Deep sea squid communicate by glowing like e-readers | Hacker News Reader

Deep sea squid communicate by glowing like e-readers

npr.org

147 pointspseudolus41 comments

Children of Ruin, by Adrian Tchaikovsky, explores the concept of squid communication. I'm about half way through, and enjoying it!

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40376072-children-of-rui...

Arthur C Clarke's also got an interesting short story on giant squid, "The Shining Ones" in a story collection. One of my favorites.

Children of Ruin is the sequel of Children of Time, I strongly suggest you read the first book or you'll have quite an hard time to understand certain things.

I'm reading Children of Ruin right now and it's quite funny finding this article here right now. :)

I recall an Arthur C Clarke story (can't remember if it was a short or a novel) that touched on the same idea. In the story, the squid's imaging abilities were very advanced, almost TV like.

He liked squids.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_squid_in_popular_culture

>> 'Arthur C. Clarke used giant squid in many of his works. In The Deep Range, a squid of exaggerated size is captured and exhibited. In the short story "Big Game Hunt", a device capable of controlling the behavior of invertebrates is used in an attempt to capture and film a giant squid. In Childhood's End, one of the characters stows away on an alien spacecraft by hiding inside a model of a giant squid battling a whale.'

There's quite a bit of light/color-based communication from/between "octospiders" in his Rendezvous with Rama series. Also depicted in (mediocre) computer game form!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2B5Rsy12XBY

Kind of disappointing to see someone else's drawing of the octospiders. Not very much like what i had in mind at all.

I had no idea there was a game. I would love to see that redone now, starting from the first book.

A bit off-topic since I don't recall it discussing communication a lot, but Stephen Baxter's Time touches on genetically engineered squids for manning space exploration missions. As always, the short lifespan of these creatures is both a blessing and a curse...

Stephen Baxter explors similar in his Manifold trilogy.

> "Right now, what blows my mind is there's probably squid talking to each other in the deep ocean and they're probably sharing all sorts of cool information," said Ben Burford, a graduate student at Stanford University.

Squid: it's ... uh, Linux ISOs.

Maybe they are proxying web traffic...

An E-reader seems like a bad analogy given they're usually reflective rather transmissive displays. Wouldn't any backlit display technology (such as most computer monitors) make for a better example?

you're right, it's a clunky example.

I guess the author must have a Nook Glowlight, otherwise i'm lost on example.

…but does not manufacture public opinion?

E-readers are definitely more like dead tree pulp whereas an IPS panel screen on a device like iPad would be closer analogy. :-)

Is that true of modern e-readers? My original Kindle was a gray background on gray text dark mess, but Kindle White uses LEDs at the screen edge directed through a light guide to come from behind the text. Not that most people don't just use the Kindle app on an OLED or LCD screen smartphone nowadays anyway. Considering e-readers unlighted at this point would be like considering handheld games unlighted because the original Gameboy wasn't.

> through a light guide to come from behind the text.

What does that even mean? The nature and the underlying physics of the light hitting the cornea of your eye doesn't change or depend on how or where the rays of light originated. I know a lot of e-reader folks try and upsell 'behind the text' but that's not how it works.

Light always has to reflect or radiate off of a surface from the front.

It's a description of the mechanism that delivers light of unchanged nature and physics to your eyes.

>Light always has to reflect or radiate off of a surface from the front.

And in the case of the Kindle, the light reflects off of the pigment layer from above, rather than radiating directly from a light source behind the pigment layer. GP's comment just contains what amounts to a typo. The light guide is in front of the text, not behind it.

The light on the Kindle does not come from behind the text. The lightguide is in front of the text. It directs the light from the edge LEDs down, where it reflects off the text and back up through the lightguide out to your eyes.

Here is a detailed tear down of the Kindle optical system: https://arxiv.org/abs/1605.05174

I clicked on the article hoping for information on how e-ink displays are illuminated and was (not unsurprisingly) disappointed, but this paper absolutely saves it.

