-the-1970s/)

<comment><USER7> Mars's atmosphere may have been thicker in the past, and wings could be vestigial appendages from the creature's ancestors.

<comment><USER8> Surely they would have been strongly selected against given many thousands of generations in a harsh environment?

<comment><USER7> And worse for my idea, looks like Mars probably lost its atmosphere billions, not millions of years ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm skeptical, but a genuine question:

If we had an "Earth rover" that took similar photographs as the Mars rover did, would it find examples of insect fossils?

If not, it seems like this is just seeing Jesus in a piece of toast.

<comment><USER6> For what it's worth, I've lived on earth my whole life and I've never seen an insect fossil outside of a museum.

<comment><USER10> Same here... lived my whole life on Earth an never seen Jesus on toast... seems like a shame, really.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I see we're doing this again. Previously:

Face on Mars: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cydonia_(Mars)#%22Face_on_Mars...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cydonia_\(Mars\)#%22Face_on_Mars%22)

Bigfoot on Mars: [https://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily- lakdawalla/2008/1305.h...](https://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily- lakdawalla/2008/1305.html)

The actual explanation, of course, is [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia).

<comment><USER12> A "Life on Mars" paper was actually published in Science in 1996 too: [https://science.sciencemag.org/content/273/5277/864](https://science.sciencemag.org/content/273/5277/864)

<comment><USER11> I find it entirely believable that there may have been life on Mars, and even that some of it survives today in extremophile microbial form.

That doesn't make this guy's conference poster any less silly, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> sure looks like a yeti to me

"There's a large, out-of-focus monster running around the countryside. That's extra scary to me. Run, he's fuzzy!" (mitch hedberg)

</comment><comment><USER14> "When your mind becomes obsessed with anything, you will filter everything else out and find that thing everywhere."

I'd be willing to believe that there is fossilized life on Mars, maybe even complex arthopod-type life, but saying that there is still life flying around on Mars is a pretty extraordinary claim. Is there a paper or any more information around here? Outside of the two pictures in the articles I can't find anything.

</comment><comment><USER15> Today I learned entomologists have pareidolia for bugs.

</comment><comment><USER16> If you could find any alien living with head and legs, that would be very stranger than finding alien life itself,

or life on earth come from the same origin.

<comment><USER17> Not entirely. Legs have independently evolved multiple times on Earth, as have heads (or things that are similar to heads). It pays to have a lot of sensory organs on an appendage that can articulate – said sensory organs being close to the brain is also an advantage, assuming you have one single central brain. And 'legs' are good way to achieve locomotion over uneven terrain. Even on Earth that was done using different mechanisms: we use muscles attached to tendons, spiders use hydraulics.

Even though an alien lifeform could conceivably have a 'head' and have 'legs', they would probably look _nothing_ like what we have here.

For a good story about how some alien lifeform would look like, I would recomend reading Blindsight: [https://rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm](https://rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm)

The author uses some of his marine biology background to design the lifeforms. I think he does a pretty good job at trying to identify mechanisms which would hold true anywhere, but also making the result completely alien.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Well it complements this article: [https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/11/mysteriou...](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/11/mysterious- oxygen-spike-seen-on-mars-puzzles-scientists/)

</comment><comment><USER19> What an amazing find! In case you aren't aware, there are also giant human- like life forms living in the clouds on Earth. This has already been widely reported though.

</comment><comment><USER20> This is also pretty good evidence that Ohio exists.

</comment><comment><USER21> I can clearly see a honey badger on this photo.

</comment><comment><USER22> Isn't this roughly comparable to estimating an entire dinosaur from a leg bone?

<comment><USER11> It's roughly comparable to squinting at a pile of rocks, seeing what looks kinda like a leg bone, and declaring "dinosaurs walk among us!"</comment></comment>


Al Gore: We Can't Wish Away Climate Change - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/opinion/28gore.html?pagewanted=all

<comment><USER2> The article is worth studying as a masterpiece of political rhetorics. A salesman truly shows his skills when selling a bad product.

He explains that some side issues in the debate (IPCC claims about disappearing Himalaya glaciers,FOIA violations) are mistakes and he conveniently ignores the big elephant in the room: tampering with temperature records, corruption of the peer review process, lack of evidence for AGW.

And this is all coming from the same Al Gore who used to make false claims about melting polar ice caps, increases in sea level rise, ... in his movie "An Inconvenient Truth".

To cite [1]: "You can bet he'd be making the same claim if we had a below normal snowfall records too."

[1] [http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/23/the-goracle- forecast-a...](http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/23/the-goracle-forecast- agwmore-snow/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I think it is possible to believe in climate change and _not_ believe in anthropogenic warming.

It's just like pascal's wager. Let's assume just the two options where the globe is warming, is it man's fault or not?

Let's assume it is man's fault and there are two options, we can do something or we can't. If we can't and we try, we wasted a huge effort to stop something we can't stop. If it isn't our fault, then we start to look at ways to adapt and have a better chance of survival. No one is suggesting better air conditioners as a solution to global warming, but something like that may be our only hope.

The problem with blaming man is that it might be our behavior that is actually keeping the globe cool. For example, Global Dimming may be counteracting the effects of what could be a natural warming cycle due to sun spots: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_dimming> and PBS's Nova did a show on it as well: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-o1iXRU_5WU>

If we stop polluting through the emission of particulate matter, then the global warming may actually get worse!

<comment><USER4> Should not be a matter of belief. Should be a matter of science.

<comment><USER3> Should be, except that the science has been corrupted by special interests.

<comment><USER5> How can you be so sure that your understanding of science has not been corrupted by special interests? It seems to me that if one were to pick a population to corrupt, one would pick the intellectually lazy majority...

<comment><USER6> Not necessarily; it might be easier to corrupt scientists because they are traditionally black/white on controversial issues.

As someone not in either the "intellectually lazy majority" or the hardcore scientific minority it's fairly clear both things are going on.

The science is being corrupted quite a bit by the media and politico's to be spoon fed to the populace on their own agenda :)

<comment><USER7> Actually, science is characterized largely by an absence of black and white thinking. Speaking as a theoretical physicist, I can assure you that those of us in science will argue ad naseum about whatever detail of a theory you want. It is this precise mechanism that allows us to produce theories which are incredibly well-tested.

Where science tends not to see shades of gray is in defending its work from politically-motivated attacks. One might as well accuse biologists of being "black/white" on evolution when defending against entirely insubstantial attacks from creationists. Creationists aren't interested, say, in whether it's genes or species that are evolving, but only in whether they can sow enough distrust of science to get into the public discourse. Similarly, climate denialists don't really care about specific problems with climate models as much as they do with undermining how science is perceived.

Thus, denialists don't see the actual teeming debate within science over the specifics over how AGW takes form, where real climate skeptics point out problems that are then addressed by the rest of the community. To a denialist, it probably seems as if the world is simply screaming "no" at them over and over again, but that doesn't mean there's not a rich world within the science that they denigrate.

<comment><USER6> Im not sure that is the case for _controversial_ theories. Just take a look at the differing opinions on quantum theory (especially the argument over light quanta) and atomic structure in the past. That was pretty black/white for many years (by which I mean you had scientists very staunchly on both sides of the theories).

This black/white scenario is ripe for corruption by a (political) third party. They can play the two off against each other and ultimately try to present one as right or wrong.

Going back to the specific quote:

 _It seems to me that if one were to pick a population to corrupt, one would pick the intellectually lazy majority_

As I read it DaniFong is saying that the general populace is being corrupted by denialists (agreed, as it happens). He uses this as a(n abstract) proof that non-denialist climate change science is accurate and scientists are not corrupted by political motives etc.

My argument is that firstly this is a tautology (because both could be true) and actually that both _are true_.

We've seen some politically motivated science hit the news even over the last month or so. Just as much it is clear that the denialists are trying to sway populists to their opinion through a combination of pseudo-science and (more often) by undermining the science (as you mention). Arguing that only one exists doesn't really work any more.

