The Roots of Boeing's 737 Max Crisis: A Regulator Relaxes Its Oversight - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/27/business/boeing-737-max-faa.html <comment><USER3> Deregulation never seems to result in more competition, just more consolidation and more and more powerful companies with increased lobbying powers and personal connections to top government officials.

<comment><USER4> I mean this is facially untrue. We've been undergoing a 70-year long period of deregulation, and it's been overwhelmingly positive. (Not to mention, it's been copied by nearly every Western European country, and has markedly improved what during the 1970s and 1980s were very weak economies.)

We can get next day packages from Amazon, for example, because of the deregulation of the airline and trucking industries: [https://parcelindustry.com/article-5131-De-Regulation-of- the...](https://parcelindustry.com/article-5131-De-Regulation-of-the-Airline- Industry-FedEx-and-Last-Mile-Delivery.html). Previously, package delivery would take much long because packages would be transferred from carrier to carrier operating on regulated routes with regulated prices.

In the electric industry, deregulation of the generator side of the industry has caused wholesale electricity prices to plummet. Today, more than half the cost of electricity is from the still-regulated, retail distribution side.

As to airline deregulation: fatality rates per million passenger miles has trended linearly down since the 1960s. So have ticket prices. [https://www.fastcompany.com/3022215/what-it-was-really- like-...](https://www.fastcompany.com/3022215/what-it-was-really-like-to-fly- during-the-golden-age-of-travel).

We have also largely avoided regulation of the first major post-FDR industry: the Internet. If the US operated the way it did in the 1950s and 1960s, we'd likely have regulated prices per ad impression and things like that. Instead, the industry has flourished in the absence of regulation.

There is a reason anti-deregulation screeds focus on isolated incidents and are heavy on narrative. Why are we fixating in one instance of failure instead of looking at what airline safety records have looked like over the past decades overall? Objective views of numbers and long term trends make the situation look far more rosey.

<comment><USER5> It doesn't seem very useful to talk about "regulation" as some sort of singular entity.

When you talk about the positive results of deregulation, that's all economic regulation. Freight being run on regulated routes with regulated prices was protecting various groups' economic interests. Usually at the implicit expense of the economic interests of everyone else.

Safety regulations are a completely different beast. Safety regulations in aviation have increased massively over this same timeframe, and the result has been an even more massive increase in safety. Crashes went from routine to unheard of despite a huge increase in activity. Cars have seen a similar increase in safety regulations and in actual safety, although the safety gains have been more modest and seem to have stalled out in the last five years or so.

That doesn't mean safety regulation is necessarily good or that deregulation couldn't be helpful sometimes. But the actual track record in recent decades is completely contrary to this idea of decreasing regulation providing better results.

We're fixating on one instance of failure because it looks like a canary in the coal mine indicating a threat to the safest mode of travel ever devised.

<comment><USER6> > Safety regulations are a completely different beast.

Only they're not. If you impose a billion dollars in fixed regulatory burden then you can no longer have sub-billion dollar companies.

But lack of competition erodes everything -- even the safety rules, because bigger companies are more capable of capturing regulators.

Any regulation which is the direct cause of a lack of effective competition is doing more harm than good.

> That doesn't mean safety regulation is necessarily good or that deregulation > couldn't be helpful sometimes. But the actual track record in recent decades > is completely contrary to this idea of decreasing regulation providing > better results.

That's kind of the point. The entire frame of "regulation bad / deregulation bad" is a farce. What you actually need is regulation that maximizes the ratio of benefits to regulatory burdens. That means removing burdensome and ineffective regulations and having efficient and effective ones.

But evaluating regulatory efficiency and effectiveness is dry and non- partisan. Framing it as "we need more regulation" is failing before you even begin.

This 737 MAX debacle is a case in point. It came about because Boeing was trying to avoid the high costs of recertification, so they didn't change things that could have made the plane safer because changing them would have required recertification.

So we have "safety regulations" negatively impacting safety by making it move expensive to improve safety than not. That's not a case of needing more overall regulation or less overall regulation, it's a case of needing to replace worse rules with better rules. The ideal outcome is that the net regulatory burden becomes _lower_ and as a result it becomes less expensive to make changes that improve safety.

<comment><USER7> If I interpreted this argument correctly - regulation is bad, costs money. How much is a human life worth? Clear to me is that Boeing did that sick math and rolled the dice and F'd up royally and fatally.

FAA was gamed, but If you think Boeing would self regulate, I think you are on a different timeline where stockholder dividends are not the prime directive.

<comment><USER8> I understood his argument as: regulation is rigid and some regulations end up pushing things towards a bad ending, because actors in the real world don't always do what regulators imagine they will do. Eg the total costs of recertifying the plane are so high that it's worth it (for the company) to roll the dice to avoid it.

<comment><USER9> This isn't about whether more or less regulations should exist or not, but how we can build better administrative systems. When the regulations create an environment where only one or two mega-companies like Boeing can exist, combined with pretty much any democratic system where said company can have a direct influence on both the regulatory agencies (often through staffing via knowledge gaps in industry/academia where those in the company often are the only ones who know enough to make the policy) and policy making itself by elected officials in favour of just the current company not the future.

Simply put, the definition of 'failure' of a regulation needs to be broadened. Regardless if it reduced deaths by the company _itself_ in the near term, if it adds long term risk to deaths/accidents in the future by encouraging regulatory capture and eliminating any competition but Boeings to exist - <USER2> are worse off as a society, period. The only option we are allowing is some pseudo-market mega-corps with monopolies and the mediocrity in both service and safety or public gov run companies (which do make sense occasionally, but rarely).

There's a few solutions I can think of here which isn't "all regulation is bad" or "lets only have mega corporations in every market via poorly designed regulation" or "let gov nationalize the markets":

a) Contextual oversight. Allow a certain level of freedom at the lower tiers of markets so a future competitor to Boeing can exist and challenge them on everything from prices, to technology, customer service, and safety (which yes is a massive competitive advantage, ask all the people who now refuse to fly in Max, what other options do they have? A single European version of Boeing?). While allowing the courts to expunge any company that sacrifices on safety or any other externality via tort laws, liability, via stronger consumer and property rights.

b) Constant pressure on regulatory agencies (possibly by an outside agency) to look for regulatory capture within agencies and severely punish civil servants and companies engaged in any backroom deals, creating policy/incentives which are barriers for competition with little/zero benefit to citizens, punishing companies for obvious lapses, etc.

c) Stop politicians from anointing themselves job creators and promoters of businesses. They should strictly be in an administrative role when absolutely necessary (to eliminate any forms of violence, coercion, externalities that courts can't handle, etc). This is the biggest source of the worst of a) and b).

When politicians think their job is to 'create jobs' themselves by creating monetary/policy incentives for companies, this inherently create incentives for kickbacks to politicians and moral hazards for companies, and therefore should not be the job of politicians period. The only "help" to companies should be to help get out of the way by eliminating useless policy OR streamline necessary administrative systems. Otherwise don't help them at all.

Companies should not be able to buy success and maintain success in markets (by that I mean monetarily regardless of behaviour or outcomes) by having influence from politicians. All policy should be neutral of company size (or tiered based on size, the way modern rent control has tried to stop disincentivizing new lower income buildings by not applying to new developments) and factor in small firms who can't afford a team of lawyers or checkbox checkers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > In the middle of the Max's development, two of the most seasoned engineers > in the F.A.A.'s Boeing office left.