It's pretty cool to see how they did it and thinking about how it could maybe be DIYed. Do you happen to know whether anyone has attempted such a thing before? I'm not totally clear about the chance of success here, but the 2 main components, clear plastic and a roughed up surface, seem generally DIYable. I very uncertain about the quality, however (since I'm not sure what exact shape the rough spots need to have, I'm basically limited to whatever a laser can make). My greatest fear is that the light won't actually go down onto the screen, but directly into the user's eyes, I guess.

> My original Kindle was a gray background on gray text dark mess

That was the best tech in my opinion though, closer to how a book works. A backlight makes my eyes tired, and I definitely don't want to use a Kindle app on an LCD display, what would be the point?

Kindles don’t use a backlight. They are semi front illuminated, more like shining a light on your book. The light can also be turned off

Yes, a much better version of the “light” in those classic “indestructible” Casio watches.

I still find the unlit or separate-booklight-lit grey kindle to be a lot easier to read than a self-lit white kindle.

And while a current kindle's light can be turned off, you control the light through the touchscreen interface, so if you have the light off and it's dark, you have no hope of turning it on, so you have to just always leave it on. It's a really stupid system.

Indeed. I can imagine they use the same basic chemistry, but I struggle to imagine they're displaying English words. Perhaps somewhere in the depths one of a million has the collected works of Shakespeare on its back, prison-style.

The author is trying to evoke electroluminescent backlit displays. It's a very specific kind of display technology and it's become fairly uncommon, but for maybe four to ten years it was ubiquitous.

I'm trying to think of an example... the Timex Indiglo watch? A lot of displays with that weird, creepy green or blue glow. Oh, some Palm Pilots and other early handhelds.

I don't actually think e-readers with EL displays are common but some e-readers have a similar color and it's easy to see being confused.

It was a really big deal when they became mass market (90s, I think?) and were the peak of “cool” at the time. But they’re absolutely horrible for energy consumption.

Here’s an example: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/66Charge...

They compete mainly with the fixed-segment monochrome LCD display market. I’ve seen some in multicolor as well.

Casio comes to mind when coming up with EL devices for example. The classic G-shock I have on my wrist right now touts a "Electro Luminescent Backlight", though I rarely use the light.

There was a Japan-only Game Boy Light that was the form factor of the Game Boy Pocket but with an electroluminescent display. I have one, and to this day it's one of my favorite handhelds. It males grayscale games are absolutely gorgeous in the dark.

Surprisingly, it has a very decent battery life - 20 hours without the backlight, 12 with.

Not really, LED’s work by directly emitting light or not. LCD’s work by sitting between the light source and you and blocking that light.

Squid’s have significant internal reflection so this really is much closer to e-ink displays with a light on the edge.

E-readers glow like squids. Priority people, sheesh.

Life is nanotech.

- - - -

Total tangent: When that movie "Dazed and Confused" came out the character Slater looked exactly like me. I wore my hair long and had that same cap on backwards, like the exact same color and pattern. I didn't mind so much being exposed as a walking stereotype, but everybody started saying, "Hey! You look just like Slater!" and that was really annoying because, no, Slater looks like me, I was here first. LOL I got a haircut and a different hat. LOL

But yeah, squids are cool.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Dazed+and+Confused+Slater&atb=v110...

The year is 2030.

Amazon has announced it's new consumer biotech product: the Squindle eReader, the only e-reader that works underwater and requires no battery.

In fact, it only works when kept immersed in pressurized salt water and fed a steady diet of mollusks.

This is a phenomena and wonder if they are afraid of humans and the damage we are doing to the oceans with those underground cable lines..we love the internet. Those lines run under the ocean floor and studies are scarce on the impact cable lines are having on the ocean floor. Just commenting

Sounds like naturally occurring case of optogenetics - "Optogenetics is a technique to introduce light-sensitive ion channels to neurons, allowing them to be switched on or off, sometimes it is also reffed to optical monitoring of neuronal activity".

Makes sense that this would evolve naturally. At that depth only the groups that communicated this way could coordinate and survive

I wonder how evolution worked here. How did squid decide to evolve to glowing and then using it for communication.

I'm guessing the most glowing ones could find each other and mate.

Not mating is really bad for your evolutionary prospects.

Is that how E-Readers communicate?

The deep sea versions, yes.

The headline says "glowing like e-readers" not "communicate like e-readers".

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