Research continues to show health benefits of coffee, tea, and chocolate - <AUTHOR> https://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/coffee-chocolate-make-you-smarter-according-to-latest-neuroscience.html <comment><USER2> From the brain cancer study:

"Findings from this study suggested that higher consumption of coffee may contribute to the lower development of brain cancer in Asian populations. Tea consumption had an inverse association for the risk of brain cancer in American populations, instead of other populations."

That's a pretty important footnote that might mean the causal factor here in this study is not coffee or tea, but other foods in the diet. It's certainly a good reason to pause and question whether to dive into an 8 cups/day routine.

<comment><USER3> Could also be a two-variable effect. For example, American diet or environment contains something hazardous that tea protects from.

<comment><USER4> Apparently, in some people smoking cigarettes promotes caffeine breakdown. So 6-8 cups of coffee recommended by this article may not be for everyone.

[https://ps.psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/appi.ps.55....](https://ps.psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/appi.ps.55.5.491)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have coffee and cocoa every day, and I'm only slightly smarter than a rock.

<comment><USER6> With the amount of coffee and chocolate I consume, I would have expected my hat size to increase, but that isn't the case.

<comment><USER7> Well, if you have those with sugar that might explain it.

Try having those without sugar and report back in 5 years. :)

<comment><USER5> I use Stevia and fiber powder to make a shake with my coffee cocoa mix.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Food science is iffy, and different people may react differently to the same food.

Personally, I think coffee is not healthy for me. I used to drink 4+ cups a day for the last years, but stopped last year. Since I stopped I feel much less stressed, have less problems getting up in the morning, and my sweat stinks less.

<comment><USER9> I totally agree. Coffee is also dangerous to anyone with acid reflux. everyone reacts differently and if you don't feel right consuming something, you shouldn't consume it, health science rules be damned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> > Studies have shown that the ideal daily dosage of coffee is about six to > eight 8oz cups, ideally consumed prior to 2pm so that it doesn't disturb > your sleep.

I think this claim should have been backed up with a source for the studies that are suggesting people should drink 6-8 cups of coffee each day.

Seems crazy to me! I personally don't drink coffee because I've seen lots of people develop dependency/addiction, even though I'm sure it's not too serious.

<comment><USER11>
      six to eight 8oz cups

48oz is just 2.4 cups of Starbucks' venti size.

<comment><USER12> 48oz of _just_ coffee, mind you ... no padding with ice, foam, milk, cream, water, sweeteners, etc.

That's a lotta Joe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There might benefits, but there are also drawbacks. Discussions around this always reminds me of this image showing short term impact.

[http://intentblog.com/wp- content/uploads/2013/01/481171_1449...](http://intentblog.com/wp- content/uploads/2013/01/481171_144914898996681_1672731324_n.jpeg)

As with most things, overdoing consumption of any substance will have negative implications.

<comment><USER14> Ive been drinking coffee for so long (since age 12 so, 14 years now) that I wonder if its effected my brain development any, if at all.

<comment><USER15> Here's a study on pubescent rats in PLOS one. In short, caffeine disrupts sleep which impacts brain development.

[https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0072539)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Low-level anxiety, procrastination, jittery energy useless for humdrum work, bad overall energy levels if you consume alot of strong coffee, painful wakeup in the morning, adrenalised brain geared to snap decisions rather than measured reasoning.

Or

Bounce out of bed at 100% energy, fluid easy reasoning, easier learning, relaxed, enjoy slow movies, good overall energy, fine with humdrum activities, far less procrastination. Less impatient with people.

The caffeine-energy thing is pretty bogus. The problem for me is that I find it fun.

Just realise that giving up caffine means tapering for many people as the migrained a heavy coffee drinker can get form cold-turkey can be the worst, worse than anything I;ve ever had before. Also, even decaf and cocoa have too much caffeine, and with the reduction in tolerance as you come down in dose, so you become more sensitive. You really have to give it up completely, which is a shame. But the upside is massive.

</comment><comment><USER17> The best way to anecdotally see if it works for you would be track consumption using a simple app ([https://careclinic.io](https://careclinic.io)) then measuring productivity with rescuetime and seeing correlations.

</comment><comment><USER18> If the coffee part is true I will soon be able to fold space like the navigators in Dune.

<comment> 0-_-0 The navigators in Dune don't fold space, they predict hazards and avoid them through prescience from the Spice. But I get your point.

<comment><USER19> To be fair, this wasn't explained in detail until the Brian Herbert prequels. The movie and miniseries also left the nature of Guild Navigator travel rather ambiguous.

<comment> 0-_-0 It was explained, I'm reading the 3rd book right now! I think it was explained in the 2nd...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Well, twist my arm then

</comment><comment><USER21> Can this clickbait title be fixed? This is a news article covering a review. The review suggests that the (small) cognitive effects of caffeine and other things present in chocolate have mechanisms that are starting to be understood, in rodents.

Because it's a review it provides no new evidence unlike the implication in the title. Instead, it's suggesting possible neural pathways for why the cognitive effects might exist.

<comment><USER22> I've taken a crack at a more accurate and neutral title. If anyone suggests a better one, we can change it again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is fake news and BS. Coffee is very bad for your health and it is also a drug. They keep on advertizing coffee to keep this commodity price high.

<comment><USER24> "Coffee is very bad" sounds like a very bold claim to me and should be backed by supporting facts.

Pretty much every substance will have bad effects on your health when overdosing. But thats not to say that lower doses will produce these negative effects as well.

Sola dosis facit venenum.

<comment><USER25> "Everything in moderation ... including moderation."</comment></comment></comment>


Mount Everest Trek to the Summit - <AUTHOR> http://everestavalanchetragedy.com/mt-everest-journey.html <comment><USER2> Pretty cool way to visualize the route. Would like more info thrown in along the way.</comment>


Google is evil...  After getting us hooked on free… - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/u/0/113389625012958748964/posts/9DAskCYMTFv <comment><USER2> > Google is evil... After getting us hooked on free…

This sounds like the lament of a drug addict, whose first taste was free. There are plenty of free, high-quality options, like LibreOffice, so no one needs Google Apps to survive.

Google is just another company, with investors, and a profit motive. It's a basic mistake to think otherwise.</comment>


Leisure Suit Larry and Space Quest coming to iPad by HTML and javascript - <AUTHOR> http://www.martinkool.com/2010/10/sierra-adventure-games-go-ipad-sneak.html

<comment><USER2> So, I don't understand... he's tweaked the online Sarien to run well on iPad but he's not releasing it? For legal reasons?

If anything, isn't this campaign just going to drive negative Activision attention toward Sarien allowing people to play Sierra games for free online? They don't have some special dispensation from Activision as far as I know...

EDIT: this TouchArcade article makes it more clear. Apparently he's still putting the final touches on it; sounds like it'll be released pretty soon. I continue to fear that his work toward getting Activision to do something with these games will end up forcing the issue and getting him a C&D. If that is to happen, I hope it at least gets released first. [http://toucharcade.com/2010/10/15/sierra-adventure-games- com...](http://toucharcade.com/2010/10/15/sierra-adventure-games-coming-to- the-ipad-but-not-how-you-would-think/)

</comment><comment><USER3> In celebration, I'm going to Monolith Burger tonight to work on my Astro Chicken highscore.

