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Comment by shermantanktop | Hacker News Reader

It's an guy blogging about sports gear that he doesn't seem to have much experience with, but has instead used a geek gadget and reasoning-from-first-principles to analyze and then blog about it, with a youtube-style "I debunked the myth" flavor to the narrative. I have seen plenty of other stuff like this on HN...though this isn't the best example of the genre, that's for sure.

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The article is fine, it's the discussion that is maddening here. Sometimes HN is just too much.

This would have been great n-gate bait. Too bad that site isn't updated anymore.

I used to ski religiously for 20 years but stopped for health reasons 10 years ago. I found the debate fascinating rather than maddening to see how the tech has continued to evolve. When I started (1986) it was still expected that you would use thin straight skis that were much taller than you were. Carving skis simply weren’t available, at least not at my beginning level

Now that you mention it I suspect this may be a big reason some people have had different experiences.

I also started with long straight skis and they are a lot less forgiving than the carving skis that followed. Nowadays I see a lot more freestyle skis which are again a different thing, but I don't have much experience with those. So maybe that's where people are coming from.

I'll admit the discussion has gotten a lot better by now, I guess I was just too early.

>> great n-gate bait

I also miss n-gate. One of the great concepts from it was concerned HN'ers 'incorrecting each other', which I thought was a superb expression, and now use more widely.

And if you sharpened your edges on straight skis, you would often intentionally blunt the front and back and only keep it sharp around the foot/middle, in order to have grip when going diagonally but have it easy to twist around turns.

Everything old is new again. Only today the effect is achieved by constructing the ski with tip & tail rocker.

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