Do the Rich Capture All the Gains from Economic Growth? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@russroberts/do-the-rich-capture-all-the-gains-from-economic-growth-c96d93101f9c <comment><USER2> While attempting to refute the idea that the poor haven't improved their station since the 70s, they cite a lot of stats that show most households make more income than their parents did (inflation adjusted), but they completely neglect to account for the _huge_ factor that is the number of people working (or cumulative hours worked) per household in order to achieve that improvement. In the 1970s, there were a lot more single-income households. The new standard of multi-income households, I expect, entirely accounts for any gains made by the lower income quintiles of people.

<comment><USER3> They also likely use inflation statistics that are problematic, at best.

When considering consumables, we've had pretty reasonable inflation and people are making more than their parents. But if you were to calculate inflation based on prices for things that don't benefit from advances in our production abilities (commodities, equities, housing, education, health care, etc), we'd be making nowhere near as much as previous generations when adjusted for inflation using that calculation.

Affording a car, TV, computer and food to feed ourselves isn't that difficult for many people. It's the life-altering purchases that are slipping farther and farther from the reach of the middle class.

<comment><USER4> Exactly. Low inflation doesn't help much if your salary increases get eaten up by housing, education hand healthcare. Rent, health care and education should be counted into inflation numbers.

<comment><USER5> Wait. Aren't rent, healthcare, AND education all included in the eight components of CPI? Isn't that how the government measures inflation?

I think one of the big things left off is housing prices. But I'm pretty sure rent, healthcare, and education are part of it:

[https://www.bls.gov/cpi/factsheets/medical- care.htm](https://www.bls.gov/cpi/factsheets/medical-care.htm)

[http://webapps.dol.gov/dolfaq/go-dol- faq.asp?faqid=94](http://webapps.dol.gov/dolfaq/go-dol-faq.asp?faqid=94)

<comment><USER6> The inflation rate does include rent, or "imputed rent" for home owners. However, it's an average of what people actually pay, including people who somehow got a sweet deal on housing costs, through rent control or buying their house a long time ago or whatever. It's not going to match the prices you see advertised when you're looking to move.

<comment><USER7> >However, it's an average of what people actually pay, including people who somehow got a sweet deal on housing costs

which is arguably the more accurate way of measuring consumer prices.

<comment><USER8> That not accurate because important information about the spatial distribution gets filtered out. Economists are pretending their statistics are filtering out 'noise' when they are really filtering out data they don't want people to see.

<comment><USER6> Inflation is an average. Newspapers usually report the national average, but there are a lot of other averages and they aren't being kept secret. This page has data for California:

[http://www.dof.ca.gov/Forecasting/Economics/Indicators/Infla...](http://www.dof.ca.gov/Forecasting/Economics/Indicators/Inflation/)

I don't think anyone is all that interested in a bunch of dry statistics. No conspiracy is needed.

<comment><USER8> The problem is while other statistics exist in practice policy makers, political leaders, businessmen, and economists in general have come ignore them. Rather than believing some small brained primate on the internet, here is Paul Volcker saying the same thing.

[https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-10-24/what-s...](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-10-24/what- s-wrong-with-the-2-percent-inflation-target)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is an astoundingly bad comparison if it's missing the point I think it's missing. It's arguing that the average person makes more than their parents by comparing _household income_. I searched the article a few times for a few keywords trying to make sure I hadn't missed anything, but I see _no mention_ of number of wage earners per household.

All the rest, about "fringe benefits" and the conclusion that everything's not perfect because we still have excessive occupational licensing and minimum wages is just garbage hand-waving.

edit: I re-read it, and the panel data that shows the same income gains per cohort is not clear on how the data was gathered, but the Pew and Brookings data is CLEARLY household data, NOT individual data.

edit2: the Splinter data also appears to be household-level: [http://www.davidsplinter.com/Splinter- Mobility_and_Inequalit...](http://www.davidsplinter.com/Splinter- Mobility_and_Inequality.pdf)

Splinter mentions "Some reasons for increased household-level income inequality include skill- biased technological change (Acemoglu, 2002), decreased marriage and employment rates (Larrimore, 2014), and the exclusion of employee benefits and government trans- fers from most income definitions (Burkhauser, Larrimore, and Simon, 2012; Auten and Splinter, 2018)."

So, he's discussing how decreased marriage rates might drive down household wages (increasing inequality, particularly among the poorer groups), but a quick command-F is not finding any mention of how the impact of these decreased marriage rates may be counterbalanced (and possibly/likely?) outweighed by increased total number of wage earners per household.

<comment><USER10> From past podcasts he doesn't see the problem with having two people working to get that gain while ignoring the individual stagnating/declining worker pay. That stance is not logical to me, but it seems to fit his view on the world.

<comment><USER9> Okay, so he's being intentionally misleading in this piece, rather than presenting an academic view.

I'm fine with that stance, too. He's welcome to argue that the average household is "better off" as long as he's willing to subtract the added costs this situation creates. Or you can calculate doing the reverse; calculate the value generated with a greater number of stay-at-home parents in the 70s, so that this opportunity cost is reflected in the numbers when a second earner enters the formal workforce. Then at least we're comparing apples to apples and we can see where we end up. It's totally possible those lower-income cohorts are better off now, but he hasn't attempted to prove it.

Also, it's a lie to present this as individuals earning more money unless you acknowledge that you're averaging individuals across households, and not comparing ACTUAL working individuals.. And admit that you're factoring in some number of individuals in the 70s earning $0 and some other number of individuals today earning $0.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The author Russ Roberts runs the EconTalk podcast and is a well respected economist/journalist/thinker in the field, definitely worth reading for a fair assessment.

Here he presents a few studies that go against general economic consensus popularized mainly by Piketty in "Capital in the 21st century" and through papers/writing by Krugman, Saez, Zucman, Stiglitz, etc. that most of the economic gains in the past 100 years have gone to a concentrated few owners of capital.

Roberts highlights a few studies that use panel data (same people tracked over time) instead of cross-section data (snapshots of different populations at different times) and show that 70% of children from low-income households generally earn more than their parents, and usually end up with about 2x more income (only 33% of high-income children earn more than their parents.)

Another study looks at people age 35-40 in 1987 and then how they did when they were 55-60 in 2007. Median income was down for the top 5%, middle quintile was up 27%, and bottom quintile median income rose 100%.

Basically - absolute mobility (how much people gain over time) is still decently healthy today in percentage terms in the US, but relative mobility (how easy it is to move between classes) is widening and the wealthy in 1980 still have a much higher income on average than the poor in 1980.

Also, the poor in 2014 were actually _worse off_ than the poor in the 1980s which Roberts attributes to poor people reporting less income in 2014, that there could be more poor immigrants in 2014 with less education, and that 2014 could be an unrepresentative year.

Personally I don't buy Robert's "glass half full" argument, but I appreciate him bringing some panel data into the discussion to temper the prevailing economic narrative.

I think if he looked at studies that include _wealth_ and _net worth_ panel data, not just income, that account for assets such as homes, the results would be much much different.

<comment><USER10> Russ' political views have been drifting steadily right over time so the data that he cherry picks regarding inflation, total household income, income inequality, is not surprising. I used to listen to his podcast pretty frequently to get a different perspective on econ but now it's pretty painful due to his increasing inability to see outside his own bubble.

<comment><USER12> There was a guest this summer who noted that unmarried and areligious people are "emasculated". The guest also received zero push-back while implying that immigrants were purposefully being directed by the government to avoid assimilation and that we should return to harsh methods for dealing with immigrants. Russ just let the whole statement slide by without comment.

Have conversations with difficult people, sure, but have a _conversation_ , don't just let stuff like that slide by! Not sure how long I'll be subscribed if those attitudes keep receiving clear air.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The whole point of much of this analysis (and the videos shown) is that household income can be very misleading. But most if not all of the analyses I report on are for individuals over time. So changes in the number of earners are actually more of a problem for most of the gloomy studies that look at households by quintile. Incredibly, the proportion of households with two earners is LOWER in 2014 than in 1980 because of the large increase in households with one or no earners. Marriage is not nearly as common as it used to be. The data are here in Table H-12: [https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time- series/demo/income-p...](https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time- series/demo/income-poverty/historical-income-households.html)

I also would add as I did in the essay, that I am not claiming that everything is OK in the economy. I am trying to respond to the relentless claim that the rich got all the gains of the last few decades. It's simply not true. That doesn't mean everything is fine. But just figuring out what actually happened is surprisingly complicated. The people who claim that the economy is only helping the rich should be more nuanced.

<comment><USER14> I think it is generally well-understood that individuals more senior in their career have generally higher incomes. So, when it is stated that "the rich" are obtaining wealth gains, it is explicitly looking at structural changes rather than simply an earnings cycle for individuals continuing to be true. Your first sentence is "Adjusted for inflation, the US economy has more than doubled in real terms since 1975" \-- but it was the case even in 1975 that there was absolute income mobility as one progressed in their career. So, your argument purports to disprove the relative mobility or inequality arguments of Saez/Piketty but in fact cannot.

That is why there is so much pushback on this piece of yours: because it appears to be attacking a strawman unrelated to real inequality in the system.

</comment></comment><comment> old-gregg The gains have been looted by the healthcare providers. It is not uncommon for health coverage to exceed $2k/mo for a typical family of 4, that's $24k/year. The median US household income is $59k, so the total comp is $83k/year. See the gains now?

