The 'folly' of buying a fixer-upper yacht - <AUTHOR> https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-26/southwinds-restoring-an-old-yacht-with-mates/11798696 <comment><USER2> There are a lot of folks out on the water in "ugly" boats that are not costing the arm&leg but safe and a lot of fun. Get a 100 foot boat, that is a boat that looks great from 100 feet away. Sailing is totally possible for anyone, do all the maintenance yourself, also a really good idea to deeply know every line and turnbuckle when out in the ocean days from a mechanic.

OMG they bought a wood boat, the only way to keep a wood boat is to start a foundation or be a billionaire.

<comment><USER3> >OMG they bought a wood boat, the only way to keep a wood boat is to start a foundation or be a billionaire.

absolutely. On the other hand, buying an old, requiring a lot of restoration/etc, boat is practically the only way to get such a beautiful wooden boat as they don't build them anymore for a couple of reasons:

1\. those beautiful graceful lines were designed to "hack" the mid-20th- century CCA racing rules - the short waterline of a free standing boat becomes longer when the boat is heeling during actual sailing. Half a century ago the IOR rules de-facto replaced CCA and thus all those fat boats of 197x-198x which in turn seem to be more and more replaced during the last couple decades by the boats designed more for the downwind planing.

2\. the introduction of mass produced fiberglass resin boats in 196x completely killed the economics of wooden boats at both stages - building as well as maintenance.

A mildly related sidenote just for visual pleasure for anybody who loves the boats - i think it is just magnificient how smooth and fast this Draken is sailing [https://youtu.be/XORSpUUy0lQ?t=168](https://youtu.be/XORSpUUy0lQ?t=168)

<comment><USER4> That's an incredible boat, definitely not one for those who are easily seasick. Also a nice testimony to how good the shipwrights and carpenters of that age already were. It is almost skimming across the waves in some shots.

Thank you for posting this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> >Financially, it was a foolish decision, which cost us at least double the original estimates. But being in a syndicate has meant sharing the losses and the workload.

Two good lessons. (1) Restorations are almost always far more expensive than just buying a similar boat that has been well maintained. (2) Group boat ownership is often a good idea, you can share the finances and no one actually ends up using the boat as often as they think they will.

<comment><USER6> >Group boat ownership is often a good idea, you can share the finances and no one actually ends up using the boat as often as they think they will.

That works well if you're all the type to just putt in a circle outside the harbor. If some of the owners are the type to beat the vessel up doing what it was intended to do and more and some of them aren't you will wind up with hard feelings when things break.

<comment><USER7> Would you expect the other owners to pay for something you broke?

<comment><USER6> Because often things don't break right away. They just wear out prematurely or repeated abuse eventually gets them. If you have multiple people with varying use cases odds are someone is abusing the boat because they are trying to shoehorn it into a use case it really isn't well suited for.

If you are trying to bounce off 6ft surf (emphasis on "off" rather than "through" in a tri-hull) that will eventually come back to bite you in the form of tearing the vessel apart at the seams. If you are constantly beaching something with a deep V you can only go so long between events where the prop/lower unit unexpectedly finds the ground (and eventually that will get expensive). So you either share the cost of these repairs with the understanding that that's just the cost of doing business (because simply based on your varying use somebody will have to be more abuse to the vessel) or you all get your own boats that fit your use cases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Anyone who enjoyed this article will likely enjoy watching the rebuild of Tally Ho, a 110 year old wooden sailing yacht. He's replacing _everything_ and his series is amazing to watch.

[http://sampsonboat.co.uk/](http://sampsonboat.co.uk/)

<comment><USER9> This is one of the best YT "series" I've encountered in, oh, maybe forever.

Relaxing, engaging, fascinating, full of subtle wit, hard-earned knowledge. My wife thinks it is utterly boring, I could watch it for hours at a time (and have).

<comment><USER10> Try project binky, fantastic series

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> 35 years of racing sailboats(mostly other people's) ranging from 14-80ft have taught me a lot. You can do more than you thought. You can get in deeper than you ever imagined and still get out. And this sounds deep. The coolest thing is mentioned in the article. Sailing on and participating in this adventure changes lives. And saves more than you might know. Over the years I've known many people young and old who have died, by natural causes, or their own hand, or at the hand of another. Of hundreds of sailors I've known personally, I recall only one who took his own life.

<comment><USER12> I have been racing and sailing other peoples yachts for a similar time frame. I grew up in the Southern suburbs of Sydney. It is a place surrounded by waterways -- Botany Bay, Port Hacking and the Tasman sea.

When I was young, during the 1980's it seemed like every young person spent their free time sailing and boating. Numerous sailing clubs had weekend fleets numbering in the hundreds of vessels over multiple classes.

This has all but vanished today -- The clubs have either disappeared or are struggling.

I'm not sure what children do today instead, but sailing isn't it anymore.

<comment><USER13> > I'm not sure what children do today instead, but sailing isn't it anymore.

We solved distraction as if it were a game of perfect information then we put it in everyone's pocket.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm surrounded by boat owners who repeat the old adage:

"The two happiest days in a boat owner's life: the day you buy the boat, and the day you sell the boat."

I imagine a yacht is just that .. but more.

<comment><USER15> Having sold our Contessa 26 last year for cheap, I can say it has been the happiest day. I no longer worry about what is happening during a storm. We just got back from vacation aboard someone else's motor (sailing?) yacht where our bed, food, navigation, and boat maintenance was all done for us for less than it would cost just to haul out our old sailboat. I'd rather be sailing than doing any boat maintenance. As beautiful as that all that wood looks in the pictures, it is not fun to maintain unless that is what you like doing.

<comment><USER16> Do you get a better utility / maintenance ratio if you buy a boat use it all weekend every weekend and then sell it, rather than than having it for a long time and using it sparingly?

<comment><USER17> Yes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> A number of years ago we decided to get a boat. I've been sailing my entire adult life (through clubs) and love it. And yet, I am also good at math and have seen friends and acquaintances go through the realities of boat ownership. I had exactly zero interest in that.

We bought a boat. It was in good condition. The plan was to enjoy it that summer and sell it a the end of the season. In other words, I bought a boat with the stipulation that we would not keep it after three months. That was not negotiable. We would potentially lose a little money in the transaction. I thought of this as a rental fee.

This worked out great. We had a good time boating that summer. I did not spend a dime doing anything to the boat (I made sure of this by being careful during the purchase selection phase). We sold the boat for $1,000 less than we paid for it. With slip fees that was about $800 per month "rental". Perfect.

<comment><USER19> I am of a similar mindset. My family has owned a small lake house in (very) rural Maine for close to thirty years. My parents have spent a small fortune to maintain and upgrade the property over the years.

While I am incredibly grateful for the summers spent there as a child, the burden of ownership from a financial and time point of view had major consequences over the years. Because this property put such a strain on finances, it put my father through incredible strain at work. His health paid the price. My mother also had to weather the strain of raising three boys and working full-time to help ends meet. And because of ownership and these hardships, going to the lake became a requirement for every vacation we took. Even when we moved twelve hours away.

I've carried this lesson with me for many years now. When the temptation has struck to make a big purchase like this, I remind myself that often our possessions end up owning us. You can rent practically anything you want nowadays, and in doing so do not need to face all of the hidden financial and personal costs associated with ownership.

<comment><USER18> I put RV ownership in that same category. A bunch of my neighbors own RV's. If I had to guess I would say they are parked about 350 days out of the year, in some cases 365. So, at the best utilization rate we are talking about being parked 96% of the time. In some cases they have to park them off-site and pay monthly storage fees. I now people who have had their RV's for over twenty years. I can't understand the math.

We've rented RV's three times in the last twenty years. The cost ranges from about $100 per day to a few hundred per day. That math I can understand. We even have a favorite RV camping spot we've been to where you can order an RV to be delivered and setup for you. You just show up and start your vacation, no need to drive an RV around at all!

<comment><USER20> For some reason, buying an RV feels different from renting one. Buying an RV feels like buying an asset; renting one feels like throwing money away. (Maybe this is because I've never bought one!)

I understand the numbers. I understand exactly your argument here. I would say that you are correct. But for me, personally, it doesn't _feel_ like it. And so, from time to time, I still consider buying an RV. So far, I've always managed to talk myself out of it...

<comment><USER21> >Buying an RV feels like buying an asset; renting one feels like throwing money away.

To me, assets are things that make me money. Things that continually require me to pay money are liabilities.

