Italy bridge: Genoa motorway collapse kills at least 22 - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-45183624 <comment><USER2> I was looking for the site of the bridge on OpenStreetMap, but couldn't find it. It took me a while to realize that someone already took it off the map within an hour of it collapsing.

Impressive (and correct), if a little disconcerting:

[https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=17/44.42585/8.88840](https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=17/44.42585/8.88840)

All the access roads have been disabled too.

<comment><USER3> bridge=collapsed

damage:event="2018-08-14 Genova Collapsed Bridge"

[https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/616904168#map=18/44.42599/...](https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/616904168#map=18/44.42599/8.88854)

<comment><USER4> The power the OSM tagging system.is capable of astounds me over and over. Looking for benches with backrests in your area? There's a way to encode the locations of those in OSM!

Are you allowed to bring your bike onboard this ferry? Does it have a toilet? All answerable with OSM!

Of course, the downside is a diverse set of opinions on how to tag stuff, but I get the impression OSM editors are aware of the vast public benefits of having an agreed-upon way to tag things.

<comment><USER5> You're welcome :-)

<comment><USER6> I wonder if there's also @Anonymaps on HN...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Apparently in Ancient Rome, the ceremony of opening of the bridge consisted of placing the Engineers and Architects who built it to be under the bridge and marching an army Legion over the bridge. Today we have courts and laws to deal with this but every story like this is a reminder of responsibility put into Civil Engineers. But also it serves as a reminder that any Engineering discipline, including Software, has to have accountability and ethics standards.

edit: I'm not blaming anyone for this tragic accident. The cause will be found eventually. What I mean is it's important to remember how your work may impact lives, regardless of what that work is.

<comment><USER8> I don't see why one would jump to blaming the engineers from the 1960's instead of the very government bureaucracy that was responsible for funding the maintenance and oversight of the bridge for over five decades. I do wonder if it is possible the "violent downburst" in the article could have created enough force on the bridge to push it past it's load-rating though.

edit: I should add that it could very well be the fault of an engineer from 50 years ago (poor design, implementation), but this just happened today and it will take a while for people to figure out what really happened, and without any other data my first inclination is to think "poor maintenance" as that is what Occam's Razor (simple: lack of maintenance is very common these days, at least in the US: prepare to be afraid of many bridges you drive over[0]) and then there's the whole downburst thing that seems vaguely plausible for now.

edit2: "The U.S. has 614,387 bridges, almost four in 10 of which are 50 years or older. 56,007 — 9.1% — of the nation's bridges were structurally deficient in 2016, and on average there were 188 million trips across a structurally deficient bridge each day. While the number of bridges that are in such poor condition as to be considered structurally deficient is decreasing, the average age of America's bridges keeps going up and many of the nation's bridges are approaching the end of their design life. The most recent estimate puts the nation's backlog of bridge rehabilitation needs at $123 billion."[1]

[0][https://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/americas- grades/](https://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/americas-grades/)

[1][https://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/cat- item/bridges/](https://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/cat-item/bridges/)

<comment><USER9> _> I don't see why one would jump to blaming the engineers from the 1960's instead of [...] the maintenance_

Unfortunately, in this case it's probably a bit of both. A bridge that was the direct precursor to this one, collapsed after a few years. Maintenance expenses for the Genoa bridge were already off the charts 20 years ago, and likely went down after its privatisation. It had been described a few years ago as a "failure of engineering" by several people.

Chances are that everyone involved in its maintenance knew that shit could hit the fan at some point, but there was no political will to close one of the main city arteries, and probably no budget (or even space, in that city) to build a replacement either.

Being a civil engineer can be tough, especially in complicated countries like Italy. The main architect is long dead; the country has been broke for decades now; the elements are unforgiving; and people are more than ready to lynch you if shit happens.

<comment><USER10> > the country has been broke for decades now

Really?

<comment><USER11> Broke, no. Choked by debt interest, yes.

<comment><USER6> >Broke, no.

And waste of resources. But broke no, thanks €!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I used to work under this bridge. Everybody knew that the bridge was unsafe. However, the local government didn't want to close the bridge because it was critical for the community. Some activists didn't want to close it because they didn't want to build a replacement. So disasters happen, shit always happens. But this was not a disaster, something unknown, this is manslaughter from my point of view. I wish somebody pays for it, but this won't happen.

<comment><USER13> Almost the same thing happened in London a year ago, local government was too afraid to make any action and improve the situation. No one is gonna to pay for it, unless it's you with taxes.

