Soviet radar hidden in Chernobyl's shadow [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/reel/playlist/secret-worlds <comment><USER2> It was apparently informally known as "the woodpecker" because of the sound of the interference it would make. It's interesting to read the amateur radio community's response to it at the time: [https://www.qsl.net/n1irz/woodpeck.html](https://www.qsl.net/n1irz/woodpeck.html)

> "If you want to screw up a radar signal, all you have to do is send a return > signal on its frequency which blocks out the echos. Hams, from the earliest > woodpecker days, have been driving the monster off their bands by getting on > the frequency and sending properly spaced dots back. The screen somewhere in > Russia blanks out and the operators utter some Russian oaths and change the > frequency to get rid of the interference."

<comment><USER3> The opposite behavior is kind of scary. What prevents someone from faking a "missile echo" response?

<comment><USER4> What the Hams are doing is radar jamming/interference; it's not the ability to make the radar screen show whatever you'd like. That would be much, much, much more difficult (if it's even possible).

As far as this sort of spoofing between nation-state actors, discussion is difficult because both the U.S. and Russia have been developing sophisticated 'electronic countermeasures' [1] for decades, and all their most interesting capabilities in this regard are certainly classified.

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

<comment><USER5> Put a reinforcement learning network on the task to recreate signals from a radar with a ham radio and see if it can learn it. That would be pretty sweet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've visited this radar installation - of course, as another poster pointed out it was an OTH missile detection system. But a fun conspiracy theory floated by my guide was that this installation was intended as a Soviet weather control experiment. The evidence for that, such as it can be considered, was that allegedly there were supposed to be 12 reactors at Chernobyl, not just the famously exploded Reactor 4, which would have been an immense amount of energy production capability for one single location. Additionally, the nearby Pripyat was inhabited by the brightest of the bright, most elite of the Soviet population in an already highly secret portion of the Soviet Union. Who better to attempt that sort of endeavor? Plus, what powerful government doesn't wish it could control the weather?

Whether or not it's true, it clearly didn't work. But it sure is fun to think about.

edit: typos

Also, while I was there I picked up some forgotten artifacts in the form of old computer operations manuals, including one for the Russian ES EVM, which was a copy of the System/360\. I scanned all the pages, maybe it would be interesting some people here: [https://chernobylbooks.netlify.com/](https://chernobylbooks.netlify.com/)

<comment><USER7> The US had HAARP[0] which was researching use of high frequency radio waves in the upper atmosphere which was also surrounded by conspiracy theories. One theory was that HAARP was responsible for the massive flooding in the early 90s of the Mississippi river due to the Jet Stream to severely change course due to the effects of HAARP. Another was that HAARP opened up a hole in the atmosphere which allowed a small portion of Alaska to receive a much more intense dosing of solar radiation.

[0][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Frequency_Active_Auroral_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Frequency_Active_Auroral_Research_Program#Conspiracy_theories)

<comment><USER8> For non-hams, "high frequncy" here refers to the "HF" band of roughly 3-30MHz.

Or, as anyone else might call it, low frequency.

Afaik, it didn't work at whatever it was trying to do, which IIIRC had something to do with submarines.

<comment><USER7> That was one of the stated purposes. They thought that they would be able to communicate with deeply submerged submarines with something more than 3 letter codes using ELF. They also thought they would be able to communicate further distances by reflecting the signals off of the ionosphere. They also thought they could disrupt warheads on re-entry. There was a lot of ideas about this place. I guess when you are getting the government to fund such a project it's going to need a lot of things it can pivot to when the original idea fails.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Apparently it never worked properly (from [https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09636412.2017.13...](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09636412.2017.1331639)):

> Meanwhile, the top Soviet EW warning commanders called OTH radar "virtually > useless."[88] Danilevich agreed, arguing that LUA was impossible before the > development of satellites: "there were only above-the-horizon systems; there > were no over-the-horizon systems ... These systems were not sufficiently > reliable. They did not allow the reliable detection of launches. The only > way to reliably determine the beginning of an attack is through human > intelligence, but it is dubious that such data could be obtained."[89] > Apparently OTH radar operators would consult public reports about planned > NASA space launches and then claim that they had tracked a launch on the > appropriate day. But the ruse became obvious when weather delayed a > launch.[90]

[88] Fischer, "The Soviet–American War Scare of the 1980s," 502. [89] Hines interview with Col. Gen. Danilevich, 24 September 1992, in Hines, Mishulovich, and Shull, "Soviet Intentions 1965–1985, Vol. II", 41. [90] Bruce G. Blair, The Logic of Accidental Nuclear War (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1993), 205.

</comment><comment><USER10> Huh, that looked familiar, YouTuber shiey climbed around on that thing a few months back: [https://youtu.be/jGPjj4B_jEk?t=7755](https://youtu.be/jGPjj4B_jEk?t=7755)

<comment><USER11> His footage from Duga is really amazing, he managed to shoot it with incredible lighting from the sunrise. I'd strongly recommend checking this out even if urbex isn't normally your thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Whenever I read, see or, especially, visit such enormous abandoned man-made objects I have very specific feeling which is hard to put in words. Some wild yet soothing blend of awe and fear.

Does anyone else experience it? Is there a name for such feeling?

<comment><USER13> Probably you mean kenopsia[0]?

[0] [https://www.dictionaryofobscuresorrows.com/post/27720773573/...](https://www.dictionaryofobscuresorrows.com/post/27720773573/kenopsia)

<comment><USER14> So that's what I feel on massive sound stages that are dark after we are done shooting for the day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I was there a few months back.

If you go on the day-long Chernobyl tour from Kiev, they will take you into Pripyat as well as the Duga radar installation.

It's a very interesting trip.

I took some photos inside the radar control building. They had a lot of soviet era electronics laying around, as well as pictures of expected U.S. missiles that they were meant to track.

[https://thesolidconcept.com/a-trip-to- chernobyl/](https://thesolidconcept.com/a-trip-to-chernobyl/)

<comment><USER16> I really enjoyed the read, thanks!

<comment><USER15> Glad you enjoyed it!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The secret radar? The massive, seen from the air, heard on the radio, reproduced in one of the top selling games of the last few years (PUBG) radar is a secret?

I can't wait to hear about the secret arch built in St Louis for the World Fair.

<comment><USER18> Pictures of the radar array show up on Reddit r/AbandonedPorn all of the time. People have climbed on top of it for pictures.

<comment><USER19> not when it was turned on though...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> TLDW: A 1970s over-the-horizon radar for ICBMs that apparently didn't work very well.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duga_radar](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duga_radar)

<comment><USER21> I couldn't quite figure out from the video if it was an early launch detection system and/or a signal jammer. Cause the video mentions both.

