Delivery By Drones - <AUTHOR> http://anthonypompliano.com/2013/10/14/delivery-by-drones/ <comment><USER2> Anyone know how these type of "logistics" companies are planning on solving the last 10 feet problem.

I.e. where does the drone land? How does the recipient pick up their package? What if you live in an apartment, how do you get your pie?

This make me think drone delivery is probably waaay more valuable in suburbia than a city setting. Delivery in the suburbia seems costlier currently (larger distances, lower densities so less stops per route, etc) and drones are well suited to deliver to a nice big front/back yard.

In cities - I don't see how they'll deliver pizzas, but maybe non-perishables can be deposited into receptacles on rooftops or street corners and picked up asynchronously.

<comment><USER3> How about a large QR tag :) With the data: DROP-ZONE-house-number-5a :)

<comment><USER4> The article points out that the drones don't have onboard cameras.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Pizza, Starbucks, mail? Really? What worthless examples.

I'm guessing most mail can be eliminated, tomorrow. Make snail mail marketing illegal, you take out probably 90% or more of all mail. You also take out 90% of the income for the post office, making the rest more expensive, driving people to digitize what bits they haven't already done. Convenience win, environmental win.

As for Pizza, what socially worthless tradeoff. Noise pollution, total surveillance by corporations, crashed drones and trash in your backyard, for what? So that we can get fatter with even less effort?

Rescue services, organ transplants, air pollution monitoring, emergency communications, OK. But making it easier for someone to get a Frappachino? Do we still need to solve that problem?

</comment><comment><USER6> No.

Millions of details need to be sorted out before even beginning to draft legislation. One must be insane to think this could "just work" and promote innovation. Try running an airport. This would be orders of magnitude more complicated. Not unfeasible, but please be patient and methodical.

How long until the drone owners start selling not ads, but data collection/reconnaissance services to corporations/governments...?

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree there are numerous issues and details. If a suburban area decided to take a stand and pass legislation, we could begin ironing out those details. By no means am I suggesting a free-for-all right out of the gate, but a well executed ramp up of activity could prove successful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I really hope Zookal have their safety measures sorted out. All it takes is one drone to run out of juice carrying a thick stack of physics textbooks and crash into a pram. Then the party's over for everyone.

Seriously though, how are the flightpaths going to be managed once multiple services start flying drones? Centralized proximity detection service based on GPS? (Hmm startup idea anyone...)

<comment><USER8> If my GPS experiences are anything to go by, big stuff (buildings and mountains) and cold (possibly heat too?) make GPS inaccurate enough that it would be pretty much useless. Up high in subzero temperatures on a mountain we would get strange coordinates back due to (I assume) the mountain blocking or reflecting signal somehow. And that was when it worked - sub zero with a big wind chill and the batteries would last about 10 seconds, then back under the jacket it had to go to warm up. This has been on multiple brands of hardware. Things may have improved since this experience as it was 5 years ago.

<comment><USER7> I doubt GPS could be trusted for autopilot, but if the accuracy is reliable for a ~30 foot sphere it could be used as a proximity alarm. ("Cool your jets human, there's another drone nearby")

The GPS on my iPhone is good enough to pinpoint my 2D position to within ~10 feet, so I don't see why not.

<comment><USER9> GPS is good enough for autopilot; I've flown with them just fine. It's also common to do GPS approaches in inclement weather, and when you break out of the clouds, the runway is right where it should be!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Fast forward 10-20 years, above your house is the constant whirr of hundreds of drones going back and forth above your property every single minute of every day.

One drone is fun, hundreds need more thinking through.

<comment><USER11> I imagine they'd have to be limited to vertical paths anywhere near the ground, otherwise as you say the noise of hundreds of drones would be unbearable. I don't see any reason why there shouldn't be a few stations around urban areas for silent landing/launching i.e. nets for drones to drop into(potentially assisted by small parachute/wings) and launchers(catapults etc.) to get them out of earshot before they fire up their motors. You'd still have a little activity in the last few meters but how many deliveries are actually delivered to a particular area per hour?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I recently read something about HN cynical top-level comments syndrome. Is it just too hard for us to dream anymore? I'm confident we'll work out the details; the future is going to be really cool!

</comment><comment><USER13>
      > Mail, pizza, and Starbucks all delivered by drones which saves everyone money and creates more happiness

I liked the article until I read this. I don't think you can link the existence of Starbucks with creating happiness at all.

