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Show HN: IoT device to warn you of a supernova hours before Earth is destroyed
- aae42 4y agosite doesn't contain any information about a return policy in the event you're unsatisfied with the performance
- sverhagen 4y agoThe only reason I came here was to make cheap puns like this, and you beat me to it.
- elif 4y agoDon't worry, they have stellar reviews.
- leeoniya 4y agoa lot of 0 star reviews tho :(
- imwillofficial 4y agoHahahaha I see what you did there
- PaulHoule 4y agoNo you need a star of 6-10 solar masses to make a supernova.
- sliken 4y agohttps://xkcd.com/937/ https://xkcd.com/937/
- PaulHoule 4y agoMakes me think of the intellectual elbow grease that it takes to interpret ratings of photography equipment. There is always the guy who tells us this inkjet printer is a piece of crap and he shows pictures he took of the prints he made that look just like the prints I make when I put the photo paper in upside down. Some fraction of the bad reviews come from people who are getting bad results who don't know what they're doing, but there are some lenses like Sigma lenses for Canon bodies circa 2010 that seem to be bad 10% of the time and you want to catch that. (Reminds me that Sigma makes some really good lenses for Sony bodies these days and I could use something to replace my long lens)
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- margalabargala 4y agoI wonder what the chances are that this will give a false positive, vs accurately warning you that the earth will soon be destroyed? https://xkcd.com/1132/ https://xkcd.com/1132/
- thedougd 4y agoZero. It doesn't actually have to do anything.
- stavros 4y ago1) Why can't they send a push notification to my phone? 2) How do they get Alexa to play a song? AFAIK Alexa can't do anything unless you trigger it by a voice command.
- pxx 4y agoI don't know how good the API is, but you can certainly "drop in" on your Alexa smart speaker (and turn it into an intercom) from the app. It's been useful to tell people to check their messages.
- nonameiguess 4y agoI don't agree with this using a dedicated single-purpose IoT device. Who wants ever more shit on their network? Just send an alert to existing emergency alert systems. My phone is already able to tell me when old people go missing or a child is kidnapped, so the infrastructure seems to be in place already to do this.
- dskrvk 4y agoBut that would create a mass panic, while this device lets the owner quietly proceed to their private shelter without alerting the neighbors.
- anonymousiam 4y agoThere would be no way to shelter from a nearby gamma ray burst. You would die and there would be nothing you or anybody else could do about it, except maybe commit suicide to avoid the coming trauma.
- throwawaymaths 4y agoWell you could get lucky and be on the other side of the world from the source. It's just then that you have to figure out how to shelter yourself from years of acid rain. In that sense an asteroid strike is worse, apparently it sends up shards of glass that hit at a density of more than one per square meter, all around the world.
- anonymousiam 4y agoSuch an intense burst would likely pass through the whole earth and exterminate all life everywhere on it.
- gleenn 4y agoThis is hilarious: "Integration with cloud services allows Exaluminal to control other home IoT devices. Yes, Exaluminal will tell your Alexa to play It's The End Of The World As We Know It."
- chrischen 4y agoLet’s honest they probably never even implemented the code for that feature. What are people gonna do? Sue them in the last hour?
- dskrvk 4y agoHow would one even test a feature like that?
- savrajsingh 4y agothe whole thing could be fake. If it actually works to spec, the world presumably ends in 1 hr, so there's no time to get your money back. :)
- robonerd 4y agoImagine a million people buy these and take them seriously. One day they all have a false positive, how many crimes are committed?
- jvanderbot 4y agoWhen an "Incoming nuclear ICBM attack" alarm went off in Hawaii, there was no public hysteria and no crimes were committed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Hawaii_false_missile_alert https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Hawaii_false_missile_aler... Edit: Remove "Nobody panicked" as that does seem very unlikely.
- sodality2 4y ago> nobody panicked That's definitely false, I know people who panicked. Not sure about the crimes though. But plenty of people genuinely believed they were spending their last moments alive.
- PaulHoule 4y agoThere's a genre of Youtube video where somebody goes to visit relatives and pops a USB stick into into the TV with a fake Emergency Broadcast System message.
- SamBam 4y agoCould you imagine thinking it's your last few minutes on Earth, and deciding to spend them committing a crime? I don't understand why people always imagine other people would do this.
- LinuxBender 4y agoHours? I need only a few minutes to find a paper bag to put over my head and lay down. On a more serious note, I would not mind having a device that could tell me hours in advance of a large gamma ray burst if that were even possible. If one can get into deep enough of a tunnel there is a small chance of survival. I am not sure what I would do afterwards short of becoming a gatherer. Hunting would be over. No idea if the plants would survive.
- hsuduebc2 4y agoIf u survive in deep enough cave. That mean you would survive on opposite side of earth right? So probably as one of the few alive your goal should be to live from remains of canned food and try to get on opposite side of earth which was not hit by the death ray.
