In a most restrained and calm way I must also point out that the Guidelines have this to say about What to Submit:

  On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting.

  anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

and they also say this about complaining about submissions in comments:

  Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission
  is inappropriate for the site. 

They are silent about pointing out the guidelines in comments on comments that complain about submissions.

:)

I'll take it over another self important blogger's take on the NSA. I found the article to be interesting and enjoyed it.

This kind of stuff is actually why I come to HN. I'm not really interesting in reading Blogger-25981875's take on <insert scandal>, and definitely not "I became an entrepreneur and if you do exactly what I did you can be successful too".

While it may not be news, and it may not be immediately useful or directly applicable, I found this a fascinating process, and a good illustration how something very simple can be a very effective solution.

Side (but on-topic) note: I don't necessarily agree that building a 49 m tower to make tiny shot balls is "a very effective solution".

It is if you're making huge amounts of them and you're in the 19th century.

See here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6374682 where I calculate a "single 1 oz load [for dove] would be 337 pellets of #8 shot"

Now, way back when they were probably more using larger sized shot for larger birds (dove are about as small as is practical, and probably more useful for learning real wing shooting), but that gives you an idea of the scale. If you go up to #6 for pheasant and grouse sized birds, 1 oz is 219 pellets.

And, yeah, this is a very cool hack for cheaply making this stuff, which we do indeed use in mass quantities.

It's conceptually simple and produced great results. I agree that it might not be the most effective solution there is, but it seems like it was the most effective at the time (which is why they were used).

Perhaps you mean efficient rather than effective? It does seem to be quite effective, despite the superficially amusing fact that a very tall tower is being used to form a very small product.

Though whether it's inefficient in any other sense is, I think, open to question: The up front expense and difficulty of the tower is a one-time cost, and I'd think maintenance on it would be fairly minimal. I'd think other methods discussed in these comments would almost certainly incur significantly more overhead, particularly over the life of the facility.

> Perhaps you mean efficient rather than effective?

Parent said "very effective", I am not sure what it means if not "efficient".

> Though whether it's inefficient in any other sense is, I think, open to question

Indeed, that's exactly what I meant.

Just out of interest:

1) Why, exactly, should this not be on HN?

2) What makes a submission suitable to be on HN?

You've said that you found it interesting. You maybe learned something? Your curiosity isn't piqued - do we still use this process, does anyone anywhere in the world use this process, could it be used for anything, what happens if you use other materials or if the air is hotter or colder, or if we try it on the moon or on Mars or etc etc etc?

Why not Hn. It is an elegant solution to a manufacturing problem, im sure many of you ask how it can be done more effectively requiring less space and material.

It's on Hacker News because 170+ people decided it should be.