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> I would prefer if journalist learned to provide something more factual and informative in their stories

It is deeper than that (no pun intended); many journalists seem to be lacking the critical thinking skills required to judge whether a story passes a basic sniff test when it comes to science and technology.

The Proteus project is not the ISS of the Sea, it is a vanity project. Clickbait from cnet is par for the course but I guess I expect more from a publication with "Smithsonian" on the masthead.

The previous HN thread Proteus: Underwater research lab worthy of a Bond villain [1] points out that this is not just a questionable idea but a really bad one.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23985772

At some level I think we should stop calling it "journalism". The state of journalism in general is pretty sad, not just with regards to science and technology.

The amount of effort required to get down to actual information after reading most stories (about anything) is not trivial. In other words, they are now in the mode of writing click-bait pieces for traffic and letting interested readers to the work real journalists used to do in order to produce substantive material.

The simplest example of this are very short articles with an enticing subject line and lots of ads on the page. After reading such articles (and feeling cheated) you immediately go to Goggle and have to track down such things as the company URL, research papers, historical context, current state of the art, supporting documentation/legislation/whatever, and then apply some critical thinking. Yeah, what we have today, at many levels and kinds of organizations, is far from what I would call "journalism".

and what little journalism is presented is drowned in a sea of opinion pieces trying to tell me how angry or scared I should be.

Easy publishing has removed a few kinds of signaling that we used to have.

An article in the Wall Street Journal (chosen at random to have a proper noun) had a different gravitas than the hand-stapled 15 lb paper booklet the scruffy guy shoved at you in front of the market. Now the scruffy guy got shave and a haircut, has access to equipment that is almost but not quite as good, and the "WSJs" have reacted by engaging in a race to the bottom - more ads, less attention to detail. The signalling is gone.

A 12 year old has the same reach and visibility as a real journalist. Normally this would be a good thing. The problem is that the audience has no way to discriminate across almost any intellectual plane.

I have seen this happen in local Facebook groups. I remember an instance where a dreadful, spiteful, verbally violent exchange of hundreds of posts was triggered by this community member starting a thread. Neighbors saying the ugliest things imaginable to each other. It was truly sad to witness.

Nobody bothered to see who started the thread.

It was someone who had just finished high school. In other words, a 17 to 18 year old, maybe a bit older.

The subject isn't important, what is important is that someone with exactly zero life experience, zero responsibility for herself or others, decided she could actually post one of the most ridiculous thoughts on a subject she could not possibly comprehend for many years.

People got launched into the most vile verbal battle I've seen in a long time because nobody took a moment to consider the source. Had this comment been offered in person, in the context of a town hall meeting, she likely would have been told to please sit down, listen, learn and come back once she had a kid or two, a mortgage, a job and the realities that come with adult life.

The internet has allowed this kind of thing to happen. It isn't about age, it's about a range of variables that used to create categories of trust. You had to earn this ranking over time in order to have reach. Today no such thing exists. Google, YouTube, FB, Twitter, TikTok and others will gladly hand you an audience of billions of people, truth and other standards of quality, in this context, are meaningless.

I wonder if journalists are no longer getting the same on-the-job training they got with print magazines? Maybe the cycles are too quick, it's too easy to convince yourself that you can fix a mistake post-publication, and you don't interact with as many experienced coworkers throughout the process.

Are we the baddies?

I wonder if journalists are no longer getting the same on-the-job training they got with print magazines?

They don't, but the roots run deeper than that.

College journalism departments used to stand on their own, or be part of a Communications department. Now, a lot of them are part of marketing departments because that's where the donor money is.

For example, one of the "Big J" journalism schools used to be Medill at Northwestern University. A decade or so ago it changed to become the "Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications."

I used to mentor interns from that school. The first few years after the switch we started getting students who didn't know the first thing about journalism. They were being taught how to edit videos for YouTube, not how to find out how a congressman voted on a particular topic. We had students about to graduate who didn't know important recent historical figures. Couldn't tell you what party any president belonged to earlier the current one, and his predecessor.

It goes along with a long-running theme on HN: That universities are no longer about education. They're only in it for the big money now.

The internet destroyed the economics of journalism, without cash, where are the resources to hire?

> "Fabien is raising $135 million" (which, TBH, seems quite a conservative estimate for this project on the one hand, and on the other is a pretty huge investment for something that doesn't have any ROI projections attached)

Juicero raised $113M, anything is possible if you get the right people on-board (no pun intended). I agree it seems incredibly conservative for a large scale engineering project though.

But that was a company selling a spectacularly expensive beverage subscription service. There was at least a business plan behind that.

Is it supposed to be a business? As far as I know, the ISS has no truly quantifiable ROI or business plan, either.

The orbiting ISS or at least the US segment of it, was designated a US National Lab in 2005.

A few companies have research or commercial projects, including Made In Space's work on ZBLAN ultra-clear optical fiber https://madeinspace.us/capabilities-and-technology/fiber-opt...

And Budweiser (a American beer subsidiary) has sent four experiments to the ISS on barley germination and malting https://www.issnationallab.org/blog/budweisers-fourth-invest...

