Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

8.9 earthquake hits Japan

earthquake.usgs.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 269 posts

Re: 8.9 earthquake hits Japan

#211

Post by melvinram »

donw wrote: post #178
donw wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Death toll is now being reported at over 400, mostly from the tsunami. Words don't exist to express the sorrow of their families...

I don't know if this is appropriate here, but the Red Cross donation site has been down for awhile (at least, for me). I took the liberty of setting up a WePay group for donations: https://www.wepay.com/donate/78062 Not sure how to get the word out, but you've gotta start somewhere. :)

To help, see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2312911

Re: 8.9 earthquake hits Japan

#212

Post by atgm »

atgm wrote: post #146
po wrote: post #25

I'm still feeling shakes every few minutes. It's like living in a house on a block of jello. Long rolling waves. I'm in central Tokyo and our china cabinet was shaken pretty badly: http://www.flickr.com/photos/poswald/5516954100/in/photostre... I know some people up in sendai that I'm a bit worried about.

I'm feeling shakes every 20 minutes or so; one of the earthquake alerts on my phone actually preceded the shaking by about 10 seconds. My body's so used to the shaking that it always thinks it's shaking -- I set up a bottle of water to look at just so I don't go insane. 11:30 pm JST and I'm still feeling quakes.

4:00 am JST, had a 30 second quake that bashed my head on the wall and woke me up.

Edit: I'm from seismically-inactive Pennsylvania and completely not used to this, even after four years. It took me a while to fall asleep the first time since I kept feeling like I was shaking and would jerk awake. Now I don't know if I should try to fall asleep again or what.

Re: 8.9 earthquake hits Japan

#213

Post by melvinram »

melvinram wrote: post #123

Red Cross and others will likely be jumping to the aide of those who have been affected by this disaster. If you have a website, please consider adding a message and link to the Red Cross donation website or the link to the donation page of any other website. To get it up ASAP, I've used the HelloBar ( http://www.hellobar.com ) on my site. You can see a working version of it at http://www.webdesigncompany.net but rea…

FYI: I'm getting about 5% click through rate on this... so if you assume that half of those donate and that each person donates $10 minimum, you can figure out how much money you can raise from simple copy/pasting a few lines of code.

Re: 8.9 earthquake hits Japan

#214

Post by TimothyBurgess »

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #205
CWuestefeld wrote: post #148

This is what I like about HN. This isn't a particularly "hacker" story, but the perspective here is unique. On the main stream media, I'll get a couple of statistics and video, then an empty comment about "loved ones trying to make sense of this senseless tragedy". On HN, I get the facts, but both broader and deeper, from the geological nature of the quake to the effect on other locales. And I get real, unfiltered pe…

Now imagine a neurotypical person reading this comment. What do you think they'd say?

You know, I'm really not sure what they'd say Florin. What do you think they'd say?

Re: 8.9 earthquake hits Japan

#215

Post by rgrieselhuber »

mceachen wrote: post #114
InfinityX0 wrote: post #75

I hope Ray Grieselhuber of Ginzametrics (YC) is OK - along with everyone else. I am pretty sure he is based around Tokyo. http://ginzametrics.com/ginzametrics-is-hiring-in-tokyo.html

I emailed him as soon as I got the NOAA tsunami notification email -- he's fine -- he's in California.

Thanks very much, InfinityX0. We are in California and are hiring for our Tokyo office. So far, everybody I know is in good health and nobody was hurt.

Re: 8.9 earthquake hits Japan

#216

Post by fryguy »

epochwolf wrote: post #194
wtallis wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have we all forgotten what the word broadcast means? If sending everyone the same signal at the same time is hard , you're doing it wrong.

The doesn't work very well when each device requires a separate communication channel like a cell phone.

There may be a 160 byte block of space in the normal traffic your phone makes to the towers in order to let it know where you are. Maybe they should look into using that for something like this.

Re: 8.9 earthquake hits Japan

#217

Post by Florin_Andrei »

TimothyBurgess wrote: post #214
Florin_Andrei wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now imagine a neurotypical person reading this comment. What do you think they'd say?

You know, I'm really not sure what they'd say Florin. What do you think they'd say?

Uh... are you asking me to... hm... exercise my... um... empathy?

Re: 8.9 earthquake hits Japan

#218

Post by borism »

mrcharles wrote: post #171
3pt14159 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Closer to 80 times stronger than a hundred, but yeah definitely deep.

From Wikipedia: The energy release of an earthquake, which closely correlates to its destructive power, scales with the 3⁄2 power of the shaking amplitude. Thus, a difference in magnitude of 1.0 is equivalent to a factor of 31.6 ( = (101.0)(3 / 2)) in the energy released; a difference in magnitude of 2.0 is equivalent to a factor of 1000 ( = (102.0)(3 / 2) ) in the energy released.[2]

so the correct answer is that this one was 1000 times more powerful than Kobe, and also very shallow (depth of 24 km), but fortunately offshore (but unfortunately that means powerful tsunami).

Re: 8.9 earthquake hits Japan

#219

Post by borism »

thingie wrote: post #184
nazgulnarsil wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that fire was put out. hope everything will be okay at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. Another blow to the public's perception of nuclear energy. :(

In my perception, it shows that nuclear plants are able to sustain damage during such a massive earthquake without causing significant harm to their surrounding, all while the oil refineries are burning…

too early to jump to any conclusions. in case of radioactive leak the area affected will be million times larger than any refinery fire.

Re: 8.9 earthquake hits Japan

#220

Post by ck2 »

ck2 wrote: post #149

I am watching live and they just said all cooling hardware and backups for one of their atomic plants has FAILED and they are advising residents to evacuate. Ugh.

2nd update: Despite the emergency coolant, pressure in the nuclear plant is going to be released soon which will result in a radiation leak. 3000+ people who live within 3 km are being evacuated.
Post reply on HN