[https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/grenfell- tow...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/grenfell-tower-failed- safety-inspections-before-fire-a8483151.html)

<comment><USER14> Sorry but I really don't understand how this applies to Grenfell. It's not like there were any major maintenance issues with the tower that were ignored by the council and ended up causing it to fall down. The problem was that some new cladding was installed which didn't follow safety regulations and thus compromised the (in principle adequate) fire safety provisions, and that turned a small flat fire into a disaster.

<comment><USER15> What he means is that also in the case of the Grenfell towers "everybody knew it was going to happen". Except it's not true (as I bet it's not true in case of the Genoa bridge as well), as among the thousands of angry complaints that the residents sent to the council in the years before the catastrophe, apparently none was about the choice of the cladding.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Probably the best image, showing the scale of the collapse: [https://gfx.nrk.no/gJothoXlgJysV_sS10u_RQaXLsIZsJIlLIQrfEX8E...](https://gfx.nrk.no/gJothoXlgJysV_sS10u_RQaXLsIZsJIlLIQrfEX8EDmA)

<comment><USER17> Why did they even build apartments under a bridge or a bridge over apartments? Can't think what would of have happened if the whole bridge collapses.

<comment><USER18> Because most of thr time bridges don't collapse and it's nice not to waste the space and create an unpleasant pedestrian dead zone below?

<comment><USER19> I wonder if they had insurance against the bridge falling?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This tragedy shows the importance of inspection and cost of maintenance of infrastructure. In the U.S. there are approximately 600,000 highway bridges. It's estimated that a quarter of them are at their end-of-life mark (that avg being estimated by some at 70). Not counting over 1,700 bridges still in use built before the 19th century, the breakdown is something like this:

        Decade   No. Built
          1900       6,084
          1910       5,893
          1920      17,883
          1930      42,009
          1940      25,971
          1950      64,085
          1960      99,975
          1970      82,129
          1980      78,279
          1990      81,410
          2000      71,475
          2010      38,038

This is just bridges. There are also about 84,000 dams and in a decade or two a huge number of both of these will approach their end of life, just as a legion of civil engineers go into retirement.

<comment><USER21> > This tragedy shows the importance of inspection and cost of maintenance of > infrastructure.

Your table is _scary_ \- and it leads me to one question: why is the future maintenance not budgeted in with _any_ public infrastructure project? For example, a city wants a shiny new bridge... but without provable funding for the maintenance in the future (e.g. tax projections), it is not allowed to be built.

Of course stuff like economic shifts (leading to a loss of tax base) can't be prevented but it's a small risk compared to some politician deciding "I need something monumental where I can cut the opening ribbons" and loading the future generations with maintenance debt.

<comment><USER22> These are easily the first to get the axe, because we now live in the Uber Tax Cuter Politician.

For me now I vote for the politician that will have the most taxes.

<comment><USER23> Certain recent presidents promised $1.5 trillion in infrastructure spending but you don't always get what you vote for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> From an article in Le Temps[1], the bridge had some conception issue; Concrete viscosity wasn't consider correctly. The cost of maintenance was very high and a replacement was considered but the project was opposed.

[1] [https://www.letemps.ch/monde/catastrophe-genes- lecroulement-...](https://www.letemps.ch/monde/catastrophe-genes-lecroulement- dun-pont-11-morts)

<comment><USER25> Yet another bridge design felled by over-reliance on concrete for structural integrity. A lot more bridges are going to fail around the world because they rely too much on concrete, and on dangerous designs without sufficient redundancy.

I like ancient Roman bridges because they're both complex and simple, but my favorite thing about them is how utilitarian they are. At least the examples we have today were clearly not undermining their integrity for the sake of a cool design (2 prestressed concrete tension beams? what the fuck?). Pretty much the only thing that would fell them was the force of flooding rivers. Some fell apart over time, but we're talking over a thousand years. Bridges today barely last 100.

We have to stop letting architects design, and cities then build, hipster bridges. Their primary consideration must be their integrity and longevity.

<comment><USER26> >We have to stop letting architects design, and cities then build, hipster bridges. Their primary consideration must be their integrity and longevity.

Agreed. You don't have to go back to roman times to see engineering for function over form. If there's one thing the red side of the iron curtain did right it was not letting form compromise function when it came to public works and civil engineering.

>At least the examples we have today were clearly not undermining their integrity for the sake of a cool design

What people like to see follows what they're used to seeing. A good example is the GMT800 Chevy truck platform. In 2000-2005 everyone thought they looked like ugly slant eyed jelly beans, now they just look normal because people have gotten used to them. If we built functional things people would get used to how they look and start to like it.

