Want airline food? Take Amtrak - <AUTHOR> https://www.railwayage.com/passenger/intercity/want-airline-food-take-amtrak/?RAchannel=home <comment><USER3> I took the Empire Builder a couple weeks ago, and the Lakeshore Limited + California Zephyr last year. As much as I enjoyed the trips, I have to admit that they longer lines are incredibly impractical. Amtrak is operating at a huge loss per passenger ($32 on average)[1], and the prices aren't even _that_ much cheaper than flying. It's viable for people with more time than money, but most of the passengers are just weirdos who enjoy wasting their time taking the train cross-country in 2018 (like me).

In any case, I'm sorry to see them thinking about nixing the dining car, since it was one of my favorite parts. The food is surprisingly good (if not over priced), and it's a great way to meet random people from around the country. Coming from the liberal New York tech-bubble, I definitely met a bunch of people I wouldn't have otherwise had a chance to talk to.

But at least they're not getting rid of the observation car! Sitting in it through the Rockies on the Zephyr was a great way to see that beautiful stretch.

[1] [https://www.downsizinggovernment.org/transportation/privatiz...](https://www.downsizinggovernment.org/transportation/privatizing- amtrak)

<comment><USER4> I don't disagree with your comment, but the thing that often gets lost in these discussions is that at least for the Empire Builder, people generally aren't using it to go from Chicago to Portland or Seattle.

Sure, a flight from Chicago to Seattle would be much faster and cheaper. But what about getting from Minot to Whitefish? Or Spokane to Wenatchee?

I personally use it 2-3 times a week to go between Bingen and Portland. Most of the people I ride with eastbound are going to Pasco or Sandpoint or Spokane, not Chicago.

<comment><USER5> Most of those trips appear to be under 3.5 hours each way... Why not drive since it's likely faster and cheaper than the train?

<comment><USER6> That's just about the distance that I prefer to take Amtrak over driving or flying (mostly I travel SF <-> Fresno). I can get work done, unlike when driving, and I don't have to deal with all the pains of getting to the airport early and going through security.

<comment><USER7> Unsolicited advice: get yourself global entry.

<comment><USER8> Unsolicited advice: Not everyone is into sacrificing money to avoid bullshit security theater that has been going on for 17 years.

Trains have the beauty of being able to go to the station, hop on the train, hop off. No wait or lines. I've had great trips taking the subway to Union Station then a train to San Diego. If trains were more affordable, widespread, and faster, it'd probably help the US immensely.

<comment><USER7> It may sound a bit arrogant, but global entry is 100$/5yrs, and TSA-pre is 80$ for similar amount of time.

If you are well-off to be using air transportation, it would be worth it. Though, I might be agreeing with you on the utility of excessive security check. As a foreign national, I can tell you that US requires 4x the security checks in foreign airports in inbound flights to US.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've taken the California Zephyr between Chicago and SF a couple times now, it's a wonderful experience. 2 1/2 days of solitude from a world with increasingly few remote corners.

If you're at all interested, I recommend riding soon. These admittedly impractical long-distance routes are going to be the first to go when budget cuts necessitate it.

<comment><USER10> Google say it takes 31h to drive between the two -- any idea why the Amtrak takes twice that time?

<comment><USER11> If you're driving alone -- a reasonable assumption if you'd be in the market for a train -- a 31-hour "Google Maps" roadtrip takes 3 days, assuming ~10 hours of "map-time" driving, followed by 6+ hours of civilized sleep.

The biggest constraint is "civilized" sleep, which is best had in a real bed at a real hotel, whose locations are constrained by settlements and whose typical availability hours begin at 15:00 local time and end at 11:00 local time. When you're driving west and passing through timezones, you can gain an extra hour that you can use for rest, while if you're driving east, you're racing doubly against the clock, as you're losing an extra hour you could be sleeping in a hotel at every timezone.

My longest "map-time" drive sprint (not including stops) between sleeps is 19 hours, which was filled with delirium towards the end, and I would never recommend. I've done a 16-hour sprint to similar results, and have done multiple ~12-hour sprints with no issues whatsoever. In my experience, 12 hours is around the upper limit of how much "map-time" distance one can _safely_ drive between sleeps, especially if one is to perform a comparable drive for three consecutive days.

<comment><USER10> Yes, but trains don't need to sleep. I'm not saying I'd recommend driving 31h at a time, I'm saying I don't understand why that would be so much faster.

<comment><USER12> Plenty of stops and built-in delays with overlaid industrial trains. Additionally, you aren't going generally as fast as a car can, especially on long stretches of rural highways.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Amtrak's current food is far superior to airline food. I'm speaking as a regular Empire Builder, Sunset Limited, and Southwest Chief first class passenger.

The only disappointment is that for some reason, I can't get food served in my room on the Sunset Limited. No problems on the other routes.

It's kind of sad if Amtrak has to sacrifice freshly-prepared food for airline heat-n-eat fare. But if it means an additional passenger car can be added, I'm OK with it.

Full trains are a bigger problem than fresh food for Amtrak. (Though its biggest problem is a shortage of trains and routes.)

<comment><USER14> Depends on where you are flying. ANA is my favorite airline (Japan), but Lufthansa (Germany) has better food I think.

EVA (Asia) food isn't great, but United and Delta are still worse imo.

<comment><USER15> My experiences with ANA have been pretty fantastic. One time I was flying to Japan and the plane were going to get on was hit by lightning as it landed. Apparently the FAA then requires a mandatory rebooting and testing process that takes 6 hours. ANA did three things here that really separated them from other airlines:

1\. During the 6 hour wait, despite there being no news, I could walk up to the counter and say "Hey just checking again to see if there's any update?" and every single time, without fail, they were friendly, polite and apologetic for the situation.

2\. When we got on board the captain got on the loud speaker and immediately apologized profusely "for our incompetence." The plane was struck by lightning, a _literal_ "act of god" and the captain still apologized to us.

3\. When we landed in Tokyo they handed us about $200 in cash to deal with taking a cab since it was much later than expected arrival.

I just can't imagine this kind of treatment from an American airline, even on international flights.

<comment><USER14> Thts cool, yea ANA seems to get it. I also appreciated the bidets on the plane toilets :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I can echo the Zephyr experience. Fantastic service. We were late, but I would highly recommend it. If nothing else you can simply show up 10 minutes before departure and get on. Then just get off a minute or two after your arrival. You're treated like a human on a train.

</comment><comment><USER17> I've only taken Amtrak once, from Portland to San Francisco. One of the best parts was having dinner in the dining car. Two older ladies invited me to join them because I was by myself and we had a nice chat while cruising through the mountains. Sad to see it go, but I guess it was only a matter of time.

<comment><USER18> I've done the same trip by myself, met so many interesting people in the dining and observation cars.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I have a strange love for the Acela Express' cheeseburger. If I wasn't sitting in a meeting right now I would go to Penn Station now and take a ride to Newark for that burger.

<comment><USER20> wow I'd have guess that was untouchable. Now I'm going to have to try it. Since ShakeShack appeared in Penn station, that and a tall beer or two has been my post-work Acela fare.

<comment><USER21> It's microwaved. It's not good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I have traveled Amtrak quite a lot - across the country on the Empire Builder, Southwest Chief, and California Zephyr. And many other routes.

I think the food is usually decent - the veggie burger is reliably edible.

What I can say is terrible - and what has caused me to cease using Amtrak - <USER2> the presence of the DEA.

In case you haven't experienced this, the DEA sometimes raids specific sleeper cars at a station, demanding money, guns, or drugs. I had _no idea_ about this until it happened to me.

It was absolutely, positively terrifying. I (and my partner) were repeatedly threatened with violence if we didn't allow our bags to be searched (which of course we didn't). Our 2.5 year old was screaming in terror the entire time.

They refused to tell of their names or let us see the numbers on their badges - they only flashed their badges for 250ms at us.

We recorded them on both of our phones and a camera. At one point, a DEA agent physically tried to swat my phone out of my hands.

They told us that we had been selected "randomly", but I found out soon after that a colleague of mine, seven cars back, had also been "randomly" selected. I later found out from an Amtrak employee that we were the only ones on the train who had been raided and that it was never random - they research people in advance and select who to raid. Apparently being involved in any way in crypto-blockchain tech is enough to trigger such an event (indeed their primary questioning to my colleague was about his hardware wallet, which they took the majority of their time with him to inspect and photograph).

The Amtrak employee further told me that she and others are terrified of these agents - that there had been times when they themselves had been subject to their antics and also to unwanted advances at their departing stations. She said that they have learned to just leave the train and stay out of the way and also encouraged me to complain to Amtrak or file a lawsuit, saying that if we were able to get the DEA off Amtrak we'd be doing Amtrak employees a big favor.

If Amtrak can't protect me against armed thugs coming into my sleeper car and terrorizing my family, they are simply not a viable solution for transportation IMO.

I encourage you to reconsider Amtrak - if you ride often enough, this will happen to you.

A quick google search will show you that this is a common, if largely unknown practice. Here are some links:

* [https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/08/10/dea-travel-re...](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/08/10/dea-travel-record-airport-seizures/88474282/)

* [https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/10/the-per...](https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/10/the-perils-of-going-west-on-amtrak/500651/)

* [https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-09-29/dea-bribed-a...](https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-09-29/dea-bribed-amtrak-workers-for-free-rider-information-long-after-exposure-paid-single-source-30m-report-says)

* [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2015/05/12/...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2015/05/12/another-asset-forfeiture-outrage-2/?utm_term=.aaeb5d526a22)

<comment><USER23> wow I am really surprised this was triggered by cryptocurrency. this is terribly authoritarian and disappointing. if you don't mind me asking are you a US citizen? if so contact your local congressperson and file a complaint with the DEA office.

has your friend ever had anything similar happen traveling by air?

<comment><USER24> > wow I am really surprised this was triggered by cryptocurrency. this is > terribly authoritarian and disappointing.