> In their place, the F.A.A. appointed an engineer who had little experience > in flight controls, and a new hire who had gotten his master's degree three > years earlier.

This is how you grow an army of YES-men without any substantial backbone. The type that makes good middle managers and keeps the process moving smoothly. Unfortunately for these engineers, they might ultimately be responsible for the system they signed off on.

<comment><USER11> This is how the government works. The government is just an institution, and institutions do not care about you. They just don't. They follow their rules and guidelines. If the guide is to put a GS-13 in that slot (employment category), then that is what will happen. There's no magic. Just rules.

Boeing did not build great planes because of the FAA. They built them because their culture and expertise were aligned to do so.

In the fact, the safety culture at Boeing was once so great that they often worked with the FAA to establish standards and guidelines, because the FAA simply did not have the expertise that Boeing had.

When that culture failed, Boeing failed.

<comment><USER12> "Boeing did not build great planes because of the FAA. They built them because their culture and expertise were aligned to do so."

People say things like this, that when a company is competent, or ethical, or whatever, that it's not thanks to the government.

Yet I hear/read every day where a company says that they _cannot_ do a given sensible, or ethical thing because it is not mandated by law. Every disclosure (e.g. privacy) I get with a financial account says that they cannot give customers more rights than are mandated by law.

I wonder what the reason for this disconnect is?

<comment><USER11> Government regulation can certainly help, as long as you can somehow ensure adequate expertise and actions are taken. For example, a lot of farm raised shrimp from outside the US is not what it is advertised to be. This impacts legit US producers who want to sell healthy food by putting them out of business. If the USDA and FDA actually were competently regulating, then this would not happen.

Aircraft are much more difficult. When making the 747, Boeing was faced with needing to have it certified by the FAA, but FAA did not have the expertise to do that. So Boeing worked with the FAA to develop the regs and tests and so on. I really cannot imagine how the FAA would ever be able to hold on to a competent aviation grade software engineer for very long. Even if they could hire one, within a year or two their skills would atrophe.

<comment><USER13> > This impacts legit US producers who want to sell healthy food by putting > them out of business.

I'm sorry but there is no evidence for this claim. I can't think of a single Big Food company that wants to sell healthy food. Look at the poultry industry. Look at how milk, pork, and beef are produced. There's no reason to believe that "Big Shrimp" would be any more ethical.

Local corporations put profit before health and safety just as much as foreign corporations do.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, because the people who would have wanted to put healthy food before profit have either overcome that desire or gone out of business. Just as GP's model predicts. The corporations you get are the ones you regulate for.

The tech industry is the same: we'd love to protect users' data better than regulation demands, but it's hard to make the business case because you just do a lot of work to put yourself at a competitive disadvantage while the users don't notice or don't believe the difference. If data protection were effectively regulated then compliance woudn't be a competitive disadvantage, and then we might have a hope in hell of shipping a good product.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Kind of BS. Yes the regulations and oversight should be amazing and effective, but Boeing should have redesigned the airframe from the beginning when it became clear that the more efficient engines didn't work with the frame. Let's not misplace the blame here. Their business driven goals (don't require simulator training) were smart until they couldn't be made to work. Instead they forced it, resulting in death of human lives and possibly Boeing itself.

<comment><USER16> This is way over the top. Boeing will be fine on account of being too important to fail (and we can debate endlessly whether that's a good thing or bad thing but that doesn't change the veracity of the statement). Boeing's _customers_ wanted the Max to be built on the 737 platform. You're vastly underestimating the impact of a new airframe on carrier operations if you think it's as simple as simulator training.

<comment><USER17> I think above ALL, Boeing's customers want airplanes that only make controlled landings. If that's unachievable in practical terms with the current airframe, then it shouldn't exist in its current form.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> There are so many underlying threads here: the revolving door between government and industry, the influence of lobbying, lack of competition within critical American industries, deregulation, lack of funding for regulatory agencies. All sums up to regulatory capture. Sickening.

Time and time again regular people are getting screwed by the same patters, the previous paragraph basically summarizes what led to the 2008 financial crisis as well.

<comment><USER19> In a deregulated world banks wouldn't get bailouts. They would go bust. Governments wouldn't pressure France with import tariffs to protect their aviation industry.

In a heavily regulated you still got dieselgate. It got exposed by the private sector.

There's many factors at play. There exists no world where Boeing benefits from having their planes crashing.

<comment><USER20> There does exist a world. It's a world of calculated risks, where people figure out how far they can push things before the risks start eating into profits.

It's the same thing that occurs with risk analysis using customer data. They only fund exactly as much security as they need. Does the company benefit from having private data leaked? Not particularly, but if the cost of having data leaked is less than the cost of securing that data, then businesses will not secure their data.

Which is where regulations come in.

<comment><USER19> The regulatory world is also a world of calculated risks.

In any case. The result of the calculation will always be:

"crashing planes = not good for our company"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> One issue the article didn't cover, but I wish it did, was the obvious corruption of the FAA by industry lobbying. The revolving door of industry -> government -> private industry leaves any regulation weak and often ineffectual. We call it "lobbying" but the reality is that it's just corruption and bribery under a nicer name.

One specific example to highlight the issue...

Ali Bahrami works for the FAA, lobbies to delegate oversight to the airlines, then leaves for a lobbying job, then is back at the FAA again at a higher position. It's hard to believe he's always acting in the public's interest with so much industry money and connections.

[https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing- aerospace/with-...](https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing- aerospace/with-close-industry-ties-faa-safety-chief-pushed-more-delegation-of- oversight-to-boeing/)

</comment><comment><USER22> Probably true but not nafarious/corrupt. It's just human nature that if you watch something and it appears to be safe for long enough, you stop watching so closely.

It's also alkind of a paradox: the safer something appears to be, the more the safety is taken for granted and pushed to unsafe levels. C.f. the mortgage crisis or a million other examples.

<comment><USER23> From what data are you deriving this theory of inevitable entropy? The safety record of the airline industry overall does not appear to be declining or regressing. On the metric of commercial jet fatalities, 2017 was the safest year ever [0]. Or are you suggesting that the 737 MAX is the canary in the coal mine of an imminent era of airline disasters caused by complacency? Why is that more likely than the lobbying and bureaucratic changes documented in the article?

[0] [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-aviation- safety/2017-safe...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-aviation- safety/2017-safest-year-on-record-for-commercial-passenger-air-travel-groups- idUSKBN1EQ17L)

<comment><USER5> 2017 was the safest year ever with zero fatalities in jets and less than a hundred fatalities total.

2018 saw a couple hundred deaths in jet crashes.

Where does one get the idea that airline safety is regressing? Well....

<comment><USER23> The commenter I replied to is asserting that a regression in safety is the natural order of things, and this is in response to article alleging systemic dysfunction on the part of Boeing.

I wanted to know what statistical basis he's working from, because the phenomenon he describes is not at all self-evident, not when airline safety has been solid for decades. That we just recently had the lowest annual crash- fatality count, in a decade that is arguably the safest decade in history of passenger travel, undercuts his claim. Unless he thinks the Boeing crashes are the harbinger of this inevitable safety regression.