<comment><USER20> I do not disagree. But my less-analytical side sees that, after purchase, I've got something to touch, so it _must_ be an asset, right? (As opposed to a rental, when after the rental is over, it's gone.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> On my honeymoon the resort had free hobie cats and lessons on how to sail. I immediately fell in love and bought a small trailerable sail boat when we got home. Launching and rigging was always a huge pain and took about an hour.

While out on the lake I saw people on windsurfers sailing, it seemed so much easier to transport, rig, and sail so I took a lesson with a local club.

After the first time windsurfing I sold my boat. Rigging the windsurfer took just 30 minutes and the equipment was so easy to load/transport. The stoke was pretty much the same and an additional benefit was all the core strength.

I Windsurfed for a few years. I even bought my truck based on transporting boards. I picked my travel destinations based on the wind and availability of equipment at the destination. My friends had sprinter vans and dedicated trailers for all their boards/sails/masts/booms. The downside was the equipment was heavy and all dead weight. It was extremely difficult to travel (boards wouldnt fit in rental car) and even getting equipment to the waters edge sucked.

And then I started to see guys show up in priuses with tiny boards and kites in backpacks. They could rig up in about 10 minutes and it was so easy to carry everything to the water. The boards/kites were so small they could fly as checked baggage at no extra charge, this opened up all the destinations with wind, but no equipment at the destination.

I was in the philippines on a windsurfing vacation, but the wind was too light for the size sails they had. The kitesurfers were all out on huge kites, so I took a lesson and was blown away by how comfortable it was. Instead of a giant unwieldy sail, the kite flew itself and weighed nothing. When I got home I sold all my windsurfing equipment and have been kitesurfing ever since.

The zen is still the same as sailing, plus you get the thrill of jumping 30+ feet in the air, or being able to surf awesome waves.

</comment><comment><USER23> As someone who knows _nothing_ about boats, I don't understand understand why there hasn't been more breaking of tradition. Why we don't use modern materials and methods to create boats that are much more resilient to external conditions, solar power instead of sails, etc.?

Edit: Thank you so much, everyone, for answering!

<comment><USER24> Fiberglass, carbon fiber, aluminum, and stainless steel are modern materials commonly used in building boats. They are resilient to external conditions as long as you don't drive the boat into a rock or something.

Boats don't have enough usable surface area for solar panels to propel them at a sustained useful speed (especially not at night or in a storm). Most sailboats do now have small solar panels to power lights and electronics. Hybrid propulsion systems are available, although expensive.

<comment><USER25> Double sided solar panels could be a good improvement but not groundbreaking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> All yachts are fixer-uppers, even (especially, sometimes) new from the factory.

Source: former owner of Hunter, Hylas & others.

<comment><USER27> If you think there is nothing wrong with your boat, there is something seriously wrong with your boat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Ship, (n): A hole in the ocean into which money is thrown.

(this shouldn't necessarily deter you from owning one: just, go in with open eyes)

<comment><USER29> What if you live in it?

<comment><USER28> not much changes in terms of money. Unlike land and houses on that land, ships (and trailers, vans, etc) typically don't appreciate in value: upkeep costs are just costs, you're not usually "paying into" something which you can "get your money back on" later. Arguably that's true for property too but we like to believe it's not.

there are many factors beyond monetary value that ought to influence decision- making.

<comment><USER30> Houses don't appreciate in value. The land they are on appreciates faster than the building depreciates.

<comment><USER31> Structure can and do go up in value if replacement cost increases from higher material costs, labor costs, building code and permitting costs (that just add cost, not directly to buyer utility), etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Interesting classic story of a software engineer who bought a boat...

"An account of an around-the-world solo sail in a 31-foot boat, 1988-1991"

[https://arachnoid.com/sailbook/index.html](https://arachnoid.com/sailbook/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER33> Oh my is that a beautiful boat.

I love that fiberglass has made sailing more accessible, but those timber hulls really have something to them.

</comment><comment><USER34> Another epic restoration in Sydney - the tall ship James Craig.

Took $30m and 40 years!

[https://www.shf.org.au/explore-the-fleet/our-operational- ves...](https://www.shf.org.au/explore-the-fleet/our-operational- vessels/james-craig-1874-tall-ship/)

</comment><comment><USER35> I met my wife when good friends brought her along when I invited them for sailing/whale watching. She loved boating, but I had a crappy little boat that I liked because it was so low in monetary value that I didn't think twice about taking it to Mexico for fishing and general fun anchoring in Bahia de Tondos Santos. My wife didn't particularly care for my crappy little boat but fortunately she liked the captain.

Anyway, 35 years ago we found a boat we liked at a boat show but it was $45K new and would have needed another $5K of gear. We didn't get it, but a year later we found the same boat used that had definite wear and tear, but at half the price. We enjoyed that boat for almost ten years, and sold it at a good price. I have always been grateful for how well that turned out.

</comment><comment><USER36> I've experienced this with cars, where I wanted to buy something cheap and fix it up, only to find the costs were way higher than I'd anticipated. I've since learned to look for better "deals" that require minimal work, but the lesson that trying to cheat reality doesn't work is still there.

I feel like a "life lessons Wiki" would be really useful. When the old salts said the buyers were crazy, they were right! But they probably couldn't articulate in great enough detail, so they weren't listened to.

<comment><USER37> Unless you have an edge over others, the car has already been priced to 'be fixed up.' Nevermind that at least a third of used cars are for sale because they are 'upside down' in repairs. I.e. they are worth less than a mechanic would charge to fix it. If you can outdiagnose, source cheaper parts, and not value your time, you can make a reliable profit.

Number one tip: know your niche and stick to it. Pick a single model/generation/platform and dive deep. Forums exist for every car, boat, tractor, and hot air baloon made. The common issues, fixes, and prices will already be in your mind when you evaluate one to buy. Money pits are always just things you don't know well enough to make sound financial decisions about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> IMO it's surprisingly easy to build small boats on your own.

Easy enough in fact that I wouldn't bother buying one until you at least get into the $1k+ range.

<comment><USER39> Any resources on that? I assume we're essentially talking rowboats here, given the price range. I was going to say I'm very skeptical it's as easy as you make it sound, but after a quick mental rundown of material cost, I'm suddenly curious and maybe would like to build a boat!

<comment><USER38> The cheapest is skin on frame style boats (like the original Inuit kayaks.) You build a frame with wood and then wrap it with canvas and paint it to keep the water out. People have even made small dinghies this way.

The easiest (maybe, SoF is pretty easy) are probably plywood boats. A lot of people like "stitch and glue" but the "glue" is usually epoxy resin which is a human carcinogen so I've never tried it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Fixer-upper is not a folly.

1\. It is the only way for many people

2\. It allows to trade your time for a huge discount which may be advantageous if you have relatively low wage.

3\. It creates healthier market making boats cheaper for everyone because now low end yacht makers compete with used boats and because as an owner you can sell used boat making it effectively cheaper to own.

Now... it is a folly if you have no idea what you are buying. Some kinds of damage is going to be too costly to repair properly. It is best if you have already spent some time sailing before you buy one.

</comment><comment><USER41> Reminder - NY boat show in a few weeks. [https://www.nyboatshow.com/](https://www.nyboatshow.com/)

</comment><comment><USER42> BOAT = Bust Out Another Thousand, as anyone that has owned any boat can tell you.

Glad I got mine sold off a while back. Maintenance is costly.

</comment><comment><USER43> I immediately thought about the guy who filled his boat with foam, in his quest to make it "unsinkable".

Also, he made it fully autonomous.

[https://towndock.net/shippingnews/sean-d-epagnier-and- alexan...](https://towndock.net/shippingnews/sean-d-epagnier-and-alexandra)

</comment><comment><USER44> Can someone tell me what the phrase "fixer-upper" comes from? Is it a type of woodwork, or maybe refers to fixing and upgrading?

<comment><USER45> It means you buy something unfinished with the plan to improve it after purchase.

A lot of people buy houses that way in the USA, but it is usually stressful on the marriage, and banks require the house to be habitable before a mortgage is issued.

Generally large boats are not in the same category, so it's a red flag here.

<comment><USER46> > ... it is usually stressful on the marriage...

So true. My wife and I noticed that several of our friends who had renovated their house on the way to a big showcase (e.g., to become one of the homes on a home design tour) ended up getting divorced right after the big showcase. They lost their focus on what really mattered.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Suspect this applies to machine tools, as well.