I think that if you want to hold an opinion on this you, sadly, have to go and do some realistic research of your own into the topics. It's no longer safe to trust politicians, activists (both for/against) or news agencies (and, yes, some scientists).

As an aside: this whole debate amuses me because as I observe it seems incredibly black/white for everyone involved. People are getting so hung up on whether we have an effect on climate or GW that it completely disconnects from the actual main issues. It seems often like there is a minority of people actually trying to do something sensible while the rest bicker of (albeit very important) meta-issues.

(btw I'm not a denialist :))

<comment><USER5> I wouldn't say that scientists are uncorrupted or incorruptible, but it happens in degrees!

Actually, I think that the climate science indicates more that we're likely to move out of a regime of the easily predictable, based on empirical data. I think that the science shows that there's a rather likely possibility of severe climate change, though I don't put much faith in the specific effects.

The trouble is that our models can't simulate the response of the biospheres or of the human beings living in them. These are possibly the most important feedback effects -- certainly they are the ones we should be most interested in, if we want to imagine how climate change might effect life, but they are also incredibly difficult to model, since the responses usually can't be figured out from first principles. (Apparently some of our best data on the topic comes from a project involving giant heat lamps blasting on a microclimate. People thought it was crazy but it's our only decent source of direct data.)

Climate denialists rarely get to this level. Some claim climate change isn't happening, some claim we're not responsible, and some deny either the predicted effects or how bad they'll be. However, as I argue in my essay on Climate Change Skeptics (<http://daniellefong.com/2009/10/11/climate-change- skeptics/>) we should have a much higher standard of proof for the absence of severe effects and the absence of harm before we make such drastic changes to the Earth's atmosphere, biosphere, and primary cooling mechanism.

Incidentally, CO2 based climate change is only one part of it. (for example, even take a look at N2O and CH4 (methane) concentrations over time [http://www.grida.no/publications/other/ipcc_tar/?src=/climat...](http://www.grida.no/publications/other/ipcc_tar/?src=/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/134.htm#4211) [http://www.grida.no/publications/other/ipcc_tar/?src=/climat...](http://www.grida.no/publications/other/ipcc_tar/?src=/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/136.htm)) There are hardly any temperate rainforests left, the coral reefs are dying, one quarter of the Earth's photosynthesis is in our food chain, and 90% is in anthropogenic bioemes: ecologies that human forces have largely shaped, we are depleting mineral resources and aquifers much larger than they are replenished or found, we fix more nitrogen than all other life combined, and the mass extinctions of the past have largely been driven by life-based changes to the atmosphere (see this TED talk: <http://www.ted.com/talks/peter_ward_on_mass_extinctions.html>).

PS: It's " _she_ ", actually.

<comment><USER6> > I wouldn't say that scientists are uncorrupted or incorruptible, but it > happens in degrees!

We're in agreement there. Indeed I suspect a lot of it is scientists producing their work in good faith with a serious commitment to their field and once the data leaves the "lab" (as it were) third parties are queued up to pull out of context quotes and make a story from it.

As it happens I think your stood at the "worst case" extreme (based on what your saying). I'm currently thinking, from the data I have read, there is both plenty of time to react and the impact is going to be nowhere near as dramatic as some people like to suggest :)

Which brings me to:

 _we should have a much higher standard of proof for the absence of severe effects and the absence of harm before we make such drastic changes to the Earth's atmosphere, biosphere, and primary cooling mechanism._

I think this is where we mostly disagree. While clearly we should approach this from the perspective of "we need to make changes and assume that climate change will have an impact on our future" I think ignoring the scientific process to _such an extreme_ like your suggesting undermines the entire issue.

There is _no_ requirement to be dramatic about any of this. Indeed it does a lot more harm than good to be so. We have the makings of a problem facing us - a problem we really have inly just begun to assess and face. The solution requires calm, level headedness and common sense.

Example: I've written several times to my MP to suggest he proposes a private members bill to add new building regulation requirements for new build houses. These would require Solar heating and/or solar energy cells to be added to every new build. The added cost of a build is negligible - but I think the cumulative impact would be as dramatic as any "green policy" currently being proposed.

These kinds of things make sense not only on a global scale but on an individual one too: and that is the sort of rational approach that is needed in the case of climate change.

(I also want to see studies into whether our habitat can and will adapt to a changed climate; I feel this is a much under explored area and is worth considering as potential solution. If we can mitigate things to bring about an adaption to world ecosystems that restores balance that would be a neat and subtle solution)

> PS: It's "she", actually.

Sorry :)

<comment><USER5> In which ways are my suggestions extreme? I don't mean to put you on the spot: I just actually don't know what you perceive extreme in what I'm suggesting.

<comment><USER6> Well simply that your final paragraphs read a lot like "it's really really bad, we're all going to die".

Which is fair enough; but still worst case scenario (based on what I have read into it)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> [http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/02/al_gore_gets_a_po...](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/02/al_gore_gets_a_poll.php)

A great visual at the end of this article.

<comment><USER9> The problem with that visual is that it ignores the fact that the same social mechanism that blindly repeats the anti-global warming line today was repeating the pro-global warming line a few months ago.

It's not clear whether the author's objection is that society reduces nuanced and still developing scientific research to sound bites and repeats that as if it were canon, or the fact that the message has turned against AGW (or at least not as vehemently pro-AGW).

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I usually flag all of the climate change stuff here, but this one got an upvote.

While I've not been excited about Kerry, Hilary or Obama, every time I read something from Gore, I feel like the US missed out on being able to count him among its presidents. This article exemplifies why: he's taken an issue that is central to our times and approaching it with reason and passion.

<comment><USER11> > I usually flag all of the climate change stuff here, but this one got an > upvote.

Wait, you usually flag the articles that show the science for climate change, or the science against climate change - you flag those, but you upvoted a political call to action written by a non-scientist?

<comment><USER10> The overwhelming majority of posts here on climate change are mediocre editorials by non-scientists:

<http://searchyc.com/submissions/climate+change?sort=by_date>

I don't flag the ones that are data-oriented, but do flag most editorials. This one, specifically, was a mark above most of those enough that I found it worthwhile. While Gore is obviously partisan, I find it disingenuous to lump him in with the bulk of partisan hackery on the topic.

<comment><USER12> I hope you know there's a downvote button you can use instead of a flag.

<comment><USER13> What threshold do you need to get that downvote button? I don't see it yet.

<comment><USER14> I think I noticed my downvote button showed up around 200 karma?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why Edinburgh's clock is almost never on time - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20180913-scotlands-clock-thats-almost-never-on-time <comment><USER2> If a clock is always off by three minutes, people will just adapt.

What if they make it off by 3 minutes a random 50% of the time? Then people can't adapt and half the time they'll be "helped" with extra time.

Kind of useless in modern times but an interesting problem to think about.

<comment><USER3> I don't know. I use the same technique at home. I keep the clocks a few minutes fast, and even though I know that they are fast I find that it does help getting out of the house on time for the morning school run, etc.

<comment><USER4> how do you schedule calls, online meetings?

<comment><USER5> Maybe he schedules them for when he's in the office?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I thought it would be related to solar time vs. local time, but an inspection of [http://blog.poormansmath.net/how-much-is-time-wrong- around-t...](http://blog.poormansmath.net/how-much-is-time-wrong-around-the- world/) reveals that Edinburgh's solar time would actually be around 15 minutes behind its local time.

</comment><comment><USER7> tl;dr When the North British Station Hotel opened in 1902, the railway company wanted to give passengers 3 extra minutes to catch their trains.

Related: [https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/27000/why- does-e...](https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/27000/why-does- edinburgh-castles-one-oclock-gun-fire-at-1pm-instead-of-say-noon)

<comment><USER8> More tl;dr: the clock outside Edinburgh Waverley station only displays the correct time on New Years Eve, and no one wants it to read the correct time because it's a Scottish tradition now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Doesn't every bar on the planet do something like this?