<comment><USER4> Make sure to stop by _Droids-B-Us_ , but don't forget your coupon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> More interestingly, he(Martin Kool) wrote an interpreter for the old Sierra adventure games engines. Notably the engines use GOTO statements which javascript doesn't have an analog of, so they compile the entire thing into a giant switch-case statement. Nifty!

This is much more impressive than it looks, I feel. Saving/loading games by using a browser bookmark? Multiplayer?

</comment><comment><USER6> Wasn't guessing the commands half the fun of LSL?

Putting them all out in front of you seems too easy!

<comment><USER2> I'm glad it's available — there are lots of folks that wouldn't even give a change to a full text interface these days. I and my nostalgia would certainly prefer a keyboard option, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I was a little disappointed (though not surprised) that this only supports the older AGI games and not the later SCI games (SQ4+). Still, very cool. Space Quest is easily one of the most entertaining game series ever developed.

<comment><USER8> AGI and SCI are completely different game engines. Both the interpreter and the data formats are radically different. BTW, I've actually converted my fan- made AGI game using Martin's tool, and it worked very well. He really deserves a round of applause for this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> What does this have to do with an iPad again?

</comment><comment><USER10> awesome.</comment>


Amid denials, state workers in Flint got clean water - <AUTHOR> http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/flint-water-crisis/2016/01/28/amid-denials-state-workers-flint-got-clean-water/79470650/ <comment><USER3> If this article ( [http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/01/raw-data- lead-...](http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/01/raw-data-lead- poisoning-kids-flint) ) is correct, the problem specifically of _lead_ in Flint seems to have been worse throughout the 1990s and most of the 2000s. The recent upward spike only made it as bad as it had been in _2010_. So should people have been panicked and drinking bottled water there for most of the last 30 years? Or was downplaying the current risk level - in context - <USER2> of reasonable?

<comment><USER4> Have you looked closely at the analysis in that article?

It's a total fudge, basically. But even if it weren't:

 _So should people have been panicked and drinking bottled water there for most of the last 30 years?_

The problem with what you're asking (and perhaps the biggest problem with the MJ article you cited) is that in past decades, lead poisoning (as measured by children's blood levels) has come from _multiple sources_ (lead-based paint in homes being the most widely cited culprit). So it's an apples-to-oranges comparison to start with.

And any numerical "extrapolations" from those numbers to what the comparative risk factors from _water sources_ might have been, going back decades, are equally vacuous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't understand why they didnt't just announce to the public about the bad water.

It would have made it looked like they actually cared about the citizens of Flint, once.

<comment><USER4> Because it goes to the very core of their attitude about the people they govern: Not only could they not begin to care -- they don't care about even looking like they care, either.</comment></comment>


❤ Belgium Hacker Agenda ❤ - <AUTHOR> http://hackeragenda.be/

<comment><USER2> I'd love to have such an agenda in France !

I see this on the github page "My objective is to end up with Hackeragenda all over the world and meta-hackeragenda like hackeragenda.eu." Sounds like the way to go !</comment>


Why did Myspace fail? (Reddit) - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3jna7y/eli5_why_did_myspace_fail/cuqwky8

<comment><USER2> > Every new idea had to be approved by him before going into production.

I see this in so many places and it's distressing to watch. This is the fastest way to ensure you lose people who actually love the company. Either you lose them as in they leave the company or they just stop giving ideas. I went through this personally. There would be meetings where people would be encouraged to give ideas, and unless the 'idea' was a reassertion of the leaders original idea it would be shot down. Even independent ideas/research would eventually come under the umbrella of a single individual's control. Very quickly became frustrating. Further meetings finally became all of us nodding head and waiting for things to finish. I have entire notebooks of doodles from those days. It was horrible for me because I loved the company and had so many ideas to help us function more efficiently and transparently.

Of note, the single individuals in this case would be one of the founding C-level folk.</comment>


Ventilator built from snorkel mask and 3D printed part - <AUTHOR> https://www.isinnova.it/easy-covid19-eng/ <comment><USER2> Original title is "Emergency mask for hospital ventilators". The title on the post is misleading.

A ventilator is a machine with electronics, moving parts, and sensors that pushes air into people's lungs and pulls it back out. This is an improvised replacement for one of the less- or non-reusable accessories in short supply, the mask that goes on the patient.

<comment><AUTHOR> Technically it is a "ventilation-assisted mask" but according to the sketches, it does plug directly into the hospital's oxygen system. Scroll down to the bottom to see sketches.

<comment><USER2> What you refer to as the "hospital's oxygen system" is the oxygen output port on a ventilator. See also this note in the text:

"The prototype as a whole has been tested on one of our colleagues directly inside the Chiari Hospital, _connected to the ventilator body_ , and has proven to be correctly working."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm having trouble seeing why this couldn't be a widespread solution. It uses the same supply lines; the mask is designed to maintain a seal and support normal breathing.

What prevents this from being an option when the alternative is, I dunno, death?

Is this actually a "ventilator"? Or is it just a mask and it's the rest of the air delivery system that's in short supply? Can anyone point to a good basic intro to the "design a ventilator" problem?

<comment><USER4> It is a ventilator in terms of displacing exhaled CO2 via the volume of air moving through the circuit, mask and lungs. It also provides positive pressure to aid in more effective oxygenation.

There is alot of selective focus and attention to "ventilators" currently. The danger is people believe that a fuller featured ventilator will save them when in reality (it will in some cases) public health focus should (arguably is) be on everything that can be done to keep COVID patients from being intubated and needing a full featured ventilators.

There is a risk that we run out of ventilators because they are dedicated to long term life support of patients that become dependent on them when they could be providing the short term ventilatory support of patients who will recover enough not need one. This is another scenario given our medical capabilities, well trained healthcare workers, and cultural outlook we are not yet talking about.

<comment><USER5> > This is another scenario given our medical capabilities, well trained > healthcare workers, and cultural outlook we are not yet talking about.

In the UK the ethics boards are working on policies for triage

<comment><USER4> I saw the Italians intubation protocol has this in mind. A very public discussion of these issues could create more panic than productive conversations in the media, but it really it will need to be addressed openly sooner or later before long-term ventilators start stacking.

<comment><USER5> One person I speak to online is a reverend, who's been asked to be part of an ethics committee which will be making those decisions when resources run out

What do you optimise for?

Number of lives saved? Number of Years saved (so better to save someone with a life expectancy of 40 years than 2 people of LE of 5 years each)? Do you remove ventilators from those who it's just delaying the inevitable? How to do you factor in non-covid cases?

Do you take into account how "good" the patient was? Were they self isolating or did they go to a pub lockin? Have they been hoarding toilet paper? Do you save the person who caught it performing CPR? What about the Key Worker who caught it while delivering food to the town? How about the dumbass politician who's encouraging people to ignore the restrictions?

<comment><USER4> Generally (Used to be) in the united states the social worker will present the general ethical frameworks to reason within and it is up to family to provide the answer. Ethics boards develop recommendations as needed, when courts have to step in.

I will say working in a Trauma and ICU rooms, families are generally well aware of the decisions to be made when it is time.

<comment><USER5> What do you mean "up to family"?

500 people outside need ICU beds, 6 patients have just died, so you have 6 new beds open. Which of the 500 do you treat?

<comment><USER4> Family = Next of Kin

They are assigned a triage score and that score will be updated routinely. As beds open, the people who fit the criteria get the bed. I believe that is fairly standard in a public hospital type setting.

I have only ever worked in public and military icu, wards, er and trauma rooms so I do not know too many details on how that works in practice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Just signed up as a local maker, it is nice that they are trying to connect hospitals with manufacturing capabilities [1].