<comment><USER48> Indeed, and wait until you have to buy and maintain tooling, including cutters, fixturing, etc. That stuff adds up quick.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> They say the second best day of your life is the day you buy a boat, and the best day of your life is the day you sell it.

</comment><comment><USER50> "Go small, go simple, go now" - Larry Pardey

<comment><USER51> Just rent a boat for those few days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> reminds me of the documentary that Moxie Marlinspike, of Signal fame among others, did a few years back about fixing up a boat in south Florida and sailing it in the Caribbean.

[https://vimeo.com/15351476](https://vimeo.com/15351476)

</comment><comment><USER53> Wow, read this and thought, "this is like airplane ownership."

<comment><USER54> Maybe, if the hangar is on a salty, wind-blown beach.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> The article is about a sailboat. A real yacht is powered by two engines. :)

<comment><USER56> We use the term differently in British English. It's a yacht if it has a cabin, a dingy if it doesn't. We really don't use "sailboat" at all (it sounds like "wingplane" to our ears).</comment></comment>


China's Property Bubble Has Already Popped, Report Says - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2014/05/05/chinas-property-bubble-has-officially-popped-report-says/ <comment><USER4> Here is Chanos in Nov 2010:

-5×5 office cubicle for every man/woman/child in China

-New Residential real estate accounts for 15% of GDP

-60% of GDP is towards fixed asset investment

-Buyers in China purchased 44% more residential space than they did in 2008

-Dubai during its peak had 240 sq. Mtrs/1million dollars in GDP. China has 4x that.

-Lending went up 95% yoy 2009-2008 and up 60% through 2010

-Perpetual China Bull – Goldman is forecasting a 10-20% decline in housing prices in 2011.

-Chinese vacancy rates are accepted to be unusually high but exact numbers are extremely hard to find. The Chinese investors essentially treat real estate investing as investing in Gold without even bothering to rent them out because of the unusually low rents. [http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2010/11/17/chanos-vs-china/](http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2010/11/17/chanos-vs-china/)

<comment><USER5> Rental rates indicate the real economic value of a property, as against it's notional or book value as an investment. If rents are pitifully low even during an economic boom, that doesn't bode well for property prices when there's a bust.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> So the worst case scenario is that Chinas GDP growth drops to "only" 6%, and will become the largest economy in the world by the end of this year.

We'd be happy in Europe with 3% GDP growth, and I'm sure the US wouldn't be unhappy about that too.

<comment><USER5> The Chinese government believes that China needs a growth rate close to 10% in order to absorb expansion in the available labour force. Already Chinese universities are churning out far more graduates than there are new graduate level jobs. There's also a steady stream of labor from the countryside seeking work in the cities and factories. The economy has barely been keeping up with demand for jobs as it is.

The other problem is that local governments in China are massively overextended with vast outstanding debts, mostly backed by property. Chinese local officials are routinely rotated between regions, so they have little long term commitment to the area they run and are only interested in results during their tenure. This has lead to a generation of highly short-term management decisions, ramping up debt to fund prestige projects, with chronic lack of long term planning or infrastructure investment. Much of Chinese domestic driven growth is spending wasted on white elephant construction projects. When those turn out to be worthless, the entire Chinese domestic economy will crash.

A third issue is that up to half of the populations of Chinese cities are technically migrant labour and, even if they've lived in the city for generations, they are technically not residents and have no claim on local services or any welfare support and no pensions. When the bubble bursts they'll be left with nothing. Either the flow of labour from the countryside to the cities will reverse, or the system will break.

<comment><USER7> The fourth issue is the one child policy which will cause Japan-like stagnation in a few years.

<comment><USER8> China's birth rate is above a huge number of countries, including Holland, Switzerland, Germany and Canada. It's a problem, yes, but let's not overstate it.

<comment><USER9> China: 1.58 / woman, Netherlands: 1.76, Switzerland: 1.52, Germany: 1.36, Canada: 1.63. So yes all of them below replacement rate, but then again, they all have vastly different demographic and economic profiles from China - <USER2> notably in savings per person and reserved money for pensions, of which there is basically none in China.

Well unless you count 'current market valuations' for all that empty real estate, that is _smirks_

A country can afford, or at least isn't hurt that badly by, low birth rates when those who are born don't have to support (or at least not fully) the elderly - I don't think it's reasonable to put China on one line with the other countries you mention.

<comment><USER10> Thanks for your statistics. I'd rather people didn't smirk when they are predicting other people's misfortune. Not everyone has the benefit of your foresight or hindsight.

<comment><USER9> ? I'm not smirking at other people's misfortune, just at the idiocy of an economic system engineered to shackle the people that have to live their lives under it to workarounds like this ('this' = use assets that could otherwise be used economically productive as stores of wealth), and at the arrogance of claiming a centrally-led economy can provide both prosperity and freedom - <USER3> things I find axiomatically fundamental human rights.

<comment><USER10> The idiocy economic system being discussed, if it transpires as you predict, is going to lead to some people literally losing their shirt. They stood to gain and stood to lose, every time this happens many involved felt like they had no option but to play the game, it's not arrogance in doing so.

It's like smirking at the gambling industry, except with very respectable and influential people pushing it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is what a friend of mine told me, don't know if it's true, it could explain the massive ammount of buildings. Housing is build everywhere with banking money, in China it's possible to borrow money and not paying it back. (mostly friends of the governement who do this)

How? They invest 60% of a loan in building a property, they finish it in bad quality and put 40% in their own pocket. The bank takes the building to get their money back...

It seems to be a regular case in China, off course something's going to pop after a while.

</comment><comment><USER12> In the event WSJ are pulling paywall shenanigans (link WFM), an alternative: [http://language.chinadaily.com.cn/portal.php?mod=view&aid=21...](http://language.chinadaily.com.cn/portal.php?mod=view&aid=217344)

</comment><comment><USER13> From the article: "Average home prices, meanwhile, rose 0.1% in April from March and 9.1% from a year earlier."

<comment><USER5> So on average house prices had risen by around 0.75% per month over the previous year, and that's now collapsed to barely above zero, and in fact to a rate below inflation and so a drop in value in real terms. Not good.

Also that's an average. This means there must be plenty of regions where property prices have actually dropped. That's new.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Fortunately for us in the west, China is more than willing to let millions of it's own people starve while it's poor economic policies right themselves.

It's a bitter pill to swallow, but we may well be shielded from this nascent catastrophe because of China's disregard for human life.

<comment><USER15> You seem to demonstrate the same callousness towards human life.

<comment><USER14> On second reading I see your point. I thought I was being sardonic but that didn't come across.

But I stand by the comment none the less. China has set its own precedent, and I see little reason to predict they will break with tradition.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> China gonna crash anytime now!!! For real tis time?

<comment><USER17> Overheard in 2006: USA housing market gonna crash anytime now!!! For real this time?

A crash will happen sometime in the future, the only question is about timing.

<comment><USER18> I have to add an amusing quote from John Kenneth Galbraith about the sky-high stock prices before the crash of 1929:

 _By far the greatest force for sobriety was the New York Times. Under the guidance of the veteran Alexander Dana Noyes, its financial page was all but immune to the blandishments of the New Era. A regular reader could not doubt that a day of reckoning was expected. Also, on several occasions it reported, much too prematurely, that the day of reckoning had arrived.

Indeed the temporary breaks in the market which preceded the crash were a serious trial for those who had declined fantasy. Early in 1928, in June, in December, and in Februrary and March of 1929 it seemed that the end had come. On various of these occasions the [New York] Times happily reported the return to reality. And then the market took flight again. Only a durable sense of doom could survive such discouragement. The time was coming when the optimists would reap a rich harvest of discredit. But is has long since been forgotten that for many months those who resisted reassurance were similarly, if less permantently, discredited. To say that the Times, when the real crash came, reported the event with jubilation would be an exaggeration. Nevertheless, it coverted it with an unmistakable absence of sorrow_

\- John Kenneth Galbraith, "The Great Crash 1929" [http://www.amazon.com/Great-Crash-1929-Kenneth- Galbraith/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Great-Crash-1929-Kenneth- Galbraith/dp/0547248164)</comment></comment></comment>


Mnuchin Calls Plunge Protection Team; Stocks Soar One Day Later - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamsarhan/2018/12/27/mnuchin-calls-plunge-protection-team-stocks-soar-one-day-later/amp/ <comment><USER2> This article says the trading was up ".. on Wednesday. Literally, the first day after that call was made. I can't make this up."

