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syllable_studioon Ask HN: Who Is Seeking a Cofounder?

Terrament is seeking a Civil Engineer co-founder!

Did you know that we can't solve climate change until we solve a trillion-dollar energy storage crisis?

Help Terrament solve this crisis. We are building a large-scale, cheaper-than-lithium-ion energy storage solution with underground pumped hydro.

https://www.terramenthq.com.

syllable_studioon US Army and UFO research group team up to study exotic UFO material. Seriously.

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/30498/the-army-wants-t...

syllable_studioon Echolocation in blind people reveals the brain’s adaptive powers

A few years ago, I was very inspired by Daniel Kish and others who use echolocation. So I started a side project called Project Sonorous. Sonorous was a prototype to explore combining AR with echolocation and 3D audio. This allows you to translate visual spatial information into echolocation-like audio cues through headphones.

I would still love to work on this idea in the future. But it would require a lot of funding and advanced technology (similar to that used by self-driving cars.)

https://blog.syllablehq.com/project-sonorous-a-proposed-navi...

syllable_studioon Solar and Wind need exponential energy storage growth. Why UPHS is our best hope [pdf]

One more thing.. For quick vetting that this idea is legit:

Here is the original research paper where I source more of my info:

Underground pumped hydroelectric storage Allen, R.D., Doherty, T.J., and Kannberg, L.D., for the Pacific Northwest Laboratory, sponsored by the United States DOE https://www.osti.gov/biblio/6517343

syllable_studioon Solar and Wind need exponential energy storage growth. Why UPHS is our best hope [pdf]

Author here,

Yesterday I posted my full research report on this topic. I wanted to also post this short summary presentation which explains this technology.

Here is my post for the full version if anyone would be so kind as to help spread the word. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20690640

Peace, love, and climate stability, Eric

syllable_studioon Underground Pumped Hydroelectric Storage: A Feasibility Study

Hi @sfink,

Thanks for asking. It's likely that the optimal design for a head height of a mile would use two stages. You would have an intermediate reservoir half a mile down. Reversible, Francis-type pump-turbines would likely be used. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_turbine

From my paper: " 8.1 PEPC Study: Two-Step Design with Reversible Pump-turbines The PEPC study’s optimized design called for single-stage reversible pump- turbines with identical layout and design. Each step consisted of three pump- turbine/motor-generator sets, each of 333-MW rating and each operating at 720 rpm under a nominal head of 762 m (2500 ft). With two steps combined, the overall nominal head was 1525 m (5000 ft). The study acknowledges that future technological development could significantly raise the head height or achieve the same head height in only one step. "

Or here is the original source for that info. Underground pumped hydroelectric storage Allen, R.D., Doherty, T.J., and Kannberg, L.D., for the Pacific Northwest Laboratory, sponsored by the United States DOE https://www.osti.gov/biblio/6517343

syllable_studioon Underground Pumped Hydroelectric Storage: A Feasibility Study

Author here,

Here is a TLDR Summary of the Report. https://github.com/syllable-hq/uphs-feasibility-study/blob/m...

Thanks for any feedback, corrections, or suggestions.

Cheers, Eric

syllable_studioon Browsers are pretty good at loading pages

Page load speed is not the only reason why client-side rendering is important. When traditional server-side rendered pages need to update state on the page they have two choices: Use DOM manipulation or reload the entire page from the back-end just to update one small piece of the page. The more state that needs updating, the more complex it becomes to manage rendering on both the server and the client. Code redundancies creep in as html templates are duplicated on both sides.

In my experience, as soon as a website has any app-like qualities at all, a tool like react just makes sense. It's a great tool that solves a very real problem. I always use universal rendering so that you get the best of both worlds and the page still renders fine for the no-js folks out there (respect).

syllable_studioon How iOS 13 redraws your eyes so you're looking at the camera

Insert image of Clockwork Orange film scene where a machine holds your eyes open and forces you to look.

syllable_studioon A critical step to reduce climate change

I'm excited to see a "Subsurface pumped hydro" solution on his list. This is an idea I thought of recently and have since found other projects working on it.

https://blog.syllablehq.com/can-we-create-the-worlds-largest...

syllable_studioon The universe is expanding faster and is younger than we thought

What if the universe isn't expanding, but rather we're contracting?

syllable_studioon See with Ears: Auditory Display for Synthetic Vision (2018)

Cool, that's an interesting scheme for translating vision to audio.

I have experimented a little with using 3D binaural audio for navigating environments and translating objects' location in 3D space into audio. Here's my blog post about my experiment https://blog.syllablehq.com/project-sonorous-a-proposed-navi...

The blog post links to an app you can demo where you can practice navigating a maze with your eyes closed using only binaural audio to guide you. Anyone can do it with very little practice!

I would love to spend more time on this in the future and I'd love to consider adopting this vOICe scheme.

syllable_studioon Show HN: This Question Does Not Exist

Very fun. But how am I supposed to help Charset solve their urgent problem? I'll just answer here.

Q: How to use a JSON string in a funky way https://stackroboflow.com/#!/question/49913

A: Dear Charset, I hope this might resolve your issue.

window.location = JSON.parse('[{"use": "https://www.youtube.com/embed/0ROzGihgCj8?rel=0&autoplay...

syllable_studioon Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s

Wow and this content is just posted on imgur with no link to sources? Is anyone already working on posting this through a legit source? If this content is real, it seems wild that it's not even published somewhere that is searchable online.

syllable_studioon Cheap renewables won’t stop global warming (2018)

There are many pieces to this puzzle. Energy Storage is a hugely important piece to solve.

https://blog.syllablehq.com/can-we-create-the-worlds-largest...

^ This is a proposal that we consider the ocean as a source for relatively affordable pumped storage.

syllable_studioon Ask HN: Is There Any Interest in an Open Source Solution for Climate Change

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19247308

^ I'd like to contribute this idea: "Creating the world's largest battery deep below the sea."

I'm working on other ideas as well and would love to contribute in a more formal decentralized way.

I'll follow this thread and reach out to folks as well! eric at syllablehq.com

syllable_studioon You probably don't need a single-page app

I have experience building both SPA apps and server-side templated apps. They each have their strengths and weaknesses.

Just as a SPA won't solve all your problems without any trade-offs, getting rid of a SPA framework also won't solve all your problems -- you'll probably need to re-invent some wheels and then discover that your new solutions are hard too.

I think it's good to have a healthy dose of skepticism about new technologies. But it's also important to understand their value and not to hate them just because they're hard. I like that the author tries to find this ballance. Though, honestly, from my own experience, I would rename this title to "You might not need a single-page app."

More than once, I've tried to build something without a SPA framework only to realize that if there is any interactivity at all, it's often just simpler to use a SPA framework in the first place.

syllable_studioon Blueprint of a distributed social network on IPFS, and its problems

I just started dabbling with IPFS. It has inspired me to revisit a project prototype that I abandoned for a year.

A year ago, I started making this prototype: https://www.dearnation.org/ "Dear Nation is a living archive of the letters we write to our nation's leaders." I've been torn about pursuing this concept. I think I'm particularly scared of how messy it is to moderate and foster democracy online. I'm hoping that by working with tools like IPFS it will inspire me to give more free time to ideas like this.