[1] [https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdc0aa34YSqm6hPQWRL...](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdc0aa34YSqm6hPQWRL9OT4bFaowXSlvObUVr9kZurn4MZnoQ/viewform)

</comment><comment><USER7> Relatedly, some engineering students from Tunisia created 3D printed protective masks and started supplying hospitals as they have a shortage of those. The prototype is open source : [https://github.com/FAB619/Protection- Mask--COVID-19](https://github.com/FAB619/Protection-Mask--COVID-19)

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm not a ventilator specialist, but this is gaining some traction and I fail to understand how it really helps. Is the ventilator shortage just a mask shortage ? Isn't there a quite complicated machine plugged to the mask ? With complex valves and a motor and pressure sensors and alarms and whatever ?

Again, I don't know what I'm talking about.

<comment><USER9> There has been some discussion on 3D printing medical ventilators on the local hackerspace mailing list. One of the participants used to work at a company which builds those and made similar points:

There are different systems, one are the C/VPAP which are only for ventilation during sleep, avoiding a closure of the pharynx by increasing the pressure to a certain maximum value. Some of those have parameters also taking care of the patient's breathing pressure etc. but in general can only help for "better sleep" – if they fail, then you have a bad sleep but won't die.

The systems they use in hospitals are the complex machines you describe: they have battery power, measure the flow of breath, have alarms etc. Even here they distinguish between "supported breathing" and "keeping alive", i.e. in the former case the machine helps you to breathe while the second takes care of breathing for you.

In Italy, a doctor asked for a replacement part of their ventilators which was then 3D printed – the valves mentioned in the article. This seems to have led to a surge in people now trying to build, design, etc. ventilators which can essentially be build anywhere, to combat supply chain shortages.

Again: You are right, medical ventilators are a tricky business and difficult to build. But in this case, the ventilators seem to be there, they just need the valves, which can be printed. And they put up a huge disclaimer that patients need to agree to use unapproved devices.

A German article covering this is [1].

[1] [https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/kreative-loesungen-in- zeiten-...](https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/kreative-loesungen-in-zeiten-von- corona-lebensretter-aus.676.de.html?dram:article_id=472978)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The panic of where we will get the ventilators from does not have to be the sole focus. Not every patient will need a million dollar ventilator.

If someone is self isolated with the disease then they may need a lower technology solution such as a dehumidifier. In that way they can avoid the secondary bacterial infections that are the real killer. They can recover in a room that won't be growing mould because it is damp from their breathing.

A humble dehumidifier could put someone on the road to recovery before it gets to the ventilator stage in a northern climate where damp is a problem.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Article regarding inventors in the NYTimes: [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/22/opinion/ventilators- coron...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/22/opinion/ventilators-coronavirus- italy.html)

</comment><comment><USER11> Some interesting hacks appearing i.e. modifying a single ventilator to support two or even more people.

<comment><USER12> It's amazing what people are coming up in the last weeks to make things work, even though they don't follow the standards, the regulations, etc. etc. The human brain under a certain amount of stress/motivation can come up with a sh __load of ideas and solutions.

<comment><USER13> I think a lot of it is finally feeling safe to experiment. I'm sure ideas like this were always around but people knew they'd be in prison if they tried it.

        The west gone wild
        Pioneering spirit
        A golden age for cowboys
        Warstories for grandchildren

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Really hope that our societies can fund some research and development to bring elasticity to health care capacity. This won't be the last time we as humans will need it, and it will help if some smart people work on this instead of ad click optimization..

</comment><comment><USER15> The headline is misleading, this isn't a ventilator, this is an emergency mask. Great project though!

</comment><comment><USER16> It doesnt help people who need intubation as many will with the virus.

<comment><USER17> But could it help those who do not?

<comment><USER18> Are they(expected to be) in short supply?</comment></comment></comment>


The Most Effective Weapon on the Modern Battlefield Is Concrete - <AUTHOR> http://mwi.usma.edu/effective-weapon-modern-battlefield-concrete/ <comment><USER3> I don't think I saw any concrete structures when I was in Afghanistan. We used Hesco bastion for everything. I think even the furthest-back hospital was just sheet steel siding construction, surrounded by Hesco.

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

Hesco is another very interesting material. Cheap, extremely light and easy to deploy, until filled, which can be done by anyone with an entrenching tool (small infantry shovel/spade that everyone carries) if required, and then basically indestructible.

How many of those concrete walls can a helicopter carry? One? It's going to take a long time to build any wall or structure. Or do you send an armoured cement mixer and create on-site? That's not realistic in a place like Afghanistan.

I'm not an engineer but I would also guess that Hesco survives better - a box of stones can lift up and crash back down with an explosion where if concrete cracks it's permanently broken.

<comment><USER4> > I don't think I saw any concrete structures when I was in Afghanistan.

Seriously? You never saw the giant prefab concrete walls around Bagram and Phoenix, and Eggers? Where were you in Afghanistan?

I have been to just about every significant ISAF base (while it was still called ISAF, not RS) and US DoD base in the country, and can assure you that giant prefab concrete walls lifted into place with cranes are _everywhere_.

<comment><USER3> > Where were you in Afghanistan?

A FOB somewhere near Lashkargah. I never went to Bagram, Phoenix or Eggers. I spent a few days in Bastion, which, as the name suggests, was also constructed from Hesco bastion.

<comment><USER5> The Marines ran Helmand a bit differently than how the Army ran everything else.

The Army loves their t-walls. So much in fact they give out little awards that are shaped like t-walls.[1]

[1]: [http://uswarriorsoutdoors.org/us/wp- content/uploads/2014/11/...](http://uswarriorsoutdoors.org/us/wp- content/uploads/2014/11/USWOMembersaward.png)

<comment><USER6> Farah (2009 - 2010) EOD tech reporting in. We were almost all Hesco too. Oddly, we found a lot of PMNs[0] in our Hescos.

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

<comment><USER7> Woah! To clarify, when digging up filler for the Hescos, PMN was present in the area the filler was taken from and thus made their way into the Hescos?

<comment><USER6> I was/(am?) a bomb tech, I didn't dig up a damn thing, we were too highly valued of an asset..And only having a small handful of us to support an entire theater of war makes us exceedingly rare.

Got called out on quite a few. One in particular was a dude out at a COP in the middle of no where Farah, taking a piss next to a Hesco, looked up and saw a mine poking out of the barrier. Afghanistan is one of the most heavily mined countries in the world. It's not surprising.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It is interesting to read that so little has changed since the days of Caesar. Reading his _Gallic War_ you'd think the war was won by digging ditches and building walls. For instance, search for "fortification" on this page:

[http://classics.mit.edu/Caesar/gallic.5.5.html](http://classics.mit.edu/Caesar/gallic.5.5.html)

Contrast with Galba in the early chapters of

[http://classics.mit.edu/Caesar/gallic.3.3.html](http://classics.mit.edu/Caesar/gallic.3.3.html)

You would only exaggerate a little to say that in his telling, victory is all about being prepared and not slacking off.

<comment><USER9> That isn't very surprising you win a war by controlling territory which is why boots on the ground are always needed to win an actual war, to control a territory you need fortifications.

A properly fortified base can take pretty much any conventional artillery fire for weeks without taking any real damage and unless there is an all out assault you can hold out as long as you have food and water, ammo might not even be that important as long as the enemy doesn't know that and or is incapable of scaling the fortifications.