This absurd amount is not reflected in a paycheck and one may think "my job pays for it" but that is still your money.

<comment><USER15> This is correct. I dropped my "Affordable" Care Act plan in January when BCBS quoted a monthly principal increase from $696 to over $2200 for the Silver level plan my family of four had been enrolled in. We are young and healthy.

$2200 is monthly rent on a luxury condominium in Honolulu.

I asked the agent on the phone if he had children, and if he could afford such a plan. He replied that he could not.

<comment><USER16> Well thats just going to make health insurance more expensive for more people now isn't it? IIRC poor people get subsidised healthcare now so if the middle class workers aren't paying for healthcare... who is?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The whole thing he is explaining is just regression to the mean. Yes, if you take people who are currently rich and people who are currently poor, over time the poor will likely go up in income and the rich go down.

Using this as a counterpoint to accusations of the rich taking all the gains is like pointing out that a wealthy duke could only pass his whole dukedom to one of his children, and the others would have to make do with much less.

It is simultaneously true that the gains of the last few decades have largely gone to "those who are rich", and that the identities of "those who are rich" are not completely stable.

<comment><USER18> _The whole thing he is explaining is just regression to the mean._

The author directly addresses this further down in the article. Regression to the mean _is_ a possible explanation of the numbers he cites, but it doesn't refute the main point he's making, which is that some numbers suggest poor people capture more of the gains from economic growth than is widely thought.

<comment><USER17> It's not just _a_ possible explanation, it's the most obvious one. It's a well understood phenomenon that results in exactly what he's discussing here.

> some numbers suggest poor people capture more of the gains from economic > growth than is widely thought.

Some individual poor persons will, yes. "The poor", as a class, will not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This reads like research sponsored by a tobacco company showing that cigarettes are actually not that harmful.

I like how it frames the economy as this independent entity that we just sort of observe and hope for the best. Oh our divining rod produced these arbitrary statistics so the glass is half full guys!

In reality, though, the forces of human nature driving the economy don't change. Since the dawn of the surplus, there have always been a handful of kings and many serfs, and there probably always will be.

<comment><USER20> > Since the dawn of the surplus, there have always been a handful of kings and > many serfs, and there probably always will be.

One thing is different though: the thralls of today possess costly devices that simultaneously entertain and surveil them, among other things. Past kings would never even have dreamed about that.

<comment><USER19> I think it's largely irrelevant. Do the kings of today have a harder or easier time maintaining the status quo? I think most changes and fluctuations there are more attributable to chance (i.e. mechanisms we don't understand) than our conscious efforts. The same devices that surveil can also empower, in the end it could be a wash. We change the world around us but I'm convinced there's a certain homeostasis to our social and cultural experience, at core we're having the same conversations and dealing with issues analogous to the ones they had 3000 years ago.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The income divide increasing int he past few decades is due to globalization. This much is obvious.

Many huge American companies have done super well as we move to a global economy - tech is a great example. There's more money to be made when you can start selling more iPhones to India and the development costs stay the same.

Whether this new global revenue wealth goes workers vs corporate pockets depends on the supply of labor. Does Apple mostly want to employ Americans? If so, these rich global companies need to compete for a limited supply of American workers - our salaries rise. Tech workers in the USA make much more money than other countries - we have many successful companies here all wanting American tech labor.

On the flip side , not all American labor falls under this category. If companies don't care if the labor is domestic or outsourced or immigration is easy (flexible supply), then American workers don't see much gain from these global companies making more global money - the new wealth is split between top American executives and developing countries..

Most companies fall into the latter category - which is why we've seen the income divide grow, the average American worker's wage stagnate, and developing countries wages grow.

</comment><comment><USER22> This bullshit article tries to paint a rosy picture of the economy by dismissing proportional median income gains between quintiles and instead argues that absolute income gains of individuals over time is enough evidence to suggest everything is actually great. This chart [1] seems to be the crux of their argument, as in - Surprise! Over 30 years poor people gained an average of almost $30k in income! I sure fucking hope someone who started at minimum wage in 1980 is making $30k more today.

And even though the median income of the top 1% went from $189,000 to $843,000 in that sime timeframe, that's not important because in our sample, the average income of those in the top QUINTILE actually FELL $7k. Guess you couldn't find any 1%ers for your study?

Bottom line - if the economy can't support a living wage for the working class, it's not doing all that great.

[1] [https://cdn- images-1.medium.com/max/2000/1*Z5rBoco1CtNVHYZdh...](https://cdn- images-1.medium.com/max/2000/1*Z5rBoco1CtNVHYZdhWn4QQ.jpeg)

<comment><USER23> Thank you for writing this comment so that I don't feel like a crazy person after reading this article. It came across to me as so obviously flawed that it's hard to even apply Hanlon's Razor to it.

Not once does he mention of any correction for the obvious bias that people make different amounts at different points in their careers.

Using his exact same process, you could also show that the average height of Americans has increased significantly in the past thirty years, possibly up to a foot! Because, duh, people are shorter when they're kids.

If you're trying to measure how the economy is doing over time, you _don 't_ want panels, you want to compare equivalent people at different points in time. Comparing a 20 year old in 1980 to a 50 year old in 2010 confounds the differences between 1980 and 2010 with the differences between being 20 and being 50.

There are reasonable criticisms that identifying representative "equal" people over time is hard, but the author's solution seems dramatically worse than all of them.

<comment><USER24> From the article: "The study looks at people who were 35–40 in 1987 and then looks at how they were doing 20 years later, when they are 55–60. The median income of the people in the top 20% in 1987 ended up 5% lower twenty years later. The people in the middle 20% ended up with median income that was 27% higher. And if you started in the bottom 20%, your income doubled. If you were in the top 1% in 1987, 20 years later, median income was 29% lower."

<comment><USER25> In other words, regression to the mean. Of course the poorest people are more likely to gain in income -- when you start at the bottom, there's really only one direction you can go.

You can still have regression to the mean among individuals while society itself is becoming horrifyingly unequal.

<comment><USER24> "Of course the poorest people are more likely to gain in income -- when you start at the bottom, there's really only one direction you can go."

But doesn't this claim in itself refute the thesis that all the income gains are going to the top? If we find people at the bottom gaining income far faster than people at the top, which is what my quote claims, isn't that evidence that we live in a just society, not an unjust one?

<comment><USER26> Firstly as pointed out in other comments they were measuring income. People at higher incomes in the 80s were probably more likely to retire early or "on time". A more representative number would be wealth which I would imagine is probably horrifying in the vein that the parent and grandparent meant. People living hand to mouth in the 80s were probably doing the same in 2014. People who could save probably weren't.

Even just from the numbers presented imagine the lower percentile person who was making say 10k in constant dollars in the 80s. They're making 20k (100% increase) in same dollars in 2014.

Imagining the person in top was making 1,000,000 dollars in constant dollars they dropped 29% so they're now "only" making 750kish.

I know which group I'd rather be in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> _Adjusted for inflation, the US economy has more than doubled in real terms since 1975. How much of that growth has gone to the average person? According to many economists, the answer is close to zero._

First of all, the population has increased from around 200M to 325M. The inflation-adjusted economic output would have to increase by that same factor just to say the same _per capita_.

<comment><USER28> And it has increased by well over the ratio; two is substantially greater than 325/200, which is 1.625. What's your point?

<comment><USER29> 2 is less than 25% more than 1.625.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> The problem with most economic analysis is that adjustments are generally based on arbitrary metrics like PPP or inflation.

If a child (or couple) in Britain earns three times as much, in "real" terms, that their parent (or parents) did at that stage of life, they will probably have to live in a smaller house, further from the center of town, with a worse commute.

Pretty much the biggest QoL improvements knocked out. The fact they can buy a few more toys or nicer food is not really that consequential.

<comment><USER31> Exactly. I probably earn 2X what my father made, inflation adjusted, when he was my age. Buuuut, I pay 5X what he paid for housing, 20X what he paid for healthcare, ∞X what he paid in student loans, have a commute 6X longer than his, live in a house 75% the size of his (he also had two houses at my age, by the way), work 1.25X his hours and have a crappy 401k rather than a nice defined-benefit pension. Comparing just salary misses the story.

<comment><USER32> Shouldn't those things be factored into the "inflation adjusted" calculation? (housing, healthcare, student loans...)

<comment><USER30> Yes, they should, but they are not, and realistically cannot be.

Inflation statistics are almost useless in calculating quality of life for this reason.

They calculate an average over a population. An example of why this is silly, is that the average 40 year old both has lower personal inflation _and_ can weather inflation much more readily than the average 20 year old.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> On top of the studies within the article, there are other really interesting papers. Some time back I was searching information on the chiseling out of the middle class, and I found this paper [1]. And the paper does describe that chiseling out. In 1979 the middle class controlled 46% of all income, and the upper/rich classes controlled 30%. Today (as of 2014) the rich and upper class control 63% with the middle class left with 26%. There's even been a chiseling out of the middle class as a whole declining from 38.8% of society to 32% of society. That's where most media outlets leave it. It sounds grim.