It is authoritarian and disappointing, but to me unsurprising. The cryptocurrency world associates pretty hard with drug trafficking. Coupling that with someone choosing a train over what might be an easier flight could be read as avoiding TSA.

The low security of Amtrak likely makes it a common smuggling route.

<comment><USER23> I would be surprised if even 0.1% of drug trafficking is done with cryptocurrency. The big banks have been caught red handed doing industrial scale money laundering for cartels and producers.

<comment><USER24> I would be very similarly surprised! And indeed, big banks have been and are very guilty of aiding and abetting.

Yet, I would also be very surprised if the percent of actual cryptocurrency usage that is legitimate even begins to rival that of typical currencies. And I may have missed the connection, but I fear I do not see how the illegal behavior of several large banks bears on the use of cryptocurrencies in narcotic markets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> As a regular rider of Germany's night trains: what's the problem with eating in a roomette (sleeper car cabin)? First of all I already hate it when the cabin mates see me totally groggy - much less a whole fucking dining car. In addition, no dining car can fit as many people as there fit in a _single_ sleeper car, much less a whole train composed of 10-15 sleeper cars.

<comment><USER26> DB doesn't operate night trains since 2016.

<comment><USER25> The ÖBB has taken them over - including the cars themselves.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> One thing I remember about the dining car is that if you're traveling alone you sit with other people in a 4-person booth. It's been at least one way to get away from staring at a screen/window alone and talk with people you may not normally encounter.

This said, maybe Amtrak is trying to optimize for the people that ride it - from my west coast anecdata it usually skewed to lower-income people needing to get somewhere on short notice (where air prices got too much), or worked for the govt in a way that it the price was discounted. (And to a smaller extent thieves, adventurers, photographers, and people afraid of flying)

Thinking aloud, it'd be interesting if Amtrak could pair with a food delivery app so folks doing a long distance trip could order something from a midway stop.

<comment><USER28> I'm a West Coast, medium-income, short and overnight traveler, who doesn't work for the government, isn't an adventurer/photographer, and doesn't fear of flying.

I ride Amtrak frequently (more than fly). I rather like the Amtrak steak. I think your model is wrong.

<comment><USER27> Thanks for the input. My model was just anecdata from riding a few times. Realized my negative sentiments are all from overnight trips.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This is sad. I spent six weeks traveling the entire Amtrak system in the early 1990s and it was a wonderful experience. And the food was good.

</comment><comment><USER30> I'm all for this move. If amtrak is to succeed, it has to do so on the basis of efficiency and service. If people aren't willing to pay the prices neccessary to cover the cost of food, and unions are unwilling to reduce the cost of production, then we're at an impasse and should cancel the service in order to free up operational capital for running more service and improving service in other ways. Trust me, people will find ways to eat! Making food a money sinkhole is contrary to history and experience. It makes sense as a loss leader, not when the system as a whole is a loss.

</comment><comment><USER31> I didn't have a good experience the last time I took Amtrak and had dining on board. It was the only time in my life I felt I was discriminated against in a dining setting. It was near the end of dinner time and food was likely running low so i didn't expect much. However after seating us, she took on two other groups and continued to fully serve them drinks and meal before coming back to our table for drinks. And by this time, nearly every item we wanted of interest was out of stock. With this kind of service, I rather they just serve premade airline quality food.

<comment><USER32> Were you dining à la carte or without a reservation? Maybe the later arriving parties had already had their food set aside in the kitchen because they were traveling on a ticket with meals included and/or had a reservation. I travelled only once with bedroom accommodations and recall we were assigned reservation times when to show for our pre-paid meals.

<comment><USER31> Yes without a reservation. However, the first half of dinner hour was for reservations then they took people in without reservations. By the time we were called, anyone with reservations would have long been accommodated. I understand that food might run out but they could have atleast asked us about drinks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Midwest Express had crazy good food. Miss them. Eggs Benedict with mimosas on the way to Milwaukee. At low fare pricing with business class seating. No wonder they folded I suppose. Good while it lasted.

</comment><comment><USER34> My wife and I celebrated our 20 year anniversary with a 7 train, 3 week trip last year. The food was good for the first couple of weeks, but I think 3 weeks was a week too long - All things can eventually be monotonous.

We went out and scored a bottle of horse radish in DC to spice up the surf and turf... That helped.

The most picturesque of the routes we took for us were the California Zephyr and the Empire Builder.

[https://raintreesbytrain.wordpress.com/](https://raintreesbytrain.wordpress.com/)

</comment><comment><USER35> I'm actually happy with this, having taken around five >24hr Amtrak trips over the past few years. The dining car is pretty great overall, but the announcements for it get really, really grating really quickly. Because all announcements go over intercom, _everyone_ hears it - maybe 20 announcements through out the day. Really breaks the mood if you packed your own meal.

</comment><comment><USER36> I used to go to a business conference every year in SF (I am from the UK). Also, in the summer a few friends and I would regularly take 9/10 days off and rail around Europe, seeing new cities, exploring and having fun.

A few years ago, I had a bit of holiday available, so took it straight after the conference in SF to travel from SF to New York (with the most part of the Zephr train).

I explained what I was doing to one American at the conference and he couldn't get his head around it. "But you can fly" and "but it is cheaper to fly" and "but you can get their faster by flying". I explained I wanted to be on the train, unwinding, watching America move past my window, speak to all sorts of people. Go to sleep in one state and wake up in another. After a long chat, the American was happy to leave me be.

The next day I am talking to someone at the conference and the American from yesterday turns up, I do a little nod and wave to acknowledge him, but he comes over and interrupts. He is with 5 other Americans and says to them "this is the British guy I was talking to you about!" and I had to explain to more people what I am doing and why. It was then like a snow ball effect for the rest of the conference.

I spoke to so many Americans that had never been on a train, which seemed just as bizarre to me as I seemed to them.

Anyway, the Zephr ride was amazing, there was a drought and heat wave in California and Chicago was in -15°C freezing temperatures. I saw the land scale change from sky scrapers to empty space, climbed up and around the Sierra Nevadas, went through your after hour of flat farm land and so the outside change from sun to snow. I spoke to so many people from devout Christians from the South, to a train driver/operator (who told us when the driver wasn't doing as well as he could and explained how various parts of the train work), to a retired couple who are travel regularly to see their kids, to college students to military men.

In the observatory carriage you get an amazing view of the country going by and sometimes have guides come on board to give you some history and information about the area. This was supplemented by eager locals who told me even more and pointed out wildlife as we travelled.

I slept brilliantly in my bed each night and enjoyed nice food three times a day. It was like being on a package holiday where you eat too much, drink too much and sleep too much. Needless to say I really enjoyed it and have been on a few more similar journeys in the US since (but the Zephr was the best).

When I arrived in New York I was only there one night but that was fine for me, I was more interested in the train ride.

After a tiring week at the conference, the train ride was such a breath of fresh air, a chance to decompress and relax, being forced to do nothing except enjoy the surroundings, have a few days off from appointments, to dos, worries and stress.

I have been to quite a few American cities, but felt I got a better sense of what America is from taking that train ride.

</comment><comment><USER37> So Amtrack is downgrading their food to the same level as their far more successful European counterparts and everyone panics and sees it as a sign of their imminent demise.

I think people are overreacting a bit but then again i am used to the cramped overcrowded European railway network which likely have much different problems to what's seen in America.

</comment><comment><USER38> I logged in to post my ode to the San Francisco<->Chicago California Zephyr... but looks like it's already pretty well-covered.

It's really incredibly beautiful and great for thinking. SF<->Seattle on the Coast Starlight is also wonderful, those two routes are absolute gems.

Worth doing them now if you're at all interested; they might well not operate in a few years. Amtrak USA Rail Pass is also an exceptionally good value if you're looking to see a lot of the USA in a short period of time —

[https://www.amtrak.com/take-the-trains-across-america- with-u...](https://www.amtrak.com/take-the-trains-across-america-with-usa- rail-pass)

</comment><comment><USER39> Somebody get this man a plastic spoon!

</comment><comment><USER40> Doesn't the low pressure in a plane contribute to the blandless. Not a problem on trains.

<comment><USER41> The recipes used account for this, increasing spicing. The low humidity is also a factor I think.

The larger struggle is logistical, not culinary. You're eating what amounts to a recently-frozen TV dinner, designed for the least-spice-tolerant palate, engineered to not dry out in the time between being reheated and served.

Even if you can nail the flavor, there's no way to get a good texture (imagine good french fries, or breaded chicken) when you account for what the food has to go through to be served hot in the air.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I would love for there to be some actual high speed rail in the USA but there really isn't. The only Amtrak anywhere near me is if I drove 70 minutes or so to Indianapolis to get on a train that left at 6am and got to Chicago at 10 am. No thanks.

</comment><comment><USER43> Want decent airline food? JAL, ANA.

</comment><comment><USER44> Took the Amtrak from San Diego to Anaheim last year business class. It smelled like a sewer. Wifi was unusable. Is that normal?

<comment><USER45> Amtrak wifi is typically pretty bad because it's cellular, so it ends up roaming between towers constantly and you have a ton of people all on the same network. As for it smelling like a sewer, that is not normal, no.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> The steak on the Acela is great!

</comment><comment><USER47> > Yes, you heard me right, and I believe it's part of a plan to dismantle the > National Network—shutting down most, if not all, long-distance trains, to > focus on the Northeast Corridor, Midwest (Chicago) and California short- and > medium-distance services, and state-supported trains.

That would be fantastic.

</comment><comment><USER48> Taxpayers (and freight customers) shouldn't be subsidizing a novelty form of transportation for rail fans. If there's a subset of people who want this service, they should pay sufficient fares to cover the cost of service. Amtrak isn't doing that.