I don't understand your comment if it's meant to be a rebuttal to me. The fact that after 2017's record safe year, hundreds of airliner passengers have in _crashes involving new Boeing airliners_ , is support _for_ the NYT article's thesis that Boeing is to blame. Not just, "shit happens as things get better".

<comment><USER5> I don't have a particular opinion one way or the other on the idea that safety tends to revert. But given the past couple of years, I see why someone might think it is starting to revert.

<comment><USER23> Yes, people thinking there might be a regression in airline safety is the entire basis of the article. The main factors for that regression, particularly with respect to Boeing's record, is what's being debated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> A major problem is that regulatory capture leads to less competition, yet the common solution proposed is "more regulation/government". The US federal government effectively forced Boeings 2nd biggest competition to shut down their business in 2017 (Bombardier's C Series program, now sold to Airbus for pennies on the dollar). It seems to me that if a democratic government is given broad arbitrary regulatory power, it is a given that it will be used to limit competition for special interest's groups benefit. If anyone has any examples of a large federal agency that hasn't been captured, I would be interested to know more.

<comment><USER25> Except the bombardier issue had literally nothing to do with regulation and to claim it did is misleading. That was 100% Trump with his tarriff BS. The FAA and safety regulations played 0 part in it. We could have literally an unregulated airline industry and it wouldn't have changed the bombardier situation.

<comment><USER24> Without speculating about political motivations, the Bombardier CSeries tariffs were imposed by two Federal regulatory agencies for "unfair competition/dumping". (US International Trade Commission, and the US department of Commerce)

<comment><USER25> Which again, had absolutely nothing to do with the FAA or anything safety related. Conflating the two is misleading at best. My point stands.

<comment><USER24> Your original post started off with this sentence: "Except the bombardier issue had literally nothing to do with regulation and to claim it did is misleading".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> > The F.A.A. eventually handed over responsibility for approval of MCAS to the > manufacturer.

This is pure WTF, right here.

<comment><USER27> Yes, an MCAS system with 0 redundancy.

> So even some of the people who have worked on Boeing's new 737 MAX airplane > were baffled to learn that the company had designed an automated safety > system that abandoned the principles of component redundancy, ultimately > entrusting the automated decision-making to just one sensor — a type of > sensor that was known to fail. Boeing's rival, Airbus, has typically > depended on three such sensors.

"A single point of failure is an absolute no-no," said one former Boeing engineer who worked on the MAX, who requested anonymity to speak frankly about the program in an interview with The Seattle Times. "That is just a huge system engineering oversight. To just have missed it, I can't imagine how."

[https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing- aerospace/a-lac...](https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing- aerospace/a-lack-of-redundancies-on-737-max-system-has-baffled-even-those-who- worked-on-the-jet/)

<comment><USER28> No need to imagine - Boeing was selling the sane more-sensors solution as an extra, and just assumed - before the fact - that no airline would pass on the extra sensor. That would be insane. So, more money for Boeing, AND a lower list price. The airlines shouldn't have bought unsafe airplanes, but were crazy enough to do so. The buyers turned out to be even worse chancers.

<comment><USER13> > The airlines shouldn't have bought unsafe airplanes, but were crazy enough > to do so. The buyers turned out to be even worse chancers.

The plane was made by Boeing, and signed off by the FAA as being safe. Some airline on the other side of the world isn't going to even pretend to know more about the plane than Boeing and the FAA do. It was a completely reasonable assumption to make that the aircraft was airworthy.

The only airlines who would know that the FAA is actually corrupt (captured by Boeing) and could be failing at their regulatory function are the US airlines.

It's unfortunate that you seem to be blaming Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines for the crashes because apparently they should have known better than to trust that Boeing and FAA would approve a faulty plane. Keep in mind that the FAA approved the plane _as is_ and not "airworthy only if you buy the extra features"

<comment><USER29> And in addition, the new MCAS System was apparently hidden from the manual.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> The background of all of this is increased corporate power in American society relative to individuals. Regulatory capture happens more quickly and fluidly when government is more accountable to corporate money than to voters.

</comment><comment><USER31> The roots are when they moved the Boeing Headquarters from Seattle, where they made airplanes, to Chicago, where they did not.

They stopped being an engineering and production company and became a marketing and accounting company.

<comment><USER32> It started when Boeing bought McDonnell and in turn McDonnell took over Boeing.

You can read more here

[https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/the-coming-boeing- bailout](https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/the-coming-boeing-bailout)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I think it's more a lack of long term thinking. Leaders that do not have a long term stake in the company but who can profit from a rise in the stock price in the short term.

What if executives could only sell their shares five years after they acquired them? What if they experienced losses when the company does?

Boards and shareholders need to get smarter. I'm hesitant to regulate it but I see no problem the SEC rating companies for their incentive structure. It should be updated whenever leadership changes or the company changes compensation.

Companies lad by founders who still have most of their wealth in company stock should garner the highest rating. Companies that don't require CEOs to invest and who allow CEOs to exercise options stock and sell stock whenever they want might get the lowest.

How executives can sell stock should be part of that rating. If executives can only sell an amount of stock gradually, say in 8% increments every month for the next year and can't change that schedule, that is safer for shareholders than allowing them to sell whenever they want.

<comment><USER34> It'd be interesting if executives and upper management were paid in dividends for 30 years.

That way, you have a vested interest -- even after you leave the company -- to make sure it does the right thing.

<comment><USER33> Definitely something to that. 30 years might seem like too long a period. But if you want your pension to stay healthy, build it to last. That message would be pretty clear.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> It's seems easy to dogpile on Boeing in this situation - there is likely even truth to narratives of under valuing engineering at Boeing, I should know. But the story of corporate greed and callous corner cutting is too easy and starts to feel like group think. Boeing, as the plane manufacture, has the task of ensuring safety under a vast array of conditions. And in truth, they, along with industry have made flight incredibly safe. Not only are planes complicated, they are complicated systems composed of many more complicated subsystems operated by Airlines across the world under different regulatory agencies, with differing training and maintenance standards. It's complicated and it's always easier to see flaws in hindsight. Second, don't think that Boeing doesn't know that there business hinges on consumer confidence. Every time there is an incident with a plane - manufacturer's fault, operator's fault, or whatever, Boeing gets a black eye. Regulation is critical, but not a blanket solution to industry challenges. It may not be right, or ideal, but there are good reasons the faa delegates. How much more funding should we give them to make us feel safe? Fatality frequency is measured in "per billion" today. We want a bad guy when there is tragedy. I fear that want will further damage a company already fighting for it's life with Airbus. Let's not let them off the hook, but neither are the causes or solutions simple.

</comment><comment><USER36> It's interesting how this lesson is never learned. We constantly see how oversight is reduced or removed because companies decide that the costs are too high and the rules too stringent. But as soon as the rules are relaxed the companies immediately begin to cut corners and things begin to fail.

It's human nature to find ways to get from point A to point B using the least amount of energy even if we need to break the rules. We should all keep that in mind.

<comment><USER37> This lesson will continue until we realise that the ultimate goal is the improvement of our society and that to get there we create markets which serve society.

