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

Nike Says Its $250 Running Shoes Will Make You Run Much Faster

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 304 posts

Re: Nike Says Its $250 Running Shoes Will Make You Run Much Faster

#251

Post by mamon »

bmj wrote: post #201
mathgladiator wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is strange to me and basically says the engineers are not allowed to compete...

This is similar to the limit imposed on various motorsports. It's not that engineers aren't allowed to compete (they most definitely do, within the limitations imposed by the sport's governing body)--the rules exist to level the playing the field a bit between teams and companies with radically different budgets.

In case of Formula 1 racing rules exists to force more innovation.

For example, the trend of the past few years is to limit engine capacity and reduce fuel consumption. So the rules say your engine must go down from 3 liters to 2.4 liters capacity and now it's your job as an engineer to maintain the same horsepower (of roughly 800 hp) at that lower capacity.

Actually, changing those rules every year puts teams with lower budget at disadvantage: they are basically limited to buying engines from richer teams, because they wouldn't be able to keep up with all those rule changes on their own.

Re: Nike Says Its $250 Running Shoes Will Make You Run Much Faster

#252

Post by Too »

Alex3917 wrote: post #186
gascan wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We seem to take it very much case by case. Running efficiency augments are controversial. Drugs are verboten. But better bicycles are OK, and football players can wear eyeblack and grip-enhancing gloves. The closer a sport is to pure human performance, though, the more sensitive we seem to be about it. Perhaps out of a sense of continuity through the ages. Yeah, we train better than Athenian athletes. But we still ru…

> We seem to take it very much case by case. The principle is very consistent: You can't do something that gives you an unfair advantage over other competitors. Everything banned basically falls into one of three categories: - It would be prohibitively expensive for others to adopt the technology. This is why you have weight minimums for bikes, boats, etc. - Others would have to risk their health to compete. This is…

> It would be prohibitively expensive for others to adopt the technology. This is why you have weight minimums for bikes

Weight minimums for bikes is for safety also, riders started using frames that were so light that a race become more of a gamble if your bike would break or not.

Re: Nike Says Its $250 Running Shoes Will Make You Run Much Faster

#253

Post by Too »

not_a_moth wrote: post #94

Whatever happened to the whole "born to run" thing, which surveyed a lot of evidence that running shoes - recent inventions - cause injuries almost universally, that you're better off with totally minimal shoes if not no shoes at all.

The book mostly is against shoes that absorb the energy in the shock, because it makes you less careful when landing and allows you to incorrectly land straight on the heel rather than using the built in suspension of your toes and foot. It's not against shoes universally. These new shoes supposedly store the energy in the landing and gives it back on release. Think of it more as a spring rather than a damper.

Re: Nike Says Its $250 Running Shoes Will Make You Run Much Faster

#254

Post by specialist »

zhte415 wrote: post #244
sopooneo wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One point that surprised me about those banned suits is that the drag reduction they provide is largely indirect. Instead, they're buoyant . They make the swimmers float higher in the water leaving less of them in the pool to be dragged on. So for roughly the same reason you can't compete in the freestyle paddling on a surfboard, you can't use those suits. Apparently they worked by other mechanisms as well, but the f…

Your comment reminded me of the 80s movie Running Man. There are no rules, there is only winning. Which is the antithesis to principles of competing fairly. And in Running Man there were undiscovered rules, but only ones to game the sport which came crashing down resulting in a loss of trust of the institution. Transparency is key for trust in sport and thus continuality of the larger body.

I thought the only rule was to boost ratings.

Re: Nike Says Its $250 Running Shoes Will Make You Run Much Faster

#255

Post by jacobush »

darawk wrote: post #250
Alex3917 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We seem to take it very much case by case. The principle is very consistent: You can't do something that gives you an unfair advantage over other competitors. Everything banned basically falls into one of three categories: - It would be prohibitively expensive for others to adopt the technology. This is why you have weight minimums for bikes, boats, etc. - Others would have to risk their health to compete. This is…

> Others would have to risk their health to compete. This is pretty tenuous for some things though, like ephedrine, clenbuterol, or blood doping.

Blood doping can clog your blood, also sticking needles deep into veins on a regular basis, gotta have some risks.

Re: Nike Says Its $250 Running Shoes Will Make You Run Much Faster

#256

Post by sundvor »

ekianjo wrote: post #221
Alex3917 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We seem to take it very much case by case. The principle is very consistent: You can't do something that gives you an unfair advantage over other competitors. Everything banned basically falls into one of three categories: - It would be prohibitively expensive for others to adopt the technology. This is why you have weight minimums for bikes, boats, etc. - Others would have to risk their health to compete. This is…

"unfair advantage" is particularly hard to define. We are not born equals, so there are already folks among us who have unfair advantage due to their genes, their upbringing, their social background, etc... I would say the definition is still blur. What if you have a medical condition that impairs you in some ways but make you stronger for doing one type of tasks? Is that unfair?

At that price and 100 mile effective usability, it's hard not to bring up the pay to win argument for these shoes.

Re: Nike Says Its $250 Running Shoes Will Make You Run Much Faster

#257

Post by chiefalchemist »

ccmonnett wrote: post #193
SurrealSoul wrote: post #54

Articles like this make me want to get a NYTimes sub, excellent reporting on something mundane with enough statistics to make it worth the read. If we ban shoes now, will we ban other augments in the future? Will this stunt the progression of such human performance augmentations?

If you like this, you (and many others here) may also enjoy this great visual breakdown of how the American economy has changed since the recession in 2008: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/06/05/upshot/how-th... P.S. I am also a happy NYT subscriber. +1 for supporting high-quality journalism!

Post-college (late 80's) I was faithful subscriber to the NYT. Over time the quality and quantity drifted down. Eventually, I put my confirmation bias aside and took my attention elsewhere. It's rare I regret it.

Re: Nike Says Its $250 Running Shoes Will Make You Run Much Faster

#259

Post by Klathmon »

mirkules wrote: post #225
bmj wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is similar to the limit imposed on various motorsports. It's not that engineers aren't allowed to compete (they most definitely do, within the limitations imposed by the sport's governing body)--the rules exist to level the playing the field a bit between teams and companies with radically different budgets.

My favorite example of forbidden ingenuity is the "sucker car" (Chapparal 2J) which used a plastic skirt to seal the car to the ground, and pump that sucked the air from underneath the car, producing an insane amount of downforce. It was outlawed of course after blowing away the competition. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaparral_Cars#2J

I also liked the Mazda Rotary/Wankel engine that really threw the classification systems at LeMans.

Because the Rotary engines are something in between a 2-stroke and 4-stroke calculating it's displacement in comparison to 4-stroke engines was difficult.

Re: Nike Says Its $250 Running Shoes Will Make You Run Much Faster

#260

Post by tiatia123 »

thret wrote: post #228
ekianjo wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"unfair advantage" is particularly hard to define. We are not born equals, so there are already folks among us who have unfair advantage due to their genes, their upbringing, their social background, etc... I would say the definition is still blur. What if you have a medical condition that impairs you in some ways but make you stronger for doing one type of tasks? Is that unfair?

Genetic advantage is what we're testing for in these running experiments though. It isn't an unfair advantage, it's the whole point.

It is a question of time until we have Gene doping. It might be happening already.
Post reply on HN