<comment><USER49> "Yes, Amtrak is subsidized. So are all competing forms of transportation. Highways cover only 51 percent of their costs from all user fees, including the gas tax. The rest is paid by subsidies of one form or another, especially from local property taxes. Airlines receive massive subsidies in the form of airports and the air traffic control system. The day after 9/11, the airlines ran to Capitol Hill and were immediately given billions of dollars in additional taxpayer money, no questions asked."

[http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/dont- railroa...](http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/dont-railroad- amtrak/)

<comment><USER48> Airports are largely self-funded by user fees (or via federal funds which come from other user fees and fuel taxes), and airlines (except for bailouts in 2008-2009) are almost entirely commercially funded.

[http://airportsforthefuture.org/did-you- know/](http://airportsforthefuture.org/did-you-know/)

Air is the true competitor to the long-haul train in the US. It is cheaper and faster. There are separate arguments for/against transit and regional trains, but long-haul passenger rail, which is what is discussed in TFA, is essentially a novelty.

<comment><USER50> There's the small problem that air travel is environmentally unsustainable, with no fix in sight. It should be heavily taxed to account for the env. externalities.

<comment><USER48> Taxes to account for environmental externalities (in the case of air travel, noise, CO2, altitude-related pollutants are probably the main things) make sense for everything. Air travel beats road and rail in some cases on this, doesn't in others. Taxes and thus pricing in all the costs would let consumers decide.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Good, good. The sooner Amtrak alienates its remaining customer base, the sooner it can be scrapped. There are only a few parts of the country that are settled densely enough -- and broadly enough -- for passenger trains to make sense. Any moves toward consolidation of service to only those areas should be welcomed.

<comment><USER52> Why do you want rail to be scrapped?

<comment><USER51> I don't want to scrap it all, just the parts that require hefty subsidies to serve places that have realistic alternatives. US households usually have cars and for those that don't, intercity buses tend to serve even very tiny burgs. So most people most do have realistic alternatives.

Trains are the right solution in some cases. Commuter rail often makes sense. And in some densely populated regions, intercity trains make sense too. But in most of the US, because of the distances between cities, cars and planes work better.

<comment><USER52> _the parts that require hefty subsidies to serve places that have realistic alternatives_

You realize roads are built & maintained entirely at public expense? But we are so used to taking roads for granted.

Public money spent on rail, is public money that doesn't need to be spent on roads. So, IMO, the first question is how many passenger-miles we get per dollar on rail, and how many per dollar on roads.

<comment><USER53> You also can't discount the benefits of modal redundancy in transit. Trains don't just carry people around -- they also take drivers off the road. When NJTransit's rail-workers union was agitating for a strike a few years ago, the state DOT advised drivers to expect a few hundred thousand extra trips per day to make up for the service outage.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Man Drives 'Transformer' on Streets of Beijing, Gets Pulled Over by Cops - <AUTHOR> https://yellrobot.com/man-builds-diy-transformer-robot/ <comment><USER2> Alternative source: [https://nextshark.com/chinese-man-transformer-beijing- police...](https://nextshark.com/chinese-man-transformer-beijing-police/)

</comment><comment><USER3> The original concept for the Transformers, called Diaclone, was that they be human-operated military machines disguised as innocuous road vehicles, that could transform into humanoid battle mechs. Hasbro and Marvel came up with the "alien robots from Cybertron" backstory after licensing the toys from Takara. Takara actually liked the Hasbro concept better and continued to market the same toys in Japan now with Transformers branding, as well as commissioning Japanese Transformers animation and comics.

No real reason for these fun facts, except whenever I read one of these about a guy driving a Transformer-like robot down the street I think, that's how it originally was supposed to be, human-operated transforming mechs.

</comment><comment><USER4> I hope there's a build thread somewhere on this. Being able to see construction details would be awesome. There's got to be some interesting solutions to suspension, steering, power transmission etc.

</comment><comment><USER5> Why are they calling it transformer? Looks like a low-tech mecha.

<comment><USER6> >Unfortunately, the local police or possibly Decepticons pulled over the large robot and told him to get off the roads.

I think they wanted to use this line.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> reminder that the one true transformers movie, the one from 1986, is coming back to theaters 9/27.

[https://www.fathomevents.com/events/the- transformers-1986-mo...](https://www.fathomevents.com/events/the- transformers-1986-movie-event)

</comment><comment><USER8> That might be the most awesome news story of the day.</comment>


Show HN: A crowd sourced front-page of the world wide web. - <AUTHOR> http://scobido.com/ <comment><USER2> Is it an entirely separate service? So far it doesn't appear to match HN's top news.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes it is a seperate service. Everyone can post as long as the ML algorithms don't mark you as a spammer.</comment></comment>


We're in a Golden Age for Amateur Radio - <AUTHOR> https://www.ke6mt.us/2018/05/hf-ham-radio-on-a-budget-qrp-labs-and-qrpguys/ <comment><USER2> I have a license because my high school teacher made us do it but I never quite understood what hobbyists do with it. I see how it can be a useful skill to have for people in a certain profession but as a hobbyist what do you do? Do people just talk to random people on the radio? I'm genuinely curious.

<comment><USER3> It's an incredibly broad hobby. I just got my first award by downloading digital images (SSTV) from the ISS using a $35 handheld radio, and that didn't require any talking at all.

There are tons of things you can do, so many that it's hard to sum up. It also combines well with other hobbies. Or it can be a symbol or inspiration of its own kind, an objective reminder that more science in your life is a good thing.

One of the biggest advantages is the practically free education. If you upgrade your license you'll learn a lot of really fascinating stuff. I really wish I knew about propagation and differences between the various bands and band schedules back when I was a kid, fooling around with my dad's Patrolman radio. I also learned how effective logging can be, and have applied that in just about every area of my life.

Finally, there's just something about breaking the silence and making that call when you're out in the middle of nowhere. Even if you're the world's biggest introvert, you might end up helping somebody by keeping your radio turned on and tuned in.

[https://old.reddit.com/r/amateurradio/comments/9c9n0q/my_for...](https://old.reddit.com/r/amateurradio/comments/9c9n0q/my_forthever_contact_was_an_emergency/)

<comment><USER4> > I also learned how effective logging can be, and have applied that in just > about every area of my life.

This statement really piqued my curiosity. Would you mind expanding on it?

<comment><USER3> Sure, as a radio operator, even just a listener-operator, you quickly find that A) you are expected to keep a log, and in many situations _must_ keep a log (contests are a good example), and B) a log easily runs circles around your memory. As it turns out, logs also provide a helpful context for bridging the gap between the subjective and objective lenses, both of which are helpful and needed for solving problems, reaching goals, etc. no matter the activity.

In many areas of life, I knew I was really far too subjective due to my research into my personal psychology (I'm a professional coach) and wondered about different ways I could be _more_ objective without actually becoming an external sensing-measuring device. :-) Reading about logging tools like SINPO[0] helped me intuitively identify new ways of logging & spreadsheeting my way through different activities and situations.

As an example, when I get sick, I now engage this logging skill rather than just feeling my way through the illness, and I get to see some really cool emergent properties of this new personal system. I usually monitor my vitals in addition to writing down some subjective 1-10 ratings of how I feel in terms of general wellbeing, nausea, depression, and anxiety as the day passes. I have an autoimmune condition and while I can't just take a pill and cure that, my logs have shown me the peaks and troughs of amplitude within every passing hour of severe illness, when those illnesses come. I discovered that as I watch this data I can be more nuanced about the way I treat my sick time, and ended up actually getting productive work done that I _wanted to get done_ while "sick", by recognizing the high points and patterns in rest and energy buildup. "Riding the waves" with more precision, so to speak. There is also the analytical side of this, where I'll occasionally look back through my logs and see icons like a circled "!!!" which means "wow you tried something new here and it worked amazingly well, please add this to your toolkit for this activity from now on."

Because you're effectively engaging more of your "sensor suite," you kind of feel more like the space ship that can navigate the asteroid field vs. the one that really gets banged up. When you fold in the analysis step, it's like you're now better able to approach even more treacherous asteroid fields--your machinery is getting upgrades over time.

Incidentally, when I meet up with a doctor, I can be much more accurate about what happened and when.

I do the same logging thing at work, and now keep logs as part of just about every project. In some cases this is a literal mini-blog on a web page, and in other cases it's a text file tucked somewhere 15 folders deep, and in still other cases it's a small mark in the margin of a paper journal page.

I also discovered that this helps with other hobbies. I run RPGs for my kids and develop my own table-top RPGs, and keeping a log is a huge tip for a really effective campaign. Later on the log can become a published, written narrative (e.g. Record of Lodoss War), or mined for new ideas.

I used to struggle to keep a personal journal, but I've since found that I can more easily approach the practice by starting from the "Stardate" mindset and being a tad more robotic regarding current circumstances than I can by trying to keep the personal history that used to come to mind when I'd consider journaling.

Another thing I've learned is that we are extremely brittle about this practice, as a society. Our thinking about keeping logs tends to be black & white (a common sign of lack of education on the matter) and we hesitate or think in terms like "OCD" when people around us really leverage this practice[1]. IMO this is really unfortunate.

Anyway I hope this expands on it a bit!

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

1\. [https://qz.com/507727/a-man-who-recorded-his-every-sneeze- fo...](https://qz.com/507727/a-man-who-recorded-his-every-sneeze-for-five- years-might-have-a-fix-for-your-pollen-allergy/) (example)

<comment><USER5> Just to chime in, I saw an old-timer keep a daily work log in a text file, and that appealed to me so I started it too. This was in 1998, and to this day I still keep writing new entries to that same text file pretty much every business day. Old test account credentials, notes on what got done, ticket numbers, ideas, unfinished todos, the works. It also helps with time sheets at the end of the month :-)

<comment><USER6> Rather like back in the day people like Jefferson would keep a daily journal. Hand-written in a paper notebook of course, and still available 250 years later, without worrying about hardware and data conversion issues.