</comment><comment><USER10> I was really hoping it would be something more like, because there's a mechanical flaw that causes the clock to run slow, and it takes three minutes reach the belfry of the clock tower from, the street. This means that when the clock master notices that the clock is running on time, he has three minutes to reach the belfry, and set the clock forward three minutes, so that it never runs slow enough to make people late.

Or something like that.

</comment><comment><USER11> The same could be said about a stopped clock :)</comment>


Kenya is using the earth's heat to power the country - <AUTHOR> https://spectra.mhi.com/Kenya_is_using_the_Earths_heat_to_power_the_country <comment><USER2> > Kenya's Maasai people have long been aware of the awesome power of the earth > in the area around Hell's Gate [..] in fact it is considered to be one of > the most exciting geothermal areas on the planet.

So Kenya is harnessing geothermal power from Hell's Gate? This is literally the plot of DOOM, except it's not on Mars.

</comment><comment><USER3> I had similar questions about the heat exchange over time affecting the earth's core temperature, but it looks like far smarter minds than me have done the calculations and dismissed that as nothing to be concerned about.

But that then brings me to my next question - I am assuming that the plentiful supply of heat will be used to drive steam turbines in order to generate electricity? Will that mean that the actual limit may be the plentiful supply of clean water which can be converted to steam? That would still leave a lot of drought affected area unable to utilise geothermal energy, wouldn't it?

<comment><USER4> Well, you don't need _clean_ water. You can use your distilled water in a closed loop and condense it using any old water. That's what the big towers on a nuclear power plant are for - they're cooling towers for the condensors.

This could even increase rainfall (and thereby fresh water supply) if you have a source of brackish water nearby to use as cooling water, since a decent fraction of the cooling water evaporates.

<comment><USER5> If I'm not mistaken, the condensers are cooled by water, hence the plumes of steam you see rising above nuclear power plants. So if you are using a similar technique with geothermal plants and are in an area where you cannot quickly radiate excess heat away, you'll still need a secondary, renewable, source of water... right?

<comment><USER6> Right but gp is arguing that water isn't in competition with drinking water, you can use grey water, which should be easier to come by

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Kenya has had geothermal energy in Hell's Gate National Park for a long time. I remember cycling through there in 1995, and the equipment was looking well- used and extensive then.

It's a fantastic park to visit, by the way.

<comment><USER8> The park is now adjacent to at least one geothermal plant - the smell of sulfur around it is nauseating - which is operated by a chinese company (or at least, it's almost exclusively chinese people who work there)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> What happens when everyone starts doing this? Won't this cool and solidify the earth's molten core? And what happens to the magnetosphere then?

Edit: how does the size of the earth matter? The molten core is the (nuclear?) energy source. If you have done the math please share your work.

<comment><USER10> Heat passes from the Earth's core through the mantle to the crust at 45 TW. That heat can be converted to usable energy (aka exergy) at 70% efficiency. So global geo-thermal energy production is limited to 32 TW. A given geo-thermal plant slowly cools the rock below it and produces less and less energy until it reaches equilibrium with the flow of heat energy into the rock it draws from.

See page 20 of [https://gcep.stanford.edu/pdfs/DyUMPHW1jsSmjoZfm2XEqg/1.3-He...](https://gcep.stanford.edu/pdfs/DyUMPHW1jsSmjoZfm2XEqg/1.3-Hermann.pdf)

And [https://gcep.stanford.edu/research/exergy/resourcechart.html](https://gcep.stanford.edu/research/exergy/resourcechart.html)

Nuclear decay and fission produce 30 TW in the earth's core and 45 TW flow out to the crust, so the earth's core is gradually cooling. The core contains 1e31 J of energy and is currently cooling down at a rate of 15 TW = 1.5e13 W. A Joule is 1 Watt-second. Therefore the earth's core will take longer than 30 billion years (1e18 seconds) to cool down.

See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_energy#Renewability...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_energy#Renewability_and_sustainability)

And [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%27s_law_of_cooling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%27s_law_of_cooling)

<comment><USER9> > The core contains 1e31 J of energy

What does that mean? Does it mean the core temp will drop to zero degree kelvin when 1e31 J is removed from it?

Can we realistically bring the core temp down to absolute zero? I think you need a temperature difference between a "source" (here earth's core) and a "sink" (here surface of the earth (radiation), atmosphere (convection)) to drive any engine. So geothermal energy stops being useful when this difference is zero or less?

<comment><USER11> No, definitely not. It would reach the temperature of the other side of the heatsink, and since that's 30 billion years, the Earth will be long, long, LONG gone by then.

Even if the sun doesn't engulf the earth, the lowest it could get would be the temperature of the CMB, which is about 3K. Granted, over a couple trillion years, that number would lower.

Reaching absolute zero is pretty much one of the only few things that physicists consider impossible, along with exceeding light speed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Another geothermal power plant is currently under construction in kenya [https://www.kenyatalk.com/index.php?threads/jubilee- developm...](https://www.kenyatalk.com/index.php?threads/jubilee-development- another-158mw-olkaria-geothermal-plant-groundbreaking.46182/)

</comment><comment><USER13> Is there a cost effective way that people living on the west coast of North America can use this type of geothermal for energy extraction (rather than the common residential geothermal which is just a heat exchanger a few feet below ground), or is it only possible at utility scale?

<comment><USER14> For an individual? Not really, no * . The residential geothermal you refer to is actually not geothermal at all, but more accurately a ground source heat pump which is relying on the fact that the soil temperature a couple meters down is about the average annual air temperature. Actual geothermal-powered applications typically require engineering at depths well beyond the grasp of an individual household, and at costs that almost certainly wouldn't make sense for any reasonable payback period that was only covering household energy consumption.

MIT/INL had a nice overview ~10 years ago[1] on enhanced geothermal systems across the USA. Even the commercial power plants that rely on this type of resource are typically situated only in areas with very nice conditions. You also need to be mindful of the heat extraction over the area underground vs. the natural recharge rate. You can draw down the resource if you don't have a good model of recharge, which is particularly problematic for something you probably want to just run constantly once in service.

* Obviously, it is possible for there to be exceptions based on extremely fortuitous resource access (in terms of both the heat and personal capital), but for almost everyone this isn't going to be the case.

[1] [https://energy.mit.edu/wp-content/uploads/2006/11/MITEI- The-...](https://energy.mit.edu/wp-content/uploads/2006/11/MITEI-The-Future- of-Geothermal-Energy.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I read years ago that such plants lose their effectiveness over time because they extract heat from the ground faster than it replenishes (i.e. it creates a local "cool spot" in the ground).

<comment><USER16> This only happens if you're pulling more energy than the long-term capacity (i.e. heat flow from the interior of the Earth) of the site. If you end up doing this, you can just draw less power until the temperature rises back up.

<comment><USER15> > This only happens if you're pulling more energy than the long-term capacity

Well, of course that's true. The problem was the capacity was too low to be cost effective.

<comment><USER16> It turns out that this is not true. In many cases the issue is just depletion of water, in which case re-injecting water restores power output - the long- run sustainable power is quite economical to harvest.

<comment><USER15> Then the obvious question is why don't we see a lot more of these plants?

<comment><USER17> drilling the well is about $1 million per km. only a few spots around the world make 1-2 km wells cost effective for extracting energy for electricity. this is even worse with the costs of PV installed now 100 fold less than the marginal cost of geothermal.

having said that, a resilient system would have a baseload of electricity from geothermal, some peaking from hydro and plenty of PV/wind. mind you, i'm biased since i live in NZ and we're well on the way to 95+% electricity renewables...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> _" Geothermal is currently at 533.8MW (of which 81.1MW is from the innovative wellheads technology raising geothermal capacity to about 32% of the total installed capacity. Our total thermal capacity is 253.5MW while wind comprises 25.5MW.

Following the full operationalization of the 280MW Geothermal plant in Olkaria, the national electricity consumption by mode 47% geothermal, 39% hydro, 13% thermal and 1% wind."_

Source: Kengen.co.ke

</comment><comment><USER19> Like like Mitsubishi is providing the technology.