Even when we'll be fighting on Mars and the jovian moons you'll still will have grunts digging trenches unless for some reason the war is going to transform to purely strategic weapons in which case it's usually the side that either has more or strikes first who would win.

<comment><USER10> Not necessarily. I imagine the wars of the future will largely be automated and wars will be won or lost almost purely on logistics and manufacturing supply chain management. Do you need walls when you have a drone above doing surveillance and an army of quadrocopters or other robotic flying machines that are doing 24/7 patrols along the perimeter and can arrive within 30 seconds?

<comment><USER11> Wars are already won or lost on logistics. That's why, in WW2, the allies ran a near-continous near-sucicide air bombing campaign against German industrial capacity (and to their eternal shame, civilians, too). That is why the Atlantic was so important, if the Germans could have choked off the supply chain from the US, they would have won the war more or less overnight. The ability to run the air bridge to Berlin after the war was also a logistical feat.

But at the end of the day, the only purpose of the logistics are to support the fight to control the territory you need to win.

<comment><USER12> Wasn't it Wellington who said something along the lines of "Amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics."

<comment><USER13> Amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk strategy real professionals talk logistics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > Each type was named for a state, denoting their relative sizes and weights. > There were small barriers like the Jersey...

The Jersey barrier isn't so named because of its size. It was developed as a barrier by the NJ highway dept [1]. The newer barriers used for the military are just given other state names to follow along with the original. It just happens to be smaller because of its original civilian purpose.

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

</comment><comment><USER15> One mission in my service was going to Korea and blowing up concrete walls. Back in 2008 the Korean government acquired new concrete barrier designs meant to re-enforce strategic locations.

Wanting to see real life usage of these barriers, a contingency of Marine combat engineers working with the ROK Marines got tasked to breaching them.

From that I learned two interesting things of note. Concrete serves two means: it's actual use as a barrier and the other being a manifestation.

In combat zones, Hesco containers prevail. Rapid deployment and durability makes them a much better fit. But imposing concrete blocks represent the continuity of the state.

Heavier and harder, with more logistics required, building out concrete walls is meant as a way for the state to declare they are here to stay, not retreat. So actually it's wielding a supply chain effectively that is the most effective weapon on the battlefield.

That said though, we made short work of the concrete.

<comment><USER16> I reckon concrete is necessary, but how much does it harm the economy? I can't recall a barrier in history that didn't prevent food from reaching to the right people and triggering bribes. But the main driver in peace is to get paid/production jobs for everyone, and the main specificity of a city is that it's good for tertiary jobs, but it requires constant provisioning from agriculture and industry, which both happen outside towns and require intensive movement of goods.

In a nutshell: Don't concrete walls prevent recovery? Don't they split the population, creating even more groups with differences? Should we plan for them to be "reconfigured" in the following years, when the conflict improves?

Side question: Sorry I didn't follow, why was USA in Irak again? Did it start with the famous WMD accusation at the UN conference then the intervention got bogged into a long unpeaceful situation, am I recollecting events in the correct order?

<comment><USER17> It started with the Project for the New American Century: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_C...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century#Calls_for_regime_change_in_Iraq)

"Of the twenty-five people who signed the PNAC's founding statement of principles, ten went on to serve in the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush, including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz."

They were planning this for a long time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The discussion of Hesco vs concrete barriers is an interesting one, and I think a lot of the other comments handle it well.

The thing I was wondering while reading the article is what will they do after the fighting is done?

Will the barriers and walls be left in place or dismantled?

Is it easier to take down or move concrete vs Hesco?

I suspect lots of them will remain until they fall apart, especially in situations like lining highways. I bet that the walls in the city, and the enclaves formed by them, will be affecting the culture off the city years after the conflict is done.

<comment><USER19> > Will the barriers and walls be left in place or dismantled?

I was looking at satellite images of the area my FOB was at in Fallujah - <USER2> sign of our presence. We had double stacked hesco all over the place, as well as Texas and Jersey barriers on the road.

> Is it easier to take down or move concrete vs Hesco?

Easier to take down hesco (boltcutter and a knife), impossible to move. Concrete is easy to move with common construction equipment, I'm sure the people of Fallujah found a new use for the barriers pretty quickly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> _Many in the military are thinking about future warfare in complex urban terrain, to include operations in megacities with populations over 10 million._

For what plausible reason would you invade and occupy a city with a population of over 10 million? Here is a list of cities with a population of 10 million or more, please tell me for what good reason any one of them should they be invaded:

Tokyo, Shanghai, Jakarta, Karachi, Seoul, New York City, Mumbai, Manila, Mexico City, Delhi, Beijing, São Paulo, Lagos, Wuhan, Kyoto-Osaka-Kobe, Guangzhou, Chongqing, Cairo, Los Angeles, Chengdu, Dhaka, Moscow, Tianjin, Bangkok, Istanbul, Kolkata, Rio de Janeiro, London, Buenos Aires, Tehran, Kinshasa, Paris, Shenzhen, Harbin, Rhine-Ruhr, Lahore

Maybe invest as much time and money thinking about peace as you do on war and you might not need to bankrupt your country to fight another one. The US's military industrial complex is the ultimate case of _when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail_.

<comment><USER21> Tokyo, Seoul, Kyoto-Osaka-Kobe would very much be on the front-lines of a war involving North Korea, which is way too distressingly possible (NK's rulers aren't exactly known for their rationality in foreign policy).

Pakistan and India have gone to war no fewer than 4 times since their independence not 7 decades ago. It was considered basically a miracle that the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai _didn 't_ spark a war, and the tensions between the two countries remain the most likely potential nuclear war. That gets you Karachi, Mumbai, Delhi (Kolkata is on the wrong side of the country).

Cairo, Istanbul, and Tehran could become war zones in a future Middle Eastern conflict, although the Israeli-Palestinian conflict does seem to have declined in importance to the Arab region as a whole. The risk of a World War III involving China or Russia is probably understated--especially given Putin's responses to the increasing failure of the Russian economy since the 2008 financial crisis.

It is also worth pointing out that many of the megacities that people are concerned about don't exist yet--the number of megacities is expected to grow, predominantly in Africa, a region not known for stability of governments. You might say that solid middle-class countries would help to stabilize the governments, but the Syrian and Libyan civil wars really ought to be clear signs of the fallacy of that belief.

In many respects, though, the main point of a military is not to fight wars-- it's to figure out how to, and be prepared to, fight the next war. Acting as if wars won't happen won't guarantee you peace--indeed, WWII, the bloodiest war in history, was so bloody precisely because its principal actors refused to believe that is was going to happen.

<comment><USER22> > You might say that solid middle-class countries would help to stabilize the > governments, but the Syrian and Libyan civil wars really ought to be clear > signs of the fallacy of that belief.

Neither the Libyan nor Syrian civil war was caused by a failure of the middle class or institutions. In both cases the wars were fomented by external state actors who sought geopolitical advantages at the expense of these nations. In any case your sample size of 2 is insufficient to prove anything

If a war broke out in Tehran no prizes for guessing which nation would start it.

