
The Google project to put an aquarium full of water bears inside a phone - seycombi
http://venturebeat.com/2017/02/24/complicated-weird-beautiful-the-secret-google-project-to-put-an-aquarium-full-of-tiny-wiggly-water-bears-inside-your-phone/
======
patsplat
The main thrust of the comments so far are negative, but in my opinion this
was a great idea.

Phones are personal devices. Plenty of time is spent on smoothly machined
surfaces, wood cases, etc. A little biosphere is a beautiful idea, and likely
cost a fraction of the overall project.

------
rdtsc
This is like the rumor of 1970's platform shoes filled with water and fish
floating inside.

But to be serious here are some of the other modules they planned on:

[http://www.modularphonesforum.com/news/yezz-
another-28-modul...](http://www.modularphonesforum.com/news/yezz-
another-28-module-concepts-project-ara-1887/)

And yeah some look pretty cool, a scale, iris detector, a better microphone
and speaker, laser range finder, smoke detector (but could imagine perhaps
other hazardous materials). Might think of other specialty application, but
the problem is in any of those fields, there are probably higher quality tools
already available not tied to an experimental expensive phone. They'd have to
first make the phone as ubiquitous as an iPhone then start selling add-ons.
Not make add-ons as as a major feature of the phone.

But tardigrades just seems like a way to get someone in management to notice
and say "Wait wut, we are spending the money on this? Somebody, please defund
this project".

------
Animats
I saw that in a list of Ara modules. They had real trouble coming up with
useful modules to justify the thing.

~~~
joshmarinacci
I can think of plenty of use for modules. The problem is that none of them are
general purpose. There are tons of niche applications though. They should have
made an industrial phone for $1000. Lots of people would have bought them for
interesting use cases that Google never would have thought of.

The challenge is that a hackable industrial strength phone is not a ten
billion dollar business, which is what Google wants.

~~~
rickycook
there are so many things that google markets poorly, or to the wrong audience.

glass would have been amazing for industrial or many professional jobs, wave
was a collaboration tool released to individuals, and now this where people
want "an input device" for a niche application and would currently pay tens of
thousands of dollars for such a thing.

it's really quite upsetting that all these fantastic technologies are wasted
because of this push for "social" and mass market.

~~~
MegaButts
Looking from the outside in, it seems the problem is with management. I have
never worked at Google, but I know many people who have. None of them have
said positive things about their managers. Obviously this is anecdotal, but I
see little reason to believe otherwise.

~~~
harrisonweber
One big thing here is that Ara was part of ATAP which was acquired from
Motorola (back when Google owned Motorola). So the culture of this project is
an unusual one, even for Google. The heavy dependence on outside contractors
probably made for a complicated setup, but I don't think that was the problem.
From the outside, it feels like ATAP/Project Ara just ran the clock out. If
they'd have gotten the phone done and ready to ship faster, maybe things would
be different today.

------
PepeGomez
The line between microdosing and tripping balls is thinner than many people
realize.

~~~
reaktivo
I suppose you meant to comment on
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13731931](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13731931)

~~~
PepeGomez
No.

------
gravypod
These sealed aquatic systems are really cool. How do you go about finding out
how much of everything you need to put in them for long term survival?

Can the biological processes of these simple organisms be modeled as checmical
equations and all you need to do is balance them out and solve for the mols of
everything you need to pour in?

~~~
ralfd
> These sealed aquatic systems are really cool.

I find them more cruel, as you knowingly doom your pet world to die a few
years later.

~~~
DanBC
It could be worse: [https://www.thedodo.com/live-animal-keychains-
china-12256846...](https://www.thedodo.com/live-animal-keychains-
china-1225684627.html)

[https://www.thedodo.com/watch-holds-captive-
ants-1057364913....](https://www.thedodo.com/watch-holds-captive-
ants-1057364913.html)

~~~
AlexandrB
The keychain thing reminds me of this: [https://medium.com/the-
mission/a-visit-to-the-dead-tiger-war...](https://medium.com/the-
mission/a-visit-to-the-dead-tiger-warehouse-b375ee66bcd5#.wbiovzgq1)

“…humans are monsters.”

“Yeah…” she replies. “We really are.”

------
WheelsAtLarge
We might have hit peak phone. As much as I try I don't get the reasoning on
this one. How is it that these top techs could not find a better idea?

Forget the aquarium, how about a really strong microscope. Or a portable
testing lab or a television or some kind of art project.

~~~
detaro
I'd say that aquarium counts as some kind of art project (art product?). Which
seems like the thing you'd hire such an agency for, after you've run out of
more sensible ideas.

------
kartickv
Sad to see Ara die. I don't understand why they took three years to realise
the path they were pursuing didn't work. Why couldn't they figure out earlier
so they still had time to do something that works?