But the eye opener is this. This is the change in the size of each economic group between 1979 and 2014 as a percent of the total population:

\- Rich: 0.1% -> 1.8%

\- Upper Middle Class: 12.9% -> 29.4%

\- Middle Class: 38.8% -> 32%

\- Lower Middle Class: 23.9% -> 17.1%

\- Poor or Near-Poor: 24.3% -> 19.8%

Statistics like this are certainly subject to biased interpretation and 'massaging'. If one is curious about the source, wiki has a section on the political stance of the Urban Institute [2]. Though the paper itself is very transparent in their methodology and extremely readable. I found it all eye opening to the point that it literally changed my worldview. This change is only since 1979! We are doing something _incredibly_ right from an economic point of view. I don't understand the media motivations in choosing to omit these crucial, and greatly encouraging, data when writing on this topic.

[1] - [https://www.urban.org/research/publication/growing-size- and-...](https://www.urban.org/research/publication/growing-size-and-incomes- upper-middle-class)

[2] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_Institute#Political_stan...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_Institute#Political_stance)

<comment><USER34> I'm more curious as to why you chose to omit the critically important data behind the study. What exactly is your motivation there?

First, let's look at how they define the income brackets:

-Poor and near-poor $0 $29,999

-Lower middle class $30,000 $49,999

-Middle class $50,000 $99,999

-Upper middle class $100,000 $349,999

-Rich $350,000 None

A quote from the publication: "The study did not adjust for regional differences in the cost of living, the underreporting and exclusion of certain sources of material support, or taxes."

As with all statistics it is incredibly easy to look at one and yell out 'The economy is doing FINE!' while ignoring the economic realities for many people. Income levels may rise, but the average costs for middle-class workers has skyrocketed as well. Someone living in SF earning over 100k would count as upper-middle despite likely barely being able to survive.

<comment><USER33> Indeed. And similarly, as the paper mentions, there are many places in the US where someone earning just under $100k would only be counted as middle class, even though they'd be _well_ into the upper middle class. So the important question then is there a big bias in one direction or another? The paper concludes that the answer to this is no.

So why would they use such an ostensibly broad metric in the first place? The paper also goes into this. The reason is that on a micro level there are often extreme quality of living differences that are not accurately reflected by any data. For instance the CPI inflation rate of San Francisco, according to California, is only 11% higher than the US average. By any metric you'll be able to point to various little bubbles throughout the nation and indicate, accurately, that the macro level data does not hold true.

So you need to try to pick aggregate data that most likely balances out the biases so much as possible. Do you think this fails to do so?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> "Some studies leave out important components of compensation such as fringe benefits which have become increasingly important in recent years."

And why are those fringe benefits increasingly important, eh?

<comment><USER36> And what kind of fringe benefits are minimum wage earners pulling? I hear Starbucks gives health insurance, for example, anyone else?

<comment><USER4> My company gives only nominal raises each year but we get bagels and donuts once a week.

<comment><USER36> Hah well, I guess that'd be pretty fringe, especially if you're on keto / don't eat sweets / can't eat gluten or whatever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I have nothing against this article.. its all analysis and information.. but is it just me or does it have very little to do with what we actually think of when we consider where the benefits have gone?

Where are the numbers on average expected spend, including spending expectations for disposable income. so that we get a reasonable idea of someones saving power. and compare this to various income levels. We don't live in a vacuum and we all have to be living up to the expectations of those around us.

Also looking at social mobility, security to find a job etc. numbers are irrelevant freedoms are relevant.

If the poor earn lots more than the rich (in comparison to previous generations) do these days but rich people living expenses have not gone up and tax evasion has increased and the spending expectations on the poor have increased then I would still say the benefits have gone to the rich.

if the poor are still working 40 hour weeks and a few people are becoming so rich that if they reduced their income to millions per year that they could reduce average working hours to 30 hours per week i would still be hard pushed to say that the benefits were not being hoarded by the rich.

I don't know.. there are many ways to look at this but these numbers seem among the least relevant - like they have absolutely no causal link with the concerns that people have.

Are there any articles that go attempt to put numbers on some of these vaguer but more relevant things? i feel like even data with huge error bars could be very damning - or am i just naive and jealous of my parents :)?

</comment><comment><USER38> Two issues:

\- Income levels indicate practical income that market is willing to pay, therefore claiming that unreported income boosts poor people's income is bogus. Unreported income going into poor peoples pockets will not exceed median levels. It may shift what is considered median, but I absolutely disagree that all of that money drastically changes the state of poorer people.

\- Adding up poorer people gains and saying that their gains are 70%, while rich people's gain are 33% is also misleading. Wealth transfer and accumulation is totally ignored by this.

Wages have stagnated is a technically incorrect statement. If you take wealth accumulation, you'll have to change the tune... Wealthy people become wealthier, at a rate considerably higher than the average individual.

Just mere tax "optimization" options are way more readily available for rich people, than to poor people. According to Warren Buffet - his taxes are lower even in relative terms, than his own secretary's. Which makes an employee's wage growth of 70% not even close to 33% of a rich person's.

</comment><comment><USER39> If you look at that first report of increased family income, also in the referenced Pew report it says 59% of sons make as much or more then their fathers, which means 41% are doing worse. So 4 of every 10 sons does worse than his father in this time of economic growth.

Two more factors come into play. US working class stagnation started in the early 1970s and got going in the 1980s. The study starts in 1968, which means some of the growth pointed to for the children is actually what is kept from late 1960s and early 1970s growth, not now. If the study had started five years later, the results would look worse.

Also the politically influenced Boskin commission revised historical inflation estimates in the mid 1990s, also making things look rosier. If you believe, as I do, that inflation estimates were correct in 1996 and that Boskin was wrong, then things look bleaker in that light as well.

Although 4 in 10 sons doing worse than their fathers (from the Pew report _he_ cites) is bleak enough.

</comment><comment><USER40> I'd like to add to this argument.

If Ohio's steel industry grows by 500% who reaps the benefits? Me? The guy writing code in Portland, Oregon?

No... its pretty clear that a specific subset of people receive the benefits. The people who own the steel mill. The people who receive employment from the steel mill. The governments which tax the steel mill. But not me.

Economic growth isn't uniform. Its an uneven field that benefits some and not others. That's why people move and change jobs. That's why societies abandon old interests and embrace new interests.

I don't know why anyone should feel entitled to economic growth if they didn't participate in it in any way.

<comment><USER41> I think the thing that is at odds with this attitude is that more and more prevalently "The people who receive employment from the steel mill." don't actually benefit from 500% growth. Instead they might have 6 additional months of job security with little to no raises. And that job security isn't a favor it's because that's the amount of time those workers are needed to get through whatever contract and not any further. In other words, the absolute maximum profit the steel mill can make.

And of course your argument is on the side of the people that risked everything to start a steel mill. So yeah, it's a complex system - but that doesn't mean we have to shit on everyone else.

<comment><USER42> It's not "shitting on" anyone; it's how (efficient) economics works. You don't earn more money unless you're producing more value. If a steel mill increases its output by way of some new automation, the accounting department and janitorial staff are unlikely to see a wage increase. The folks on the assembly line are also unlikely to see a wage increase because they're not more productive. The people who will be principally rewarded are the people who developed (including investing) the automation.

In other words, as I understand it, economic rules aren't arbitrary--it's not like some cabal of mean rich guys is preventing us from flipping the switch that would make everyone obscenely rich (which is distinct from a cabal of mean rich guys _interfering_ with an economy to make themselves wealthy at the expense of the efficiency of the economy).

<comment><USER43> > It's not "shitting on" anyone; it's how (efficient) economics works. You > don't earn more money unless you're producing more value. If a steel mill > increases its output by way of some new automation, the accounting > department and janitorial staff are unlikely to see a wage increase. The > folks on the assembly line are also unlikely to see a wage increase because > they're not more productive. The people who will be principally rewarded are > the people who developed (including investing) the automation.

In your example, _all_ the steel mill owners have to do to make more money is to _passively own_ the steel mill while their employees work to improve it. If "efficient economics" works by compensating the people who _create value_ , why are the passive owners getting most of the compensation? They're not creating _any_ value. By your logic they probably should get less than the janitors and assembly line workers, who at least create some value.

<comment><USER42> Good question! That's the "investment" part. They risked the funds to create the value in the first place in exchange for returns on their investment.

<comment><USER43> > Good question! That's the "investment" part. They risked the funds to create > the value in the first place in exchange for returns on their investment.

That's not really an answer. You're just saying their entitled to the passive returns from ownership because they owned something else. It's circular. Anyone could take a risk with the funds if given access to them, even the janitors and line workers.

<comment><USER42> Then I'm not sure what answer you're hoping for.

> You're just saying their entitled to the passive returns from ownership > because they owned something else.

Not sure what you mean here, but I agree that investors are entitled to the returns stipulated in the investment agreement. Hopefully this isn't a controversial position.

> Anyone could take a risk with the funds if given access to them, even the > janitors and line workers.

Yes, janitors and line workers can (and regularly do) invest their finances as well, frequently for the very company for which they work (although they are very likely not investing enough to be principal owners, because even very small companies tend to be very expensive relative to the average salary of a janitor or line worker).

<comment><USER43> > Not sure what you mean here, but I'm saying investors are entitled to the > returns stipulated in the investment agreement.

You said "...(efficient) economics [means y]ou don't earn more money unless you're producing more value." However, an owner can be nearly _completely idle_ yet still profit handsomely, by simply paying others a modest fee to increase her fortune, so your statement isn't really true.

<comment><USER42> I think you misunderstand investment. Enterprises are risky; someone has to lose money when they fail or otherwise lose value. Those people are investors. Employees can also be investors (e.g., employee owned companies or other arrangements in which employees buy stock in their companies). By definition, the people who get returns on investment are the investors. Buying risk (aka investment) is inherently valuable.

