I don't want to play grumpy old guy, but I'm getting a bit tired of breathless articles that omit key facts.
What's the efficiency? It's such an obvious question I can't imagine writing an article without that data. How about current costs of other green power? Difficultly of the subject area? Others who have tried?
I love these new tech stories, but one or two paragraphs of context can go a long way for the reader. We're left having the same old discussion: one person says "awesome!" and then another points out one of these obvious (and common) holes. It's the same discussion, over and over again.
It's not just the energy stories. I've seen dozens of startup stories that are long on hype and emotion and really short on explaining the market and how the company is executing -- the key things that any other startup person would want to know. Heck, I know everybody's excited about it, what I want is somebody giving me a bit of perspective.
Same goes for "new cancer treatment found!" articles, which are also long on emotion and short on context. I know emotion gets clicks, just wish we could do better here.
People like to shit on reddit a lot here, but both the submission and the discussion over at /r/science [1] contains much more substance than discussion here. They link to the actual paper as well, which contains more details, such as efficiency.
I agree, there is a lot more that tech blogs could do to help the reader. The problem is, that kind of extra detail isn't really possible without specializing -- and if you specialize, you limit the size of your audience.
The other problem is writing the stories: it would be awesome to have a writer for every kind of topic, so that every story can be tackled with complete background knowledge... but that's just not feasible. Instead, most tech blogs have writers with 'beats' that they cover -- but even then, if the 'green technologies' writer is out for the day, someone else has to tackle it.
So for the most part, we tech bloggers just try to get a good grasp of the technology, and then boil it down into a form that's easy to read and understand. The resultant story quality is variable and depends a lot on how much time and effort you put into it, and your background knowledge -- but I like to think I do a fairly good job :)
Not to disagree with you (you make a good point, after all), but couldn't this be a case of reporting on a minimal viable product? As you say, it happens in tech, too. The idea here is to generate interest. Sure, it's not complete yet, and they probably still have a long way to go, but the idea isn't to present a finished solution that is now going to market.
And it's not like reporters want to wait until something is being sold before writing a story, either.
I guess for me, as much as I want more information, I'm willing to accept what they are trying to do.
Emotion? Of COURSE it's emotion! It's ALL about emotion; the rest is just window dressing. It's to grab you by the heart, the gut, or below the belt, always below the shoulders, never between the ears.
It's from a 'culture' that is ingrained and self-perpetuating: In college, they majored not in math, physical science, or engineering but in the 'humanities', especially English literature. There 'truth' is 'compelling' and from emotions or beauty, is in the eye of the beholder, personal, relative, etc.
In particular the most desired form of the emotions is 'drama' especially as in formula fiction with good and evil, etc.
The foundation is 'art' as in communication, intrepretation of human experience, emotions. Or 'it feels good'.
This 'culture' is solidly in control of 'old media'. There are two big reasons:
First, old media goes way back, is sitll close to the old morality plays, and goes way back before the revolution in information safety and efficacy starting with, say, J. Maxwell and with grand examples in math, physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, technology, medical science, and medicine of the 20th century. Old media is still locked up well before 1900, mostly 1800. The college humanities majors naturally gravitated to that culture and still do. There are more details in C. P. Snow's 'The Two Cultures'.
Second, "The medium is the message" has long held true. In particular, before the Internet, the 'medium' was print, radio, or TV, and there the number of 'channels' and the 'bandwidth' of each channel were so small that the audience had to be very broad and the room for details was very small. So, the 'message' was to low grade emotions and very short. And that's what the article of this thread is. Useful? Rational? No. Emotional? Trivial? Yes.
So, obviously 'new media' can exploit more 'channels', would you believe over 100 million blogs, and more bandwidth, how ahout over 5 Mbps download bandwidth? Then we can have 'streams of focused content for focused interests', over 100 million 'streams'.
Sure, anyone with anything like an education in math, science, or engineering good enough actually to make things work pays close attention to details, say, efficiency, cost, durability, power levels, etc. Else, computers would snap, crackle, and pop, airplanes would never get off the ground, bridges and buildings would fall, etc. But the English majors in the culture of old media don't care.
