My family saw a police car hit a kid, then I learned how NYPD impunity works - <AUTHOR> https://www.propublica.org/article/my-family-saw-a-police-car-hit-a-kid-on-halloween-then-i-learned-how-nypd-impunity-works <comment><USER2> > "I blame myself," she kept saying. "I never let him out on Halloween. A > bunch of Black boys together. I shouldn't have let him out. But he begged > me."

Notice that while average white parents might worry about criminals before letting their kids out on the street, the black parents worry (with good reason) about the police.

(Just to spell it out: this is why so many BLM activists feel comfortable saying "abolish the police" or "defund the police", because from their point of view the police are the people most likely to assault or kill them or their children on the street, more so than random criminals)

> "Young teens or pre-teens of color were handcuffed, arrested, or held at > gunpoint while participating in age-appropriate activities such as running, > playing with friends, high-fiving, sitting on a stoop, or carrying a > backpack."

This is child abuse.

<comment><USER3> I just don't get it.

The number of unarmed black men shot by police across the entire US in 2019 was 14. [0] How does such a small number spark this level of fear and protest?

Also, do people actually think the police generally and on average does more harm than good as to request abolishing it?

[0] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/national/police...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/national/police- shootings-2019/)

<comment><USER4> To address your first point, there're a constellation of relevant answers.

1\. Most people who dislike or distrust the police don't actually trust those numbers. There are decades worth of documented evidence of police lying about people carrying weapons, and sometimes even carrying weapons to plant on people they kill. So from the start, a lot of us think that number is an undercount, possibly by a dramatic degree.

2\. Even among the people who are armed who are shot by police, there are people who weren't doing anything wrong who were still shot. The most recent high profile version of this was Philando Castile. Technically, he was armed when he was shot, but when he was killed, he had already informed the police about his licensed, legal firearm and was moving slowly towards the glove compartment, _as instructed by an officer_ , to retrieve his registration. So it's not just shootings of unarmed people.

3\. Police don't just shoot people to death. George Floyd was not shot; Derek Chauvin kneeled on his neck for just under nine minutes. Eric Garner was not shot; Daniel Panteleo choked him to death with an illegal chokehold. Adam Trammell was not shot; he was hit with a Taser, 18 times, while in the shower and experiencing mental issues, and it caused his heart to stop. Sandra Bland was not shot; she supposedly hung herself with a plastic grocery bag in her cell after being arrested as a result of a pretextual traffic stop. This list could go much, much longer. Only looking at shooting deaths artificially constrains the number of people police kill in a very deceptive way.

4\. There are so very many other ways that police can make your life absolutely miserable without shooting or killing you. I am not Black, and so I have been spared many of these experiences, but of my Black friends and family, I can tell you this: every single one of them has had police harass them for absurdly minor issues, or sometimes no issue at all. A number of them have had a police officer point a gun at them. Almost all of them have been at some point unofficially detained for some length of time. Some of them have been arrested and then eventually released without charges. All of them who drive get pulled over at least a few times per year, without fail. These are mostly middle- or upper-middle-class professionals. They live all over the United States, in cities and towns, in places with large Black populations and small Black populations, and yet their experiences all share a commonality that is terrifying when you pull back even a little bit and look at them as a pattern.

5\. But maybe this should have been #1...what do you think is a reasonable number of shootings of unarmed people? Personally, I think that number is zero, so even "just 14" is absolutely grounds for extreme anger, even if you want to ignore my first four points. I don't think the police, people who are given special dispensation and training to use violence in the name of the state, should ever shoot and kill an unarmed person. I actually think any number of deaths caused by police is too many deaths. In every situation, they are the people with the most training. They are (ultimately) the best-armed. I recognize that, in a country with as many guns as the US, maybe the police will have to kill some small number of people per year, but I think every time they do, that shooting should be heavily scrutinized. We give them these weapons and powers so they can protect people, even people who commit crimes, and if they have to kill someone, they have failed to protect that person.

I hope those points answer your first question, and start to explain the answer to your second question. In response to that, though, I would first ask what you've read about police abolition so far.

<comment><USER3> > what do you think is a reasonable number of shootings of unarmed people? > Personally, I think that number is zero

I humbly suggest that if you give this some thought, you'll see that isn't a very good answer. Any complex system, especially one that involves humans, will have errors. There's no way around that. So the only way to eliminate errors completely is to eliminate the system entirely. This understanding is perhaps what fuels the call for police abolition: No amount of reform and training will get the error rate to zero, so the only way to get zero police accidents is to not have any police.

To illustrate my point further, consider medical malpractice. How many deaths caused by doctor error is acceptable? If the answer is zero, one needs to abolish medicine. How many automobile accidents are acceptable? If zero, we must abolish all motorized transport. I think for the most part people accept the unfortunate fact that accidents are an inevitable part of any system, and should be accepted if we consider the system to do more good than harm.

<comment><USER4> For starters, I'm a little disappointed that that's the only thing you decided to engage with. That said: this isn't actually terribly complicated. This isn't medical malpractice, where some degree of risk is an inevitable side effect of any medical intervention. Police in the United Kingdom shot one (1) person to death in 2018. He was carrying an airsoft rifle that looked like a real gun. I still think that's terrible! He should be alive. But still: one person, in the whole year. There are countries where the police don't kill anyone. This is the healthcare conversation all over again; Americans insisting that some goals are impossible while other countries that have already achieved those "impossible" goals look at us with a mix of pity and disdain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> When I was younger I lived in a fairly rural area. I was driving home late from work one day on a remote highway and came across one of the most horrific accidents I've ever seen. A driver was pulling onto the highway and was hit by a police cruiser at an almost impossibly high speed. The highway was marked at 55mph, and under normal conditions, the driver of the other car would have had plenty of time to pull out, speed up and join the road at speed. On this road, at this time of night, there were virtually no other cars on the road.

The cruiser was going at least 130mph, without lights or siren on, struck the car at the b pillar and literally _sheared_ the car in half right behind the driver. It was unreal, the two pieces of the car looked like they had been cut in two by a giant table saw. The front end of the cruiser was smashed in pretty well.

Incredibly, when I pulled my car off the road to help, I found both drivers up, relatively unhurt, ambulatory and in a daze from shock. A few minutes later another cruiser pulled up, called a tow and drove the civilian driver home. It became a local news story as the police officer was not only not arrested, but not disciplined in any way. Insurance covered the cars and the officer was back on the beat in a new car within the week. His rush? He wanted to make it home in time to watch a college ball game after his shift was over.

<comment><USER6> Once saw a police car in a smallish town whip a u-turn for no clear reason, no lights, nothing, nearly hit a car that was pulling out of a bank parking lot and the driver of which had clearly already looked that way and seen no-one coming, then the cop freaked out, u-turned _again_ (lights this time) and pulled over the car they nearly hit. Guess whatever they were breaking traffic laws and driving very dangerously to get to wasn't so important after all. What a shitty day for that person. At least it was probably just a totally unjustified ticket and an unpleasant lies-filled conversation with an upset and fragile-ego'd cop, and not death or injury, I suppose.

[EDIT] this and other dangerous-driving observations lead me to treat cop cars on the road like someone I've seen through the window drinking a 40 while talking on the phone. They're far and away the most likely category of vehicle to do something batshit crazy with no warning.