<comment><USER23> hint: U S A

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> All that military expertise in rapid wall-building is going to be useful. Already, there are concrete barriers around Trump Tower.[1]

[1] [http://gothamist.com/2016/11/09/nypd_trump_tower_security.ph...](http://gothamist.com/2016/11/09/nypd_trump_tower_security.php)

<comment><USER25> Similar to the HESCO barriers mentioned above, another measure used there was simply a row of dump trucks full of sand:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/nyc/comments/5bugud/sand_blockade_o...](https://www.reddit.com/r/nyc/comments/5bugud/sand_blockade_outside_trump_tower_on_5th/)

<comment><USER26> They also used such trucks to prevent a vehicle ramming into the NYC Marathon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> It's not really surprising. The Roman armies made surprisingly extensive fortifications when they stopped for the night and won battles they might have lost as a result.

"The more you sweat today, the less you bleed tomorrow."

<comment><USER28> So I've been wondering: was it usually the soldiers themselves who did all the fortification work, or did the Roman armies have 'grunt workers' and engineers that they took with them on their conquests?

<comment><USER27> I'm not sure if they had help from the camp followers, but the soldiers definitely worked on the fortifications.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> In Iraq I was really surprised by how quickly these barriers showed up and how easy it was to build fortifications. I always wondered where they were made, the quality of the concrete and the cost. It seemed there was an endless supply. On the night before the first election alone we basically put jersey barriers up on every major street in the city. Nuts. I always imagined some factory in the desert near an aggregate source where they just poured these things as fast as possible.

</comment><comment><USER30> NRP Science Friday all on concrete

[http://www.npr.org/2012/02/17/147047553/concretes-role- as-a-...](http://www.npr.org/2012/02/17/147047553/concretes-role-as-a- building-block-in-history)

<comment><USER31> Another interesting podcast on concrete from "Surprisingly Awesome": [https://gimletmedia.com/episode/3-concrete/](https://gimletmedia.com/episode/3-concrete/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> So if I'm reading this right, the occupation in Iraq is a tower defense game. I really wouldn't have guessed...

</comment><comment><USER33> Funny how he mentions other wars and successful application of this strategy but forgets to mention walling of Jewish population in occupied Polish cities during WWII. Very successful in limiting activity of terrorists and insurgents from what I've heard.

</comment><comment><USER34> It sounds like concrete is a useful counterinsurgency tool in the same way that placing blocks is against mobs in Minecraft.

<comment><USER35> It's also a good combat tool in the same way placing blocks cleverly will make you a nice mob/animal farm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> In France most of the people have always seen the Israeli concrete barrier as pretty outrageous. The least I can say after reading this article is that I'll need to carefully reconsider the facts with this new lighting in mind.

<comment><USER37> The reason that the barrier is outrageous is not that it's made out of concrete; it's because of its location. It criss-crosses into the West Bank [1].

[1] [http://www.btselem.org/download/separation_barrier_map_eng.p...](http://www.btselem.org/download/separation_barrier_map_eng.pdf)

<comment><USER36> Thanks a lot for the resource, I'll have a close look at the whole [http://www.btselem.org/](http://www.btselem.org/) site.

<comment><USER37> Np. That was just the first thing I found on Google; b'tselem does not have a neutral point of view. But the fact is that the wall is being built mostly on the West Bank side of the pre-1967 borders.

You might also be interested in this talk, which if memory serves discusses the wall's impact on the community: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSkevV- CoO4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSkevV-CoO4)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Interesting. I've been following the war in Iraq but I wasn't aware they were building so many walls.

<comment><USER39> >I've been following the war in Iraq but I wasn't aware they were building so many walls.

couple days of tomahawk cruise missiles barrage followed by 10 years of nation _building_

<comment><USER40> I don't criticize them for it, but protecting vehicles from IEDs and walling off sections of the city is still war activities, not nation building. Crucial stuff, no doubt, but I'm sure the people actually trying to build a nation would rather spend those resources on other stuff if there wasn't insurgency activity.

<comment><USER41> Upscale neighborhoods in my neck of the woods clamor for very tall walls near high traffic roads to block out the sound (and the occasional runaway vehicle). They become a nice canvas for tasteful artwork, or if that's too contentious can have vines grown on them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Alesia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Alesia)

</comment><comment><USER43> For some reason I've become obsessed with our nations decision to elect Donald Trump as president. For that reason my mind drew a connection with US Iraq concrete walls and barriers and all the historic walls humankind has built, and plans to build.

Walls and barriers can offer protection from the "others" but I feel more often then not, they are used to separate territory and control movement. That separation and control comes at a cost. One such cost, is freedom of place.

</comment><comment><USER44> apropos of this, Al-Jazeera has an interesting documentary on this topic: [http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/rebelarchitecture/2014/0...](http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/rebelarchitecture/2014/06/architecture- violence-2014629113556647744.html)

</comment><comment><USER45> Are we witnessing the ascendancy of the castle?

</comment><comment><USER46> Bad article written badly.

Firstly, concrete isn't a weapon, it is a defensive utility, not an offensive one (weapon).

Correcting that, the best defense is people. More specifically, "civilians".

You can now easily defend yourself if you surround yourself with civilians like ISIS has done. Without civilians, no-doubt the US will "precision bomb" your entire stronghold to dust.

That's the whole reason the US spend trillions of $ on precision weaponry and surveillance now. The US is trying to develop weapon systems that, even when defending oneself with civilians, when you walk outside your civilian-filled afghan hut alone to go to the outhouse, a tiny precision bullet from the sky assassinates you in an instant. They are getting there, and it's ever closer to fruition, regardless of how disturbing it all is.

EDIT: I mean, why do you think they are pouring money into drones that can stay in the air for ages, path-changing (steerable) "smart" bullets, face recog AI, flight stablisation, etc.. It's ALL an effort to create the aforementioned precision assassination system.

<comment><USER22> > You can now easily defend yourself if you surround yourself with civilians > like ISIS has done

That is a very dubious assertion. If the stakes are high enough, a sufficiently equipped aggressor will attack a city despite the civilian population within. Stalingrad, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Falluja,

<comment><USER46> A lot of things have changed since the days of Shock and Awe ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> Tell that to Aleppo

[https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/08/16/syria/russia- incendiary-...](https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/08/16/syria/russia-incendiary- weapons-burn-aleppo-idlib)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Sounds like 12ft ladders would have also been pretty effective, depending on which side you were on.

<comment><USER48> good luck getting a 12ft ladder through a checkpoint without being searched

<comment><USER49> A rope would do just as well too.

<comment><USER50> That's why you have to have your archers to protect the castle from the orc hordes :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> My many years of reading comics made me hope this was because The Hulk kept picking up large concrete structures and swatting tanks like flies with them.

</comment><comment><USER52> This is an extremely interesting, non-silicon valley related article, and the comments and really informative as well. One of the best examples of why Hacker News is so great!

</comment><comment><USER53> Amazing that we can send our soldiers, equipment, and supplies half way around the world to build structures but it takes an act of congress to fix our dilapidated infrastructure at home.

</comment><comment><USER54> why don't we drop a grid (across the whole of syria) of concrete covered sniper turrets they'll only have to be small and can just be remotely operated.

<comment><USER55> Or something like T-800s. I'm sure someone could hack the Atlas a bit [https://youtu.be/rVlhMGQgDkY?t=29s](https://youtu.be/rVlhMGQgDkY?t=29s)

<comment><USER54> my concept is a pyramid shape with the top hat being able to raise so that measuring equipment can have a scan of the horizon, if something is a target then a large cannon comes out of the top too. and if someone tries to blow it up then it's covered by meters of concrete to absorb all damage. and if enemies come to attack it then HQ is notified. it can also send drones to inspect papers and personnel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Forced Americanization.