<comment><USER20> whith hitachi who is damn fuckin' good at atomic research</comment></comment>


Children for Sale, 1948 - <AUTHOR> https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/4-children-sale-1948/ <comment><USER2> Here is a comment from the article (not me)

Cheri Hofstater JULY 20, 2018 Unfortunately I am the granddaughter of this women. My mother, (Lana) was lucky enough to get sent to live with her grandmother on a farm in Wisconsin. At the age of 12 or 13 I believe, was when her mother came back for her. I remember my mom telling the story like it was yesterday. Her mother loved to drink and play bingo, but with four new children now she found it difficult to maintain her social life, so when my mother was old enough Lucille went and got her for the sole purpose of babysitting. At least that's my mother take on the situation. With no place else to go, my mother stuck around and eventually married and had 7 children. Me, I'm right in the middle. I don't remember much about my grandmother except that she was a strong and demanding women, and I feared her. I remember my half aunt's who were always wonderful to me and my siblings. My mother eventually left her abusive and alcoholic husband and we moved away, never to see them again. Until after my mom died that is. We reconnected, breifly, with some of my mother's half sisters and there view of the situation is totally different. Because of that we never really talked about the relationship between my mother and grandmother, we were just glad to have the time together. I suppose being raised by your mother and being given away by your mother would have a tremendous impact on your opinion and thoughts about your life and the people in it. My mother never seemed bitter or angry at her, just afraid, of being hurt, I suppose. I thank God everyday for giving my mom the strength to endure her life, as lonely as it was. I guess you could say the pain, and or love, we receive throughout our lives doesn't have to dictate who we will become. My mom was proof of that. Thanks for listening. Respectfully, A tender soul.

<comment><USER3> > I suppose being raised by your mother and being given away by your mother > would have a tremendous impact on your opinion

Yeah, that seems pretty clear. Although I don't see why the impact should extend to your relationship with other random people.

My grandfather was given away by his mother a little before the Great Depression, the theory being that she couldn't afford to keep him. (The other two children were kept.) He understandably bore a grudge -- he never spoke about her, and when she tried once, a long time later, to reestablish contact, he refused.

But the only obvious candidate for a lasting impact on his relationships with people other than her was his habit of assuring us "Remember -- your (grand)father always loves you."

<comment><USER4> Being abandoned is a primeval fear of every child. Actually being abandoned has a tremendous negative and traumatic effect on a child.

Even not actual "abandonment", but emotional abandonment is the main culprint for borderline personality dissorder. It will impact a person's emotional stability and wellbeing, the way he is attracted to other people, his self esteem and so on.

<comment><USER5> BPD probably has a substantial genetic basis, although it's not implausible that BPD-leaning parents are more likely to abandon or abuse their children. (Not guaranteed, just more likely!)

Mental illnesses of all kinds, like virtually everything, are heritable. Of course, environment can play into heritability, but it's like the IQ debate... full of Culture War and the science of "why the brain does X thing" is unsettled.

<comment><USER4> BPD probably does have a strong genetic substrate as well since 25% of people diagnosed with BPD also have ADHD, at least that's what the psychiatrist that diagnosed me with BPD told me when she handed me questionaires for ADHD.

I've researched a lot about BPD therapies and the most promising one -- Schema Therapy -- models heavily BPD as being rooted in abandonment issues in childhood -- and everything I've read rang like hitting a nail on it's head, at least in my case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This story is so heartbreaking. I expected to see an old restored photo from the distant past, and being sold by a slaver not a parent.

Sadly, this plays out today in many countries with parents or grandparents selling children into sex slavery, with motives ranging from pure evil to (still terrible) justifcstion of sacrificing one child so that the others can be fed.

<comment><USER7> I mean, this is just adoption essentially.

Would it be more or less heart-breaking if they all starved homeless on the street instead?

<comment><USER8> It is "just adoption" if the kid is lucky. Otherwise it is horror story.

Edit: Also it was not done for the good of the kids, but for the good of the parents. Which puts it into different situation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Over history, it seems like people disagree on the monetary value of children. Sometimes people get paid for their children, and sometimes they have to pay.

Also the standard deviation of prices (in 19th century London and current day Russia) is quite high. My wife's sister is a professor who studies human trafficking and has quite a bit of data on this sort of thing.

One unsurprising trend is that girls are significantly more value than boys: they can potential do housework, cause less problems, and their sexual access can be monetized.

<comment><USER9> I wonder how much of a role culture plays in this as opposed to economics. We say that the reason kids worked in factories and were sold was due to economic hardship, but most people wouldn't find that acceptable nowadays even when they are going through economic hardship. I guess the reason why we care less about the economic aspect nowadays is that we have enough social services that will at least minimally take care of the kids if necessary.

<comment><USER10> Actually not so long ago countries like Sri Lanka and Colombia made a lot of money providing "orphans" to couples who wanted children in Europe. Caused quite the scandal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Grand Daughter comment in comments section complete the story... (If she really was her grand daughter).

<comment><USER12> Thank you for pointing this out. Moving indeed, in particular how this pain is passed on to further generations.

<comment><USER13> Every so often on HN someone recommends the book "the body keeps the score" by dr. Bessel van der Kolk. Im a fan, so I'll do that here.

A chunk of the book talks about intergenerational transmission of trauma. The rest of it is a fascinating insight into the mind-body connection. It's Thorough and well worth the read.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The article mentions horrific abuse of 2 of the children including being tied up in chains and forced to work and the rape and abuse of the other leading to an unwanted pregnancy an being sent to a home for pregnant girls. And one of the kids becoming violent and sent to prison.

This is clearly not the road to a civilized society. History shows all cultures and religion dominated by stable societies and family structures going back thousands of years, and while things like famines, war, epidemics, slavery and others led to breakdown, desperation and widespread suffering they cannot be passed as 'normal' in any age or gloss over abnormal human behavior.

</comment><comment><USER15> That's a horrific story. The historical nature of the photograph might soften the impact a bit but there is plenty of nastiness going on today, even if a sign like that today would be unthinkable.

</comment><comment><USER16> Just heartbreaking looking at those kids faces. No child deserves that.

</comment><comment><USER17> My step-grandfather grew up in a very poor part of south Germany. He was sold by his parents at 7 years to herd sheep. That must've been ~ 1920. During WW2 he fought in Stalingrad and survived a Russian POW camp with maybe 10% survival rate. He lived to become 98 years old. With half his limbs and organs missing. A very hard life, but he was one of the happiest people I knew.

<comment><USER18> When your life improves that dramatically it's hard not to be positive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Just seeing the headline "Children for Sale" drove me into a panic. I could never imagine selling my children. Perhaps if I was in distress I would give them to someone willing to do some form of open adoption, and only until my personal situation recovered.

The whole situation was formidably cruel.

<comment><USER20> > The whole situation was formidably cruel.

This is the natural state of the world. The fact that it's so abhorrent to us now is a testament to how far we've managed to come.

<comment><USER21> The world is what we make of it. There is the shadow and there is the light. Still I believe our natural state is that of love, before all concepts of anything that is all there is.

<comment><USER7> Well, we can look at evolution on other animals to understand where we came from at what the "natural" state of the world. And the answer is clear: the natural state of the world is suffering, sex, and death.

I'm not sure how you could ever think that love is somehow the a priori concept of the world. Do single-celled organisms "love"? What about insects?

The answer is no, and evolution tells us what this cruel world is all about: propogation of genes through sex. We, as beings, are irrelevent: just hosts for a game that is being played at a different level.

<comment><USER22> Ridiculous. If the natural state of the world is "suffering, sex, and death," it's also joy, sex and birth. Sex is at least value neutral -- if you are going to sandwich it between suffering and death I may as well put it between joy and birth -- which are real experiences. Animals seem to experience joy, to play, etc.

Animals also take care of their young, they often mourn those who died.

