Hacker News Reader

Comment by luxuryballs | Hacker News Reader

Why do we even need 5G it seems like there’s always something, whether real or tinfoil, risks and unknown risks, so at one point do we decide that what we have is good enough?

Is there not any room in the regulatory world for “better safe than sorry”? At some point we could maybe just stop adding new energy waves to the sky.

It’s like the Wi-Fi router thing, it’s to the point where I’m going to need to buy a big piece of land to live on just so I don’t have 50 different Wi-Fi networks bombarding my house 24/7. I mean they say it’s safe to have a Wi-Fi router but did they study having 50 at once?

View on HN

did they study having 50 at once

Wifi signal drops off with the square of your distance from the radio. So if you feel safe sitting 5 feet from your own router, you're only getting 1/25th as much signal from your neighbor's router 25 feet away (well, almost certainly less since it's going through walls, windows, etc). (some factors can change this, like if he has a high gain directional antenna pointed directly at you, you could see more power from his router than from your own)

So unless you're sitting in a Wifi router store surrounded by wifi routers, you're not getting irradiated by 50X more power even if your computer can see 50 wifi networks around you.

> Why do we even need 5G it seems like there’s always something, whether real or tinfoil, risks and unknown risks, so at one point do we decide that what we have is good enough?

Because it consists of non-ionizing EM waves, the risks of which are very well understood.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4pxw4tYeCU

And if you're concerned about the amount of non-ionizing EM waves in your environment from these 50 wi-fi networks, you should never go outside, since the sun is constantly blasting you with ~1,000,0000 GHZ-frequency electromagnetic waves, at an energy flux of ~1300 watts/square meter. It's half a dozen orders of magnitude more[1] energy than those fifty wi-fi networks are putting out. They aren't even a rounding error.

The only thing the 5G 'controversy' reveals is that the public is happy to listen to people who don't know anything, as long as they are being told what they want to hear.

[1] Not just more energy, more dangerous energy. Solar radiation, unlike 5G, is actually ionizing. Those radiation waves carry enough energy to break molecular bonds in your body.

While I don’t think the paranoia around 5G is justified, this isn’t an appropriate comparison.

Humans have a barrier, known as the “skin”, that’s designed to block the electromagnetic radiation from the sun and repair the damage it causes. Many of us even have an extra protective compound in us known as “melanin”. Nevertheless, damage to this barrier from the sun is responsible for causing many cases of cancer and people often wear protective compounds, known as “sunscreen”, to reduce cancer risks by blocking out the most dangerous ionizing radiation.

And in extreme conditions, many of us use something known as "clothing".

It is more subtle than that. There are various protein molecules that vibrate inside the cells as a part of their normal functions including those responsible for immune system functions. As such there are absorption spectra due to resonance with vibration frequencies. This was mostly ignored in past, but there are speculations that 5-5O GHz radiation can be absorbed affecting molecular functions with unknown consequences.

And where is this published?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5406447/

I don't understand how they could conclude that their sleeping caps had any effect when they apparently went into the study with the belief that they work and decided not to have a placebo control group because it would be unethical.

As these patients were all ill, many undergoing olmesartan treatment with therapeutic intent, we decided that ethical considerations precluded the distribution of “placebo caps” without the silver threads.

And they were apparently distributed to those that requested them, likely those that already thought they would work:

Sleeping caps” were sewn and, upon informed request, distributed free of charge to members of our follow-up olmesartan cohort.

You read the abstract and still shared this here?

"A case series of 64 patient-reported outcomes subsequent to use of a silver-threaded cap designed to protect the brain and brain stem from microwave Electrosmog resulted in 90 % reporting “definite” or “strong” changes in their disease symptoms."

(edit: in case it isn't clear, this is not how you science)

Well, you have asked for it and I wrote initially “speculations” without citing this. The idea that complex protein molecules may absorb 5-50 GHz radiation via proposed mechanism in the paper is at least plausible and the calculations from the paper does not look like totally unsound. So this should be investigated.

> Why do we even need 5G

Ever tried to use 4G in a crowded place? Network congestion is the main reason.

> Why do we even need 5G

Because smartphone sales have leveled off and consumers are content holding onto their devices longer.

Manufacturers and telcos have become addicted to the 1-2 year device renewal cycle and want it back. Thus the marketing department instills “5G” as a need in the mind of the consumer.

Also, for people on metered plans, it behooves the telco to develop means for you to exhaust your quota as quickly as possible to get you into overages (and subsequently onto a pricey unlimited plan).

> Why do we even need 5G

Everyone complains about the lack of choice and competition and quality among internet service providers (ISPs.) 5G is fast enough that you can use it to replace your wired internet, just as cell phones displaced "land lines" over the past two decades. 5G, and hopefully Starlink, will be ISP game changers.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com