After a Stroke at 33 a Writer Relies on Journals to Piece Together Her Own Story - happy-go-lucky http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/02/11/514559596/after-a-stroke-at-33-a-writer-relies-on-journals-to-piece-together-her-own-story <comment><AUTHOR> Reminds me of an old Kim Stanley Robinson SF novel called _Icehenge_ , which as I remember it revolves around life extension without corresponding memory preservation, so that history becomes a way of understanding your own past. I think it did interesting things with the unreliable-narrator trope and the idea of historical revisionism.

Definitely recommended, and I'm feeling a strong urge to dig it out and reread it; it's been decades. It'd be pleasingly appropriate to discover that I'm misremembering or have a drastically different response to it this time.

<comment><USER2> You might also like 'Soldier in the Mist' by Gene Wolfe, about a greek soldier who loses his short term memory from an injury. He starts each day by reading the journal he finds beside his bed..

<comment><AUTHOR> I tried that not long after reading _Icehenge_ , but didn't really get on with it. Again, that was decades ago, so maybe I should give it another look. Gene Wolfe does tend to reward older readers; I'm pretty sure most of his Urth books whooshed right over my head as a teenager.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I started keeping a physical journal a few months ago. For some reason having the physical journal with me as a constant reminder helps me keep up with it.

Anyway, I've gone back and reread the beginning of that and I've gone "Oh yeah, I forgot about that," several times already. I can't imagine completely losing my memory and needing to refer to my journals for memory. But at least if I ever did go through this, I'll have these to refer to.

<comment><USER4> Physical journal? As in paper and pen?

I was listening to the Twit podcast once and Jerry Pournelle was on. He talked about his life log. Basically it was a journal in which he recorded everything - meetings, meals, phone calls, weather, along with the more usual thoughts and ideas. I tried to do that for a while and it was a lot of work.

What do you track in your journal?

<comment><USER5> I think you'd appreciate something I've been working on and I'd love to hear what you think!

[https://www.60secondseveryday.com](https://www.60secondseveryday.com)

It's basically the fastest way of daily journaling - you get a call each night and record a 60 second journal entry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It struck me as odd, or at least made me stop, think and now write about it. Why the doctors recommended maintaining a "Moleskine" journal. Why "Moleskine"? Why can't it be a plain journal!!

</comment><comment><USER7> Imagine a capacity sensor around the artery and a capsule of blood thinner.. This could be historic instead of gone history.

<comment><USER8> The headline made me sad but this comment made me laugh. If only all life's problems could be handled with simple engineering. With all the machinery you'd have to stuff everywhere, there'd be a lot more problems.

<comment><USER9> > With all the machinery you'd have to stuff everywhere, there'd be a lot more > problems.

Oh, machinery like pacemakers, knee implants, cochlear implants? Seems to me we have far too little of such machinery, rather than too much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Can you completely recover after a stroke like this, or is the brain permanently damaged?

What causes these to happen? There's a photo of the author in the article, and she appears visibly healthy. How can you reduce one's risk of having a stroke?

Strokes are scary. Aneurysms seem even more terrifying.

<comment><USER11> It depends. I had a very mild stroke at the end of last year.

I was extremely lucky. The only lasting damage is occasional slight facial tingling and a hint of numbness in one arm. For a few months I had unusual bouts of extreme fatigue, but those seem to be fading now.

Otherwise I'm fully functional. Memory, speech, and mobility all seem fine.

I'm definitely much much luckier than some of the people I saw on my very brief stay on the stroke ward. One person had been on the ward for literally a year. A stay of a few months for regular rehabilitation sessions isn't unusual. (I got pretty angry that strokes happen at all. They can be _so_ damaging that it seems unusually cruel for humans to live in a reality where that kind of handicap/illness is even possible.)

Practically, strokes are somewhat random. There are some risk factors - cholesterol, heart arrhythmias, smoking, alcohol, stress, high blood pressure - but you can be low risk and still suffer the effects of a loose clot.

In fact you can have a series of very minor ischaemic events and not even notice. They'll show up on an MRI, but you may not have any obvious symptoms at all.

<comment><USER10> Thanks for your response. I'm glad you were able to make an almost complete recovery.

That's terrifying about strokes being essentially random outside of the obvious risk factors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> >Days later, she learned she'd had a stroke

Don't you have to get to the ER within hours when you have a stroke?

<comment><USER13> One might. And its not inconsistent with the sentence. There could be several days of disorientation prior to being able to form the memory that they had a stroke a few days ago.

Tangentially related, [https://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_strok...](https://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight) is about a brain scientist who had a massive stroke and she talks of both the shutting down of the brain along with the starting it up again.</comment></comment>


Buy our app Genius Scan+ and fund medical treatments through Watsi - <AUTHOR> http://thegrizzlylabs.com/watsi

<comment><USER2> Just bought that today. Very cool!</comment>


It's Possible to Hack a Phone with Sound Waves, Researchers Show - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/14/technology/phone-hacking-sound-waves.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fscience&action=click&contentCollection=science&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=3&pgtype=sectionfront <comment><USER2> The weakness in this is that designers didn't expect people to be hacking their phones from this direction. The reality is that ANY input that effects what's inside can be used to effect and maybe reprogram the system. The system is just a bunch of electrons with no meaning and no concept of "security". One day, if we get optical computers, hackers may use radio or other light waves to manipulate those computers from outside with no internet connection.</comment>


DHH: Doing a Start Up in the Real World [video] - <AUTHOR> http://events.carsonified.com/fowa/2009/dublin/videos/david-heinemeir-hanson-2

<comment><USER2> 37S keep on insisting on the whole "don't write a business plan" thing. In this talk, DHH puts up a strawman.. "Build something good enough that people want to pay us money for, and charge them monthly.. that's my business plan." That's not a business plan, that's a business model.

A business plan is simply the result of doing basic research like:

* estimating the size of the market * checking out the competition * estimating your costs * figuring out what drives your costs * figuring out just how much you need to sell, and at what price, to cover your costs * agreeing who's gonna do what when, roughly

and a number of other things..

A "business plan" is just a piece of paper. Business planning, on the other hand, is essential - unless you like to fly with your eyes closed.

<comment><USER3> According to that definition, we enjoy flying blind, then. We never did any substantial research in any of the areas that you suggest and we managed to do just fine.

Doesn't mean that you should never do those things, just that I generally find them overrated as your ability to gauge market sizes for non-consumption products is very limited (which is what we try to do almost exclusively, attract people who haven't used a product in the category before).

<comment><USER4> The "we did it and we do just fine" argument to me is really what's overrated here.

How do you know you are doing just fine? How much of the market have you captured? How big is that market? What if you had created your business plan 5 years ago and today you did triple your sales? Would that extra 2-3 weeks of work be worth it?

<comment><USER5> _How do you know you are doing just fine?_

I'm pretty sure they just look at their bank accounts.

In all seriousness, there's doing fine and being greedy. There will always be a step to climb, a market to reach or revenue to grow. The goal is to do enough to enjoy life and be comfortable, not to be the richest man in the world. At some point, you can do "well enough" and not worry about what "could have been".

<comment><USER4> I'm sure their investors would disagree.

<comment><USER5> They are their investors. :-)

<comment><USER4> [http://www.37signals.com/svn/archives2/bezos_expeditions_inv...](http://www.37signals.com/svn/archives2/bezos_expeditions_invests_in_37signals.php)

My point is this: Though they may have taken Jeff Bezos on for his expertise, Bezos made his investment to earn a return. You don't invest in private or public stocks in a capitalist world to do just fine. You don't start a business for that reason either. That's not greed, that's entrepreneurship.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm so mentally attracted to the concept of not formulating a business plan other than "make something people want, and then put it up for sale" - but in my business it hasn't been viable.

To get the loan that we've taken out, and to get meetings with useful people, we've had to have a traditional business plan and cashflow forecast.

Here's the good news though: it only took me one evening to write and another to edit, and it doesn't matter if we don't stick to it.

I wonder if Jason Fried had to man up and write one when he founded his consulting firm?

<comment><USER5> Writing a business plan to show a bank and "writing a business plan" are two different things, really.

Looking at 37S, my guess is that they're mostly self funded, so I don't think they ever went looking for loans. I would say this is the "ideal path", even if it isn't practical.

If you do need start up capital, then of course you're going to have to show the bank that you're good for it. You should still cling to the idea however that your ultimate business is about making "something" and not sticking to what you thought you would be making before you started.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Don't get so hung up on his point about whether or not you should write a business plan that you miss the rest of his points, which are great. Among other things, that it's about execution and staying power, not the idea.

</comment><comment><USER8> Starts with poor audio and then improves a lot.

</comment><comment><USER9> My Conclusion: do it your own way (which is not necessarily: do it the 37signals way).

</comment><comment><USER10> I always find DNN compelling. And appreciate the fact that he spends a lot of time trying to get others to go out and realize their visions, while providing some key guidance.

I agree with most every angle, except I do think he over-simplifies, a little, the idea that all viable businesses must start with a product that people pay for. While it's a hard road, and a great challenge, web apps that begin life as free play a very important part in the whole web ethos, and some become very valuable through a variety of valid business models that can be tacked on later depending on what/how things evolve. So to dismiss "startups" that shoot for this particular "success" wholesale, I would say is it's own sort of nay- saying. But again, as a whole...loved the pres.

</comment><comment><USER4> Not creating a business plan and making up prices out of thin air is definitely the most fun and least time consuming. I think DHH nails that aspect of it.