Plus, your incredulity at the thought of "love" between single-celled organisms is without basis. Love is a subjective state which we can only infer. We (well, some of us, not you I guess) think it's real because we've felt it at a level to which to describe it as not real would do violence to our conception of real/unreal.

And then we infer that it's felt in other organisms around us based on their actions.

Now, a single-celled organism really doesn't have a great range of "actions/behaviors" it can show us. Therefore we don't get to see it. This says nothing about whether it's experienced or not.

<comment><USER7> >Animals also take care of their young, they often mourn those who died

Animals also kill their young on purpose, including people.

Do your cells in your eyes and in your butt love each other? If so, you have a pretty flexible definition of love.

Of course love is a thing, but is a much more recent phenomenon than pain. This is why it's much easier to feel pain, that in it is to feel love.

Humans and elements have a "S-shaped" function in which they rather avoid pain than feel pleasure. Would you rather feel a lot of joy for an hour or not be tortured for an hour? Most choose the latter: the stick is more powerful than the carrot.

I think it's a little disingenuous to that animals feel "love." Neurochemically, it's a little unclear as to what the feeling of love even is. Pain, on the other hand, is quite clear.

Therefore, we can reasonably conclude that pain has been more of driving factor of evolution than love. And then in it also follows that pain has been more prevalent than love in the history of the world.

<comment><USER22> There are subjective and unknowable states. The whole world is not inside your head. By asserting that the cells in my butt can't possibly love each other, you've made a pretty lifeless machine psychology that I don't have to accept, happily. You can't even prove your idea -- I would like you to be aware you are making a faith-based argument. Anyway, cheers. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> How did she afford the professional sign painting?

<comment><USER24> I read this awhile back, but it helps explain your question [https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7kiu0r/how_w...](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7kiu0r/how_were_protest_signs_in_the_30s50s_us_so/)

<comment><USER25> From your reference:

> (If your question is more of a technical one: These signs weren't all > individually hand-lettered. A professional lettering artist makes one copy, > then the artwork is photographed and turned into a plate for silkscreening > or lithography.)

Holy crap, was this so common they had it made produced like the baby on board signs? :(

<comment><USER26> I'm guessing whoever made the sign arranged 4, CHILDREN, FOR, SALE words into the horrid sentence

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> >>Within two years all of the children pictures,

Is there a typo there? Should it have been - Within two years all of the children in the pictures

<comment><USER28> Probably a typo, meant to be "all of the children pictured".

<comment><USER27> Yes. Your correction is better than mine. Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I have wondered if drive for mothering is powered by built-in gene programming. If that was the case, I'd say there was possibly a mutation in this case.

<comment><USER7> Mothering is about propogation of 50% of your genes. Your interests aren't fully aligned. In many situations, it makes sense to kill or get rid of children, in order to improve the chances of future offspring.

Moreover, if the child is a girl, their reproductive skew is very low: it's highly unlikely she will produce more than 15 offspring in her entire life. So it might make sense to sell your girls, and keep your boys.

Why, you might ask? Because in an ideal world, each boy could potentially have thousands of children.

This, of course, is unlikely but we can look at history to just see how reproductively successful a man can be. Genghis Khan in all likelyhood had thousands of children.

<comment><USER29> You are missing the point here, may be. Man could not be reproductively successful without women. If a boy has thousands of children, there needs to be corresponding women who can carry them.

<comment><USER7> Of course you need one mother per dad. But I'm talking about the skew of the probability density function of the distribution. If I'm a sucessful man I can get more than my "fair share" of reproductive access.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> How/why is this even legal?

<comment><USER31> It's probably not, but that doesn't stop it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Initially, I thought it said "Chicken for Sale" and I was alright with that.

</comment><comment><USER33> I thought this photo was hilarious until I realized it was serious.

<comment><USER34> Please don't post unsubstantive comments here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Is this illegal today?</comment>


GitHub is down for some users - <AUTHOR> https://www.githubstatus.com/ <comment><USER2> Continuing the pattern of downtimes in high-profile tech products. I'm genuinely curious whether this is a quirky property of Poisson distribution or something more interesting is going on...

EDIT: One datapoint, Boston, MA, here still getting 500s e.g. in gist.

<comment><USER3> The web is so centralized at this point that I don't think Poisson processes even really apply. When Cloudflare goes down, so does half the world. When AWS sneezes, 10% of websites die for an hour. It wouldn't surprise me if Azure was experiencing some funkiness and that's what was causing GitHub's issues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's been promoted to a "Major Outage." This is disrupting a lot of stuff. I hope their engineers can fix whatever the problem is before too long.

</comment><comment><USER4> Gone from Major Outage to Degraded Performance in the space of minutes.

At least the status page is working. Was expecting all green lights like most other major cloud providers.

</comment><comment><USER5> now, Degraded Performance for now only on API, Issues and PR</comment>


I invented Roomba and assure you, robots won't take over the world - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/84/outbreak/dont-fear-the-robot <comment><USER2> There is no point made here that robots won't take over the world, he just belabors the point that it is hard to make robots replicate exactly what humans do.

Automation will eat everything, it's just a matter of time. Even his problem of 'visually identifying weeds and uprooting them' does not come across as a massive problem, but one that can probably be solved with enough time and demand.

Platitudes like these give false hopes to workers who should be training and preparing for the next phase of industry, and IMO serves people like the author who need complacent workers to give them time to come up with their money-making solutions.

<comment><USER3> The fact aside that you just brought up another platitude, actual data suggests that this is wrong. Automation is slow, has been getting slower as is clearly visible in labour productivity and employment statistics and there's really no indication of a large change in that trend.

Billions of dollars are invested annually in technologies with marginal productivity improvements, and it looks like there are more and more diminishing returns.

If there was any indication that automation would 'eat everything', unemployment would be high (corona-pandemic aside), and labour productivity would be growing fast, none of which is happening.

Robert Gordon gives an expansive, evidence-based account of the development of American economic development in _The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living Since the Civil War_ , and there's virtually no evidence for the grandiose claims made by the tech industry that we're living in some sort of era of rapid change. That for the most part ended in the late 70s.

<comment><USER4> FWIW, automation is certainly eating jobs in the back office. I push a button and my pivot table gets updated in a few seconds whereas that used to take somebody a couple hours to assemble. Why do I need a second staff accountant, again?

I think it's inevitable that the "junior" office jobs (where many get their start) will be/are replaced by scripts & API's.

<comment><USER5> that's just productivity enhancement. in most cases, junior positions aren't disappearing, but rather being redefined to do things that were previously too difficult or time-consuming, so were skipped.

like fraud detection. before, you just accepted a 3% fraud rate as a cost of doing business and left it at that. now you get that down to 0.5% because the tools let you do it in the same amount of time, and the owners want that sweet, sweet cash. you still want a second accountant to double-check the first, so you expand the work to fulfill that need. it can still be worth it, even so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There are a lot of jobs that are suitable for people with disabilities or lack of college education or other issues -- those jobs jobs are being taken over by "software robots". My employer and lots of other similar companies are using them to automate stuff so that those people are no longer needed.

Robots are not taking over your world -- just some jobs which mean the world to some people who have those jobs!

</comment><comment><USER7> Why do some things get "invented" and others being simply developed ? Roombe is based on other ideas and concpets.

Even according to the timeline in the article itself the Swedish Electrolux Trilobite [1] was already press released when iRobot had their first proof of concept.

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

</comment><comment><USER8> Before spreadsheet software (Excel, etc) showed up, some people were using actual physical spreadsheets (very large pieces of paper). Spreadsheet software appeared to make that job obsolete. And indeed it did. Nobody uses the paper spreadsheets anymore. But how many people use the computer spreadsheets? Hundreds of millions?

It's going to be the same with robots. Maybe actual lathes will disappear, but there will be computerized things that will perform that job, and people manning the computers. Some of the jobs will be automated (think Excel macros), but many will require human interaction and iterations.