</comment><comment><USER57> Is this submarine PR for Trump's wall?

<comment><USER58> I don't think a concrete submarine would work very well. :)

More seriously, I have no idea. Submarines normally involve an advertisement for the advertising company somewhere in the latter part of the article; no company = no giveaway ad. But knowing Trump and his way with memes, I wouldn't be surprised if the author just had walls on the brain, without having to be paid for it...

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> Perhaps we can recycle the concrete to build Donald Trump's Great Wall

</comment><comment><USER60> Fuck popup windows

</comment><comment><USER61> > weapon ... concrete

If we're going to play this semantics game, then the most effective weapon on the modern battlefield is food. Without food, your people can't do any of the other things they're there to do. Take away concrete, and your military can still do plenty of stuff. Take away food and your military ceases to exist.

<comment><USER62> You can't exactly strategically deploy food.

<comment><USER63> You can certainly strategically fuck up your enemy's supply lines. War is one of the main causes of famine for this reason.

<comment><USER64> One of the ways they did what you describe is by placing these concrete walls around troubled enclaves. They weren't restricting food but munitions had to now be taken through checkpoints.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> Nice to see how these links appear on HN front page now as the new POTUS plans to build a concrete wall...

<comment><USER66> The site linked is a blog/podcast pit on by senior cadets and officers at westpoint, which is just about as apolitical as government institutions come

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> build the walll

</comment><comment><USER68> I don't think any war was ever won by endlessly placing concrete. This has the hallmarks of WW1 trench warfare.</comment>


Should a Cash-Poor Entrepreneur Give Up Control to Keep Her Start-Up Alive? - <AUTHOR> http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/02/should-a-cash-poor-entrepreneur-give-up-control-to-keep-her-start-up-alive/ <comment><USER2> Giving up 75% of your company to some huckster is absolutely ridiculous.

If you give up control the new guy in charge will always be able to get rid of you. You are basically signing up for an employee type of deal, but with a fundamentally broken employment relationship. The real owner will know that you'll be resentful rather than grateful and will try to get rid of you as soon as practical. If your deal on paper is too costly for them they'll find a way to restructure / dilute you in some way to avoid paying out anything substantial.

People get desperate, I understand that. But it should be better to just walk away. The real solution though is to plan things through and not get yourself in the situation of "needing" to raise cash or go bust. There are tons of ways to avoid getting stuck is this situation.

<comment><USER3> You've captured a lot in this comment.

You've characterized Arthur Shorin as a 'huckster' which in many places would be considered insulting. This guy spent 27 years at his Grandfather's company and grew its revenues by 5x [1]. That is some pretty serious credibility in the candy business. Not 'huckster'.

Then you talk about by giving up 75% you lose control. Which is true, but 100% of 0 is 0. But lets imagine that there is a chance that Arthur can grow the value of this particular company with his knowledge of the candy business and his credibility. If your company is valued at $1M and you own 100%, you give up 75% and with the help of that investor it becomes worth $5M. Your 25% stake is now worth $1.25M.

Contrast that with going broke. Having your net worth gro 25% is much better than having it shrink 100%.

Then the last lament, which I have heard many many times, is this _"The real solution though is to plan things through and not get yourself in the situation of "needing" to raise cash or go bust. There are tons of ways to avoid getting stuck is this situation."_

I think of it as the parallel universe theory of wishfulness, because we know that every decision creates two parallel universes, one where you made the right decision and one where you didn't. The "right" answer is not to be in this damn universe but to somehow step across dimensions into that really awesome one. Sadly people get lost looking across at that other universe.

It is the _opposite_ of ridiculous here is to take the offer, not dwelling on all of the 'could have been' things, and resolve to learn everything you can about the candy business from this living legend. They have to take your meetings because they are in it to win, not lose their investment. Our entrepreneur is just hitting 30, spend 5 years learning the candy business (its not taught in business school) and then, start yet another candy business. Her 25% stake in this one is much more likely to be worth a decent chunk of change, she will know the people in the industry, and she'll have gone through all of the stages of getting a candy business from where she got it too before, into the big leagues. It will be _much_ easier for her to succeed, and in that new business she will know _exactly_ how much work it is to get into distribution and _exactly_ how to negotiate with contract manufacturers, and _exactly_ how to find the market and increase awareness. Perhaps we'll add her name next to Wrigley's or M&M Mars.

[1] <http://artuitive.com/bio.html>

<comment><USER4> _Then you talk about by giving up 75% you lose control. Which is true, but 100% of 0 is 0. But lets imagine that there is a chance that Arthur can grow the value of this particular company with his knowledge of the candy business and his credibility. If your company is valued at $1M and you own 100%, you give up 75% and with the help of that investor it becomes worth $5M. Your 25% stake is now worth $1.25M._

This would appear to be a combination of Sunk Cost and Gambler's fallacies. The time and money is gone, the only question is whether this guy can make anything more than she has out of the company. Like I state elsewhere, the $250K he's offering for the stake amounts to only ~$60K per year of time she's already put into it, with nothing substantive but possibilities (without any indication of probability) for the future.

Said another way, this could just be a cheap setup for his friends to nibble away at her remaining ownership now that he's got his. Once they all have her down to nothing, well...it's happened before.

<comment><USER3> I don't doubt for a moment that the guy _could_ be a schmuck. I disagree with characterizing him as a 'huckster' simply because of the terms of the deal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It looks like she already took the deal, or at least some variation of it - <http://artuitive.com/recent.html>

<comment><USER6> That's sad. It's understandable, but I don't think she can keep her motivation going with that deal. I know I wouldn't be able to!

<comment><USER7> Much easier to stay motivated with 25% of a growing company vs a larger share in a failing company. Hopefully she negotiated some better terms, and has some protection from being pushed out and diluted. If so, this could end up being a very lucrative first business for her even if she doesn't make her earn out.

<comment><USER6> That depends on ones frame of mind, doesn't it? If you consider that buy-in a failure - and who in that situation wouldn't? - Would you really be able to push on after that? Would you really want to?

If she maintains control, then sure - that might work, depending on how large amounts of sale she can gain from this move. But 25% doesn't smell like control to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow, 250K for 75% with a 15% max earnout for ultimately 40% on her part? That's $60K/yr for her for a handful of possible gravy. Sad story.

</comment><comment><USER8> She took the deal as written.

It's easy to justify early on, convincing yourself the company wouldn't be able to get off the ground otherwise.

It's easy to justify even later, when you think about how the company wouldn't be where it is today without that cash infusion.

Unfortunately, it doesn't matter if you don't have majority control. It doesn't matter if the company is doing $10mm/year if it got there based on a strategy (driven by the investor) that drives you up a wall. As an entrepreneur, what makes you crazy isn't a lack of funds, it's a lack of control.

Conversely, if you and the investor share a similar vision, it's a legitimate partnership that could work well. You sacrificed a lot more equity, but your company is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it.

</comment><comment><USER9> 25% of something is a lot more than 100% of nothing

<comment><USER4> What's the opportunity cost of working for office manager wages on something you created? The guy offering this deal is a shameless vulture, she should counter (at least) $250K for =<49%.

<comment><USER9> I did not see that she had a whole lot of other opportunities, so the opportunity cost is hard to quantify, would she feel happier just closing the business and going and getting another job, maybe but it did not sound like she was ready to do that.