A cursory glance at the Wikipedia article also didn't clear it up. Does anyone know?

<comment><USER22> It was a detection system, but it operated on frequencies that already in use by shortwave broadcast stations (much more prevalent then than now), amateur radio operators, etc and interfered with them.

You can get more details on how it and similar systems work at [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Over-the- horizon_radar](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Over-the-horizon_radar)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The Russians have just started transmitting from a new OTHR called Konteyner ..

[https://planesandstuff.wordpress.com/2020/02/25/russian- othr...](https://planesandstuff.wordpress.com/2020/02/25/russian- othr-29b6-konteyner-analysis/)

also ..

[https://planesandstuff.wordpress.com/2020/03/06/konteyner- fo...](https://planesandstuff.wordpress.com/2020/03/06/konteyner-follow-up/)

The HF bands are full of OTHRs at the moment. There are Russian ones , Iranian ones and a British one from Cyprus among many others.

</comment><comment><USER24> I've visited, including inside, the US equivalent : [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/FPQ-16_PARCS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/FPQ-16_PARCS)

This was before 9/11\. Probably these are no longer allowed, but they would have an annual "open house", and my wife is from that area (which is sparsely populated) so we'd pop in. Inside I saw a 16-CPU parallel processing system developed by Western Electric specifically for this project in the late 60's (still operating).

</comment><comment><USER25> For a longer and more detailed treatment of the Duga antenna and its connection to Cherbobyl, I can recommend the documentary "The Russian Woodpecker":

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Russian_Woodpecker](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Russian_Woodpecker)

</comment><comment><USER26> Thar guy takes out his phone and says something along the lines that the phone is way better than that, believe me.

Really? Is phone hardware capable of transmitting that far? I have hard time believing that. Processing power? Sure.

<comment><USER27> Of course it can transmit that far, it just takes a few hops.

What he was actually comparing the phone with was the so-called "huge computer" that processed all the data wires coming from the radar receiver sensors, not the radar transmitter itself.

4:25> Each radio receiver has lots of sensors. Each sensor has to be supplied with data wires and power. All data wires were going to the main control centre. It looked like a huge (let's say) computer. But believe me, this thing (waves phone) is much better than anything here. (laughs)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> People have flown FPV quadcopters around it:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhJpdCZNSDc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhJpdCZNSDc)

</comment><comment><USER29> The Stanford Dish, built in 1961, was used to detect these and other sorts of signals. Rather than over the horizon it was via earth moon earth bounce.

[https://medium.com/dish/tech-history-the-story-behind- stanfo...](https://medium.com/dish/tech-history-the-story-behind-stanfords- satellite-dish-hiking-trail-in-palo-alto-fc44745be409)

</comment><comment><USER30> I visited the Duga installation a couple of years ago (along with Chernobyl) and it really was utterly inspiring. I highly recommend it for nerds and non- nerds alike.

</comment><comment><USER31> It became the brain scorcher in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R shadow of chernobyl games.

</comment><comment><USER27> Wow, the Pokemon Go graffiti at 4:58 is hilarious!

</comment><comment><USER32> Warning: video</comment>


The Simple (And Perhaps Harsh) Reality Of Apple's Ecosystem - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/15/apple-ecosystem/ <comment><USER2> Cribbed from the linked list of the pundit-who-shall-not-be-named: <http://twitter.com/gassee/status/37642355649675264#>

Apple's game is to make things that are friendly to the user, much in the same way that Google makes things that are everywhere for the user.

The other side is always seamy, because we can see the stitching and sometimes it rubs on us the wrong way.</comment>


Stalin's Danish Mystery - <AUTHOR> https://www.historytoday.com/miscellanies/stalin's-danish-mystery <comment><USER2> Fascinating! If Bornholm had remained a Soviet garrison, it would have completely reshaped the cold war in the Baltic.

<comment><USER3> How?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If Denmark was a mystery then certainly Norway should have been mentioned as well in this article. Northern Norway was liberated by the Soviets and to my knowledge no allied forces ever set their foot in Norway at the end of the war.

Thus in principle the Russians could have claimed all of Norway.

They did not which I think is one of the reasons we in Norway retained a pretty good relationship with the Soviet Union through the Cold War sometimes to anger and bitter resentment by our American NATO allies which seemed to prefer to refer to the Soviet Union as the "evil empire".

<comment><USER5> Interesting. Off-topic but: How was that norvegian TV show about a Russian led occupation received by Norvegians considering the good relationship ?

<comment><USER6> I cannot vouch for others, but I didn't think much of it; while no-one are seriously expecting a Russian occupation of Norway, we're rather aware that we are a NATO member, the Russians very much not - and that there is bound to be some strain in the relationship, despite it (in particular in the border zone up north) being good on a day-to-day basis.

For instance, citizens of both countries living in a defined zone either side of the border can visit under a visa waiver-esque program.

IIRC the debate following the TV series was more about how some figured the plot - that the EU wanted access to our natural resources and were willing to use force (by proxy) to get it - seemed plausible if international relations deteriorated sufficiently.

Our own little Suez crisis, that.

<comment><USER7> While plot in the current political climate is obviously a stretch, it's an allusion to the annexation of Crimea. Overall, given constrains, it's well executed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Click-baity title, but an interesting article nonetheless.

</comment><comment><USER9> > _Bornholm was quietly evacuated leaving no Soviet presence in Scandinavia._

Arguably incorrect, since the Soviets maintained a naval base in Porkkala, Finland, just west of Helsinki, until 1956. (Arguably because Finland is culturally but not strictly geographically Scandinavian.)

<comment><USER10> Finland isn't a part of Scandinavia. The culture doesn't matter. A lot of countries share a "Western Culture". Doesn't mean that what happens in 1 country, happens in all of them.

<comment><USER11> A lot of people confuse 'Scandinavian' with 'Nordic'. Scandinavia is a geographical description, Nordic is more cultural, which includes Scandinavia, Finland and Iceland.

<comment><USER12> Poor Estonia suffers neglect. :)

‣ [https://satwcomic.com/new-nordic](https://satwcomic.com/new-nordic)

‣ [https://satwcomic.com/greatest-authority](https://satwcomic.com/greatest- authority)

‣ [https://satwcomic.com/imposter](https://satwcomic.com/imposter)

‣ [https://satwcomic.com/party-crasher](https://satwcomic.com/party-crasher)

<comment><USER13> And what about the Faroe Islands? The people of the Orkney and Shetland Islands of Scotland are fond of claiming Scandanavian heritage too.

<comment><USER14> I would argue an independent Scotland could become the 6th Nordic nation.

Of course, I enjoy being contrarian more than I probably should.

I'm Swedish, if that matters.

<comment><USER13> Well it's certainly northerly anyway.