Apparently the author did make this up, because the call occurred on Sunday [0], and yet the trading was down on Monday, which was the day after the call.

[0] [https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/24/treasury-was-not- concerned-a...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/24/treasury-was-not-concerned- about-liquidity-when-mnuchin-called-banks-senior-official-to-cnbc.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> That call was not about the WGFM working group for financial markets. That call was to try to calm markets "hey everyone the banks are fine!" Which naturally led many investors to question "Were we supposed to be concerned with the financial system after many months straight of assurances nothing whatsoever was wrong?"

The call to the wgfm was after the markets closed on Monday.

They just talked about convening on Monday from Sunday's call

[https://www.yahoo.com/amphtml/finance/news/morning-brief- mnu...](https://www.yahoo.com/amphtml/finance/news/morning-brief-mnuchin- calls-bank-112055906.html)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> How many 4%+ daily moves up till we start asking questions?</comment>


Making your explicit reasoning trustworthy - <AUTHOR> http://lesswrong.com/lw/2yp/making_your_explicit_reasoning_trustworthy/#

<comment><USER2> This is surprisingly funny...and interesting nonetheless.</comment>


Life in the time of coronavirus in a developing nation - <AUTHOR> https://www.ksharifbd.com/blog/life-in-the-time-of-coronavirus-in-a-developing-nation/ <comment><AUTHOR> More or less we all are affected by the new coronavirus. As the number of infections and deaths are rising exponentially, the struggle to stay positive is getting intense.

It's my story about how I'm affected by the coronavirus and how I'm dealing with it.

What's your story?</comment>


Amtrak derailment: safety gear was not active after rush to launch service - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/19/amtrak-derailment-seattle-washington-positive-train-control <comment><USER2> >"Railroads are under government orders to install positive train control by the end of 2018 after the industry lobbied Congress to extend earlier deadlines, citing complexity and cost"

Amtrak receives well over a billion dollars a year in subsidies from the US Federal government[1], they should not be allowed to use cost as an excuse for not modernizing safety.

Also I think if you sight safety as being too complex then maybe you have no business operating a monopoly passenger rail service. Lawmakers are just as much to blame for this tragedy as the incompetence and disregard at Amtrak.

[1] [https://www.cbo.gov/budget- options/2013/44782](https://www.cbo.gov/budget-options/2013/44782)

<comment><USER3> My understanding is that many modern Amtrak locomotives _are_ equipped with PTC. Either way, the problem was that the track was not yet equipped with the necessary transmitters to communicate with the train (and isn't yet mandated to, since the railroad industry keeps lobbying to move the implementation date forward).

In Amtrak's defense, my understanding is that this track was actually owned by WSDOT / Sound Transit. And the mainline track (privately) owned by Union Pacific / BNSF isn't any better. Amtrak owns very little track of it's own on the west coast.

The failure to deploy PTC is a systemic issue with the entire railroad industry.

<comment><USER4> Classic "obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility"...

My problem, not my problem, his problem, not his problem... What a stupid situation...

<comment><USER5> Amtrak doesn't really make a profit on its own. Anyone who has ever travelled portland to Seattle knows how slow it can be as freight gets priority.

<comment><USER2> Then it should be broken up and managed differently. The idea that a company with a sanctioned monopoly who receives over a billion dollars a year in subsidies loses money is absurd.

<comment><USER5> You are basically demanding that the service should not exist. No one will compete for these routes, very few train systems in the world are profitable in themselves (even JR would lose money if it wasn't for train station real estate).

<comment><USER2> No I am not "basically demanding" that the service should not exist. There is no reason why smaller regional companies couldn't exist and be profitable, offer better service and provide a compelling alternative to buses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Besides being a tragedy, this is a national embarrassment. It's a fucking _train_ on a _track_ on it's _maiden_ voyage. And they crashed it.

It should not be humanly possible to configure the train to run at 80 mph over a section of track rated for 30 mph. The idea that some people say we need billions of dollars to make this work only compounds the embarrassment.

We want Level 5 self driving cars but we can't control a single variable (velocity) in a 1 dimensional problem space?!

Shame. Shame. Shame.

<comment><USER7> The solution you're asking for exists and is called Positive Train Control. They didn't have it.

<comment><USER6> So who goes to jail?

But I have a feeling that the money sucking industry selling a particular solution called "Positive Train Control" has managed to create some sort of undeployable monstrosity. And what we actually need is something completely different which costs virtually nothing to implement.

<comment><USER8> Over PTC?

Nobody would be going to jail... It's a relatively new technology, and legislation is already in place mandating it be universal by the end of 2018. I find difficulty in faulting either Amtrak or Sound Transit for not yet having 100% coverage -- both are actively rolling it out.

Outside of PTC, multiple safety protocols were violated, with responsibility _likely_ falling to the Engineer and possibly Conductor. In systems not equipped with PTC, the engineer and conductor both are responsible for knowing the allowable speed for a given block of track, with the conductor being responsible for "enforcing" the safe operation of the train -- i.e. yell at, or even remove the engineer from the controls and/or initiate emergency braking.

(This is based on the way CSX operated when I was a freight conductor in '05\. Obviously a decade later and a different railroad the responsibility hierarchy probably varies a bit, but I imagine it isn't _terribly_ far off)

<comment><USER6> Relatively new technology... that's been around since the 50s.

And what you're saying is backwards thinking. The problem isn't that the old way of driving trains isn't perfect. We already know that.

The problem is we still have humans driving the trains. In 2017. It's ridiculous.

<comment><USER8> I don't disagree, but to suggest somebody go to jail over a single incident that could have been prevented by a technology already under deployment is equally ridiculous.

In 2005, PTC was a technology found almost strictly in yards and on local or regional lines where a single railroad operated both the rolling stock and track infrastructure. Seeing that in 2017, 12 years later, Amtrak is at 49% coverage on locomotives, and 67% on track coverage, the situation (from a PTC deployment standpoint) seems hardly criminal.

[https://www.fra.dot.gov/app/ptc/](https://www.fra.dot.gov/app/ptc/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'd guess that until PTC becomes standard across the country, new lines may be deployed with out it. The lack of PTC certainly doesn't stop them from running trains on pre-existing lines today.

I've spent almost the last decade involved with designing and implementing the messaging system behind PTC. Every one of these disasters makes me wish it was deployed everywhere. But for better or worse, railroads are incredibly change and risk intolerant. Everything goes through extensive testing before being rolled out into the field, which can add several years to any rollout plan.

</comment><comment><USER10> That this is a problem is just ridiculous. It's on freaking rails! There is absolutely no excuse for this. GPS, Inertial Nav, simply integrating speed over time, it should be absolutely dead simple to calculate exactly where the train is at all times.

The article mentioned crap like differential GPS. Completely unnecessary. You don't need to be that accurate, I mean good grief, +/\- 100 feet would be just fine for dealing with such gross overspeed detection.

I can't believe this is actually a problem. Pure politics/bureaucracy. It's certainly not a technical problem.

<comment><USER11> > simply integrating speed over time

This probably runs into issues with accumulated error, especially if the error in speed measurement has a serial correlation.

<comment><USER10> That's what sensor fusion is for.

That said, inertial nav can take a plane across the country without correction and get within sight of the target.

I think integrating actual speed while on rails would be vastly more accurate.

And really, it just need to augment gps.

<comment><USER12> Are you trying to reinvent already outdated ETCS level 2?

<comment><USER10> I'm not inventing anything.

And why would it be outdated if it works, and we (US) aren't using it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> overspeed protection has been standard on most national railways for decades

is there any reason they invented a new system (expensive and slow to rollout) vs. using an existing tried and tested one?

the main UK system (there are two) is nothing to write home about, but it is gloriously simple and was very fast and cheap to deploy: two metal transmitters live in the track bed coming up to a hazard, spaced such that they are 1 second apart at the maximum speed

if the train detector passes over both in less than 1 second then the brakes are triggered automatically

they look like this: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Train_Protection_%26_Warning_S...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Train_Protection_%26_Warning_System#/media/File:Tpws_loop.jpg)

<comment><USER9> PTC is a lot more than overspeed control, imagine any use case that would be enabled by electronically controlled trains connected to a highly available network.