<comment><USER7> Absolutely. I'm a firefighter. I was the designated driver for two friends. We leave a bar, and I pull up to the intersection. I have a flashing red traffic light, and the cross traffic has a flashing yellow. There is a police car sitting at his flashing yellow, windows down, watching (it's closing time, and there are several people milling about on the street, the usual). I wait. He doesn't move. I wait for approximately 10 seconds before turning, with my signal, left.

I'm immediately lit up. "Failure to yield". In addition I get an FST after "failing" the vertical nystagmus test (bear in mind at this point, my one and only pint of beer is coming up on five hours old). Cop is insistent I'm drunk, says he can go the DUI route, because my "behavior" in "failing to yield" shows I'm impaired, regardless of actual numbers. I'm lucid, but frustrated. Debates merits of blood draw, etc. Tickets me, "Get out of downtown and get home, I think we both know you're getting off lucky".

<comment><USER6> Hahaha, yeah, same smallish town's cops love to hassle people with late or early shifts playing "20 questions" fishing for drunks or I-don't-even-know- what ("5:30's awfully early to be going to work" look, asshole, take it up with the hour-fifteen of highway I have to cover, how many drunks are you nabbing at this hour on a Tuesday anyway?), usually just obviously fabricating some reason that they stopped you in the first place, without even trying to hide that it's BS (good luck questioning it, though). That's white folks, too, I can't imagine how bad it is there if you've got too much melanin in your skin. Incredibly annoying. Often it just seems like they're super bored and looking for anything at all to do.

<comment><USER8> > I can't imagine how bad it is there if you've got too much melanin in your > skin.

It's the same. That narrative you're pushing is hindering genuine discussion and potential solutions to the very real problems of abusive police and injustices within the legal system. It's them versus us - all of us - not some of us more than others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's crazy but from a European perspective, stories like this sound more like what I imagine police forces to behave like in dictatorships, not in a democracy.

After living in Europe for six years now, my wife is still puzzled sometimes by the differences between Europe and North-America when it comes to the police: how they are experienced by the population and how they see and present themselves and which role they think they're playing in society. Big difference. I'm certainly over-generalizing but here, we see cops as approachable and helpful in general (with exceptions) while in North-America, at least my wife's impression is that of cops being mostly intimidating (again, with exceptions).

Of course, this is all complex and different social and societal aspects play a big role, such as e.g., the odds for a cop of running into an armed person. But when I read how the police handled the situation with the group of black trick-or-treaters, it seems so foreign to me now from a more European perspective.

I suppose accountability is always going to be an issue - who watches the watchmen? But it should not be - in a democracy especially, there should be functioning mechanism to prevent abuse of power, and that of course applies to police actions, too.

<comment><USER10> Usually police in dictatorships, at least the more successful ones, tend to be much more professional, polite and non-brutal. Until they are very professional, very cruel and very brutal. The latter usually against very well defined groups, in very well defined ways.

Simple reason being, that random police violence just results, ultimately, in the kind of uproar and civil unrest the US experience now. Basically the last thing dictatorships want.

<comment><USER11> I actually found that most of the police in China are not particularly scary. I'm sure they can mess up your day if they wanted to, but the day to day officers are unarmed, not particularly physically imposing (lots of normal looking men and women). They wear a sort of light blue office collared shirt.

Outside of big cities it gets even more lax. You just see police officers hanging out like regular people. I once saw an old guy get into an argument with the cops that looked like an argument between two people, not between "officer and civilian". In the US that wouldn't happen, the officer would feel slighted and probably arrest that guy, or the guy would never dare to talk back to a police officer in the first place.

But to your point I suspect the military police is very brutal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've lived here a long time and come to the realization through observation that the NYPD operates like a private security force for capital. Their primary concern is to defend private property, the people themselves come second. The "community outreach" they do is just enough to keep us from getting accusatory.

<comment><USER13> Historically, this is what police were in the Northeast US. (In the South, police trace their heritage to slave patrols. I'm sure they would argue that these patrols were also just defending property. Gross.)

Landowners and merchants hired private police to watch over their holdings. Over time, they convinced locals that it would be in the public good if the guards they hired were paid for by everyone.

In the 1850s, in Boston, they formalized this arrangement into the first police department in the country. (There's an interesting history here around the oppression and then incorporation of Boston's Irish population by the police force.)

Edit: Curious about the downvotes -- this is a review of US history.

<comment><USER14> It's become popular to regurgitate that bit about police and slave patrols but it has no real basis in reality. That isn't to say that there isn't _some_ example of a slave patrol that was pressed into service as police, but Police are a concept that all of America inherited from the English roots of our governments.

<comment><USER13> You are incorrect. Not all police departments started as slave patrols, in fact many of them did not. But to deny that it was a widespread event is counterfactual.

The first American police dept was founded in the 1850s, well after the split from England. The first police department in England was founded in the 1830s.

Prior to that, our communities either took collective action to regulate themselves and the 'spirit of the community', insisted on night watch duty as a rotating responsibility, paid a constable or sheriff (a word whose roots are 'shire reeve', meaning 'shire official'), or hired private guards to protect property.

In the 1850s, around the time of the first police departments in the US, the Fugitive Slave Act was enforced as law -- requiring officials to hunt and 'return' runaway slaves. This was adopted to a greater or lesser degree depending on the area, but it absolutely was a role of law enforcement across much of the US, and it's without a doubt a part of the roots of many police departments in the US.

<comment><USER14> I'm not denying slave patrols existed, I'm denying this rumor of them being the root of modern police because it's straight up not true.

The very simple historical trend that brought us the police we have today started with the King enforcing the peace, was delegated to sheriffs who enforced the peace among other things, was inherited in the colonies where the sheriff took on a primarily peace officer role in early states, and as the population grew and cities got bigger were augmented with more specialized and local peace officers. Slave patrols being the root of police is just propaganda.

<comment><USER13> It's absolutely not just propaganda. The KKK was formed in the 1860s and there are many accounts of reconstruction era patrols being perpetrated by or with the aid of police at the time.

Enforcing the law required acting as slave patrols for well over a hundred years in the US. In 1757 Georgia, for instance, the colonial assembly required white landowners to be slave patrollers, and this continued well past the civil war.

There is over a hundred years of law enforcement, particularly in the South, acting as slave patrols. It's absolutely reasonable to trace the roots from modern departments back through the nation's unique history.

Not all police followed that path, like I mentioned above, police in the North were formed more out of an interest of protecting property and landowners. Places like Boston founded their police to try and prevent crime, rather than simply exact justice post-facto. That's a different historical root of American policing, and it did not involve slave patrols.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I had an incident happen to me where I was stuck in traffic in the left most lane on the freeway next to the diamond (HOV) lane. So the HOV was on my left and was wide open and all the other lanes were completely stopped, or stop and go. A state police officer had people pulled over just ahead of me for HOV violations. A car that was exactly the same model and color as mine was flying down the HOV and pulled in two cars behind me when he saw the cop. When I got up to where the cop was, he was confused and thought it was me. He was pointing at me and pointing at the side of the road and yelling something. At first I didn't understand what was going on, it was not until later that it all made sense. I didn't know a car similar to mine had pulled in a couple of cars behind me. I could not understand what was going on, if he was pointing at me or what. I rolled down my window and he was screaming at me, I had the radio on and had not noticed any of this until he was hopping mad. Then he put his hand on his gun and I could hear him yelling at me to pull over right there right then. So I did, because I was scared as hell. Of course a car came flying down the open HOV lane right then and T-Boned my car. I blacked out for a bit and came to and the air bags had all gone off saving my life I am sure and I was unharmed but my car was totaled. The two young men who were driving the car that T-Boned me both were rushed to the hospital. The cop gave me ticket for improper lane change and HOV violation. I had the wits to take pictures of license plates of the stopped cars and got witnesses from that. I hired a lawyer and he said it was very unlikely to beat the ticket and there was nothing we could do, could not sue the police, they have immunity.