If you think employees should get returns on investment, then you're necessarily advocating for forcing them to take home less money and risking the difference on the performance of their company.

The good news is that many employees do invest in their own company or in other companies, and they're free to choose their investments such that they can tune the knobs of 'amount' and 'risk' to suit their personal goals.

<comment><USER43> > I think you misunderstand investment.

I understand investment, I'm just telling you that your original statement is wrong. If you're an owner, you don't have to _create_ any value to get paid. _Mere ownership_ gets owners paid. Sure, they can actively invest if they want to, and they may be better off for it, but that kind of activity is _strictly optional_.

<comment><USER42> > I understand investment

I'm ... not sure you do...

> If you're an owner, you don't have to create any value to get paid. Mere > ownership gets owners paid. Sure, they can actively invest if they want to, > and they may be better off for it, but that kind of activity is strictly > optional.

This isn't true. Owners are investors by definition; owners are the sole investors in their companies. Like all investors, owners don't "get paid" unless they sell their shares at a higher price than they bought them. I'm not sure if you take issue with those definitions or if you're trying to nit-pick what it means to 'create value', but I'm pretty sure I've simplified this as much as I can. Good luck.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Am I completely mis-reading the report? By following the same people, the report grossly states that someone's salary tend to go up with age. How revolutionary! I'm pretty sure the vast majority of people draw better salaries with teh more experienced they get. This has nothing to do with the repartition of the increase of the economy.

</comment><comment><USER45> >This does not mean that everything is fine in the American economy. There are special privileges reserved for the rich that help them reduce their risk of downward mobility — financial bailouts are the most egregious example.

That is such an important thing to note. It's so important to make an even playing field. Equal opportunities allow people to climb that ladders. The economy does much better when people are able to take risks,like start businesses. Also business opportunities open up when the big incumbents fail. To me, the financial bailouts are the worst thing to happen to the economy in a long time. Risks were taken by investment companies and they shifted the burden of those risks not working out on to the tax payer, that is so wrong.

</comment><comment><USER46> This is an important way to look at the data. By looking at individuals over time, it essentially quantifies social mobility. But then you have to take it a step further. Does the difference in individuals' mobility over time change over time? In other words, has social mobility gotten better or worse? Only then are you comparing apples to apples in pessimism/optimism.

</comment><comment><USER47> One flaw here, as others have noted, is the number of wage-earners per household.

But there is even a greater factor: the inflation-adjusted GDP per capita! In 1968 it was $24k; in 2008 it was $50k. Is the author really surprised that a lot of households make more than their parents?

</comment><comment><USER48> I can only speak of my experience. Adam smith pointed out that the rich will always dominate the poor, as we are small and we can talk to each other. This has been my experience as well.

<comment><USER49> Sorry, when did he pointed that out? I don't think that is true at all.

In fact, he claims that the worst and most pernicious oppression of the poor is done by the measures and people that claim to do it in their aid.

<comment><USER48> I could point out a few but I'm currently partying. Here's my favorite and tell me if it is close enough to convince you "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices."

<comment><USER49> He continues to say that any attempt to prevent it would be either ineffective or cause the monopoly itself. He gives as examples the regulations of "making a registry with name and address of every tradesman makes it easier for them to congregate" and "the requirement to make a retirement fund makes congregation a necessity". Praphrasing

<comment><USER48> He also advocated for free education, free clothing. People want to pain adam smith as an extremist, but having read him a couple of ties, he'd be considered a centrist today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> We're definitely due for a major shift in our political and economic systems over the next hundred years. At some point, the inequality and gains going to the top are going to boil over into something like the European-wide revolutions of 1848. Back then, much of central europe was still ruled by absolutist monarchs, with even the wealthiest business owners not having representation in government. Basically, people were scared of what a kingless republic is capable of after the reign of terror during the French Revolution. Within a few decades, and especially after WW1, the entire continent transformed republics. It's bound to boil over again at some point.

<comment><USER51> The surveillance-advertising-entertainment complex will likely keep these forces in check for far longer than you'd expect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> >Adjusted for inflation, the US economy has more than doubled in real terms since 1975. How much of that growth has gone to the average person? According to many economists, the answer is close to zero.

Simple question to ask yourself and anyone you know: would you rather be alive in your income bracket (inflation adjusted, etc.) today or 30 years ago?

I keep asking this question to people I've met and have yet to have any takers for the 30 years ago option. Clearly these types of economic measurements are missing something important. Deflationary technology improvements not being properly taken into account? Something else?

</comment><comment><USER53> Using income, instead of wealth, to argue economic trends, is like using weather, instead of climate, to argue global warming.

<comment><USER54> Sure, weather and climate have no relationship and the author is a simpleton.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> It's never been easier or cheaper for anyone to invest in the stock market and capture a share of those gains.

<comment><USER32> If you have free cash flow.

<comment><USER55> The US is not divided into two categories - 1% with everything and 99% who have nothing.

<comment><USER56> No, but it is filled mostly with people living paycheck to paycheck without any savings.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> > possible overstatement of inflation

This has been the drum beat for well over two decades. Conservatives revised CPI and CPI markers to their liking in the mid 1990s with the Boskin commission. Yet if you look at inflation over the past two decades and see idle class heirs enriched and the workers creating the wealth stagnant, it's back to the old inflation-is-overstated argument. I mean, Trump is saying it this week in criticizing the Fed chair.

An odd counterpart to German conservative bankers, who seem more obsessed with low inflation and currency stability.

</comment><comment><USER57> So the trend disappears when the groups are disaggregated - I'm surprised that the author does not mention Simpson's Paradox: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox)

</comment><comment><USER58> I find it somewhat unsurprising that if you follow _individuals_ over time, you would see that poor people gain more than rich people on a percentage basis.

The question is, what percentage of people are gaining? One success story can significantly affect the mean when you're starting from a small number.

<comment><USER59> Another issue with just using averages and math: say you're looking at the housing crisis 10 years ago. Math says that the middle class actually had a net gain in wealth because when your house gets foreclosed on, you no longer have all that debt. 2006 -> buy $200k house with $190k mortgage. 2008 -> House worth $130k, still owe $175k. So net worth is -$45k. (This is not yet accounting for toxic assets in which you could assume the house not to be sellable and the owner thus a full $175k in debt). Owner defaults, net worth is now $0. A mathematical net worth increase of $45k, even though most people would agree this is a bad thing.

<comment><USER60> A home mortgage is secured by the home and is usually non-recourse. Your personal net worth can never go negative because of the mortgage liability. It's all upside as far as the homeowner is concerned, or at least loss is limited to your initial down payment. The price for this is the interest rate you pay, which has factored into it a risk premium; and if you don't make the industry standard 20% down payment you literally pay for additional mortgage insurance.

A secured, non-recourse loan is _not_ a personal liability. In terms of accounting, it's its own thing, like a limited liability company. That's how you need to think of it. For better or worse there's no place in a cut-throat capitalist society for people who can't wrap their heads around that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> This study is laughable given that dual-earner households are now the norm.

<comment><USER49> The author mentions in the comments that dual-earner households went down in comparison to 1978~

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> We have to share our resources with an increasingly larger proportion of a growing humanity and nobody can do anything about it. We just don't want to hear or see the facts until it's already a fact of the past.

</comment><comment><USER63> Tl;dr: Wealthy and poor cohorts are not necessarily stable over time, generational boundaries in particular seem to be a relatively strong predictor of change. However people who are now poor are just as poor as the poor of the 70s, while those who are now extremely wealthy are even more extremely wealthy than the rich of the 70s.

<comment><USER64> I bet that compound earnings are the main contributor here. It's much easier to save more money because you're wealthy and have more money. Across generations this effect is massive.

<comment><USER65> That will certainly be compounded by the demise of the estate tax. That said it's not like intergenerational wealth is a new thing, wouldn't that be the case way before the 70s?

It seems the trickle down economics approach taken since the 70s from both Democrats and Republicans hasn't really helped anyone but the rich.

<comment><USER64> The same inter-generational wealth logic would apply pre-1970s.

I think that 1970 is used as a starting point because that's also when real wages started dropping relative to production output.

I'm don't think it's fair to blame US politics. I bet this is a universal phenomenon.

<comment><USER65> Your argument is wealthy inequality has been rising universally since the birth of the USA?

It's not hard to find a chart and it was OK and exploded since the 70s, perhaps coincidentally with trickle down economics and neoliberalism.

[https://static- ssl.businessinsider.com/image/54610db56da8113...](https://static- ssl.businessinsider.com/image/54610db56da811360c3cf8af-960-720/the-swings-in- inequality-over-the-twentieth-century-are-even-more-dramatic-when-looking-at- wealth-rather-than-income.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> This is one of the reason I dislike the current debt-based economy that relies on extracting more dollars from "consumers".

</comment><comment><USER67> TLDR Not so simple.

First, purchasing power is not considered. If wages are stagnant, but most consumer goods have gotten cheaper, then the bottom 50% with stagnant wages is capturing productivity gains.

Second, there's no account for economic mobility. Wages for the bottom 50% are stagnant but most people don't stay the same income all their life. There's no account of economic mobility.

From the article: "As in the other panel studies, when you follow the same people, the biggest gains go to the poorest people. "

<comment><USER68> If wages are stagnant with respect to the consumer price index, they are not capturing productivity gains, because the CPI accounts for lower prices on goods.