<comment><USER13> perfect is the enemy of good

TPWS was always a stopgap (rolled out in the 90s while ETCS was being developed); as I said it was cheap and easy to deploy, and has prevented many accidents exactly like this one for 25 years

ETCS does what you are describing, and has been live in the UK and Europe since the early 00s

it works, and is slowly being rolled out everywhere replacing TPWS

so, again, why re-invent the wheel?

even the Chinese are adopting it

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=L8TM- LGDt5M](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=L8TM-LGDt5M)

The Pennsylvania Railroad had the equivalent of positive train control on all their mainlines by the late 50s. It's sad that we don't have it everywhere almost 60 years later

<comment><USER15> Is someone offering to pay? The reason we do not have a Pennsy anymore is that they went bankrupt, partly because they had to compete with subsidized highways and airports (there are various other reasons).

The fact is that PTC is an expensive way to increase the safety of one of the safest ways people can travel. Automobiles are far more dangerous. If the billions of dollars being spent on PTC were instead used to expand passenger service (and take cars off the road) we would almost certainly save more lives.

Also keep in mind that PTC solves just one of many ways that train wrecks can occur. It is not hard to find examples of other recent fatal incidents that PTC would have done nothing to prevent:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valhalla_train_crash](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valhalla_train_crash)

<comment><USER16> I'm not sure I understand your point. Are you saying we should disregard train safety because there are other more dangerous forms of travel?

Travel by rail may be one of the safest methods of travel (citation needed) but the US has much more dangerous rail infrastructure than the rest of the developed world. There doesn't seem to be a good reason for this.

The fatal train crash in this article was on the first run of a newly expanded line. It injured more people than were on the train because it fell on the freeway.

You may be able to cherry pick train crashes that PTC would not have prevented but my understanding is that several recent (last 10 years) fatal crashes would have been prevented by PTC.

<comment><USER15> My point is that we can spend billions of dollars making trains safer, or we can spend those billions expanding passenger rail to reduce the number of people who drive, something which would save far more lives.

It is a matter of economics. A dollar spent on PTC is a dollar not spend expanding passenger rail service (and the PTC mandate raises the cost of building new passenger lines), and the question is whether or not it is worth the extra safety. Considering how safe rail transit already is, and how much more unsafe driving is, it seems like our money would be better spent taking cars off the road.

Or to put it another way, I am arguing that focusing only on rail fatalities is _too narrow_ and that we should instead focus on travel fatalities in general. Increased access to passenger trains, more frequent and more reliable service, and faster passenger service are all ways to reduce travel fatalities because all the above reduce the number of people who drive. PTC also reduces travel fatalities, but not by as much. If you need a more extreme example, many lives could be saved by banning automobiles altogether, but obviously the costs would be far too high to justify such an approach.

<comment><USER16> Except in this case we did spend the money on PTC but then didn't bother to turn it on. This fatal crash was the first run of a newly expanded line. Are all new rail line expansions dangerous? If so will trains still be safer than cars if we expanded them enough to carry similar numbers?

I think I understand your argument but I'm not convinced more routes without PTC is safer without seeing numbers.

That train was only 1/3 full, if we added more trains and put more people on those trains would the deaths really be lower? What if we compare to just the alternative of traffic fatalities on interstates between Seattle and Portland? Also this train fell onto the freeway and injured drivers, is that included in traffic statistics (slightly facetious)?

I'm not convinced that banning automobiles entirely would save lives. There are too many practical concerns there. Do ambulances still exist? Would people just drive anyway, perhaps ignoring all laws or driving unsafely to flee police? It's not a compelling argument.

I take issue the most with the attitude that we shouldn't be critical of the safety of trains because there is another method of travel that is worse because that kind of thinking does nothing to make trains safer.

<comment><USER15> Keep in mind that Amtrak had tested the route and conducted numerous practice runs prior to this accident. None of those practice rules ended with derailments. It is unfortunate that on the first day that this route was operated with passengers, some kind of mistake was made and the train exceeded the speed limit. Obviously there is not much more that can be said about what happened until the NTSB report is published. New passenger services are introduced without incident on a fairly regular basis.

I have no idea how popular Cascades is between Portland and Seattle, or how many people would choose to take that train rather than drive on I-5.

As for fatality numbers, here is one study that tries to extract an apples-to- apples comparison of different transit modes, from 2010 (before PTC had been installed or activated on many routes):

[http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/~ipsavage/436.pdf](http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/~ipsavage/436.pdf)

Trains are safer than cars according to those numbers. There may be some nuances involving how fatalities are being reported; for example, whether or not we should count fatalities involving trespassers being struck by trains. Regardless, it seems pretty clear that yes, if more people took trains instead of driving, fewer people would die. If you know of a better way to make the comparison I would love to see it.

I am not suggesting that we should not be critical of train safety. There is a long history of railroads killing people and there are good reasons for many of the safety regulations applied to trains. The reason passenger rail is so safe is that so many regulations are in place. For the same reason, it is hard to see why spending billions of dollars to install one more safety system makes sense, especially when there is a competing mode of transit that is far less safe.

<comment><USER16> The test runs did not include PTC though. The entire point of requiring PTC is that railroads will not install it themselves because they don't think they need it.

My concern with saying trains should replace cars because they are safer is that trains don't do the same thing as cars and interstates do. Trains can't take me around town but cars are often used for that which skews the numbers. I would like to see the risk in micromorts [1] for travel from Seattle to Portland by car, plane and rail[2].

If I want to go to Portland from Seattle I have several choices. The top three from most to least likely for me are:

1) Drive my car down I-5.

2) Fly.

3) Take the train.

I suspect most people are in a similar situation and I think we can both agree that more people drive their cars to Portland than take the train in any given period of time.

I do not agree with your assumption that just putting more people on trains will magically save lives. Specifically I do not think that putting the people who drive to Portland on a train will necessarily save lives. This is for several reasons:

1) The existing trains do not carry anywhere near as many people as I-5 does so we must drastically increase the number of trains and possibly rails. This would drastically increase the chances of train on train collisions which are uncommon today (but still happen). There could be other issues here such as the availability of qualified operators.

2) Trains are much slower than driving or flying. The train to Portland takes 10.5 hours, by car it takes 3.5 and by plane is an hour in the air plus a couple hours to get to the airport and get through security so call it the same as driving. For trains to compete with this we would have to significantly increase speed which would increase danger.

I'm with you, I would love for there to be better rail options in the United States. I don't think we get there by just scaling up and ignoring the risks and problems. If rail companies can't safely operate their trains with the small amount of current utilization why would we expect it to get better (or even stay the same) with higher volumes? Changes must be made to a lot of aspects of railroads to increase ridership but safety is absolutely one of them.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort) [2]: Note that 250 miles by car seems to include all forms of driving, not just driving on the freeway.

e: From the linked study it looks like highway driving is one of the most dangerous forms of driving. My point stands that this is more complex than it looks and rail transit does not scale linearly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've worked on two PTC projects, one successful and one failure, after hundreds of millions dollars. The successful one took about 6 years and is still on a trial basis. The failed one had an aggressive schedule but ran out of money after 3 years going nowhere. This thing is not as easy as it seems.

<comment><USER16> I'm interested in your experience, what makes it so hard? The PTC roll-out is not new but delays seem common, it's obviously hard but why? Once we figure it out in one place can that experience be applied elsewhere easily?

<comment><USER18> Yeah, this is really weird to me. They're talking about installing sensors on particular tracks and the like, after saying that it's GPS-based, but... why? Stick a GPS on the engine, load a database of maximum speeds, get instant safety. What'm I missing?

(Yeah, you have to integrate with the engines themselves, but that seems like not a 6-year project, and especially not once it's been designed and tested. It probably also won't account for "stop, there's something else on the tracks", but just speed-checking seems like it would be a massive reduction of risk with very little complexity...)

<comment><USER19> Even an app on the driver's phone that alerts when they're exceeding the speed limit would have prevented many of the recent crashes because the drivers weren't incapacitated - just distracted or confused. Many recent cars also know when you're driving over the speed limit and display an alert. Not billions of $

<comment><USER20> An AP Press reprint: [http://www.dailyfreeman.com/general- news/20171219/engineer-i...](http://www.dailyfreeman.com/general- news/20171219/engineer-in-fatal-amtrak-derailment-might-have-been-distracted- by-trainee-in-locomotive)

> Engineer in fatal Amtrak derailment might have been distracted by trainee in > locomotive

> Investigators are looking into whether the Amtrak engineer whose speeding > train plunged off an overpass, killing at least three people, was distracted > by the presence of an employee-in-training next to him in the locomotive, a > federal official said Tuesday.

> The official, who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and > spoke on condition of anonymity, said investigators want to know whether the > engineer lost "situational awareness" because of the second person in the > cab.