Funny, I actually beat the HOV violation in court, witnesses all corroborated my story. The whole thing was super scary and frustrating.

I can only imagine how frustrating it is for black people who deal with things 10 times worse than that but it gave me a bit of empathy and understanding how a crazed a-hole cop can wreak havoc and there is nothing you can do about it. I mean all that for a dumb HOV violation for cripes sake.

<comment><USER16> imagine wanting to kill someone because they didn't listen to you when you told them to pull their car over for an HOV lane violation.

<comment><USER15> right, those are the types of people who should not be police officers.

<comment><USER16> They are literally training officers to do this. There is a systemic problem that needs to be addressed by a complete defund and reorganization of the criminal justice system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is why we need civilian oversight of every police department. Cops are generally too corrupt and/or too incompetent to investigate their own. They've proven their inability to hold themselves accountable for their actions, so it's up to the rest of us to do it.

<comment><USER18> Is there evidence that indicates police are more corrupt than anybody else?

<comment><USER13> Even if they were equally corrupt to everyone else, they have much, much more authority to use violence and be shielded from the consequences. We should demand that they are significantly _less_ corrupt than everyone else.

<comment><USER18> I completely agree, but the point still stands that insinuating corruption is a straw man when it's not based on anything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Even if you chose to argue statistical frames, as I'm seeing so much in this thread, you're not factoring the ripple effects that must surely be caused by the knowledge that official agents of power view you and your family as inherently, or very potentially inherently, dangerous. It doesn't take a critical mass of groundless violence (even if that mass does indeed exist)-- but just some of it, left unaccounted (or even defended) by those same official agents. Such a message is bound to resonate broadly and cause what should be a comprehensible outcry from, for example, the mother quoted in this article. I'm saying that you might consider the nonchalant (at best) response to such violent incidents.

</comment><comment><USER20> The NYPD has a budget for spying on people in other countries. State power is weird.

<comment><USER21> For those curious who didn't know about this (like me):

>With offices in 11 foreign capitals and an unpublished budget, the ILP's far- flung counterterrorism cops operate outside the authority of top U.S. officials abroad, including the American ambassador and the CIA station chief, who is the nominal head of U.S. intelligence in foreign countries.

>The ILP is supported by private donors through the New York Police Foundation, which won't say how much it has given the NYPD, beyond a sentence on its Web page that it sought to raise $1.5 million for the program in 2010. The NYPD itself won't say whether any of its annual $178 million budget for intelligence and counterterrorism goes to posting detectives in Paris, London, Madrid or other posh capitals.

[http://voices.washingtonpost.com/spy- talk/2010/11/nypds_fore...](http://voices.washingtonpost.com/spy- talk/2010/11/nypds_foreign_cops_play_outsid.html)

<comment><USER22> _keep having to preface everything lately with "not a joke," but no joke the NYPD's International Liaison Program, which has a secret budget and operates in 13 foreign countries with no oversight, just showed up in an official NYPD cruiser for a pro-police demonstration in Paris_

[https://mobile.twitter.com/newyorkyearzero/status/1273754924...](https://mobile.twitter.com/newyorkyearzero/status/1273754924250288128)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> There are basically two things that the police do:

1> Patrol public spaces to deter illegal behavior in those places, direct traffic, punish traffic offenders, offer directions to tourists, etc

2> Respond to calls from citizens, investigate the crimes that those calls are about, locate and apprehend the associated criminals.

I've only lived in places sparsely populated enough that <1> is mostly impractical except along highways and around major construction sites.

The VAST majority of the value provided to people by the police clearly comes from <2> \- it's the reason that no sane person would mug me (or kill me) for $40 cash on an unpatrolled country road, or invade my home and take up residence there against my will. 99.9% of citizens benefit from <2>, as it's the main deterrent to any antisocial person coming and taking whatever they have of value.

It seems to me (though I don't have data) that most (nearly all?) the mistreatment of (maybe mainly black) citizens by police that has been garnering media attention over the past decade or so, happens during the course of <1>.

<comment><USER24> Only 60% of _murders_ are solved. [https://www.vox.com/2018/9/24/17896034/murder-crime- clearanc...](https://www.vox.com/2018/9/24/17896034/murder-crime-clearance- fbi-report)

<comment><USER23> Are you suggesting that, because of this, the existence of the police is not the main deterrent to crime?

<comment><USER24> a few years ago, I getting a beer after work with a colleague. we had become friends and talked about quite a bit outside of work. As the topic of religion had come up in the past, it was not unusual for us to discuss. He was a devout Christian (some kind of protestant) and I am a self-described "athiest Catholic". At a certain lull in the conversation after a couple beers, he leaned in to me and asked in a hushed tone: "so, if you don't believe in hell, why be a good person?" I put my drink down and looked him in the eye and said "that's the scariest thing I've ever heard."

Plainly, I don't believe in deterrence as effective or a substantial reason why most people don't engage in bad behavior.

<comment><USER23> It's not _most people_ that I'd. worry about, though.

<comment><USER24> with 60% of _murders_ going unsolved, do you think the 'deterrent effect' is really preventing the remainder from engaging in antisocial behavior?

<comment><USER23> Probably not, but those who are already willing to be criminals in situations where they won't be caught would now be able to act with wild abandon, or execute much grander schemes with relative impunity.

60% of murders go unsolved because a sane murderer does not commit a murder that would be easy to solve. I'm sure many tempting, high-reward murders do not happen because they can't be committed without an ensuing police investigation.

Suppose 1% of people are currently criminals (I don't know the real number). Without an authority investigating and punishing crimes, that number might increase to 1.1% or even 2%. But a small fraction of those would likely increase their criminal behavior by an order of magnitude.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I keep seeing this narrative where people say, "We need law enforcement to prevent crimes, we can't defund the police." And I 100% agree, we need law enforcement. But _the police aren 't law enforcement if they refuse to enforce the laws_.

<comment><USER26> > But the police aren't law enforcement if they refuse to enforce the laws.

Sure. That's obviously true. However, not very helpful to the discussion as you don't state what percent of police officers "refuse to enforce the laws"

Do 100% of police officers refuse to enforce laws? 50%? 5%. Surely that's more beneficial to talk about than simply saying "the sky isn't blue if it isn't blue".

<comment><USER25> While Derek Chauvin was murdering George Floyd, 100% of the officers present did not enforce the law.

While Daniel Pantaleo was murdering Erik Garner, 100% of the officers present did not enforce the law, and at least a significant percentage of the court system which did not convict Pantaleo did not enforce the law.