<comment><USER27> "If there's one thing the red side of the iron curtain did right it was not letting form compromise function when it came to public works and civil engineering."

Um. You're technically correct (because the reasoning was "form be damned, gotta build a wartime infrastructure, we'll just let civilians use it until it's needed for _tanks_ "), but this was undermined by lack of maintenance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Whenever there is a bridge failure (or similar, highly-visible civil engineering failure) I recommend to engineers of all stripes that they go read the works of Henry Petroski. In particular:

\- _To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design (1985)_ [1]

\- _Design Paradigms: Case Histories of Error and Judgment in Engineering (1994)_ [2]

and

\- _Engineers of Dreams: Great Bridge Builders and The Spanning of America (1995)_ [3]

He also wrote a salient op-ed after the 2007 bridge failure in Minneapolis: _Learning from bridge failure_. [4]

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/dp/0679734163](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0679734163)

[2] [https://www.amazon.com/dp/0521466490](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0521466490)

[3] [https://www.amazon.com/dp/0679760210](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0679760210)

[4] [http://www.latimes.com/la-oe- petroski4aug04-story.html](http://www.latimes.com/la-oe- petroski4aug04-story.html)

</comment><comment><USER29> Article from 2016 talking about the people that designed and built the bridge: [http://www.ingegneri.info/news/infrastrutture-e- trasporti/po...](http://www.ingegneri.info/news/infrastrutture-e- trasporti/ponte-morandi-a-genova-prestigiosa-opera-di-ingegneria-o-no-parla- ling-brencich/) (in Italian, Google Translate may help with it).

<comment><USER30> It's a bit long to translate while typing on a phone, but the main takeaway is that it was build in the sixties with then-novel and not fully understood material engineering practices which then forced frequent and expensive extraordinary repairs, to the point that it would soon have been economical to just demolish and rebuild it.

As for people asking why the highway needs to go through Genova instead of around, it's probably the same kind of reasoning that leads to using nuclear bombs to build harbors and the like.

<comment><USER31> A very small piece of land on the sea with a very steep 1000 meters tall mountain next to it, that's why.

<comment><USER30> I know, but are you familiar with how terrible it looks, even when it doesn't collapse? Genova hasn't ever been the prettiest city, but still.

<comment><USER32> People tend to pick an ugly city over hours of traffic jams in a pretty city.

<comment><USER9> It's more that people in Italy like to live and die close to where they were born. Genoa also was a very busy port until relatively recently, which is a natural population magnet.

<comment><USER6> It's the biggest port in Italy, and 63rd worldwide. The population increased when the big public industrial complexes were active, now it's declined.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Nothing at this scale but this summer in Finland there was a national park bridge fail. The merging of the local municipalities caused the bridge maintenance to be taken care of by the new municipality. In the merge the maintenance was simply forgotten for ten years.

[https://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/news/mondays_papers_tractor_ta...](https://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/news/mondays_papers_tractor_taxi_hanging_bridge_fail_and_kindergarten_on_wheels/10284039)

</comment><comment><USER34> Part of the collapse - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0c4N91otMs&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0c4N91otMs&feature=youtu.be)

</comment><comment><USER35> Coincidentally, a book has just been published on the I-35W bridge collapse, written by one of the survivors. I wonder how many parallels there will be (less a tragedy of design and more a tragedy of maintenance reports gone unheeded for decades). [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B077FHMNJX/](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B077FHMNJX/)

</comment><comment><USER36> As Italian I feel very touched. Hope the body count won't go up. What a tragedy! This is the live streaming from an Italian newspaper [https://video.repubblica.it/edizione/genova/genova- crollato-...](https://video.repubblica.it/edizione/genova/genova-crollato-il- ponte-morandi/312390/313026)

<comment><USER37> I feel you. I think that people all over Europe are sad and shocked. This is heartbreaking for all of us, I was in Genoa not very long ago. I hope that the families get all the help possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> From what I read on Italian forums, Italian engineers say that the materials that were used to build the bridge weren't the same chosen by the designers.

It will be a while before we learn the actual cause for the collapse, however.

<comment><USER39> >From what I read on Italian forums, Italian engineers say that the materials that were used to build the bridge weren't the same chosen by the designers.

Care to post a link?