While it's not turning a profit (ISS running costs are ~$3B/year) it is researching American space technology and agriculture for us down here on Earth.

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/nlab/ind...

In a world where a kpop band can get 150 million views in 24 hours I'd say visionary projects like this are a welcome addition to the internet.

Some of these Kpop bands do the Lords work in keeping democracy alive, so there's that.

Their fandoms of organized young people do. The bands contribute shockingly little to that.

Would someone please explain what this is about? How are kpop bands (or their audience) "keeping democracy alive"?

Genuine question, there's obviously something I've missed.

A lot of KPop fans are very organized on social media (mostly Twitter/Tiktok/Instagram) and know all the best tricks for them, which they usually use to push their favorite bands. At the same time it also gives them a lot of power whenever social issues are discussed on those platforms.

Recently, they've been involved with BLM in various forms[0] and orchestrated the "million ticket" Trump rally prank[1], so very direct involvement in politics. Whether that is "keeping democracy alive" is probably up for personal interpretation, but in general there seems to be at least a high interest in political participation.

In contrast to their fanbases, KPop artists are pretty absent from those political debates (which isn't uncommon for mainstream media stars), and don't speak out about political issues in fear they might turn away a portion of their fans.

[0]: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-52996705

[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/21/style/tiktok-trump-rally-...

"Keeping Democracy alive"...by preventing voters from attending an event by certain politicians.

If trying to subvert the activities of a campaign to re-elect a politician who happens to be actively undermining the democratic process isn't making efforts towards "keeping democracy alive", I don't know what is.

I see. Thank you for the explanation!

Kpop fans are active on Twitter and have flooded right-wing and pro-police hashtags with content designed to drown-out "racist" messages.

The Verge covered it back in June: https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/3/21278950/k-pop-stans-socia...

If you consider Twitter to be a place to allow all voices (which it isn't) this act by kpop fans should be considered silencing voices

Well youre just some john doe. Even if I had the funding, I still would try to rope in either fabien or jean-michel just for the name recognition alone. Money would be more easily available with such people aboard the project, and (as long as we're smart and courageous) more money will just make things run smoother. So I would put Fabien out in the papers, smithsonian magazine, wherever our pr specialists think would have greatest fund raising impact.

Now "would I?" is a whole other question. Human missions are kind of old school now that we have fully autonomous devices such as the surf glider, underwater gliders, animal-tag based telemetry, multiple global satellite internet networks. If I was collaborating with Fabien, I would put that name to use raising money for something a little more modern, such as autonomous monitoring of military hydrophone arrays, measurement of radiation around nuclear sub pens, locating and monitoring the 60+ beluga whales just recently released from the russian whale jail.

"I don't know if a project like that can actually happen in the observable future."

Why not give him a try raising enough money to accomplish it?

In todays time anything can go viral quickly.

Maybe it will be only enough for a small, limited one?

Maybe only design work?

If you support maritime exploration, why not out of general principle also this? Maybe it goes off. In the context of saving the oceans and climate change, I think it is possible, but I also don't know more facts than the article that just described the dream.

But I am not aware of a project with better planning where this could draw ressources from. So, why criticize it to the ground from the start?

Because it is not your project? Well, this one at least has news article coverage and HN front page. I would call it a good start.

Heck, let him go to #kickstarter for it and sell everything from souvenirs to actual trips to the facility. his customers can include full on science groups to everyday citizens with obvious disclaimers you have to meet specific medical requirements.

The scale of fundraising on Kickstarter is not even close to the scale of funding a project like this requires. The largest Kickstarters in history (which this would not be) are in the realm of $20 million.

This project will need $135 million, and it's not clear even that will be enough, but my guess is no. For reference, estimates put the actual ISS cost around 150 000 million (150 billion)

Why does the cost of the ISS matter when "Jacques Couasteau's grandson" has already projected costs to be lower than the ISS?

Star Citizen raised 300$ million in crowdfunding.

Sure, you probably will not get to that level for a science project - but at least some extra money would be good.

Just because you only know his last name, but not Fabien’s actual research work, background and experience doesn’t preclude that he is highly qualified to run and make use of this project. Regardless of his last name.

to you he is just “this Fabien guy” because you are uninformed of his qualifications. But blame the journalist, or blame the article for not providing that context, or blame Fabien for his last name, or maybe do a little googling before discounting the person and blame yourself

If I am an expert in my field planning to volunteer or stake the next five years of my career on a slightly crazy idea, I could do worse than attach myself to a project headed by someone who already has their foot in the door with a lot of people who can get us financing or legislative help.

And don't most investors want some solidarity with their fellow investors? Brand recognition is a built-in safety feature that might help protect my money.

Lots of things succeed with very shallow major drivers, like a name.

“Cousteau’s grandson”, just that phrase, will grab attention around the world from people who never once saw the grandfather’s face.

I'm not sure I understand the point of this exercise. If it's being built in reasonably shallow water, why not just have the structure be mostly above-water, with sensors underwater and apparatus for divers and remotely-operated vehicles?

Decent choice of name, of course.