Old media is dying, and not just because Craig's List is taking their classified ads.
HN and your remarks are right on target for how old media is being killed and where new media will be better.
My view is that the biggest problem in civilization and our country now is the brain-dead, all-emotions all the time, dysfunctional, self-destructive nonsense of old media instead of the solid information we need to be responsible citizens and direct our government to a better future. E.g., only now, slowly, are we learning the real anatomy of The Great Recession. So, old media never got the word out. Cry about the pains after the disaster? Sure. Have the solid, crucial information to avoid the disaster before hand? NOT a chance. Old media is helpless, full of tears, devoid of rationality or responsibility.
With old media, it's surprising we haven't blown up the planet by now. Old media, I have a question: "Now, how does that make you feel?".
In materials science labs around the world, researchers are performing 'miracles'.
Aerogels could eliminate most of the waste heat from buildings. Piezoelectric nanogenerators could power mobile electronic devices. Graphene transistors could attain speeds of 1THz. And multiferroics like the beastly Ni45Co5Mn40Sn10 mentioned above could replace bulky laptop batteries.
But what is achieved with multi-million dollar government sponsored research grants in controlled labs is difficult to transfer to ones doorstep.
One barrier is economic: an aerogel house would cost $50M! A pricetag that may be acceptable to the Department of Defense, but won't do Peoria Joe much good.
Basically the same as a seebeck generator; but it can be used in places where current seebeck generators would not do well.
I wish they would phrase these things as "turns heat differences into electricity;" because every time they say "waste heat," people get excited about harvesting heat from their CPU and having their computer power itself.
Well in theory a proportion of the heat generated by a hot running CPU or GPU (or anything else that operates at a temperature significantly higher than the local ambient temperature) could be converted to useful energy, and you could feed the generated power back into the unit to reduce what it needs to sink from other sources.
Though of course you would have to work out if the energy savings are enough to outweigh the extra energy used in manufacturing such a device (remembering to account for the fact that the extra complexity of each unit may reduce the effective yield of the manufacturing process). It might cost far more energy to make than it'll ever save in its active life. Thermodynamics can be a bugger like that...
If I remember correctly, there was recent talk about the magnetic component of light being much strong than thought. Well, why not focus light on this material and let the heat make a stronger magnetic field and use it as a solar panel?
Because you need a cold sink to make this work. Solar panels need a dark sink, but that's easy to get.
You can only convert energy (i.e. do work) when sending energy from high to low, for example hot to cold, light to dark, etc. (If you heated a solar panel to the point that it glowed with the same intensity as the incoming light it would not work. Ignoring the fact that it would melt :)
Electric power plants use bodies of water as the cold sink. If you ever see clouds of what looks like smoke, but is really steam while driving, what you are seeing is the cold water evaporating after being used as a cold sink.
BTW if you did want a solar-thermal power plant they exist, and don't need this material. It's a lot simpler than that - just concentrate the light to heat water and run a steam turbine.
BTW#2 "the magnetic component of light being much strong than thought" doesn't make sense. The magnetic component of light is VERY well understood. You are probably misremembering, or misunderstanding.
I'm guessing its applications would be more in the line of powering remote devices then anything more substantial. I could see the point of replacing a photovoltaic panel with a hunk of metal in a seismic sensor or something like that.
I don't get it. So you can use heat to make a magnet. We already have permanent magnets. Magnetism, in and of itself, doesn't create energy. You'd have to either pulse the magnet, or move a coil past the magnet. The former seems impossible since you'd have to cycle its temperature, and the latter just gives you an alternator, which we already have.
If I'm missing something, I'd like to know. It just looks like, "hey, magnetism!" and some hand-waving.
This looks like it has the possibility to dramatically increase the efficiency of motors and engines.
Also, if they could capture the heat coming out of a nuclear reactor, they could both avoid meltdowns and not require proximity to a large body of water.
Edit: Disregard this. I don't know thermodynamics as well as I thought I did.
