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Comment by akersten | Hacker News Reader

As I scroll through the wall of heat transfer equations and long-winded extrapolations of how some derived formulae can be used to predict a temperature rise in a specific contrived scenario.. I can't help but wonder if the paper is attempting to disguise a mundane conclusion (when we crank radio waves into a waveguide we can heat stuff up, obviously) within a wall of intimidating text.

I feel like if there were anything to be worried about re:5G, they'd be presenting the conclusion front and center in the abstract?

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I think the paper makes a mistake by giving it that title and including the first line of the abstract, but otherwise it's not actually trying to figure out if 5g is harmful - such a title and outcome '5g = more radiation' makes it insanely easy for this to be used as ammunition for people who love a conspiracy like '5g bad' (just as groups did with 4g) even if the conclusion doesn't make any claim that this has a chance of causing medical problems for users.

The paper did a great job raising concerns about the limits of gel simulants to study potential health hazards. The '5G bad' is pointless. More studies are needed, specifically about the environment impact. Electromagnetic pollution is already causing insect population collapse at an alarming pace.

how could you possibly pin it on EM radiation when there are so many other factors in ecosystem collapse?

I pin it because there's evidence. What are you suggesting as the main cause?

the main cause of insect death? the insecticide.

more broadly, our collective penchant for killing everything that’s not corn or soy. insects are co-evolved to pollinate all the flowering plants of the world, and we’ve replaced a lot of flowering plants with farmland and concrete. so it’s no mystery to me what happened to the bugs.

so what’s the theory with electromagnetism? only correlation i can imagine is the more urbanized an area is, the better the 4G coverage.

Insecticides are the main vector of attack of course, they're designed for that. The problem is not identifying properly other substantial vectors.

As a hobbyist beekeeper can confirm the impact of EM pollution. EM fields are a big deal for bees. I see trends like 5G-based satellite internet growing which are amazing technologies, opening fantastic use cases. But we should be more cognizant of its impact in the long run over the environment. BTW, high correlation with insect population collapse.

The intent of this paper seems to have been to invent/improve methods for measuring the effects of 5g radiation on tissue, not necessarily to prove/disprove harm.

Great point!

It looks like you expected a study answering the question "Is 5G harmful or not" to which the authors have no pretense. Instead, they address a different topic: how to precisely assess the effects of the radiation on tissue. They present at least one conclusion: that the method of using gel for assessing it in other studies is not as precise as it had been thought, and that studies using it might underestimate the effect.

The study is more for having a more precise base for further studies and discussion that could answer key questions and help to establish safer SAR levels for device manufacturers/policy makers.

Like usual with papers, skip to the summary - the first sentence: "In this paper, we present for the first time, a simple, highly accurate test system for measuring [...]"

Good reason to talk a lot about the measuring methodology.

I think if they presented it in an alarmist way, it would probably be dismissed early by the academic community as anti-5G propaganda?

It will be dismissed no matter how it is presented.

self-driving cars/etc, more integrated city infra cannot happen without 5G, way too much money on the line.

> self-driving cars/etc, more integrated city infra cannot happen without 5G

What do you mean? We basically have the first prototype of self driving cars already and what city infrastructure works on 5G but not 4G?

im sure city infrastructure worked even before cellphones. Higher bandwidth allows for far more things to be done where value can be extracted. Google has already tried their Sidewalk Labs, not going to be the last attempt.

as for self driving cars, fully 3D mapped city roads will be eventually needed to improve ride quality, and they will be constantly uploaded/downloaded by vehicles.

Here is one example: https://www.clearmotion.com/

"This “digital chassis” consists of four electro-hydraulic “activalves” installed on the shock absorbers at each wheel, and it collects and stores road data in the cloud for analysis and retrieval at a later date."

more use cases, more data, etc etc.

for the money it would cost to map the city streets every week I imagine they could just fill the potholes and make sure the lane markers are painted

there’s a lot of chicago that is really ambiguous about being one or two lanes, you just kind of cross your fingers and hope everyone else also has a fear of death (this is why i dont trust ai, no fear of death in em)

> collects and stores road data in the cloud for analysis and retrieval at a later date

This sounds terrible for a lot of other reasons, but anyway. It sounds like they want to rely on collected data about roads which is great, but cars still have to have safety measures for pedestrians/unexpected obstacles like trucks or new road issues.

5G would improve this but I still don't see how it's necessary. Even now it sounds like it's collecting data and uploading it on WiFi or something later. I'd be surprised if it was too much data for 4G.

Self-driving cars, of course, and city infrastructure, are both completely irrelevant to this issue, since neither of those applications involves holding the 5G hardware up to your head.

Come to think of it, a vanishingly small and steadily-shrinking percentage of cell phone users hold their phones up to their heads, these days, too, so really, it's hard to see the relevance of this research.

I barely even use my iPhone as a phone, at all, these days, let alone in a baroque fashion like holding it up to my head.

I would not dismiss so easily the potential environmental hazards of electromagnetic pollution. It's not just about humans, but whole ecosystems. Starting by insect population collapse. BTW, even if you think those applications are not relevant, satellite-based internet is on the rise at record speed.

+ Electric motors do emit EMFs too, and we don't know their long term impact on health...

we don't know the long term impact on health of almost anything, weird times we're living.

There is zero evidence that EM signals have anything to do with the insect population issue, and a lot of evidence for more obvious causes: climate change, pesticides, et al.

5g has nothing to do with control of self-driving cars.

The control of a vehicle is never going to be performed over an RF link like 5G.

What is suggested for self-driving is higher level traffic management which is more "advisory" and is non-critical (think "waze" or google maps).

You literally have to 3D map roads. Then upload that data. Allow cars to download that data, and upload updates (road closures/constructions, new potholes etc), telemetry etc.

Control will not happen over 5G, but the volumes of data being passed around certainly will likely require a good amount of bandwidth.

Do you see this happen over LTE?

Idk. maybe its not cars, but simply a much better surveillance system somehow.

That's the problem with Conspiracy theories, people tend to polarize in order to avoid being flagged as such. I think that, indepently whatever you think about 5G and its implications. It's a new tech, and it must be studied thoroughly with highly accurate methods, specially if there are used to regulate and prevent damage of any kind.

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