<comment><USER4> If someone is offering her $250k for 75%, she can get enough to pay for 6mos from a distribution person to get her product out there. It doesn't sound like the Topps guy is offering anything more than "Yeah, you need distribution. Try calling these three guys," which could certainly wind up getting her more business, but it's not guaranteed results so why give up the farm?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It reminds me of a deal with a businessman (but willing to invest): [http://blog.wiradikusuma.com/2011/07/on-using-new- technology...](http://blog.wiradikusuma.com/2011/07/on-using-new-technology- and-setting-up.html)

<comment><USER4> That post appears to be completely irrelevant.</comment></comment>


Storms and Teacups - <AUTHOR> http://acko.net/blog/storms-and-teacups/ <comment><USER2> As I read this, I found myself trying to pinpoint the bits of text that would inevitably be cherry-picked by others for the sake of argument (or simply to make Steven Wittens look bad for having written this piece).

And, while there are certainly quotes that could be misconstrued, I had a hard time seeing how anyone could take away part of this without at least acknowledging the rest. Yes, the author touches on some uncomfortable topics. Yes, I can see how someone might find certain arguments upsetting, or even offensive. At the very least, not everyone will agree with every point Wittens makes.

But the take-away, at least for me, was how vast the grey area is between the "sides" of these topics, and also how much of what we perceive (about people, sexism, and the tech industry as a whole) happens within a bubble. That there are a ton of related and important issues in the wider context, which fail to get addressed when the discussions are so narrow in scope.

There are plenty of other take-aways too, and perhaps I'm missing something that someone else will point out, but overall I found this piece really refreshing, especially after a the other discussions I've read lately, on HN and elsewhere.

\</comment><comment></comment><comment>

Note: I originally responded on this link, which is now dead:

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5434142>

</comment><comment><USER3> This is my favorite line from the article :

Judging a book by its cover is the new tolerance. We throw people into the stocks based on feelings while ignoring intent and assuming victimhood. This is why I fundamentally disagree with equating offense with harassment: it provides unlimited ammo and shuts down discussion rather than giving people the benefit of doubt. It elevates the exception to the norm, by presuming the worst.

</comment><comment><USER4> Very well written. However, I believe he takes the conclusion one step too far. As he says, the issue is complex. The problem can be _both_ sexism and narcissism. The issues can co-exist. Clearly, a lot of women have to deal with a plenty of vile crap. One can be active against rape threats and also _at the same time_ speak out against those that misuse important issues to brew stormy cups of tea.

</comment><comment><USER5> The best analysis on the subject I have seen so far. The fact that "the most reasonable people are now afraid to speak their mind" is a strong indicator that we're heading the wrong way.

<comment><USER6> I believe this is true, and I have a theory that these public spectacles are fuelled and perpetuated primarily by the simple fact that anyone with well reasoned, rational responses tend to keep quiet in fear of being drawn into an ugly discourse - leaving the metaphorical inmates to run the prison.

<comment><USER7> Much in the same way that most reasonable people don't go into the circus that is politics?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _Ever since then, I treat the internet like I would a lovable-but-backwards grandparent, who makes racist comments over Christmas dinner. Yes Grandma, it's all the damn commie jews and faggots' fault, now, who wants dessert?_

This is key. I can't be responsible for the feelings of every person who overhears anything I say. If I say something offensive, call me an ass and move on because I'm not worth giving any attention to.

</comment><comment><USER9> There's some more discussion on a [dead] duplicate link: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5434142>

</comment><comment><USER10> I am the author of the neckbeardrepublic.com that he linked to and I went to great length not to let the name of the site take away from the content and the community I am trying to build.

5% of my subscribers are women, which hopefully goes to show that they too seem to understand lighthearted poke at ourselves.

<https://www.neckbeardrepublic.com/faqs/>

</comment><comment><USER11> _They weren't talking about me, they were talking about themselves._

Often, when people (myself included) write comments we're making an instant, gut reaction. We might have only read the title, the tl;dr, or heard second- hand. But it ignites our insecurity and we lash out. We're no longer wrestling with the author's thesis, we're focused entirely on ourselves.

</comment><comment><USER12>
      "If you're ready for a build server so pretty you could take it to the prom.."

The issue I have with this tweet is that it implies one would not take ugly people, regardless of gender, to prom and comes off as shallow. I also don't think it's a stretch to come to this conclusion as any other generally excepted positive attribute could have been substituted for "pretty" such as "awesome", "fun", etc which wouldn't have the same implications. No, I wouldn't take someone un-fun to prom, just like I wouldn't use an un-fun build server (or at least I wouldn't buy one).

Is there some context or interpretation I'm missing that implies otherwise?

</comment><comment><USER13> > For fuck's sake, way to exhibit absolutely no understanding whatsoever of > the subtleties of patriarchy. Get educated.

Now I cannot stop wondering what kind of patriarchal horror is hiding in robotfindskitten.

</comment><comment><USER14> why isn't this more discussed?

<comment><USER7> Because:

      The most reasonable people are now afraid to speak
      their mind. They rightly fear being shamed and
      harassed by those who scream the loudest of abuse.

<comment><USER15> Allegedly. I see plenty of people speaking their minds, on either side of the issue, and many of them are reasonable. I'm left to wonder how one can be so certain that 'the most reasonable people' (by what metric? In whose judgement?) are 'afraid to speak their mind'.

<comment><USER16> Because the most reasonable people will have well thought out and reasoned arguments and will have tried pretty hard to understand the problem from all sides that it has. And you rarely see that in anything on the internet that is difficult to talk about, you see a lot of quick fire, purely emotional responses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Unrelated to the topic, but holy cow that website looks amazing!</comment>


A new experiment hints at surprising hidden mechanics of quantum superpositions - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/quantum-physics-may-be-even-spookier-than-you-think/ <comment><USER2> Question about the basics. They say:

> And it gets weirder: Measuring which slit such a particle goes through will > invariably indicate it only goes through one—but then the wavelike > interference (the "quantumness," if you will) vanishes. The very act of > measurement seems to "collapse" the superposition. "We know something fishy > is going on in a superposition," says physicist Avshalom Elitzur of the > Israeli Institute for Advanced Research. "But you're not allowed to measure > it. This is what makes quantum mechanics so diabolical."

But (afaik) measuring means disturbing, because you have to exchange some energy with the system in order to perform the measurement.

So in the above quote, if you replace "measuring" by "disturbing", then all of a sudden, the whole paragraph doesn't make any sense ... Can anyone clarify this?

<comment><USER3> >But (afaik) measuring means disturbing, because you have to exchange some energy with the system in order to perform the measurement.

This isn't necessarily true; QM allows what's called interaction-free measurement. Say you have a particle that's in a superposition of two states (or places, or whatever), which I'll call A and B. You do something that'll interact (and detect) it if it's in A. If you _didn 't_ detect it, that means you've effectively measured it as being in B.

You can also turn it around, and use a particle in a superposition to see if an object (that it _would_ interact with if it's in state A) exists; if the object exists, the possibility of interacting with it will destroy interference effects between the parts of the particle's superposition, allowing you to infer the existence of the object. The Elitzur–Vaidman bomb tester ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elitzur–Vaidman_bomb_tester](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elitzur–Vaidman_bomb_tester)) is an extreme example of this: it lets you verify that a bomb is "live" (will explode if interacted with), with only a 50% chance of setting it off.