[1] [http://www.beyondbars.org/starbucks_private_prison_labor](http://www.beyondbars.org/starbucks_private_prison_labor)

[2] [http://sabbah.biz/mt/archives/2006/07/16/dear-starbucks- cust...](http://sabbah.biz/mt/archives/2006/07/16/dear-starbucks-customers- you-are-killing-palestinians-and-lebanese/)

</comment><comment><USER14> > Mail, pizza, and Starbucks all delivered by drones which saves everyone > money and creates more happiness

I don't see how it would create more happiness. The "oh look, a drone" reaction would lay off pretty soon. But, perhaps it can save some energy and lessen the use of fossil fuels.

Also, I see they're self-driving. How well would this work with tiny in air obstacles like power lines?

<comment><AUTHOR> There is anti-collision software included. I'm imagining it works very similar to the way Google's self-driving car does.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Actual article: [http://pandodaily.com/2013/10/14/zookal-starts-world- first-d...](http://pandodaily.com/2013/10/14/zookal-starts-world-first- delivery-by-drone-service-in-sydney/)

<comment><USER16> Maybe the official world's first drone delivery. We tested this service years ago but unfortunately the FCC regulations stopped us.

So the question "are we innovative enough to follow?" is somehow exaggerated. We could've asked the same question 4-5 years ago. The better question would be "When will the FCC adapt to innovation?"

<comment><AUTHOR> Elaborate on your experience? I'd love to know what happened (any conversations...) when you encountered the FCC regulations?

<comment><USER16> Well we wanted to build a similar project maybe more complex a few years ago and we tested some standard drones and some custom made ones for it and then we wanted to launch a service like this. We did some research about it and there weren't any regulations for drones so we waited...and we are still waiting...probably 2015 will be the year.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Tacocopter: It's real now!

</comment><comment><USER18> Delivery by self driving car makes more sense to me. Both are automated but a car avoids weight, landing and FAA issues. Not to mention that our homes are already configured for easy access to roadways.

<comment><USER19> I've imagined a sub-car-sized delivery drone. Think one or two-wheeled drone that arrived outside with your bread and milk. Impacts traffic less, you don't need to be driven, makes smaller purchases more economical.

You could have a postbox-like port that it could put items into.

<comment><USER4> You mean like self-driving motorcycle? Why won't people just get on a bike, and pick up small items themselves (+health benefits, sustainability)?

<comment><USER19> Convenience, safety and lower costs. When you're cooking and you forgot some ingredients, push a few buttons and 10 minutes later your order arrives, sans humans and hassle. Like pizza delivery, but for everything and with fewer costs. Lower costs mean smaller transactions become economical. No flying bladed helicopters mean reduced risks and requirements for landing spots.

We have grocery delivery in my area, but it's such a hassle because I have to be home within their time window and I have to book it a couple days in advance. Why can't I just hit a "now" button and it arrives via drone, at 2am if I so desire, when most delivery people are sleeping? Or in a rainstorm, because the drone doesn't care?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Crap, it's not going to work until we solve energy usage. It's not free energy or cheap to deliver by air.

</comment><comment><USER21> Need pizza? hack a drone. BTW great idea.</comment>


A South Vietnamese Air Force Officer and a Crazy Carrier Landing (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://tacairnet.com/2015/08/20/a-south-vietnamese-air-force-officer-was-responsible-for-one-of-the-craziest-carrier-landings-of-all-time/ <comment><USER2> It seems worthwhile pointing out the comment at the bottom:

\-----

 _I'd like to point out that a lot of our young men are currently attempting to do the exact same thing as was described above for the Afghani translators who served with the US Army even at tremendous risk to their lives. They have sponsored them for visas since their lives, and those of their families, are increasingly at risk back in Afghanistan because of their work with the US. Many of these Afghani and Iraqi translators saved US American soldier lives, and made it possible for the our soldiers to work with the local populations when this was critical.

Unfortunately, even as American soldiers are working hard to bring their translators they worked with, along with their families, to the US, they're running into a lot of red tape back in the US, even though we've only filled a fraction of the visas that Congress allotted for Iraqis and Afghans who served with the US Army and other branches.

See: [https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/09/10/afghan- tra...](https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/09/10/afghan-translators- risked-lives-deserve-us-immigration-visas-column/1204853002/*)

<comment><USER3> I've had some personal experience with this.

Having worked in Afghanistan in 2012-2014 and employing interpreters daily that we shifted between government and military programs, a few of our interpreters got caught outside of parameters for visas because we shifted them between programs.

We've managed to get all of our long-term male interpreters out of the country legally.

The biggest problem was getting our female interpreters out of the country legally.

Our female interpreters were, on average, far better than the male interpreters.

Further hindered by cultural differences making it exceptionally difficult to get family permission to allow female interpreters to move overseas without male family leadership, as well as a continuing paycheck to the family that was all that prevented them from getting involuntarily married off.