At the moment we appear to be confused and think the goal of society is to have markets, so we regulate for the market and hope society gets an outcome.

<comment><USER36> Well put.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Seems like another anecdote of where seniority and experience in engineering is something that can't be quite replicated/replaced by technical qualifications:

> _In the middle of the Max's development, two of the most seasoned engineers > in the F.A.A.'s Boeing office left. The engineers, who had a combined 50 > years of experience, had joined the office at its creation...In their place, > the F.A.A. appointed an engineer who had little experience in flight > controls, and a new hire who had gotten his master's degree three years > earlier. People who worked with the two engineers said they seemed ill- > equipped to identify any problems in a complex system like MCAS._

I assume engineers new to the industry (and government regulation) would be lacking in "big picture" thinking and in confidence and skill in navigating and investigating bureaucracy – the NYT notes that Boeing's early MCAS report "didn't prompt additional scrutiny from the F.A.A. engineers". But the NYT also reports that the engineers made what seemed to be a straightforward technical misjudgment:

> _In several briefings in 2016, an F.A.A. test pilot learned the details of > the system from Boeing. But the two F.A.A. engineers didn't understand that > MCAS could move the tail as much as 2.5 degrees, according to two people > familiar with their thinking._

Though it's hard to tell from that paragraph and its context whether the misunderstanding came from simple technical error and incompetence – e.g. misreading or not fully reading the specs – or deliberate deception/obfuscation from Boeing, and/or inexperience and naivety in doing regulatory work.

</comment><comment><USER38> The underlying assumption here seems to be that if only the FAA had examined in detail every aspect of the development of the plane, of course they would have found all the problems. Underlying this assumption is the idea that Boeing is either trying intentionally to create unsafe planes (as though this is good for Boeing) or that the FAA could hire engineers that are way better than Boeing's engineers.

I don't buy it.

<comment><USER23> The latter half of the article makes specific claims to how lack of FAA expertise and manpower, and increasing deference and complacency to the industry's self-reporting, led to missed signals. For example:

> _When company engineers analyzed the change, they figured that the system > had not become any riskier, according to two people familiar with Boeing's > discussions on the matter...So the company never submitted an updated safety > assessment of those changes to the agency. In several briefings in 2016, an > F.A.A. test pilot learned the details of the system from Boeing. But the two > F.A.A. engineers didn't understand that MCAS could move the tail as much as > 2.5 degrees, according to two people familiar with their thinking._

> _Under the impression the system was insignificant, officials didn't require > Boeing to tell pilots about MCAS. When the company asked to remove mention > of MCAS from the pilot's manual, the agency agreed._

The "change" mentioned is Boeing overhauling MCAS to have a four-fold increase in magnitude of control over the stabilizer (2.5 degrees vs 0.6 degrees). Your belief is that the FAA, even with a better-staffed review team, and less of a culture of rubber-stamping industry engineer assessments, would have reached the same conclusion? And/or do you think the MCAS change is actually not a problem it's scapegoated to be, and that Boeing was right to tell FAA to remove it from the pilot's manual?

<comment><USER38> I'm saying I don't buy that the FAA was ever likely to catch the problems with this system that the engineers at Boeing didn't catch. In hindsight it's easy to say the system was a problem and clearly it was, but the FAA was never going to catch anything.

The meeting with the FAA pilot you mention only goes to reinforce this; nobody in the FAA is ever going to have all the right context to put this together. Rather than trying to find some meeting with the FAA where someone could have caught it, there were probably many many meetings inside Boeing where it should have been caught.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> This article ends abruptly

<comment><USER40> Yeah, what was the deal there? Cliffhanger? I legitimately can't tell if intentional.

<comment><USER23> I think it's just an example of a common news article pattern: put the most memorable and/or important finding or anecdote at the top, and end with the second most memorable.

It's not a cliffhanger. It's an anecdote – a FAA employee asking what seems like a seemingly-too-basic question "days after the Lion Air crash". The Lion Air crash happened last year, and the body of this article is ostensibly the answer to that employee's outburst.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Systems are getting too complex for traditional methods of validation and certification to operate. Safety and correctness of intelligent machines should be validated by even more intelligent machines.

Another big problem is that there is very little competition. In reality there are only two players. Smaller manufacturers get absorbed by big ones. As a result grounding a single model causes economic catastrophe in many airlines - leading to significant ticket price increase!

<comment><USER42> Simply applying the rules would have worked just fine here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> "they followed proper procedures and adhered to the highest standards."

And here I thought 'highest standards' meant not creating death traps.

</comment><comment><USER44> I wonder if critical systems such as this would become more or less reliable if a law forced the companies to release the source code to the public so that anyone could audit. Something like the rewards Tesla gives to the hackers that compromise their systems should be set up by the government for critical software.

</comment><comment><USER45> Where are the smaller airline creating startups trying to eat Boeing's lunch?

If there ever was a time to take down a giant, this is it

<comment><USER42> How on earth does 'airline creating startups' live in the same sentence as 'Boeing'? Boeing is an _aircraft manufacturer_ , not an _airline_.

Airline creating startups do not compete with Boeing, they compete with Lufthansa, Air-France-KLM, Delta and so on.

And even if they did create airplanes, small start-ups do not usually directly compete with giants the size of Boeing on their home territory. Airline manufacture - even with shitty regulation - of a new model passenger plane is not something a 'smaller airplane creating startup' would successfully pull off. It will take a very large amount of money and a huge team to do this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> This is what I always fear when I hear deregulation. It is not that regulation is gone, it is just that it is shifted to the regulated and this is one possible outcome, people die.

</comment><comment><USER47> This is regulatory capture that corporate-political plutocracy brings. I hope Nader sues the pants off them in his goddaughter's memory.

</comment><comment><USER48> The root is our current form of capitalism.

</comment><comment><USER49> The elephant in the room is that we made requirements for getting a completely new plain design into the market so expensive and time-consuming, that Boeing cut corners and reused an existing design to get around the process.

<comment><USER50> Completely new plane designs are being introduced into the market all the time. What are you talking about?

<comment><USER49> No, they don't. New variants enter the market, such as the 737 MAX, which are easier to certify.

Boeing introduced the last new airframe for commercial passenger transport on 2009 (the 787). Before that, it introduced the 747 in 1994.

Which new airframes that enter the market all the time are you talking about?

<comment><USER42> The 737 MAX is a new plane, they hacked the type certification process to get around that.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to Sell Anything to Anyone – Secrets That Every Entrepreneur Show Know - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-sell-anything-anybody-bruce-kasanoff

<comment><USER2> FREE ebook on how to sell is available until SAT afternoon: [https://dl.orangedox.com/freecopy](https://dl.orangedox.com/freecopy)

</comment><comment><USER2> Great article from Bruce. Always helpful.</comment>


Show HN: An old-school forum for new-school web designers, developers and makers - <AUTHOR> https://webwide.io/ <comment><AUTHOR> I wrote some thoughts on why I think a traditional forum is better than other platforms for some things: [https://webwide.io/threads/why- webwide.65/](https://webwide.io/threads/why-webwide.65/)

I'm sure it won't be for everyone and that's fine. There is a super welcoming community already for anybody that would like to dive in.

Please feel free to AMA about it!