The bridge (actually a long viaduct) has been subject to several overhaulings in the years, including the replacement of some structural parts, though these interventions were largely related to the deck, while - at least from the pictures I have seen - it seems more like a pier collapsed, which is "unusual".

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> There is a live stream from the bridge currently available on youtube:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBjfUyvtr3w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBjfUyvtr3w)

</comment><comment><USER41> I don't know if this brigde collapse could be prevented but they could at least not build bridges above buildings. There probably was a better place for the bridge.

<comment><USER42> Genoa is a very 3D (hilly) city, so they really don't have a choice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> hn is the one site i come to detox from news (porn).

hopefully for me, i wont see so many news here in the future

</comment><comment><USER44> Every time I refresh the page the title (count) changes, what a tragedy!

</comment><comment><USER45> Why is this on HN?

<comment><USER46> Bridges are engineering.

<comment><USER47> And it's a matter of public safety, collapses like these.

<comment><USER48> Highly recommend Henry Petroski's book on bridge building [https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/to-engineer-is-human-the- role-...](https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/to-engineer-is-human-the-role-of- failure-in-successful-design_henry- petroski/247221/#isbn=0679734163&idiq=493725)

<comment><USER47> That picture of the Tacoma Narrows' incident on the cover totally grabbed my eyeballs. This book looks super interesting, thank you for the recommendation.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


AppsCode relicenses Stash and KubeDB products - <AUTHOR> https://blog.byte.builders/post/relicensing/ <comment><USER2> So basically anyone who depends on it for automation for their commercial employer will now have to pay up or stop using it?

Putting a lot of useful features into an enterprise offering is one thing, but restricting the open source version to hobby/test users is another. At least keep a permissive license for the open source version so people can at least choose to keep using a restricted feature set under the current conditions, that's how a lot of dual licensed projects work.

I guess I now understand why MariaDB was created, to prevent exactly this from happening. At least we can fork this one as well if there is enough demand for it.</comment>


Don't start from scratch - <AUTHOR> http://nathanbarry.com/scratch/

<comment><AUTHOR> What do you think about this?</comment>


SpaceX Refused to Move Satellite at Risk of Collision with a European Satellite - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanocallaghan/2019/09/02/spacex-refused-to-move-a-starlink-satellite-at-risk-of-collision-with-a-european-satellite/#43eec9541f62 <comment><USER2> Being a lover of Space and SpaceX, this incident highlights why a goldilocks paradigm for regulation needs to exist for space. Not too much that it stifles innovation. Not too little that someone ends up Kesslerizing Near-Earth space.

Current regulations are largely successful at promoting commercial space flight, but there is a big transparency gap between civilian space flight agencies and private entities. Transparency should be one of the cornerstones of space regulations, but it isn't. This incident raises multiple policy questions. Why can't SpaceX move their satellite? Is it a no because an ion drive takes days to burn or is it a no because they don't wanna? Either way, it exposes a flaw in SpaceX's design and raises concerns about StarLink. When there are hundreds of StarLink satellites in the air, will SpaceX say no again if there's a chance for collision? Will SpaceX be a responsible steward of Near-Earth space? If ion drives are insufficient to address this problem, should they be required to take a small amount of monopropellant as a precaution?

Transparency is essential for answering these questions and asking new ones. The one I'm most concerned about is the question, what are the pollution risks of LEO constellations? Ideally, before StarLink and other networks are up and running, I feel there should be a study of the pollution risk StarLink poses be it light pollution or debris. We shouldn't repeat the failings of the 20th century in space.

<comment><USER3> I'm not entirely convinced this is the argument.

From what I've read so far, it seems that ESA was uncomfortable with the possibility of a collision to a degree that SpaceX could possibly be quite comfortable with - ESA wants > 1km distance, whereas SpaceX might be comfortable with much closer - they are quite different constellations.

Who has the right to dictate who has priority / which criteria is the right one?

I'm going to assume that the cost of ESA's satellite is much greater than SpaceX's StarLink module so obviously they have much more of an interest in preserving full functionality - BUT avoiding collisions is in everybody's best interests. Who is going to use their fuel? Who has right of way, and to what terms?

<comment><USER4> Or just that Space doesn't care about losing 1 Satelite.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> >ESA noted that it performed 28 collision avoidance maneuvers in 2018, but it was mostly to avoid dead satellites or bits of space debris. Maneuvers to avoid active satellites were "very rare", they said, but the arrival of mega constellations like Starlink raises concerns that many more such maneuvers will be needed in future.