But, how feasible is it to start companies this way? Sure it may have worked well for them and it may even work incredibly well for your business. As hackers though, we know that just because something worked once, twice or 500 times doesn't mean it's the truth or will always work.

It's best to be prudent wherever possible and do some research into your market and pricing strategies. I'm not saying go off and create 5 year business plans, I'm just saying it definitely deserves some of your time cycles.

<comment><USER5> Why? Is there an identifiable increase to your chance of success if you have a business plan over not having one?

In the traditional business, I suppose the answer would probably be yes (although I haven't really seen anything that supports this). Working in tech however, is much more of a crapshoot. Most of the time, you can't really research a market you're creating. This alone makes the whole process a giant guessing game.

If forming a business plan is just a series of guesses, you'd be better off moving straight into the part where you're actively testing those guesses with a workable product.

<comment><USER4> I think you make the assumption that the tech you are creating here is inexpensive. If you can make your idea with $5k and a few months time, go for it. Make up prices and make up numbers.

What if your new product, that has never been done before, will costs tens of millions? Surely those products have existed, and yet are still somehow able to do the prudent 'guesswork' to convince venture capitalists.

<comment><USER5> _What if your new product, that has never been done before, will costs tens of millions?_

Bluntly, my opinion here would be that this isn't a viable option for a startup, unless they have access to easy angel capital or can self fund to that amount.

Developing an idea with that price tag is an is a risk orders of magnitudes higher than a low cost startup. Having a hit is hard enough, but you'd need a run-away smashing super hit to even break even.

Even if you choose that path, there are still aspects of the idea that can be harnessed and build at much lower costs to begin income generation to help fund the remainder of the idea.

Investing money of that amount into an idea that has yet to prove itself is not my idea of a good move, really.

EDIT - Curious, what problem space are you thinking about/working in that requires that level of funding?

<comment><USER4> I'm not particularly working in that type of space, but we are generalizing here.

If you look into startups in the medical, pharmaceutical, chemical and energy fields, you will see very high startup costs while sharing the high risk attached to software startups.

Even in software though, there are companies working on solving difficult problems that would require the work of scientists, engineers and administrators for 1-2 years. This would place you into that multi-million dollar category pretty quickly.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Teen Vogue published and then deleted an uncritical story about Facebook - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/teen-vogue-story-on-facebook-prompts-sponsored-content-questions-vanishes-2020-1 <comment><USER2> Looks like somebody accidentally hit the "make visible to the entire planet" button on Teen Vogue's CMS instead of the "make visible to just Lauren so she can edit it and submit it to her editor".

That's the way submarine articles are written and the way a CMS works these days, no surprise to most of the people here I assume, but I still find it surprising that CMS vendors sell systems that have minimal friction required to publish something. You don't quite need an air-gapped multi-key cryptographically secure system, but a few checks by various parties that articles have been copy-edited, fact-checked, verified for browser support and accessibility, and approved by an editor would seem to alleviate a lot of embarrassing publication errors.

<comment><USER3> The problem with the "it's Teen Vogue's fault for fat fingering the publication" is that Sheryl Sandberg immediately shared the article on her personal Facebook page. I mean, are we to believe that she did not realize this was paid sponcon by her own company (PR/comms falls under her leadership) that it was "mistakenly" published and was organic content (in which case she should've known as well as they had access to FB employees with pictures inside the office).

Mistake or not, FB leadership clearly cheer led it's publication, and then walked back and claimed they had no idea this was sponsored, and only in the last hour or so said it was a "mistake" to deny it was sponsored.

<comment><USER4> Can't we assume at this point that Sandberg likely has someone posting on her behalf? Someone who likely is in PR/marketing working "next to" the person/team that spearheaded the article.

This is particularly ironic because there are likely rules against account sharing that Facebook PR does not in fact follow.

<comment><USER3> there's no way someone could've posted this on her personal FB page without her knowledge

<comment><USER5> Is that true? Maybe I misunderstand how powerful people typically use media, but I wouldn't be surprised at all to learn that Sheryl Sandberg has an assistant who's allowed to post to her personal Facebook.

<comment><USER3> you're conflating the act of posting something with posting something you made up without approval from the person in question.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Twitter thread about the mislabeling/misattribution/removal, for context: [https://twitter.com/maxwelltani/status/1214957104206876672](https://twitter.com/maxwelltani/status/1214957104206876672)

Mashable story tracking the takedown and statements by Teen Vogue: [https://mashable.com/article/facebook-teen-vogue- sponsored-c...](https://mashable.com/article/facebook-teen-vogue-sponsored- content-election-integrity/)

 _Update: Sadly, it looks like the Internet Archive copy has now turned into a 404. Mods should probably replace this link with the Mashable writeup above instead._

<comment><USER7> [https://archive.is/8J1qB](https://archive.is/8J1qB)

Since Internet Archive chucked it in memory hole.

<comment><USER8> The Internet Archive is working for me:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20200108170304/https://www.teenv...](https://web.archive.org/web/20200108170304/https://www.teenvogue.com/story/how- facebook-is-helping-ensure-the-integrity-of-the-2020-election)

<comment><USER9> Please see my post in the other thread about how TFA images fared on the Internet Archiv.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21998463](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21998463)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I don't think "fears" is really the right word, and is not part of the original headline...

Regardless, sponsored editorial content is one of those icky things that I'm surprised remotely reputable journalistic outlets get into. You're renting out your reputation to those that could use it (e.g. likely not very reputable themselves and thus can easily drag you down).

How much does an article like this go for? Six-figure range? It just seems like the monetary reward doesn't make up for the possible damage to your perceived journalistic integrity.

<comment><USER10> Six figures? My guess is in the low thousands -- if that. Teen Vogue is not that big of a website -- according to SimilarWeb it gets 4M visits every six months, which is less than ~22k visits a day.

A reasonable CPC for native content is under 10 cents. Assuming a 5% CTR (high), that's 1k clicks, for ~$100.

A reasonable CPM is also under 10 cents. That comes in at ~$200.

News articles don't stay on the front page very long.

It's amazing and pathetic how willing companies are to throw their reputation into the ground for almost no money.

<comment><USER3> The math is different when a company is paying for it. It's not the same economics as a random ad that shows up on the page.

<comment><USER10> I know. They overpay for stuff like this. But in the order of 10s, not thousands.

The point was, the OP guessed six figures. I was trying to make it clear that I can't imagine this being above the low four figures.

<comment><USER3> this is dumb, but I don't think vogue is that dumb. for < $10k many individuals and corporations seeking to wash their reputation by pumping "fake news" could afford it, and if that were true you'd see a lot more of this.

I can't imagine it would be that cheap.

<comment><USER11> It might cost more than $10,000 to publish something like this, but not all of that money goes to the venue. Just because Teen Vogue didn't have to write it doesn't mean nobody had to write it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Not surprised that Facebook initially denied it. Planting news stories covertly has been part Facebook's PR playbook since the beginning.

[https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-google- lies-2011-5](https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-google-lies-2011-5)

[https://www.technologyreview.com/f/612424/facebook-is- being-...](https://www.technologyreview.com/f/612424/facebook-is-being- accused-of-hiring-a-pr-firm-to-smear-its-opponents/)

<comment><USER13> Yep. I assume that any "news" story that fawns over Facebook is a PR plant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> > Newest in teenvoguegate: Facebook sponcon _was_ supposed to be sponcon: "We > had a paid partnership with Teen Vogue related to their women's summit, > which included sponsored content. Our team understood this story was purely > editorial, but there was a misunderstanding." - FB spox

[https://twitter.com/pkafka/status/1215034900375433216](https://twitter.com/pkafka/status/1215034900375433216)

<comment><USER15> Whenever a FB spokes drone, or senior manager opens their mouth they lie.

That, at least, is my take.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> > Facebook spokesperson Lisa Stratton said: "This piece is purely editorial. > We pitched this to Teen Vogue and worked with their team on the piece over > the past few months." (Companies' communication teams will sometimes pitch > news outlets on possible stories, in the same way news outlets will reach > out to companies to ask for interviews and access, and it's not a sign of a > financial relationship or underhand behaviour.)

Maybe I'm naive but the idea that Facebook (or whatever company) is "pitching possible stories" to news outlets seems bizarre to me.

<comment><USER17> I will let you in on a secret then, this is how 1/3 of stories work. I have gotten such stories written about my companies. These writers are under constant pressure to churn out stories and welcome someone doing most of the work for them.

Here is a general rule of thumb when reading an article. If what you are reading is not news, you are being marketed to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The middle aged social media marketing person, responding in the faux speech of a 14 year old to shrug it all off:

[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ENxrpCCX0AATVYd.png:large](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ENxrpCCX0AATVYd.png:large)

</comment><comment><USER19> That various people at both Teen Vogue and Facebook _don 't even know_ if it was sponsored content or not (and in some cases thought they did) says a lot all on it's own.

<comment><USER20> No. The issue is they all weren't sure how much truth to admit to, until it went up the chain of command. Decisions like this are hard when you have a web of deceit to navigate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> > But Teen Vogue then added a note saying it was sponsored content, before > removing it again. A Facebook spokesperson told Business Insider it wasn't > sponsored content, then finally admitted it was.

Did they let interns run the PR department for a day?

</comment><comment><USER22> Suppose the story _was_ marked as sponsored content - what is Facebook's motivation for publishing it in Teen Vogue? Presumably _Facebook_ shouldn't have trouble reaching people. The only sensible explanation is that they had hoped the 'sponsored content' tag would go unnoticed, so that readers would mistakenly attribute the story to Teen Vogue. No matter how you look at it, the aim was deception.