We managed to get 2 of 3 female interpreters legally overseas, the 3rd is still employed in various NGO programs providing good income for the family, stalling on getting married off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For those curious, here's a recent photo of Lawrence Chambers and Buang-Ly pictured together at a 2014 commemoration of the event: [http://www.navyhistory.org/2014/04/the-opportunity-to- make-h...](http://www.navyhistory.org/2014/04/the-opportunity-to-make-history- vietnam-war-heros-flight-to-freedom-remembered/)

</comment><comment><USER5>
        A South Vietnamese UH-1H being pushed overboard to make room for a Cessna O-1 landing. (U.S. Navy/released)

Why don't they just fly the helicopter and bring it back once the plane is landed ?!

<comment><USER6> > Chambers ordered all available hands to the flight deck, regardless of rank, > to assist in moving any aircraft parked on the deck to a different spot, > clearing a long strip for Lee to land on. Any helo that couldn't be moved in > a safe and timely manner was to be pushed over the side of the deck after a > quick gear strip. An estimated $10 million worth of South Vietnamese UH-1Hs > were thus stripped and jettisoned from the flight deck. When five more South > Vietnamese Hueys landed on the deck during the mad dash to clear the deck, > their occupants were hustled into the ship and their helos met the same fate > as the others.

Seems there wasn't time or resources to get them all into the air quickly enough.

<comment><USER7> The same thing happened at the end of WW2 with all the PT boats that has been shipped to the pacific. In the course of a war, a lot of equipment gets moved to the field. When war ends (particularly abruptly as was the case in Vietnam), it's a cost benefit analysis as to whether it makes sense to ship it back. PT boats were burned and scuttled in WW2, helicopters were dumped in vietnam (not just in this case but in others to make room on the decks for people). I'm sure a lot of equipment was left in the field as well.

<comment><USER8> And more recently in Iraq and Afghanistan, billions of dollars of equipment, including thousands of Hummers and MRAPs were scrapped or donated to local allied security forces as the cost of shipping them back the United States was prohibitively costly. Embarrassingly, some of the equipment fell into the possession of the Islamic State when they conquered northern Iraq.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I just visited the Midway in San Diego this spring. The ship has been turned into a museum, and the Bird Dog is one of the first exhibits you can see. It's an amazing vessel, with lots of awesome and terrible stories to tell. Veteran crew are always aboard to answer questions about the ship and their service. HNers might especially like the CIC and other information handling rooms — they're configured like they were during Operation Desert Storm.

<comment><USER10> The Midway is definitely the best in the country, but if the west coast is too far of a trek there are similar museums within decommissioned aircraft carriers in Mobile, AL (USS Alabama) and Charleston, SC (USS Yorktown) that I'd recommend. Each has interesting histories and exhibits, and veterans in attendance.

<comment><USER11> Also Intrepid in NYC, or do you not recommend that for some reason? I enjoyed when I went, but that was over 20 years ago now. They've had a major restoration and put one of the Concordes on display since then.

<comment><USER12> And the space shuttle Enterprise is there now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This reminded me of an even crazier, and quite moving, story that appeared here a few years ago. It's so similar that at first I thought the stories must be the same, but they're not: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9462885](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9462885)

<comment><USER14> Man, what a great 3 hour rabbit hole that just led me down. The linked video about the USS Kirk was amazing. Thanks for the link.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think there may not have been a better airplane for landing on a carrier than a Bird Dog. Those things have amazing landing performance. With the tanks empty, it might not even have been overloaded.

What I don't get is why they couldn't make radio contact. There are standard emergency frequencies (121.5, 243) that the pilot should have known about and the ship tried to contact them on.

<comment><USER16> [1] says there was no headset, though who knows where they're getting that information from. The photos in the article do kind of look like the pilot is bare-headed.

1: [http://www.criticalpast.com/video/65675069507_evacuation- of-...](http://www.criticalpast.com/video/65675069507_evacuation-of- refugees_Americans-and-South-Vietnamese_USS-Midway_Cessna-aircraft)

<comment><USER15> That would totally make sense, thanks. I doubt they had speakers and hand- mics, although civilian Cessnas of the era sometimes did.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> swingline-747 Not on a moving/bobbing/weaving/zigging/zagging carrier, but here's Alaskans doing what they do best... taking off and landing in ~3m / 10 ft.

[https://youtu.be/f7u1jzjFL8s](https://youtu.be/f7u1jzjFL8s)

And here's a "helicopter" plane that plants it in 0 ft... doesn't even need a runway. :D

[https://youtu.be/HJJI3kPZ0-I](https://youtu.be/HJJI3kPZ0-I)

<comment><USER17> And without all that wind?