<comment><USER14> It also has a similar culture, weather and history.

Not sure if any Scots agree, but it seems right to me at least.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > The war with Japan, to which the Soviet Union was committed by Treaty, and > in which it played an immense role, continued until the end of August.

Really? I think the Soviet campaign in the Far East began 3 months after VE day, after the US had dropped 2 atomic bombs on Japan, and lasted less than 4 weeks. Its real strategic importance was that it forced the Japanese to realize the Soviet Union would not broker a negotiated peace with the other Allies. The Soviets had no beef with Japan, to them it was a land grab,

<comment><USER16> The Soviet campaign in Manchuria started before the bombings.

Japan's forces on the mainland were swept away by experienced, battle-tested, and overwhelmingly large armies redeployed from the Eastern front.

Japan's plan for the defense of the home islands consisted of pulling everyone they could out of Manchuria, but relying on its resources and industry to support the war effort. This obviously required the Soviet Union to uphold it's end of their non-aggression pact. Which it didn't.

With Manchuria under Soviet occupation, and the Japanese armies routed, this plan completely fell apart. The invasion convinced Japan that capitulation was the only solution more than the bombs did.

<comment><USER17> > The Soviet campaign in Manchuria started before the bombings.

No. (And also no to JackFr.) The Soviet campaign in Manchuria started on August 8, after Hiroshima but before Nagasaki.

The Japanese plan to use Manchuria for defense of the home islands would never have worked. The US could have put enough naval forces there to make transport of troops and material impossible.

<comment><USER16> > No.

My mistake. I must have gotten confused because of its inter-bombing timing. The argument that it played a bigger role in their capitulation than the second bomb is still a reasonable one, though.

> The US could have put enough naval forces there to make transport of troops > and material impossible.

Japanese war planning was quite optimistic. But once Manchuria fell, it was clear to everyone that there was no hope.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Most likely Stalin hoped that Denmark would become neutral in any future division of Europe (Finnish and Austrian Neutrality is highly useful for the USSR).

I think this is consistent with the withdrawal of Red Army troops from places like Austria.

</comment><comment><USER19> There are much more significant instances of Soviet retrenchment and retreat during this period. Probably the most notable is the withdrawal from Austria. The USSR held a significant amount of territory in Austria at the end of the war, with the US holding the rest, and quickly agreed splitting the country into 4 allied sectors of control, and doing the same in Vienna. Shortly afterwards, the USSR withdrew from Austria completely. Why? Well, Stalin was not one to share his strategic thinking with the public, so we can only guess. Probably he did not want to deal with a "West Vienna" along the lines of "West Berlin". But who knows.

As for Bornholm, I really don't see why people think it would have some great significance. The Soviets already had many bases in the Baltic which were contiguous with their territory. What would an island add? The Soviets did not have a good record of supplying their forces by sea. During WW2, i.e. immediately before the time in question, they suffered a number of disasters when their forces were cut off from supplies by land and had to be supplied, and then evacuated, by ships. There was the disastrous evacuation of Tallinn at the beginning of the war, the battle (and evacuation) of Odessa, the loss of Crimea, and the Leningrad front with immense civilian and military losses. Bornholm would have looked like a death trap to the Soviet commanders of the time, rather than some great asset. No wonder they agreed to return Porkkala to Finland 40 years early, and never placed naval assets of any significance there.

<comment><USER20> _Shortly afterwards, the USSR withdrew from Austria completely._

The Soviets did not withdraw from Austria until 1955, two years after Stalin's death. The neutrality of Austria was a condition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Not related to Bornholm at all, but it struck me how the "Map of the North Sea and Baltic Sea, 1914" emphasizes railways (the thick black-and-white lines) over roads (the much thinner dashed lines). Of course, those were the heydays of the railroad, and road travel was still largely by horse-drawn carriage...

<comment><USER22> And rail was several orders of magnitude more efficient at moving goods. The 'roads' were tracks made by repeated wagon traversal. Bumpy, muddy, rocky, eroded.

<comment><USER23> The area around Bornholm (Skåne, Denmark, Germany/Prussia) has some of the best agricultural lands in Europe. The roads were just fine.

<comment><USER22> Hm. I come from a rural setting in Iowa, and the roads even today are not much good.

Here's a painting of Danish roads around that period. Looks like a buggy track thru the countryside: [https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=gUPDkI...](https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=gUPDkI10&id=9F09B8ABA74B01BE30BFA1BA7A84DE50155C3AB2&thid=OIP.gUPDkI10PTfqvrmAlnHeBQHaFG&mediaurl=https%3a%2f%2fwww.christies.com%2fimg%2fLotImages%2f2016%2fCSK%2f2016_CSK_12582_0475_000\(carl_wennemoes_winter_road\).jpg&exph=2207&expw=3200&q=danish+roads+1914&simid=608036887598926641&selectedIndex=18&qpvt=danish+roads+1914&ajaxhist=0)

<comment><USER23> The area is now, and was then, densely populated.

Here's an article (in Swedish) about the roads in Skåne.

Covers a long period.

[https://www.sydsvenskan.se/2017-03-25/alla-landsvagar-bar- ti...](https://www.sydsvenskan.se/2017-03-25/alla-landsvagar-bar-till-det- forflutna)

Malmö was even then Sweden's third largest city. Copenhagen was a global city and Denmark the center of European pork production. Prussia's huge estates were the foundation for the aristocracies' wealth.

To get goods to market, or to a rail hub, good roads helped a lot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Is it just me or did he lose the Hamlet thread? It doesn't seem so much a mystery as a purely strategic post-war moment that no really knows about.

<comment><USER20> She (Caroline Kennedy-Pipe ) - and the Hamlet thing is mostly colour but it did send me down a clickhole of tracking down 'Stalin hated Hamlet'. That the "story of bloody intrigue in the court of Denmark supposedly reminded Stalin of Kremlin politics" sounded a bit off to me - after all, Stalin famously commissioned Eisenstein's _Ivan the Terrible_.

It seems around 1940 or so Stalin did stop a Hamlet production (based on a Pasternak translation) at the Moscow Art Theatre. Recollections vary somewhat but the most plausible explanation is that Stalin felt Hamlet (the character) was weak. Completing the circle, the Russian wikipedia page on _Ivan The Terrible_ has a quote from a Central Committee critique of a different movie in which, as an aside, part two of Eisenstein's film is criticized as ahistorical and as portraying Ivan as too weak "like Hamlet". The second part was not screened until some years after Stalin and Eisenstein's deaths. Hamlet itself was not staged in the last 12 years of Stalin's life.

<comment><USER25> I'm imagining the Stalin from Death of Stalin sitting around complaining that Hamlet takes nearly two hours and doesn't hardly kill anybody! And then dies himself!