</comment><comment><USER23> Reminder that only something like 10% of Teen Vogue's leadership is under 20 years old

<comment><USER24> I'm assuming you mean *readership rather than leadership? It would be kinda weird if they had even 10% teens as their execs.

But yes, I've also heard it's a bunch of creepy older folks

<comment><USER25> Creepy by virtue of being older than 20?

<comment><USER24> By virtue of 96% being older than 24? For a magazine called Teen Vogue that's about dating tips and makeup advice for teenagers. Yeah.

While it's not exactly an unbiased source, Wikipedia trusts this citation enough...

[https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/teen-vogue- promot...](https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/teen-vogue-promotes- prostitution-to-an-audience-of-minors-and-thats-not-even-its-biggest-problem)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Is it possible that it was an A/B test with one variant showing the "sponsored content" byline, and the other hiding it?

I'm remembering the Stanford study in 2016 that showed 4 out of 5 middle school students weren't able to distinguish sponsored content from the publication's own content.

Maybe an enterprising Teen Vogue marketer decided to push that number up to 5 out of 5.

[https://ed.stanford.edu/news/stanford-researchers-find- stude...](https://ed.stanford.edu/news/stanford-researchers-find-students- have-trouble-judging-credibility-information-online)

</comment><comment><USER27> Outside my circle, but it just strikes me odd that Teen Vogue would have an article of this type.

Shouldn't Teen Vogue be about teenage fashion stuff? Isn't Facebook the 'old people' platform? Would real teens care?

<comment><USER28> To get with the times, Teen Vogue recently pivoted from fashion to wokeness.

<comment><USER29> Is it a pivot, or is wokeness an element of fashion in the demographic it targets?

<comment><USER30> Bingo. Even the fashion is a signaling medium for wokeness now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> "Literally IDK" _snicker_ I got a kick out of that response.

</comment><comment><USER32> [http://archive.md/i4iuG](http://archive.md/i4iuG)

</comment><comment><USER9> Anyone have the actual content?

Just curious.

<comment><USER20> [https://archive.is/8J1qB](https://archive.is/8J1qB)</comment></comment>


Butterick's Practical Typography - <AUTHOR> http://practicaltypography.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> follow up to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15243477](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15243477)</comment>


Farmworkers key to keeping US fed are wary of virus spread - <AUTHOR> https://apnews.com/647a445d026527acdc2848a740666d38 <comment><USER2> We need to figure out protocols as a society so that things like farms, food supply chains and other critical services are not disrupted by this epidemic. Things like test every single farm worker for the virus and keep them isolated during harvest season. Have onsite quarantine facilities, maybe even have the military come in and help with containment and quaratining.

Oh yeah, also PAY THEM A LOT BETTER. Also, where are these 15 mins tests that we have been talking about for months? We need these before we can start implementing any sort of procedures to help restart our economies.

Unfortunately food prices will have to go up, which will affect the poor, but not as badly as if the supply chains are completely disrupted and food prices skyrocket.

<comment><AUTHOR> Even if would pay more, as long as our population keeps increasing, it won't work out.

The only solution is automation of most Ag operations, create many more decentralized food production/distribution hubs that is more sustainable. Food security necessarily means assured labour supply.

No one wants their kids to be farm labourers. As we educate more of the world population, why would they come to the field and do manual labour? We need Ag robots and automated platforms of all sizes for farms at different scales. Farm labour is implicitly exploitative.

The only solution is automation and reducing manual labour/labour costs for food crops.

<comment><USER3> Reality has a way of not giving a crap about what parents want.

Why can't people be laborers regarding their basic needs some times, and academics sometimes?

It's a pretty traditional values "I am king now and forever" notion to think one life one career.

There's nothing biological preventing a rotation between work over our lives.

And many philosophers too have warned about division of labor making for a society of ignorant humans. Following orders rather than their curiosity.

IMO first worlders who can should. You're not a god and the billions that outnumber us are catching up fast. Pointing big guns at them and saying "lol, no" isn't gonna work forever.

<comment><AUTHOR> Why don't we want manual labourers?

Because they are weaker and less efficient than machines.

If I had the choice and can afford to choose between a person picking fruit and a machine picking fruit, I will pick the machine.

A human will get sick. A machine won't.

A human needs breaks and insurance and have to be paid. Machines don't.

If a human is broken, a life is affected. If a machine breaks down, it can be repaired and sent to the fields to work again.

Also, I can depreciate a machine as a deduction. When a human 'depreciates' for someone to profit from that, it is a crime against our own species.

I am a god in my farm because I own it. I don't know any farmer who would pick unreliable, easily breakable, under paid(if they have a conscience, it should bother them) human worker over reliable machines because the prime directive of a business is to stay viable and profitable. The farmer wants to make a profit and hopefully in an ethical and sustainable manner.

Human workers for repetitive manual unskilled jobs is not sustainable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Before you panic, what I heard when this came up about Europe is that it only applies to "luxury crops". Certain fresh fruits and vegetables; not basics like grains. The latter are easy to harvest with minimal labor. It isn't good, but nobody's at risk of starvation.

<comment><USER5> What about the second order effects though? Even if it's a luxury crop, those are calories that will have to be consumed elsewhere, putting strain on the basics. Maybe we can turn up production on those, but what if we can't? It could prime us for a cascading failure.

<comment><USER4> Another thing someone pointed out is that we feed grains to cattle. If livestock started declining for reasons like these, there would be excess grain for humans.

<comment><AUTHOR> Grain grown for feed and fodder is inedible for humans.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My parents mentioned that farmers in their area are offering to let "regular people" who have the time come and help with harvesting with social distancing measures in place, with the bonus of taking home farm fresh items.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is not a viable business model. And fraught with liability. Not to mention risky.

Any business that have to resort to volunteerism to survive..or 'gofundme' ...Or any business that needs works risking their health by exposing themselves to covid are those in an industry that MUST be automated

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Get the military to start farming

<comment><USER8> ... or send farmers to fight in wars, the result will be the same.

Army would not make good farmers for many reasons. Too different goals and sensibilities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Link is broken

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://www-sfgate-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.sfgate.com...](https://www- sfgate-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.sfgate.com/news/medical/amp/Farmworkers- key-to-keeping-US-fed-are-wary-of-15163600.php) : this should work?

<comment><USER9> Sorry! This looks like a case where our software failed to rewrite an AMP URL correctly. The correct URL would be [https://www.sfgate.com/news/medical/article/Farmworkers- key-...](https://www.sfgate.com/news/medical/article/Farmworkers-key-to- keeping-US-fed-are-wary-of-15163600.php).

However, that page autoplays a video, so I googled the title and found one which doesn't instead.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How much do you make at a startup? - <AUTHOR> I recently joined an early-stage startup and while I feel like I come out of negotiations with a fair compensation package, I was sorely disappointed by the lack of public information on how much startup employees can expect to make. While there was some information (e.g., the Andreesen Horowitz salary leak), most of it was outdated, incomplete, or not clearly from a reliable source.
In an effort to make this more transparent for others in a similar situation, I'm hoping to collect and publicize compensation details from current startup employees. If you currently work at a startup, please fill out the attached form in as much detail as you can and feel comfortable with. Note that while the questions are somewhat targeted at US-based employees because that's what I'm most familiar with, this information should be equally valuable for other locations and I encourage those working elsewhere to fill out the form and suggest changes/questions that would make this information more relevant for you.
The responses to this form are available at the second link, and please feel free to comment with suggestions of other questions to add!
Survey: https://forms.gle/imnTvSV35UjY5EC28
Results: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ZX_bcVE9bbuFbz20N4fMbFYVgltxsVeFpQ7gXlJpBrI/edit?usp=sharing <comment><USER2> The developer at timestamp "10/21/2019 10:24:14" with 10 years of experience making $85,000 in the US with 0 equity, can you please explain yours situation? ;)

<comment><USER3> To be honest, "10 years of experience" in this industry means nothing.

I have worked with (and interviewed) A LOT of devs with 10-15 years of experience who can't do a basic fizz-buzz (I'm exaggerating, of course, but really, really weak devs who due to whatever reason didn't bother to improve their skills past what they learned in school in 1980s).

Even $60,000 can be acceptable for a dev with "15 years of experience", if his skills are worth $60,000.

<comment><USER4> That's so true. Diploma, years of experience, experience itself doesn't mean anything. I've interviewed a lot of people who came to interview with a pile of of diplomas and recommendations and were quite weak and hired people without prestigious education and extensive experience who produced amazing results.

People tend to collect toys like diplomas, certificates, etc... I'd probably be downvoted, but imo correlation between actual skills and those toys is getting weaker lately.

<comment><USER5> to be honest, I think this has more to do with the way a lot of companies interview. I was probably a much stronger interviewee immediately after graduating college than I am now after having worked in the field for half a decade. I'm a much more skilled developer now though. I don't read textbooks in my free time, so if I end up in an interview where they are asking me textbook questions I'm not going to do as well. I had an interview recently for a senior dev role and they were asking me things like, "what are the 4 pillars of OOP?", and I thought to myself, "Off the top of my head, IDK, but it sounds like something I probably learned in school."

edit: I guess you're more so comparing people with degrees vs. those without so my response would better fit under the parent comment. basically all I'm saying is yes, 10 years experience does mean something in this field, but if your interview style isn't picking up on that then your interview process is broken.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Clickable links:

Survey: [https://forms.gle/imnTvSV35UjY5EC28](https://forms.gle/imnTvSV35UjY5EC28)

Results: [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ZX_bcVE9bbuFbz20N4fM...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ZX_bcVE9bbuFbz20N4fMbFYVgltxsVeFpQ7gXlJpBrI/edit?usp=sharing)

<comment><USER7> It would be great if someone would do some quick data analysis on this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Older version of salary survey: [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1a1Df6dg2Pby1UoNlZU2l...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1a1Df6dg2Pby1UoNlZU2l0FEykKsQKttu7O6q7iQd2bU)

</comment><comment><USER9> I am never sure, when it's not explicitly stated, so can somebody clarify it for me? These are gross or net annual base salaries? If gross, then what how much taxation is on it usually in the US? (As the majority of responses comes from the US currently)

<comment><USER10> Gross. Probably 20-35% effective tax rate combined federal and state. State income taxes vary from state to state.