<comment><USER18> Longer than 0 ft. ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Contrast the carrier Captain's behavior with that of our current Secretary of Defense (when he was a Marine General) when he was asked to aid Green Berets in Afghanistan after they were hit by friendly fire.

First the Captain: _Captain Chambers' actions could have very well had him court-martialled and killed off his career in the Navy, and he was well aware of that. Even still, he put his livelihood on the line and took the necessary actions to save the Lee family._

Then the Marine General[1]: _" He was indecisive and betrayed his duty to us, leaving my men to die during the golden hour when he could have reached us,"_

[1] [https://www.nbcnews.com/news/military/former-special- forces-...](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/military/former-special-forces- officer-gen-mad-dog-mattis-left-my-n691211)

<comment><USER20> Marines do not leave Marines behind. The Army are on their own.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I just can't believe Buang-Ly doesn't have his own Wikipedia article.

</comment><comment><USER22> >By the end of the war in Vietnam, a fairly sizable number of Republic of Vietnam Military Forces (the South) officers and senior enlisted soldiers/airmen, as well as their families, were marked for death. Their civilian peers in the South were especially fearful of reprisal from the invading North Vietnamese Army for supporting and harboring ranking RVNMF personnel, who were often unceremoniously dragged out from their houses and shot in the streets, their bodies left to rot as both a warning to anyone who wouldn't give up RVNMF troops and to the soldiers themselves that their demise was imminent.

War absolutely disgusts me, but the Vietnamese war in particular was a horror show. My grandpa tells me stories that make me want to vomit. Study the history as much as I'd like, I will never understand how "start killing people" becomes a valid solution.

<comment><USER23> > I will never understand how "start killing people" becomes a valid solution.

It's always the solution. The reason a "civilized" world exists is there are people out there who are willing to commit extreme amounts of violence upon others if called for. The credible threat of violence is what puts negotiation and diplomacy on the table. Even something as civilized as a court of law depends on the existence of armed enforcers in order to be respected.

<comment><USER22> >Even something as civilized as a court of law depends on the existence of armed enforcers in order to be respected.

I disagree with the premise that the threat of institutionalized penalty is what causes people to be good. I think the primary cause of good behavior is lack of reason to commit crime (i.e well fed and housed comfortably) as well as culture.

Why else would cities with exactly the same legal systems across the USA have different crime rates?

<comment><USER23> Society cannot guarantee that 100% of the population will have no reason to commit crimes. Even something as fundamental as not agreeing with a certain law can be reason enough to break it, as seen in the case of civil disobedience.

When we talk about the reason to commit crimes, we're talking about intent, the very first stage of violent crime. That's the part where someone convinces himself that it makes sense to use violence to get what he wants. Of course, the less intent people are on committing crimes, the better. However, at this point, violence is not happening yet.

Violence comes into play during later stages, when the criminal is actually making his move. The purpose of the threat of violence is to convince people that it's in their best interests to behave according to the rules. Warranted use of violence exists to convince criminals that things could end up very badly for them should they choose to escalate the situation.

Violence is what you use to make unwilling people do what you want. Robbers use overwhelming violence to make victims give up their belongings. Cops use overwhelming violence to make the robber surrender to arrest. If someone is being judged in court, what stops them from literally getting up and walking out to freedom? There are police officers there who will violently prevent that from happening.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Vietnamese people fleeing their country for helping the US in the Vietnam war: immediately brought to the US in helicopters and aircraft carriers and given refugee status. Iraqi people fleeing Iraq because they helped us: forced to stay in Iraq for >8 years while paperwork is done and then denied. [https://www.thisamericanlife.org/607/didnt-we-solve-this- one](https://www.thisamericanlife.org/607/didnt-we-solve-this-one)

<comment><USER25> There is a small difference. The US was retreating to a hostile enemy in Vietnam. Iraq is left in the hands of a US backed regime. When the talibans take over Afghanistan, that will be a better analogy.

<comment><USER26> A US-backed sectarian regime which has been persecuting a segment of its population...</comment></comment></comment>


For collecting weather data, tiny satellites measure up to expensive cousins - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2018-09-weather-tiny-satellites-billion-dollar-cousins.html <comment><USER2> As a software developer, the thing I love about the cubesat concept is the presumably reduced iteration time. The idea of waiting for years only to find out something went wrong once the satellite is in orbit seems absurd (sorry, GOES-17).

That said, isn't the whole concept of cubesats tied to the idea that they're not in a geostationary orbit? There's something to be said for the simplicity of "point at this spot in your section of sky and receive data".