<comment><USER20> Hah, it's hinted at in the movie but Stalin was actually something of a performing arts (and theatre in particular) superfan - that's why the Hamlet bit caught my eye.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> My fist thought was what could Denmark trade at that time for the return of Bornholm? My first thought was the atomic secrets that the Neils Bohr group had.

</comment><comment><USER27> > The country was ultimately liberated by the Americans in Greenland [...]

Hmm. "On 8 April 1941, the United States occupied Greenland to defend it against a possible invasion by Germany."[1] So, first, there never were any German occupiers to liberate Greenland from, and second, the US occupation of Greenland started 4 years before 1945.

> Furthermore, there were emplacements for massive guns with 42 kilometre > range, which could close the strait south of the island to the coast of what > is now Poland (then Germany).

First, the strait is 90 kilometres wide.[2] Second, the last German stronghold on the southern coast of the strait, the port of Kolberg (Kołobrzeg) fell to the Polish People's Army on March 18.[3] Calling the coast "then Germany" in May is pretty weird.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland#Treaty_of_Kiel_to_Wo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland#Treaty_of_Kiel_to_World_War_II)

[2] [http://visitkolobrzeg.com/bornholm#](http://visitkolobrzeg.com/bornholm#)

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kolberg_(1945)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kolberg_\(1945\))

<comment><USER28> > Calling the coast "then Germany" in May is pretty weird.

Founded in 1255 by Germans, Kolberg was part of Prussian Pomerania from the 1648 Peace of Westphalia until the _August_ 1945 Potsdam Agreements which implicitly recognised the Soviet capture of eastern Poland and gave Poland eastern Germany in return; this was not finalised until the _1990_ Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany. It's perfectly reasonable to refer to Prussian territory in early 1945 as Germany.

(I am not complaining about the transfer to Poland — after the inhumanity of the German occupation of Poland itself it was only just. It _does_ seem a bit unjust that eastern Poland is still part of Russia though!)

<comment><USER27> Let me rephrase: assigning any military importance to the de jure status of a land is pretty weird.

<comment><USER29> Such issues featured prominently in the Yalta conference, where the starting point for the discussions and negotiations was the de jure status quo ante. And if Bornholm ws not de jure Danish territory, there would be no issue here (or, at least, a different one - if it had been German, I imagine it might have become part of the DDR.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I thought this was about Stalin's craving for Danish:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish_pastry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish_pastry)

<comment><USER31> Reminds me of this article about unusual cravings from the 1940s; no mention of Stalin though.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Coke](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Coke)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> > our American NATO allies which seemed to prefer to refer to the Soviet Union > as the "evil empire".

It wasn't an entirely inappropriate term, given the Holodomor, the Katyn massacre, the massacre of the Cossacks, the suppression of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia, the Berlin Wall, the gulag system, the 1979 invasion of Afghanistan &c. The U.S. was imperfect too, of course, but most of the badness was non-policy like the My Lai massacre, or evil or wrong policies (e.g. segregation) which pale in comparison, and anyway whatboutism isn't really wise: one should call out misbehaviour anywhere it rears its head.

It's fair to say that even in its kinder, gentler post-Lenin and post-Stalin form the Soviet Union was a malign force in the world. 'Evil empire' was a fair shorthand.

<comment><USER32> Please don't take HN threads further into generic ideological flamewar. It just leads to even more and even worse, as it did below. This is why the site guidelines ask people not to post like this.

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

[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20generic%20discussion&sort=byDate&type=comment)

We detached this subthread from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22534609](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22534609).

<comment><USER28> I don't think that's very actionable direction, because _every_ post, no matte how dryly factual, can trigger someone who reads it. No doubt there is someone reading right now who would react violently to a post about an experiment with statically-typed programming languages, and someone else who is still really unhealthily incensed about the War of Jenkins's Ear. All one can do is apply a reasonable-man standard: would a reasonable man think that a post is starting or perpetuating an ideological flamewar? I don't believe a reasonable man would think that about my post, which I believe falls well within the guidelines.</comment></comment></comment>


After Paris attacks, UK politicians suggest fast-tracking new surveillance laws - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2015/11/16/9742182/uk-surveillance-paris-attacks <comment><USER2> That sucks. Pretty sure France has strong surveillance laws and that still happened. If anything it proves that stronger surveillance doesn't stop terrorism.</comment>


Roger Ebert: No Longer an Eater, Still a Cook - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/01/dining/01ebert.html <comment><USER2> Ebert's ode to Steak 'n' Shake is here: [http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2009/01/car_table_counter_or...](http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2009/01/car_table_counter_or_takhomasa.html)

His discourse on the rice cooker is here:[http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2008/11/the_pot_and_how_to_u...](http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2008/11/the_pot_and_how_to_use_it.html)

It's a shame the article doesn't provide the links to the blog entries it discusses.</comment>


Simplex-noise.js: A fast simplex noise implementation in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jwagner/simplex-noise.js <comment><USER2> It's really interesting that they were able to use typed arrays to get better performance out of it. If anyone is looking for a more bare-bones approach to simplex or perlin noise, I've had good experiences with this library:

[https://github.com/josephg/noisejs](https://github.com/josephg/noisejs) (not affiliated)</comment>


What would happen if you put your hand in the Large Hadron Collider - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NMqPT6oKJ8

<comment><AUTHOR> Short answer: They don't know.

Longer answer. It won't be good, but it might not kill you - probably won't give you superpowers. But nobody's going to let you try anyway.

</comment><comment><USER2> Dup: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1725592></comment>


"there are two dozen spiky places in the world that account for 98 percent of innovation." - <AUTHOR> http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/index.php?term=pto-4360.html&fromMod=emailed <comment><USER2> I always felt much more mentally engaged in Italy than I did in the bay area. First of all, I actually know more, and better hackers there, second, I interacted with many kinds of people, most of who were fairly bright and resourceful, even if not in the same field. Furthermore, as an environment, it's far more stimulating than the endless burbs that comprise most of the bay area (san francisco excluded). Also, it's much more invigorating to ride one's bicycle or walk, rather than drive everywhere to the same sorts of plasticky, fake, establishments that most other people frequent (or the conspicuously "alternative, look, we're different!" sorts of places where the remainder go). SF is a bit better, but it's so expensive, that it tends to only contain people at the edges - either really rich or really poor. It's not a livable place if you're not wealthy and want to have kids, for instance.

Woah.... I guess that turned into more of a rant than I meant to write. I appreciate the article's sentiment, but a think there are some nuances to it...

</comment><comment><USER3> Despite the title of the post ("98% of innovation"), I think there are some truths in the article.

