The man who brought us the lithium-ion battery has an idea for a new one • Hacker News Board

Re: The man who brought us the lithium-ion battery has an idea for a new one

#71

Post by mkup » Fri, Feb 06, 2015, 3:55 PM UTC

alextgordon wrote: post #68

floatrock wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People today have no concept of how much computing power is wasted as excess heat because of modern software development practices. Or of how many new ideas are created because generous power/space ratios give us the luxury to develop quickly using abstractions higher than highly-optimized references and pointers. You can take a hit on optimal energy efficiency if it results in a larger ecosystem with more possibil…

But high level languages do not require VMs. Time for a rant. We were lead down a collective rabbit hole by rabid VM and JIT enthusiasts. Notice the absence of those extolling the benefits of JIT compilation today. People used to claim that at some point Java would consistently outperform C due to the greater number of optimisations available to a JIT compiler. They've all become silent because it's quite obviously a…

Also code produced by LLVM-based languages can be linked with low-level modules written in pure C/C++, or even assembly, if necessary. So one may quickly prototype and then slowly rewrite the software for performance, module by module. No such thing is possible for JIT-based languages or platforms.

Re: The man who brought us the lithium-ion battery has an idea for a new one

#72

Post by morlockhq » Fri, Feb 06, 2015, 3:58 PM UTC

ManuelKiessling wrote: post #58

cko wrote: post #47

Kind of off-topic, and I'm sure I'm not the only one thinking this, but is it common to have clarity of mind at age 92? Is it mostly genetic or is it more like "keep challenging your mind and get enough sleep"? Anyone have good links? At 29, I'm (probably prematurely) worried about cognitive decline. I only started challenging really myself last year.

I think one thing you can do is try to avoid a typical fallacy. My brother gave me a great example: - When people get older (say around 30-40), they realize that they can no longer memorize stuff quite as good as in their twenties - They start to write notes a lot more in order to make sure they don't forget stuff - Now they get even worse at memorizing stuff, because they challenge their memory a lot less

There is some brain plasticity research that seems to indicate that the more you challenge your brain with new activities and problem sets, the more resilient it is against decline in old age.

Do you do a lot with your mind during the day? Take up wood working, knitting, or sewing as a hobby. Work with your hands.

Do a lot with your hands during the day? Do something that engages your mind more. Take up art, writing, etc.

Take dance lessons. If you are not a dancer already, learning to dance and then doing it has a lot of health benefits, social benefits (see below) and makes your mind work in different ways.

I highly recommend trying square dancing (as corny as it may sound). Square dancing is very intricate and requires careful attention to called queues in order to maintain a steady stream of dance transitions. It is the fastest way to get into "flow" that I have ever experienced and have heard of number of other writers and technical types that rely on flow express the same sentiment.

Learn, teach, and play more board games. Modern board games have a vast array of different mechanics and strategies in them offering lots of different problem spaces for your brain to tackle. There is also a good social aspect to them that is inter-generational (we have board game nights with ten year old kids regularly playing with retirees) and some decline in cognitive ability is linked to the lack of social engagement people experience as they age.

Re: The man who brought us the lithium-ion battery has an idea for a new one

#73

Post by cartoonfoxes » Fri, Feb 06, 2015, 4:35 PM UTC

mschuster91 wrote: post #4

What I'm worried about is the waste of lithium and other battery/accumulator metals. In theory, people should turn electronic devices and batteries to recycling facilities, but a large part of the population ignores the rules and throws their gadgets into the trash when broken... I wonder if someday we will find a way to "separate" trash on atomar level (i.e. put arbitrary stuff in on one side, get raw atoms on the o…

Unless you live in San Francisco, municipal battery recycling programs consist of transporting batteries to the landfill for you.

Re: The man who brought us the lithium-ion battery has an idea for a new one

#74

Post by lkbm » Fri, Feb 06, 2015, 4:36 PM UTC

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #29

mikeyouse wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CPU speeds stopped increasing because the market stopped focusing on CPU speed (coincidentally to this discussion, the change was largely to reduce power demands). Transistor count has kept plugging right along; http://i.imgur.com/FvVrnn4.png

I think it is misleading to say it was due to reduce power demands. Rather it was due to needing to cool the damned things. If you were to have a 500W TDP chip, you would either need a crazy huge cooling system or a much bigger surface area. Consumers want light and thin, so Bob's your uncle.

Even if consumers were fine with big heavy things (and except for maybe phones, I don't think the CPU weight/size are an issue for consumers), light travels roughly 1ft/ns. You want fast, you have to be small.