When Philip Brailsford murdered Daniel Shaver, 100% of the officers present did not enforce the law by arresting him. A significant percentage of the court system which did not convict him of any crime didn't enforce the law. The police department which reinstated him and then let him medically retire due to PTSD _from the murder he committed_ and pays him $2,500/month pension didn't enforce the law.

Since three police officers murdered Breonna Taylor, 100% of the police in Louisville Metro Police Department has not enforced the law.

When ex-cops murdered Ahmaud Arbery, 100% of Glynn County Police Department did not enforce the law until months later after massive outcry, and more than one DA refused to enforce the law.

When a homeless man in a wheelchair was shot in the face with a rubber bullet by LAPD, 100% of the LAPD did not enforce the law. When Buffalo PD officers assaulted a 75 year old man, 100% of the officers present did not enforce the law, and 100% of the 57 SWAT members resigned from the SWAT team when other police _did_ enforce the law. When Denver PD shot tear at a pregnant woman and her husband who were uninvolved in protests, 100% of Denver PD did not enforce the law. When a Philly PD officer knelt on a man while he said, "I can't breathe" and the officer responded, "Shut up asshole. Are you fucking stupid? That shit don't work here" 100% of Philly PD did not enforce the law.

With the exception of Breonna Taylor, these are just _some of_ the incidents that were caught on video. There are many, many more on video, and we can only guess how many incidents _weren 't_ caught on video.

Obviously I'm not going to be able to give you an exact percentage number of how many police officers refuse to enforce laws when cops commit crimes, but how many examples do you need to see before you will admit it's too much for the current system to be salvageable?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> My wife was in Indianapolis for a couple days and she saw the same thing: a cop crossed over to the wrong side of the road and up onto the sidewalk to strike an unarmed black man on a bicycle head on. They claimed later that the man on the bike had struck the car while it was sitting still (hard enough to put him in the hospital with a fractured skull). No investigation was made. I think they do this because running people over or choking them to death produces less paperwork than shooting them.

<comment><USER28> In San Francisco, I've seen so many occasions where police and fire (not the fire truck, the little cars) do the "lights and full speed" for really no reason. Or screaming high speed U turns just for the heck of it.

Honestly, I'm somewhat sure that this is just considered a perk of the job since it lets them ignore road rules.

<comment><USER29> I had a cop friend who told me he lived for high speed chases. Interestingly he died of an illicitly procured opioid overdose at 46.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The protests in the wake of George Floyd's murder are currently tapering off, but I don't see any evidence at all that substantive changes have been made, which means that this is all going to happen again, and soon, and the protests will be bigger, the police response more violent. The black lives matter organization in my city presented a list of demands to the city council and every one of them was ignored, instead the council promised sensitivity training. This is nowhere close to over.

<comment><AUTHOR> In terms of sweeping reforms, no – especially re: qualified immunity with SCOTUS recently declining to reexamine it [0]. But I would venture to claim that the Overton window on what police can be held accountable has certainly changed. That all 4 police in the George Floyd case were arrested and charged was unexpected, given the lack of consequences in the Eric Garner case. The arrests and assault charges for officers who attacked protesters in Atlanta [1] and Buffalo [2] is the kind of thing I never thought we'd see, and signals an opportunity (albeit unguaranteed) for the balance to change. The change in public perception is quite striking – including a doubling of white Americans since 2015 who think police brutality is a "very serious problem [3]. And this shift is happening under a presidential administration that is one of the least likely to take federal action against or even just criticize law enforcement.

[0] [https://www.businessinsider.com/what-is-qualified- immunity-p...](https://www.businessinsider.com/what-is-qualified-immunity- police-accountability-law-2020-6)

[1] [https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/03/us/atlanta-police-booked- felo...](https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/03/us/atlanta-police-booked-felony- charges-protest/index.html)

[2] [https://abcnews.go.com/US/buffalo-police-officers- arrested-s...](https://abcnews.go.com/US/buffalo-police-officers-arrested- shoving-75-year-protester/story?id=71106787)

[3] [https://apnews.com/728b414b8742129329081f7092179d1f](https://apnews.com/728b414b8742129329081f7092179d1f)

<comment><USER30> It changes because of overwhelming evidence, public outcry and protests. We shouldn't need to have to protest for that!! Maybe ubiquitous incident footage will make the window shift. Maybe we'll end up self surveilling any encounter we may have with police but also with crime.

Imagine we're all streaming to a personal blackbox in the could that gets overwritten say every month or every hour or however we set it up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> FWIW my wife used to know a guy who was a magistrate (a kind of volunteer low level judge) in England. He told her many stories about police telling obvious lies in court in order to justify minor violent behaviour towards suspects.

</comment><comment><USER32> > The boys were driven to our local precinct, the 76th. I eventually made my > way there, too. The families of all the boys were there. The police are > required to notify families when a minor is arrested. But the families told > me that hadn't happened. They'd learned about the boys' arrests from > friends. (The police later said the families showed up so quickly they > didn't have time to make notifications.)

Wow this is really scary to read. There's a miniseries on Netflix I would urge everyone to watch "When they see us" about "The Central Park 5" kids that were coerced into confessing they raped a white woman in the park. They were interrogated for hours and promised to go home if they confessed.

</comment><comment><USER33> Ending qualified immunity and civil forfeiture are ideas whose time has arrived.

Even with bipartisan support for stopping these unconstitutional practices they have enjoyed surprising staying power through different administrations.

<comment><USER34> Qualified Immunity is fascinating. Nobody ever passed a law for it, it just evolved. Really weird. Need new laws to remove it.

<comment><USER35> Especially when there is statute that on the surface contradicts it! 42 U.S.C. §1983

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> The part about all the school kids having instructions on the back of their student IDs for what to do when stopped by the police is just nuts!

</comment><comment><USER37> Why is "Black" capitalized, but "white" is not?

<comment><USER38> "For many people, Black reflects a shared sense of identity and community. White carries a different set of meanings; capitalizing the word in this context risks following the lead of white supremacists."

[https://www.cjr.org/analysis/capital-b-black- styleguide.php](https://www.cjr.org/analysis/capital-b-black-styleguide.php)

<comment><USER39> Kafkaesque

<comment><USER40> Not really. You wouldn't be criticized if you got it wrong, but it's the kinda thing that would make an English style guide.

You do it the other way and watch absolutely no one care.

<comment><USER41> > You do it the other way and watch absolutely no one care.

I have never seen a style guide make a distinction between skin colors, and I disagree that nobody would care if they capitalised 'white' but not 'black'.

<comment><USER40> You're quoting to a reply that replies to a link with a style guide that does exactly that. Open it and your whole world will change apparently.

Reading comprehension must be so hard.

<comment><USER41> My comment: "I disagree that nobody would care if they capitalised 'white' but not 'black'."

The style guide in question: "why we capitalize 'Black' (and not 'white')"

Your comment: "You're quoting to a reply that replies to a link with a style guide that does exactly that. Reading comprehension must be so hard."

Yes, it must.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> We need the police to take care of their own house and stop the us against them mentality. Until they do we won't be able to truly address the events that have led to BLM and the current protests.

The problem isn't a few bad apples, it's a culture that allows a few bad apples to expect impunity and protection from the consequences of their actions.

<comment><USER43> The training regimen for officers sounds like expert-level cult indoctrination.

First they inflate your ego by telling you you're joining a high and noble cause.

