Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by Iulioh | Hacker News Reader

Full thread

Iulioh

That is not a bed, that's just a flat and fucking uncomfortable surface

Would you really want to stay on a surface with no barriers for you to block from falling down while sick?

Turn around and you will be thankful for the medical staff already present

View on HN

If you're a refugee you might be glad of a place to lie down that's not on the cold floor. Or dirty.

Sure the comfort level is pretty low, but maybe futon style mats could be used?

They spent half the article describing what this is replacing and every picture of it in any realistic situation has mat on top of it.

Sorry but i see a very cost efficient waste of money

If that's all the local industry can produce, it's better than nothing.

Honestly i could even argue that in fact it is not better than nothing.

A bad solution is a problem because it would lead to not providing a good solution.

This is a puzzling display of confidence. Have you ever slept on the ground after a long hard day of dealing with a natural or a man-made disaster? Getting into ANY bed is the only thing you can think about (this plus eating, of course). Being able to distribute 10K beds on the day they are first needed is an incredible advantage over having to wait for several days for more comfortable beds (it's not even clear whether they are indeed more comfortable).

Yeah, i would prefer a pile of random clothing on the ground to a fucking box i could fall from anytime i sneeze

Would you prefer to sleep on the ground for a month before getting a camp-bed, or get one of these inside 24 hours? That's the trade-off here.

If the "Cardboard Bed" was to be produced and used in the local area, I'd be a fan. Instead, these are created somewhere else and brought in. From the article:

> "The cost of 1,000 beds for a refugee camp ranges from €100,000 to €200,000 (US$110 to $220) and it takes up to two weeks to produce them, another two weeks to ship them (by land or sea) and more than 24 hours to install and set them up”, said Juan Sanz, Humanitaria’s CEO.

Humanitaria seems like they need to work on streamlining their manufacturing process if a thousand beds takes two weeks to produce. At 8 hours a day, 5 days a week this suggests 1000/80 = 12.5 beds per hour. This manufacturing appears to be simply cutting cardboard and packaging it. I'm really hoping this 12.5 beds per hour (one bed every 5 minutes) is inexperienced manual labor from one worker.

If Humanitaria _is_ actually automating this process in their centralized location, why is it so slow?

At the scales/speeds they are operating on, these beds cannot be produced rapidly in response to a crisis. Given the constant harping on low cost, I'm skeptical that these beds are actually even a good idea. I'm skeptical of the motivation to make a cut-every-corner "solution" for bedding needs. Are 1000 of these beds actually more useful than 100 more rugged beds? Outside of emergency situations which Humanitaria cannot produce sufficient quantities for, I'd prefer 100 real beds to 1000 cardboard beds.

> "By comparison, 1,000 Humanitaria beds cost $17,000, can be produced in hours on existing, readily-available packaging machinery in every major city in the world, delivered folded flat by plane next day and can be set up in 20 minutes. The first 24 hours is critical in disaster response and this invention brings massive promise!"

You misinterpretted that portion of the artical, the CEO is contrasting their beds to what 1000 beds currently take to set-up.

I am sorry? You would "prefer" 100 real beds to 1000 cardboard beds when there is a need for 1000 beds? That's nice, the rest 900 people can sleep on the ground as along as this is your preference.

Yes 100/1000 people on beds is preferable to 1000 that have beds today and no beds tomorrow or the rest of their stay.

Do you think anyone involved in this project ever tested and evaluated this bed? How do you think businesses work in general? They built a bed that lasts only 1 day but decided to go ahead and ship it to disaster areas because why not.

Why is it always some dude on an Internet forum that knows better than a business dedicated to solving a particular problem...

Yeah, i think businesses makes bad decisions for the public interest because the business does care about it's profits and not the public interest , that seems about right.

I’m sure they did but in typical sv startup culture they probably did not consider all the design objectives that a product they serves refugee camps needs to meet. Need a bed vs need a bed that can survive a hostile environment are 2 different objectives. Cardboard beds were tried at the Japan onlymics btw and they weren’t great there either

You misread the article - the bit you quoted is about existing camp-beds. It goes on to say:

> By comparison, 1,000 Humanitaria beds cost $17,000, can be produced in hours on existing, readily-available packaging machinery in every major city in the world, delivered folded flat by plane next day and can be set up in 20 minutes.

This sort of thing is already stocked by the UN (and various charities) and ready to transport out at a moment's notice.

The UN have a warehouse in Copenhagen with the more special stuff (medicines, schoolbooks, toys etc), and several others with the basics (food, beds etc).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com