</comment><comment><USER2> Been hanging around since few months and it's a really nice community! <3

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks so much! :)</comment></comment>


Before wikileaks there was Gazette De Leyde - <AUTHOR> http://www.theworld.org/2010/11/29/dutch-newspaper-tradition/

<comment><USER2> Big journalism today is mostly nestled within the belly of big fat corporations, beholden to maintaining their viewership numbers and worse yet to a bevy of advertising interests. It's no wonder that their fire has largely left. They are the mainstream, they are the establishment. They fear change. It's no wonder that scrappy internet based newcomers (blogs, wikileaks, etc.) are rising up to take on the role they have long since abdicated.</comment>


Ask HN: Startups and Past Contributions - <AUTHOR>

In many startup-related articles and HN posts, I've read that people tend to overvalue past contributions, and undervalue future contributions. Eg: http://cdixon.org/2009/08/23/dividing-equity-between-founders/<p>Why do many people not put a lot of value on past contributions, such as forming the idea and developing the business plan, when deciding how to split equity between co-founders? <comment><USER2> This line from the linked Chris Dixon post sums it up pretty well:

"Remember that an equity grant is typically for the next 4 years of work (hence 4 years of vesting)."</comment>


A coach is probably the highest-paid public employee in your (US) state - <AUTHOR> http://wagesofwins.com/2013/05/10/a-coach-is-probably-the-highest-paid-public-employee-in-your-state/ <comment><USER2> An employee with specialized skills who runs a profit center in an organization makes the most money? Color me surprised.

<comment><USER3> Profit centers, eh? [http://seattletimes.com/html/collegesports/2010103078_ncaa21...](http://seattletimes.com/html/collegesports/2010103078_ncaa21.html)

<comment><USER4> Yes, profit centers. Notice how all but one of the coaches on that map coach Football or Basketball.

Athletic departments as a whole aren't profitable because the ridiculous amounts of profits earned by basketball and football can't subsidize the losses incurred by supporting the other sports.

<comment><USER3> Does this profit calculation include or exclude the cost (or bond interest payments) of building up a football stadium with supporting facilities?

<comment><USER5> Obviously that's going to be an analysis that has to be done for every stadium. Certainly in many cases it works out -- the average age of an NCAA stadium or arena is much higher than a professional venue. These are not the billion-dollar megaplexes you're probably imagining.

But really, I think the issue here is that you're arguing at cross purposes. There's a strong argument to be made that the _whole idea_ of the state running a profit-making sports team through its universities is flawed and borderline immoral. And I tend to agree.

But that says nothing about the economics of the situation, or the "fairness" of paying the coaching staff a market wage, or even the fact that these absurd salaries are, in fact, driven by a very liquid and efficient market.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, agree with what you're saying. The "fairness" comes into play as high- salaried coaches become high-pensioned retirees [1], but other than that NCAA salaries are not wildly divergent from professional sports salaries, so seem to be in line with market

[http://budget.universityofcalifornia.edu/files/2011/11/2012-...](http://budget.universityofcalifornia.edu/files/2011/11/2012-13_budget.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A coach probably brings more revenue into your school than any other employee.

<comment><USER7> Typically, it's only into the athletic department, though. At least at the big state schools I've been at, money from athletics/merchandizing/etc goes to athletics and only athletics. Beyond paying for athlete's education, etc, the money isn't going back into education in any direct way.

However, the coach's salary is typically paid out of the athletic revenue stream, not directly from state funds, which makes it a bit of a moot point.

(Note: To the best of my knowledge (which isn't much) this holds for Univ. of TN, Univ. of AL, and Univ. of WI. It's probably different at many other schools.)

Of course, all that having been said, the popular sports entirely fund all of the less popular, but still very meaningful athletic programs. There's also a _lot_ to be said for the secondary effects of having a popular sports team on the overall prestige and income of a university.

<comment><USER8> I never got the link between sports programs and academic prestige.

<comment><USER7> Eh, I can see it for undergraduate admissions, etc. I'm very skeptical as well.

However, I know some very smart people who did actually choose their undergraduate program based partly on the football team.

<comment><USER9> I chose my school partly because I followed the basketball team as a kid. It's free marketing. I never heard of half of the small division III schools in my area, but all of the big state schools were on my radar because of sports.

<comment><USER10> >It's free marketing.

Expensive marketing.

<comment><USER11> that's a big chunk of everything,

when you buy a pop out of the machine, what fraction of what your paying for is raw material + production cost and what percentage is so the can pay for superbowl ads so the next time you're thirsty their brand is the first the pops into your head?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> And the highest-paid person you graduated high school with is probably a player (assuming you went to a run-of-the-mill public school)

A guy I graduated with plays in the NBA, and makes somewhere around 6 million a year, which is about the league average. He'll probably be retired in a few more years but he'll still have had a good 10-12 years of making an extremely high salary.

<comment><USER13> That's okay, it probably won't last:

 _Sports Illustrated estimated in 2009 that 78 percent of NFL players are bankrupt or facing serious financial stress within two years of ending their playing careers and that 60 percent of NBA players are broke within five years of retiring from the game._

[http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/sports/story/2012-04-22/Pro-a...](http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/sports/story/2012-04-22/Pro- athletes-and-financial-trouble/54465664/1)

<comment><USER12> Very common. A kid who got drafted the same year from the rival high school across town OWES the team that drafted him $10 million.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What about elected state employees? I know in Georgia the top two are tax commissioners. The real issue isn't their salary so much as the pensions and other retirement perks many already highly compensated public employees, elected, appointed, or otherwise, collect, and how soon they can collect. Throw in double dipping and the numbers get high quick

</comment><comment><USER15> An old thread now, but I thought this article was pretty topical, re: one of the highest-paid coaches in college football:

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomvanriper/2013/05/13/the- magic...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomvanriper/2013/05/13/the-magic-of- nick-saban-everyone-wants-to-go-to-alabama/)

</comment><comment><USER12> Is the data out there find out what the highest paid programmer/database administrator/'IT manager' is per state?

</comment><comment><USER16> This is really misleading because while state colleges are ostensibly public institutions nowadays most of them (especially ones that pay their coaches a shit ton of money) are not receiving the majority of their funding from public sources.

</comment><comment><USER17> Hey, my state is the only one where the highest paid employee is specifically for women's sports. He is not a woman himself, though.

Nevada is completely appropriate, though.

</comment><comment><USER18> I was extra tickled that the highest paid public employee in Nevada (read: Las Vegas) is a plastic surgeon.

</comment><comment><USER19> And a CEO or Sales guy is probably the highest paid employee of a software company.

<comment><USER20> But the CEO and the Sales guy are key to the software company's mission. The football coach is not key to either education or research.

<comment><USER21> That's silly, the coach is key to the athletics department he was hired to work for, just as the CEO and sales guy are key to their respective departments (or in the case of the CEO, the entire company).

<comment><USER19> So innocent :) CEOs more often then not, are not essential to the company. Sales guy maybe, but plenty of them sell based on company inertia.

Now a coach on the other hand...</comment></comment></comment></comment>


IoT Devices and Privacy Concerns in Wake of Apple HomePod Release - <AUTHOR> https://choosetoencrypt.com/tech/iot-devices-bring-privacy-worries-wake-apples-homepod-release/ <comment><USER2> The futuristic vision of IoT working completely smoothly is still a dream.