Then they tell you that others don't appreciate the noble work you do and they hate you for reasons out of your control. And you just want to do right in the world so that's not fair!

Then they show you every documented instance of when an officer was ambushed and/or killed. This forces you to mentally ostracize yourself from the broader community by instilling a persecution complex.

Then they teach you that only your buddies in the department have your back and everyone else is out to get you.

Then they train you literally to shoot first and ask questions later. This training consists of variations of the game "slaps" except you're drawing a gun and shooting it at the other player instead of slapping the other player's hands.

And at that point you've been shown (1) that you have a huge target on your back, (2) how to pre-empt a perceived attack, and (3) how to justify the use of force or defend your fellow officer for doing so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> This says everything: "Instructions on what to do when stopped by the police are on the back of student IDs at Summit Academy in Red Hook, Brooklyn."

</comment><comment><USER45> Unions protect bad apples, that shouldn't be the purpose of unions. It should be illegal.

<comment><USER13> Police unions are almost all terrible. Seattle kicked their police union out of the local labor council, and it would be great to see more cities do the same.

<comment><USER46> Any additional information on how Seattle police union is terrible?

<comment><USER13> They've consistently pushed back on reforms from both the community and the federal consent decree. They insist they are 'tough on crime' and the city is holding them back, going so far as to demand people vote out the city council.

They've described the concerns about policing as "the flavor of the week", they fought against body cams, they've defended police in well documented cases of retaliatory and unbecoming behavior.

<comment><USER46> It would be nice to have links. "defended police in well documented cases of retaliatory and unbecoming behavior" is bit too vague to follow up upon.

<comment><USER13> Sure, here's a handful:

[https://komonews.com/news/local/police-union-president- defen...](https://komonews.com/news/local/police-union-president-defends- officers-in-mondays-fatal-shooting)

[https://mynorthwest.com/70234/police-union-head- vehemently-d...](https://mynorthwest.com/70234/police-union-head-vehemently- defends-department-in-wake-of-cop-stomp-acquittal/)

[https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation- now/2016/07/13/se...](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation- now/2016/07/13/seattle-police-union-chief-resigns/87030666/)

[https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/crime/memo- seattle...](https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/crime/memo-seattle- police-union-official-called-sergeants-public-retaliation-against-citizen- minor-misconduct/)

[http://www.courts.wa.gov/content/publicupload/eclips/2015%20...](http://www.courts.wa.gov/content/publicupload/eclips/2015%2006%2026%20Court%20First%20Amendment%20protects%20profanity%20against%20police.pdf)

[https://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/article64596437.ht...](https://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/article64596437.html)

[https://www.cbsnews.com/news/seattle-cop-punches-teen-in- fac...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/seattle-cop-punches-teen-in-face-seen-on- video/)

<comment><USER46> Clicked the last link from your list, see this: _The two were already struggling when Levias ' friend, a 17-year-old, pushed the officer, and he responded by punching the friend in the face._

Is this the sort of thing you consider outrageous?

<comment><USER13> Outrageous is your word. Have you seen the video? The cop full on decks a woman who gives his arm a _light_ push. It's definitely out of line, he's not trying to defuse the situation, he's grappling another woman and is clearly out of control of the situation.

This continues a pattern of excessive force from the dept. From the Justice Department's findings on the SPD:

> Our investigation finds repeated uses of excessive force for charges related > to minor offenses, including pedestrian interference, obstruction, open > container violations, jaywalking, and shoplifting. In a number of incidents, > failure to use tactics designed to de-escalate a situation, led to increased > and unnecessary force.

[https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/crt/legacy/2011/...](https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/crt/legacy/2011/12/16/spd_findletter_12-16-11.pdf)

<comment><USER46> The video doesn't show on my phone. From your description it sounds somewhat excessive, but not outlandishly so.

Also I find it odd that decade-old events are being brought up. Yes, it's pretty much a recorded fact that excessive force was used back then. DOJ forced the the SPD through a reform program, the result of that program should be judged to decide what if anything needs to be done at SPD. Otherwise it's like this:

      SPD did bad things in 2010, they must reform!
      Ok. SPD Does reforms 2010-2020
      SPD did bad things in 2010, defund!

Every time a story predating consent decree comes up I interpret it as lack of newer stories, hence I conclude the reforms worked well.

<comment><USER13> Footage from the protests shows pretty extreme violence, and SPD shot and killed a black man in lower Queen Anne in May of this year after charging him with a dog. Yes, the suspect had a knife and was very loud, and may have been suffering from mental health or a crisis, but SPD definitely could have handled this differently.

[https://komonews.com/news/local/seattle-police- investigating...](https://komonews.com/news/local/seattle-police- investigating-shooting-in-queen-anne)

<comment><USER46> I clicked on the link you provided and I couldn't locate anything incriminating. Can you provide the video and exact location of what you found objectionable?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> >The commissioner can also let the case go before an internal NYPD judge (whose boss is the commissioner). If the judge decides punishment is merited, the commissioner can overturn or downgrade that, too.

The NYPD have their own Judges?!? eh?

</comment><comment><USER48> A car crashed into my Sunnyvale, California home while it was being chased by the Police.

The Sunnyvale Police told me to stop taking pictures of the accident while I was standing on my own property. They refused to release the police report of the accident to me (I needed it for insurance claims) because they claimed I was "not a victim and had no right to see it." (The car ended up on my lawn, smashed into my house.)

The only official way to file a complaint against the Police force in Sunnyvale California is to fill out a form and the Police investigate it themselves. Anything else, you have to go to court. There's no independent overseer.

All police forces are rotten to the core, and will do anything and everything to protect themselves.

</comment><comment><USER49> Police shouldn't have access to their own body camera footage. And it should require multiparty keys to decrypt. Those decryption events should go on a ledger along with the authorization order. PriorArt

<comment><USER50> And that's common IT management right there. The group that is being audited for bad behavior gets no say over the audit process, and no say over giving or rescinding access to the audit trail. But when it comes to police, we put cameras on them to shut up the peasants, but we ensure nothing will change by making sure the department has control over the incriminating data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> The only solution is to incentivize good behavior, not bad ones. Any time a police officer is caught doing something wrong, the money should be taken out of the local police pension fund. If one cop is bad, then ALL COPS SUFFER. This is the right incentive system, so that bad cops get weeded out.

First offence, depending on the severity, gets nothing. Second and subsequent get exponentially worse cuts to the pension fund. Good cops will weed out bad cops pretty quickly if they realize all their efforts are being lost because of bad behavior.

</comment><comment><USER52> I've seen police abuse innocent people, multiple times, which should be lesson enough. More importantly, I've been falsely accused of assault by a Federal officer, and had to spend all my savings on a lawyer to fight it (one year of fear and hell, until they finally produced the video showing I had done nothing but sit in my car while answering his questions).

I don't want to live in anarchy, but I don't want to live in fear. Help.

</comment><comment><USER53> It's articles like this that make me happy that I donate to ProPublica monthly.

</comment><comment><USER54> This is pretty much SOP (Delay, frustrate, cover) to a greater or lesser degree, for every police force that I have ever encountered. Occasionally an overtly 'bad' apple is sacrificed, unwillingly.

</comment><comment><USER55> Why are certain political hit-pieces getting flagged, and others, like this one, are somehow immune?

