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Some commenters on reddit are not so hyped by this PR piece. https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/dssixi/inspired_by_diving_bell_spiders_and_rafts_of_fire

• ansible 7y ago
  Yup. Even disregarding the problems mentioned in the linked post, it isn't going to work well for real-world applications. Fresh or saltwater, any vessel is subject to corrosion and the accumulation of grime (or worse, like barnacles). In the demo video, note that the demonstrator is using gloves and isn't even touching the "coin" directly, but using tweezers.
• lonelappde 7y ago
  HN has loose posting standards, but /r/science is heavily moderated. They zealously delete comments witn an inch of speculation, but for some reason allow University press releases, whose only purpose is to take a science paper and dress it up in a pile of nonscience for marketing use. I don't understand why the mods there allow it.
  • cjcole 7y ago
    > I don't understand why the mods there allow it. Precisely because it can result in excellent comments like the current top comments on the article. Providing an opportunity for experts to exercise critical analysis is a good thing and an excellent teaching/learning opportunity.
• appleflaxen 7y ago
  Great contribution. Key criticism from my standpoint: ...The buoyancy provided by superhydrophobicity scales with surface area, while the mass of a ship scales with volume, so this can only ever work for roughly coin-sized objects. ... lame PR piece.