5 ms·

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 questi

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.

jasonlotito 15y ago
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.
- stdbrouw 15y ago
  If they know it's viable they know of its efficiency, potential drawbacks and advantages related to other technologies, so there's no reason why the reporter couldn't have asked for that information.
NY_USA_Hacker 15y ago
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?".
StavrosK 15y ago
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. [1] http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/i6pfi/ http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/i6pfi/
- makmanalp 15y ago
  Maybe part of the problem is that specific subreddits like that have specific rules that enforce this: "Editorialized or biased headlines will be politely requested to resubmit. Submitters of summarized primary research that do not contain citations in the article are highly encouraged to include links to the original, peer reviewed sources in the comments. This is to allow interested redditors with expertise to fact check the summary author. Please don't submit breaking stories that have already been submitted from different sources. Submissions that are not directly about scientific research (e.g., science education, science policy, educational videos, etc.) need to be non-editorialized and substantive."
  - StavrosK 15y ago
    I don't understand which problem you're referring to. The moderators of /r/science all come from scientific backgrounds as well, so it's a tightly run ship. This isn't as easy to do with other subreddits.
mrseb 15y ago
Hi, author here. 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 :)
- SigmundA 15y ago
  My god man, at least mention the existing technology called thermocouples at least once, since they have better efficiency than this thing.
- jerf 15y ago
  The objections DanielBMarkham are raising are literally high-school physics issues. I'm not expecting a QM explanation of what's going on, at this stage the researchers may not even be totally clear, but we know the efficiency is going to be bounded by thermodynamics, and in particular "generating electricity from waste heat!" rates dangerously high on the Science Bullshit-O-Meter. It can be done, but the bounds on efficiency are pretty dismal. I'm not asking for a physics PhD level of coverage, but if you're going to cover this sort of thing giving us at least a high-school level of coverage would be nice. Just segment it off so those who are somehow interested in this but lack even that low bar of knowledge don't get too confused. ... or... not. I honestly can't say with a straight face this would increase your reader count, or any other interesting metric like that.
  - NY_USA_Hacker 15y ago
    "High school" WOW! What distant planet did you just arrive from? You didn't get the memo: "All content is to be at the level of a not very good student in the fourth grade. There are two exceptions: Math is to be at the second grade level or below. Sex is to be at the tenth grade level or above." Now you have the memo and know not to expect anything as far out, absurdly advanced, totally unrealistic, super genius level as high school physics!!!!!!! Yes, you may want to rush back to your home planet. Have any extra space on your ship?

jasonlotito 15y ago

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.

stdbrouw 15y ago
If they know it's viable they know of its efficiency, potential drawbacks and advantages related to other technologies, so there's no reason why the reporter couldn't have asked for that information.

NY_USA_Hacker 15y ago

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?".

StavrosK 15y ago

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. [1] http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/i6pfi/ http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/i6pfi/

makmanalp 15y ago
Maybe part of the problem is that specific subreddits like that have specific rules that enforce this: "Editorialized or biased headlines will be politely requested to resubmit. Submitters of summarized primary research that do not contain citations in the article are highly encouraged to include links to the original, peer reviewed sources in the comments. This is to allow interested redditors with expertise to fact check the summary author. Please don't submit breaking stories that have already been submitted from different sources. Submissions that are not directly about scientific research (e.g., science education, science policy, educational videos, etc.) need to be non-editorialized and substantive."
- StavrosK 15y ago
  I don't understand which problem you're referring to. The moderators of /r/science all come from scientific backgrounds as well, so it's a tightly run ship. This isn't as easy to do with other subreddits.

mrseb 15y ago

Hi, author here. 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 :)

SigmundA 15y ago
My god man, at least mention the existing technology called thermocouples at least once, since they have better efficiency than this thing.
jerf 15y ago
The objections DanielBMarkham are raising are literally high-school physics issues. I'm not expecting a QM explanation of what's going on, at this stage the researchers may not even be totally clear, but we know the efficiency is going to be bounded by thermodynamics, and in particular "generating electricity from waste heat!" rates dangerously high on the Science Bullshit-O-Meter. It can be done, but the bounds on efficiency are pretty dismal. I'm not asking for a physics PhD level of coverage, but if you're going to cover this sort of thing giving us at least a high-school level of coverage would be nice. Just segment it off so those who are somehow interested in this but lack even that low bar of knowledge don't get too confused. ... or... not. I honestly can't say with a straight face this would increase your reader count, or any other interesting metric like that.
- NY_USA_Hacker 15y ago
  "High school" WOW! What distant planet did you just arrive from? You didn't get the memo: "All content is to be at the level of a not very good student in the fourth grade. There are two exceptions: Math is to be at the second grade level or below. Sex is to be at the tenth grade level or above." Now you have the memo and know not to expect anything as far out, absurdly advanced, totally unrealistic, super genius level as high school physics!!!!!!! Yes, you may want to rush back to your home planet. Have any extra space on your ship?