<comment><USER7> Let's not be too dramatic, ascii and utf8 will be readable in 250 years, that's a certainty.

As for the hardware issue, his notebook was kept because he was an important person. Average Joe's notebook had a much greater chance to go into the landfill.

That's the same for today persons' digital files: Average Joe laptop goes to landfill but I'm sure presidents and whatever's files are archived by State or their families, same as they did for the paper notebook back then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Cell phones are laughable single points of failure. Everyone brought this upon themselves from decades of bad engineering choices, if you consider resilience an objective. Once upon a time there was a terrestrial network of small autonomous telephone exchanges. Your phone numbers were tied to geographical locations. It seemed 'inconvenient'. Now you or your signal often have to travel hundreds of miles (as the crow flies) to find a central office that is required for call completion, even between two phones 10 feet apart. Even so- called 'land line phones' are tied into this network now because cell phone providers have remade the old Bell system in their own image and require, of all things, Internet connectivity and utility power to boxes on poles all over the neighborhood to work.

Expect it to fail all at once. You will not be disappointed. What this means in terms of the value of amateur radio is not hard to figure out.

<comment><USER9> Thank you for posting this.

 _> Now you or your signal often have to travel hundreds of miles (as the crow flies) to find a central office that is required for call completion, even between two phones 10 feet apart._

And people generally think this is okay. Until something big happens and everyone reacts to it by trying to call other people, the central office gets overwhelmed, and the entire system stops working right when it's needed the most.

Then you get something like AWS or Azure outage. And you see engineers saying "it's fine, there are so many services down, no one expects out to work".

Then you get something like that big Oculus Rift shutdown. No big deal, right? But do you know that that some industrial control systems use certificate signing?

I've just finished reading The Machine Stops by E. M. Forster. If you think about it, the kind of systemic failure he describes is not as ridiculous as it might sound. Over time, people start taking large technical systems for granted, like forces of nature.

<comment><USER10> The Machine Stops was one of the first science fiction stories I ever read, and one I will never forget.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've always been curious about this hobby but never jumped in. The technology is an interesting curiosity to me but speaking bluntly what would probably give me the impetus to really spend time on it would be tapping into any kind of underground content or social experience that exists. For instance I read that Art Bell got started by broadcasting his show over shortwave bands, what a fascinating experience it would have been to be hanging out with those guys and listening to their conversations through amateur radio.

What is the easiest way for me to start listening in and discovering what's out there on the airwaves? Do I have to buy hardware or are there purely software/online options? Also I live in Thailand so most of the local chatter would probably be in Thai which is hard for me to follow.

<comment><USER12> Online SDR receivers are a great way to listen using other people's equipment:

[http://www.websdr.org](http://www.websdr.org)

Reverse Beacon Network and PSKreporter are excellent tools to see how people's signals are propagating:

[http://www.reversebeacon.net](http://www.reversebeacon.net)

ttps://pskreporter.info/pskmap.html

<comment><USER11> Oh man. This is amazing. Going to require at least one full evening to figure out WTF I am looking at though :)

<comment><USER13> Check out the WSPRnet map to get a visual indicator of propagation conditions, by seeing which automated stations can hear which other automated stations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'll also toss out that there is a great amateur radio community on Reddit... where you can avoid some of the more... seasoned radio operators, their opinions and health conditions ;)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/amateurradio](https://www.reddit.com/r/amateurradio)

</comment><comment><USER15> The title of this piece is "HF Ham Radio on a Budget: QRP Labs, QRPGuys, CW Academy" and probably should at least just be the first part. The article doesn't really talk about being it a golden age for amateurs except for the existence of SOTA.

It's actually a pretty bad time for HF right now because of low solar activity; in fact, it's probably one of the worst times in recent memory to try doing HF beyond SOTA.

<comment><USER16> Why is low solar activity bad for amateur radio?

<comment><USER17> HF signals need to bounce off the ionosphere to travel any distance. The more ionized the ionosphere is, the more effectively hf radio waves refract off it. High solar activity leads to higher ionization.

In ham terms, this is know as "band openings", eg when ionospheric conditions allow hf at a given frequency to refract off the ionosphere.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The problem is that many on the bands are miserable people. It can be discouraging.

The radio is a lot of fun. (I love Morse.) But a sizable percentage of the radio-ers make you want to do something else.

<comment><USER19> This is a big problem. I find CW to be populated with less annoying people.

<comment><USER20> This reminds me: has anyone done a survey of the relative Democrat/Republican/Other distribution of voice hams vs CW HAMS?

I would be interested in the results.

<comment><USER21> In hundreds of contacts on CW I've never once talked politics with anyone. I understand that isn't your question but the bandwidth is too low to waste on useless garbage. That and CW operators are a tighter community so an opposing political opinion isn't as divisive with that much common ground.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I guess it might be of as old fashioned, but there's nrarely a "Resource Limit Reached. Error 508" with radio.

Shame, I was interested in reading about this.

<comment><USER23> Well, I once was operating from the Caribbean on 40m and had such a huge number of people calling me, I couldn't make any contacts for many minutes. I guest that would be a 508 error.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> A question for the international crowd, I want to take the license exam. I live in France, and the closest exam center is like 300 Km away, exam dates always on weekday, so I'd need to take a day off for that. I live near Monaco, had a look but I can't find anything regarding exams, some people hold licenses but they don't answer to my emails asking about it. Is there a comfortable way to obtain the license around here?

<comment><AUTHOR> Surprised nobody has responded. What entities have you tried reaching out to? I'm sure that if you find the right person your quest to get licensed will be greatly streamlined.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I agree we are in a golden age of ham tech but older hams than me (like my friend GI0LZR) talk about days when the radio bands were more open. This is ham speak for sending/receiving more frequent long distance calls. I think we may be in a season of bad radio weather. The Sun usually gets the blame.

I get a buzz out of the low power stuff and don't see the fun in pumping out signals using 1 or 2kw of power. I have sent and recieved low power messages 6k miles using less than 5w.

Transmitting low power signals, like wspr, using a raspberry pi is great fun. And before anyone mentions it I do run my noisey signals through a low pass filter :-)

2IOJXA

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm almost 40 and never quite managed to get into amateur radio, but my kids are getting old enough that they might be interested. Reading articles like this gets me excited to finally give it a try.

<comment><USER27> do it! you can get started with some cheap SDR stuff to "see" whats out there. I you want to participate it is really a great hobby. I can't wait until my daughters can participate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I am interested in ham radio, but I'm uncomfortable with broadcasting my call sign around (as required by the FCC) since in the US it's super easy to get someone's name and home address from their callsign.

For currently operating hams: do you just deal with it, or is there something you can do to protect your privacy?

<comment><USER14> You can get a PO Box or forwarding service as your FCC address.. doesn't have to be street address just mailing addy.

<comment><USER29> I thought the FCC wanted to know where your station was. Doesn't this defeat the purpose?

<comment><USER30> No, they only need to be able to contact you.

However, as far as I know, even if you change your listed address, your _past_ addresses are still published, unfortunately. There was some movement towards ending that, but I don't think it was successful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Great read! Thanks for the website info! Taking my General Test on Tueday. I have picked out a Yaesu 818 as my first HF radio. Look forward to QRP and SOTA.

<comment><USER27> awesome! i need to get my butt up some of the summits around me and do some SOTA work myself. I've got all the stuff, just need to do it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Submission is mistitled. Should be "HF Ham Radio on a Budget".

<comment><AUTHOR> The title used is more descriptive of the intent of the article, which is clear if you RTFA.

<comment><USER32> I did RTA and I understand the reasoning. I just disagreed in this case because although the HN title was one of his main points, that wasn't _the_ main point and the article wasn't structured around it.

If that had been the title and the main point, he'd be emphasizing a lot more than the great cheap HF gear that's now available. (There's a lot more that's really awesome in AR than what you can do with basic HF gear.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I would like to have a go at building a receiver for listening to CW with my kids. I don't want anything on the computer, just something I can solder that will work. Is there a kit that has a good success rate? I'm in the UK if that matters.

<comment><USER34> Check out the Pixie kits, they're extraordinarily cheap, like $5 on ebay cheap.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwtErr2E1kQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwtErr2E1kQ)

<comment><USER35> Not a pixie. They are super simple, but require considerable skill to use.

For example, they are morse code only.

<comment><USER34> He specifically asked for a CW device.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> These hobbyists may save our hide after an apocalypse that levels the Internet.

</comment><comment><USER37> If you're a software engineer, and know even a little electronics ( V=IR, basic components, schematics , etc), you can get your technician's license with 2-4 hours study using [https://hamstudy.org/tech2018](https://hamstudy.org/tech2018) . There are many exams every month, and it's only $15 (use [http://www.arrl.org/find-an- amateur-radio-license-exam-sessi...](http://www.arrl.org/find-an-amateur- radio-license-exam-session) to find a local exam)

Think of your HAM license as a driver's license for radio communications, and you'll see it opens up a lot of opportunities & functionality. You can do voice simplex (radio-radio), chat on repeaters (bunny-hopping to reach distant stations), DMR (same as above, but digitally encoded), CW (morse code with low bandwidth & long range), APRS (digital beacons for GPS, weather, etc), and more.

Most people experience radio through a commercial (aka unlicensed) product like GSM/CDMA (cell phones), WiFI, FM-broadcast, FRS (walkie talkies), CB Radio (trucker's radios) etc. That's a great intro, but so restricted it's kind of like comparing bumper-cars to driving a car.

It's more than a just a hobby too. Most emergency response teams get licensed. The Red cross sent Hams to puerto rico when the network went down. Sailors still use radio to communicate.

Since your first radio is $30 and the technician's exam is $15, it's a very easy and rewarding hobby to get into.

</comment><comment><USER38> Are those cheap Baofeng radios decent? Was considering getting into this and using one of those as a starting point (to listen at first, obviously, not broadcast until I've got a licence.)