I suppose now is a good time for me to look into how to get data from a cubesat fleet.

<comment><USER3> If you're curious about this, check out Planet Lab's. [http://planet.com/](http://planet.com/)

They have a fleet of almost 200 cubesats now, in addition to higher resolution satellites from TerraBella. There's an api that you should be able to experiment with.

<comment><USER4> Sadly, their time resolution (at least at the free tier) is awful.

Would be quite an interesting challenge to interpolate a large fleet of cubesat's imagery into decent time resolution (the goes satellites regularly do 30 sec time resolution ) over a large geographic area.

edit: The cube sats in the study are only microwave as well, which are compared to the noaa-20 series which arent the correct comparison really.These cubesats would fit in better with the GPM constellation for which global coverage is pretty good, but more coverage would be good. The biggest problem as mentioned is calibration. Accuracy of the dataset over long periods of time is Paramount.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My big concern is that we still don't have a solution for [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome). Lots and lots of small satellites brings us closer to that potential catastrophe.

My big hope is that SpaceX's BFR can potentially launch and maneuver cheaply enough to take dead satellites out of orbit in a cost effective manner. Hopefully they manage to launch, and someone is willing to pay to make it happen...

<comment><USER6> Cubesats at their typical altitudes have deorbit times ranging from 6 months to 20 years, with regulation (in the USA at least) mandating a deorbit within 25 years to receive a license. The fear of Kessler syndrome is much more relevant to launching large geostationary satellites that may break apart than for cubesats.

<comment><USER5> That is good to know. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > You can build them faster, which means you can put new technology on quicker > instead of waiting 10 years for new technology infusion on a government > program

I imagine that having one cube launch every year with top equipament (or the best that the budget allows and tha fits the cube) can have better results than one big giant with older technology.

Of course, probably some tech cannot fit a small satellite, but I bet that the vast majority can. And if it can't now, it can in the following 3-5 years, before the big one is released.

<comment><USER8> A single cube sat is vastly worse. They are comparing an array of cube sat's which means they also end up very expensive due to short lifespans.</comment></comment>


'Moonshot' hype illustrates the UK government's obsession with tech hyperbole - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/15/moonshot-no-10-tech-hyperbole <comment><USER2> This is a good piece.

They also take a similar approach to regulation - the age verification strategy was going to be "world leading" and fell apart before it launched. The new Online Harms bill will also be "world leading" but is now supposed to solve so many complex cross societal problems it will also inevitably implode.

It's not really tech specific I think, just that the current government in particular is obsessed with thinking they are super naturally gifted because they own a lot of flags, and like to repeat slogans over any nuanced thinking.

</comment><comment><USER3> It isn't the government's obsession, it is from Dominic Cummings, an unelected beaurocrat, the likes of which many people voted in favour of brexit to get rid of (so they thought).

<comment><USER4> Current Secretary of State for the Department of Health and Social Care has pushed "better tech" as a solution for all of the NHS's problems since before he got the job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I reckon the one thing "Project Moonshot" actually demonstrates is how much media coverage of Covid-19 is partisan horseshit. It's basically identical to what the New York Times and other American media publications have been claiming the US desperately needed for months, and they portrayed it as a neat, easy solution that the US would have had months ago if not for Trump's incompentence. Yet when the UK government and Boris Johnson - who is seen as our equivalent of Trump - attempts something similar, suddenly there's a wave of news articles in the UK context about how it's impossible, the tech doesn't even exist, it would have far too many false positives, and so on. Pretty much the exact same plan is being spun in the UK as a delusional distraction by right-wing populists that pushes a quick fix where none exists, and in the US as a easy fix that would've happened if not for the incompetent right-wing populists refusing to do it as part of an evil cover-up. (Needless to say, pretty much all the problems with false positives, inadequate technology, the diffculty of scaling up, etc would have been much bigger problems in the US a few months ago given the much larger population and the improvements in Covid-19 testing technology since then.)

<comment> jon-wood My view on this is that there'd be a lot less grief being handed out over Project Moonshot if the existing solutions were being given the same level of focus on making them work. The current plan from the UK government is equivalent to a software developer responding to a bug report by rewriting the whole application - it may well work, but it'll be massively more expensive, and come with a whole host of new unknown problems.

Right now in the UK the basic testing infrastructure is a mess, people are being told to make 500 mile round trips to get tested, and then thousands of tests are being disposed of undone because of logistical issues.