Google should have pursued a less ambitious and more practical version of the
idea. Instead of making everything replaceable, maybe just identify one
component that would be. Like the camera. Why do I have to buy a new phone if
all I want is a new camera? Would a phone with only one or two replaceable
components be feasible to build, and not impose too many tradeoffs?

The Ara team pursued the "everything should be replaceable" dream for too
long, and failed. I wonder if a limited version would have been feasible.

It doesn't make sense that you should buy a new smartphone, priced at as much
as ₹80K ($1000) even if all you want is one new component. Imagine if you had
to buy a new laptop for more storage for your movies, and external hard discs
didn't exist. Or a bigger screen, when you could use an external monitor. And
so on.

~~~
rincebrain
The problem with that is that it's not just one or two components that are new
iterations when you upgrade your phone - CPU, GPU, display (or, more likely,
generation of protective tech on display, at this point), camera, maybe
speakers, the antenna(e) could be workable barring something like a 4G->5G
iteration if they covered enough to start with...and that's all ignoring the
custom-shaped battery, which would get smaller to fit the modular slot.

Plus the one upgradable component that stops having feature-parity often long
before the rest - software stack. The number of problems with getting random
bugs out would get worse by the number of modular parts, and few Android
vendors that I've seen keep phones updated for even 3 years, let alone 6.

It's been the case for a long time that you lose customization when you shrink
the form factor, as you start squeezing every component down to its minimal
essentials, and because it lets you start making tradeoffs you can only make
if you know intimate details of the entire platform.

I would, quite fervently, like for a modular smartphone to work, and to not
have to do the equivalent of paying hundreds of dollars every few years when
my phone gives up the ghost or is EOL (or both). I just don't see the
technology advancing that way until we get way better at miniaturization, such
that fitting functionality into the phone form factor is no longer a strong
pressure constraint.

~~~
kartickv
Any component could theoretically cause someone to want to upgrade their
phone, but in practice, some would be more frequent driving factors than
others. Have you done market research to identify these?

If you were to make only those replaceable, you'd derive much of the benefit,
but only incur some of the cost. A phone with only some modular parts would
hopefully be not as thick as one with all parts modular. You'd have fewer
random bugs, since there are fewer combinations.

Regarding software updates, that would be taken care of by a phone made by
Google, like Nexus.

Concretely, how much thicker would the Pixel be if the camera were
replaceable? 1mm? I'd take that tradeoff, particularly since the additional mm
of thickness would result in better battery life.

~~~
rincebrain
I do work for Google, but not on anything phone-related, and have no more
information about what goes into phone design decisions than most others
randomly sampled on HN.

Consequently, no, I have no market data on what drives phone replacement,
though my own limited circle of personal experience suggests either
catastrophic failure or a threshold of the device performing unusably poorly
as the most common reasons, more than wanting a shiny upgrade.

The phone would probably be more than 1mm thicker in order to accommodate a
sturdy mount for the modular thing to slot into alone, let alone whatever
additional wiring overhead might be involved for having enough bandwidth to
speak arbitrary optical device protocols encapsulated in some standard - and
then you might have a failure as version 1.x can only speak up to 2K
resolution, 2.x 4K, and so on, so you might end up needing a phone upgrade
_anyway_ to get that 4k camera.

Yes, paying upfront for a device like the Pixel buys you X years of device
updates, but there are plenty of people who can't afford to buy a phone for
the upfront price all at once, even if it might offer cost savings on modular
upgrades later.

I might also take that tradeoff, but then, I prioritize durability in my
phones over tiny size, since I have relatively large hands and a habit of
breaking my phones.

------
labster
Those poor tardigrades would be killed by all of the dangerous radiation
coming from the phone.

Just kidding, they'd be killed by the dangerous _conduction_ from the phone.
The little guys can't handle the rapid heat changes caused by the battery and
CPU.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
Really? I seem to recall these organisms being almost indestructible.

 _They can withstand temperature ranges from 1 K (−458 °F; −272 °C) (close to
absolute zero) to about 420 K (300 °F; 150 °C)_

Battery and CPU heat output of a phone couldn't be more than 40 degrees C in
variation, at a guess.

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrade](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrade)

~~~
PhasmaFelis
No one ever reads the article.

