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Google open sources solar atmospheric water generator

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Re: Google open sources solar atmospheric water generator

#201

Post by kisstheblade »

space_rock wrote: post #175
manigandham wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which debunking video was like that?

"Veritasium: BUSTED!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Hyy1zRZPiQ This is his area of expertise and is a great "busting" video Trash: "Elon Musk Invents UNDERGROUND Traffic Jam!" "Tesla Bot" No debunking. Small mindedness, pessimistic rant. Just says Elon will fail but not clear how he knows he will fail

He actually has outlined exactly what's wrong with these ideas. I mean the hyperloop was supposed to be "like an air hockey table", well guess what, musk now "advocates for wheels"... It's just a really bad and unworkable idea. The idea of 1000km long vacuum tubes is beyond stupid, when we already have high speed rail. Please tell me how stating these facts are "small minded" or "pessimistic".

His main point is usually about the massive unwarranted hype and blind hero worship around these concepts, and usually scams (the water stuff and other kickstarter projects).

The truth hurts, I guess.

Re: Google open sources solar atmospheric water generator

#202

Post by kisstheblade »

mardifoufs wrote: post #12
curiousfab wrote: post #2

The concept has been debunked over and over, e.g. by Thunderf00t. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVsqIjAeeXw

I think you need more than just a YouTube video to "debunk" the nature paper that they have published and that is linked in their github. They seem to acknowledge that while there are some limitations it still is a viable source of water for a lot of regions. What is surprising is that thunderfoot didn't lose his habit of repeating himself over and over again. I'm counting 10 videos "debunking" the same idea of a bot…

"Though to be fair, he's now more into into making misleading videos about SpaceX and obsessing over Elon Musk."

They seem to be well reasoned. What are these misleading statements?

Re: Google open sources solar atmospheric water generator

#203

Post by gsich »

eloeffler wrote: post #198

MIT made a similar device as well. I looked it up after hearing about people in Ukrainian cities being in need of water now. https://news.mit.edu/2020/solar-extracts-drinkable-water-101... There was a HN post 7 months ago, too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28265067 The commenters didn't seem to see much use in it ^^

It' still not useful. Most if not all devices are dehumidifiers.

Re: Google open sources solar atmospheric water generator

#204

Post by adrianwaj »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #157
adrianwaj wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there any sites that help build groups around current and upcoming open-source projects, and also encourage people to make stuff open-source - perhaps with pledges? ... a more business-focused GitHub. ... an OpenSea for inventors. Imagine if money spent on NFTs would go to cool projects instead of avatars!

> Are there any sites that help build groups around current and upcoming open-source projects, and also encourage people to make stuff open-source - perhaps with pledges? Open Collective is designed to do exactly that: https://opencollective.com/

Great.. in Discover, I think it would be good to be able to see "Collectives near me" to bring people physically together.

Re: Google open sources solar atmospheric water generator

#205

Post by torginus »

Ansil849 wrote: post #41

So what is the practical use of this? Let's say that I'm not an engineer or a researcher or a coder, but would like to set some of these units up to collect water. How do I do so? Do I approach someone to build this for me (who?)? How much can I expect it to cost? In other words, how can I actualize this vision: > So the H2E team asked: “What if you could put the power to generate daily drinking water into the hands…

None. Or alternatively, gathering Reddit/HN karma or channeling NGO funds into overpriced useless science projects instead of helping people.

Thunderf00t has made a ton of videos about devices like this, for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGTRX6pZSns

The TLDW version is these devices are fancy dehumidifiers. They need a ton of power, and lots of air humidity to be practical, which are exactly not the conditions these devices are advertised to operate in.

And even then, the water they produce is dirty, so it needs to be purified and treated to be actually drinkable.

Even if we solve all these challenges, it turns out that doing something dumb and low tech, like transporting drinking water on trucks is actually a lot more efficient.

This is another one in the long list of devices designed to help those hypothetical poor people, like OLPC and the Gravity Light.

It turns out these people have already solved these issues, and much better, usually with off-the-shelf alternatives and a bit of ingenuity.

Re: Google open sources solar atmospheric water generator

#206

Post by space_rock »

kisstheblade wrote: post #201
space_rock wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Veritasium: BUSTED!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Hyy1zRZPiQ This is his area of expertise and is a great "busting" video Trash: "Elon Musk Invents UNDERGROUND Traffic Jam!" "Tesla Bot" No debunking. Small mindedness, pessimistic rant. Just says Elon will fail but not clear how he knows he will fail

He actually has outlined exactly what's wrong with these ideas. I mean the hyperloop was supposed to be "like an air hockey table", well guess what, musk now "advocates for wheels"... It's just a really bad and unworkable idea. The idea of 1000km long vacuum tubes is beyond stupid, when we already have high speed rail. Please tell me how stating these facts are "small minded" or "pessimistic". His main point is usual…

I never mentioned hyperloop. Again this is the level of reply I would expect of Thunderf00t. You can do better

Re: Google open sources solar atmospheric water generator

#207

Post by aaaaaaaaaaab »

csours wrote: post #120
jodrellblank wrote: post #107

Check out Thunderf00t's videos cricising solar water collectors, e.g.: - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc7WqVMCABg - Zero Mass Water: BUSTED! "Honestly, it drives me crazy how many people have reinvented the dehumidifier, put a solar panel on it, and the media has danced around like theyve just saved the world!" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPvXnmBIO7o - Self-filling water bottle: BUSTED! " The fact that its t…

I will never check out a Thunderfoot video. He is a hateful pitiful man.

Ok? But he’s still right.

Re: Google open sources solar atmospheric water generator

#210

Post by antonvs »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #170
gundmc wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough, maybe I should have said "X has done this several[1][2] times with shut down projects and I think that's pretty cool because they had no obligation to do so." [1] - https://x.company/blog/posts/sharing-project-amber-with-the-... [2] - https://x.company/blog/posts/sharing-makani-with-the-world-t...

It's cool, but one gets kind of irritated when they talk this big talk about changing the world but do not seem to appreciate just how transformative open source can be as a tool for innovation. At least, I got frustrated.

> they talk this big talk about changing the world

The unspoken part of that is that the changes in question should be profitable for Alphabet. Anything else is just PR for recruiting and marketing.

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