Moonshot has a budget roughly equivalent to running the entirety of the NHS for a year, I can think of much better uses for that money than a project with no clear path to success, such as massively scaling up test and trace infrastructure. But of course we're Great Britain, and so everything must be the very best. Such as the failed attempt to implement tracing apps with a custom solution rather than building on top of the Android and iOS SDKs for the purpose.

<comment><USER5> Right now in the UK, the basic testing infrastructure is more-or-less world class as far as I can tell, with a level of testing that's basically unprecedented outside of the US (though some other European countries are catching up over the last few weeks) - it's still having trouble coping right now, but that seems to be the case throughout Europe and elsewhere too. That is very much not the impression you'd get from the media. They keep pushing stupid narratives like the UK needing South Korea-style mass testing when in reality the UK is testing about an order of magnitude more people for Covid, and South Korea charges most people with symptoms for testing in order to discourage them from getting tested and using up the limited capacity whilst the UK tests for free.

Also, the government also seems to be working on the testing infrastructure - from what I can tell, the problem is that as it turns out that things like expanding testing capacity has a lot of lead time, and the capacity expansion is a couple of weeks later than it ideally should have been.

<comment><USER6> > Right now in the UK, the basic testing infrastructure is more-or-less world > class as far as I can tell

If you believe the government's figures it is, but they have history in misrepresenting the data.

The leak a day or two ago suggests they are inflating the figures again (62k tests per day actually carried out v. claimed capacity for 375k a day).

See e.g. [https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-covid-testing- program...](https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-covid-testing-programme-in- chaos-amid-185-000-swab-backlog-leaked-documents-show-12070814)

I appreciate the challenges are significant, but I'd have a lot more confidence in the system if they were just honest about the problems they were facing.

<comment><USER5> That's not what the article you linked says. It actually says that only 62,000 people are getting tested _for the first time_ every day. This isn't officially published as a daily stat anymore because it's confusing and not all that useful - there are good reasons why people get tested more than once, for example because they develop potential symptoms again or perhaps more commonly in order to protect hospitals and care homes by testing people before they're admitted to hospital, during their stay, and before they're discharged to a care home. The number of repeat tests is also going to keep going up as time goes on for really obvious reasons that have nothing to do with testing failing.

Now, admittedly it is worded in such a way as to trick people into making the exact mistake you just did. These two sentences are a work of art: "Labelled "official: sensitive", the Department of Health and Social Care report seen by The Sunday Times says most British laboratories are processing fewer tests than their stated capacity due to problems in supply chains. The newspaper said that despite government claims that its system has capacity for 375,000 tests a day, the equivalent of just 62,000 people a day were newly tested in the first week of September." It's very carefully structured to make it sound like only 62,000 people are being tested a day and the rest of the capacity is going idle due to supply chain issues, even though in reality that's not what's happening and there is _pretty much no casual link between the two facts it 's using to make people think that_.

(The testing delay figures also look, off-hand, very similar to what I've seen from other countries around the globe lately.)

<comment><USER6> OK, I am sure you are correct. But the government is doing a lousy job of presenting the data and their history of massaging the figures does not inspire confidence.

Their assignment of tests is also awful. I know several healthcare workers who have been out of work for a week while trying to get tested, and surely they should be prioritised.

I don't think total number of tests processed is the only criterion for labelling the system "world class".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Coronavisrus seem like complete hyperbole at this stage. 1% of deaths in the UK were from Covid yesterday.

<comment><USER8> Right, because of the drastic measures taken. If these measures are halted, that figure will skyrocket. The pandemic isn't over in the UK, it's currently under control, despite incredible expense.

Also, people who get the virus and survive may still have permanent lung damage. There's more to it than the death rate.

<comment><USER7> It not orders of magnitude worse than a bad flu season, yet the response has been unprecedented. Sweden has managed fine without any lockdown (and it's not a competition over death rates before someone starts comparing). Hospitals didn't get overwhelmed anywhere which was what the reason for lock down was all about (originally). They appear to have reached some level of herd immunity.

If hardly anyone is dying can it still be classed as a pandemic? No one bothers about a "cold pandemic", which is effectively what coronavirus is at this stage. Deaths per day are in single digits.

And you can't claim "permanent lung damage" for something that has only been around for 7 months.

<comment><USER9> It's not "orders of magnitude worse than a bad flu season" precisely because the _entire country shut down for months_

<comment><USER7> > precisely because the entire country shut down for months

The way to test your hypothesis would be to look at countries that didn't lock down.