This doesn't lower the temperature of a nuclear reactor or any heat source. The new material will still experience an increase in temperature, and the same amount of heat will still be released into the environment.
Not really. (Also: “Epic fail” and a pretty cryptic and lazy link? Doesn’t seem HN worthy.) This obviously doesn’t make perpetual motion machines a possibility and the article reeks of hyperbole but this technology is potentially useful.
It would be better to just make stuff that doesn’t produce any waste heat, I guess you could say that this is sort of a step in that direction. It’s for making stuff more efficient, no more, no less.
[+] [-] DanielBMarkham|14 years ago|reply
What's the efficiency? It's such an obvious question I can't imagine writing an article without that data. How about current costs of other green power? Difficultly of the subject area? Others who have tried?
I love these new tech stories, but one or two paragraphs of context can go a long way for the reader. We're left having the same old discussion: one person says "awesome!" and then another points out one of these obvious (and common) holes. It's the same discussion, over and over again.
It's not just the energy stories. I've seen dozens of startup stories that are long on hype and emotion and really short on explaining the market and how the company is executing -- the key things that any other startup person would want to know. Heck, I know everybody's excited about it, what I want is somebody giving me a bit of perspective.
Same goes for "new cancer treatment found!" articles, which are also long on emotion and short on context. I know emotion gets clicks, just wish we could do better here.
[+] [-] StavrosK|14 years ago|reply
[1] http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/i6pfi/
[+] [-] mrseb|14 years ago|reply
I agree, there is a lot more that tech blogs could do to help the reader. The problem is, that kind of extra detail isn't really possible without specializing -- and if you specialize, you limit the size of your audience.
The other problem is writing the stories: it would be awesome to have a writer for every kind of topic, so that every story can be tackled with complete background knowledge... but that's just not feasible. Instead, most tech blogs have writers with 'beats' that they cover -- but even then, if the 'green technologies' writer is out for the day, someone else has to tackle it.
So for the most part, we tech bloggers just try to get a good grasp of the technology, and then boil it down into a form that's easy to read and understand. The resultant story quality is variable and depends a lot on how much time and effort you put into it, and your background knowledge -- but I like to think I do a fairly good job :)
[+] [-] jasonlotito|14 years ago|reply
And it's not like reporters want to wait until something is being sold before writing a story, either.
I guess for me, as much as I want more information, I'm willing to accept what they are trying to do.
[+] [-] NY_USA_Hacker|14 years ago|reply
It's from a 'culture' that is ingrained and self-perpetuating: In college, they majored not in math, physical science, or engineering but in the 'humanities', especially English literature. There 'truth' is 'compelling' and from emotions or beauty, is in the eye of the beholder, personal, relative, etc.
In particular the most desired form of the emotions is 'drama' especially as in formula fiction with good and evil, etc.
The foundation is 'art' as in communication, intrepretation of human experience, emotions. Or 'it feels good'.
This 'culture' is solidly in control of 'old media'. There are two big reasons:
First, old media goes way back, is sitll close to the old morality plays, and goes way back before the revolution in information safety and efficacy starting with, say, J. Maxwell and with grand examples in math, physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, technology, medical science, and medicine of the 20th century. Old media is still locked up well before 1900, mostly 1800. The college humanities majors naturally gravitated to that culture and still do. There are more details in C. P. Snow's 'The Two Cultures'.
Second, "The medium is the message" has long held true. In particular, before the Internet, the 'medium' was print, radio, or TV, and there the number of 'channels' and the 'bandwidth' of each channel were so small that the audience had to be very broad and the room for details was very small. So, the 'message' was to low grade emotions and very short. And that's what the article of this thread is. Useful? Rational? No. Emotional? Trivial? Yes.
So, obviously 'new media' can exploit more 'channels', would you believe over 100 million blogs, and more bandwidth, how ahout over 5 Mbps download bandwidth? Then we can have 'streams of focused content for focused interests', over 100 million 'streams'.