I think the best designs and ideas come about through a process which is not unlike evolution. You might start with something good in isolation, but being subjected to many differing viewpoints and perspectives will challenge your idea, and force you to flesh it out in ways you may never have done on your own.

In keeping with the evolution analogy, this type of force causes your original concept to mutate into something which is (often) superior.

</comment><comment><USER4> "And for every doubling in city size, there's a 14 to 27 percent increase in productivity per worker--meaning that individual workers are far more productive if they live in cities than they would be out in the sticks."

This is a really broad statement. I would be incredibly impressed if it applied in >95% of cases. How do you measure national productivity anyways? PPP adjusted GDP?

<comment><USER2> Yeah, looks like BS to me. It probably just means they earn more, which is natural because you don't run big, low paying factories in the middle of expensive cities these days.</comment></comment>


The Assumption Pile - <AUTHOR> http://natari.us/post/27924050604/the-assumption-pile

<comment><USER2> Socks for Fish exist. And in the mobile carrier world, people still believe that fish would need them - and while we're at it, gloves as well.

Funny that you mentioned iPhones. I remember from anecdotes of a former colleague, the discussions between Steve Jobs & the CEO of the biggest international mobile carrier group when negotiating the exclusive distribution rights for the 1st iPhone (the carrier did not get the iPhone at the end).

CEO: The iPhone lacks features. It can't send multi media messages (MMS).

Steve: Every thing MMS does, Email can do better. What's the delivery rate of an MMS between networks? 60% at best? Email has 100%. So why would you want MMS, a service that doesn't work?

CEO: But the iPhone also lacks IM (trying to push the carrier's internal IM solution).

Steve: Why do you need IM? You have the best IM service in the world; it's called SMS.

This conversation happened 2007.

</comment><comment><USER3> I love it. It's always best to list all assumptions one is making and try to test them to narrow the liability. Great blog article!</comment>


From Bash to Zsh to Fish - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/almoullim/from-bash-to-zsh-to-fish-e432f1e1b9f8 <comment><USER2> I want to love Fish, or ZSH, or anything other than Bash. And I've spent some time learning how to be productive in Fish - but I keep coming back to one problem:

Bash is everywhere. Every Linux/ _nix server I SSH to, every friend 's Mac or Linux machine I troubleshoot, and now even Windows. I spend my whole work day in a terminal, or at least it feels like it, but I'm often logged into remote stuff. I can't get myself to really commit 100% to using Fish when I _know* I'm going to have to keep my Bash skills and knowledge fresh because I simply can't stop using it.

I know I can install Fish (Or ZSH, KSH, etc) on everything, but the fact that I can't assume it is there makes it cumbersome to write scripts/configuration/documentation that can be used across a range of devices, servers, OSes, etc.

Every time I fire up a Fish shell I really, _really_ enjoy using it. I just can't figure out how to accept it as my "primary" shell. And I feel like until I can do that, I can't take full advantage of it.</comment>


How cyclists, not drivers, first fought to pave US roads - <AUTHOR> http://www.vox.com/2015/3/19/8253035/roads-cyclists-cars-history <comment><USER2> A few months ago I attended a conference where they spoke very clearly about how the automobile industry, in the early 1900's, used marketing to make roads their own.

Here is the talk: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHA4xN1dEkM&t=2m8s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHA4xN1dEkM&t=2m8s)

and this part of the interview: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyT8AUn3cuU&t=10m30s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyT8AUn3cuU&t=10m30s)

<comment><USER3> 99pi did a story recently on how the auto industry fabricated the crime of "jaywalking" to get people out of the streets and seize the streets for cars.

<comment><USER2> correct, in the above talk they mention the origins of "jaywalking". i found it fascinating.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> not just in the US - from the stuff I've read (and I can't cite anything), here in Australia the roads were originally sealed to improve cycling conditions!

</comment><comment><USER5> Very interesting. Who woulda thought!

</comment><comment><USER6> So cyclists started raising money for roads in the 1900s from private individuals ("Pope [...] and other special interest groups"), private companies ("asphalt manufacturers") and 16 years later when it was too late, the government passed some bill to give themselves credit for funding the roads by saying they would match state contributions.

And now everyone thinks if it weren't for the government we couldn't have roads.

<comment><USER7> You could have roads without the government, you'd be unlikely to have an effective interstate highway system without it. Or something like the Garden State Parkway.</comment></comment>


Where is the programmable web - <AUTHOR>

Hello, what do you think of the following:
There's seems a lack of web api's being created on a pay for use basis. Most web companies I see are creating end user applications. The api's available are mostly for newfeeds or databases (ebay/amazon/google apps).
Why aren't there more developers quickly turning out micropayment api's. There's a whole lot of people on the net - affiliates - who are scrambling to make some money off of lousy ebooks or adsense etc., give them real products they can earn commissions on.
Sort of break things competely into one man companies earning small commissions on multiple products in a free flowing market.
An area where this type of thing is really lacking is in image recognition. Someone could put a service where for one tenth of cent it will locate a cat in a picture, someone else puts out a dog recognizer (see opencv or torchvision haar recognizer). Or in speech recognization, someone works to create a really good "hello" recognizer, someone else puts out a "bye" recognizer etc. <comment><USER2> I think there are a couple of reasons. Which is not to say it won't happen (tipjoy rocks), it's just hard.

Payment is about trust. In order use someone to give or collect money on my behalf I have to trust them. Trust for startups is hard.

Secondly, people aren't always interested in small payments. When the cost of a transaction approaches zero it often becomes it.

If there were an arbitrary scale of value, people would more willing to pay $5 for some that gives them 5 value than $0.50 for something that gives them 1 value. They would look for something that gave them 1 value for free.

<comment><AUTHOR> If the applications being created are very small, e.g. in a few hours or days, as is the case in the content creation industry (for websites), small sums of money work. Websites are running on adsense, 1 dollar for every thousand page views (uses of the site).

As for trust, a third party can run the application and meter use (as in amazon ec2 and payment system), and besides, if a user doesn't pay or a provider doesn't give quality product, you will withdraw your offer from that person pretty quickly. As examples, affiliate systems like commission junction, clickbank, adsense are working.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Are you talking about <http://www.strikeiron.com/>?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, what I'm saying is there are far too few of these, there's over a million developers out there. Even many of these strikeiron services are just news, you send a small query and get a simple result, rather than sending a complicated spreadsheet of data and having it transformed and returned.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> where i said micropayment api's i meant api's which can be used for a small payment (few cents or lower)

<comment><USER4> _"... i meant api's which can be used for a small payment (few cents or lower) ..."_

do S3 & AppEngine count?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes S3 and appengine are doing this, but still at the nondomain "computer programmer" type level. A better example would salesforce app exchange, domain specific applications being created on top of others. But this level of activity is still small. There are a much larger number of excel spreadsheet templates/macros etc.