Sweden didn't shut down and had a similar outcome to most European countries. Hospitals were not overwhelmed. Looking at Euromomo they had it relatively mild in terms of excess deaths for the time of year. [https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/](https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and- maps/)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The limited, and hence reasonable, effectiveness of mathematics in physics - <AUTHOR> http://arxiv.org/abs/1506.03733 <comment><USER2> "the contents of mathematics is far from arbitrary -- while an infinite number of mathematical objects might potentially be envoked [sic], the few that prove interesting develop a very small number of core concepts. These core concepts are not arbitrary -- they are elaborations of structures which are discovered during the study of nature. There are four of these core concepts: number, geometry, algebra and logic."

It could be as well argued that there is only one core concept: computation. (Or maybe "symbol".)

The interesting question is: of all the myriad possible things that are computable, how is it that we are able find the unfathomably small subset whose behavior corresponds to (what we perceive as) physical reality? That was the question Wigner was asking, and I don't think Smolin answers it at all.

<comment><USER3> "the contents of mathematics is far from arbitrary -- while an infinite number of mathematical objects might potentially be envoked [sic], the few that prove interesting develop a very small number of core concepts. These core concepts are not arbitrary -- they are elaborations of structures which are discovered during the study of nature. _There are four of these core concepts: number, geometry, algebra and logic._ "

The fact that Smolin thinks these are distinct things shows just how out of touch he is, and is ironic given his hatred of mathematics.

<comment><USER4> > ironic given his hatred of mathematics.

Wait, what? Are you going off of a particular polemic of his?

Because it's hard to imagine someone who had to have learned enough math to do string theory, to be a true math hater, even if (I am assuming) he rants.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is excellent. Interview going over more here: [https://scientiasalon.wordpress.com/2015/02/13/lee-smolin- an...](https://scientiasalon.wordpress.com/2015/02/13/lee-smolin-and-the- status-of-modern-physics/)

"As Roberto Mangabeira Unger and I argue in our new book The Singular Universe, the most important discovery cosmologists have made is that the universe has a history. We argue this has to be extended to the laws themselves. Biology became science when the question switched from listing the species to the dynamical question of how species evolve. Fundamental physics and cosmology have to transform themselves from a search for timeless laws and symmetries to the investigation of hypotheses about how laws evolve."

and

"Neurosciences are a fabulous area to work in, ripe for great discoveries. I've always felt this and indeed the only alternative to a career in physics that ever attracted me was a brief flirtation in college with neuroscience. But that is a field which is as bedeviled by outdated metaphysical baggage as physics is. In particular, the antiquated idea that any physical system that responds to and processes information is isomorphic to a digital programmable computer is holding back progress."

<comment><USER6> When you listen to some contemporary physicists like Nima Arkani-Hamed they seem to disagree, i.e. they believe that neither time nor space are fundamental properties of our universe but instead emerge from something more fundamental. [1] This leads of course to some really hard problems and especially it is no longer clear what physics is even about. It used to be the science of things moving through space over time, but what if you lose space and time?

[1] [http://www.cornell.edu/video/nima-arkani-hamed-spacetime- is-...](http://www.cornell.edu/video/nima-arkani-hamed-spacetime-is-doomed)

<comment><USER4> > they believe that neither time nor space are fundamental properties of our > universe but instead emerge from something more fundamental.

Yes, this has gained increasing acceptance ever since its first (?) suggestion from the late illustrious John Archibald Wheeler in the 1960s, and it is a very compelling idea, although yes, it makes it hard to conceive what we may be talking about.

> like Nima Arkani-Hamed they seem to disagree,

I missed it, who's disagreeing with whom about what? The parent comment doesn't _seem_ to have content disagreeing, unless I'm missing something.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "As we do not believe in timeless Platonic realities, we do not want to say that chess always existed-in our view of the world, chess came into existence at the moment the rules were codified."

Okay, but when were the variations of chess invented? For example, instead of playing on an 8x8 board, you could play on an x*y board for any natural numbers x and y. Do we need to set x and y to specific values for that variation to "come into existence". Does it make sense for us to say that a game exists when it's never been played?

How specific do we need to be about imagining a game? If we just say that chess can vary in many possible ways by changing any of its rules, does checkers come into existence? Or suppose we write a computer program to generate variations on board games. Do I have to run the program for these games to "come into existence", or just write it, or just think about writing it? If the program has a bug so that it won't generate a particular board game, does that game come into existence when I document the bug, fix the bug, or verify the fix?

I don't think any philosophy is all that good at distinguishing between explored and unexplored concepts in the general case. But that's a problem mostly when you try to do philosophy. If you have a practical purpose in mind, it's much easier to come up with a useful working definition for the particular domain you're interested in.