Just distracted or confused is a real possibility that is being looked into.

<comment><USER12> In which case a standard attention system would have worked. The ancient ATS that just stops the train when not cleared.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> According to a 2011 article[0], the US has (or at least had) the largest number of deaths per passenger-mile in the world.

It's easy to overweight recent events. Can this be true? It feels like there's a piece missing somewhere.

[0] [https://pedestrianobservations.com/2011/06/02/comparative- ra...](https://pedestrianobservations.com/2011/06/02/comparative-rail-safety/)

<comment><USER22> I came in here to vent about how unsafe our rail systems are. However, our deaths per passenger-mile are well below the EU average, and we're safer than all except UK, Denmark, and Netherlands: [https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2013/jul/25/how- sa...](https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2013/jul/25/how-safe-are- europe-railways)

Still, this wreck is sad, and also embarrassing. Our rail system is just not a meaningful transportation network, and is such a missed opportunity. Even small efforts at improving it seem to end in failure, or even disaster.

<comment><USER23> Reading transportation fatality statistics requires some nuance.

In the realm of railways, most fatalities tend to be suicides causing no additional deaths, which are often analyzed separately. The EU does this [1], while the Guardian article only raises this distinction halfway through.

Once you exclude suicides, there are several other categories that are useful to distinguish: collisions (e.g. between two trains), derailments, accidents at road-crossings, and 'accidents to persons caused by rolling stock in motion' [2]. The share of accidents by category will tell you a lot about a particular country's issues; a relatively large amount of level crossing accidents may suggest that not enough of the rail network may be grade separated (e.g. Poland, Hungary, Romania), while a high share (and absolute number) of collisions or derailments would be a serious cause for alarm.

Also consider this 2012 post [3] which compares collisions and derailments per usage by country between Europe and the US, originally written as a response to that 2011 article.

[1] [http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics- explained/index.php?...](http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics- explained/index.php?title=Rail_accident_fatalities_in_the_EU) [2] [http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics- explained/index.php/...](http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics- explained/index.php/Glossary:Accidents_to_persons_caused_by_rolling_stock_in_motion) [3] [http://reasonrail.blogspot.com/2012/07/us-and-european- rail-...](http://reasonrail.blogspot.com/2012/07/us-and-european-rail- safety.html)

<comment><USER22> Great details, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is insane to think this happened in 2017 in USA. No other modern industrialized nation suffers these many embarrassing train derailments and with no blame/shame in the end. "Thoughts and prayers" my ass from WSDOT and Amtrak.

It shouldn't take a billion dollars to figure this out. even the simplest techniques like proper railway training that they do in Japan would go a long way.

</comment><comment><USER25> The PATH subway system between NYC and NJ has been boasting on little ads inside the cars that they are implementing communications-based train control and positive train control. How would positive train control work underground, if it's GPS-based?

<comment><USER23> If I accurately recall, PATH is rolling out Siemens Trainguard MT; a Communication-Based Train Control (CBTC) system which uses trackside (between- the-tracks) beacons and in-car equipment.

Radar is used to figure out the vehicle's distance from the beacons. The system communicates using a wireless-and-wired network to a control center and keeps track of mobile blocks. Here's a brochure [1]. I'm not entirely sure, but I think GPS isn't used in Trainguard -- which makes sense; the beacons know where they are in relation to the track geometry, and locations only need to be resolved in track-space.

[1] [http://www.mobility.siemens.com/mobility/global/SiteCollecti...](http://www.mobility.siemens.com/mobility/global/SiteCollectionDocuments/en/rail- solutions/rail-automation/train-control-systems/trainguard-mt-en.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm not convinced this is operator error. This is the first run on this route so it's unlikely the engineer was asleep.

2nd Hand copy paste from another part of the web I visit. I couldn't find the original source:

"If the wheels locked up at 81.1 MPH on the 1.4% down grade there would be no way to slow that lightweight train as in 41 seconds it would be into the 30 MPH curve. The engineer would not have time to release the locked-up brakes, apply sand and make a new braking application. Even with electronic brakes, the system does not work that fast. The NTSB should not take a year, like happened regarding the engineer who failed to stop at Hoboken, had failed to blow his horn at many crossing in his trip and the Conductor failed to check on his bad performance during that inbound train trip. That NJ Transit train had an inward facing camera but its recording was kept secret for over a year. This was a passenger only track and the rail conditions were not likely felt by the engineer as there were no prior locations where he could get a feel of the slipperiness of the rail head. This was a new line and even thought there were many qualifying test trips, it could be likely this was the first morning with just the right dampness, temperature to make very bad rail conditions. Were many test runs made at this early time of morning? As far back in the 1960, when single Budd Rail Diesel Cars were use on commuter runs with various station stops in an early Fall morning, some morning the rails were so slimy the RDC's Rollacon anti-slide system would release the brakes when the wheels locked up, and the RDC would fail to stop at the platform and have to back up. One morning this happened at 3stations so when the engineer approached the terminal interlocking with a possible red signal, there was a very slow approach as going past a red signal could not be corrected by a short back up. Many East Coast electrified commuter railroads are very familiar with bad rail condition caused by ground up leaves on the rail head which creates carbon black and misty water for a very efficient lubricant that can only be eliminated with sand. But electric suburban cars do not have sand. There is an entire industry used to wash the rail head and apply solutions to improve the traction for these trains Railfans who own and use their own track motor cars (Speeders) become well qualified of the need to test for the rail conditions and learn the distance it would take to stop at any place on their run. A leaf ground-up track can be so slimy that a light track car can fail to get enough traction to go up a 0.10 % grade without spinning their power wheel. You cannot even gain any speed as the wheels will just spin out. And if you're coming down a 1 or 2% grade, with is very common on many lines, you can go into a slide and wish you had an anchor to throw out. Being on a frozen rail track, and then have some very misty or rain situation, can be worst that being on a highway that was frozen over and then have been rain on over the ice. Sometimes in those cases a car rubber tire will just coast you over to the curb with just the crown on the street. Most cases a rail head can be worse than any highway surface for having traction. I believe the train 501 wheels locked up and the train slid into the 30 MPH curve at too high a speed. PS: Positive Train Control will not know of the possible bad rail condition and this wreck may have happened regardless of PTC in effect or not. That system cannot tell which is the worst case rail condition and is designed for the average expectation of conditions. So much for crewless trains, that will never happen. "

<comment><USER16> I don't follow the logic in your first sentence.

The copy pasted quote is nothing but speculation.

<comment><USER26> >I don't follow the logic in your first sentence.

When you're running the highly publicized 1st run of a new route you don' t use that time to play angry birds on your phone, you pay attention.

>The copy pasted quote is nothing but speculation.

He's saying that there's things other than driver error or mechanical failure that could have contributed to the crash

<comment><USER16> There is nothing about the physical world that guarantees a person pays attention because something is important. A common cause of accidents is when people do not pay attention. Train crashes specifically have happened in recent years due to distracted operators. Just because this run was more important than normal does not somehow mean the operator could _not_ have been distracted.

> He's saying that there's things other than driver error or mechanical > failure that could have contributed to the crash

Right, that's speculation.

<comment><USER27> I believe the point he's making is that the driver's attention is more likely to wander when it's a routine trip done many times before.

This was the first run on the new route, not a routine trip.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Nothing in the article about a "rush to launch". I would love all safety tech to rollout immediately but it doesn't and it's not reasonable to expect no new lines to launch. Pushing to delay installs for cost reasons though still doesn't sit well.

<comment><USER29> What do you mean, "expect no new lines to launch"? The article says that the safety systems in question are being installed and will be ready relatively soon, but they chose to start service without them. Delaying a new service for a little while to wait for such things to be installed seems pretty reasonable!

<comment><USER15> It seems less reasonable when you compare the safety of train travel to the safety of automobile travel, and when you consider that every time a new passenger route is opened it takes cars off the road. Yes there are train wrecks, and yes, PTC would have prevented _this specific wreck_ , but trains remain one of the safest modes of transit.

<comment><USER29> Are you sure trains are safer? I found these tables:

[https://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/pu...](https://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/publications/national_transportation_statistics/html/table_02_42.html)

[https://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/pu...](https://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/publications/national_transportation_statistics/html/table_02_17.html)

Train fatalities tend to be clumped so the stats tend to vary a lot from one year to the next, but it looks like in recent years the typical rate is something like 5 fatalities per 100 million passenger-miles. The car data only gives fatalities per vehicle-mile for some reason, but that will always be a pessimistic number (at least until autonomous cars happen), and that rate is just a bit over 1 fatality per 100 million vehicle-miles.