> _It turns out the myths about tardigrades — how they’re indestructible — are
> true, under the right circumstances. “They go into cryptobiosis. They shed
> up to 90 percent of their body water, turn into a little grain of rice, and
> that is the thing that survives in space, and that’s what survives in ice
> cores for 300 years, and you add water and they revive. Cryptobiosis
> requires very narrow environmental ranges in order to begin,” said Feehan.
> But a sudden change in temperature? Lab-bred tardigrades are no match for
> that._

~~~
jwilk
From the HN guidelines:

 _Please don 't insinuate that someone hasn't read an article._

~~~
andybak
How does that guideline apply if someone asks a question that is directly and
clearly answered in the article? Is it OK to point out that the article covers
that as long as one is polite about it? I'm not sure I understand if the rule
is "you're allowed to correct people using information from the article as
long as you don't tell them it was in the article" which is obviously silly -
or "just don't be a dick about it" which seems covered by the general rule of
"don't be a dick".

~~~
grzm
The guidelines include an example of how to do this:

"Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The
article mentions that."

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
andybak
Thanks. How ironic that my question about how to handle "not reading the
article" comments could have been resolved if I'd read the article on how to
handle mentioning reading the article.

I'm just off to dive into a singularity of self-reference. See you later.

------
yeukhon
It would be cool if in the future a device can scan (real life scene, blood,
piece of chalk) anything and tell you the composition and everything you ask.
Think Pokedex and those fictional gadgets in sci-fi movies.

~~~
spyder
There is a company who is trying to do that with a spectrometer but they
product is controversial:

[https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/16/scio-the-pocket-sized-
mole...](https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/16/scio-the-pocket-sized-molecular-
analyzer-is-making-everyone-angry/)

------
1001101
Would make an interesting random number generator (which are tough to find on
some systems). Waterbears are rad hard as well :) Would be tough for Mallory
to "reduce their entropy."

~~~
matt_wulfeck
Actually true random number generators are cheap and to integrate into
Silicon. The question is do you trust them? :-)

~~~
1001101
Can't trust them -- I've seen too much.

~~~
benchaney
If you don't trust the hardware, adding tardigrades doesn't really help.

------
karmakaze
> One pitch outlined a module that transmits touch, like a high-tech version
> of the heartbeat feature in the Apple Watch.

Seems unfair to group this with the far fetched ideas. I for one think this is
a killer feature in a world that could use more opportunities for meaningful
connections.

------
alexandersingh
Coming across the Lapka concept for Project Ara[0] made me realize that the
problem was to market this as a "phone" in the first place.

Few people are willing to take the risk on a phone with an entirely new form
factor, let alone an entirely novel premise, and no one would carry two phones
around in their pocket.

It seems like they missed an opportunity to position this as a customizable
mobile computing platform. Or perhaps they did and thought it was too niche.

[0] [https://medium.com/@my_lapka/lapka-x-project-
ara-78fc5fe9f50...](https://medium.com/@my_lapka/lapka-x-project-
ara-78fc5fe9f50a)

------
imtringued
Another crazy idea. Why not integrate a soldering iron?

Soldering irons that are powered via USB with 1500mA and 5V exist and are
basically just a heating element plus a 555 timer chip.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-8D5t6TJYU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-8D5t6TJYU)

------
frozenport
Seven engineers? Isn't that a million dollar a year project?

~~~
nashadelic
These are google engineers so wouldn't be surprised if the burdened annual
cost per engineer is $300k so upwards of $2M+

------
webwielder2
Is this the innovation that's supposedly lacking at Apple under Tim Cook?

~~~
bitmapbrother
You mean innovation like the Touch Bar?

~~~
petee
And "Dongle-Christmas"?

:P

------
xyzzy4
Sounds like they are doing great things with investors' money.

~~~
Reason077
Yeah, but not just investors money. One of the sad things about Google is that
it seems to soak up so many bright, highly paid minds - then puts them to work
on relatively useless things.

It's inefficient allocation of humanity's intellectual resources.

~~~
josephg
I daydream sometimes that lightning strikes and both google and facebook
suddenly go out of business.

So many of the world's best and brightest software engineers work at those
companies. Suddenly out of work they'd be motivated to start those little
business they've always wanted to have. I think we'd see an explosion of cool
new ideas & businesses pop up in the tech community.

~~~
jboggan
A bit like the ending of "God Emperor of Dune".

I have nothing but great things to say about the quality of the engineers at
Google . . . but I do think our purposes are suboptimal.

------
maxander
"Hey, the Ara is going nowhere, but it would be a shame to not get any return
from it... Lets see how many click bait blog articles we can generate from
it!"

~~~
harrisonweber
Ara's been gone since August. I sourced the story myself, not sure how it's
click bait tbh! Did you read it?

~~~
maxander
To be clear, that line was something I imagined someone at Google saying prior
to the developments mentioned in the article. But, "put an aquarium full of
water bears in your phone"? That's a nonsense, fluff headline if I ever heard
one. That they went so far as to _actually do it_ , I will admit, redeems it
somewhat! But not so much that I'll believe that the project had any goal
beyond generating press. :D

------
sandworm101
Cruelty to animals. I eat meat but do not like seeing anything suffer for
purposes of amusement. These are small, but mistreating even insects can be a
crime in the US (specifically if you film it). Give them a digital version and
leave the actual animals out of such displays.

~~~
harrisonweber
The creators of this project told me they actually wondered if PETA would take
offense. Ideally, though, the tardigrades would have had plenty of algae and
room to swim around/reproduce.