For now, it works but only in isolated cases. As the system's AI continues to learn, the solutions will be exponentially better.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's cool that Apple's systems will supposedly learn on their own, beyond sending information back to Apple. Compared to Amazon and Google's model which relies on learning through data collection and then pushing updates.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> That story in GizModo is cool...kinda what I expected. IoT has a long way to go.</comment>


The End of the Password Age - <AUTHOR> http://www.sitepoint.com/end-password-age/

<comment><USER2> While I completely agree with you that the end of the password age has arrived, I disagree that biometrics is the solution; at least not on a broad level.

The problem with biometrics isn't a matter of its ability to authenticate an individual; they make great credentials. Rather, the problem is that once that uniquely personal data is leaked or hacked (in security, we must always plan for future malicious attacks/vulnerabilities), you can't simply replace or revoke those credentials. e.g. Say a cloud service holds a copy of one of your fingerprints. If that data gets leaked, you can't simply remove or replace your fingerprint. What happens when you've lost all 10 of your fingerprints to hackers?

In reality, biometry is so powerful that we must be responsible in how we employ this most intimate form of identification. Using biometry within truly closed systems (think iPhone 5s TouchID) is the only responsible way to utilize biometry, as the data is encrypted and stored locally in a partitioned drive, and made unavailable to everything else. Of course, this architecture generally limits usage to the device it's on.

My last point is that you don't need biometry for true multi-factor authentication (MFA), which is what everyone should be striving for. Biometric factors are also known as inherence factors (something you inherently are), which means you can replace biometric factors with inherence factors like geofencing (your location on this planet is something inherent only to you).

You should look into services like LaunchKey ([https://launchkey.com](https://launchkey.com)) or view the FIDO Alliance ([https://fidoalliance.org](https://fidoalliance.org)) to see what the next generation of authentication looks like.

<comment><USER3> It's an April Fool.

Anyway, I don't think it makes any sense to treat fingerprints (especially, but other biometrics too) as sensitive. It's a repeat of the social security number fiasco, except it's worse, we leave them everywhere we go.</comment></comment>


Greasemonkey script to remove any bitcoin related articles from HN - <AUTHOR> http://patrickkettner.com/ybs.user.js There has been a big influx of bitcoin related news lately. Nothing wrong with that, I am not interested in it.
a tweet by @jacobian (https://twitter.com/#!/jacobian/status/69985853354672128) reminded me of http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1085721
Changed one word in the script. <comment><USER2> I find this discussion of filtering out bitcoin-related stories particularly interesting because just a few days ago this video hit the front page: [http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bu...](http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles.html)

I'm still not really sure whether I believe that video's thesis, but I certainly now believe that it's worth thinking about.

<comment><AUTHOR> Since this is self imposed, it isnt quite the same issue, no?

I would think this would fall more under the risk of narrowing our world view with things that are not inline with our own beliefs. That, again, though, isn't as much of an issue (in my opinion) in this case, because I have looked into it - I just don't want to look into it more.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Edit:I am the poster. I was just explaining the reason it was posted.

There has been a big uptick in bitcoin related articles lately. Nothing wrong with it - just not my cup of tea.

A recent tweet from @jacobian reminded me of <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1085721>

Changed "ipad" to "bitcoin"

All credit goes to Tom Hastjarjanto

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm just going to reverse this and make it highlight articles that are interesting rather than filtering out articles that aren't interesting.</comment>


Our app powered car rental lost cell service and now I'm stuck here - <AUTHOR> https://mobile.twitter.com/kari_paul/status/1229214223227478016 <comment><USER2> I don't run a car-sharing company but I don't think this is the way to handle the situation:

> after @GIGCarShare told us to sleep in our car on the side of the road and > try again in the morning we called a tow truck on our own and made it back > to our Airbnb. TBD on whether I'll be refunded for this.

> also we were able to turn the car back on somehow but now we are afraid to > turn it off because it may not start again and Gig told us we used our > "allotted restarts" of the car so we are on a literal endless road trip > through California now

</comment><comment><USER3> This incident is fantastic. I worked at Zipcar on the firmware deployed in the cars, and these kinds of issues are _hard_ to get right, though this failure looks to be spectacularly naive. I had to deal with cars parked in garages underground, as well as off the grid (and moved between countries, and with dead batteries, etc).

There is an inescapable tension between default-permit (the customer _must_ be able to get in the car and drive it) and default-deny (it should be impossible to steal a car) that results in all kinds of trade-offs with UX implications. These are, at their core, sociological problems that the technology can guide but not solve.

</comment><comment><USER4> Seattle had a problem with Lime Cars.

People would put their Lime Car on a ferry and head west. As soon as the car lost reception from its range of allowance, it essentially was bricked. The car would have to wait for the ferry to come back to Seattle and be towed off.

This was shared by a friend over Labor Day.

</comment><comment><USER5> I saw this on Internet of Shit: [https://twitter.com/internetofshit](https://twitter.com/internetofshit)</comment>


SETI astronomers tell US Congress 'there's alien life out there' - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/seti-astronomers-tell-us-congress-theres-alien-life-out-there-9419702.html

<comment><USER2> I agree with them. Mankind spends an insane amount of money for useless endeavours, the search for extraterrestial life could turn out to be one of the most important projects for mankind and deserves more attention and funds.</comment>


Yahoo, Flickr can go to hell - <AUTHOR> http://www.surf-the-edge.com/2011/09/13/yahoo-flickr-can-go-to-hell/

<comment><USER2> Crazy. I understand your annoyance but I did LOL @ the hypervigilant Flickr staff/robot.

Nice shoe blog though!</comment>


Early startup pitches are like movie pitches, not business pitches - <AUTHOR> http://also.roybahat.com/post/141207062911/early-startup-pitches-are-like-movie-pitches-not <comment><USER2> I wonder if the comparison can be extended. I've never made movies, but it seems like they are exactly like "little businesses". They have to be funded, and made, and launched, in order to make their money back.

A more modern approach to startups is to get that MVP out there and then intelligently evolve the business. Are there any movies that get made that way?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I liked "Is your startup Avatar? Or is it Ishtar?"</comment>


$100 million startup accelerator: The Blasting Station - <AUTHOR> http://blastingstation.com/

<comment><USER2> I can't wait until they announce the winners... with startup claims like "We're the viagra for pets," and half-trillion dollars in backing, what's not to like?</comment>


Tim Cook's Letter to Apple Staff - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/25/tim-cooks-letter-to-apple-staff/ <comment><USER2> I hope this guy is more humble, Apples Achilles' heel is it's arrogance. It was somewhat accepted because is was Steve Jobs doing. Another CEO will never have this bonus and if he proceeds with this attitude then it will hurt the brand.

<comment><USER3> Don't you think it's kind of difficult to point out Apple's "Achilles' heel" at this point? They're killing it on all fronts. I can't think of a better performing leadership group at this point. You might perceive Apple's leadership as "arrogant", but their strategy is working wonders in the marketplace. What makes you think you know better?

<comment><USER2> I am not just talking about the financials, the reputation in the developer community suffered a lot.

It is somewhat arrogant what they do, telling their customers what is better for them like the mousewheel in tiger. Steve Jobs always had this attitude to know whats best for the people.