>"What I want is an organized way of doing space traffic. It must be clear when you have such a situation who has to react. And of course automating the system. It cannot be when we have 10,000 satellites in space that there are operators writing the email what to do. This is not how I imagine modern spaceflight."

SpaceX simply saying it would "not act" is negligent, and I _really_ hope there was more to it that the author just wasn't privy to. If they had better sensors and knew there'd be no collision, say so. If they couldn't maneuver, say so. Otherwise it's just a game of space chicken, risking not only those two sats but all of LEO.

<comment><USER6> One is a throwaway satellite of a huge constellation - the other a unique billion euro research satellite. Easy to see who will give in first to protect their assets, but plainly it is equally easy to see who _should_ move first.

<comment><USER7> What happens if the two groups disagree on the odds of impact? Because one has either more precise or just different telemetry than the other?

<comment><USER8> There's not much to disagree on the odds. Trajectories are known, uncertainties too and therefore probabilities of collisions can be calculated.

Any disagreement here is easy to reconcile, whose assumptions and methods are more accurate?

The disagreement is on the importance of the odds. SpaceX might be OK with a 1:10000 (or whatever) chance of collision, the Europeans want it lower.

The Europeans could in the future force the issue. Move, or we'll fine you and forbid you from launching off of European sites and ban EU companies from using SpaceX.

<comment><USER9> Trajectories have measurement errors.

<comment><USER8> Indeed. we wouldn't need safety margins without errors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The ESA is sure making a huge deal out of this. I wonder if politics is involved.

[https://twitter.com/IridiumBoss/status/1168582141128650753](https://twitter.com/IridiumBoss/status/1168582141128650753)

> Hmmm. We move our satellites on average once a week and don't put out a > press release to say who we maneuvered around... -Matt Desch, CEO of Iridium

<comment><USER11> The ESA asked SpaceX to move to avoid a collision, and they refused. What would happen if a private airline refused the FAA telling them to redirect to avoid a collision, forcing another aircraft to take evasive action?

It definitely is political, and it's going to become a bigger problem if SpaceX's approach to potential collisions is just to play chicken.

<comment><USER12> The bigger issue is that ESA is coming up to an important administrative date in November where their future budget will be determined, and they want money for their automation program. So they have to portray space as dangerous, ESA processes as desperately in need of improvement, and this specific example of a super expensive research satellite coming close to part of a future megaconstellation makes for great attention-grabbing headlines.

That it was SpaceX that ESA got to throw under the bus was the cherry on the cake.

<comment><USER13> SpaceX playing chicken with cheap disposable Starlinks against multibillion euro public satellites _does_ make space dangerous.

<comment><USER12> Nobody is playing chicken here.

The SpaceX satellite is for all intents and purposes inert, since it is incapable of significantly adjusting its orbit.

You know the old joke about the US Navy warship giving way to the second class seaman, right?

<comment><USER14> >The SpaceX satellite is for all intents and purposes inert, since it is incapable of significantly adjusting its orbit.

If SpaceX is actively deorbiting the satellite, it's not inert.

<comment><USER15> Having enough thrust for a deorbit burn doesn't mean having enough thrust to avoid a collision.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> NORAD 44278 is a Starlink satellite presently being de-orbited by SpaceX in a controlled fashion to simulate end-of-life disposal. [1]

The current altitude (~330km) [2] puts it well below the operation envelope and it's currently the lowest sat of the Starlink constellation at this point.

It appears SpaceX does continue to have some level of control of the craft. [3] Some speculation I've read is that the much higher impulse of the ESA thrusters would make the ESA craft a better candidate to execute the maneuver.

These adjustments are not rare - they happen approximately every other week for this particular craft, and as Iridium says, they do this weekly. [4]

A video of the conjecture [5] shows an approach of "less than 10km". The ESA craft apparently passed much closer to several other craft over the last week, so there may be more to it in this case, or there may be a bone to pick with Starlink.

Lastly, ESA has a particular interest in raising this issue now as much as possible, as these "mega-constellations" launched by US companies are coming closer to reality and the current processes (picking up the phone) don't scale well to tens of thousands of satellites.