What I was thinking of as that a single developer/domain expert (e.g accountant) could quickly create a small program in an hour or a day or so and immediately have it hosted somewhere for someone to pay for it and use it. This program might be using someone else's small program that does something specific. An "end of the line" entrepreneur/marketer would be creating/paying for the final website interface that the end user uses and pays for (or it could be advertising supported). As it is used, all the various creators would be compensated appropriately. The market ecosystem of suppliers would sort out the complexity (as is done in the manfucturing/distribution/retail industry).

The above would start working when there is critical mass of developers/designers that are willing to create and consume each others products.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Mechanical Turk?

<comment><AUTHOR> Mechanical turk is human powered.</comment></comment>


SourceForge grabs GIMP for Windows' account, makes installer push adware - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/05/sourceforge-grabs-gimp-for-windows-account-wraps-installer-in-bundle-pushing-adware/

<comment><USER2> See related discussion here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9612152](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9612152)</comment>


American Runners Have Never Been Slower - <AUTHOR> https://runrepeat.com/american-runners-have-never-been-slower-mega-study <comment><USER2> _' It has been a popular belief that the increase of the average marathon finish time is due to the fact that participating in running competitions is gaining popularity. With the popularity increase, the number of not so fit participants rises, and the average finish time increases.

This argument is not exhaustive.

Let alone that in the last two years (2015 and 2016) numbers of participants are declining and the finish time in all the four major race distances is still growing.'_

This is a wrong argument. It is enough if just running in general gains popularity. If you take races as a sample from the running population the sample size does not mean that much - the average/median/percentile performance of the sample (if it is representative) may follow the performance of the whole running population!

This is the case for example if the racing population is a uniform random sample. But it may even happen that nowadays larger proportion of slower runners are going to races - because races are much more advertised/known for the hobby joggers than in the past, while elite runners were there always...

<comment><USER3> I feel like this counter-argument is glossed over and not thoroughly refuted. The stats go back to the 80s and yet it's not till the last two years that participation starts to decline? I think it's very likely that more and more amateurs are signing up for smaller races that didn't previously exist. There's probably enough variance that one year of decline is not enough to prove that participation increase is not a factor.

Also, I think there's a chance that the running races are losing some of their top athletes to triathlons which are also growing in popularity.

<comment><USER4> Triathlons, off-road running races, obstacle races (tough mudder, etc), and other races that aren't plain running.

Local to me, there are also a few extreme distance races (longer than marathon), usually on hiking trails.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting claim but I'm not quite convinced based on the data presented. They considered the hypothesis ('myth') that increased popularity of running is what's slowing down the average times by looking at 100th-finisher times and nth-percentile times, but this does not control for an increased number of _races_ being held each year to accommodate all the extra runners.

<comment><USER6> It doesn't need to control for that. The new people who get swept up into participation in running events are invariably the slow ones. Conducting larger and more frequent races to fit them in is neither here nor there.

In a road race held somewhere in America in 1975, it would all have been largely highly fit, fast people from a track and field background.

<comment><USER7> Interesting, the goal of the fastest runners must not be to finish highly, if it were, they would distribute themselves to the additional races so that they had a better chance of winning. Instead, the claim is that they each keep running in the same races as they did before so that the slower runners do not have lower finishing places. Wait, not that either since then those new low finishes at the new races would be slower.

I note that they don't look at the top 3 finishers of big races... because those times have been falling (like the US Nationals). [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA_Marathon_Championships](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA_Marathon_Championships)

An economist might say that was impossible (for competitive people to deny themselves a precious placing goal), I simply find that it's unlikely.

<comment><USER8> The top runners will continue to go to the major races (New York, Chicago, Boston) because they can compete with the best runners in the world, there are appearance fees for elite runners, and they offer better exposure for athletes who depend on sponsorship dollars to make a living.

As for the US Marathon Championships, America's best marathoners usually skip that race (aside from when it serves as the Olympic Trials) because smaller, less prestigious marathons that pay less prize money are often chosen to serve as the US Championship. Why (relatively) smaller marathons? So that your US champion actually wins the race (like they would at the Twin Cities Marathon) instead of finishing somewhere in the top 5 (but not first) at New York.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Can't popularity explain this? Marathons used to be for an elite of first movers, then everyone joined and the elite left to do ironman and other sorts of crazy extreme.

I mean, this is a personal theory that I've basically pulled out my ass right this instant, based solely on what I've seen my coworkers do, so it's probably completely ridiculous. But in my network the people who were the fastest at running marathons aren't running marathons anymore.

<comment><USER10> Yeah I think this is also a possibility

(to be honest, healthwise, Marathons are very bad exercises - they're extremely biased towards aerobic capabilities - just check the amount of muscle mass a marathon runner has)

Also running for 3h straight is extremely boring and repetitive

<comment><USER11> This argument doesn't make much sense to me. Running is hard on your body sure. Lots of load on muscles and joints.

But then you use as argument 'extremely biased towards aerobic capabilities'. This argument doesn't make any sense. People have only very limited capability of anaerobic exercise. At the same time people are build to exercise aerobically almost forever.

<comment><USER10> > People have only very limited capability of anaerobic exercise. At the same > time people are build to exercise aerobically almost forever.

Hence the need for balance

(though sports at the Olympic level are rarely healthy, I'm betting on the swimmers, short range runners (not 100m though), rather than the marathoners to be the healthiest)

<comment><USER11> Running a marathon is risky because of the load on muscles and joints. That's specific to running. Doesn't have anything to do with extreme aerobic exercise.

If you replace running with equivalent amount of cycling then there are no ill effects. You can easily cycle at a recreational level for 8 hours a day and see no ill effects. Muscle structure will be quite similar to distance runners. They just don't wear out as much.

<comment><USER12> > If you replace running with equivalent amount of cycling then there are no > ill effects. You can easily cycle at a recreational level for 8 hours a day > and see no ill effects. Muscle structure will be quite similar to distance > runners. They just don't wear out as much.

I once thought this too, but I have come to think that this is a myth. It's what my doctors and physical therapists (and friends) say -- if you're injured running, pick up cycling.

I injured my knee cycling and haven't been able to do it in years. It's a chronic pain that starts when I hop on my bike, and only then. (I have had the full fit, bike sizing, and all that.)

I began running instead and have never felt better. I do it barefoot, but I don't know if that's relevant.

It's now hard for me to accept that cycling is easy on one's joints. Maybe it is true, but if it is true, it's not obvious. Our bodies are very good at running and walking. There is no reason to think they are good at cycling. A bike is a rather unusual and modern invention.