<comment><USER69> While health insurance captures an increasing share of the stagnant income.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> > And some studies include the elderly which lowers measured progress because > the elderly are an increasing share of the population and they are less > likely to be working full-time if at all

Should probably just burn them for fuel, right?

> And many of the most pessimistic studies about the fate of the American > middle class ignore the fall in marriage and the increase in divorce since > the 1970s and the effects that demographic change has had on the way we > measure changes in household income

The right wing culture warrior says that if people got and stayed married they'd be better off. The left wing materialist says that if people were better off they'd be getting married more and staying together longer. Which is more likely: every young person got brain worms at the same time that made them want to not do monogamy/family things, or the stratum of society that has always tried to capture as much of its productivity as possible has made gains in its project?

As to the rest of it: I don't particularly care if the same exact individuals have effected a greater capture of the economic output of this country, I do care that as a whole the top Xtile captures a larger slice. That does, in fact, matter materially to me even though I'm imminently comfortable. I'll leave it to the real stats nerds to punch holes in the math.</comment>


How many of Donald Trump's Twitter followers are fake? - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1422395/how-many-of-donald-trumps-twitter-followers-are-fake/ <comment><USER2> "79% have an unusually small number of followers 76% follow an unusual number of accounts"

I wonder what metrics they use for a claim like this.</comment>


What blogging platform do you use? - <AUTHOR>

Inspired by the recent post about "What's your blog?", what blogging platform do you use?
We started a (WP hosted on WPengine) blog for our startup at http://blog.octanenation.com/ and there are some behind-the-scenes posts that I would like to write that I don't think would fit well on the 'business' blog, similar to what Patio11 has done.
Where do you blog about these things? I'm not crazy about hosting/installing/maintaining a WP installation. Though I'm active on FB it's too closed and not the right 'vibe'.
What do you suggest? Tumblr? Blogspot? Wordpress.com? etc?
Thanks for all the suggestions! <comment><USER2> Don't think of a platform: First think of your goal, then select a platform.

If you're a startup and you want a branded official news source then it's hard to beat a WP install on your own domain. Can you use another platform? Sure you can, but don't over think it because you should be working on your product.

If you're looking to reach a community, then think about who is the community that you want to reach? Then pick the platform based upon that. Want to meet tech geeks into Android? Well G+ seems to be the place. Want to meet hipsters who love to swap images images? Tumblr seems to be a good place for that. So play on the playground where you want to make some friends.

<comment><AUTHOR> Some good points. Our 'branded official news source' is already up and running on a subdomain using WP.

I was thinking of writing blog posts that go into more detail about the technology stack we're using, A/B tests, customer acquisition strategies etc. These types of blog posts don't seem like a good fit on the official blog.

Your comments about focusing on the community vs platform/technology is a nice practical insight. Cheers

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I use a homemade one (written in PHP) that writes static files to the disk. The fact that I use static files means a post of mine was able to survive ~ 24 hours on the front page of HN even though my website is on a shared host.

</comment><comment><USER4> [https://github.com/orangethirty/marketing_bits/blob/master/o...](https://github.com/orangethirty/marketing_bits/blob/master/one_blog_per_subject.md)

</comment><comment><USER5> Have you thought about the WP install on your own domain, then seeking input/thoughts from people on the appropriate linkedIn group or g+ community?

</comment><comment><USER6> <http://www.squarespace.com/>

It is AWESOME.

<comment><USER7> would you mind elaborating on what you like about it? We're currently using posterous, and very unhappy with it.

<comment><AUTHOR> What don't you like about Posterous?

<comment><USER7> among other issues, it has poor handling of draft posts, private posts, and recently published posts in terms of editing and workflow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Jekyll.</comment>


Will Generation Y Be In Deep Trouble? - Globalization - <AUTHOR> http://blog.sokanu.com/will-generation-y-be-in-deep-trouble-globaliz

<comment><USER2> I'm going to state something incredibly radical, and possibly (to some) fool hearty: Last week I announced to myself that I would no longer take a part in the political process until 60% of the baby boomer population in the US was out of office, succeeded by a member of a younger generation.

With some notable exceptions, the Baby Boomer generation is painfully slow to adopt the globalization of information technology in such a capacity that younger generations have; sometimes to the point of willful ignorance. Their timid nature results in often refusing to be a part of these new trends, and often stopping their adoption on wide levels for no reason other than not understanding how they work.

That said, those who have been empowered by such technologies need to be exponentially more vocal in driving down the capital and overhead of our expensive lifestyle by making use of these cost effective technologies and they must do so by(A) leveraging the benefits of a globalized workforce that doesn't place such a heavy dependence on third-party workers (in much the same way the US has depended on foreign energy to the point of hyper-polarization and excessive political baggage) and (B) strategically implementing infrastructures that would allow for a symbiotic relationship that develops social capital in these areas with cost effective solutions; thereby empowering these smaller nations, while inspiring and creating incentive for keeping the machine back at home well oiled.

<comment><USER3> Wouldn't it make more sense for you to at minimum mechanically vote in every election you can where a Baby Boomer is running against a young whippersnapper? Maybe even give some money to the latter if it looks like he can win?

Note also that _culturally_ the classic Baby Boomers (e.g. the Clintons and G. W. Bush) are different from those who were born at the end of the demographic Baby Boom, who are labeled as being part of Generation Jones (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_Jones>; e.g. Obama and myself :-). I think we might be a bit more accommodating of new technology and all that it brings.

<comment><USER2> It would, actually.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It it just me or is this just a secret ad for Sokanu?

<comment><AUTHOR> Nope, not a secret ad. While Sokanu can help people by helping them find their passion, it has nothing to do directly with the issue of globalization and it's economic effects.</comment></comment>


My search and I am feeling lucky buttons, gone. - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en

<comment><USER2> Still there for me ...</comment>


Pharo Zeroconf: multiplatform, multiversion, all in one from the CLI - <AUTHOR> http://www.pharo-project.org/pharo-download/zeroconf

<comment><USER2> Zeroconf is confusing. That name is already taken for a standard network service discovery protocol (e.g. Bonjour, Avahi). [http://zeroconf.org](http://zeroconf.org)

<comment><AUTHOR> Somewhat indeed.

[http://get.pharo.org](http://get.pharo.org) isn't tough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I wish people would stop piping curl/wget output into bash|sh|whatever, it's a recipe for disaster.

<comment><AUTHOR> well, one can '> getit.sh' and 'bash -x' it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The Zeroconf title made me think it was something like Etcd, but it's just a smalltalk environment?

</comment><comment><USER5> supercool way of work... I'm using it since it is out and cannot be easier :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep.

I am using it on Windows through MobaXterm [http://mobaxterm.mobatek.net/](http://mobaxterm.mobatek.net/) with the Curl plugin [http://mobaxterm.mobatek.net/Curl.mxt3](http://mobaxterm.mobatek.net/Curl.mxt3)

Works nicely, and makes Windows tolerable.

Adding your custom preferences to the right place will make it a blast.

Check Camillo's script:

[https://github.com/camillobruni/script/blob/master/pharo- pre...](https://github.com/camillobruni/script/blob/master/pharo- preferences.st)

Or some helper scripts of mine in:

[https://github.com/philippeback/scripts/tree/master/pharo](https://github.com/philippeback/scripts/tree/master/pharo)

like

[https://github.com/philippeback/scripts/blob/master/pharo/ex...](https://github.com/philippeback/scripts/blob/master/pharo/extracommands.sh)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Works like a charm!</comment>


An analysis of the Lego City deep space rocket - <AUTHOR> http://h313.info/blog/aerospace/2020/05/09/an-analysis-of-the-lego-city-deep-space-rocket.html <comment><USER2> My intuition, as a rocket scientist[1].

Once the boosters have come off, it feels like the drag from the nose is going to flip the rocket around. Those control surfaces _on the nose_ are at the exact wrong end of the rocket.

They don't even need to be dynamic — a set of static stabilizers at the rear of the liquid stage is should be added to provide stabilizing drag after the boosters have been detached.

This might not be a problem if the rocket has reached an altitude where it is subsonic or the drag from air is small enough to be countered by the torque provided by thrust vectoring.

Those engines have a gimbal, right?

[1] I've worked at KSC[2] since almost the very beginning[3] of the programme.

[2] Kerbal Space Center.

[3] 0.18.

 _...written with apologies to those who are actually qualified in this area._

<comment><USER3> Looking at their nozzles, the boosters also appear to be SRBs. That's a real rookie mistake. Nobody has dared launch humans in a capsule atop SRBs. The general consensus is that, in an emergency, deploying a parachute under a hail of burning solid rocket fuel will not end well.

<comment><USER4> Is Nozzle design actually a method of determining Solid/Liquid?

I know that the design depends on expected stage of flight use and things like exhaust velocity, but i didn't think just seeing a nozzle would be enough to make a determination,

<comment><USER3> (1) Relative size. Solid fuel is much more energy dense. In this case, if the nozzle was for liquid then its tank is so small that it would burn out very quickly. So it is likely an SRB. Note the other nozzles for the relatively wider center tank.

(2) Shape. You can look to the shape of the nozzle to see which altitude it is optimized for. SRBs are generally optimized for lower altitude.

(3) Throat diameter. By following the shape of the nozzle towards the tank above you can estimate the throat. SRBs have wider throats.

