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Comment by aaron695 | Hacker News Reader

This stuff seriously seems like a game changer. Could be all hype but if it's legit I think it'll be huge.

Never having to clean the toilet again in itself would be amazing. Cost reductions in business here alone is significant.

Anti graffiti capabilities would make it huge for government applications. On park benches etc keeping communal equipment from ageing. The whole cleaning industry could be changed.

Waterproofing electronics.

Hygiene in hospitals might save many, many lives.

I do like living in the future.

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Anti-graffiti use is the first thing that sprung to my mind as well.

As you said, it may all be hype- but if it delivers, I suspect that the company making it (UltraTech?) is going to have a nice few years ahead of it :)

I wonder how long it lasts, particularly when constantly exposed to the elements?

Don't think it would work, because taggers use knives to carve into thing half the time.

Technically, 'taggers' refers to spray-paint only. You're referring to 'scratch.' This is because a 'tag' indicates a spot on the complexity level of the graffiti, and it's impossible to make a throwup or piece via scratch.

The More You Know!

How about making graffity with it in a rainy place? It could look very cool and would be hidden most of the time.

An art student I know did this at my school (U of Calgary) about three years ago. The design is invisible unless it rains or you splash a bucket of water on the wall. It's also in a low-traffic area, so I don't think very many people know about it.

Is it still there / how long did it last?

Except it's easily removed with soap and water. I imagine that it's not intended to be a long lasting coating.

Source?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-WNb0NLSTI&t=146s

I'd love to coat my toilet with this, so I never have to scrub it again. And also the insides of the plumbing pipes, so nothing gets stuck in there... :)

Suddenly I remember the zero-friction toilet bowls in Jerry Pournelle's The Mote in God's Eye...

Think of the building and infrastructure industry! Paint with this and via, trillions saved (and lots of jobs lost) over time

those jobs aren't lost - they are just not needed anymore!

Such nitpicking makes a lot of difference to an unemployed person.

Indeed! But it makes a lot of difference to whichever schmucks who had to pay that person, too. Perhaps a few million homeowners spending a few hundred dollars less on painting services every year could buy something more meaningful than a guy standing around on a ladder fixing paint jobs that don't need to be broken.

It should. The appearance of a new technology creates value which will be shared by society in some way. If a solar breakthrough removed the need for gasoline, oil workers would lose out in the short run, but every car owner would have more money to spend on other things, so jobs would be created elsewhere. Whereas if oil just disappeared, value would be lost overall.

That's how structural unemployment works; as I recall economists are pretty sure it's a good thing. Unfortunately because its positive effects are general (everyone gets slightly better off) and the negative effects are local (a few people don't have careers any more), nobody else seems to see it that way.

> The whole cleaning industry could be changed.

By making it obsolete maybe. Sounds like unemployment.

And by new jobs spraying coating.

Certainly no more unemployment than was caused by the invention of automobile farm equipment, but I think most people come down in favor of that.

Dirt and grit still accumulates somewhere. Bins still need to be emptied.

Not necessary unemployment, maybe conversion. Perhaps cleaning industries will take care of providing and deploying hydrophobic substances in toilets, firms, public services etc.

Or maybe as you suggest it will create a completly new market. It depends entirely on the ability of these companies to move forward.

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