<comment><USER24> They're decent for their price... but you won't hear much, as they're stuck in 136-174 MHz (some AM airband, but the radio is FM) and 400-480MHz (local PMR446, some pager networks operate here).

Also no digital modes, and max bandwidth (25 KHz? don't remember) limits what you can postprocess in the computer.

Otherwise, they're fine for low bandwidth stuff. They work great as ghetto amplifier for 433MHz applications.

To get started I'd rather recommend a RTLSDR dongle, they're under $10 and you can listen (though not transmit) from 24 MHz to 1.7 GHz at 2MHz bandwidth: you can capture images from weather satellites at ~145MHz, scan for weather stations at 433 MHz, various telemetry at 868/915 MHz, airplane tracking, L-band satellites... for some of these things you'll need some sort of filtering and amplifying though.

<comment><USER38> Thanks for the reply, very useful. I have an SDR dongle around somewhere already I think.

Are there any entry-level (price wise) handhelds you'd recommend? It's not always hugely easy to carry my laptop around with me sometimes.

<comment><USER24> If you have a (rooted?) Android phone, you can use the dongle with an OTG cable.

Otherwise, a Baofeng DM-5R should do the job, it has digital modes compared to the cheaper and more popular models. Still limited to FM in analog, which is a pity for airband (where, by the way, you should never ever transmit in).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I want to get started with packet radio. I don't know anything about it. Where do I start?

<comment><USER34> Start with APRS --- a lot of people aren't even aware that there are packet radio networks that exist on VHF outside of 144.390M, but no matter where you are in the US, you probably will be able to get something going on APRS.

There are all sorts of ways that you can go with packet radio. Here are a couple ideas:

1\. Start monitoring APRS traffic in your area.

I have a blog post that I wrote about repurposing a $5 scanner from a swapfest with a broken USB headset from a junk drawer, and turning it into a receive- only APRS igate. [1] I run that on a raspberry pi, you can see the current status of it here: [2]

You can do this with an RTLSDR, or a Baofeng into your laptop's microphone, etc. This is the easiest way to just listen and hear for yourself that there is traffic around you, and I think that will motivate you to get further into it.

2\. Start putting cool packets onto APRS!

If you have a Baofeng, you can make a cheap TNC out of a USB soundcard, an appropriate break-out cable (available for ~$15 on Amazon), and any computer running soundcard TNC software. I strongly recommend Direwolf if you are playing with a Raspberry Pi (or just a laptop running linux), and APRSDroid if you have an old phone in a drawer. Something to watch out for is the quality of the signal that you put out, you need to tweak the volumes so that things aren't being overdriven. Nobody will hear you otherwise, and you'll be jamming the band for others.

A cool project idea is to put together a Baofeng-powered APRS security system in your car, with the radio stowed in the trunk and tied into the ignition switch. You could track your car at any time! (I started a project like this but never finished it --- the Baofengs use something weird like 7.4V, and my Raspberry Pi was powered at 5V, and I never could think of a proper solution for my ground loops, and how to put it together in a clean package. I have a TH-D72A with a built-in GPS and TNC that I use for APRS in my car on longer trips, for now.)

I bought a cheap weather station, and I was able to get wee_wx to start pulling data from it, and sometime over Christmas I'm hoping that I'll find the time to start putting that data onto APRS. The sky is really the limit, there are dozens of interesting data formats on APRS besides positional data and weather data.

3\. Non-APRS packet radio!

This is where the real fun is. Here in Wisconsin I have the following site to see where traffic is [3].

One of the craziest things I've done in Ham radio is hooked my TH-D72A up to my laptop, connected via raw commands to a neighboring station speaking AX.25, left a message on his BBS, and then issued a command which had me hopping from his VHF receive _to his HF rig_ , which forwarded me onto another BBS over HF. The connection was very broken up, but enough came through that I know it happened, and that was enough for it to put a wide smile on my face.

4\. If you live in Seattle, check out HamWan.

Hams are allowed to run standard 2.4GHz Wi-Fi equipment at higher power than normal people, provided that we stick to the FCC requirements (station identification in the form of our SSID, no encryption, etc.) I really don't know much about this project, but it's cool stuff. Fun to see what WiFi is theoretically capable of. [4]

[1]: [https://nsielicki.blogspot.com/2018/04/repurposing-old- radio...](https://nsielicki.blogspot.com/2018/04/repurposing-old-radio- scanners-to-make.html)

[2]: [https://aprs.fi/info/a/W9NLS-2](https://aprs.fi/info/a/W9NLS-2)

[3]: [https://www.qsl.net/n9zia/wapr/bandplan.html](https://www.qsl.net/n9zia/wapr/bandplan.html)

[4]: [https://hamwan.org/](https://hamwan.org/)

<comment><USER40> > _Hams are allowed to run standard 2.4GHz Wi-Fi equipment at higher power > than normal people, provided that we stick to the FCC requirements (station > identification in the form of our SSID, no encryption, etc.)_

Are you sure about that? It doesn't sound right to me, since 2.4GHz is not a ham band. But I would be happy to be corrected!

<comment><USER27> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_radio_frequency_alloca...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_radio_frequency_allocations#Very_high_frequencies_and_ultra_high_frequencies)

notably: 13 centimeters – 2300–2310 MHz (lower segment), 2390–2450 MHz (upper segment)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Backup link: [http://archive.is/tH0Ae](http://archive.is/tH0Ae)

</comment><comment><USER42> If you want to learn Morse Code I can recommend using these Anki decks:

\- Easy start but without punctuation. You might want to add that [https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/950182698](https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/950182698)

\- Pretty good but hard to start with [https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/3645353967](https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/3645353967)

\- There are a few more Decks: [https://ankiweb.net/shared/decks/morse%20code](https://ankiweb.net/shared/decks/morse%20code)

<comment><USER21> Sorry to be that guy but it is for good reason. Don't learn Morse Code visually. The time it takes to convert an audible signal into a visual representation is simply too long to be able to decode a real Morse Code signal.

I learned visually at first and the amount of effort it took to unlearn it was unbelievable. You have to learn by hearing the audible character and have your brain immediately translated it through shear practice and repetition.

If you have to convert it to a visual dot dash symbol in your head you will be too slow to ever have a conversation on the air.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I guess it's all relative. I am just getting into ham radio and I am shocked at how expendive HF rigs still are. The QCX kit is $50 sure and it's really well designed, but it takes hours to assemble and it's difficult to debug without already having a radio or other test equipment. If I want to get into Arduino, I can buy a fully built board on eBay for about $3. Other HF radios on the budget end are a couple hundred bucks. It's one of the few areas where you can save significant cash building kits, which is kind of cool.

</comment><comment><USER44> I'm interested in getting into HAM radio to communicate with/via satellites (or the moon), what's a good resource to get started?

<comment><USER45> AmSat has some good articles for getting started with satellites:

[https://www.amsat.org/introduction-to-working-amateur- satell...](https://www.amsat.org/introduction-to-working-amateur-satellites/)

Moonbounce is challenging even for experienced hams.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I was a HAM in the US, mostly just to get internet access via packet radio (and play with higher power wifi) back in early 2000's. I participated in a few field day's which were really awesome. The community was pretty cool.

I didn't take this hobby over to Europe when I moved, and let my license lapse. How's the community over here (specifically the Netherlands)?

<comment><USER47> Can't speak to it specifically - yet - but I've been in NL for a few years now and haven't converted my licence as it requires some paperwork hoops on the non-NL side that I haven't bothered to figure out all of yet. Probably easier than doing the exam in a tweede taal though.

But I was at SHA2017 where we had a temporary repeater hoisted up on a cherry- picker, and someone who had boated in was doing APRS (I brought my HackRF so could dabble on the edges of legality :)

But one of these days, soon I'm sure, I'll get my HAREC thing sorted and convert it over.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Remember that we used to have antennas in the our cellphones back in the 2000s? Well, where did it go? This is a pretty interesting history about an Amateur Radio hobbyist going to a Amateur Radio conference and Fractals!!!!

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mPefLpoz50](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mPefLpoz50)

<comment><USER49> That's not where they went.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> I'm interested in amateur radio but always feel that I can't get anything done without a big honking antenna?

<comment><USER51> For VHF and UHF , that's not generally true - e.g. a simple quarter-wavelength antenna (exactly what it says on the tin - a stick antenna that is 1/4 of the wavelength on which you intend to operate - so e.g. for VHF 2m band, we're talking ~20" long, and for UHF 70cm it's even shorter) is perfectly sufficient to work repeaters, and to communicate with others directly within the radio horizon.

For HF, you do need a large antenna, but it's not necessarily what people think of when they think "antenna" \- i.e. not a tower with a giant vertical rod. An HF antenna can just be a piece of cable of the right length and type, properly arranged; and it's usually strung more horizontally than vertically. Using trees for that is pretty common, too. Something like this:

[https://hamcall.net/images/BuckmasterOCFInstallDiagram.png](https://hamcall.net/images/BuckmasterOCFInstallDiagram.png)

<comment><USER52> >For VHF and UHF,

For VHF and UHF it matters that your antenna is very high up (on a pole, roof, or whatever w/line of sight if you want more than a couple blocks) more than your antenna 'size'. So even VHF/UHF/Microwave you still need something "big" unless you're just communicating with your next door neighbor.

There's no magic in RF. The cell system for phones only works because they pay the big bucks to put cells on every high point they can.

<comment><USER51> If you hold the transceiver in front of your head while speaking (as you naturally would), that already gives you 2-3 miles of radio horizon, depending on your height. If the person you're talking to does the same, that range doubles. Of course, that's on flat ground, without hills etc getting in the way... but still, you're usually looking at a mile or two of range, at least.