(4) Gimble (not seen here) SRBs can be steerable but they don't 'gimble' the same as liquid engines. Their nozzles are moved rather than the whole engine (see shuttle). So any moving nozzle bits suggests an SRB.

So ya, there is much to read from just the nozzle. In fact deep in the CIA there are probably some experts with magnifying glasses studying pictures of a North Korean rocket nozzle doing exactly that.

<comment><USER4> 1) I think relative size is a bit of a crapshoot. The size of the strap-ons is effectively the same size as the center core, The second stage of the core makes it look like a full sized LOX/LH2 tank because its painted orange, but it isn't.

2-3) Sure, but that is a general principal, not a sure sign its an SRB.

4) I don't see a sign of a gimbal. It may actually not even be a nozzle, and just the skirt.

<comment><USER3> Relative size of nozzles to attached tank. The sides are much much larger in proportion to their tanks.

SLBMs (ie SRBs) [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6a/SLBM_Com...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6a/SLBM_Comparison.jpg)

Atlas missile (liquid fuel) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Atlas_2E_Ballistic_Missil...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Atlas_2E_Ballistic_Missile.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Clearly this line of reasoning is the wrong way round. Surely the correct approach is to calculate the gravity and size of the LEGO planet and it's moon from the characteristics of the rocket.

<comment><USER6> Okay, I did it. Lego Planet is 20 (edit: actually 5) times less massive than earth.

Let's presume Lego Planet has the same density as Earth, so that the math is easy and I can make fewer assumptions. If we assume a planet with the same density, then our radius is just a function of the mass. Then all we need to do is pick a mass that lets us reach escape velocity- I presume a Deep Space Rocket wants to fully escape the planet, after all.

V_escape = ((2 * G * M) / R)^(1/2). G is constant, M for earth is 5.97E24 kg, R is 6.38E6 m.

Doing some math, if Lego Planet has a mass of 3E23 kg (20 times smaller than earth), then the radius is 2.35E6 m (a little bit bigger than 1/3 Earth's radius), and the escape velocity is 4120 m/s. The author calculated this rocket would have 4246 m/s of delta-V, so that leaves this rocket 125 m/s of Delta-V to maneuver where it needs to go.

Edit later: Okay, people have suggested Lego Planet is made of Lego (sensible). So let's fix these numbers.

According to this[0] Lego bricks with optimal packing have a density 0.64 g/cm^3, which is 640 kg/m^3 - FAR less dense than Earth, which will have consequences. If we then guessed that Lego Planet's mass is 1.25E+24 kg, 1/5th of Earth's mass, the the escape velocity is 4213.2 m/s which is close to this Rocket's delta-V.

This also means that Lego Planet is 47% _larger_ than Earth, by radius, and has more than double the surface area (which is based on radius squared). No wonder there's so many different Lego sets!

[0][https://www.brickodyssey.com/what-is-the-density-of- lego/](https://www.brickodyssey.com/what-is-the-density-of-lego/)

<comment><USER7> Lego Planet is made up of how many 2x4 bricks? (assuming they dont compress)

<comment><USER6> tldr: A little bit more than 400 million billion billion standard 2x4 bricks, roughly.

Given my calculated radius of 9.39E6 m (47% larger than earth), the volume of Lego Planet is 1.95313E21 m^3.

Brickepdia[0] (of course that's a thing) shows that a standard 1x1 block of standard height is 8 mm x 8 mm x 9.6 mm, or 6.14E-7 m^3. A 2x4 brick would be 8 times that, or 4.92E-06. Simple division then gives us that Lego Planet is made of 3.97E26 standard 2x4 bricks.

[0][https://brickipedia.fandom.com/wiki/Brick#Sizes](https://brickipedia.fandom.com/wiki/Brick#Sizes)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This assessment completely omits an important source of impulse -- the kid driven by imagination. This has to be scaled up too!

I've been locating some of our Lego models at home in places that defy traditional notions of gravity, can only guess what was the intended target of our little Commander at launch.

So the base assumption should be that the tanks are filled with Magic, and the main stage houses a warp-core. The destination is indeed Deep Space! (Picard to the Bridge)

</comment><comment><USER9> It could be decoy program to hide development of an intercontinental ballistic missile?

I haven't seen any LEGO centrifuges in stores. Those could have been hoarded by someone to encrich LEGO uranium?

<comment><USER7> Lego City is a rogue state? This changes everything.

<comment><USER10> It is, or did you read anything about a proper governmental transition from SYSTEM to City? All hush hush.

<comment><USER7> They always seemed to have more police stations than supermarkets, always a bad sign

<comment><USER11> The only productive industry is Octan, the oil company, and in the movie, the president of that company is also the de facto ruler of the city. Is Lego City a classic petro-state?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's all a massive jobs program that doesn't need to accomplish anything to achieve it's true goals. Very realistic.

</comment><comment><USER13> I believe the flaw is in assuming a Lego figure is not in 1:1 scale. So instead of upscaling the Lego figure we should just down-scale "earth" (in reality now Lego-earth) and re-run these numbers with Lego-earth gravity.

<comment><USER14> Lego figures are more bulky than humans. This would suggest that Lego-earth has actually a higher gravity than earth, right?

<comment><USER15> Lego minifigs are mostly filled with air, while humans are mostly water. Water is heavier than air, so wouldn't that mean lower gravity?

<comment><USER14> Good question, haven't thought of that!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Solution is simple. LEGOTimespace functions based on consensus of observers and rule of imagination.

Thus, they need big rockets to merely get out of sight. Once they are unobservable, they only need enough "fuel" to convince the two astronauts aboard they are doing fine.

</comment><comment><USER17> Choosing the Orion capsule as a reference seems unnecessarily large. The Gemini capsule had crew 2, and was 3,851 kg.

<comment><USER18> Not only that, it assumes the payload stage weights as much as the Orion capsule...

<comment><USER19> Yeah. This is a single person capsule so Mercury would be a better comparison. 1090 kg.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Without reading TFA: no. Probably could reach space. Maybe— _maybe_ —orbit, but barely and I'd lean toward no on that, too.

Source: Kerbal Space Program intuition (hey, served me well when I took one look at that SpaceX starship design and went "oh that's not going past Earth orbit without an orbital re-fuel and nearly-dry top stage tanks at launch" and, sure enough, that was the plan)

<comment><USER21> The title was "Will the Lego City Deep Space Rocket Go into Deep Space?" when this was posted. We changed it to that of the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Lego city isn't on earth... So requiring earth amounts of delta-v doesn't make sense...

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good point! I'm assuming that it's on Earth as [this set]([https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003A2JCOA?tag=duckduckgo- fpas-20&...](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003A2JCOA?tag=duckduckgo- fpas-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1#immersive-view_1589080320217)) shows cities on Earth as destinations for the train.

<comment><USER23> The routes include Moscow and Dublin. What city on Earth has train routes that can reach both of those cities? Another point in favor of Lego City not being on the Earth we know.

<comment><USER24> Instead of scaling the Legos up, assume that they're life size beings on a Lego sized pseudo-Earth. It's been years since I've done any physics so, I hope I'm not badly off, but I think the gravity will be around 1/900th that of Earth (if we assume radius of Lego world at 1/30 earth, mass of Lego world proportional to the cube). If we ignore the fact that there probably won't be an atmosphere on Lego world, I'm sure there are are various other applications of the square-cube law, etc. that will work in their favor as well.

I believe they'll make it.

<comment><AUTHOR> It'll actually still be 1/30th of the Earth, since from Newton's law of universal gravitation:

F = G * (m_1 * m_2) / r^2

m_2 * a = G * (m_1 * m_2) / r^2

a = G * m_1 / r^2

If we make m_1 1/30th of its original size and to the same to r:

a = G * (m_1 / 30^3) / (r / 30)^2

a = G * (m_1) / r / 30

As escape velocity v_e is where GPE + KE = 0:

v_e = sqrt(2 * g * r) from the surface of the planet

If g is now 1/30th of it's original amount as shown above, the escape velocity would be sqrt(30) = 5.477 times less, or about 2042 m/s. So yup, they would make it if it's at 1/30th the size of the Earth, with thrust to spare for air resistance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> > A minifigure, 3 blocks high, is repesentative of an average American adult

Ummm... why? Lego is from Denmark.

<comment><AUTHOR> An average Danish adult is 1.80 m, so I would be off by 0.05 m. That gives me an additional 9,000 litres of volume in the main stage, which can hold 3,240 kg of extra fuel. It also gives each SRB an extra 1.47 cubic meter of volume, or an extra 2,980 kg of fuel. This gives me an extra delta-v of 144.8 m/s, which is still a far cry from the 11,186 m/s you need for escape velocity.

[0] [http://www.dst.dk/pukora/epub/upload/17958/headword/dk/29.pd...](http://www.dst.dk/pukora/epub/upload/17958/headword/dk/29.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Well, obviously, the brilliant scientists of LEGO City have invented better rocket fuel.

Some sort of direct matter-to-energy converter to power the engines, and then fill the tanks with something really dense, osmium or whatever.

<comment><USER27> This is indeed the case - as indicated in the award-winning documentary "LEGO City Adventures: 3,2,1"

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKcR_RMxIBY&t=5m43s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKcR_RMxIBY&t=5m43s)

("This is a specially modified rocket engine for my new rocket fuel that can get us to Mars in one month, as opposed to the normal ten months it would take non-geniuses.")

