An ancient engineering feat that harnessed the wind | Hacker News Reader

An ancient engineering feat that harnessed the wind

bbc.com

54 pointsMiriamWeiner53 comments

Persian wind catchers were discussed a few months ago here [0].

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17384177

A coincidence, yesterday I was watching Joanna Lumley's travel programme visiting Yazd and other places in Iran: https://www.itv.com/presscentre/ep3week39/joanna-lumleys-sil...

It's a striking place and I'd love for it to be safe to visit there.

We have been there with my girlfriend a year ago. Tehran is a fairly safe place, not that 'tourist oriented' and only seriously annoying thing was traffic as we were not expecting such time to go waste in hours of traffic jams. We intend to visit Isfahan next and hope it is better.

Food, people, museums, landmarks, stuff you find in markets and once more people are quite awesome. As soon as you look like a lost tourist, people attempt to help you 'genuinely'. They try to chat with you everywhere and show that their country is nice, unlike how they paint it in western media.

Regarding western media, I can't say I get that impression in my corner of western europe; the image I see is of a nice place with nice people, and a messed up government. Even the online newspaper comments are usually nice!

Iranian traffic! I've driven all over the world, but Iran was definitely one of the worst. Not like India where you have elephants / camels / bullock carts, but just sheer aggressive driving. Cars going the wrong way, crossing lanes purely because you need to cross not that there is space to cross etc

I've never been Iran. And I know how misleading national stereotypes are. But anecdotally, I'll be damned if every single Iranian I've gotten to know in the US isn't one of the kindest, warmest people I've met. (sample size=6)

Been there specifically few years ago, alone, after climbing Mont Damavand I had some extra days without prior planning, ended up visiting Isfahan and Yazd with some sunset on nearby sand dunes.

Extremely friendly people, all spoke at least basic english, even signs were dual (farsi/english). You can't get much more safe in middle east these days.

Yazd is most important place for zoroastrianism, probably first major monotheistic religion (they have fire burning there for few millenia, and some now-unused towers of silence for scavengers 'burial').

Overall, fascinating place to visit, untouched by mass tourism. Wandering randomly through central maze of mud brick streets, brings some good memories. Just brace yourself for some serious heat during summer, albeit air is very dry which helps (unlike south Iran which is supposedly brutal due to humidity).

The only annoying thing - you probably won't get US visa easily with same passport (with another one for same person there is no issue)

The only unsafe thing in Iran is the traffic. And too much food.

There's nothing to worry about.

And the fact that after visiting, any time you want to enter the US you’re going to get given a very hard time.

I considered visiting Iran years back as it seems like an interesting place, but the potential for issues at the border made it impractical to go through with.

You can also hold two UK passports concurrently. It's a little workaround that the UK government allows for. It's necessary, for instance, for all of our very experienced workers in the oil industry. When the the Immigration of a particular country are being arses just show them the clean passport.

Don't get your passport stamped.

Countries that have been in shit lists started to provide the option of using landing slips long time ago (Cuba, Iran). Now the custom is spreading to other countries.

People seem to think if there is no obvious evidence it’ll be fine, but the reality is the question will be “have you been to Iran?”. If you lie, you risk making the situation even worse. I’ve had visas in more countries than i care to remember, currently a permanent resident of Canada, born in Australia...being labeled by any immigration department as someone that provides intentionally misleading information could literally destroy my current lifestyle.

do it just before your old passport expiration, there is no issue once you get a new one (tested it this year, but you have to lie on application form about this, otherwise you get rejected)

> you have to lie on application form about this

As an FYI, from http://www.alllaw.com/articles/nolo/us-immigration/passport-...:

"For a basic, first offense of passport fraud, such as lying on a passport application, you can be fined $250,000 and sentenced to up to ten years in prison."

Yeah imo it’s not worth it. The fine is one thing, prison is another...but maybe even worse, being a person that suddenly cannot cross borders, that’s a whole different kind of prison.

I've not been there. There's a lot of media propaganda against Iran. But I trust much more what people that visit the country say about it. You can read this automatic translation of "Iran - the country with the best people?" https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=pt&tl=en&js=y&prev...

Why do you think it is unsafe to visit?

Why do people think it's unsafe to visit Iran?

The British Foreign Office, advise against all but non-essential travel there, and advise against travel all together to large parts of it.

The US State Department simply advises do not travel there at all. In fact their advice includes 'make a will' if you disregard their warning.

Is there even a US diplomatic or consular presence in Iran at all? If you get in trouble, you are on your own, or maybe the Swiss will help you.

No they don't?

https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/iran

The link you posted exactly supports what the GP comment said. What do you think it contradicts?

It does not advise against all but non-essential travel to almost all of Iran for people who arent dual citizens.

Oh so it's only unsafe for Iranian nationals to visit their own country? Ok that's much more indicative of a safe country.

Iran is safe, it's just you may be arrested as a spy (if you have dual nationality): https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/topics/czgdk5znl24t/nazanin-zagha...

Probably to do with mandatory military service. Not an issue for a non-citizen.

Ah, I must've misread it in the same way as the original comment. Sorry about that.

As a tourist from the Netherlands I've been to Iran in 2015, and have not had any unpleasant encounters, other than a taxi driver really wanting my business. He was brushed off by other taxi drivers.

Even the more religious individuals I've encountered, were always very open and pleasant to converse with. My opinion was that there is a big divide between the Iranian I've encountered on my tour, and the position of the Iranian government.

Actually, I've found the people much more pleasant than in any other country I've been a tourist in Which includes the UK and the US.

