6 ms·

Technically powered by the effort of lifting it.

• mmanfrin 14y ago
  Technically powered by the food eaten to lift it. Technically powered by the sun. Technically shut up with useless pedanticism.
  • Jach 14y ago
    It's not very useless. The title suggests a perpetual motion machine, so I was wondering what that was doing on HN. Knowing you have to lift it first (from the article or from the comments) is important to know and lets one think this isn't necessarily made up.
    • bmelton 14y ago
      If you had an infinitely long rope and access to an infinitely deep chasm, then there's no reason it wouldn't be considered a perpetual motion machine.
      • kevinh 14y ago
        With an infinitely long rope and an infinitely deep chasm there would not be substantial gravity pulling it downward to have perpetual motion.
        • rtkwe 14y ago
          No gravity would simply approach infinity as you descended the well. And since we're being pedantic that's not an issue.
    • mmanfrin 14y ago
      You infer a perpetual motion machine, they say it is 'powered by gravity'.
      • mayanksinghal 14y ago
        Which is something I infered as well, and probably many others. The title is confusing and that is all the OP was pointing at, so you know, be nice - he wasn't trying to undermine the achievements, if any.
  • icambron 14y ago
    I don't think that's useless pedanticism at all. If you didn't know anything about physics, you're likely to hear "powered by gravity" and think "great, gravity is ubiquitous and free, so this is totally free energy", whereas actually these poor people will have to eat more in order to light their homes. So it's important to communicate what you actually have to do to power this light. On the other hand, your "if you're reductive at all, you have to be 100% reductive all the time or shut up" argument is completely unhelpful.