<comment><USER55> Here's an example. If I were to post an article that shows data that NYC shootings are up 30% since activist-pushed disbanding of cops took place, it would get downvoted to oblivion, flagged repeatedly and such. It's an interesting discussion point, and there are some very calm and rational pro and cons to different approaches. Instead, an article like this one from Propublica gets upvoted to the stratosphere.

As long as we admit there's some sort of double-standard at play, I'm fine with it. Or we're consistent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Why is black capitalized in this article but white is not?

</comment><comment><USER30> We need more self surveillance tools we're in control of.

</comment><comment><USER57> In the article white is written with a lowercase w but black is written with a capital B.

Seems odd.

<comment><USER58> Similar to how deaf and Deaf have different meanings, and you don't read stories about Hearing people. If you're intellectually curious, read up on that.

<comment><USER57> I think I get what you mean. My mother had diabetes but detests being called a Diabetic she says, "I am a person".

Thanks for the heads up. Others just down voted my comment out of contempt for me I guess.</comment></comment></comment>


What to do when you're hungry at work? - <AUTHOR> http://snackandmunch.com/ Dudes and dudets,
We just launched snackandmunch.com, we're trying to make it easier for people to snack at work.  You can order your fully customized snackpack with FREE shipping.
Use the code 2BUCKS to get a discount on your first order!
Ammar <comment><USER2> I like the idea, but there are some weird things about the home page that I thought I'd mention (first impressions and all that).

There are a number of areas on the page that look like they ought to be clickable, but aren't. For example, I was initially drawn to the square with the shopping cart inside ("Pick 24") and tried to click there before I realized it wasn't a link. Likewise, that "24 snacks for $24" box in the banner looks clickable. Might be worthwhile to have multiple hot spots on the page that all lead to the products listing.

On the products page, the text "Add Snackpack to Cart" overflows the button, at least on my setup (Safari & Chrome browsers, on Mac OS X).

OK. Now I have to figure out what to order. ;)</comment>


Mistakes at Work Are Not Sins - <AUTHOR> http://codeahoy.com/2016/04/14/mistakes-at-work-are-not-sins/ <comment><USER2> Dr. W. Edwards Deming said it a long time ago, even before this quote from his 1982 book Out of the Crisis (MIT)

"I should estimate that in my experience most troubles and most possibilities for improvement add up to the proportions something like this: 94% belongs to the system (responsibility of management), 6% special."

An attitude embraced by The Toyota Production System and now embedded in Lean thinking.

[http://management.curiouscatblog.net/2013/04/24/94-belongs-t...](http://management.curiouscatblog.net/2013/04/24/94-belongs- to-the-system/)</comment>


Nintendo is discontinuing the NES Classic - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2017/04/13/nes-classic-discontinued/#MeRcxtL.i05n <comment><USER2> Am I reading this wrong or does the statement from the company conflict with the Mashable article? Seems like they are not shipping more this year, but the way I read it, that leaves the door open to bringing it back next year once they've shored up the logistical process. Talk about underestimating demand. Did current Nintendo execs not experience the 90s?</comment>


Netflix feels a lot like Blockbuster these days - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2016/11/21/13697700/netflix-blockbuster-personalization-curation-user-experience <comment><USER2> No, it doesn't.</comment>


When I'm Gone - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@rafaelzoehler/when-i-m-gone-f1611ceb759f <comment><USER2> Reminds me that life is too short. Make most of what I have right now.

</comment><comment><USER3> Thoroughly disturbing article since it reminds me that my parents will die one day. And I will have to experience it most likely. Ugh. I f*ing hate the future.

<comment><USER4> Thank you for the heads up</comment></comment>


Demonstration to explore radio waves generated by a mobile phone - <AUTHOR> http://www.creative-science.org.uk/mobile_LED.html <comment><AUTHOR> Submitting this because people have expressed an interest in electronics, and this simple circuit is interesting and this is a nice write up of it.

Good luck getting a germanium diode though.

The things to make page is cool too, with lots of interesting bits n bobs.

For example, on this page he recreates some 17th century demonstration experimental equipment: [http://www.creative- science.org.uk/newton_main.html](http://www.creative- science.org.uk/newton_main.html)</comment>


Apple sells more than 10M new iPhones in first three days - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/23/us-apple-iphone-idUSKCN0HH1Q120140923?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&utm_source=twitter <comment><USER2> I have yet to meet anyone who is genuinely excited about buying the new iPhone for personal use. Is it possible that most of the early buyers are just looking to flip these phones in countries where they're not available yet?

<comment><USER3> No.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Time stamps for your phone or computer - <USER2> http://copypastetime.com/ <comment><USER2> It still needs cleaned up, but I thought I'd put it out there anyway. Been fiddling with it, but I find it useful.

[2016.12.10 12:38:13] - <USER2>

</comment><comment><USER3> Very nice :)

Thank you for sharing. I find it very useful in note taking or for work log diaries... I will use it :)

</comment><comment><USER4> If you could also provide this format I'd be grateful:

#date 2016 December 10

(no time preferred, but either way)</comment>


Can We Kick Our Keyboard Addiction by 2013? - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/can_we_kick_our_keyboard_addiction_by_2013.php <comment><USER2> I hope not, or at least that they make things for us keyboard folks. I can type at ~120wpm, and while I don't always think that fast, I can't imagine communicate at a much slower pace..</comment>


Robot automatically sorts and prices cards from Magic: The Gathering - sahin-boydas https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/28/this-robot-automatically-sorts-and-prices-cards-from-magic-the-gathering/ <comment> sahin-boydas Just missed my gathering days :(</comment>


Why Most VC-Backed, Ad-Supported Companies Are Doomed to Fail - <AUTHOR> http://watchmojo.com/web/blog/index.php/2008/02/20/why-most-vc-backed-ad-supported-companies-are-doomed-to-fail/ <comment><USER2> Nothing beats having people pay you for your product.</comment>


First photo of HS2 tunnel boring machines - <AUTHOR> https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/blog/2020/06/04/first-photo-of-hs2-tunnel-boring-machines/ <comment><USER2> In the media, there's been a focus on HS2's ever-growing budget, bulldozing land, and massive delays. These are significant, if not more so than what I'm about to talk about, but it's worth focusing on an aspect frequently not considered: the positive externality of improving human skills.

With Crossrail (now Elizabeth Line) nearly finished under London, the Channel Tunnel, and now HS2 tunnels, the UK is exposing some of its workforce to some great tunnelling projects. The skill these workers must have aquired working on these large-scale tunnelling projects is impressive. The UK could even be developing a comparative advantage in tunnelling.

It doesn't solve the factors outlined at the start, but it's a side affect few discuss in public discourse when deciding to fund an infrastructure project like HS2. The positive externalities of SpaceX's work or of NASA's work are not limited to the end goal (the fact we fly something to space), it's also that now we have more people with better skills. This is something that the media doesn't focus on when big breakthroughs happen, whether privately- or publicly-funded, and I think that's a shame.

<comment><USER3> I'm mainly annoyed about the rollout of HS2 because of the government's insistence of all projects starting/ending in London. A new trans-pennine rail tunnel from Liverpool-Manchester-Sheffield under the peaks, and Manc-Leeds- Hull would add vastly more value than a faster connection between already well connected cities. This is planned for 'HS3', but that could be 40+ years off at this rate.