- LinuxBender 4y agoThat is a good idea. A part of me would want to stay here and live off my freeze dried foods and see if I can get seeds to grow. It would be so quiet, at least maybe for a while. I better store away some fertilizer and bacteria someplace safe. Maybe barrels of fetid swamp water.
- gtirloni 4y agoVery quiet places are within reach of most HN crowd, if so they desire. Don't procrastinate waiting for a gamma ray burst :)
- LinuxBender 4y agoIt's mostly quiet here most of the time. I am in a very rural area but not far from a highway. I only hear the trucks with straight pipes + JakeBrakes in J2 or J3. Maybe those will be less of a thing soon.
- trhway 4y agoAlmost how remaining people are living in Mariupol right now. No food, no water, no medicine, broken sewer, destroyed buildings with bodies still under the rubble in the summer heat, cholera is starting... That is how end of the world looks up-close.
- wly_cdgr 4y agoLol why would I want to know. If there's a reason you'd want to know, take care of that reason now
- function_seven 4y ago...and go to prison? Nah, I'll wait until imminent apocalypse to take care of it.
- dandelany 4y agoOh great. A product that will let me spend my last moments on Earth debugging an IoT device because surely it’s a false posi——-AUGHHH
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- imwillofficial 4y agoSweet! Need one of these
- teeray 4y agoBuying a device like this is basically a hedge that the same information won’t make it out via the emergency alert system.
- bernardv 4y agoPerhaps should pivot to monitoring for radioactivity levels, in the more likely event Putin goes supernova on all of us.
- PaulHoule 4y agoThey have one of these in the Charles Stross novel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Sunrise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Sunrise
- imwillofficial 4y agoWait this is the guy who built that super dope cyber deck concept I wanted. Curse you and your lack of selling me things! ::shakes fist at impending supernova::
- PaulHoule 4y agoThe neutrino signal from this (mostly harmless) event https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SN_1987A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SN_1987A was clear as day. Astronomers run an email list you can subscribe to to know about the next core collapse in or near our galaxy. They are hoping to get a heads up so they can point their telescopes at it as soon as possible. https://www.nature.com/articles/s42254-020-0221-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s42254-020-0221-5
- treeman79 4y agoObligatory death by neutrinos. https://what-if.xkcd.com/73/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/73/
- _carbyau_ 4y agoAs usual from XKCD, an interesting an entertaining read. And now I am reading the what-if's from 1... thanks!
- causality0 4y agoI always thought the physics on that one was a little shaky. We know how EM radiation of various frequencies and intensities affects biology but neutrinos are not EM radiation. The paper Munroe cites mentions that it ignores the expected supernova neutrino spectrum and its consequences with regards to biological interaction specifically because the dose is so low at the distance with which the paper is concerned, 1 parsec. In a scenario where one's objective is to calculate the lethal distance, that spectrum is important and may wildly change the results. It's a fun read but it's bad science.
- ateng 4y agoWhile what you said is true, I don’t think anyone has done any research on neutrino’s spectrum impact on human tissue? Partly due to this being nearly impossible to experiment on.
- acallaha 4y agoHere's a question to give you a sense of scale: Which of the following would be brighter, in terms of the amount of energy delivered to your retina: 1. A supernova, seen from as far away as the Sun is from the Earth, or 2. The detonation of a hydrogen bomb pressed against your eyeball? Applying the physicist rule of thumb suggests that the supernova is brighter. And indeed, it is ... by nine orders of magnitude. ...Sounds like I should buy one of these IoT alarms so that I know to stay away from the window :-)
- throwaway787544 4y agoI really need the "Why did we make this" section. Somebody needs to explain to me how your dead corpse is going to care if you wasted the last hour of your life or not.
- FPGAhacker 4y agoHow is your dead corpse going to care about any of the hours of your life?
- throwaway787544 4y agoRight
- runlevel1 4y agoPretty sure it's art. Its creator: https://twitter.com/violenceworks https://twitter.com/violenceworks
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- dmwiens 4y agoA slightly more useful alert subscription for Space Weather (e.g. Carrington Event): https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/content/subscription-services https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/content/subscription-services Get to the grocery store a few minutes before the crush :)
- Kaibeezy 4y agoI need a “Why did we make this” section to explain why on earth it needs to be standalone wall-plugged hardware. Why not pocketable, wearable, or just an app/widget? Gen 2 maybe.
- tinsmith 4y agoPoC, baby.
- Kaibeezy 4y agoMVP?
- function_seven 4y agoAccording to a white paper by Gartner, the app market is saturated, and depending on FAANG platforms presents serious risk to your business. However, (also according to Gartner), developing your own platform will position your firm optimally to reap the benefits of a fast exploding IoT market. Today this device warns of impending supernovae. In the future they'll grow to include rogue black hole alerts, warnings of comets on 30,000 year cycles, maybe even an impending asteroid strike (for Pro subscribers only). Simpli-Safe better watch their 6.