I can speculate that maybe it's the shoes that are contributing to injuries in distance runners. I am not sure. Feel free to reply if you feel I am wildly off.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> As soon as I saw the headline, I thought to myself "well yeah, Americans have also never been fatter," so the conclusion wasn't much of a surprise. Interesting that it's affecting men so much more.

This isn't the only study that indicates fatness is impacting aggregate performance, either. The US DoD has actually identified American obesity as a potential threat to national security and readiness. [1][2]

[1] [https://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/policy- dose/articles/20...](https://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/policy- dose/articles/2016-04-05/obesity-is-a-national-security-threat) [2] (PDF) [http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a547350.pdf](http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a547350.pdf)

<comment><USER14> > I thought to myself "well yeah, Americans have also never been fatter,"

Do fat Americans run?

<comment><USER15> Some do.

But "fatter" != "fat". [http://www.webmd.com/men/news/20041027/average-weight- for-am...](http://www.webmd.com/men/news/20041027/average-weight-for- americans-growing-heavier#2) points out that Americans are over 10kg heavier than the previous generation, but that's classified as "overweight" not "obese".

<comment><USER16> It's not a discrete scale, ceteris paribus every single kg will make you slower and increase injury risk. It's continuous.

<comment><USER15> If you wish to phrase things that way then feel free to reinterpret the discussion chain thusly:

1) spyhi used a continuous scale: "also never been fatter"

2) _qhtn switched to a discrete scale: "Do fat Americans run"

3) I replied to that question, that yes, "fat Americans run", objected to _qhtn's discretization of a continuous scale, and gave a pointer to a paper regarding BMI, which assigns categories like "overweight" and "obese" to the continuous scale.

Your comment comes across like you think I didn't know the difference between continuous and discrete, when that was the point of my response.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Picking up arbitrarily trends - obesity in this case, even though plausible, still doesn't feel right, ie. you could also choose average global temperature or %-age of CO2 and it would probably match the trend as well.

Also they're not addressing more complex implications - ie. if %-age of women (who are slower) increases and directly it doesn't account for total slowdown (as they've shown) maybe it has indirect impact on other runners (males) who are running _together_ with more slower participants (women).

I think assumption that people tend to run at the paste of people around them is not completely out of place compared to assumption that obesity slows down marathons.

</comment><comment><USER18> (This comment references bodyweight. While not normative, some readers may wish to skip it.)

\--

I am _usually_ quite critical of misreported findings but I must say the article does seem to support its findings pretty clearly. If they had a plot of it, I would expect to show over this period another effect: "amateur marathon finishers have never weighed more, or been slower." Obviously this is my speculation and if found as I predict it would be a statement that _even_ those who care enough about their health to train for, run, and finish in a marathon, have been weighing more and more.

I say this as a prediction because it is a very strong effect throughout the population. It certainly trumps any other health changes that have affected the population as a whole over the same period.

This data may be possible to estimate retroactively, visually based on photographs and footage of races - telling 15% from 25% from 35% from 40% bodyfat (for both genders) may be possible based on photographs alone. (With low fidelity.)

For comparison, although I couldn't find a chart going to 2017, this article includes weights for Americans as a whole through 2010:

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/06/12/look-...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/06/12/look- at-how-much-weight-weve-gained-since-the-1960s/)

It is interesting to compare with the data we have just seen.

-

EDIT: I have edited this following a downvote. If there are specific objections I can edit it further or remove it.

</comment><comment><USER19> I thought this study was going to be about the top percentile. I would assume this percentile is getting faster (competition is increasing in all sports at the top level).

Obviously on average Americans are getting slower because they are getting fatter. This almost isn't news.

<comment><USER20> Through, average Americans don't run marathons at all. It is only self selected smaller subset that does it (or is even able to finish it).

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I don't understand why they rule out the increasing proportion of female runners. The fact that the trends are different for the genders doesn't negate this as a possibility. And they even state that this accounts for 46% of the effect. To me this reads more as an agenda-driven investigation than an actual study.

<comment><USER22> Both men and women are getting slower. Men much faster than women. So: Americans are becoming slower.

The myth tries to be the explanation for the average running time getting slower. It falsily implies that because more women join, people aren't really getting slower. This is false: people are getting slower.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I don't have the data, so the authors might be right, but honestly reading this that's the best gloss I can put on it.

The second last chart (they aren't numbered, because this is a study done by someone with a mathematical analysis Ph.D and a statistician, apparently) says it all - we've plotted two things and we have fitted a line and then we state a conclusion. I'm sorry, but stop the seminar there.

The first two points, what does the line look like if we remove those? What do you mean by average? Can we have error bars on the points to cover 90% of the population? What are the distributions of the finish times? If they are normal, how come - aren't there elite and club peaks as well as everyone else? Did we try excluding the registered runners?

The questions are endless and this study is "not exhaustive" \- back to R guys.

</comment><comment><USER24> Hey look, I'm part of a trend! :D

But seriously, I'm a bit confused. Early on, they refute "Just the slow are getting slower" but near the end they make almost the same claim. The trick they play is to shift from examining the N fastest to examining the N slowest. In other words, the two samples "prove" nearly contrary things because they're both incomplete. Also, the real meaning of N fastest/slowest changes a _lot_ with race size. Using percentiles would have been a better (and more obvious) choice.

BTW, I love RunRepeat and have used it extensively as part of my research the last several times I've bought running shoes. Highly recommend.

</comment><comment><USER25> Isn't this a good example of why people shouldn't just crunch through a big dataset looking for a correlation to support a claim that they already believe is true?

</comment><comment><USER26> My first thought was also that it's simply due to the growing popularity of running. However this is also the case in Europe.

I've checked some random results - the difference is crazy. In Europe the median time seems to be around 1h55, while in the US ones it was more like 2h15-2h20 ! Which is very bad indeed

<comment><USER20> Male marathon world record is 2:02:57 and female is 2:17:01. It is unlikely that median marathon time in Europe would be faster then world record.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Marathons were cool in the 70s and 80s. Now athletic people are into different sports.

<comment><USER28> All the pop science I've read in the last decade has been saying the same thing: running on roads will screw up my knees, that long distance running is not great for either losing weight or gaining muscle, and that you should do intense running instead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Slightly off topic, but this is a great example of an affiliate site done right. It's comprehensive, unbiased and has some really interesting content.

</comment><comment><USER29> brainstorming: Has timing got more precise over time? Is it something in the atmosphere that's changed over time? Has the threshold of pain willing to be endured been reduced in our culture? Perhaps there is better awareness about the downsides of pushing through pain and injury.

</comment><comment><USER30> Given that they haven't done random sampling of the US population over time, the correct title should be "population of american runners who choose to run marathons are getting slower."