The large-scale projects need to srart every 10 years or so... the UK is in desperate need of non-car infrastructure if it wants to be carbon zero by 2050.

<comment><USER4> > A new trans-pennine rail tunnel from Liverpool-Manchester-Sheffield under > the peaks, and Manc-Leeds-Hull would add vastly more value than a faster > connection between already well connected cities.

I live in this area and do these routes frequently and yes I'd love them to be more connected too.

But realistically, like almost everyone else in the country almost all my travel is to and from London, because that's where most things happen.

<comment><USER5> Could this not be because of lack of said transport links on an East-West Axis?

I can't help but feel that if the trains had dedicated business carriages with reliable internet access, nobody would be all that fussed to get to London 20 to 30 minutes quicker

edit:

I don't mean First Class. I mean something like an all tables carriage or even just a fold down tables that can easily accommodate a 17" laptop (even if not many people have them, the space is what I'm after)

<comment><USER6> > nobody would be all that fussed to get to London 20 to 30 minutes quicker

I don't think people are that fussed. From QZ.com[0]:

"In the mornings, a train leaves London for Birmingham approximately every 15 minutes. The 7:23 am fast train leaves Euston and arrives at New Street station one hour and 22 minutes later, at 8:45 am—this would be shortened to 45 minutes with HS2.

The train is full of commuters and business travelers with a confusing range of opinions about HS2. Most point out that the journey from London to Birmingham is already quite fast. 'We have this train, so I question why we need it,' says Ben Brown, who commutes to Birmingham two to three times a week. 'It's not as if the train that we're in…is particularly slow,' echoes Damon Lacey, a human relations consultant from Portsmouth."

[0] [https://qz.com/1803712/birmingham-shows-why-the-uks- hs2-plan...](https://qz.com/1803712/birmingham-shows-why-the-uks-hs2-plans- are-so-controversial/)

<comment><USER7> Yes it goes to Birmingham, but it's not for Birmingham. It just so happens that Birminghan is on the route to the North.

<comment><USER8> Birmingham will definitely benefit as it will mean that more local and regional trains can use the WCML when intercity trains move over to HS2.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The crazy bit of this is that this is where the tunnels will be built: [https://www.hs2.org.uk/where/route- map/#12/51.6609/-0.5849](https://www.hs2.org.uk/where/route- map/#12/51.6609/-0.5849)

"from just inside the M25 to South Heath in Buckinghamshire"

South Heath is here [https://firstname.lastname@example.com,-0...](https://firstname.lastname@example.com,-0.6893411,11.37z/data=!4m13!1m7!3m6!1s0x48765e6963dc0a2d:0xe00016c272f1065e!2sSouth+Heath,+Great+Missenden!3b1!8m2!3d51.710744!4d-0.6866789!3m4!1s0x48765e6ec734927d:0xdc5eb80894c2f27c!8m2!3d51.7092146!4d-0.682869)

We are going to tunnel through open country due to the politics and objections from land owners.

It is no surprise that the costs have risen.

<comment><USER10> It's about time we just did a big nationwide vote for big infrastructure projects.

Voters can decide if they want to pay an extra few billion pounds or to keep a little farm village.

<comment><USER11> That's all very well and good until it's your village.

And you know full well it's never the Lords and Lady's in this country at risk of their shooting grounds getting a train through it.

<comment><USER12> The massive viaducts at Cullen in Scotland were apparently required to route the railway away from Cullen House:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cullen,_Moray](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cullen,_Moray)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> As alluded to by another comment below, having even a small specialized workforce trained and skilled in building rail is something that's desireable. Maybe even a topic of national security (or at least national competence).

However, people need _practice_ and real projects to stay skilled. And if a country only has 1 major rail project every 30 years, you're not going to be able to maintain that workforce or national skill -- unless that workforce finds projects outside the country to work on. (Or attract people to that field. Maintenance alone is not very interesting to many people.) It becomes a very boom/bust talent pool that loses its sharpness because of lack of wood to chop.

I think advanced countries will find these kinds of skills (rail being just an example) attritting to developing countries like China, India where growth means that 10,000 _rail-specific_ engineers have places to practice their skills on real projects that keep on coming. They stamp out an elevated rail bridge every month.

First you see the expertise moving to the private sector because government no longer engages in the building of infrastructure. Then even the private sector talent moves overseas to follow the projects. Even an org like Parsons almost cannot compete with this. And that's why you see rail projects going to such countries' companies as top bidders possessing the necessary expertise -- ready to go right now, rather than taking 1 year to even find the people.

Talent and ability follows the need (and money) for it.

</comment><comment><USER14> I wonder how much it will fetch on eBay. One of the Channel Tunnel boring machines sold for £39,999 in 2004. [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3620673.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3620673.stm)

<comment><USER15> It's pretty common to have these machines buried in the tunnel after they done the digging.

These are usually custom made one off machines that don't have much of a life span beyond each project.

That was on some level the whole point of the boring company Elon said it was crazy that these machines were discarded or sold for scrap.

That said since recovering them would be much easier than landing a rocket I don't know if there is actually financial motivation to recover them.

When they are sold they are usually sold for their effective scrap weight (metal worth minus the cost of getting them offsite and breaking them down).

<comment><USER16> When the cost of machinery is a rounding error in the cost of the entire project...

Yeah, I don't like that thinking.

<comment><USER17> Why not? It just means that the main expenses of the project are labour, materials, energy, etc.

I don't imagine the paint for the Sistine Chapel ceiling cost much compared with the cost of painting it.

<comment><USER16> If recovered, the cost of the machine would likely repay the recovery operation many times over even if scrapped.

What I don't like is the thinking of people who rush for the sign off, and paycheck date.

<comment><USER15> The cost of those machines failing or worse getting stuck is enormous, they have very specific life span and are pretty much discarded even mid project if they dug past their mileage.

These machines are also custom built for the diameter, soil type and probably a plethora of other variables so it's unlikely that you could reuse them.

They are also not built to be recovered and reused from what I gather which complicates things further.

<comment><USER16> Hmmm, doesn't seem so at all

<comment><USER15> Doesn't seem what?

<comment><USER16> Doesn't seem real.

What's there to break? The cutters on the face of the TBM, and bearings would likely be replaced few times during boring. Aside from that, what's there to break? Hydraulics is sure to outlast even the longest boring.

Pumps, gearing, sealing, etc should all be easily replaceable.

<comment><USER15> There have been plenty to cases where these things have broken down which caused years of delays and usually another tunnel had to be dug to get them free, sometimes they changed the path of the original tunnel to circumvent them where it was possible and more cost effective.

These machines are constantly serviced and aren't operated one minute past their life spans.

I really don't think you understand how many hours these things operate for....

To put things into perspective machines have a single digit meters per hours top speed and not high single digits to boot, and if you are digging in rock you are looking at sub meter per hour figures.

If you have a source to contradict this I'll be happy to read it but honestly every source from articles to documentaries pretty much paints the same picture these machines aren't worth their weight in scrap once they are done with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Extract from the UK yellow pages from years past:

 _Boring \- see Civil Engineers_

</comment><comment><USER19> It's amazing the expense we are going to to avoid building a railway across a few rich peoples land. Not that this is new, it happened during the steam age.