</comment><comment><USER9> I've been trying to make Buckbee's Law happen for a while:

"The more a robot looks like a robot the less useful it is."

Take fast food as an example: what's really going to change things are automated systems that reduce the number of people needed to run the place. Look at things like touchscreen ordering systems that cut the number of people talking to you. That's not a "robot" but it is automation of a sort.

<comment><USER10> These aren't really much of an improvement in efficiency though - self- checkout kiosks for stores have been around since at least the early 2000s, and they're still much slower than minimum-wage cashiers with a little experience (maybe Amazon will finally change this, but the tech my local grocery has is definitely as bad as the kiosk I worked alongside in 2003). It takes me much longer to order using a kiosk at a McDonald's than it takes me to tell a cashier what I want. I remember using a touch-screen kiosk at a Subway back in 2005, and my local subway 15 years later still doesn't have them. This ultra rise in productivity just isn't _actually_ happening despite what conversations on hacker news (and before that, digg, and before that, slashdot) keep insisting on.

<comment><USER11> There are other types of efficiency than time.

At my supermarket, they replaced 2 regular checkouts with 8 self-checkouts in the same floor space. During rush hour, this greatly increases throughput despite actual scanning time perhaps being slower.

At McDonalds, it means they can higher fewer staff which means a cost efficiency.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> When someone talks about robots destroying the mankind, I start picturing scenes from movies or tv series (i.e. Terminator, iRobot, Westworld so on) where human like robots try to destroy the mankind.

Robots taking over the world may not be eminent. However, greedy people taking over the world with the help of robots and AI is already being facilitated for quite some time. Governments acquiring technology to hush the oppositions and free speech around the world is a common phenomena around the world. Usage of data along with AI to pinpoint, target and destroy enemies is being used for over a decade.

It is the usage of data and AI by the greedy community we need to be more concerned about, not silly imitation of life that barely perceives the world.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm not worried about a grad-school project picking up a gun and using it against me.

I am worried about something like this, which, while a parody, is not long off:

[https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/robots/a29610393...](https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/robots/a29610393/robot- soldier-boston-dynamics/)

<comment><USER14> Something like this terrifies me- [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlO2gcs1YvM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlO2gcs1YvM)

Tl;dw, mini weaponized AI drones get loose and mass havoc ensues. I'm sure the feasibility behind these isn't close but still, it's an interesting design fiction.

<comment><USER13> _shiver_ Very well done short film. A chilling vision of the (possibly near) future.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Roomba is a very old concept, missing almost everything that makes modern robots interesting. No vision; not much memory; no model of the environment; no knowledge of physics. Just a tuned mechanism and simple algorithm to wander around an barely pick up some dirt.

Don't get me wrong; its terribly useful. I own a knockoff. But not a model of what robots could be, today. Think of facial-recognition drones delivering voice messages to people in a crowd. Think auto-drive cars and the terabytes of data and kilowatts of energy they command. Think of the Netflix algorithm for suggesting movies. Lightyears beyond Roomba.

Yes, automation will eat our lunch. Because automation _is eating our lunch_. Factories, city planning, scheduling, diagnosing - all sorts of automated processes are in industry and consumer space right now. Just ask Siri about it if you still have doubts.

<comment><USER16> Actually Roombas for a while already have vision and model/map their environment.

<comment><USER15> Ok. But they have tiny little processors (5?) that each do a tiny little task with a smidgen of RAM. Is the 'vision' feature real, or just a light intensity detector? Can you get a picture out of it? I'm dubious.

As for the model/map, how does it sense location? Dead reckoning? Not a very significant feature if it can't find itself on the map, nor use the map to choose a route. Which I doubt (from videos of the Roomba in action)

<comment><USER17> It depends on the model, but I think that your impression of Roomba, either through experience or the technology that the author of this article presented is really out-of-date. Even on past models, they have Visual Simultaneous Location and Mapping (VSLAM) tech that is far, far beyond dead reckoning. The even more recent version (not sure if there's been a release since) also has persistent maps, so it actually can find itself on the map and choose routes[2]. I'm not sure what exactly the processors are, but considering the supply-chain investments that've gone into mobile processor development for smartphones, I think it's likely unfair to characterize them as "tiny little processors".

Disclosure: I did an internship at iRobot a few years ago, although the overwhelming majority of my work wasn't related to Roomba products.

[1] [https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/home- robots/iro...](https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/home- robots/irobot-brings-visual-mapping-and-navigation-to-the-roomba-980) [2] [https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/home- robots/new...](https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/home-robots/new- roomba-i7-features-persistent-maps-room-cleaning)

<comment><USER15> That's a big name. I'm suspicious it means "light intensity map" or something far less interesting than it sounds. Turn a light on or off, and then what? My Shark (ok Not a Roomba) manual says to leave the lights on. I suspect that's because its navigating by light intensity (light fixture bright spots).

<comment><USER17> I don't like to be dismissive, but your suspicion isn't well-founded and is very likely based on little or no background research on the topic. If you had, you'd have found that SLAM and VSLAM as a subset is a well-defined category of computer with a strong mathematical background in optical flow and pattern matching on images[0]. You'd have found a number of iRobot patents still in their enforceable time period directly referencing the use of cameras in those algorithms[1][2]. You'd have found marketing materials describing how those systems work that directly correlates with the technology described in those patents[3]. That's based on no special previous knowledge of those materials on my part, just the top few results from a couple minutes of DDG and Google Scholar searches.

Implying that is just "a big name" that means "something far less interesting than it sounds" is an uninformed opinion. Plus, even [0], which is 15 years old directly refutes your comments about the effect of lighting. Lighting is helpful because it illuminates the scene that a camera is seeing, in the same way that it's easier to go on a night hike on during a full moon. We don't reference our position off the moon, it just makes it easier to see where we're walking.

[0] [https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/1570091](https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/1570091)

[1] [https://patents.google.com/patent/US9286810B2/en](https://patents.google.com/patent/US9286810B2/en)

[2] [https://patents.google.com/patent/US9910444B2/en](https://patents.google.com/patent/US9910444B2/en)

[3] [https://www.irobot.com/roomba/s-series](https://www.irobot.com/roomba/s-series)

<comment><USER15> The processors in a Roomba (when I went to the plant a couple years ago) were all around $1. No room in a buck chip for that. Ok I see it uses DSPs which is a budget version of image processing. Looks for moving marks on the walls to gauge distance. Kind of a cut-rate lidar. About what I figured.

<comment><USER17> Which plant? Which Roomba?

According to the materials released by Qualcomm in 2018 (by which point, the Roomba i7 would have already have had lines in that plant), the processor used is a ARQ8009, a quad-core ARM processor commonly used in smartphones[0]. It's tough to find prices because the contracts are negotiated individually, but I'd put money on those chips costing much more than $1.00/piece.

Comparing VSLAM to lidar in any way besides saying that they technically can both be used to measure movement is also incorrect, and to actually call it a "kind of a cut-rate lidar" can only be due to a fundamental misunderstanding of VSLAM, lidar, or both.

Lidar measures distance along a single axis, with no additional information provided. You get movement by measuring changes in position by directly updating the distance value and inferring position change. It can be made robust by adding multiple lidar sensors, but is subject to weird edge cases with reflective materials or sunlight.

VSLAM only can measure change in vehicle position through the estimated position changes of significant image features through time, and provides no information about vehicle distance to the surroundings while the robot is standing still. You'd require stereo vision for that, and that does require more processing power, typically including a GPU like the one included in the NVIDIA Jetsons. You'd also typically use sensor fusion with an IMU, odometry, etc. to help with that.

Without stereo vision, you need motion to estimate position, which fundamentally makes VSLAM different from lidar, and makes your claim that it is "kind of a cut-rate lidar" completely false.

I'm not sure which DSP acronym you're referring to as a budget version of image processing , but if it has to do with digital signal processing, then yeah, of course. That's kind of the definition.