[http://www.miklor.com/COM/UV_HowFar2.php](http://www.miklor.com/COM/UV_HowFar2.php)

[https://hamradioschool.com/how-far-can-i-talk-with-my- radio/](https://hamradioschool.com/how-far-can-i-talk-with-my-radio/)

And, of course, beyond that, you'd just use repeaters anyway. There's no shortage of VHF and UHF repeaters, and because they take care of antenna height on their side, it's not uncommon to hit one 10-15 miles away with a handheld.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I posted this the other day: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18375562](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18375562) Amsat and Ariss fundraiser to support new infrastructure for the ham stuff in ISS.

</comment><comment> rv-de [https://www.reddit.com/r/amateurradio/comments/9q15t1/the_re...](https://www.reddit.com/r/amateurradio/comments/9q15t1/the_real_problem/)

</comment><comment><USER53> This is great. I love that old things, old paced stuff comes back. We all need to take a break to re think how we do things that entertain us. Spotify, Netflix, Facebook, etc, are just making us more miserable and less social in real life.

</comment><comment><USER54> What is a Toroid used for and why does it need to be winded differently for different bands? Is it what generates the signals that get transmitted by the antenna?

<comment><USER23> Basically a circular inductor with a ferrite core instead of air which allows it to be more compact, have a higher inductance per volume and a greater q factor (bandwidth). A different inductance (different number of wire turns) is needed depending upon several factors, especially if you are using them to make a resonant circuit (a circuit that responds to a particular frequency). It does not generate the signal. I hope I got that right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> What's the most lightweight, portable ham radio?

Is it comparable to a smartphone?

<comment><USER45> I guess it depends on what you mean by "ham radio". Here's a tiny surface mount transmitter that is barely more than a gram and operates on amateur frequencies.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMkaN21K5S0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMkaN21K5S0)

Gerber file, bill of materials, etc are freely available. I'm looking at modifying the design into a beacon for a rocket radiolocation project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Obligatory comment for new radio enthusiasts: "ham" is not an acronym. Ham not HAM :)

</comment><comment><USER57> I'm curious, do hams ever troll one another as internet users frequently do?

<comment><USER56> Ohhh yes. That would occur on 14.313 MHz on the 20m band. Don't find yourself caught calling "CQ" on that frequency. It is where lots of bad language and name calling occurs.

<comment><AUTHOR> The FCC occasionally does a sting operation to shut down someone doing malicious interference, but there are a few frequencies where a handful of griefers congregate. I suspect the reason the FCC ignores it is that they generally only bother each other and limit it to one or two frequencies.</comment></comment></comment>


One space between each sentence, they said. Science just proved them wrong. - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2018/05/04/one-space-between-each-sentence-they-said-science-just-proved-them-wrong-2 <comment><USER2> This seems to be one of those many instances where I would trust more results obtained using one of the principles of experimental economics: When asking participants to do things that require effort, provide a reward that correlates positively with their performance on the task.

In addition, let's say there some validity to the result that two spaces provides a slight benefit to a subpopulation of readers. Does it matter? Is what is true for the general population true for your readers? What is the cost to YOU, the author? Maybe through self-selection, most of your readers are those who are comfortable with single spaces.

I typed a lot of papers a mechanical typewriter. Then I started using WordStar. In either case, I learned myself and it never occurred to me to leave two spaces after a period. No one around me complained. Nor did I ever see anyone use two spaces after a sentence. And, I was around typewriters a lot with a journalist father and a secretary mother.

I did not learn about this rule until I came to the U.S. for grad school to witness the horror of people hitting the space bar twice after each period on WordPerfect.

Apparently, being completely oblivious to the alternative was not much of a hindrance.

</comment><comment><USER3> Flagged.

<comment><USER3> No, in all seriousness are you kidding?

>Reading speed only improved marginally, the paper found, and only for the 21 "two-spacers," who naturally typed with two spaces between sentences.</comment></comment>


Apple.com does more to protect your password, study of top 100 sites finds - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/01/apple-com-does-more-to-protect-your-password-study-of-top-100-sites-finds/ <comment><USER2> It should be noted that this is just e-retailers, not the top 100 sites generally. Google was mysteriously missing and it took me a bit to realize why.</comment>


The Missing Fundamental - <AUTHOR> https://hatsunearu.github.io/dsp/audio/electronics/software/2018/04/08/missingfundamental.html <comment><AUTHOR> Hey, this is my first blog post--I got motivated to write one because of all the cool stuff I find on HN.

I wanted to write a single blog post on bass boost (as mentioned at the end), but I wanted some early feedback on my writing so I split the original blog idea into two.

Obvious points for improvement are the code (playing more than N seconds, etc) and writing some CSS for it, but I'm looking for some readability issues in writing if there are any.

Thanks for reading!

<comment><USER3> Well, it was an awesome blog post. I have actually lost sleep pondering how itty bitty iems manage to have bass response. Thanks.

<comment><USER4> IEMs can have pretty good bass response just because they don't need to generate much volume. Hold them about an inch from your ear and turn the volume up high enough to hear from that distance. Very little base at that point.

<comment><USER5> It's not just the low volume - it's the airtight seal. A very low frequency sound wave is a slow sequence of low- and high-pressures. With an airtight seal, it's much easier to sustain pressure differences from 1 atmosphere from a long time. With no seal, the high or low pressure leaks away from the region near the ear.

This is also why open-ear headphones tend to have lower bass response than closed-ear headphones. For example, compare these frequency response curves:

[http://graphs.headphone.com/index.php?graphID%5B0%5D=853&gra...](http://graphs.headphone.com/index.php?graphID%5B0%5D=853&graphID%5B1%5D=4323&graphID%5B2%5D=&graphID%5B3%5D=&scale=30&graphType=0&buttonSelection=Update+Graph)

The open-ear Sennheiser HD650 has around 10-12 db lower bass response than the closed-ear Fostex.

Even more dramatic, look at the dynamic response to a 50hz square wave - <USER2> Sennheiser's amplitude drops completely to zero before the next jump of the square wave, while the Fostex manages to maintain about 1/3 of the original air pressure in the headphone cup by the end.

[http://graphs.headphone.com/index.php?graphID%5B0%5D=853&gra...](http://graphs.headphone.com/index.php?graphID%5B0%5D=853&graphID%5B1%5D=4323&graphID%5B2%5D=&graphID%5B3%5D=&scale=30&graphType=3&buttonSelection=Update+Graph)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Maybe my headphones aren't too good (airpods), but when I remove the fundamental I hear octaves, thirds, and fifths of the fundamental as chords instead. I also have a bit of musical training as well, so that might be helping me distinguish.

EDIT: If I turn the last four sliders all the way up (5-1-3-5), I can barely? hear the tone of the root below the first 5 (the second slider). I can't hear any tones of the very first slider, possibly because there aren't any tones between that and the jump to the next octave.

</comment><comment><USER7> Maybe I don't understand exactly what I'm supposed to be listening for, or maybe my ears are bad, but I don't think I can hear the missing fundamental unless it's actually being played.

I also don't quite follow how arbitrary harmonics can result in a specific note--is the idea that if you conjoin any 2 or more harmonics of Note X, their pitch will sound like the pitch of Note X even though it is not technically being played?

</comment><comment><USER8> I have a device that does this (among other things). It's a discontinued product called the Boomcloud Boomstick. It really does make mediocre headphones sound like they produce deep bass.

There have been other similar devices, particularly the SRS Wow! Thing is still popular among musicians, and commands high prices on eBay.

I bought the Boomstick for a DIY BT speaker project, that I had to put on hold. I may pull myself together and actually finish it now :-)

</comment><comment><USER9> > It is as if the brain knows that the harmonics are related to the > fundamental in integer multiples, and calculates the fundamental all > subconsciously.

Isn't this fundamentally (no pun intended) how overtones work?

<comment><AUTHOR> Overtones are another name for harmonics. The only thing that's different is the naming scheme: the first overtone is the second harmonic, and the Nth overtone is the N+1th harmonic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I like the writing a lot, perfect balance for people without musical training (and an interest for sound). Well done!

Side note: the JS to play sounds throws an error in Safari TP, works fine in FF.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is really cool!

I was able to hear the fundamental with its slider turned all the way down and the harmonics up using decent in-ear headphones</comment>


Steve Jobs on why Xerox failed - <AUTHOR> https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_1rXqD6M614 <comment><USER2> I do believe this is what's happening at Blizzard at the moment. The company has completely derailed in the last year. [1] And the fan response over several core franchises has been _very_ vocal. Activision is literally ripping the soul out of these guys in order to justify crap like microtransactions; a concept that wasn't very Blizzard-like up until recently.

1: [https://kotaku.com/with-activisions-influence-growing- blizza...](https://kotaku.com/with-activisions-influence-growing-blizzard-is- cutting-1831263741)

<comment><USER3> I had a few conversations with Blizzard devs during the now infamous panels.

They have no idea why people are angry with them. None. But that's not surprising, because they have no idea why their company was loved in the first place. They view users that balk at the imposition of exploitive business models as entitled internet trolls (nevermind that their most famous and successful product owner is literally a famous and successful internet troll).

How could they be so disconnected? Well, it seems there's a massive normative shift following WoW. Most of the staff I spoke with date to after the MMO's massive money-spewing success. They're in their mid-twenties and didn't really play early Blizz titles at the time they came out. The few greybeard OG nerds I spoke with that were there still _got it_ but didn't _care_. The ones that cared left, the ones that didn't stayed.

Maybe they got tired of fighting back against the suits when Titan failed to become WoW2.0? I don't know.

Morhaime's departure, and his replacement, are emblematic of this this shift to post-WoW money inurement.

This is the first year I'm considering skipping my annual visit to Blizzcon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This interview in it's full form lives on Netflix. It's great from begging to end.

"Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview"

[https://www.netflix.com/title/70243590?s=i&trkid=13752289](https://www.netflix.com/title/70243590?s=i&trkid=13752289)

<comment><USER5> +1 this was my whole reason for commenting on this thread.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The Touch Bar is the perfect example of marketing people hijacking the product to push sales without helping customers.