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> This is great. Would love to see this for the original space shuttle lego sets.

</comment><comment><USER29> I hate when people criticize and don't offer a solution. The obvious follow up would be to calculate exactly how big of a rocket must be built to reach the moon, or even deep space.

<comment><AUTHOR> Being able to go to the moon also provides the ability to go to deep space (just point the rocket away from the moon). Escape velocity is 11,186 m/s, so (assuming a rocket with specific impulse similar to the one in the post):

11,186 m/s = 263.1 s * 9.81 m/s^2 * ln( x kg / 20,800 kg )

That's roughly 1.58591*10^6 kg of propellant, which is actually less that what's in the first stage of a Saturn V. Of course, this doesn't include air resistance or anything beyond just hitting escape velocity and leaving Earth's orbit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Considering the fuel capacity of earlier Lego spaceships, I think the assumptions about the energy density of lego fuel are off by a couple of orders of magnitude.

</comment><comment><USER31> Similar video explanation:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VfdwjEJO7A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VfdwjEJO7A)

<comment><AUTHOR> I saw that! I thought that his idea to compare heights was interesting, but he failed to account for volume, since LEGO City rockets are wider than normal rockets (an Ariane V, for example, has diameter 3.06m vs 3.51m for the LEGO one) and so could potentially hold the same amount of propellant as our real- life counterparts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> > Why does the set include a rover and a grappling arm, if it will never reach > the moon? What's the satallite used for if it doesn't have the delta-v to > reach even low-earth orbit? LEGO, we need answers!

It's because the small hook like think on the nose is a anti-gravity hook, which "magically" fixes all problems ;)

</comment><comment><USER33> I don't think he took into consideration LEGO gravity,which isn't the same as the gravity we are used to.

</comment><comment><USER34> Idea for next article: How to build an appropriate third stage using existing spare pieces to enable GEO, LLO, reaching Mars...

</comment><comment><USER35> better link? [http://h313.info/blog/aerospace/lego/2020/05/09/an- analysis-...](http://h313.info/blog/aerospace/lego/2020/05/09/an-analysis-of- the-lego-city-deep-space-rocket.html)

</comment><comment><USER36> Link is dead? Getting a 404 here...

</comment><comment><USER37> This is a scandal.

</comment><comment><USER38> Those are some serious accusations!

</comment><comment><USER39> I think this is the first time it's ever felt appropriate to me to post an xkcd on hacker news... [https://xkcd.com/356/](https://xkcd.com/356/)</comment>


The AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT and RX 5700 Review: Navi Renews Competition - <AUTHOR> https://www.anandtech.com/show/14618/the-amd-radeon-rx-5700-xt-rx-5700-review <comment><USER2> > _AMD is also launching their own "Anniversary Edition" version of the 5700 > XT, which features a factory overclock_

What does factory overclock even mean? Doesn't overclocked mean clocked over what you get from the factory? Wouldn't "factory overclock" just be "higher clock"? Are you paying $50 extra for someone else to push a button for you?

<comment><USER3> If it's like CPUs, they're using units from better performance bins.

If you buy a regular version, it might be stable at this same overclock on stock cooling, but it also might not. And even if it does work, it's possible the better binned units have headroom to go even higher.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It is important to Note, both the 2060 Super and RX5700 has similar transistor count, ( 10.8B vs 10.3B ). So RX5700 isn't winning because it has new node and stuffing in more transistor.

I am wondering on the state of GPU Compute on Mac, CUDA, OpenCL, ROCm. Apple has now abandoned OpenCL and working on their Metal Compute, which is ( I think ) only available on iOS. CUDA is not available on Mac, and ROCm is only available on Linux.

<comment><USER5> Metal compute is available on macOS as well. As far as I can tell, it's been available since at least 10.11.

<comment><USER4> Thanks I was not aware of that. So Intel and AMD has to write drivers specifically for it?

<comment><USER6> You can use Intel PlaidML right now on OSX to utilize your metal supported GPU for machine learning. I have tried the python library with Keras and my GPU (Geforce 760) with no issues.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why there is a dimple on a fan shroud of XT model, and no dimple on a baseline model?

<comment><USER8> I imagine the outer packaging is reflecting what you paid for, much like how a performance trim on the engine of a car would be accompanied by outer letters and extra styling.</comment></comment>


CoreOS Vagrant Images - <AUTHOR> http://coreos.com/blog/coreos-vagrant-images/ <comment><USER3> I don't want to sound overly negative, but attempting to support every useful combination of hardware and drivers, particularly in any kind of supported, certified configuration, ultimately leads back to the same result: just running a real OS.

You can look at CoreOS the same way as the Xen hypervisor and VMWare ESX: the more flexible these became (new hardware drivers, supported configurations, etc. etc) the more they began to look like general purpose operating systems. At which point, why not start with one? (Kvm followed the same logic)

I'd much rather see the guts of CoreOS available as e.g. a RHEL or Debian package. As it stands, throwing away 20 years of distribution experience just to avoid installing a few files on my server seems far from worth it.

<comment><USER4> You just described the actual draw of CoreOS. CoreOS is _just Linux_. Instead of going the Xen route you just described, it can capitalize on being _just Linux_ by supporting everything Linux _already supports_. At this point, you can view CoreOS, which is _just Linux_ , as the "hypervisor." Containers don't have to replicate key subsystems in every paravirtualized instance, as containers share all the same subsystems like e.g. the TCP/IP stack. You're also not throwing away any distribution experience. Want CentOS? Create a CentOS container with Docker. Want Ubuntu? Create an Ubuntu container with Docker. These are incredibly powerful ideas I'm just now being exposed to.

<comment><USER3> Try telling your SAN vendor that you're running "just Linux" and can you have a driver and support package for that please, and let us know how you get on.

When you're done there, now try plugging your nice new machine into the corporate DC. Oh it seems it needs to support VLAN tagging. No problem, better just write some new code for that.

Time to migrate a bunch of performance sensitive services. Uh oh, no support for FusionIO PCI SSDs! Better write some more code.

Time to migrate your remote sites, only policy dictates certain services must be physically encrypted. No problem, better just cutpaste Debian's cryptsetup scripts and be done with it.

Oops, turns out we deployed 1000 machines with a duff BIOS setting. No problem, I'm sure the server vendor has a support package for CoreOS..

We could come up with examples until we've basically reinvented a modern Redhat/Debian initramdisk and boot environment.

<comment><USER4> That would have been a problem with every new distribution, including RHEL and Debian when they were brand new. In reality, your SAN should be able to accommodate a generic Linux kernel with any userland you can containerize.

<comment><USER3> Yes, and ideally Microsoft Windows should be open source and IBM OS/360 would have a build supporting Firefox running on my Nexus One, but that's not how the world operates..

<comment><USER5> Your sarcasm is tedious. If a SAN cannot support a generic Linux kernel, then it's the fault of the vendor for not allocating enough dev hours to the Linux kernel, and their product should not be chosen for a Linux environment.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure how else to respond to "let's reinvent a complete Linux distribution because we've written a 20 line auto-updater".

This would have made sense to me a decade ago, but back then I just wouldn't have understood the amount of work involved. You simply cannot produce a fully generalized container OS without producing a fully generalized OS.

That aside, I actually _like_ the central idea of a better approach to managing/updating a large group of host machines. I just don't think it warrants yet another bikeshedded support/security/certifiability nightmare (and lets face it, this is bikeshedding, there's absolutely no value in the core claim of "it's just Linux", but it gives unfettered license to reinvent the same old wheels all over yet again).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Alex from CoreOS here: This only supports virtualbox at the moment, but we are actively working on adding VMware. Fill out the form on this page if you want us to spam you when we have the vmware image (or others): [http://coreos.com/](http://coreos.com/)

<comment><USER7> Any plans for Parallels?

<comment><USER8> Vagrant supports VMWare, but not Parallels yet.

<comment><USER9> Oh? I just tried to get one with the instructions on their github page, and it said the box type was vbox. Are the vmware versions kept elsewhere?

<comment><USER10> He was talking about Vagrant (the tool CoreOS uses to distribute VM images)...

Also, I think you can just make a directory in the `~/vagrant.d/boxes/coreos` folder called "vmware" and copy over the vagrant file, box.ovf and the metadata.json. Then you just edit the metadata to have a vmware provider and the box.ovf to reference "../virtualbox/<<theimage>>"

I however do not have a vagrant vmware license and cannot test this theory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> To anyone wanting to learn more about Vagrant via a screencast, I've created one @ [http://sysadmincasts.com/episodes/4-vagrant](http://sysadmincasts.com/episodes/4-vagrant)

</comment><comment><USER12> Vagrant for the uninformed: Headless interface to VirtualBox and VMWare VMs on OSX. Instancing is made a breeze.

<comment><USER13> It isn't specific to osx is it?

<comment><USER14> It is not! Works on Linux, Mac and Windows.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Ahh another Gentoo distro. Never ceases to amaze me how people troll it and yet it keeps popping out in every nook and cranny.

[https://github.com/coreos/coreos-overlay/](https://github.com/coreos/coreos- overlay/)

Must have been a good idea that no one got.

<comment><USER16> AFAIK CoreOS is based on ChromeOS which uses some parts from Gentoo. That doesn't mean Gentoo was ever a good idea for general-purpose PCs or servers.

<comment><USER15> Nice burn on Gentoo. I've had the job of supporting Gentoo on a PaaS and have deployed it many places happily.