<comment><USER20> Yes it's expensive, but a future where most infrastructure is underground, from mass transit to power and communications, allowing nature to return to the surface, for future generations to enjoy seems like a worthy goal imo, even just on the aesthetic merits, saying nothing of the ecology. Just a damn shame we couldn't build these boring machines in the UK, and funnel the spending into the domestic economy.

<comment><USER21> Wholeheartedly agree! Giving back to nature is a very good goal. In the Netherlands, there is a growing problem of the "boxyfication" of the landscape (verdozing van het landschap), meaning that because of the growing trend of internet shopping, more and more warehouses and distribution centers are being built in the iconic farm landscape. Moving these structurally simple buildings underground would allow for more space for nature in the already densely populated country

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> Who knew? You can vote on the names these two TBMs will be given. [https://www.hs2.org.uk/tbmvoting/](https://www.hs2.org.uk/tbmvoting/)

<comment><USER4> At least it's from a set of sensible names this time, not open to witless joke names.

<comment><USER22> Yours and my sense of humor obviously differ, but when I observe the fun people have every year when someone stumbles over the Scottish Trunk Road Gritter Tracker (1), I think that witless joke names serve as a quite good way to have folks relate to their public infrastructure. That said, let me have a quick look where Gritsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Anti-Slip Machiney ended up parking for summer.

(1) [http://scotgov.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?...](http://scotgov.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=2de764a9303848ffb9a4cac0bd0b1aab)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The cutter head interface is appropriately keyed. No chance of putting the square peg in the round hole!

</comment><comment><USER24> How competitive is the manufacturing/design market for TBMs? Given the tight connection to government buyers and cost-plus incentives, is the industry plausibly as sclerotic as the rocket industry was pre-SpaceX? Or are there good physics reasons why TBMs can't be much more efficient than they already are?

<comment><USER25> > How competitive is the manufacturing/design market for TBMs?

There's a bunch.

> Or are there good physics reasons why TBMs can't be much more efficient than > they already are?

Mostly that tunnelling through unknown ground is risky (even if you're taken samples, you don't know what every meter is like!) so you don't want to move too fast, you're having to move vast quantities of spoil out, you need to keep the cutting blades cool (they're under immense pressure and friction so they get _hot_, and cooling is hard when you're in a confined tunnel) and we only have materials so hard (so you can't speed up the cutting head)…

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Back in the cold war, there was a proposal to criss-cross the USA with underground tunnels carrying train-launched ICBMs. Would make for a great post-apocalyptic sci-fi movie.

<comment><USER27> Iain Banks' "Consider Phlebas" has a great section of the story in such a setting.</comment></comment>


It's Easy to Be Great… It's Hard to Be Consistent - <AUTHOR> http://www.softwarebyrob.com/2010/11/04/its-easy-to-be-great-its-hard-to-be-consistent/ <comment><USER2> I spend a lot of my life trying to maximizing what the guy refers to in the article as "the madness", the crazy obsessive phase that comes with a new idea. I am desperate to grasp that productivity...

Unfortunately, he doesn't offer any real solutions for getting there, other than saying, yeah, it fades.

<comment><USER3> I think the point of the article is that being productive outside of the madness is more important for success than what you do during it. 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The message in this piece isn't new, but needs to be listened to more often. Success is measured in terms of months or years, not minutes or hours.

One quick extension to the post:

Consistency doesn't come by building a cage in which you are forced to get something done. It is far better to consistently build positive motivation. There are dozens of ways to do that, but however you do it, motivation will win out over restraint every time.

</comment><comment><USER5> Starting is easy, Finishing is hard. - <http://goo.gl/03XrI>

"This is my best piece of advice for any entrepreneur… the first 80% is easy, the next 15% is hard and last five percent is painful."

</comment><comment><USER6> Dupe - beaten by six minutes! <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1868588>

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, but I cleaned up my url :~)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> If it's easy to be great, then it should be easy to be great again (and again, and again..)

</comment><comment><USER8> This looks like a really well-written blog, but the way it has [tweet] links scattered around everywhere REALLY puts me off. It comes off as _extremely_ arrogant. I hope Rob reads this...

<comment><USER9> Yep, I'm reading this.

The intent of the Tweet links is to remove the barrier to entry for people who want to quote pieces of the article. I've found that removing even a few seconds of work increases the chance that someone will think "hey, that's a cool quote to tweet."

<comment><USER10> I think what our neighborhood SOB is saying is that it comes across as extremely arrogant to think that a random blog post of yours has 20 tweetable quotations.

<comment><USER9> Yep, I got that part (btw - it has 6 tweetable quotes).

I removed the links but given that it was an experiment I'm curious to hear what others think. Two people is a small fraction of the 5k or 6k who will read this post in the next 24 hours.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Georgia Tech MOOC MS/CS Experience - <AUTHOR> I'm curious to know about the quality Georgia Tech's online Master's program in Computer Science.  Generally speaking, is this degree considered as valuable as the traditional Georgia Tech MS/CS.  If not, what would you say are comparable traditional MS/CS degrees?
Candidates and those hiring with this degree, what has your thoughts?
I appreciate it. <comment><USER2> If you do not have a CS degree or do have a job yet. try traditional CS.

If you have a job already, this is a good fit.

more: [https://www.reddit.com/r/OMSCS/](https://www.reddit.com/r/OMSCS/)</comment>


Ask HN: What is the free quota of Google maps, places and auto complete API's? - <AUTHOR> As everyone knows, the Google quota table is extremely confusing. I have been banging my head for more than 2 hours to figure out this, either the blogs or outdated or the calculators are extremely unreliable.
I am building an application and I would like to use google placees api and autocomplete with basic details. For example:
- Let's say my site might have a 10000 visitors per day
- Each visitor will do one autocomplete search and click on the auto search result item
- Each visitor will do one nearbysearch which will give back a response with basic details
Does this comes under free quota? I have setup my billing in google cloud. <comment><USER2> Each result will at least be a Places Query. That's $0.017 per request, or $170 for 10000 visitors making 1 request each. So your $200 free quota is enough for a day and a bit, if we ignore the nearbysearch.

<comment><AUTHOR> This $200 is after the 150k free places request that we get?

<comment><USER2> you don't get 150k free places requests.</comment></comment></comment>


Venture Voice with John Bogle (founder of the Vanguard group) - <AUTHOR> http://www.venturevoice.com/2006/02/vv_show_28_john_bogle_of_the_v.html <comment><AUTHOR> I really can't stress how highly I reccommend this interview if you are interested in the finance industry. John founded the first index fund after noticing that the stock market invariably outperforms managed funds after fees are taken out. The same is true today, and the Vanguard group manages around 750 billion dollars with fees around 0.2% (an order of magnitude less than average managed fund fees). Truly inspiring guy.

I couldn't help but wondering after listening to it whether there could be potential for a startup here. It would require a lot of connections in the finance industry and a significant amount of capital, but there's a clear path to profitability and only two real metrics - getting people to trust you (require some kind of insurance?) and keeping costs low. Just how cheap could you make something that maintains an index portfolio?

My other thought was maybe he could offer 'fund x + 0.2%' packages - <USER2> that tracks the performance of a specific managed fund, after fees, and tacks on a bonus 0.2%. That would be a cool hack that in the long term you could make a significant amount of money from, but there's always the potential that a fund will do exceptionally well in the short term. Food for thought anyway.</comment>