Android is successful because it lets the user some choice, and if Apple did compromise some things they could be more successful. It is their "Achilles' heel" already.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> A-K "Steve built a company and culture that is unlike any other in the world and we are going to stay true to that—it is in our DNA."

Let's hope.

</comment><comment><USER4> Too much "I". When Steve mentions "I", it's because he's making a point.

(Off the cuff -- but gut -- reaction to just reading the letter (or, 'memo'), quickly.)</comment>


Finally Android's broken picture messaging gets a fix (but not from Google) - <AUTHOR> http://www.talkandroid.com/261487-lock-screen-photo-messenger-trumpit-gets-in-house-camera-after-exiting-beta/

<comment><USER2> Just downloaded. Looks super cool</comment>


This researcher may have discovered the antidote to health bullshit - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/5/21/15505812/lancet-teach-informed-health-choices-teaching-kids <comment><USER2> > "alternative facts"

Would of been nice if they had kept anti Trump rhetoric out of this.</comment>


Recognizing Graphs from Images - <AUTHOR> https://www.yworks.com/blog/projects-optical-graph-recognition <comment><USER2> I would pay for an iOS app that I could point at a graph I've drawn and get back an SVG together with a data structure representing the graph

</comment><comment><USER3> It sounds cliche, but I've found the yEd graph editor crucial in reading a Dostoevsky novel and keeping up with all the characters and their relations. Is yworks pretty much the only game in town when it comes to graph editing?

<comment><USER4> (Disclaimer: yWorks employee)

If you still have that graph somewhere, we'd love to see it. We're always curious (and sometimes surprised and astonished) what people create with yEd.

As far as competitors go, there are lots of other options, both in end-user applications for graph editing, as well as libraries.

For end-users it seems many stick with the first tool they really like and get used to its features, strengths, and idiosyncrasies (and from my experience there are many weirdnesses among those applications, including our own). Automatic layout may be a killer feature for our offering, though. As far as I know there is not much that can compare here (although for many people simple hierarchic or force-directed approaches may suffice and they might not need every option).

For library users it often comes down to a decision based on required features, cost, custom development effort, and target platform. I think we're well-situated for customers where cost is less of an issue, that have competent developers and require extensive customization (and support). It's not uncommon that D3 might be a better choice, depending on the requirements.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the response! FWIW, I find nothing lacking in the application, but I'm working on an ipad and it seems a native app would be less constrained by the browser quality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> awinter-py chart recognition and OCR in general would make UGC sites, in particular wikipedia, much more powerful. wikipedia is full of uploaded charts that should be datasets.

in general chart sharing on the web is bad. If we can't have a <chart> element, maybe chart parsing is the next best thing to preserve some of the original information

<comment><USER4> I think Wikipedia has macros that allow you to create a variety of charts with just textual information. I've seen at least timelines and family trees being created that way. The benefit is that it's text-editable, and the information is still accessible. In some cases, the markup is very, very unreadable, though and might actually be tool-generated. It still maintains the benefits in theory.

For things that are trivial in SVG or even HTML, like bar or line charts, there should be little to no excuse not to use markup, agreed.

In this case, we've concentrated on parsing graphs, though, as that's our main line of work (you could draw charts with yFiles, but it's not really that useful for it). We're still trying to find the time to clean up our code and publish it somewhere. This has been just a week-long effort by four people, but was definitely a fun learning experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> yWorks employee, developer and one of the authors of that blog post (and the described code) here. Happy to answer any questions regarding graph drawing or recognition.

<comment><USER5> Would you guys mind open sourcing your data set, including the cases where you currently fail (presumably graphs with edge crossings -- I couldn't help but notice that all examples are planar graphs)? I think I may have some ideas how to tackle some of the unresolved issues you state at the end of the blog post.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, we intentionally omitted edge crossings. There's prior research in dealing with them and those approaches work well (and are clever), so we thought it wouldn't be terribly useful for us to re-invent that part. The papers are linked in the blog post near the end where we compare our approach with previous attempts.

We've then concentrated on different segmentation strategies (the other approaches started with a sensible binarization of the image, which precludes color-based segmentation), as well as getting visual characteristics right, such as shape and color. The algorithms still don't handle cases well where features are much larger than we expect (e.g. photos are very different than screenshots). That'd be certainly an area of improvement.

Our data set is ... basically most of what the screenshots in the article show (one of them opens an album with more images). We didn't have time for a thorough testing of thousands of different graphs. That's something we'd certainly have to do if we'd want to publish anything ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The title led to be believe this would be about extracting relational hierarchies (e.g. scene trees, dependency graphs) from arbitrary images. That would have been very impressive, and somewhat unbelievable. The actual article appears to be about extracting graphs from images of literal graphs.</comment>


I Am Werner Herzog, the Filmmaker. AMA - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/4sjaoe/i_am_werner_herzog_the_filmmaker_ama/ <comment><USER2> This is a terrific AMA. I'm not sure I can pick a favorite Q&A, but perhaps this one:

 _Well, I would say, reading is some kind of essential prerequisite to everything you do. Whether you are a scientist or a filmmaker, or just a normal human being working in a more "normal" profession. I cannot argue much about it. Read, read, read, read, read. The other side, traveling on foot, nobody does it and what I said will disappear into thin air any moment from now. Traveling on foot has actually given me insight into the world itself. The world reveals itself to one who travel on foot. I can give you one example, you start to understand the heart of men. I was, for a film, at the Johnson Space Center and had to take to five astronauts who had done a space mission in a space shuttle. I wanted to persuade them to be extras in the film in a very strange way. They were sitting in a semi circle when I was taken in and my heart sank that I didn't know "what should I say? what should I do?" I looked around and looked into their faces and all of a sudden I had the feeling, I understand these people. I understand the heart of these men and these women. I said "since I was a child, when I learned how to milk a cow with my own hands, I can tell that since I've traveled on foot and in the meadow first you milk a cow to have something to drink. I know by looking at faces, who is able to milk a cow." I looked at the pilot and said "you sir!" and he burst out in smiles and says "yes, I can milk a cow." Somehow when you make films, you understand the heart of men. In a way you cannot learn it, the world has to teach you. The world does it in it's most intense and deepest way when you when you encounter it by traveling on foot.

I'd like to add that when I travel by foot, I don't do it as a backpacker where you take all your household items with you, your tent, your sleeping bag, your cooking utensils. I travel without any luggage and I do not travel, let's say, the specific trail 2000 miles which is marked. I do traveling for very intense quests in my life. I do that on foot._

<comment><USER3> His AMA answers cover much of what Herzog is covering in his book "A Guide For The Perplexed", including traveling by foot (he once walked from Bavaria to Paris as some kind of pilgrimage for a sick friend there). Highly recommended reading, it feels like his extreme drive imprints itself on your brain.</comment></comment>


The Milkman Model Returns, This Time for Shampoo and Haagen-Dazs - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-23/kroger-walgreens-join-p-g-unilever-in-reusable-container-launch <comment><USER2> The cost of returning containers whole, washing, inspecting, rejecting breakages outweighs the benefits.

It would be much more efficient to use extremely lightweight containers that can be crushed in a reverse vending machine in any supermarket.