Sure, anyone with anything like an education in math, science, or engineering good enough actually to make things work pays close attention to details, say, efficiency, cost, durability, power levels, etc. Else, computers would snap, crackle, and pop, airplanes would never get off the ground, bridges and buildings would fall, etc. But the English majors in the culture of old media don't care.
Old media is dying, and not just because Craig's List is taking their classified ads.
HN and your remarks are right on target for how old media is being killed and where new media will be better.
My view is that the biggest problem in civilization and our country now is the brain-dead, all-emotions all the time, dysfunctional, self-destructive nonsense of old media instead of the solid information we need to be responsible citizens and direct our government to a better future. E.g., only now, slowly, are we learning the real anatomy of The Great Recession. So, old media never got the word out. Cry about the pains after the disaster? Sure. Have the solid, crucial information to avoid the disaster before hand? NOT a chance. Old media is helpless, full of tears, devoid of rationality or responsibility.
With old media, it's surprising we haven't blown up the planet by now. Old media, I have a question: "Now, how does that make you feel?".
[+] [-] quasistar|14 years ago|reply
Aerogels could eliminate most of the waste heat from buildings. Piezoelectric nanogenerators could power mobile electronic devices. Graphene transistors could attain speeds of 1THz. And multiferroics like the beastly Ni45Co5Mn40Sn10 mentioned above could replace bulky laptop batteries.
But what is achieved with multi-million dollar government sponsored research grants in controlled labs is difficult to transfer to ones doorstep.
One barrier is economic: an aerogel house would cost $50M! A pricetag that may be acceptable to the Department of Defense, but won't do Peoria Joe much good.
[+] [-] SigmundA|14 years ago|reply
I mean the voyager spacecraft are powered by them: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_gen...
Along with many gas appliances with pilot lights.
[+] [-] sliverstorm|14 years ago|reply
Or rather, if they even bothered to comment on efficiency at all.
[+] [-] khafra|14 years ago|reply
I wish they would phrase these things as "turns heat differences into electricity;" because every time they say "waste heat," people get excited about harvesting heat from their CPU and having their computer power itself.
[+] [-] dspillett|14 years ago|reply
Though of course you would have to work out if the energy savings are enough to outweigh the extra energy used in manufacturing such a device (remembering to account for the fact that the extra complexity of each unit may reduce the effective yield of the manufacturing process). It might cost far more energy to make than it'll ever save in its active life. Thermodynamics can be a bugger like that...
[+] [-] trebor|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ars|14 years ago|reply
You can only convert energy (i.e. do work) when sending energy from high to low, for example hot to cold, light to dark, etc. (If you heated a solar panel to the point that it glowed with the same intensity as the incoming light it would not work. Ignoring the fact that it would melt :)
Electric power plants use bodies of water as the cold sink. If you ever see clouds of what looks like smoke, but is really steam while driving, what you are seeing is the cold water evaporating after being used as a cold sink.
BTW if you did want a solar-thermal power plant they exist, and don't need this material. It's a lot simpler than that - just concentrate the light to heat water and run a steam turbine.
BTW#2 "the magnetic component of light being much strong than thought" doesn't make sense. The magnetic component of light is VERY well understood. You are probably misremembering, or misunderstanding.
[+] [-] radu_floricica|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jcr|14 years ago|reply
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2687439
[+] [-] georgieporgie|14 years ago|reply
If I'm missing something, I'd like to know. It just looks like, "hey, magnetism!" and some hand-waving.
[+] [-] vineel|14 years ago|reply
Also, if they could capture the heat coming out of a nuclear reactor, they could both avoid meltdowns and not require proximity to a large body of water.
Edit: Disregard this. I don't know thermodynamics as well as I thought I did.
[+] [-] StavrosK|14 years ago|reply
More information:
http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/i6pfi/new_alloy_can...
[+] [-] rubypay|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] asciilifeform|14 years ago|reply
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnot_efficiency#Efficiency
[+] [-] ugh|14 years ago|reply
It would be better to just make stuff that doesn’t produce any waste heat, I guess you could say that this is sort of a step in that direction. It’s for making stuff more efficient, no more, no less.