<comment><USER11> Does it include 401K?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> At Codacy, we have a public salary calculator on our careers page: [https://www.codacy.com/careers](https://www.codacy.com/careers)

As well as a blog post with the detailed process: [https://www.codacy.com/blog/open-salary-transparency- culture...](https://www.codacy.com/blog/open-salary-transparency- culture/?utm_source=landing_page)

Check it out!

<comment><USER13> According to your calc An intermediate level engineer in sf makes more than a director level in Europe.

<comment><USER14> That's not shocking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> No options for Canadians

</comment><comment><USER16> This is somewhat related but does anyone know what the market rate for a mid level backend services dev in Seattle is? I'm looking but it's a little hard to find a range.

</comment><comment><USER17> Thanks for doing this!</comment>


Public and private sector efficiency - <AUTHOR> http://www.psiru.org/reports/public-and-private-sector-efficiency

<comment> ah- Written by the EPSU, from the last page:

EPSU is the European Federation of Public Service Unions. It is the largest federation of the ETUC and comprises 8 million public service workers from over 275 trade unions; EPSU organises workers in the energy, water and waste sectors, health and social services and local and national administration, in all European countries including in the EU's Eastern Neighbourhood.

<comment><USER2> Well sure, I'd be surprised if the Cato Institute would have published that ;)

It apparently is just a publication covering the results of several meta- analytical studies, EPSU neither did studies themselves nor seemed to have been involved in those mentioned in the publication. The real content starts at page 7.

edit:typo

<comment><USER3> The problem is that because of their obvious bias, we can have no assurance that they are accurately surveying all of the available meta-analyses, and that they are properly representing the information and its level of certainty.

<comment><USER4> That is true, but one should still give it a read, instead of dismissing it as lies just because it was commissioned by a union.

Some pretty interesting stuff is included, from very interesting sources, pretty certainly not pro-worker biased.

And ultimately, if public-private partnerships, privatizations and the like were consistently good, it would be a struggle to find studies that do not corroborate this. Here we have a tonne of studies from various sources, none finding these fabled results.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Good to see serious empirical work tearing down the tenets of neoliberal ideology. Too many things get accepted as self-evident truths.

I'm always curious about the profit in the private-public-partnership stories. The reduction in waste, even if it were real, does not just go back into the budget - a part of it must leak out as profits (a manifestation of the second law of thermodynamics in economy, maybe). So, taxes -> profits. Not a problem, I guess, if the contracts between gov and corporations are not too long-term, the competition is healthy, and the tenders are not rigged. Now, that's interesting - the government is assumed to be too corrupt and incompetent to manage these jobs itself, but when it comes to organizing an honest, competitive tender, it's doing that perfectly? :)

And, ultimately, a company on the market is driven to be efficient, that's easy to understand. But a company with a multi-year tender is not on the market.

<comment><USER5> I love how the entire website is coloured red. I wonder why they went with that particular colour ?

<comment><USER4> And I wonder how such trolling as yours manages to pass unmoderated. I guess even this site is not without its bias.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There is a good reason the public sector operates at a loss, it's because it serves the interest of the entire country, which no company can pretend working for.

If for example some bus company operates at a loss and receives public subsidies, it's because it can allow people who can't afford gas to go to a job, which is a net gain for the country as a whole.

While it's true that the democratic process is not always working very well, it's the reason why the public sector is not always efficient. But it's much better than an autocratic system. Democracy is just the least worst system there is.

A company has only inputs and outputs for the sake of check and balances, accounting's only role is to make sure it belongs in a sound economic logic, while a government is a single monolithic machine, often interacting with companies, but for the interest of the citizens.

(I did not invent all of that I heard chomsky talk about "operating at a loss".)

<comment><USER7> That seems a bit idealistic. Is the War on Drugs serving the interest of the entire country? How about the War on Terror? Of course not.

Nothing democratic is ever serving "the interest of the entire country", if such a thing even exists. If it was, then why would such a thing ever need to be voted upon?

That the government operates in the interest of citizens is only what we say the government ought to do, which is not actually what it does. On the contrary, there are greater incentives for the government to operate primarily in its own interest, to increase the scope and magnitude of its power, which as can be easily observed, is what it has been doing.

<comment><USER5> Sure, but if you're this cynical you could also make a strong argument [1] that companies work, or fail to work, to improve the life/goals of the managers of the company. Shareholders and employees get screwed on a regular basis.

No private company even pretends to be serving "the market" either. That's the beauty of it, in theory. Nobody in the private sector is working "for" the private sector. And yet (in theory) it works.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Well, as the percieved public/private divide goes there is also the rampant free market ideology being a strong part of our zeitgeist which usually includes glorification of private enterprise and dismissal of the efforts of the public sector.

Usually most people doing the work in both are just regular people whose work ethic depends on the general culture and not upon private/public divide. I.e. nepotistic governments probably function as a part of an equally nepotistic economy and so on. IMO, IANE (I am not an economist ;) ).

<comment><USER9> Depends where you're from, living in the UK, growing up in Republic of Ireland I can say that over here there is not the rampant free market ideology that exists in the States.

I can also say that when things become less regulated or get taken over by the private sector they are far FAR better than when under government thumb.

Case in point being privatization of Telecom Éireann and the liberalisation of fixed line phones and internet. Prior to this you'd wait 4-6 months to get a new line(now it's days/weeks). Ryanair is another one, because of them air travel in Europe (in particular Ireland) became affordable.

I personally have experienced the difference when things moved from the public to the private sector and the improvements as a result.

The latest that comes to mind is Royal Mail, since it's been privatised I get post and packages on a Sunday!

<comment><USER10> No offense, but personal anecdotes are not evidence. If you are sincere, and you could be for all I know, it should be easy and desirable for you to produce factual information or documented sources that supplement your story. Otherwise, we can't take this as credible evidence.

<comment><USER8> "We can't..."

UK has had a fairly strong market liberalization starting from Margaret Thatchers reign 30-something years ago.

e.g. [http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privatisation_of_British_Rail](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privatisation_of_British_Rail)

What do you think happens when a state monopoly is suddenly privativized without serious competition in the market?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Ontario's provincial Auditor General just produced a report on our increasing use of PPPs in areas like services and infrastructure. It's available here:

[http://www.auditor.on.ca/en/reports_2014_en.htm](http://www.auditor.on.ca/en/reports_2014_en.htm)

One conclusion is that residents of Ontario have spent up to $8 billion extra for the privilege of having private industry handle projects that could have been managed and financed publicly.

One wonders the extent to which this private industry has infiltrated government to work on the inside for its own benefit.

A Story on the auditor's report:

[http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2014/12/10/ontarios_mispl...](http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2014/12/10/ontarios_misplaced_and_expensive_fascination_with_publicprivate_schemes_walkom.html)

</comment><comment><USER12> I've long suspected that the efficiency of the private sector is greatly exaggerated. In the minds of the public, the huge percentage of businesses that fail, often from strategic missteps or inefficiency, don't seem to get factored in. It seems to be about comparing the Fortune 10 vs. all of government.

<comment><USER13> That is the point, I think. Inefficient private enterprises go belly up, and therefor stop being inefficient. There is no such corrective mechanism for government organizations.

<comment><USER14> This may be true for startups after the venture capital runs out, but in a lot of medium to large companies few highly profitable ventures subsidize a lot of inefficient ones.

Occasionally someone may decide to start "trimming the fat": that is not different in public or private enterprises.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The public sector is under a lot more scrutiny than the private sector (in some countries you can track every penny spent by the government). Its inefficiencies and faults are on the media every day. That, I think, is why people usually see the private sector as better than the public sector.

</comment><comment><USER16> Summary (from TFA): "...there is now extensive experience of all forms of privatisation [with] many studies of... comparative technical efficiency... results are remarkably consistent across all sectors and all forms of privatisation and outsourcing: there is no empirical evidence that the private sector is intrinsically more efficient. The same results emerge consistently from sectors and services which are subject to outsourcing, such as waste management, and in sectors privatised by sale, such as telecoms."

</comment><comment><USER17> I've always assumed that the privatisation game is so easily corrupted and rigged towards milking the taxpayers with one-sided deals, that the losses offset any potential efficiency gains. So many anecdotal stories that I've lost count. Seems I may have been right scientifically, rather than just bitter (for once).

</comment><comment><USER18> Public sector can PRINT currency. Private sector has to EARN money.</comment>


Google Says It's Actually Quite Small - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/06/AR2009060600056.html?wprss=rss_technology

<comment><USER2> Not exactly a dupe, but the exact same article was linked from the original source recently: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=646933>

</comment><comment><USER3> I found the case they were talking about on Wikipedia. This strikes me as bat- shit crazy:

"Hand wrote that he could consider only the percentage of the market in "virgin aluminum" for which Alcoa accounted. Alcoa had argued that it was in the position of having to compete with scrap. Even if the scrap was aluminum that Alcoa had manufactured in the first instance, it no longer controlled its marketing. But no, Hand defined the relevant market narrowly in accord with the prosecution's theory.