It looks like cars are quite a bit safer, unless I've misunderstood something. The absolute number of fatalities is far lower for trains, but the number of passenger miles per year is also far lower.

<comment><USER15> One issue is that the motor vehicle fatalities table seems to include data from buses (that is how I understand the references), which are safer than cars. I tried looking at the sources for the passenger rail data but a quick glance was not very informative.

Here is another study, from 2010, showing some very different numbers:

[http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/~ipsavage/436.pdf](http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/~ipsavage/436.pdf)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Code Reviews and Bad Habits - <AUTHOR> http://bitquabit.com/post/code-reviews-and-bad-habits/

<comment><USER2> I couldn't disagree more.

First of all, Gerrit groups the related commits together in two ways:

1) As a list of dependencies: "This commit depends on; this commit is depended on by."

2) If you develop your feature on a topic branch (and you should), when you push the commits to gerrit you can (and should) specify the topic. The related changes are then grouped by topic. ("git push origin HEAD:refs/for/master/topic_name")

Second, the reason this workflow is superior is that it requires each commit to be individually reviewed (and hopefully verified), and what ends up getting merged is a clean topic branch, with no bad commits.

Contrast this to the other workflow, and I'll use GitHub's Pull Request as the example. Typically what's reviewed is not the individual commits on a topic branch, but rather just the diff between the tip of that branch and the merge base between it and where it's to be merged. In this workflow the individual commits are often not even looked at. So you can have this series of commits on a topic branch:

       1. Commit A
       2. Fixup to commit A
       3. Commit B
       4. Commit C
       5. Fixup to commit B

When reviewing that in GitHub, you'd typically just review the total diff introduced by all 5 commits, and if it looks good, you merge all 5. Also, typically the CI system builds just 5 or the result of 5 merged into its destination branch. So now your history has the two fixup commits in it that don't belong there.

With the Gerrit-style workflow the fixups never enter the main branch, since instead you'd have squashed them into their respective commits. You'd also hopefully configure your CI system to verify each commit individually.

Further, on a decently sized topic, I find it easier to review a series of smaller changes, vs a huge diff.

It should be noted that this style of reviewing individual diffs is inspired by how reviews are done over mailing lists (Linux, Git, etc).

That said, once all the commits on a topic have been reviewed and perfected, it is often nice to be able to see the final diff of what is to be merged. With Gerrit you'd have to do that externally (via gitweb or by downloading the topic branch and diffing it locally against its destination).

Have this as a feature in Gerrit proper has been discussed and is somewhat contentious among its developers - [https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/repo- discuss/FBJl5wW...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/repo- discuss/FBJl5wWPpd4)

<comment><USER3> Yes, precisely; I got the eery feeling that TFA was yet another rant against rebase, and had it more or less confirmed by the end.

The question ultimately becomes, what do you care about more: recording every little change that's ever made, so you have a record of every time someone sneezed, or do you want a more coherent narrative that can easily be bisected? To my mind, half the reason to have code reviews and continuous integration is to make sure that the project history is coherent and bisectable.

Some might argue that non-pristine patches shouldn't be pushed in the first place, but let's be honest: we're all human, we all make mistakes, and this is (again) why we have code reviews and CI.

I can understand having options, and I'll admit that Gerrit seems good enough to me, mostly because that's all I've used. But I'll counter that successive patches are recorded in the history of Gerrit, along with commentary and the back and forth. I can see the pros to having smaller isolated commits, but one best practice recommends writing the tests first (and having them fail), then write the feature; in this workflow, you would _not_ want to push failing tests separately because it would break bisect, and the CI won't let it through anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> We've been using Opera Critic ([https://github.com/jensl/critic](https://github.com/jensl/critic)) where I work for about half a year. We did trial runs with Gerrit, Barkeep and Phabricator before settling on it. My impression is that its almost completely unknown outside of Opera, which is surprising given the feature set, clean UI and active development. The site used to review branches for the Critic project is also a demo: [https://critic-review.org](https://critic-review.org)

It supports the model of having many atomic, reviewable commits on a topic branch. Where it seems to exceed Kiln is in the rebase/fixup workflow. You can push fixup commits in response to issues left by a reviewer. A fixup commit will automatically mark an issue it addresses as resolved when you push based on the lines it changes (the fixup must also be reviewed). You can later rebase the branch to integrate the fixups. It's pretty clever, and the way fixups are shown lets you see at a glance how the branch has evolved.

As a reviewer, and as someone who often digs through five year old commits, I want feature branches to follow the most linear path possible. Approaches that are started and abandoned, and commits made on top of a branch in response to review feedback are noise. A well-crafted branch often has little to do with what happened during development.

</comment><comment><USER5> I disagree with this; you make one patch for your reviewer to review. If you want to do two things, make two patches.

The history of how you made that patch should be irrelevant; if you care, your patch is too big. Split it up.

I will admit that this takes some getting used to. When I use git alone, I commit for every little thing I change. But that's not actually useful for other people to look at; what people really want are high-level patches that represent logical changes, not just physical edits of the source code.

I've also gotten myself into a lot of trouble by committing a lot of things and then splitting them up for review. This always takes a very long time.

So just focus on one thing at a time, send it for review, and make sure your coworkers believe that reviews are the most important thing they can be doing. Then you get the small commits you like, but also get a more readable history, and better feedback from reviewers.

</comment><comment><USER6> > The whole point of a source control system is to tell you the history of how > code got to be the way it was.

No, the point of source control is to record incremental improvements in a codebase. This is a subtle difference, but critical: the history of how codebase got from point A to point B isn't valuable in itself - the logical changes that altered the behavior of the project are.

A series of broken commits might show the developer's journey from zero to 100%, but the idea that each commit is a non-broken incremental addition enables powerful automated workflows for regression testing.

</comment><comment><USER7> For what it's worth, Review Board has a way to visualize multiple revisions in a single code review request. I think it is primarily intended for the patch writer and reviewers to go back-and-forth (like "ok, here's my fix based on you comments"), but with some scripting you could make your own tool that uploads a whole series of revisions to Review Board.

<comment><USER8> One of our contributors has recently done exactly this, triggered by a `git push`:

Announcement: [https://groups.google.com/d/msg/reviewboard/SVOF-4KZ- VU/lSf0...](https://groups.google.com/d/msg/reviewboard/SVOF-4KZ- VU/lSf0gJwA1ZUJ)

Video: [http://vimeo.com/86448355](http://vimeo.com/86448355)

Also, for the record, after we wrap up this 2.0 release, we'll be focusing on allowing users to review branches of commits in a review request, and not just individual squashed patches.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> 100% agree. It's especially hard for teams that are learning both Git and Gerrit at the same time. I both administer and provide support for the Gerrit instance where I work and it has become a huge exercise in babysitting permissions configuration on the server side and dealing with angry users. They get themselves in to lots of "stuck" situations due to a lack of understanding, and it is now possibly building in to a revolt. For the record, I didn't pick Gerrit! :-) Fun times.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm pretty surprised to read this, I've used Rietveld (Gerrit is a fork from Rietveld) and it is entirely possible to review more than one commit at the time (with the option to review them as a unique patch or as individual steps)

But what I love is the option of squashing the commits (or perform any other operation), as the review is independent from the repo, meaning that I can push a clean commit instead of adding a lot of commit fixing issues, which gets a dirty commit tree.

That can be considered as "not showing the full code history", but I prefer to think about it as "only pushing to the repo code that sort of makes sense instead of lots of confusing ver small commits fixing typos"

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://code.google.com/p/gerrit/issues/detail?id=51](https://code.google.com/p/gerrit/issues/detail?id=51) seems to imply that gerrit still does not know how to review more than one commit at a time

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> What are the advantage to using Gerret, Kiln, etc for code review? Is it for people who using hg/git/etc without a web interface?

The way I normally do them is you submit your pull request on github or bitbucket and everyone on the team makes suggestions and asks questions until they are satisfied.

Once they are happy they comment "LGTM". Once you have a LGTM from your team members, you pull your pull request.

<comment><USER12> Side by side diffs, automatic integration, transactional commenting (queue up a bunch of comments, then publish them with a single notification to the patch writer), enforcement of LGTMs, better visualization of the evolution of a patch, better tracking of resolved comments, etc.