[1] - [https://twitter.com/thesheetztweetz/status/11446893347775242...](https://twitter.com/thesheetztweetz/status/1144689334777524226?s=21)

[2] - [https://www.n2yo.com/satellite/?s=44278](https://www.n2yo.com/satellite/?s=44278)

[3] - [https://twitter.com/planet4589/status/1168637324592328705?s=...](https://twitter.com/planet4589/status/1168637324592328705?s=21)

[4] - [https://twitter.com/iridiumboss/status/1168582141128650753?s...](https://twitter.com/iridiumboss/status/1168582141128650753?s=21)

[5] - [https://twitter.com/m_r_thomp/status/1168583891726344193?s=2...](https://twitter.com/m_r_thomp/status/1168583891726344193?s=21)

<comment><USER12> The "more to it" is that ESA is gearing up to request funding for their AI project, billed as an automated tracking and avoidance manoeuvre planning system capable of handling the vast numbers of objects and debris expected to be in orbit in the near future.

This was not about "SpaceX refused to move" but "we need money to build this automated system so we don't have to do it all by hand," and an additional level which is, how should the various satellite operators make their orbital parameters available to interested parties?

The situation is that ESA didn't even know what kind of object the track represented, and they had to contact SpaceX to ask about it in the first place. Their job would have been easier (whether manual or automated) if SpaceX made the orbital parameters available for automated queries.

The last thing this is about is SpaceX being "arrogant" or "refusing to move a satellite."

<comment><USER13> > The last thing this is about is SpaceX being "arrogant" or "refusing to move > a satellite."

SpaceX entering ESA's orbit and arrogantly refusing to move _is_ an excellent showcase of the need for better avoidance systems, especially since they plan to launch 12k of them.

It's also an excellent warning of SpaceX's ethical framework.

<comment><USER12> It's more likely to be an excellent example of why we should always wait two days to find out the real story.

Clickbait headlines are poison, as are hearsay and anonymous sources using emotive language like "SpaceX refused" to move their satellite.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Of course, inside the article it's explained that SpaceX didn't "refuse" to move the satellite, they were politely asked to do so and declined for reasons the author is unaware of. Possibly because they couldn't move the satellite or had a higher collision tolerance.

<comment><USER18> The thing is that satellites are planned with a lifespan which can include a fixed amount of fuel for adjustments like this. It's not too hard to attach a dollar amount here.

I'm as big a fan of SpaceX as you'll find but considering they were the one entering an orbit they didn't previously occupy it seems like a pretty lame move on SpaceX's part.

<comment><USER19> I suppose that's going to be a question in the coming years - does someone get the right of way to a given orbit just because they were there first?

Sounds like a fantastic barrier to entry for newcomers who don't have billions lining their pockets.

<comment><USER20> That is true of all finite resources, from orbits to spectrum to real estate.

<comment><USER21> Maybe the United Nations (or future world government) could levy an Earth- orbital value tax to ensure orbits are used efficiently.

<comment><USER22> This implies that un has jurisdiction over all orbits, which it can't really enforce. Also, good luck getting any kind of int'l tax passed; no one wants to give up that kind of sovereignty. Were I a company, I'd just wait until office changed and whatever treaty this was got torn up to put up my satellites. How could the un enforce this? At the end of the day, policies are enforced with the threat of force in response to non-compliance; fact is, un has precious little of that. The only viable enforcement mechanism would be enforcement by other nations; again, sovereignty issue. Also, what if a nation decides she does not agree to such an agreement?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Everytime I see these kind of events I think about Kurzgesagt video [1] about how the domino effect of satellite collisions would release such a high amount space debris that would trap us all on earth forever.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yS1ibDImAYU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yS1ibDImAYU)

<comment><USER7> Starlink satellites are only approximately 350 miles up, which means any debris gets brought down by atmospheric drag very quickly. A million satellites in that orbit could not cause kessler syndrome.

<comment><USER24> That's not quite accurate. Firstly,the debris will destroy everything in LEO, maybe including ISS, then debit in a few months.

Secondly, some of the debris will probably end up in higher orbit and stay there for a long time, just like was the case with India and China ASAT tests. Then they can pose a risk for centuries

<comment><USER14> > Secondly, some of the debris will probably end up in higher orbit and stay > there for a long time

The average height of the orbit may go up, but depending on the direction of the collision the perigee will decrease by some amount, so there will still be a considerable amount of atmospheric drag. The Chinese ASAT test was in a much higher orbit, which is why so much of the debris is still troublesome. Most of the debris from the Indian ASAT test is gone, and the rest will probably be gone in a year or two.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> What's interesting is that there's already a similar internationally agreed framework for how to approach this - shipping - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Regulations_for_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Regulations_for_Preventing_Collisions_at_Sea) \- These would probably be a good place to start considering a framework for satellite orbit adjustments. However, despite this framework, it still happens - and I can see the issue of risk evaluation being a big one - what if one entity thinks a 1/1000 risk is acceptable for their cheap satellite vs the other satellite wanting 1/1000000?