Alcoa said that if it was in fact deemed a monopoly, it acquired that position honestly, through outcompeting other companies through greater efficiencies. Hand applied a rule concerning practices that are illegal per se here, saying that it doesn't matter how Alcoa became a monopoly, since its offense was simply to become one."</comment>


Twitter hype punctured by study - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8089508.stm <comment><USER2> Summary: "The Harvard data says very, very few people tweet and the Nielsen data says very, very few people listen consistently"

Twitter appeals to people who really, really care about news in real time. Like techies, bloggers and journalists. These people feed the hype cycle because it's what matters to them.

But like most of the "real" people I have tried to introduce to twitter, rss readers, popurls etc they just say "I don't have time for that. Does any of it really matter?".

And the answer is honestly... no. All important news eventually bubbles to the top. Knowing it first doesn't really convey an advantage in the vast majority of cases.

<comment><USER3> _And the answer is honestly... no. All important news eventually bubbles to the top. Knowing it first doesn't really convey an advantage in the vast majority of cases._

Twitter is more than a news source, however. Many people these days are using it to connect with communities of related professionals, and numerous other uses that I can't be bothered to list out right now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _Just 10% of Twitter users generate more than 90% of the content._

On a related note, even _less_ than 10% of newspaper readers generate more than 90% of newspaper content.

</comment><comment><USER5> The article highlights the true power of the service: A place to get ground- level news and information from people who are close to the event.

Once Twitter becomes a mass-adopted service where everyone and there mother is using it, it will have lost some of what makes it handy at the moment.

</comment><comment><USER6> "Just 10% of Twitter users generate more than 90% of the content, a Harvard study of 300,000 users found."

In round figures, that's true of most forms of online interaction.

</comment><comment><USER7> The original posting of the study, by HBR, went on and on about the male/female split... but admitted that it was determined by using the "strongly gendered" Real Names of the twitter users.

And yet, not _once_ did the article suggest that perhaps the male/female split might be because women aren't as cavalier with their Real Names, or that a significantly greater number of women have gender-ambiguous names or nicknames than men? (Girls named Charlie vs boys named Sue?)

Maybe the original study does, but it's not available thru my subscription to ACM.</comment>


Why Bitwise Reproducibility Matters - <AUTHOR> https://thewinnower.com/papers/954-why-bitwise-reproducibility-matters <comment><USER2> It seems clear that if we hadn't inherited a bunch of irreproducible languages and/or instruction sets from the 20th century, no one would bother creating a new one. There are certainly some ways to get optimization advantages from underspecified computation, but especially in a networked world this win is outweighed by the problems it causes.

When you use irreproducible floating-point, you're essentially treating your CPU as an analog computer. For a subset of very specialized numerical applications, this is probably okay. For any kind of integration with interesting, non-numerical system software (let alone scientific publishing!), it's a disaster.

I always recommend this link on FP determinism: [http://gafferongames.com/networking-for-game- programmers/flo...](http://gafferongames.com/networking-for-game- programmers/floating-point-determinism/)

<comment><USER3> Neither the instruction sets nor floating point are irreproducible at all. What are you talking about?

In fact, FP32 is commutative (go ahead, check it out). It's just not associative. If you can't figure out how to reduce sums of FP32 numbers in a deterministic manner, you suck, no that's too weak, you really suck. And your complete lack of numerical analysis has turned a digital computing problem effectively into an analog nightmare you'll never debug. HPC people love to use this excuse for why their parallel code isn't deterministic, but it turns out that making it so is effectively free in an age of fast RDMA and INT64 atomics.

To be fair, there are situations where noisy non-deterministic inputs (cameras, microphones, and other sensors) are part of the deal. However, if given simulated deterministic examples of inputs, your result isn't deterministic, you still suck. That said, I'm willing to relax the constraint to assume reproducibility given the same HW/compiler/toolchain so I think the naysayers are pretty much out of excuses here.

I speak from experience. And the efforts I've made to achieve bitwise reproducibility in HPC algorithms are dismissed as "engineering" by the people who can't do so.

I've decided to take that as a compliment.

<comment><USER4> I also work in HPC and have been doing a better job of this but still struggling in some areas. For example, the sin() and cos() implementations are different on some machines, and their only guarantee is being within some ulp of the right answer. So far haven't come up with a rounding idea that will make those values the same again.

This is worse for our codes because our mesh structure changes topology based on floating point comparisons, so error in values turns into different discrete structures.

Parallelism introduces more headaches, making some codes non-deterministic between runs on the same machine, although I've been able to fix this for the most part.

Its important to break down "determinism" into consistency across changes in something, whether it be hardware or time or partitioning.

<comment><USER3> If your parallel reductions are consistent, you're cool in my book. That said, I've solved a lot of dynamic load-balancing behavior with 64-bit fixed point reductions and decisions. Maybe that will work for you?

Unless the timings themselves are non-deterministic, sigh. But then I'm far more sympathetic. I have not found this sort of thing to be the case for the most part and when I have, I've used a deterministic measure rather than timing (i.e. number of calculations as opposed to how long they take).

For even compiler revisions are sufficient to break FP32 associativity let along different transcendental approximations (we ought to fix that, no?).

Where I get angry is when people sloppily use FP32 for everything or FP64 because it's double(tm) and then insist determinism isn't possible. That isn't even science IMO.

<comment><USER5> I don't understand the obsession with bitwise reproducibility. It seems like if your algorithm is numerically stable and valid, you can just compare multiple inexact test runs with some margin of error. Even if you hire nothing but guru-level IEEE floating point experts, a focus on bitwise reproducibility will close off a lot of opportunities to parallelize the code.

A lot of machine learning tools like random forests and neural networks inherently inject randomness. Are we just going throw up our hands and say we only use classical deterministic algorithms run in single threaded mode, because we can't think of any way to compare multiple test runs except memcmp? Because that's what I'm hearing (maybe I'm missing something).

<comment><USER3> Moore's Law w/r to clock frequency ran out over a decade ago. And that sucks, because it's trivial to make single-threaded code reproducible.

But parallel code is how one continues to benefit from Moore's law w/r to multiple cores and ever-increasing SIMD width and SIMD units. And it happened at exactly the same time as the migration to mostly single-threaded weakly- typed languages began.

For if your results aren't reproducible, there's no way to detect if your code has a race condition that is reducing the efficacy of your methods.

For an application like molecular dynamics, it's important to conserve overall energy. Any such inconsistency is the equivalent of setting off tiny little hand grenades in the simulation. Inconsistent summation obscures this without a great deal of work to sample many independent simulations. Compare and contrast to running things twice to sniff this out in deterministic code.

For machine learning, it can amount to anything from a harmless implicit regularizer to the AI equivalent of Gary Busey taking the wheel and driving you straight to crazy town.

I speak from experience in both cases. And speaking from experience, as long as your reductions are associative, you'll be fine. That can be achieved with fixed point atomics, or if you don't have them, reduction buffers, or finally, a deterministic reduction algorithm if you have neither. I've used all of the above and they have at most cost 2-3% more than the non-deterministic alternatives (usually much less).

Finally, I inject randomness like crazy, but I do so in a reproducible manner. Confusing determinism and randomness reminds me of people who don't understand the difference between precision and accuracy (TLDR: precision is easy, accuracy is tough).

<comment><USER5> I've seen race conditions that only happen 1 time in 1000. Or race conditions that only happen when the machine is under load. I agree that it's frustrating to have to debug non-deterministic code, but I feel like there must be a better way to compare test runs than memcmp on the resutls.

You are right that deterministic pseudo-random numbers can be used when "random" inputs are required. I overlooked that... thanks for pointing it out.

<comment><USER3> One way I addressed this exact situation: Compute a hash on the state after each iteration and save it. Now run again normally and save several iterations worth of state somewhere. When the hash diverges, you have hit the race condition.

Do this a few times until you've characterized what's happening and your brain figures out how and why by seeing the pattern this will (hopefully) reveal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "The reason is a mixture of widespread ignorance about floating-point arithmetic and the desire to get maximum performance."

Hopefully developers don't misinterpret this to mean that it is idiotic or overly obsessive about performance to use floating point types in calculations. That's not true.

As an example, I once decided to use double-precision floating-point in calculations that would accumulate enough accuracy error that I had to do approximate equality conditions throughout the parts of the code that determined these solutions. This not involve monetary amounts, and we needed solutions in a few seconds, not 20-30 seconds. Each step in the solution built on the former, so I could not break it up any more to solve in parallel than it already was. Throwing faster hardware at it wasn't an option available at the time. I still think I did the right thing, and it's still an integral part of production. Just going with the standard "just use BigDecimal because it's accurate" approach would have been a mistake.

</comment><comment><USER7> I've never had to write a RTS game but fp determinism sounds like a nightmare. I can imagine someone clicking a button and not having it do the same thing every time. I'd be cursing the platform all the way down.

</comment><comment><USER8> Here is another piece by the author "Reproducibility, replicability, and the two layers of computational science " [https://thewinnower.com/papers/reproducibility- replicability...](https://thewinnower.com/papers/reproducibility- replicability-and-the-two-layers-of-computational-science)

</comment><comment><USER9> John Gustafson's unums are an effort to introduce a scheme for bitwise reproducible floats.

<comment><USER10> This is cool, but we can't seem to get floating point decimal jammed into languages. And that has an immediate business case.

I would love to have floating point decimal on _embedded_ systems rather than a binary floating point unit. But the libraries are generally huge.