If you're from the US or the UK I believe you're going to have some trouble getting in, and diplomatic assistance will not be done by your own embassy, but by a friendly one. Once you're in, you shouldn't have to worry about anything other than enjoying the beautiful country.

All this is except the obligatory headscarf situation. Which is really bad. If you can personally get over that, it's a great place to visit.

It's particularly challenging for people Iran might deem to have Iranian nationality (dual nationals obviously, but also people who were formerly or are eligible for Iranian citizenship but don't currently claim it), but otherwise a lot of the restrictions are more "our government doesn't like their government and wants to reduce trade", not actual safety risk to individuals. Unlike NK, Iran has generally not detained purely US persons who were on group tours. If there were some flare-up in tensions, sure, you could become a diplomatic problem, but otherwise it's probably safer than many other countries as a visitor.

There is a british embassy in Iran. https://www.gov.uk/world/organisations/uk-for-iranians In fact the foreign office advises against all but non-essental travel for British-Iran dual nationals. For british citizens there is only a recommendation against travel to certain parts. For many other citizens it's, arguably, even safer.

Although Switzerland does have an ambassy there (In 1919, Switzerland opened a Consulate, its first diplomatic presence, in Iran.) the travel advice ((see 1))not translated to English, available in German, French and Itallian only) warns for violent clashes, risk of attacks, avoid mass events (including football matches) and demonstrations of any kind. Be generally vigilant and cautious. Follow the instructions of the local authorities.

Adapt clothing and behavior to local customs as well as religious and national sentiments. Women are subject to a strict code of conduct, failure to comply with which can lead to difficulties with the police, including arrest.

1: https://www.eda.admin.ch/countries/iran/en/home/travel-advic...

The level of threat is less than visiting in Egypt or some other common western tourist destination.

This and many other of OP's submissions are definitely interesting. But I notice all 179 of them - with possibly an exception or two - are BBC travel stories, that OP has never submitted a single comment, and that someone with the same name as OP is a deputy travel editor with the BBC.

This may all be quite in order, I just find it at a slightly odd angle to the general way of things on HN.

Good catch, but there doesn't appear to be any attempt at deception and it doesn't really break any rules as far as I can tell. I suppose it could be considered mildly spammy, but then again the articles submitted seem generally to be high quality so as far as I'm concerned it's fine.

Imho posting almost every day for 10 months is more than mildly spammy, I agree that the articles are generally high quality but that's true of many other publications. I have no idea if there's other people doing the same nor if it's ok for HN's admins, but as a reader and user of the site I'm not really ok with it, I think we should hold users to a higher standard.

If she wants to post every article from the BBC on HN she should at contribute in other ways, commenting or posting other high quality sites. And again, this is directed to any other users behaving in the same way.

It appears that only a handful of the submissions go anywhere, the rest sit at 1-3 points. If the voting is organic, and her submissions are by hand, it seems fine right? I just wish the website wasn't such a laggy ad-ridden dumpster, and I would visit it more. This is coming from someone with uBlock Origin installed, yet it still manages to lag my PC to hell. Great job BBC.

Try and disable JS specifically on BBC? The site renders fine without it and I have no issues even with a relatively old PC.

HN is a link aggregator, of course there's going to be agents or bots that automatically post links to HN and all the other link aggregators. I don't mind, given how the point of link aggregators is to get all the links and have the heroes that visit /newest find the best ones.

We need to make sure the signal-to-noise ratio of /newest doesn't dip too much though otherwise it'll be difficult to find the diamonds in the rough. It's already pretty fast moving as it is.

if the BBC are pushing content through your site, you must be doing something right!

i don't think BBC need to push anything, they are financed from gov budget, more likely their author of those stories or editor of that department wanting more page views

I never thought I’d ever love to see both a contradiction and a confirmation embodied in a single statement. Thank you!

BBC ≠ editor/writer, not sure what's contradicting about it

and how exactly would you know

People are responding that its 'okay'.

But the issue isnt that they posted the link, its that they likely are using bots to upvote as well.

I have a hard time understanding if people hate google or if Firefox is advertising here. Similar with Apple.

EDIT: Basically cant trust HN either. What is the solution to astroturfing?

> its that they likely are using bots to upvote as well.

Doesn't seem the case to me. The majority of BBC submissions, even by the OP, sit only at a few points.

Meta: I applaud such an article about our friends past (and our own²) in times when once again "the hate machine" tries to alienate us.

² Few people are aware of just how close the Iranians are to us historically, culturally, genetically, and linguistically.

If it wasn't for the Muslim conquest of 651, we would immediately recognize their words for family members:

Farsi | transcribed | english

مامان mâmân mother

مادر mâdar mother(formal)

بابا bâbâ father

پدر pedar father(formal)

دختر doxtar daughter

برادر barâdar brother

This of course is just the tip of the iceberg.

Who is “us” in your comment?

Us, the people

Iranians and English speaking people. I admit that the genetic link was not helpful here.

+ پردیس Pardis Paradise

10 degrees? Is that Fahrenheit or Kelvin?

The quoted link leads to the following study:

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0143624415603281...

"Temperature and velocity profiles indicate an induced, cooler air breeze in the courtyard; outside air is cooled from 46℃ to 34–38℃"

The article has no photograph of the "badgir" (wind catcher). I had to search and see a few photographs to appreciate the design.

The article has no less than seven pictures. Perhaps it didn’t load for you?

Yes. I could see the images on my mobile browser. The very aggressive corporate proxy was probably blocking the images on my work machine.

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