<comment><USER26> I agree with this. Rules of the seas are not laws but more like a code for mariners to follow. Too bad we see such ignorance in space. Think of the ESA bird as a "boat in anchor". Lit up with the proper anchorage lights. Now some jackass with a jetski is blasting right twords you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I wonder if AI is really the right tool to automate the process. Couldn't it be done more robustly with a simple algorithm that takes todays collision probability models as input?

<comment> Paul-ish Reading the Wikipedia page for a 2009 satelite collision[1]:

> Calculations made by CelesTrak had expected these two satellites to miss by > 584 meters (1,916 ft)

Perhaps the calculations aren't straightforward Newtonian mechanics?

* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_satellite_collision](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_satellite_collision)

<comment> orbital-decay Predictions based on TLEs aren't precise enough for satellite collisions. TLE is a solution compiled from many measurements, and what one wants for very close passes are raw measurements. It's a bit like JPEG vs RAW in photography.

Regarding that particular collision, IIRC human factor was involved a lot. Iridium has been warned well in advance, but hesitated to make the decision since their models gave lower probabilities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Judging by the comments here, this piece has succeeded in planting the idea that StarLink is dangerous using incredibly little detail.

<comment><USER29> More like "Musk company does something arrogant again"

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "SpaceX, in a new statement, says they were aware of the potential Aeolus/Starlink collision, but at first the probability was low. When the probability increased, "a bug in our on-call paging system prevented the Starlink operator from seeing the follow on correspondence."" [https://twitter.com/jeff_foust/status/1168919094265044996](https://twitter.com/jeff_foust/status/1168919094265044996)

</comment><comment><USER30> Why would they refuse to move the satellite? It's not like only the European satellite would be affected by a collision, both are in danger, so either they couldn't or they didn't think it was likely.

<comment> Tuna-Fish The likely answer is that the satellite in question was out of control and they couldn't move it.

I don't know which Starlink sat this was, but the the other satellite that did dodge seems to be flying at ~300km. This is much lower than what the functional Starlink constellation is. Some of the initial launch failed to unfold their solar panels, and the batteries would have ran down by now, so they are rapidly decaying space trash.

Others are being deorbited under power but SpaceX would have no reason not to do dodge with those.

<comment> semi-extrinsic Why are they deorbiting? Didn't they just launch these?

<comment><USER31> To test their ability to perform a controlled deorbit.

<comment><USER32> Sounds like the test didn't work, if they can't avoid hitting other satellites.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> For anyone not familiar with aerospace terminology: LEO is not the name of the satellite but just means that it is a low flying satellite. It stands for Low Earth Orbit.

</comment><comment><USER34> This is a false article. There is no evidence SpaceX refused to move and ESA calling out the fact that they moved for a SpaceX satellite is ESA playing politics. LEO is full of space debris and satellite owners move satellites for space junk all the time. This is called political grandstanding.

</comment><comment><USER35> > In 2018, ESA performed 28 #collisionavoidance manoeuvres across its fleet.

<comment><USER36> One every two weeks (about) don't seem "rare" to me.

<comment><USER37> Its rare to have to avoid an active satellite, rather than random orbiting garbage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I was under the impression that most of the constellation would be at such an unusually low orbit that there wouldn't be much to collide with. How crowded are the planned orbit shells?

</comment><comment><USER39> The long term solution would be to establish some form of property rights over particular orbits. Then, to use a particular orbit, one must pay the market rate for it.

<comment><USER9> Deorbiting satellites make that a hilarious proposal.

<comment><USER39> Certainly property rights to orbits will have special characteristics. We've already accumulated much experience with property rights for things that are different from physical property - I'm sure spending more than 30 seconds thinking about it can come up with solutions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I guess when you have your own launch capabilities you can treat your internet satellites as easily replaced.

Adding more junk up there only serves to create more launches as the inevitable collisions occur. It arguably makes good business sense for SpaceX to add as much as possible and be quite fast and loose with their management of it, at least as long as it's the wild west up there.

</comment><comment><USER41> > ESA is preparing to automate this process using #AI

Sounds like something SpaceX and other constellation satellite companies should do as part of these widescale deployment. Or at least lower the threshold of moving out of the way so they don't get tons of push back from existing space power players who've got more influence than they do.

</comment><comment><USER42> The US military tracking isn't very accurate. Errors of hundreds of meters are common.