I use the equivalent of decimals _WAY_ more on embedded hardware. User entry is always decimal. Percentages--decimal. Time specifications--milliseconds, microseconds, nanoseconds--decimal with precision.

I wind up writing integer fixed-point arithmetic versions of this crap, over and over and over.

Maybe since Moore's law broke and memory transistors are now way more expensive that processor transistors, we'll get decimal floating point as a feature soon.

I won't hold my breath, though.

<comment><USER9> Fixed-precision is much better for business uses. What, exactly is the benefit of floating point decimal? If you want to divide a $100 venmo three ways, you get to know that your 1/3 is carried to 12 decimal places instead of 2?

<comment><USER10> Fixed-precision is fine. Until your quantum isn't good enough.

We only store to hundredths ... oops ... new regulations require us to decimal round to thousandths. Cue full reload of the database with all your numbers in them.

Or, even better, try dealing with mm and mils in the same CAD database simultaneously. (conversion factor of 25.4--a clean number in decimal but very much _not_ in binary)

In addition, you forget that _simply adding decimals_ doesn't work in binary floating point. Adding 0.10 10 times doesn't equal 1.00 in binary floating point no matter how much precision you use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I strongly disagree. Bitwise reproducibility would make it impossible to change or improve matrix multiplication algorithms, since the order of operations matters, and will change across implementations.

Do we really expect everyone who does linear regression to say "I did linear regression, using the following implementation of a linear solver". Because that's what is being asked.

A much better alternative is to test that algorithms give expected answers (within some tolerance) on simulated but non-trivial data. It will still require some care to distinguish bugs from rounding errors, but it is more, er realistic, than expecting bitwise reproducibility.

<comment><USER2> Not to be too harsh, but this seems like the kind of thinking that leads to solutions like the leap second. For the sake of an optimization in an important but specialized corner case, you abandon a general principle of universal applicability (repeatable computing, chronological time).

Maybe the optimization is important. In that case, couldn't you add another layer devoted to that special case? For instance, reorder matrix multiplies in a source-to-source transformation? Put leap seconds in the presentation layer, not the chronology layer?

Everyone who does linear regression for the purposes of publishing a scientific paper should post their code and data, so that anyone else can recompute it and get the same bits. How is this controversial in 2015?

<comment><USER11> It's not harsh to me, since you are critiquing the work of some of the best experts in the world, not me.

What do you mean by "reorder matrix multiplies in a source-to-source transformation?" To be clear, the issue is that matrix multiplication (which forms the basis for a huge part of numerical computing) is only deterministic when the order of operations is known. But any kind of fast algorithm is going to have a highly complex order of operations that depends on the algorithm and parameters. You can't reorder these back to some canonical order without completely changing the algorithm (and destroying its performance gains).

Given the above, posting code and data won't be enough for binary reproducibility. Source code for every dependency would be needed too.

As I noted I do support testing and reproducibility, just not at the level of binary data.

<comment><USER2> Yes, source code for every dependency is needed too!

This is a classic source-to-source transformation problem. You have an abstract matrix multiplication algebra which needs to be converted into a deterministic algorithm with a known order of operations. You need a second algorithm, essentially a macro, which converts the abstract operation into the concrete operations, which are then compiled to deterministic code.

This macro should itself be deterministic, even if its inputs contain information about local hardware configuration that's needed to make the optimized code run as fast as possible. If this information is in your data set, it's in your data set. Optimization is typically much less important to the reproduction pass, so a reproduction will probably just use your configuration details rather than those matched to the reproducer's machine.

Either way, both algorithms are deterministic and the result is reproducible. What's wrong with this picture? I ask because I genuinely want to know :-)

[Edit: it's disappointing to see "disagree == downvote" applied to the parent.]

<comment><USER12> The main problem is that with floating point numbers, (a+b)+c is different to a+(b+c), so almost any change can produce slightly different answers.

Also we have the problem of what is "right"? Maybe your first implementation does (a+b)+c, then someone finds doing (a+c)+b gives a more accurate answer. Should we change?

Then you are given two CPUs. If I want to do x1 + x2 + ... + xn, then obvious thing to do is going to be to give each CPU half the input data. But now however I split will give me a (slightly) different answer.

With matrix multiplication this is much worse -- all algorithms chop the matrix into little pieces in different ways, each giving a slightly different answer. Even if you try to define some plain simple algorithm, it will usually give a less accurate answer, due to how the floating point rounded!

With integer matrices on finite fields, it is much easier to get what you want, 100% reproducability.

<comment><USER2> Let me say the same thing perhaps more clearly: there isn't any nondeterminism here, just failure to capture the inputs and outputs of a deterministic code transformation.

Suppose CPU count is the configuration input. Then you have a deterministic macro function M(nCPU, abstract program) => concrete program. And another deterministic function C(concrete program) => CPU instructions.

Now nCPU is no longer a random piece of information randomly found in your environment: it's data in your data set. And your results are bitwise reproducible.

With a reproducible toolchain, I can use a 1-CPU machine to get the same results as you did on your 32-CPU machine, by using the same data set (including your nCPU=32). Why? Because I'm reproducing your results and I care more about precision than performance.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Flying-V: Flying long distances energy-efficiently - <AUTHOR> https://www.tudelft.nl/en/ae/flying-v/ <comment><USER2> More details here: [https://www.tudelft.nl/en/ae/flying-v/](https://www.tudelft.nl/en/ae/flying-v/)

> "we're looking into new options to having a rest or taking meals on a plane. > Offering food from a buffet is one of the options we're sinking our teeth > in"

Based on the A380 "promises" of in-flight gyms/casino/salons/creches, I think we can safely call bullshit on this - we'll just get more seats crammed in as usual (in economy at least - perhaps first class will get these?). That is fine - I understand the economics - it is marketing I guess.

<comment><USER3> You get what you pay for. If you want to pay absolute bottom-dollar prices, you're going to get absolute bottom-dollar service. If you want to pay more you can and will get more services. I've hung out at an on-board bar on a 777 in the last year on a flight from Australia to the US, but the ticket cost over $8k USD round-trip.

It's possible to have a private shower and bedroom onboard an A380 flight, but you will pay dearly for the privilege.

There's room in the market for both extremes as well as in the middle. I doubt you'll get a buffet service on a round trip ticket that costs <$500 (trans- oceanic, at least) as it likely is not economical to offer that. That being said, there are airlines that are offering improved options even in Economy cabins... they just charge for it. An example is Air New Zealand's "Economy Skycouch" [https://www.airnewzealand.com/economy- skycouch](https://www.airnewzealand.com/economy-skycouch)

So with the possibility that this design could save on fuel costs, maybe airlines will be able to sell upgraded experiences at prices that are today bare-bones. Time will tell.

<comment><USER4> The problem is that now there's so much price pressure on the economy seats, they are subsidized by the more expensive options. If you want a first class seat today, that takes 50% more room on the aircraft, you will pay what, 2, 3, 4 times as much money? There's really no middle ground. I'm fine with that, cause I have a family or four, we're all short, and I'm cheap, but I guess that makes me part of the problem. :D

<comment><USER5> Im 6'5" and cant afford 1st class. I am miserable and my knees are jammed against the seat for hours. 1 inch more and I'd be fine.

There has got to be more tiers

<comment><USER6> Economy, Premimum Economy, Business, First. How many tiers do you want?

<comment><USER7> He wants to pay 5% more for a couple more inches of leg room.

<comment><USER6> He said he couldn't afford First. There's literally two other tiers in between that and Economy.

<comment><USER8> Do any of those tiers allow paying 5% more for a couple of inches of legroom?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> GuB-42 The biggest issue with true flying wing aircraft is that they are aerodynamically unstable. They can't be flown by humans, and I don't know how well they do in unusual configuration, things like stalls, spins, spiral dives, ...

The rules are different for commercial aviation and for the military. The goal of commercial aviation is to get people to their destination, as safely and cheaply as possible, you don't have to fight against an enemy. As a result, commercial aviation is not very creative. They tend to use proven designs and incremental improvement.

Making a civilian flying wing aircraft will be a certification nightmare, which may involve several full-scale prototypes, a new kind of training for pilots, etc... It is a world where there is still a switch for the "no smoking" sign in the cockpit that doesn't do anything because all flights are non smoking now. Removing the button would require re-qualification and it is easier to leave it there.

The B737-MAX fiasco is another illustration. Just look at how far their went just to limit change...

I'm not saying that a flying wing commercial aircraft can't be done, but I have a feeling that the placement of passengers won't be the biggest issue.

<comment><USER9> That is not necessary true. A flying wing can be made completely stable. The biggest issue with flying wings is for passengers experiencing much more up and down movements. Their position is (specially for the most backwards ones) more towards the wingtips. As you can understand a slight correction will move you a few meters up or down. Constantly.

<comment><USER10> While you are likely technically correct, in terms of passenger experience, pretty much everyone will disagree with this assessment of "stable".

<comment><USER11> Stability in aeronautics is the tendency for an airplane to remain in equilibrium without control inputs. A helicopter is unstable, a Cessna is very stable. Comfort is a different metric. You can have a comfortable helicopter ride even though the aircraft is unstable. Comfort is also subjective, while stability is not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wow. The criticisms I've seen about using flying-wing designs for passenger aircraft (planes that look like the B-2 bomber), are often focused on how bad the boarding process is for the movie theater seating they require. This design looks like it eliminates the seating problem pretty well. Flying wings have been known to be more efficient for a long time; logistics problems are the devil in the details.

