Comment by infogulch | Hacker News Reader

Comment by infogulch | Hacker News Reader

Why is the news like this? There are only two types of articles: those spelling doom and despair on the world and those championing every millimeter of progress while blind to downsides. It's tiring how much work you have to put in to actually pick these apart to find the little nugget of truth in the middle. But apparently the truth doesn't generate clicks so it's lost to us under a cloud of extreme polarization. Maybe there's some law that the more you abstract the details and write for a layman audience the more polarized the result.

Anyways, I expect this one is the latter. It seems the general method is to elecrolyze seawater with a special membrane (lithium lanthanum titanium oxide (LLTO)) and special electrodes (ruthenium and platinum) that only allows lithium ions but not other metals through. "Five dollars of electricity is needed per kilogram", hey that's pretty good. Not so good: did you notice the phrases "seawater", "special membrane", and "special electrodes" in the same sentence? Yeah, that means $$$$$. The quote on that little detail? "His team also aims to enter a collaboration with the glass industry, to develop the LLTO membrane at greater scales with affordable cost." Mhm.

But hey, I'm just an idiot that took a chemistry class way back when and my first paragraph was cast at this article unfairly. Maybe we'll be lucky and get one of those awesome HN moments where an expert in the field chimes in, otherwise I hope to see you in 5 years with another headline claiming that this tech was finally commercialized. And good luck to the team! Just don't hold your breath.

> Why is the news like this?

Because the headline "Incremental Progress, but Situation Mostly Normal" doesn't generate as much advertising revenue. I find it irritating too though.

Yeah. News is not information, it’s entertainment.

Heh, yeah, you can see the difference watching and reading old news. On the one hand, they were factual, on the other hand, pretty boring.

The Moon landing would've been "It's official, we can now settle other planets" today :D

I miss this kind of reporting, not all news should be exciting or page turning. Fluff added can reduce the message greatly. Optics and all.

While they cover a very particular set of stories I’ve found that the headline news section (beginning of the program) of the daily Democracy Now news program is pretty factual in its delivery. And as they cover news stories in more depth it stays factual in nature. It’s just interviews with a guest where the guest may share more than just a strict set of facts.

Theory, we’re so used to little dopamine hits from social media and shock headlines it’s the only thing people will entertain?

Or Google, Facebook, Youtube, etc design their products/algorithms to maximize addiction, news organizations are forced to adapt their content to game those algorithms in order to survive, and this has been happening for so long that people don't notice how warped and stupid the whole thing is anymore.

A combination of both perhaps ? :)

It’s an accelerating race to the bottom.

Counterargument: shock headlines were the norm long before social media existed.

News articles used to be like this even before the advent of Social Networks.

Like advertising, journalism is also plagued by Dark Patterns. The feedback loops in which journalists operate seems to encourage these patterns.

Tabloids with absurd headlines to get your attention in the grocery aisle have existed since long before the personal computer.

> Why is the news like this?

Because this (and 99% of everything else pushed) is not news.

It's entertainment designed with only one purpose - to keep your engagement. Whether it's clicks or eyeballs on a TV channel, or buying a newspaper or magazine, it's a huge game to grab and hold your attention for as long as possible.

Other than a few quality outlets (NPR in the US, CBC in Canada, BBC in UK, etc.), the "news" stopped being that a very long time ago.

Look i get the membrane is expensive.. but why the "seawater" thing: is there some issue around access to the 70% of the world's surface which is ... "seawater" I don't understand?

And, what if the Feedstock was from brine Lakes for commercial salt extraction and was lithium rich? (I am unsure if lithium stays in solution when sodium chloride comes out)

Adding 'seawater' to almost any engineering problem massively increases costs due to corrosion.

There's a reason why chaos is often iconically represented by the sea.

In addition to the corrosion problem, extracting anything valuable from seawater means processing a huge volume of it. Expensive membrane * huge volume = huge expense.

They mention sending wastewater downstream for desalination, so if this plant is built alongside an existing desalination plant, then the desalination plant can take care of the offshore piping and pumping, removing a lot of the complexity for this lithium extraction plant.

$5 of electricity is a LOT of electricity to get only 1kg of Lithium. That's like 50kWh or almost 2x the amount used per day in the average home. Are we currently using more energy than this to extract 1kg of Lithium?

Assuming this is the main cost, at $5,000/ton it's not so far from existing extraction methods:

> Most of the world’s lithium comes from brine deposits in South America, although companies like Talison also operate hard rock mines in Australia. The cost of extracting a ton from a brine site costs around $2,000 says Paes-Braga while mined ton of lithium costs closer to $4,000. (These are operational costs that do not include capital.)

Of course for those the main expense isn't electricity but labor, etc.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelkanellos/2016/08/29/is-t...

> There are only two types of articles: those spelling doom and despair on the world and those championing every millimeter of progress while blind to downsides.

This is the consequence of optimizing for clicks

Journalists have been doing this kind of thing for ages, but yes, the Internet made it worse.

Yes, but now you have tons of systems to actively measure, optimize and A-B test everything under the sun for maximum effect.

It's just a different section of journalism. This is from the _Popular Mechanics_ sort of magazine, with an Editor-in-Chief who did her masters work in "digital communication and viral storytelling."

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