Comment by corodra | Hacker News Reader

Comment by corodra | Hacker News Reader

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There's plenty of people here who have done some fantastic math that throws red flags at this "I'm going to save the world" project. And each of you are beautiful people.

What gets to me, these overly complicated dehumidifiers keep popping up every 6 months and make a big buzz. And each time, "Look at this brand new thing that no one has ever thought to do!" That's the part driving me crazy. It's the same investment sham, over and over. Slightly different method, but the same idea "We tested a dehumidifier in a place with high humidity. We collected water. Throw money at us." I give it props for at least being done in Arizona. But Arizona has higher humidity than a lot of the other water problem areas in the world.

But I'm the asshole because I don't say "I'm curious how they're going to overcome the humidity problem."

No, they're not going to solve it. They're going to disappear. Why? Because they took the money and ran. Like the hundreds of other assholes who keep coming up with these middle school "I know how to save the world" ideas.

There's a sucker born every minute, and we've done almost nothing to change that. The economy in its current form would probably crash if all the suckers disappeared.

>I give it props for at least being done in Arizona. But Arizona has higher humidity than a lot of the other water problem areas in the world.

It does? Have you ever lived there? I'm not sure about actual humidity number comparisons between there and other deserts, but during the summer it's so dry that whenever I spilled water on the floor, I didn't even bother cleaning it up, because it would evaporate in seconds while I was watching it. Seriously, if you're trying to test a device like this within the US, I don't know any lower-humidity place to go than the Sonoran Desert of Arizona.

First, it doesn't state Sonoran Desert. Just "In the desert of Arizona". That entire region of America is a desert if you grew up in places like Florida or the western part of the Pacific Northwest. Because this article already treats the idea of "pulling water out of air" as some brand new concept that's never been done before, I already assume they're not using the scientific definition of desert.

However, check out NOAA. Here's a chart of average relative humidity of cities throughout the US (https://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ccd-data/relhum18.dat). From 1950 to 2018.But you'll notice in the Arizona cities, plenty times of the year, the average humidity is between 40%-60%.

Still, this is better than the Water Abundance X-Prize winner from Oct 2018. The article was on HN: https://www.fastcompany.com/90253718/a-device-that-can-pull-... These bastards "tested" it in Hawaii of all places.

So yes, I'll say I give them props for doing this in Arizona. But I'm not going to do backflips. There's still plenty of humidity in Arizona. Especially if you time your testing in the right time of year. But I mean, when huge investment money is on the line, no one would ever dare cheat or try to tip things in their favor unethically. Oh no. Never. That's just silly talk. No one has ever lied in experiments to make wheel barrows of money...cough Theranos cough.

Plus water evaporating from the ground isn't just based on lack of air humidity. It's also on heat of the ground. Just straight up steaming away. Same happens here in Florida, but you can't really confuse Florida with dry air.

> Here's a chart of average relative humidity of cities throughout the US (https://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ccd-data/relhum18.dat). From 1950 to 2018.But you'll notice in the Arizona cities, plenty times of the year, the average humidity is between 40%-60%.

I think you're reading that wrong. Doesn't M stand for "Max" and A for "Average"?

If so, the average in southern Arizona cities is 15%-30% and in northern Arizona cities 30%-50% (which matches my experience).

>Plus water evaporating from the ground isn't just based on lack of air humidity. It's also on heat of the ground. Just straight up steaming away.

No, this was inside where it wasn't that hot, though we weren't running A/C.

Also, the humidity in the cities is usually higher than in the open desert because of all the (yard) irrigation, water features, canals, etc.

Tucson actually has a small monsoon season, which I am desperately waiting for to cool us off. It's an interesting weather pattern.

https://azclimate.asu.edu/monsoon/

Tucson gets a lot more rain than say, Death Valley.

I feel the same way about blockchain healthcare startups. If you put PHI on a blockchain it will get distributed, and one day cracked and shared. Modern cryptography is not a silver bullet that will last forever as-is.

By then the founders (who we see these days on Techcrunch taking money for these sham projects) will be long gone.

Whe modern cryptography is cracked 50+ years from now I'm not really going to care about people having my medical info. I'll be dead anyway

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