<comment><USER11> Thanks for the info, I'm glad someone responded. Bitbucket has side by side diffs, but I think both those and inline difs work fine (just a matter of taste).

I don't think those other features (for me) justify the complexity of running another application. For example, not enforcing LGTMs is a feature, in am emergency, a team member can get stuff done. But if someone abuses that regularly, they loose pull rights (or are fired).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> tl;dr Gerrit only allows you to comment on one commit at a time, not a set of commits.

</comment><comment><USER14> This sounds to me like a case of a people problem being blamed on tools.

<comment><AUTHOR> Close, but it's a potential people problem being caused by tools.</comment></comment>


BlackBerry's tablet to use US Army's Crusher-vehicle technology - <AUTHOR> http://www.hindustantimes.com/BlackBerry-s-iPad-to-use-US-Army-s-Crusher-vehicle-technology/H1-Article1-589354.aspx <comment><USER2> Better headline (and the content of the entire article):

RIM's unnamed tablet is going to run QNX.

QNX also is the embedded OS in some Army unmanned vehicles and in the music/sat/nav systems in cars like BMW and Porsche.</comment>


Body modification artist charged with GBH, despite written consent - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/feb/12/body-modification-artist-dr-evil-admits-gbh-customers-wolverhampton <comment><USER2> A friend of mine stretched her ears and went to Dr. Evil to have them sown up. He did a great job, and it cost £200. This is not available on the NHS and probably would have cost thousands (for someone with less experience in the same procedure).

Such a shame to see this. Dr. Evil is a good guy.

</comment><comment><USER3> _But the judge, Amjad Nawaz, ruled that the registered tattooist could not use his clients' written permission as a defence._

This is one of the most absurd things I've ever heard in my life. We own our bodies, and the State has absolutely zero standing to regulate what we can do to our own bodies, or what we can allow someone else to do.

The problem in this story is the State, and _not_ "Dr Evil".

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm a little confused as to who even submitted the case if the procedures were consensual. Did a LEO just see someone without an ear one day and grill them about it?

</comment><comment><USER5> The distinction here is actually a ruling that the defendant performed medical procedures without medical cause, and that body modification (like removal of an ear) is not the same as body adornment (like tattooing or piercing). The law there labels this assault, which may not actually be consented to.

</comment><comment><USER6> Removing an ear? Splitting a tongue? His customers had mental problems.

You might ask: Would you split your 20 year old child's tongue in half or cut off their ear? Then why would you do somebody else's? For normal decent people, it takes some sort of learned desensitization to do this to somebody. Like the way soldiers kill other people.

</comment><comment><USER7> Will the outcome be the same when people want to implant chips / computers in their body to augment their reality or restore/change functionality?

<comment><USER8> Probably, yes. Bodily autonomy is not well-respected by most governments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Once again the government trying to control what consenting adults do to/with their body.</comment>


Contribute to open source typography, interview with The League of Movable Type - <AUTHOR> http://thechangelog.com/post/18132562374/episode-0-7-4-the-league-of-movable-type-with-micah-rich <comment><AUTHOR> So many great typefaces to fork: <https://github.com/theleagueof></comment>


Hacker Monthly – January 2014 - <AUTHOR> http://hackermonthly.com/issue-44.html <comment><USER2> For those who actually want to subscribe and do not like paypal, just create an account and use the "add payment" link in the account overview. There you can use gumroad for payment.

</comment><comment><USER3> Best way to read the best HN articles.</comment>


OpenSSH Version 8.0 Released - <AUTHOR> https://www.i-programmer.info/news/149-security/12740-openssh-version-80-released.html <comment><USER2> why is it far easier to use scp than sftp? I don't mean the facetious question: If the sftp protocol is more robust and there is a URL form, it should be as scriptable or else there is a UX issue which needs some attention.

I'm an inveterate scp user, I hate -P <port> because -p permissions yet ssh -p <port>.

I use ssh -p in rsync -e "ssh command" form. I want somebody to code QUIC as a transport for rsync!

<comment><USER3> What's the point of using scp/sftp over rsync?

<comment><USER2> Rsync --server is how you run rsync as a forked exec on a remote node to do file tree copy/update. It basically uses SSH for auth and in flight protection. SSH can be slow because of crypto and compression effects which are hard to switch off and if you don't need privacy mbuffer (for instance) or netcat can be far quicker. The likelihood is that quic would be very fast.

Sftp and scp are great when you know the src is not on the dst. If parts of a src/ tree may be on the dst/ path rsync can be block efficient. It's a slower traversal but less data is in flight.</comment></comment></comment>


Gail.com - <AUTHOR> https://gail.com/ <comment><USER2> When your blog is getting beat by a typo website to the tune of thousands of visitors a day...

I love old-style internet websites like this. It makes me happy they haven't sold it and share some of the numbers.

<comment><USER3> I found the 1.2 million bounces per week from typos even more amazing.

<comment><USER4> I helped run the infrastructure for a reasonably large site. Occasionally while debugging an issue I'd be looking through our outbound delay queue -- sure enough, there'd be at least a dozen typo variations of gmail, yahoo, hotmail sitting there waiting to time out. And these were for customers who'd made an actual purchase and entered their email address twice.

Definitively proving that 'please confirm your email address' fields are not nearly as effective as the designers thought it would be.

<comment><USER5> On an unrelated note, fuck those fields. That is all.

edit: OK that's not all. Anyone else who's sick of websites interfering with your copy/paste operations, find dom.event.clipboardevents.enabled in about:config and set it to false. HTH.

<comment><USER6> I imagine GP was not specifically talking about paste-disabled confirm-email fields, rather just confirm email fields in general.

<comment><USER5> I don't think I've ever seen one that wasn't paste-disabled, though my knowledge is way out of date since I found out about the aforementioned config setting.

<comment><USER4> Well in our case paste wasn't disabled.

It was definitely a case of a PM coming up with a quick and cheap 'fix' to the problem of getting so many people typing their email address wrong the first time.

We (from the tech side) put together a bunch of options, including validating the domain and giving the user feedback if delivery doesn't succeed immediately. But it was put on a backlog of 'nice things to implement' and never delivered.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Love the EFF plug.

</comment><comment><USER7> Cheeky. Love it.</comment>


Ask HN: Will I have more success as a Full Stack or front/back end developer? - <AUTHOR> I  am a mid level full Stack Developer. I enjoy working on all areas of the Stack, but I have started to try to move towards the more senior rank and I am wondering if being a specialist in one particular area will make me more employable/valuable. An alternative I'm thinking of is just to spend time working on my JavaScript(react, node) skill set and presenting myself as a JavaScript full Stack Developer. I'd love to hear everyone's opinions and experiences. <comment><USER2> ... I can't help but notice that you keep capitalising stack.

Beyond that, there used to be another term for "full stack developer" \- jack of all trades, master of none.

Having some knowledge of the layers above/below you is definitely beneficial but I would suggest picking an area and increasing your skills and experience there.</comment>


What Mueller's latest indictment reveals about US and Russian technical spycraft - <AUTHOR> https://theintercept.com/2018/07/18/mueller-indictment-russian-hackers/ <comment><USER2> The article's sub-headings are fascinating reading by themselves.

\---

• _The Russians Got Caught Because They Didn't Compartmentalize Enough_

• _Russian Hackers May Have Leased Infrastructure From U.S. Providers Who Talked to Investigators_

• _Several Other Companies Must Also Have Talked to Investigators_

• _The U.S. (or a Partner) Likely Compromised At Least Two GRU Officers' Computers_

• _The U.S. Government Is Very Good at Tracking Bitcoin_

• _The Government Captured DMs and Emails Between WikiLeaks and Guccifer 2.0; WikiLeaks Encouraged Misinformation About Source_

• _Whistleblower Reality Winner Is in Prison for Leaking Essentially the Same Information Now Being Used as Evidence Against Russian Officers_

\---

# 5 should be very interesting to the HN community ...</comment>


Wells Fargo lays off 5300 employees over fake accounts - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/08/493130449/wells-fargo-to-pay-around-190-million-over-fake-accounts-that-sparked-bonuses <comment><USER2> discussion seems to end up here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12456548](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12456548)

</comment><comment><USER3> Perhaps the headline on the linked article has been changed, but the employees were fired, not laid off.</comment>


Show HN: Engineering AppStore Downloads on Day 1 - <AUTHOR> http://lifebyexperimentation.com/2014/11/engineer-downloads/

<comment><USER2> Where are the download numbers?

<comment><AUTHOR> At the bottom of the post.</comment></comment>