[0] [https://www.qualcomm.com/news/onq/2018/12/17/help- qualcomm-t...](https://www.qualcomm.com/news/onq/2018/12/17/help-qualcomm- technologies-irobot-roomba-i7-robot-vacuum-delivers-more)

<comment><USER15> Jesus that's a world ground-speed record for pedantry right there.

Clearly, VSLAM is being touted as 'vision' when in fact its far less than that, less than LIDAR even, which was my point. Which I feel was completely understood, yet still a silly attempt to shame me was spewed out saying "But its less than LIDAR" which was true, what I wrote, and beside the point.

<comment><USER17> Oh, neat, looks like this debate has reached ad hominem attacks.

VSLAM is computer vision. Full stop. Here's an article about it in a Springer Computer Vision guide [0]. I don't know what your personal definition requires for that to be the case, but if it doesn't include point recognition and persistent tracking by an integrated RGB camera, then I think it's unreasonably out of line with that of the rest of the field.

Which, just so we're clear, is the eighth reputable primary source I've presented you with directly refuting claims you've made.

Yes, I understood your point that you feel VSLAM is less than lidar. My point is that it's like stating that the moon is purple. Comprehensible, but wrong. And not in a "beside the point" way, but in a way that directly laid out why a core piece of your argument regarding how you try to compare VSLAM with lidar is invalid. Pretty sure that's not pedantry.

[0] [https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007%2F978-0...](https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007%2F978-0-387-31439-6_280)

<comment><USER15> Ok, when Roomba advertises 'computer vision' they're conjuring up images of recognizing rooms, finding furniture and pets, maybe building a model of your house. But what that DSP is delivering? Maybe a little feature-extraction, just so it can calculate relative motion/distance of a wall or obstacle. Calculated and forgotten.

In the scheme of computer vision sophistication, its right down there with a fly's eye. That was my point, and I believe it was well understood. The pedantry of insisting it _is computer vision full stop_. Well, yes, about 1% of what computer vision could be. Niggling over that point is what's annoying. Instead of a good-faith discussion of how primitive this is, how tiny a feature it is, how miniscule the benefit it brings the consumer. How its pasted on the Roomba feature list because, hey, cameras are cheap and we can sell that feature for maybe $100 because the consumer doesn't know.

<comment><USER17> Except it does do that. It's called persistent maps, and it's how the feature where you can say "Go vacuum the kitchen" works[0].

Also, I think you're underestimating both how valuable and complicated VSLAM is. Sure, it's not a multi-billion dollar state-of-the-art composite deep learning model trained on thousands of hours of data running on custom silicon, but it's hardly "This area is dark, and there's a bright thing over there!" Even if VSLAM only included visual odometry, that would _still_ be a major improvement over other options in autonomous navigation, which is absolutely key in other domains that you seem to consider state-of-the-art. It's the same technology, and investments therein that make things like the RangerBot possible[1]. In a competitive market where BOM cost is a serious consideration, if you could get better results by not using VSLAM and relying only on something like laser odometry instead, that's what would be done.

Also, I'm honestly a little annoyed at your implication that I'm the one not having a good-faith discussion, while you have blatantly and repeatedly made false statements that could have been figured out by doing your own research, notable by your failure to provide any actual sources, instead making tangential anecdotal references to try to back up your statements. Heck, let's not forget your initial claim wasn't "limited vision" (which I debate anyway), but "no vision", and "no model of their environment" which again isn't simply true.

[0] [https://store.irobot.com/default/roomba-vacuuming-robot- vacu...](https://store.irobot.com/default/roomba-vacuuming-robot-vacuum- irobot-roomba-i7-plus/i755020.html)

[1] [https://good-design.org/projects/rangerbot/](https://good- design.org/projects/rangerbot/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> So OK, it's a good criteria for robotics companies: Do a valuable task, do it today, do it for less. And companies following that, and i'll add - aiming for B2B, even when failed, we'll see their competitors and industry succeed.

You can see it from his list of failed companies, where only Unbounded robotics(smart robot hand), Rethink(collaborative robotics), Blue workforce(collaborative), Aria insights(drones) have seen their work continue successfully in their industry.

But yes, robots for the home are much harder.

So maybe robots won't take over the world, but they might take over businesses.

<comment><USER19> I think it's a bit easier for businesses to reconfigure to change the essential job and make it easier for robots. E.g., a business can put guide wires in the concrete. I can do the same in my yard... but I'm not going to do it in my house.

Perhaps this is because the business is already slave to its function. The exact separation and makeup of businesses reflects efficient ways to split up problems and integrate with other businesses. It's possible to refactor that given a robot that can perform a certain kind of action that is not directly equivalent to one person's job right now.

But my home is my home, it serves me, I do not serve it. For instance, one could imagine redesigning clothing to make robotic cleaning and folding of clothing feasible. I'm not going to do that! But redesigning PPE for that process in a hospital is not at all unreasonable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> It doesn't answer the title? Why won't they take over? I thought he was going to discuss the exponential difficulty of AI as it approaches human parity.

</comment><comment><USER21> If I want to know what robotics will look like and the future of deep reinforcement learning, I'd rather ask Covariant.ai than a guy whose expertise is little vacuums whose AI is "while true, spin in a circle and go forward at random".

<comment><USER22> Current Roombas are a little more fancy than that.

<comment><USER21> But not much. You can hardly compare anything Roomba has ever done to even, say, Boston Dynamics.

<comment> Digit-Al The difference is that Roomba's are used by millions of people around the world whilst Boston Dynamics robots, whilst impressive, are currently used by... nobody?

Anyway, it's an apples to oranges comparison. Boston Dynamics are building incredibly expensive and sophisticated AI systems that will be first of interest to the military, who have very deep pockets and can afford to spend millions if it is deemed a good use of the money.

Roomba are building stuff that can be bought by the average person on the street.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> That definitely clears up a long-standing doubt caused by a lesson in computational geometry - how does Roomba know when it is done cleaning a room? It seems that the simple answer is that it doesn't.

</comment><comment><USER24> Yes you are right they even can't do this</comment>


Saliva-based Covid-19 test approved by FDA - <AUTHOR> https://news.yale.edu/2020/08/15/yales-rapid-covid-19-saliva-test-receives-fda-emergency-use-authorization <comment><USER2> This is an emergency use authorization, not a full approval by the FDA, and this only lasts until the state of emergency ends or the test is actually approved/rejected by the FDA. Either way, this is some exciting news as it could make sample collection easier for testing. It doesn't look like it overcomes the qPCR reagent bottlenecks to actually analyze the samples though, so I wonder what the full impact on testing will actually be.

<comment><USER3> So far as I know, all covid tests in use right now are being produced under emergency authorization.

<comment><USER2> And that's come with a lot of problems as we saw with the antibody testing fiasco with all the nonfunctional tests. So the precedent suggests cautious optimism, emphasis on the cautious.

<comment><USER4> Actually, emphasis on the optimism. The Yale work is really well done. Sensitivity is a little low, but people keep ignoring cost, scalability, frequency and ease. This is what is needed for back to work/school applications and the first test that actually satisfies these criteria imo.

<comment><USER2> Absolutely really good work. My concern is still that it doesn't seem to solve the qpcr bottleneck. Its great that it gets rid of ena extraction (as someone trying to get enough reagents to do any sort of real work in my lab - I'm all too aware of how much trouble they're saving themselves by cutting out that bit). The pcr part doesn't seem to be addressed though - amd if it isn't (without something like pooling or using something like LAMP) this will just add to the backlog of tests.

On the other hand, will still def second you on the quality of the work. It's some really solid science.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Kinda weird... I know University of Illinois has been doing saliva-based testing[1] for a few weeks now[2].

They also plan to roll it out nationally [3].

I am curious if this is the same test? I know students at UIUC need to do two tests a week and many have been.

Test results come back in a couple hours from what I've seen.