That's how returnable bottles and cans work here in Norway (and several other European and Scandinavian countries). At the moment it only covers drinks containers but that is probably because they are the only ones that pose a major littering problem.

See [https://www.tomra.com/en/collection/reverse- vending](https://www.tomra.com/en/collection/reverse-vending)

This way the energy cost of returning the containers is minimised and the returned material is suitable for immediate, industrial scale, automated recycling.

But of course that doesn't allow the producer to use just any container so it limits their branding opportunities.

Edit: removed repeated link.

<comment><USER3> Yeah but it locks you in. Another example of how the hysteria around climate change is exploited by companies for profit. Once you buy Tide washing liquid in a returnable container there's a higher cost barrier switching to another brand. Unless they standardize the packaging this is a pure profit move.

On a broader note I often wonder if all the talk about climate change and plastics is not fueled by corporations ready to exploit it. I just cannot believe that a topic can suddenly become so big without an agenda behind it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm here for this. The less plastic garbage we pump out, the better. Why packaging is considered single use is beyond me.

Edit: Even better if it can be optimized for shipping, but I know not everything packages into a cube shape easily.

<comment><USER5> > Why packaging is considered single use is beyond me.

Disease.

<comment><USER6> There was an interesting article (I think?), I read somewhere (maybe linked to from here?) about all the disease spread by ice cream sandwiches in the 1910s. Individually wrapped single use packaging really was a response to diseases killing many children.

<comment><USER7> I did find this interesting article [1] that might fit your description. It gives some history around ice cream poisonings, Victor Vaughan, and the advancement of bacteriology:

 _For instance, prior to the development of the ice cream cone, street vendors often served their ice cream in reusable glass dishes. Often made of thick glass to create the appearance that they contained more ice cream than they actually did, these "penny licks" were simply wiped out and reused rather than being washed.26 Later in the century the more hygienic "hokey-pokey"—an individual serving of ice cream wrapped in paper—became popular.27 Besides avoiding the unsanitary "penny lick," the hokey-pokey also discouraged the notorious practice of refreezing unsold melted ice cream and serving it to unsuspecting customers. As melted ice cream provided an ideal environment for the reproduction of bacteria, this noxious product surely caused many food poisoning cases._

[1] [https://www.jstor.org/stable/26305867](https://www.jstor.org/stable/26305867)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I believe this is less of a technology issue than a culture/adoption issue, and if widely adopted, could really improve consumer efficiency.

The idea makes plenty of sense from both a producer and a consumer standpoint. Packaging, especially when not automated, accounts for a significant portion of the cost of goods for many basic goods.

You already see this in grocery stores: the deli counter and often the nuts/grains sections, and I'd argue the produce section use minimal packaging. Expanding this to other sections seems like a pretty straightforward to reduce deadweight, if consumers adopt the practice.

<comment><USER9> I wish grocery stores near me had better bulk goods sections. I notice the ones that exist are currently presented as upscale choices, and are often more expensive than the packaged goods.

I think consumers will widely adopt the practice when it lowers, or at least doesn't increase, their grocery bill.

<comment><USER10> Bulk foods section are a disease vector, though. I see both unattended kids _and adults_ "grazing" in the bulk section of stores like Sprouts, hand to bin to mouth to hand to bin, repeat across the spectrum of bulk goodies.

I've seen kids wet their fingers in their mouths and "dip" them into bins as their parents watch, unconcerned.

<comment><USER11> On their way to the store, most bulk products have been expectorated on by a number of sweaty men in dirty boots. It's not obvious to me how packaging would lower that number.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is an interesting concern for the big companies because a lot of bulk grocery items in the US are generic. Like, when I buy bulk peanuts they're just peanuts, not Planters™ peanuts. I've noticed that a grocery store near me house has laundry and dish soap in bulk dispensers, which has a brand on it, but I think the containers are unbranded. This would be a big problem if Tide™ were sold that way. Another problem for the big companies is keeping people from putting other brands in the nice reusable packages.

<comment><USER13> Bulk dispensers are already the standard in commercial/institutional settings. Motor oil often comes in boxes (like boxed wine) now.

<comment><USER14> My mechanic gets his motor oil in an oil drum to which he attaches a hand pump to dispense it.

<comment><USER13> Yeah, you can still get 1gal and 5qg jugs, 5gal buckets and 55gal drums but boxes are becoming more common.

For example:

[https://www.grainger.com/product/VALVOLINE-Synthetic- Blend-E...](https://www.grainger.com/product/VALVOLINE-Synthetic-Blend-Engine- Oil-453C19)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There's enough margin in premium consumables to cater to customer whims like this.

Until the value priced product lines and retailers start doing this it's not gonna make a dent whatsoever in plastic usage. This is a nice step but the model is not useful yet because it only works at the top of the market.

</comment><comment><USER15> There are some Whole Foods in New Jersey where you can buy milk and chocolate milk in glass containers. They cost a dollar or two more but get the difference back when you return the glass bottle. The actual price of the contents is pretty close to the milk available in plastic containers. Pretty close to what loop is doing

<comment><USER16> Ronnybrook Dairy sells milk and milk products in thick glass bottles which you can return and get the 2 dollars back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Something like this really could have an impact on reducing garbage. Combine this with more and more people switching to grocery delivery and it could actually work!

</comment><comment><USER18> Loop ([https://loopstore.com](https://loopstore.com)) is by Terracycle? I'm glad they're still doing well after their natural fertilizer lawsuit fight with Scotts Miracle-Gro.

Too bad this is only available in a few states in the North East.

</comment><comment><USER19> Ha, I was just wondering about this recently. It's great to see that someone is exploring this idea.

1\. [https://i.imgur.com/MYQ1uTl.png](https://i.imgur.com/MYQ1uTl.png)

<comment><USER20> Agreed. I've been thinking that we need a universal deposit system for disposable items. Tag, collect a deposit, and make companies responsible for end-to-end managing the stream of waste their products create.

There was an interesting thread on reddit just recently that is related:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/brt43t/scientist...](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/brt43t/scientists_discover_china_has_been_secretly/eoh5foy/?context=3)

<comment><USER21> It would be simpler to just have an environment tax.

Setting the tax rates is roughly equivalent to the problem of setting reasonable and effective deposits, but everything else is simpler.

<comment><USER22> Not really that simple. Have to ensure correct taxation and collection of $2 bottle. The tax could also be misused (what, you think it would go 100% to disposing?)

It would be simpler to make producers take back non recyclable/biodegradable waste. Why should excessive waste issues be imposed on government or people instead of the producers?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Every piece of plastic you have ever encountered still exists somewhere. Think about that. Humans create a STAGGERING amount of trash and we need to stop.

</comment><comment><USER24> Why is Bloomberg using the subject's propaganda photos for their article?

<comment><USER25> So staged photos shot by Bloomberg would add sufficient value to the article to lead you to pay more? (Or, for that matter, would add any real editorial value at all?)

<comment><USER24> It doesn't need staged photos either. But yes, they would be better in terms of not being deliberately set up to make the product look good (although often newspapers do that too).

<comment><USER25> SEO is helped by having graphics with articles whether or not they add editorial value. Whether it's generic graphics or stock/staged photos. So good luck convincing people not to use cheap photos/graphics for stories.</comment></comment></comment></comment>