<comment><USER7> I tend to disagree. It's effectively still doing the same thing by offering functions of the current application with a single direkt input.

Previously as F1-12 Buttons they were overloaded with OS functions such as brightness and audio controls, moving the application Functions to the fn+ combo key.

With the Touch Bar not only are buttons only available when applicable, they also allow for custom inputs such as a range instead of a binary click and their meaning is a lot more explicit with icons and text as opposed to F1-12

I actually think it's more of a application support problem. If more applications offered better touchbar support I'd be happy about forgetting a series of hot key keystrokes.

<comment><USER8> "It's not our niche technology, it's the damn developers not supporting it!"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I remember that back then it was very hard to figure out which Apple computer to buy. Model names had proliferated, thanks to the marketing department, and you needed a spreadsheet to figure out the differences between them. One of the best things Steve ever did was to reduce the offerings to just "four great products." [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkVs4ZqWgN8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkVs4ZqWgN8)

<comment><USER10> Ironically it has become too confusing to know which Iphone to buy. The X* naming convention isn't helping one bit either.

<comment><USER11> How is it hard to discern X vs XS compared to 7 and 7S?

<comment><USER12> Is X the newest? I don't really Apple, but I feel like models of the 8 or 9 came after the X.

I assume X means 10 like 'OS X', so I would assume it's the 10th gen iPhone, but I don't know.

<comment><USER13> the X models are the newest. There is no 9, the 8 is the last "non-X" model.

<comment><USER14> So whats the difference between the XR, XS, X max (is that a thing? Feel like I've heard that). Which iPhone has a notch? Which one has a home button still?

These are questions I've heard over the holidays from friends and family, questions that were unthinkable when Jobs ran Apple.

<comment><USER11> > XR, XS, X max... Which iPhone has a notch?

All of them.

> Which one has a home button still?

None of them.

> So whats the difference

<>S is the refresh, same as it's been for years. Max is the physically larger size, what used to be called the "Plus".

> These are questions I've heard over the holidays from friends and family, > questions that were unthinkable when Jobs ran Apple.

I mean, Max/Plus is annoying, but I think Jobs was alive when iPhones refreshed with an S so this seems like a silly statement.

<comment><USER14> There are now 4 phones consumers are supposed to be aware of. On top of the naming scheme being confusing, most people who asked me during the holidays think Xs is just a smaller version of the X.

Frankly X was just a dumb name.

<comment><USER11> Sounds like the people you know don't want to do entry level reading on a $1000 purchase.

<comment><USER12> I don't know, would you intuit the model called the X or the XS (read: "excess") as being the bigger, better phone? How many others might have thought it was "Xtra Small"?

And even if you knew the XS was the refresh, would guess the XR preceeded or succeeded it? R comes before S, so maybe S is the newest?

Personally, the X naming feels like kind of a gaff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It happens to a majority of companies when they grow. Product innovation seizes to exist as market share grows ('don't mess things up! don't be too risky!') and Sales takes ownership.

<comment><USER16> Well isn't it something like: in times of wealth sales & marketing take over to promote growth (like a CMO becomes the CEO); in rough times it's finances that take over to cut costs and prevent losses (like a CFO becomes the CEO)...

The thing is, for some big companies Product is under the wing of marketing in some way... even if product releases are from a selected internal catalog to fill local market needs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> For Tim Cook it would be a good idea to take a closer look at this video...

<comment><USER18> I'm not a big Apple fan. I've bought some of their laptops after the transition to Intel, but slowly switched away when macOS became less of a priority.

That said, I think Apple is sitting on top of another blockbuster, similar to the iPhone in terms of impact, if they know how to play it well. I'm referring to the Apple Watch _equipped with_ a non-invasive glucose sensor.

I realize that they have a bit of a regulatory battle to fight before releasing it. But the potential is immense. It will change how people eat, not just diabetics. It's pretty well established science now that if we reduce the area under the glucose curve (read minimize glucose spikes), we will age more slowly and we will reduce metabolic disease enormously.

<comment><USER19> > I'm referring to the Apple Watch equipped with a non-invasive glucose > sensor.

As someone who has dated someone that is diabetic and now works with someone who is diabetic--someone who likes to sit at the cutting edge of technology and is even using hacked equipment to improve his experience--I don't think we have that technology yet.

<comment> jf- We don't, the latest commercial technology consists of disposable sensors that require a probe to penetrate the skin. Whoever brings something non-invasive (and reusable) to market will be raking it in whether they're apple or not.

<comment><USER18> PKVitality has a sensor array that is pretty much non-invasive: [https://www.pkvitality.com/ktrack- glucose/](https://www.pkvitality.com/ktrack-glucose/)

There's also an alternative using radiofrequency: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4641327/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4641327/)

<comment><USER20> > PKVitality

That product doesn't exist yet, the video on the home page is 18 months old so it's probably not feasible / accurate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Steve Jobs essentially described what was later coined "The Innovator's Dilemma"[1], but in a more general way.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator%27s_Dilemma](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator%27s_Dilemma)

<comment><USER22> Actually he didn't.

The Innovators Dilemma is about making a product that "overserves" the market and for companies being afraid to introduce a cheaper "good enough" product.

Also the author of the Innovators Dilemma was laughably wrong about the iPhone.

[https://medium.com/@jakewheadon/why-i-think-clay- christensen...](https://medium.com/@jakewheadon/why-i-think-clay-christensen- missed-the-iphone-and-what-it-means-for-wearables-befaf6c682bb)

<comment><USER23> > The Innovators Dilemma is about making a product that "overserves" the > market and for companies being afraid to introduce a cheaper "good enough" > product.

Isn't that essentially the problem Apple now has with:

* The high-end iPhones going up in price because of more expensive components, but not providing features users would be excited to upgrade for

* Not bringing a mid-range phone to the market

<comment><USER22> Whether that's Apple's problem or not is tangential to whether or not Jobs was describing the Innovators Dilemma.

But Apple's main problem is not the high cost of phones. Apple's problem are:

* The iPhone is good enough for most people and the upgrade cycle is lengthening. The iPhone 6s from 2015 is faster than midrange new Android phones and is actually still faster than even high end Android Phones in single core performance. No one is going to upgrade to a mid range phone. The iPhone 6s is still getting OS updates and probably will for at least two more years.

* the average selling price of an Android phone in $265 - $315 depending on which source you believe ([https://www.cnet.com/news/why-your-iphone-and-android-will-c...](https://www.cnet.com/news/why-your-iphone-and-android-will-cost-more-in-2019/)). Even the low end iPhone SE was selling for more than that.

The 7 is a midrange Phone by iPhone standards and it is $475. If they dropped the price to $350, it would still be more than the average Android user would be willing to pay.

Yes the $329 iPad is proof that they could make a profitable iPhone that was good enough for most people. They charge an extra $130 for cellular and GPS but the chip couldn't cost anymore than $30.

* I doubt that Apple could make a phone that was cheap enough to lure Chinese buyers and still be a decent phone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Wow. This applies to so many large tech companies today that have monopolies on their primary product and have repeatedly failed to really innovate since.

</comment><comment><USER25> I try to consume anything Steve says in these types of video. He might have been a terrible person sometimes but he is the greatest business man ever.

<comment><USER26> I think the important question we all need to ask ourselves is whether he was successful _because_ he was an asshole, or whether he was successful _despite_ being an asshole?

A lot of people seem to think that 'asshole' is a stepping stone to success. With no evidence to support it either way, I try to live presuming that it was 'despite'. That Apple could have been ever greater had he managed to be assertive and strong without being abusive.

<comment><USER27> I vote "despite".

I've seen this a lot. People are assholes when young and then they mature and manage to maintain their effectiveness while inflicting less damage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> It's from Triumph of the Nerds, worth watching the whole thing (3 hours long)

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

<comment><USER29> It's on Amazon if you want to watch it: [https://www.amazon.com/Triumph-of- the-Nerds/dp/B01N0KK5JQ](https://www.amazon.com/Triumph-of-the- Nerds/dp/B01N0KK5JQ)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Reminds me of the online travel industry. I did some time with Travelocity, Orbitz, and Expedia. Now its all Expedia. Expedia was always better, but not because they had a better product, but because they were better at finance and relationships. Travelocity had the best two products in the industry: travel packages and branded white labels.

I remember in each of these companies there were easily more than 10x product development people as marketing and merchandising people, but marketing people ran the companies. They had no idea about craftsmanship. Many of their ideas were in opposition to product quality would ultimately kill Travelocity as a slow poison.

My timing into all of this was interesting. I got into this in late 2007. At that exact moment Travelocity concluded industry growth in North America was finished. People had finally come online and organic growth was done. Now the only growth remaining was competition. Within a year all the executives left.

When Travelocity started its internal collapse in 2013 (I was in Afghanistan at the time) their superior products still had strong value even as the company quickly lost marketshare and employees. On top of that Travelocity had the strongest brand of the online travel companies, which was the thing they really wanted. In 2014 the company was diced up. Orbitz got the white label partnership business and Expedia got the Travelocity brand. In 2015 Expedia put in an offer to purchase Orbitz. A third of Orbitz's value was that partner business it got from Travelocity, because it would provide growth potential to Expedia it couldn't build from its brand alone. Now Travelocity is about a 50 person marketing team of Expedia, but it accounts for about a third of Expedia's core online revenue. At its high in 2012 Travelocity was about a 3500 employee company under Sabre.

The interesting thing about being at all 3 is the similarities in marketing driven goals and the similarities in technology. The technologies, the front end and the Java webapp middleware, were nearly identical. Same sorts of bloat. Same sorts of shifting positions on frameworks. Same sorts of aged archaic code that continued to live on 15 years later.