</comment><comment><USER6> The results could simply reflect the increasing popularity of participating in running events. The influx from new people is going to drags the performance averages down.

<comment><USER15> Quoting from the article: "It has been a popular belief that the increase of the average marathon finish time is due to the fact that participating in running competitions is gaining popularity. With the popularity increase, the number of not so fit participants rises, and the average finish time increases.

This argument is not exhaustive.

Let alone that in the last two years (2015 and 2016) numbers of participants are declining and the finish time in all the four major race distances is still growing."

<comment><USER6> You have to look at where the attrition is coming from; what is the demographic shift in the running population. Also, everyone is a year older with every passing year.

If you want a sport to stay vibrant, you have to have the fit youngsters coming in at the bottom, and the old people retiring out the top. This is not controlled in any way in public mass participation sport like in pro sport.

Really, this whole thing is meaningless. When I first saw the headline, I thought it would be about competitive running at the collegiate level or whatever.

Nope! Clickbait about changing jogger demographics.

<comment><USER15> What you say now is true, and not analyzed in the article.

It is not the same as your original statement regarding a simple increase in popularity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Why does everything have to be a race issue?

</comment><comment><USER32> I can't say that the study fully convinces me (I agree with szemet, not all counterarguments are carefully refuted).

There is however, a very different standard in the US, compared to other countries. In the Netherlands (and other countries), I am considered to have a normal or even slightly athletic posture. In the US, people consider me to be very skinny.

</comment><comment><USER33> Aren't marathon runners mostly competing against others in the same race, so if they can all slow down, they all will? Some of the olympic races seemed like a farce with runners right next to each other - obviously adjusting their pace according to each other, not trying to set a record.

<comment><USER34> I think that applies to the top runners, who are competing with a few other specific individuals, but a typical marathon runner will be competing against the clock, if anything. In a race in which no participant is paying any attention to any of the other competitors, they will each still end up running with others going at about the same speed, assuming their pace does not fluctuate erratically (which it doesn't - especially in longer races, where almost all participants have practiced enough that they have an intuitive knowledge of what they can realistically expect to achieve.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Nice thing is that they claim p-value of 0.01, much better than usual 0.05.

</comment><comment><USER36> Healthy people don't run marathons

<comment><USER37> Just curious, but what cherry picked study and unique definition of health are you basing that statement on?</comment></comment>


Shimo – VPN Client for Mac - <AUTHOR> https://www.shimovpn.com/ <comment><USER2> I've been using Viscosity for several years now and have been very happy with it. How does this compare?</comment>


Feedback on Learning Clojure: Comparing with Java Streams - <AUTHOR> https://blog.frankel.ch/learning-clojure/5/feedback/ <comment><AUTHOR> Thanks to the Hacker News community for the feedback they gave me. I tried to sum it up in a post, to benefit people like me who want to learn Clojure.</comment>


Show HN: Colibrin – Get up to 15% of your rent back. (AMA in comments) - <AUTHOR> https://www.colibrin.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hello everyone, back in 2016 I started researching how to improve the residential rental estate space and realized that long-term renters are the gold of the industry. Similar to good drivers in the car insurance industry, and inspired by cash-back programs from credit cards, and airline mile points -- I figured we could create a new financial instrument that exists between the world of renting and owning property.

For our generation, it is unfortunate that rent prices are increasing faster than wage hikes. This is partly due to the influence that pension funds, sovereign funds, and other retirement funds have had on the real estate landscape. To keep returns high on pension funds, they invest in REITs that increase the rent price of our generation. In a way, the retirement fund of a previous generation is making the living expense of the current generation impractical.

Colibrin sends landlords very long-term tenants, and it gives renters a 401(k) fund-like-experience that they can cash out when they move out. Overall, renters can get 10% to 15% of their cumulative rent payments when they move out, and hopefully will use that to buy their next home.

We're still in the early days, so if you wish to join - this is the time. Please let me know you if you have any questions. I can be found at omid+hn [at] colibrin [dot] com

Thank you all, I feel privileged to have welcomed Colibrin to the world via HN, this is our first public mention.

</comment><comment><USER2> Brilliant idea! I have been renting for the past 15 years and for a good chunk of it in between of two stretches of 3-4 years, was in the same building. Would have been great if I could have made some savings off of those stays! Excited to see this being rolled out :)

</comment><comment><USER3> Amazing idea. I hope you succeed.

Are you a global network or just US? I have small properties to rent on Brazil and would like more long-term renters.

<comment><AUTHOR> We can be global -- I will go ahead and shoot you an email

<comment><USER3> I'm still waiting for the email.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The site says there's no long term lease lock-in. If that's the case, how are you decreasing the vacancy rate?

<comment><AUTHOR> Because the renter fund grows -- by the time they move out the fund will be a huge reward to let go off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> where does the xtra money for renters come from? Imagine rental properties are already efficient

<comment><USER6> I think some rental properties are definitely underutilized

<comment><AUTHOR> Underutilized, and the high rate of tenant switches causes all sorts of unnecessary expenses

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> How do I sign up to be one of the first renters on the platform?</comment>


Mac Pro users and their sense of entitlement - <AUTHOR> http://julianyap.com/2012/06/11/mac-pro-users-and-their-sense-of-entitlement.html

<comment><USER2> I don't think anyone is "entitled" because they're disappointed with a refresh. There are many genuine complaints about this update, some fundamental "pro" functions are years out of date. Why would a Mac Pro ever not have thunderbolt? Come on. Either Apple is slacking or they're tossing this product out the window.

Saying people should wait even longer than the two years they have sounds pretty apologetic.</comment>


Anita Sarkeesian interview: 'The word "troll" feels too childish. This is abuse' - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/aug/29/anita-sarkeesian-gamergate-interview-jessica-valenti?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other <comment><USER2> >Sarkeesian doesn't give me the address of her San Francisco apartment over email. Instead, she texts it to me a few hours before we're set to meet.

Because texting is so much more safer than email and what would it even matter if when she sent the address? Then again her job is to be victim, so this is just her attempt to act like any of the threats were credible.

Just in case someone doesn't know about the threats, none of the death threats have been reported to FBI (or even local PD) and the shooting threat that "forced Sarkeesian to cancel her talk" was pronounced as bogus by police several hours before she canceled her talk.

I'm not saying that people making these threats aren't doing bad things, but Sarkeesian is trying to build an empire on being the victim.</comment>


Comcast picks Zimbra for online e-mail - <AUTHOR> http://news.com.com/Comcast+picks+Zimbra+for+online+e-mail/2100-1032_3-6181737.html?tag=nefd.top <comment><AUTHOR> Zimbra looks like one impressive application - especially the Zimlets for integration to other services. Does anyone have experience with this product?</comment>