<comment><USER13> Yet the image provided is the most radical representation I have seen of the "flying wing". This is two fuselages in V by initial look. I would still think that you could simply provide a screen for the interior passengers to have a view out, from the opposite side of the aircraft. People have done just fine in the center rows of jumbos so I am not sure that the negative impact is high as imagined.

The thought experiment to play with is, swap out windows for computer displays, still with the air gap seen on some planes, but not for all windows and see what transpires.

<comment><USER2> Not sure if there is "reason" for forward facing seats (perhaps crash safety? If so, why not put them all backwards since that is safest?)

I could imagine seats facing "outwards", with a corridor along the windows. Kinda like a cinema but the screen is replaced by a row of windows. This way no one gets to "hog" the window seat (apart from the front row, and even then others can still see the windows on their walk along the corridors to the toilets etc). Bonus points for raised stadium-style seating with storage lockers _under_ the rows at the back.

<comment><USER14> We fly an aircraft with "club seating" (two rear facing seats facing two front facing seats). Experimentally, my son who is prone to airsickness has a harder time in the rear facing seats [which are closer to the center of mass and center of lift and so experience less excursions in turbulence than the forward facing seats, yet he is sicker in the rear-facing seats].

<comment><USER15> Those of us prone to motion sickness don't do well when facing the wrong direction. I have the same problem in trains /subways /limos /etc

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Color me skeptical that an idea that has existed for over half a century still isn't feasible.

[https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/65124/how- is-a-...](https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/65124/how-is-a-flying- v-more-efficient-than-current-fuselage-over-wing-designs)

[https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/12782/why- are-t...](https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/12782/why-are-there-no- blended-wing-passenger-airplanes-in-operation)

A little more skepticism:

> Sadly for the Flying-V, it will probably fail like the blended wing body > designs we've seen down the years. It's for the same reason, too: airplanes > bank as they turn. That's not much of a problem in a conventional airliner > design, where passengers are never that far from the plane's central axis. > But as you move further out from that central axis the effect becomes a lot > more pronounced.

[https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/06/radical-new-airliner- co...](https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/06/radical-new-airliner-could-save- fuel-but-ride-like-a-roller-coaster/)

There really is nothing new about a lifting-body design.

<comment><USER17> One major problem with flying-V is that of stability. However, with fly-by- wire systems, this is helped with computer control.

The A320 was the first all-digital plane in 1984, so it was unlikely anything before that could have been developed (and passed FAA/EASA standards).

<comment><USER18> ...and at it's first public outing, the test pilot dropped it in the trees at the end of the runway. That would have likely killed a new aircraft manufacturer.

<comment><USER16> Meanwhile Boeing's mechanical rudder actuator in the 737 caused two verified and possibly many more crashes during passenger-carrying flights.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I wonder what the comfort level would be like in a rough landing being so far left/right of the center of gravity if the plane was doing a lot of rolling corrections?

<comment><USER20> That's the problem. When passengers are seated too far from the axis of rotation they're in for a nausea inducing ride.

Designers could reduce the problem to an extent by building a double deck passenger compartment and putting the baggage compartments out toward the wings, rather than the current standard design which places passengers on the upper level and bags on the lower level. But there are limits to how well that can scale. I'm skeptical that we'll ever see flying wing or blended wing body designs used for airliners. Cargo and military applications are probably more realistic.

<comment><USER21> > That's the problem. When passengers are seated too far from the axis of > rotation they're in for a nausea inducing ride.

What if the seats far from the axis of rotation faced sideways instead of forward? People don't seem to be as affected by pitch changes as they are by roll changes, probably because we are get a lot of exposure to pitch changes whenever we drive in a hilly area.

<comment><USER22> The angular change is negligible in either case. The problem is you're ping- ponging vertically. For example, a 3 degree bank correction in an aircraft with a 70 meter wingspan will move each wingtip by 1.3 meters vertically.

<comment><USER23> In the picture, the passenger cabin appears to be using only 1/3 of the wingspan, so the vertical movement of the outermost passengers (in the last row) will be much smaller than the vertical movement of the wingtips.

A last row width of 25m is much wider than the 5m of a conventional aircraft, but much smaller than 70m.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> So when I'm in a window seat on a traditional aircraft I see the wings flex a great deal even on a normal flight.

Are people going to be bouncing up and down all the time?

<comment><USER25> These wings will necessarily be much more rigid, as they are far thicker than traditional wings and pressurized. One thing not mentioned here is that that flexible wings act as a suspension system for an airliner; I'd expect that in a Flying-V you'd feel more turbulence.

<comment><USER26> The wings will be more rigid (and will have lower bending loading because the payload is more evenly distributed along the wing span), but any roll rate will cause the passengers to experience an acceleration. Maneuvering flight will not be pleasant for the passengers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> [https://www.jbenad.com/flyingv](https://www.jbenad.com/flyingv) appears to be the original source and PhD candidate behind the design with great info / pictures / etc.

</comment><comment><USER28> My friends' immediate reaction: "Good luck trying to certify this".

I wonder how bad the odds would be even if an aircraft like this showed perfect flight safety characteristics (which is not a given).

</comment><comment><USER29> This thing looks sick. I wonder if any savings will make its way to the customer.

> Passenger comfort is also taken into account.

That could mean just about anything, fwiw.

<comment><USER30> They put the lightest, thinnest foam imaginable over the incredibly rigid seats.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Every time I read about increased efficiency I have to think about Jevons paradox [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox)

<comment><USER16> Agreed, even if you could reduce fuel consumption by that much, the result should be lower fares, inducing more people to travel by air.

<comment><USER32> Unpopular opinion, but we could tax fuel at a higher rate than we do now (or stop subsidizing pollution, depending on how you view it).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> The sole fact that they will only get 20% over A350 in a radically different design tells just how well optimised are the current designs.

</comment><comment><USER34> How is this a new concept when blended wing body (BWB) existed since 1920s [1], with Boeing X-48 being the latest in 2007-2012 [2]?

1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blended_wing_body](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blended_wing_body) 2\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-48](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-48)

<comment><USER35> I think because this is a V-shape, instead of a triangular flying wedge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> This is the umpteenth commercial flying wing we've seen and none every fly. Perhaps this time will be different...

MIT also came up with D8 or double bubble (see: [https://www.nasa.gov/content/the-double- bubble-d8-0](https://www.nasa.gov/content/the-double-bubble-d8-0)) but that, too, was 9 years ago

It certainly seems as though we're stuck in a local minima w.r.t. commercial aircraft.

<comment><USER37> Maybe going to full airliner size in the first step is just too big of a delta to take on at once. A flying wing business jet might be an interesting intermediate step (especially interesting for extravagant billionaires who would like to impress in style, I guess).

<comment><USER36> That's a nifty idea: put all the fuel and luggage out towards the wings and the passengers down the center. No more discomfort for passengers (during turns and turbulence) and you'd still reap the benefits of the BWB design. Though this would block window views...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Looking at the design, the first thing that occurred to me is that it _looks_ like the frontal surface area would be increased compared to a traditional commercial jet with the same wingspan, which I would expect to negatively impact fuel efficiency. I did a bit more thinking and some reading to try to determine why this isn't the case.

For one thing, while the split fuselage in the images appears similar to that of a conventional airliner, I expect it would actually be considerably shorter than that of a jet with comparable capacity, the reason being that much of the luggage and equipment that would normally be stowed below the passenger compartment could instead be relocated to the center of the 'v'.

You would still have somewhat more frontal surface though I would think. Perhaps this could be outweighed (no pun intended) by weight savings and lower surface area. Although I wonder if some of the savings would have to come from flying more slowly, which this design might facilitate.

I don't know anything much about aeronautics though, so would love input from someone who does!

</comment><comment><USER39> Nobody is building this plane (yet), KLM is just funding more research, any commercial airliner based on this technology is likely decades away. The 787 took about a decade to develop and it's based on a more traditional platform.

</comment><comment><USER40> Hmm, looks like an x-plane screenshot. It wouldn't surprise me if they've been prototyping with planemaker (included with x-plane).

IMHO interesting concept but the thing to be investing in would be electric engines (hybrid or battery) as that will cut fuel costs a lot more potentially. 20% is an incremental improvement and potentially not good enough by the time this gets productized and never mind the time when this gets retired a few decades later (in the best case). So, in short, I think this won't fly (bad pun, sorry) because it's not anywhere near good enough by the time it can reach the market (15+ years?).

<comment><USER41> A lot of the proposed efficiency improvements involve new engines, new fuels, or new materials. This is a new design which could stack on top of any of these other improvements. Including a hybrid or electric engine.

<comment><USER40> Maybe but the primary driver of this design is the fuel tanks and weight distribution as well as the need for having big heavy jet engines.

This thing still takes about 140 tonnes of fuel. That's a lot of money to fly from A to B using a plane that is still a decade+ away. All I'm saying is that 20% cost reductions is not nearly ambitious enough for that type of long term project given the stuff that is already happening today and given the stuff that is likely to happen in the next decade.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> The engine placement in the image looks like if one engine has a catastrophic failure it might take out the other engine.

Engines have taken out hydraulic control lines in the past.

<comment><USER20> The engine placement is also problematic for maintenance. Airlines prefer to buy aircraft that their mechanics can service with just a short ladder. That's one of the main reasons why all recent designs have engines only under the wings.

<comment><USER14> If it gave them a 1% cost advantage, airlines would be happy to have mechanics on scissor lifts or in buckets.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Why does it look less aerodynamic than a normal plane? Isn't a rocket or missile like shape the most aerodynamic one? Planes are pretty close to rockets with thin wings for maneuverability. Fling V has so much surface area being pushed against the air, I am honestly surprised at their claim of being 20% more fuel efficient.