Sadly one of the dumbest arguments ever that will blacken the Linux horizon for decades, big dick syndrome over what Linux distro you run.

<comment> vertex-four Where can I find the page which guarantees me that any given version of any given package will be fully supported by a defined security team for security fixes for at least 2 years from release, preferably 3+?

That is my argument against using Gentoo. I have absolutely no idea how long any given piece of it will be supported. If you can point me to a resource which explains that, I might take another look.

I also have no interest in picking and choosing packages out of a bucket - <USER2> want a stable, well-defined OS that I can build on, and preferably one which is as close to what everyone else is using as possible so I can ask for help from people who understand my OS.

Yes, it might work out if you're running at scale, have specialised needs, and can dedicate resources to what essentially amounts to development of a forked distro. It doesn't work out for me, as I need to know that the system I'm building isn't going to be unsupported in a couple of months, and I need to know I can talk to someone who is running similar versions of everything I'm running if everything goes wrong.

<comment><USER17> Linux is a hotel. There are the guests (users) who expect service. Then there is the concierge (distro) who smooths off the rough edges for the guests. Then there are the back-room employees (contributors) who keep things running. And behind them, the various leadership roles, e.g., architects, evangelists, and people who invent distros.

In this scenario, you are a guest. It seems you're ringing the bell at the front desk, and the unanswered question is: how are you willing to pay?

<comment> vertex-four And to drop out of the metaphor, and explain why it's broken:

I thought one of the big points of open-source was that if something exists, and it does what I want it to, I don't actually have to contribute (pay) anything further than what I want to. I still will, if it benefits me or if I'm interested, though.

As it turns out, there's a number of freely available distros maintained by others who see personal benefit in maintaining said distros, and some of those do have well-defined security and bugfix support infrastructure and teams. Therefore, those fill my needs, therefore, there is no logical reason for me to expend more effort than is necessary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> You guys really should change the logo to a cookie, every time I see the url I think of oreos.

<comment><USER19> I was thinking it should be a chewed on apple core, but now I cannot unsee the oreos... so I vote cookie logo too!

Cool project

<comment><USER20> How about a chewed oreo?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This reminds me of Bedrock Linux, which allows you to run multiple linux distros on a single kernel instance. It does so using good old chroot, but has an implementation that is capable of breaking out of the chroot when entering a new one. This way the different environments become more integrated in that a RHEL binary can call a Debian binary and so on, creating a sort of super distro which is itself quite small and simple.

</comment><comment><USER22> Simple question, but if there is no package management, how do you install basic programs? Download binaries for everything?

<comment><USER4> Simple answer: you don't. Longer answer: It depends. Do you want to use yum or apt-get to install programs? If you like CentOS, create a CentOS container with Docker and begin installing programs using yum! Ubuntu? Spool up an Ubuntu container and apt-get away! CoreOS is just the cradle upon which you can run the userland of any distribution you please.

<comment><USER22> So CoreOS is the simple host OS, thank you for the clarification, i thought it was a minimal guest OS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is not related to the Vagrant<->CoreOS topic but since Vagrant box image format is a packaged ovf image it shouldn't be too hard to port the CoreOS images to Vortex ([https://github.com/websecurify/node- vortex](https://github.com/websecurify/node-vortex)).

</comment><comment><USER24> What's the idea behind CoreOS? I found the site incredibly weak in information about what it is.

<comment><USER4> I've just begun looking into and playing with CoreOS. Basically, it's a minimal Linux image with Docker, service discovery using the `etcd` daemon they've written in Go, and several interesting properties. The most interesting is their use of the ChromiumOS build tools, allowing them to one day update servers the same way e.g. ChromeOS is updated--using the Omaha protocol to push raw binary diffs of the new root FS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Who put containers in my Vagrant!?</comment>


Birthday party on ship may have led to oil spill in Mauritius - <AUTHOR> https://news.mongabay.com/2020/09/birthday-party-on-ship-may-have-led-to-oil-spill-in-mauritius-panama-regulator-says/ <comment><USER2> As terrible as this is, I think a more sympathetic headline would be, "Mauritius oil spill occurred when tanker captain sought telephone and internet signal, so that the crew members could communicate with their families."

Then add the following, and it's even more understandable:

> Some observers say the missteps could be linked to the stress that ship > crews are under in the upheaval caused by the COVID-19 shutdowns. It has > become challenging for shipping operators to make crew changes, leading many > seafarers to be stranded at sea, away from their families for long periods.

No less terrible. Definitely still the wrong move, but I can understand it a lot better than the original headline, which sounds truly shocking on its own.

<comment><USER3> Taken together with the other claims in the report - ignoring multiple communications attempts from the Mauritian Coast Guard, and improperly configuring/using their electronic navigational systems, it's not clear why a more charitable reading than incompetence and dereliction of duty in a licensed mariner would be merited.

<comment><USER4> Unless you have personally unexpectedly spent six months on a tanker, cut off from contact with family and friends, knowing that there's a pandemic which could be affecting any of them, I think a charitable reading is the appropriate one.

Some people have harder lives than you, and when not set up for success, make bad choices.

<comment><USER5> I think the personal attack is why you're being downvoted, but fwiw, I agree with the first part. From being in Afghanistan, I have first hand experience of some of the shenanigans some people will go through to make a phone call.

<comment><USER6> He's being down-voted because it's a personal attack that could apply to 99% of people here and people just gotta defend the tribe.

If it had been the lines of "clearly you've never worked for a business that wrote software" or some other thing that applies to some small minority here nobody would have thought twice about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Not Wi-Fi, but mobile phone/data. From the article:

 _"[T]he change of course is produced by indications of the captain of the boat, who gave instructions to approach about 5 miles away from the coast of Mauritius, looking for a telephone and internet signal, so that the crew members could communicate with their families," the AMP said._

<comment><USER8> The WiFi claim kept getting repeated even when it made no sense. WiFi doesn't have the signal strength for _miles_ of distance. Not to mention that if the ship _were_ close enough to shore such that WiFi could reach, it wouldn't be so much of a shore, but a very deep cliff.

<comment><USER5> It does. I had one when I lived on a sailboat. I've been able to get consumer grade routers to broadcast 3km with line of sight, ddwrt, and no physical modifications. Somewhere like an ocean (or a desert) you won't have much, if any, interference.

<comment><USER9> How many bits per year was your throughput?

<comment><USER5> In the case of the router, it was going through a 1mbps satellite uplink, so it didn't need to be fast (though it was still fast, at -50db IIRC, it's the SNR that matters). In the case of the directional antenna on a boat, I got regular speeds just tons of dropped packets. I have no idea how far I was from the routers, but I couldn't see the houses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The stupid reason: the celebration of the birthday of one of the crew members.

Like that gender-reveal party...

<comment><USER11> If this was for a gender-reveal party I would have lost it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Starlink for the rescue.

<comment><USER13> Is Starlink going to cover oceans where there are just a few boats?

<comment><USER12> It depends on how far you are. With the current system at least 1 Satellite needs to be close enough to a ground station. So that means from your boat up to the sky, and from there to land.

It has also been suggested that at strategic locations you could have swimming ground stations in order to cover a pretty large area.

Eventually however it will cover everything as the satellites will communicate directly between each other with lasers.

<comment><USER14> Where "close enough" means that you would need to be within about one-and-a- half-thousand kilometres of a ground station (using words not numbers because it's a bit hand-wavy).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If there's one constant in the entire world, it would be dumb accidents</comment>


TomTom Can License FAT without violating GPL - <AUTHOR> http://www.sdtimes.com/blog/post/2009/03/12/Microsofts-vanished-FAT-license-was-GPL-compatible.aspx Don't get your panties in a bunch. This isn't a threat to the GPL. <comment><USER2> FAT should have been public domain long ago, the fact that microsoft is still milking this is perfect proof that file formats/file systems should never ever be subject to such restrictions.

If you re-implement FAT just to be compatible you should not have to license anything from anybody.</comment>


IBM 7950 Harvest - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_7950_Harvest <comment><USER2> I found it interesting that the 7030 "Stretch" that was the base platform for this system was initially considered a failure. It didn't come close to achieving its design performance, forcing IBM to slash the price to contracted customers and pull the product off the market. But many elements of its architecture were later used successfully in the IBM 360 and other models.

<comment><USER3> Some of the concepts they pioneered are still used today. Fascinating story.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The last sentence seemed odd and would be nice for clarification. Not many government contractors say no from my experience.

"IBM declined to re-implement the architecture in a more modern technology."

They must have had something else they were trying to sell them.

<comment><USER5> there are lots of factors. the government is a very needy customer.

in the secure world, a further compounding problem is that the government demands exclusive access to many of the technologies you develop - making it difficult or impossible to leverage the work in the market. since that line isn't well defined, and the risks are so high, both you and the government err on the side of caution.

there is a constant struggle to keep your best engineers from being locked in a scif for the rest of their lives.

many people on the government side see themselves as the overall architects of the system with absolute fiat authority. this can lead to huge uncosted scope changes, difficult or impossible deliverables, the whole project lurching into the swamp because of some tertiary issues, etc.

despite the high price tag and hefty support contract, a lot of these deals are strategically poor and don't end up making you alot of money. in the limit your entire company functionally gets absorbed into the government.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> That reads like an early version of BULLRUN.

<comment><USER7> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullrun_(decryption_program)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullrun_\(decryption_program\))</comment></comment>