<comment><USER6> What you are struggling with here is the definition of existence. And Platonism has this problem in general, you rarely get a sharp definition of what it means that something exists. Natural numbers exist. I know what natural numbers refers to but I have no idea what existence refers to. When we talk about things in the physical world I can come up with a definition of existence, say anything I can - at least in principle - interact with. This definition is far from perfect and has quite a few issues itself but it is at least a start. But what does the existence of mathematical objects even mean?

<comment><USER4> > but I have no idea what existence refers to.

A lot of brilliant famous mathematicians in history have been befuddled on that point as well.

I think it's a linguistic issue, which perhaps you are hinting at.

If I say "that rock exists", in the real world, that meaning of "exists" is parallel to, yet _different_ than if I say "prime numbers exist".

It's hardly the first time that one word meant more than one thing.

The linguistic "exists" is a "deictic" \-- I can point to the thing.

The mathematical "exists" means "come, let us reason together, and I can demonstrate to you abstractly that this one thing is inescapably implied by this starting point".

(Phrasing borrowed from Leibniz's commentary on Calculus Ratiocinator)

They both have a similar final state, I suppose: that we are convinced of the "existence" of a thing, but nonetheless the existence in each case is in a separate realm.

<comment><USER8> I like to consider the mathematical use of 'exists' as something quite similar to its use in sentences like "a solution to such-and-such problem exists" \- basically, an assertion that if you do X then Y will result - not so dissimilar from your "come let us reason together..." explanation, perhaps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Anyone interested in this might also like Lakoff's "Where Mathematics Comes From," which I read after seeing a Bret Victor recommendation of it:

[http://www.amazon.com/Where-Mathematics-Come-From- Embodied/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Where-Mathematics-Come-From- Embodied/dp/0465037712)

Absolutely fascinating book.

<comment><USER10> See also Martin Gardner's defenses of mathematical realism for counterpoint.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think that there are softer versions of Platonism (which in other contexts would not be considered Platonism at all, but are closer to Platonism that Smolin's idea) that are somewhat consistent with naturalism. The softer version is that there _appear_ to be mathematical objects with independent existence, even though there is no a priori philosophical reason to believe in their independent existence, and there are indeed reasons to doubt it (e.g. non-standard models of not only the reals, but also the natural numbers).

One reason I find it hard to reject Platonism entirely is that the main alternative in the philosophy of mathematics, Formalism, looks to me like a kind of Platonism. This is because formalism replaces belief in the independent existence of mathematical objects (real numbers, integers) with belief in the independent existence of meta-mathematical objects (theorems, proofs) which most formalists conceive of in mathematical terms.

Ultimately I think that there is no a priori limit that we can place on how science is going to pan out, and how this will affect our philosophy. E.g. I find the idea of multiple universes distasteful and nonsensical (e.g. If everything possible happens, then how can we interpret probabilities? Why do we live in a universe where macro observations are consistent with applying the law of large numbers to quantum randomness? I can't think of any anthropic/observer based principle that would enforce this) but I can't yet rule out that that's really how things are.

</comment><comment><USER12> > There is an objective distinction between past, present, and future.

How does that work with relativity, which says that the concept of simultaneity does not even exist in the sense that we understand it? [1]

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

<comment><USER13> There's an objective distinction between "past", "future", and "undefined". ("Present" is sort of more a human concept than a physics one.) Past is in your past light cone, future is in your future light cone, and "undefined" is everything else.

<comment><USER14> I prefer to categorize them as "absolute past", "absolute present", and "absolute elsewhere". This is because for any event in one of your light cones (past or future), there'll be a reference frame that places it at your location (i.e. the same spatial coordinates, just at a different time). But for events outside your light cones, no reference frame will have it at the same location; it's absolutely elsewhere.

BTW, if you also want to talk about the present, you can only talk about it at a particular location. If you want, you can define 3 "thin" boundary regions: the surface of the future light cone (boundary between absolute future & absolute elsewhere), the surface of the past light cone (similar), and the "here & now" (the single point in spacetime where all 3 regions meet).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I have heard of two paradigms humanity have used to try to explain the world

Mathematics/logics is one of them. It says that the world is guided by _principles_. "Objects contain different amount of phlogiston and when they burn it is released."

Anthropomorphism is the other. I.e. there is one, or many human-like beings with personalities and feelings. And things that happen happen because the beings want them to. "If you offend the fire spirits your house may burn down"

Are there more?

<comment><USER16> Many things happen the way they do just down to luck or chance. If that microscopic quantum fluctuation hadn't been there our galaxy wouldn't have existed.

Some people believe in karma. Maybe this is covered as a principle, however, even though it isn't scientific.

Perhaps solipsism might also count as an "explanation" of the world. I exist, so that explains the world.

Fate is also an explanation for what happens.</comment></comment>