Re: The man who brought us the lithium-ion battery has an idea for a new one

#75

Post by lkbm » Fri, Feb 06, 2015, 4:42 PM UTC

joosters wrote: post #24

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #16

> Without it, we would not have smartphones, tablets or laptops, including the device you are reading at this very moment. Yes we would. All these things existed without Li-ion. The power/space budget would be more constrained but it was perfectly achievable. What wouldn't work is senselessly burning cycles running managed code in a VM with heaps of battery sucking DRAM. People today have no concept of how much compu…

Rubbish! The CPU isn't the power hog that you think it is in smartphones, nor are the programming techniques. Things like the screen and the radio consume most of the power.

For most use-cases, yes, but there are some CPU-intensive (usually graphic-intensive, so maybe GPU-intensive) processes that will eat up your phone's battery life like crazy. I mostly find this in games--Ingress is the worst offender I've dealt with, but Kingdom Rush (which uses no GPS or radio) drained battery much more quickly than just having my screen on for, e.g., reading.

Re: The man who brought us the lithium-ion battery has an idea for a new one

#76

Post by phyllostachys » Fri, Feb 06, 2015, 4:49 PM UTC

mkup wrote: post #71

alextgordon wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But high level languages do not require VMs. Time for a rant. We were lead down a collective rabbit hole by rabid VM and JIT enthusiasts. Notice the absence of those extolling the benefits of JIT compilation today. People used to claim that at some point Java would consistently outperform C due to the greater number of optimisations available to a JIT compiler. They've all become silent because it's quite obviously a…

Also code produced by LLVM-based languages can be linked with low-level modules written in pure C/C++, or even assembly, if necessary. So one may quickly prototype and then slowly rewrite the software for performance, module by module. No such thing is possible for JIT-based languages or platforms.

As an embedded engineer, you and parent have put into words something that I've known but haven't been able to articulate.

I think I encountered the sentiment (on HN) before that because CPU and memory speeds have become so far out of whack and that increasing CPU speeds have power limits that engineers will start having to worry about optimization more and more. I suppose the difference is that before, we didn't have the boat-loads of memory that we have now (in a system).

In other words, yay for LLVM IR!

Re: The man who brought us the lithium-ion battery has an idea for a new one

#77

Post by kps » Fri, Feb 06, 2015, 5:11 PM UTC

bigiain wrote: post #41

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #16

> Without it, we would not have smartphones, tablets or laptops, including the device you are reading at this very moment. Yes we would. All these things existed without Li-ion. The power/space budget would be more constrained but it was perfectly achievable. What wouldn't work is senselessly burning cycles running managed code in a VM with heaps of battery sucking DRAM. People today have no concept of how much compu…

I still fondly remember how long my original Newton MP100 lasted on 4 AAA cells... An order of magnitude longer than my iPhone6 lasts on a charge.

And the original Macintosh Portable could get 12 hours on a charge… of its 2lb lead-acid battery.

Re: The man who brought us the lithium-ion battery has an idea for a new one

#78

Post by drzaiusapelord » Fri, Feb 06, 2015, 5:42 PM UTC

justizin wrote: post #34

> "Goodenough in his lab at the University of Austin." There is no University of Austin, it's the University of Texas at Austin, or "UT Austin" - same as there is no "University of Berkeley", but instead, "Cal". ;)

University of Austin sounds like a Portlandia-like parody of hippies and alt-culture types putting up classes in old abandoned buildings and alleyways and living in fear of being found out by UT security.

Re: The man who brought us the lithium-ion battery has an idea for a new one

#79

Post by sgt101 » Fri, Feb 06, 2015, 5:58 PM UTC

lumberjack wrote: post #40

jacquesm wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given what happened before you really can't fault him.

How much would he have gotten in royalties anyway? I don't think there are any billionaires who got there just through patent royalties, right?

It's rare for individuals, because a patent costs ~$25k to file and maintain, and the process takes ~5 years. Patents are narrow and taken out very early in the inventive process - so prone to being irrelevant or silly. The really valuable patents - fundamental ones - are particularly risky. This adds up to meaning that the mass insurance of corporate sponsorship is the only way for inventors to profit (marginally, and as a group).

Re: The man who brought us the lithium-ion battery has an idea for a new one

#80

Post by X-Istence » Fri, Feb 06, 2015, 6:02 PM UTC

giarc wrote: post #64

cauterized wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where I live, at least, I'd have to make a special trip between 9-5 on a weekday to a battery recycling facility. And when I'm free on a weekday I'm not spending that time schlepping batteries across town. If they included batteries in curbside recycling pickup, you'd get the same high rates you do with paper, plastic, glass, and metal.

There is a Penn and Teller skit where they go to people's home's and ask about curb side recycling. They ask the home owners if they'd be willing to have a x colour bin for y. They continue on and on and on until the home owners have 15 bins out front their house. Although most of the home owners agree to have that many bins, I think their point was to say, we can't have a rainbow of bins out front our homes.

My family in The Netherlands has 3 bins.

Paper, plastic and other waste, and greens (compost).

They also get charged per pickup, so it is in your best interest to separate as much out as possible/flatten it, and make as little waste as possible in the first place.