[1] [https://illinoisnewsroom.org/university-of-illinois- creates-...](https://illinoisnewsroom.org/university-of-illinois-creates- saliva-covid-19-test-with-a-plan-to-use-it-on-thousands-of-students-this- fall/)

[2] [https://wgntv.com/news/coronavirus/university-of-illinois- ro...](https://wgntv.com/news/coronavirus/university-of-illinois-rolls-out- coronavirus-saliva-test/)

[3] [https://dailyillini.com/news/2020/08/10/university- covid-19-...](https://dailyillini.com/news/2020/08/10/university- covid-19-saliva-testing-expands-nationally/)

<comment><USER4> They both work very similar in theory: unpurified saliva with qPCR. Though as far as I know U of I doesn't have their EUA and have not stated they applied.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> On Aug. 14, 2020, Science Friday featured a discussion about rapid testing strategies with two scientists. The recording is well worth a listen. The key take-away is that while PCR tells you if you're infected, to protect others what you really want to know is if you're infectious.

[https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/covid-testing- strateg...](https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/covid-testing-strategy/)

<comment><USER7> A correct positive PCR doesn't even guarantee infection - it just tells you that you have been infected within the last month or so. Old, inactivated viral RNA can still trigger a positive weeks later.

<comment><USER8> Are there examples of studies on people testing positive months later? qPCR is used in many settings for medical testing and the guidelines for other diseases are that residual bacterial RNA is cleared 7-14 days after successful antibiotic treatment. Obviously, COVID is caused by a virus, but a much longer period to clear viral RNA is not intuitive.

<comment><USER9> > Are there examples of studies on people testing positive months later?

Yes. However, it appears to not be live virus.

[https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.21.20125138v...](https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.21.20125138v1)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Are there meaningful differences between this and the Rutgers saliva test that received emergency use authorization in April?

[https://www.rutgers.edu/news/new-rutgers-saliva-test- coronav...](https://www.rutgers.edu/news/new-rutgers-saliva-test-coronavirus- gets-fda-approval)

<comment><USER11> It sounds like the main difference is that this saliva test doesn't require specific equipment and can be done by labs everywhere.

Also about 10 times as cheap!

Source: [https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/29667299/fda-allowing- sa...](https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/29667299/fda-allowing-saliva-based- test-funded-nba)

<comment><USER2> It still requires specific equipment- it looks like its still a qPCR based test, not an isothermal amplification type test, so it needs a qPCR machine and reagents. It cuts out one step, RNA extraction, which means it trades off some sensitivity for a faster and cheaper result.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > Saliva-based Covid-19 test approved by FDA

Editorialized title. Title from the article is actually

> Quick and affordable saliva-based COVID-19 test developed by Yale scientists > receives FDA Emergency Use Authorization

</comment><comment><USER13> Pretty curious to know what the false negative rate is. With the most popular current test (nasopharyngeal RT-PCR), the false negative rate is very roughly 30%, which is already pretty awful. And if you get tested significantly before or after peak viral load, it's way worse than 30% [1]. If you get a negative result, you can't really trust it, it's giving false confidence to literally millions that they don't have COVID, when they do.

It sounds like this test is not quite as good? If it has, say, a 40-50% false negative rate, I don't really care how cheap and fast it is, that sucks. These tests are all pretty useless if you're pre-symptomatic, so they're not good for screening anyways, and if I'm at peak symptoms, I want accuracy over speed. I took a nasopharyngeal RT-PCR test and got results the same day, that's fast enough if it's more accurate. But if the accuracy is equivalent, or very nearly so, then it's quite interesting.

[1] [https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-1495#s1-M201495](https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-1495#s1-M201495)

<comment><USER14> This is interesting. I recently had a throat swab test after a week of extreme fatigue, but at no time did they indicate that the negative result was anything but certain. I had imagined _some_ false negative rate, but not this high.

<comment><USER15> This is why I laugh when people quote the infection numbers. It is potentially up to 30% wrong or heck, even more... nobody knows... but there is also other reasons, like inaccurate deduplication when people get multiple rounds of tests because of the high false negative rate.

Oh and because it is false negative, it is worse than you think, not better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The preliminary study shows very high specificity, which is good for something that may be widely deployed, as it avoids the problem of massive numbers of false positives: [https://lee-phillips.org/testingbad/](https://lee- phillips.org/testingbad/)

</comment><comment><USER17> I'd like to see the FDA move away from approvals like this and just focus on lightweight approvals that "the test seems not fraudulent for presenting the false positive rate and false negative rates of the test, and it is indeed better than ransom".

Tests should not return "positive" or "negative", rather something like "3 in 4 chance of infection" of positive and "1 in 200 chance of infection" if negative (something like that). This is both more true and helps people understand statistics/how these tests work, instead of hiding it.

I don't see a safety risk for a test if it has some predictive value unless it is fraud.

There could be a separate threshold for "reimbursability" for insurance reasons.

</comment><comment><USER18> "The related research was funded by the NBA, National Basketball Players Association"

</comment><comment><USER19> ASU also did something similar

[https://asunow.asu.edu/20200526-discoveries-arizona-state- un...](https://asunow.asu.edu/20200526-discoveries-arizona-state-university- develops-saliva-based-covid-19-test)

</comment><comment><USER20> Here is the preprint for this test: [https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.03.20167791v...](https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.03.20167791v1)

</comment><comment><USER21> You can get a saliva test today, it's just a bit expensive: [https://www.vaulthealth.com/covid](https://www.vaulthealth.com/covid)

We did this this morning, and it was not bad. They ship the tubes to your house, and you get in a Zoom call to verify ID and do the procedure. They haven't worked out all the kinks (it took much too long to do all of us) but it was pretty convenient. The biggest issue? It's surprisingly hard to fill up an entire test tube with spit.

</comment><comment><USER22> From the article, it isn't clear how long it will take to get the results. Is it the same as the "traditional" test? Any ideas? Here in Oz, I received a negative in 24 hours (actually more like 14 ) using the nasopharyngeal method and which was free for me (covered by Medicare) so would love to know if the turnaround time for SalivaDirect will be lesser as well.

</comment><comment><USER23> I previously read about this in the context of a company that claims they are working on a similar test:

[https://seekingalpha.com/news/3604178-hindenburg-research- sk...](https://seekingalpha.com/news/3604178-hindenburg-research-skeptic-of- sorrentos-covid-spit-test)

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm unfamiliar with "pooled testing". I've read many universities plan on doing it with a saliva test. Is this something that's been done in the past? Frankly, it doesn't quite right to me but then again I'm not a scientist.

<comment><USER25> That's how China is able to test millions of people in a short amount of time. It works only when you have low rate of infections. Instead of testing each sample you test e.g. 5. If this pooled sample tests positive, you test each 5 individually again (for a total of 6 tests instead of 5). If the pool tests negative you're done and you've only run 1 test instead of 5 individual ones.

So you can run the math yourself to see what % of infection rates it makes sense to pool and when not ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> There was a recent This Week In Virology covering the importance of tests like this:

[https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-640/](https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-640/)

</comment><comment><USER27> Good. That nose test is _painful_.

<comment><USER28> Is it? I heard from people who took it that it looks more unpleasant than it really is.

<comment><USER27> For me, it was quite painful. They stuck a swab to the back of my nose, which was uncomfortable. They they went several inches further to a place that I didn't even know I _had_. (I suspect it was the lower sinus cavity, but I'm not sure.) They jabbed it into the back of that, hard, which hurt. They left it there, pressed in hard, for 10 to 15 seconds.

On the upside, it felt like that sinus drained a bit after they pulled the probe out. It may have hurt me more because my sinuses are, um, fuller than they should be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> My tired mind read this as Salvia-based Covid-19 test approved by FDA. That would be some trip.

<comment> non-entity lmao this is how I initially read it. I was rather confused for a second.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Great news, Building on this idea. Is it also possible to calibrate an electric tongue to detect COVID-19 from a breath test? COVID-19 has a very specific smell I think. Breath and saliva test would be quicker than PCR and would probably be important to protect the elderly as many who have COVID is asymptotic.</comment>