- Kaibeezy 4y agoGartner. Now there's a name I've not heard in a long, long time. I’ll wait for the gray goo proximity sensor.
- Kaibeezy 4y agoSite is down for me. Big “uh oh!”
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y agoAsk HN: If you know all life on Earth was going to end in 1 hour via this device, what would you spend the last hour doing?
- scrollaway 4y agoDebugging the device to make sure it’s working correctly. Regret everything soon after.
- anonymousiam 4y agoI was going to post this same question. It also leads to introspective questions about whether or not you are doing what you want to do with your life, given that we are all mortal. Perhaps that was the reason for this project in the first place.
- bogwog 4y agoThrow a block party and get shit-faced is the only valid answer to this question.
- dylan604 4y agoAnd when all of your neighbors that don't have that device just think you're being a nutter so they call the police causing you to spend the rest of the rest of your time dealing with coppers
- wallfacer120 4y agoBut will it scale?
- leeoniya 4y agosolar powered, hopefully?
- elchief 4y ago"sorry guys, that was just a test" - can you imagine?
- nocoiner 4y ago“Yes.” -residents of Hawaii five or however many years ago the false missile alert was
- Teknoman117 4y agoWas it already that long ago? Oof.
- blooalien 4y agoShades of the original radio broadcast of "War of the Worlds"?
- colpabar 4y agoVery cool. Unfortunately this is something that can’t really be tested outside of production.
- giantg2 4y agoMaybe I'm dumb, but what's the benefit? Would the risk of false alerts be worse, assuming people would do things they would only find acceptable during the end of the world?
- yashap 4y agoThat’s the joke
- renewiltord 4y agoBoard your Space X intercontinental to go to the dark side.
- ASalazarMX 4y agoOh, if it happens to the other side of Earth, you can mock them on social networks before hey die... until it turns around.
- renewiltord 4y agoImagine not catching your Space X Earth-to-Geostationary Dark Side from the new place ;)
- gesman 4y agoWhat if my electric wall outlet fails? Am I going to miss the earth destroyed event? This is unacceptable and worrisome!
- ntoskrnl 4y agoFrom their website it seems like it relies on a remote server, which worries me a bit. Imagine missing the end of the world because of an AWS outage
- a9h74j 4y agoThey will monetize by offering a triple-redundant warning option. And free view-anytime replays.
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- sydthrowaway 4y agoI don't get it. Wouldn't it take years for a far supernova to be detected? How is it only hours?
- JohnBooty 4y agoThere's a "How It Works" page on their (very small, minimal) site: https://www.exaluminal.com/#work https://www.exaluminal.com/#work
- pvg 4y agoThere's a flash of neutrinos as the supernova core collapses and it precedes the light by a bit. One reason being the neutrinos don't really care there's a whole supernova in the way but EM radiation does. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernova_neutrinos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernova_neutrinos
- murphyslab 4y agoSupernovas emit lots of different kinds of particles and radiation. Neutrinos depart & arrive before any other radiation. The gap is on the order of hours. So neutrinos can function as an early warning system.
- sydthrowaway 4y agoDo Neutrinos travel faster than the speed of light?
- a9h74j 4y agoTwo scenarios: False event: 1. short the market 2. hack in a false signal 3. profit Real event: 1. always stay short 2. receive true signal 3. profit on paper 4. ?
- wanderingjew 4y agoThree scenarios: 1. I build these 2. Sell them 3. Trigger it randomly, for the lulz
- a9h74j 4y agoThe perfect gift for someone you don't love.
- lostlogin 4y agoThe end of the world is imminent and some people spend the final hours trading shares? This sounds about right.
- escape_goat 4y agoTo be fair, hedging against the event might lend one a sense of control over one's circumstances. It might not be an optimal use of the waiting time for most of us but for some people it might be the best alternative.
- zhte415 4y agoI imagine settlement would be difficult.
- fellellor 4y agoSure. Playing violins is great, but trading shares hours away from death is frowned upon?
- stazz1 4y agoPlease incorporate a snooze feature
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- notomorrow 4y agoA premium level trolling 10/10: https://twitter.com/kscottz/status/1537264655621427200 https://twitter.com/kscottz/status/1537264655621427200 :)
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- cozzyd 4y agoIn the distant future when high frequency traders build giant neutrino beams to beat the round-the-world time and they misaim their beam at your house... you'll have a bad day.
- jp0d 4y agoImagine missing a notification from this device! haha
- gimom 4y agoFor the love of God, if you are interested in SuperNova Alerts, subscribe to this mailing list: https://snews.bnl.gov/alert.html https://snews.bnl.gov/alert.html It's for free and faster.