Another example is the interaction-free version of the quantum Zeno effect. The quantum Zeno effect is that (under the right circumstances) a particle can be trapped in a particular state by continuously measuring whether it's still in the state. In the interaction-free version, you use something that'll interact if the particle ever leaves the state... and it never does. This has actually been done; see [https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms7811?WT.ec_id=NCOMMS-2...](https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms7811?WT.ec_id=NCOMMS-20150415)

<comment><USER4> Very interesting, thanks.

This is a nice video to expose the weirdness of the double slit experiment: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfPeprQ7oGc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfPeprQ7oGc)

<comment><USER5> Does anyone know of _actual videos_ of the experiment? All the videos I find online only show the wave interference pattern, but not the particle-like pattern shown when measuring/observing the particles.

<comment><USER6> [http://www.physicscentral.com/experiment/askaphysicist/physi...](http://www.physicscentral.com/experiment/askaphysicist/physics- answer.cfm?uid=20111017091810)

(I refer you to the photos there, which I think are what you want. I haven't read the text.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Does it mean we can create some machine (let's call it timegraph):

\- before some sport event (NBA finals 7th match) we write a question 'who will win, A (1st team name) or B (2nd team name)?'

\- do 2 experiments with photon and slits:

* (A)

* (B)

\- do not measure their results until tomorrow

\- tomorrow (after the match is over) you measure result of the experiment of the team that won and destroy results of the another experiment

\- (returning to the previous day): look which experiment shows inteference and which doesn't

<comment><USER8> > look which experiment shows inteference and which doesn't

This is also a kind of measurement, and one you can't meaningfully perform before the other. By the time you know the interference pattern, it's already too late to decide whether you want to measure the intermediate position.

You might try to measure without looking at the results, but that doesn't change anything about the fact that the interaction happened. (Superpositions do not collapse by being observed by a human, they collapse by interacting with the rest of the world.)

<comment><USER7> > Superpositions do not collapse by being observed by a human, they collapse > by interacting with the rest of the world.

But the article says: "Measuring which slit such a particle goes through will invariably indicate it only goes through one—but then the wavelike interference (the "quantumness," if you will) vanishes. The very act of measurement seems to "collapse" the superposition." "Aharonov's approach is called the two-state-vector formalism (TSVF) of quantum mechanics, and postulates quantum events are in some sense determined by quantum states not just in the past—but also in the future. "

Doesn't it mean that future measurement 'pushes' superposition into a definite state in the past?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > The apparent vanishing of particles in one place at one time—and their > reappearance in other times and places—suggests [...] a particle's presence > in one place is somehow "canceled" by its own "counterparticle" in the same > location. [...] These putative counterparticles should possess negative > energy and negative mass, allowing them to cancel their counterparts.

I thought negative energies in Quantum Mechanics give rise to senseless infinities that can't be eliminated. What gives?

</comment><comment><USER10> The website is down.

<comment><USER11> [http://www.thewebsiteisdown.com/](http://www.thewebsiteisdown.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is a horrendous article, clearly written by someone who doesn't grasp the basics. I gave up when they conflated how the double-slit experiment demonstrates wave-particle duality with a demonstration of superposition. I can't believe how much of a joke SciAm has become, it makes me sad.

<comment><USER13> You can derive the result by treating the particle like a wave, but that is clearly a false/incomplete model. There is only one particle, the only thing it can be interfering with is itself. It's in a superposition of going through both slits.

<comment><USER12> A single photon will register one click on the detector, it's only with an ensemble of many photons that an interference pattern emerges.

<comment><USER14> You will build up an interference pattern if you fire single photons, one at a time, spread out over as long a time period as you like.

<comment><USER15> Since the interference pattern is built over time, how do we know a particle is actually a wave that interferes with itself and not a particle that selects a different path from a set each time it is fired?

<comment><USER16> If it was acting like a particle and selecting a different path each time, the expectation would be only two peaks, each following line-of-sight to the source:

        —————|—|—————

What is seen is many peaks, as if it was a wave:

        —+—+—|—|—+—+—

<comment><USER17> That doesn't solve the problem, because the question is really how the set of paths available to the particle is constrained.

If you go Full Copenhagen, there are no waves, no particles, and no paths. There are only evolving probabilities - which act in unintuitively non-local but predictable ways - and events which appear to sample one possible result from the current state of a probability density.

The probabilities can be composite, which allows for entanglement and superposition.

The probability part is fairly well understood, or at least fairly easy to calculate.

The exact nature of an event/measurement/whatever is still a complete mystery.

But there is nothing in a naive wave/particle/path model that makes it any less mysterious or easier to understand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> What intrigues me about the entire situation is that the scientists are not standing back and looking at all the assumptions they use.

Simple things like that the belief that there are "virtual" particles "popping" in and out of existence and they don't affect the path of "real" particles like photons or electrons.

Simple things like what processes is the matter that exists each side of the slits undergoing in relation to the particles that pass through the slits and how each affects the other.

Simple things like what is a photon or other such particle.

Is the particle/wave duality idea hindering or helping the further understanding of these processes? Is quantum mechanics the best approximation that we have or are there other ideas that would simply the models in use?

I liken it to a programming project that has gone down one path based on a series of assumptions and when these assumptions are found to be incorrect or different from what is actually there, it becomes very difficult to change direction without doing a complete rebuild.

If one looks at the history of investigations over the last 100 years or so, one finds that there are a variety of ideas that never gained any traction at the time of proposal. Yet, today appear to give a handle on some of the puzzles that are being found. These ideas are ignored because they didn't gain traction at the time of first proposal.

Mayhaps, it would be worth spending some time to investigate to see if they have any merit. They may not, but it can't hurt to see if they have.

<comment><USER19> _Is the particle /wave duality idea hindering or helping the further understanding of these processes?_

Is that an idea? I thought that it was an observed fact. Some people believed that light was a wave, some other people believed that it was particles so they tried their assumptions and both calculations were correct, as long as you don't mix them. Maybe it makes more difficult to understand reality, but sweeping duality under the rug doesn't seem right.

<comment><USER18> We observe certain things, the interpretation is the question. I am in no way saying that duality should be swept under the rug, but rather have the entire interpretation and information held up to the light to see what other information can be brought to bear to the problems this duality give rise to.

As I intimated, should the observations that give rise to the interpretation that there are "virtual" particles that pop in and out of existence be brought to bear on this particular problem? There are those who would have you believe that the quantum vacuum is not empty but full of these "virtual" particles. Does this idea give any explanation to why we see a wave phenomena? Or this there something else that might give a better handle on the subject matter.

Is how we measure adding additional things that give rise to the effects we see? There are so many questions that I do not see being asked.

We should not be confusing the evidence we see with the interpretation we come up with. Too often, the interpretation of the facts is treated as if it is the fact.

<comment><USER20> One thing kinda like it is the optical mechanics used to describe a mirror, they use virtual points that are beyond the mirror (if my French Lycée memory serves me well) but still produce the correct answer.

In a way you could say that wave physics (from the Lycée too) behave like described by the equations... even though they migh be represented as in a fluid (ripples on water molecules-meta-material).

Sometimes it's hard to reconsider the model and the perception of reality we have.

Nice to see you kept commenting after having so many downvotes ;)

<comment><USER18> Well being ill in bed does put a crimp in responding. What I find interesting is the different views that come out when someone does make a comment that others find not satisfactory. Further grist for the mill in understanding people and the nature of the universe around should be welcome.

The wonderful thing is that there are so many questions and so few real answers. It means that we are able to have fun in investigating the universe around us. The child's "why?" is a wonderful question and should be delighted in.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>