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Explosions near Boston Marathon finish line

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Re: Explosions near Boston Marathon finish line

#381

Post by jenius »

jacquesm wrote: post #349
r00fus wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What could we learn from this -- check every trash can for a bomb at every big event? There are an unlimited number of places you could hide a bomb. France, in response to terrorist attacks in the 1995 mandated that all public locations have transparent bags held by posts [1] [2]. I don't think that's a unreasonable compromise, considering the alternatives. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_container#Media [2]…

how does that help? You could still stick a bomb in amongst the trash. Ok, it's no longer enclosed in a container that will make the blast worse but you could stick plenty of malice into a bomb the size of a football which would easily go into that bag.

totally agreed that this hardly helps with hiding a bomb, but still a really interesting response, upvote from me : )

Re: Explosions near Boston Marathon finish line

#382

Post by Duhck »

buffportion wrote: post #367
Duhck wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try saying that when you are directly affected by actions like this. It is easy to stand back at 100ft and say this type of crap, but the fact is, crazy people are all around us, and we should try to be proactive instead of reactive. We as a society owe it ourselves to reflect on events such as this, and see if there was anything that could have been done to prevent it. If the answer is yes, then we SHOULD act. Does…

You're asking for a solution to the problem of people killing other people.

No, people will always kill other people, that is the unfortunate truth of human nature. That doesn't mean there aren't multiple problems here, and each one with multiple solutions.

Our lawmakers know just as well as we do, that more laws won't fix events like these, but better messaging ("See something say something"), better trained police officers, etc.. these are things that are controllable, changeable, and have a hugely positive impact on preventing horrible things like this from happening.

Re: Explosions near Boston Marathon finish line

#383

Post by losvedir »

noonespecial wrote: post #138

The worst part for me (and I really am feeling bad about this) is that I should be concerned about the victims right now, but I can't stop thinking about what freedoms I'll be losing as a result of this.

For what it's worth, I upvoted this question despite so many comments bemoaning its existence.

The facts will be fleshed out over time on the regular news, so I see less value in comments just parroting that. Rather, (if this is to be discussed on Hacker News at all), I'd prefer it to be about the ramifications of the event, and especially how it relates to technology, or laws/regulations that foster the development of technologies.

I'm a Bostonian (at work about a mile from the explosions), and I wish everyone would just cool their jets a bit until more is known about what's going on.

Re: Explosions near Boston Marathon finish line

#384

Post by mbesto »

ctdonath wrote: post #328
doron wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it largely depends on who will be found as the culprit. If it would be found that this is an Islamist terror attack the aftermath will be much more pronounced then a scenario where the blame will be on say some extreme right wing group. Much of the lose of freedom we all suffer from is due to entrenched xenophobia becoming political agenda, it seems much harder to enact changes when the criminals are white Am…

Culprit (Saudi national?) may have been found. http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/authorities_under_susp...

You do realize you just linked to a NY Post article right?

Re: Explosions near Boston Marathon finish line

#385

Post by IvyMike »

deltaqueue wrote: post #270

Slightly off topic, but is anyone else confused by the fact that several runners in this video[1] reacted to the explosion but did not turn and proceeded to keep running? These people weren't exactly leading the pack (at a 4+ hours finish time), so my guess is that they are just severely deprived of nutrients and aren't processing what's happening, but it's still a bit baffling to me why some didn't turn to see what…

I've never run a marathon, but I've attended several supporting runners I knew. I spent my time at the finish line watching the runners come across.

Pretty much everyone who finishes is some level of fucked up. Their body chemistry is way-the-hell out of whack, with problems from dehydration, hyponatremia, glycogen depletion, and boosted or dampened immune system reactions. Usually there are people at the finish looking for trouble cases and shunting them directly to the medical tent. (Because the runner might not even recognize that how bad a state they are in.)

I've had hyponatremia once after an ill-advised hike, and I literally couldn't form sentences out loud.

It doesn't surprise me that people weren't reacting in a normal way, because they weren't in a normal state of being.

Re: Explosions near Boston Marathon finish line

#386

Post by noonespecial »

anigbrowl wrote: post #320
noonespecial wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be quite honest, me too. I expected it to just be background radiation: I too feel badly, conflicted and confused. I didn't expect this. Sitting at the top like that it really does start to look like soap-boxing or attention whoring. Apologies all, I really didn't mean it that way.

Well stop agonizing about it and delete it then. I'm not saying that to be snarky, I'm pointing out that it's something useful you can do right now to get it off the top of the page.

Good news. Looks like someone upstairs noticed and knocked it to the bottom.

Thank you, moderators.

Re: Explosions near Boston Marathon finish line

#387

Post by jlgreco »

VLM wrote: post #312
SODaniel wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Boston Globe ‏@BostonGlobe 34s BREAKING NEWS: Police getting multiple reports of unexploded devices around Boston 3.38 pm Central time. Update: The Boston Globe ‏@BostonGlobe 28s RT @billy_baker: "It's not safe to be here." - Boston Police evacuating Commonwealth Avenue mall at Gloucester. 3.45 Central time. Update: The Boston Globe ‏@BostonGlobe 1m Boston Police: If anyone knows of any information call about exp…

"Apparently cellphone service is SHUT DOWN! To make sure new devices are not remotely detonated!" Oh no. This has been done a lot of times recently and all it means is future devices are going to be designed to go off when service is lost. Like every time you get a text message the 10 minute "reset" button is shorted. On the bright side AT&T outages are now a feature not a bug as they make constructing and transporti…

That seems like an overly complicated way of doing something that could just be done with a timer. (I don't mean to provide tips of any sort, but that seems kind of obvious to me.)
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