EDIT:

This is why the two products I mentioned were the industry's best. Vacation packages (flight + hotel + other things) by far had the highest margin. When you go to an online travel agency they are always pushing you to purchase a hotel, because hotels have substantially higher margin than flights, (like $50 compared to $7), but vacations packages could be worth anywhere from 1.5x to 4x hotel margin. Travelocity figured this out the best and were able to offer the cheapest packages at the highest margin rates. That was a big deal.

When all things retail fail, as they eventually always will, contracted partnerships will continue to pay. In additional to financial security they provide access to industries, data, and financial schemes otherwise not available. If you are a growth strategist this is what you want.

<comment><USER31> A buddy of mine in the SEO space kept quitting Expedia to go work for the competition and finding himself back on the Expedia team via acquisitions. After the 3rd or so time he got so frustrated he quit the travel industry entirely lol.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Its kind of funny how Steve Jobs, dismiss all his analysis on the final sentence with "but anyway, it's all ancient history now, doesn't matter any more"

<comment><USER33> I thought so originally. But honestly, I think part of him is genuinely sad that Xerox failed the way it did.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> He is Apple's Hari Seldon.

</comment><comment><USER35> That's why Apple is failing</comment>


John Von Neumann - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann <comment><USER2> I love this Wikipedia article. I have always gotten a kick out of the "Cognitive abilities" section title. It's almost like they used a Wikipedia template intended for comic book superheroes.

</comment><comment><USER3> I would give anything to see his abilities that marvelled the geniuses of his time. I imagine this would be like when an AGI finally comes to be and creates dozens of fields of science we have no idea of today..</comment>


Tridiv - Live CSS 3D Editor - <AUTHOR> http://tridiv.com/

<comment><USER2> please make it work in IE.</comment>


Desert Aircraft 'Boneyards' (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140918-secrets-of-the-aircraft-boneyards <comment><USER2> Just want to give a plug to the Pima Air and Space Museum [0] in Tucson, AZ. The admission ticket includes access to an ICBM silo [1] ~40 km to the south. Visitors can optionally sign up for periodic tours of the neighboring boneyard at Davis Monthan AFB. Several of the docents are retired aeronautical engineering Ph.D's who helped design many of the aircraft on display and are happy to answer questions. They even have Otto the Automatic Pilot from the movie Airplane!

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pima_Air_%26_Space_Museum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pima_Air_%26_Space_Museum)

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

<comment><USER3> Yep, both of those are memorable and well worth the trip (also Biosphere 2 if you're in the area ;P)

I grew up in Tucson, and my dad was stationed at Davis-Monthan so I'm pretty familiar with the AMARC. The boneyard is a remarkable sight. A major road (Kolb) even passes through it, and you can see the planes on both sides! There's a lot of neat stuff sitting out there like B1 bombers and those little drones they'd attach to SR-71s (I guess?)

<comment><USER4> And if you're into telescopes Kitt Peak nearby is a must, and check out the Mirror Lab at the university, where they make giant telescope mirrors.</comment></comment></comment>


The Portuguese Experiment: Did Drug Decriminalization Work? - <AUTHOR> http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1893946,00.html?xid=rss-topstories

<comment><USER2> This is a very encouraging report. In Portugal there was a significant drop in drug usage, hospitalization, and deaths after decriminalization. The savings in enforcement paid for improved treatment. Selling drugs was not decriminalized.

The situation here in CA is insane. Medical use of marijuana is legal, but the feds raid the shops. We spend billions turning minor drug dealers and users into prisoners and billions more building new prisons. The prison guards union is one of the most powerful lobbying groups in the state. I remember reading around the turn of the century that nationally 40% of black males, teens to early 20's, were on parole, in jail, or awaiting trial. Insane.

It seems that decriminalization reduces the attractiveness of drugs. I speculate that it reduces peer pressure, hard sell drug dealers, and the profitability of drug sales.

</comment><comment><USER3> The title is wrong. Portugal hasn't legalised drugs, but rather decriminalised possession for personal use. In effect they have the same laws, but whereas users could be sent to prison before they will now instead be assessed and treated by the state. Proper legalisation would remove all consequences of drug use, rather than just reducing penalties. To argue that this proves any arguments for or against legalisation is wrong in my opinion.

<comment><AUTHOR> You are right an upon further review I wanted to change the title. What would be a better representation of a summary without getting too long? "Effects of Portugals changes to drug possession punishment?" I keep getting too jumbled, and would like to properly rename if you can help.

<comment><USER3> How about "Effect of decriminalizing drugs in Portugal - stats included"?

Don't take my comment personally. The title Time gave the article is misleading too especially since they later on quote someone who calls it decriminalization.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Uh, so, I usually really hate comments about how an article isn't related to HN, but with this submission and the one about China on the front page, I felt like I needed to write one too.

I sort of feel like I'm looking at the front page of CNN or the NYT when I see stories about national legalization of drugs and the problems in a nation's infrastructure.

I think some of us have taken the guideline of 'stories that are interesting to hackers' to a bit of an extreme. It's almost become 'ok, some hackers take drugs, this story is about drugs, it should be interesting.' I still think that stories submitted should have a basic level of hackishness to them. As someone who'd consider himself a non-hacker, I find more hack related stories to be much more interesting than any of these Time/etc. articles, and I come here to read them because I wouldn't have been able to find them elsewhere, whereas these globally related articles are relatively easy to come by.

So, flag. And the other one.

<comment><USER5> I don't mind a _handful_ of non-tech articles.

I'm more interested in the comments: what do smart tech people think about this or that? Then I add my own comment, and the smart bit gets cleared. Ah well.

In any case, I assume the point-based algorithm is sufficient for moderating which articles should reach the front page.... Just my two cents' worth.

<comment><USER6> We've really had enough marijuana threads already. And past experience has shown that they lead to no useful discussion whatsoever.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wow, I didn't know the Netherlands had never really legalized cannabis...

Also, I'm from Portugal, and although I knew being caught using some drugs would take no action from the police, I didn't know we were that liberal...

Anyway, whoever is caught selling goes to jail...

<comment><USER8> The situation in the Netherlands is a little more complicated than the article leads you to believe.

It is legal to possess cannabis, it is also legal to grow it at home, as long as it is for personal use.

What they say about not enforcing the laws against the shops is partly true. The shops are allowed to have a very small amount in stock. However, the legal amount is ridiculously small, and less than what most stores sell in a day. The shops solve this by having regular drops during the day.

I'm not completely sure, but I believe that the warehouses where the shops get their drops from are legally allowed. And I'm also not completely sure about the legallity of importing cannabis from other countries, although it does happen a lot.

<comment><USER9> False. Possession is illegal in the Netherlands. The Netherlands is a signatory to international treaties which it would have to back out of to formally legalize certain drugs.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_the_Netherlands#...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_the_Netherlands#Non- enforcement)

<comment><USER8> ah right, there is no cop that will arrest you for it, nor is there a judge that will sentence you if you do get arrested.

sorry that I thought it was legal, what was I thinking ;-)

<comment><USER9> There are all sorts of things that you won't get arrested for that aren't legal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The big red flag is the sponsor - the CATO institute is hardcore pro- legalization. I love the findings as much as the next libertarian but the report would be more persuasive if it came from a neutral commission.

<comment><USER11> Are you as well doubting Amnesty International findings simply because they are anti-torture? What is wrong with people having convictions and spending money to find facts that support these convictions?

I find the trend towards quick character assassination (rather than looking at the facts) quite annoying. We see it in climate debate, for example, way too often.

<comment><USER12> "What is wrong with people having convictions and spending money to find facts that support these convictions?"

That's rationalization instead of rationality. Rationality dictates discovering the facts BEFORE you reach the conclusions.

<comment><USER13> They're still actual facts that other people can use to reach their own conclusions.

<comment><USER12> Cleverly omitted are other actual facts that other people can use to reach conclusions other than your own.

Maybe an adversarial method would be a better way of addressing these issues in practice, but only when we're responsible enough to read both sides.

Also, it's intellectually dishonest to pick your conclusions first and find the facts later. Even if CATO finds good facts (I'm sure they do), there is most definitely something "wrong with" them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Link to the Cato Institute, where you can download the report they sponsored: <http://cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=10080>

</comment><comment><USER15> Singapore also have an excelent system to minimize drug use.

<comment><USER16> Capital punishment for possession, you mean? I think that's a little extreme, even though I am Singaporean.</comment></comment>


Lifesaving food 90% aren't eating enough of - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/health-46827426 <comment><USER2> It is difficult to eat enough fiber. My trick is that I keep a sealed plastic container in the refrigerator with a mixture of cooked spiced beans. I usually just use black beans and garbonzo beans. I vary the spices, but usually use some combination hot spices. It is easy to then add these to whole wheat pita sandwiches, soups, salads, etc. This way I get a lot of fiber and extra protein.

<comment><USER3> Just eat lots of veggies and leave the skins on for most fruits and veggies. If you're really struggling for some reason, lentils are a really easy food to eat that's packed with awesome nutrients.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> clickbait title should be replaced by something like "90% of us aren't eating enough fibre, and how to improve that"

Despite the title it has some good info

</comment><comment><USER5> What about supplementation? Psyllium Husk comes to mind.

<comment><USER6> Seconded, I take psyllium husk powder daily. Am I missing something by doing this that I would gain with more typical sources of fiber?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wikipedia's article is very thorough [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietary_fiber#Fiber_contents_i...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietary_fiber#Fiber_contents_in_food)

and makes the distinction between soluble and insoluble fiber. Quick source: 100g of almonds has 12.5g d.f., as well as a wealth of important vitamins.

</comment><comment><USER8> Sweet potato is a cheap and easy dietary fiber source. Also good slow burning source of energy. The betacarotene on it, in my opinion it is unclear it is good or bad for you. I think betacaroten daily maybe not good, maybe some varieties of sweet potato has less betacarotene Anyway is a good and cheap food, can keep you alive on frozen winter.</comment>