<comment><USER44> In term of pure drag, you're right, you want to reduce the surface and that's not what this design does.

However, for aerodynamic efficiency it is the lift/drag ratio that matters. And while in a normal airliner the body provides very minimal lift, here it's basically a wing and thus generates a lot of lift.

The end result is that while the drag is probably worse, lift is likely improved enough to compensate.

(Also, drag might not be that bad given you do not have a tail, which is pretty awful aerodynamically speaking)

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> if tube and wings design is to change, i think it will be some less radical changes than flying wing, more along the lines of transitioning the tube into the lifting body, while may be not the full way along the Burnelli [http://www.burnelliaircraft.com/wp/](http://www.burnelliaircraft.com/wp/) , instead more like the modern version [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora_D8](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora_D8) :

"The aircraft is designed to be over 50% more fuel efficient[1] compared to aircraft currently under production."

</comment><comment><USER46> Twice the fuselage weight, cost for same number of seats, plus two gigantic engines located well aft of Center of Pressure.

There's a good reason we don't see any aircraft with a design like this today. It doesn't work financially or aerodynamically.

</comment><comment><USER47> So how are the dynamics of this thing in the air? Easy to maneuver? As safe?

<comment><USER48> I'd be interested in how they would manage weight distribution as well. Will the plane still fly in a situation where passengers on one side of the aircraft need to be on the other side?

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> that looks like a deicing SNAFU just waiting to happen. that's a lot of surface area that has to be de-iced to ensure nothing breaks off and enters the engines at the back.

</comment><comment><USER50> Are the wings at the back doing anything useful so far aft of the center of mass, uh, behind the rest of the craft?

</comment><comment><USER51> I'm curious what kind of impact a design like this would have on pilots getting checked out in the aircraft.

<comment><USER52> It would be a significant time investment to be checked out in a radically different type like this, but not impossible. It mostly comes down to the systems, avionics, and procedures which can be radically different already, even in similar-looking planes.

<comment><USER53> I also wonder about engine placement. Engines on top will push the nose downwards in case of adding more trust. There is also issue of stalling on ascend. On ascend, wings would very easily obstruct air going into engines, reducing their power. Also currently aft-mounted engines require vertical stabilizer to be above them to counter act the forces generated by the engines. I don't see any vertical stabilizers in this concept.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> after some clicking you can see the '2% lighter' claim on a demonstrator, here: [https://www.jbenad.com/flyingv](https://www.jbenad.com/flyingv) which makes me even more dubious about this whole thing; the claim is that this configuration fits in the dimension of the airbus is compared to, so by logic alone the increased surface area should end up in a greater weight, and that's without considering the increased structural elements that are required to avoid flexing and twisting of the two heavy sections to which the rear wings are attached, which have a lot more momentum than your usual wings, since they carry more weight and farther than the center of mass/rotation.

I also wonder where would the fuel be stored. needs to be around the center of mass and lift, to avoid the com shifting around as the planes flies. and there aren't wings there conveniently placed near the com to store it, so, is it going to end up below the passengers? that'd be a huge safety hazard.

<comment><USER55> Fuel is fuel, wherever it goes there is a safety consideration.

The last crash I saw on the news had something nasty going on with the engines hitting the tarmac, the above wing placement of the engines is a safety feature as I see it, even though that design choice is more out of consideration for noise - it should be quieter for those living under a flight path.

From the evolution of the bicycle to the mountain bike I can remember that a big, thin-walled tube is stronger and lighter than a narrow, thick-walled tube. I know planes are different, but bigger does not automatically mean heavier.

You could have all of the fuel at the back, behind the passengers and engines. The flight control surfaces and some thrust vectoring could accommodate that.

A U.S company called Boeing know a thing or two about making automatic systems for mitigating against a less than perfect centre of gravity. They went for less than ideally located engines rather than less than ideally located fuel. Allegedly there have been a couple of hiccups with this system but the general idea is that not even the pilots know that there is a computer accounting for changes in centre of lift/gravity, it just works.

On Airbus planes it has always been fly by wire. By 2050 - when this V thing is supposed to go into service - the idea that a human should fly a plane will seem daft, if the computer is doing it all anyway then the plane does not have to be dynamically stable or even balanced from side to side. It should be able to precisely balance out the shear forces no matter what the conditions. You could even turn the thing without banking.

Tongue in cheek criticisms aside, it is better than my student project and a nice thing for KLM's 100 year celebrations.

<comment><USER56> > You could have all of the fuel at the back, behind the passengers and > engines.

That would cause quite the difference in handling between takeoff and handling. The fuel tanks span the length of the fuselage in this design — and I'm sure that's intentional.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> So what the speed, this doesn't seem like it can fly as fast, which naturally reduces fuel needs.

</comment><comment><USER58> If only Reimar and Walter Horten could see that! Really great to see these advances in aviation.

</comment><comment><USER59> The article is titled "KLM and TU Delft join forces to make aviation more sustainable".

</comment><comment><USER60> If the engines are over-wing you know it's nonsense.

<comment><USER61> Could you expand why for a layperson?

<comment><USER62> I wouldn't say nonsense, but the problems are different and maybe worse.

Below: Engines can strike the ground. There is more debris ingestion, ranging from sand and burst tires to people and baggage carts. Noise regulations are harder to satisfy.

Above: Failure causes nose-up (as power is lost), which may lead to a stall. The aircraft sits lower in the water after a water landing. Being nose-up may put the intakes in slow turbulent air flow, killing performance and possibly stalling the intakes. Ice and rain may come off the body, to be ingested by the engines.

Some things could go either way. Maintenance is going to involve a crane or a jack to get the engines off.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Sorry, but this thing, head on, is pure FSM.

</comment><comment><USER64> From the title, I thought this would be about an airline flying using the V-formation like geese or military jets to reduce fuel.

</comment><comment><USER65> so, why is the A350 the most advanced plane? I had not heard this claim before.

<comment><USER60> It's the newest-ish airframe until the carbon 777 flies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> > "integrate the passenger cabin, the cargo hold and the fuel tanks"

"Flying Pinto".

</comment><comment><USER67> > Its improved aerodynamic shape and reduced weight will mean it uses 20% less > fuel than the Airbus A350, today's most advanced aircraft.

That is such a meaningless claim.

<comment><USER68> Why? That's a perfectly quantifiable claim.

<comment><USER67> All airplanes are aerodynamic. There needs to be a mention of what exactly is happening to cause those fuel savings.

I highly doubt that those numbers are trustworthy considering how closely we are scraping fuel efficiency numbers, unless there is some performance metric they aren't mentioned that has degraded.

<comment><USER12> It has been known for a long time that flying wing designs are inherently more fuel efficient than typical passenger airline fuselage designs.

<comment><USER69> But in this extreme case of the fuselage being inside the wing and making it much thicker than typical and necessary, this isn't necessarily true, at least it's not obvious.

If this design actually provides the claimed results, connecting 2 such wings (one behind the other) with a long fuselage (i.e. >\---> which would incur almost no additional drag and twice the lift) would be even better, no?

<comment><USER12> Think of it this way: A cylindrical fuselage provides no lift (except for the lift from its angle of attack flying obliquely through the air), only drag. If you can design the aircraft in such a way that all exterior surfaces contribute to lift, that would be ideal.

The "\---" portion of your idea provides no lift, only drag.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> The main problem with flying wings, and probably this design too, is that they are inherently unstable, and without very precise computer control they are uncontrollable. Compare to modern planes that a good pilot can fly and land with zero computers, given some effort. (They are stable, and with no control inputs at all just keep flying in same attitude as they are currently in)

In a flying wing, computer failure is a certain airframe and passenger loss. I don't know any engineers who write flawless code. Do you?

<comment><USER71> This is patently false. In fact you should delete this post in its entirety because it's just wrong. Don't make these things up and post them as fact. Flying wings easily fly without _any_ computers whatsoever. They are inherently aerodynamically stable. Only manual elevon inputs by humans are actually required and it is quite easy to control unless your center of gravity is too far back. The CG is usually around 70% of the way to the front from the back.

<comment><USER72> Instead of spending half your comment saying how wrong GP is, why not provide some compelling evidence? I was under the impression that flying wings are indeed more unstable than traditional airframes.

For example:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Andersen_Air_Force_Base_B...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Andersen_Air_Force_Base_B-2_accident)

> After the wheels lifted from the runway, which caused the flight control > system to switch to different control laws, the erroneously sensed negative > angle of attack caused the computers to inject a sudden, 1.6‑g, uncommanded > 30-degree pitch-up maneuver. The combination of slow lift-off speed and the > extreme angle of attack (and attendant drag) resulted in an unrecoverable > stall, yaw, and descent.

This seems to support GP's assertion that "without very precise computer control they are uncontrollable" and "computer failure is a certain airframe and passenger loss"

<comment><USER73> Absolutely no one denies that the B-2 in particular is unstable, but it is one particular model designed to a particular set of requirements that are vastly different from those for a commercial airliner. It seems that the general public have internalize "the B-2 and F-117 are inherently unstable" as "flying wings are inherently unstable", which is incorrect.

<comment><USER74> To be even clearer, these two planes were designed with the goal of having the smallest radar cross-section possible. The lack of aerodynamic stability was worth the trade off (esp. since it could be compensated for by flight computers).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


GitHub's vanishing acceleration - <AUTHOR> http://redmonk.com/dberkholz/2014/09/26/githubs-vanishing-acceleration/

<comment><USER2> I don't see a problem here. The whole world doesn't need to be using GitHub.</comment>