I bet spacex themselves know the location of their satellites to within a few meters. With more accurate data, you can come up with a far more accurate collision risk estimate.

<comment><USER5> That's fine, but then share that data and there'd be no need to waste delta-v for either satellite.

Also these aren't military assets, their specs and locations aren't secret, so if they have better tracking, they should be sharing that.

<comment><USER43> My suspicion is that SpaceX and the ESA disagreed either on:

1/ the position of the SpaceX vehicle (ESA may not trust the SpaceX position data)

2/ that they disagreed on the probability of a collision (ESA thinks it's 5%, SpaceX thinks it's 0.005%) or

3/ they disagreed on whether the probability of a collision was worth moving for (eg, ESA thinks you should move for a one-in-a-million shot, SpaceX disagrees).

I recall someone saying that SpaceX did share ephemeris, but I can't find a reference. Maybe I dreamed it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I presume there are liability rules if your satellite hits another one. What about if your satellite makes another one waste fuel on a diversion?

<comment><USER45> Would ESA satellite hit Space X or the other way around? How do they determine it?

<comment><USER46> The ESA satellite had been on that orbit 9 months before the Spacelink satellite.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> It's like when there's a crappy car refusing to give the right a way to a luxury car. The crappy car owner has little to lose compared to the luxury car owner.

Constellation owners (SpaceX here) knows that owners of big satellite will dodge them. Big satellite will have to carry more fuel, which incidentally is good news for the business of satellite launchers (SpaceX again).

</comment><comment><USER48> Is there any right of way rules similar to how marine traffic works?

</comment><comment><USER49> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome) Yay!!

<comment><USER50> Animated version: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yS1ibDImAYU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yS1ibDImAYU)

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> How is it the case that StarLink didn't realize they were launching into orbits that would intersect with others?

I find it foreboding that the number of intersections with space debris and live constellations is to the point where ESA is moving towards non- deterministic algorithms to hopefully avoid the worst. How will Musk ever leave this planet if we make a shell of debris around ourselves?

See also: the anime "planetes"

<comment><USER52> They don't plan like that at all.

Since all these orbital parameters change over time due to atmospheric drag, solar pressure, gravity irregularities, etc, organizations like NORAD constantly monitor and determine the orbital parameters of every object they can find circling the Earth.

So, they watch for when the likelihood that one satellite will come within some small distance (say, 5km) of another is high. For example, if the odds that they come that close are say, 75% in the next 5 orbits, the operators are notified and alter their courses slightly to maintain separation.

Even manned spacecraft such as the ISS will perform separation maneuvers to keep themselves clear of objects that may come too close.

<comment><USER53> I think the issue is that people have some vague affinity for the way space travel was depicted in old science fiction, where you could blast off and manually control everything with possibly the assistance of a slide rule.

And it's slightly discomfiting to realize that just traffic control is so complex that it needs modern computers to track and react. Space is supposed to be vast and empty! And it is, but not in LEO.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is gonna get ugly pretty soon. I'm pretty convinced it's less an issue of moving (which esa itself stated it does once every week to two weeks) and more of politics. A couple possibilities:

* europe mad at America b/c trade

* europe mad at American companies beating european ones to space and getting more of the limited orbit spots first

* europe mad she wasn't really asked before SpaceX put up satellites

* europe has a principal objection to the idea of private companies playing on the same level as the bureaucrats or an issue with corps occupying space at all

Most likely, it's a combination of all of the above. Regardless, people will start getting awfully catty about this, and it's possible knocking some one else's satellite out of the sky could be a serious issue.

</comment><comment><USER37> From the twitter thread:

        It is very rare to
        perform collision
        avoidance manoeuvres
        with active
        satellites. The vast
        majority of ESA
        avoidance manoeuvres
        are the result of
        dead satellites or
        fragments from
        previous collisions.
        [ ... ]

        As the number of
        satellites in orbit
        increases, due to
        'mega constellations'
        such as #Starlink
        comprising hundreds
        or even thousands of
        satellites, today's
        'manual' collision
        avoidance process
        will become
        impossible...

<comment><USER35> This is unreadable on mobile due to the use of code formatting. [https://i.imgur.com/562ORgL.png](https://i.imgur.com/562ORgL.png)

EDIT: Said comment is now one full screen tall due to manual insertion of linewraps, and is very wasteful of space on desktop and landscape layouts: [https://i.imgur.com/H15eCXo.png](https://i.imgur.com/H15eCXo.png)

<comment><USER54> It so weird that there is no incentive to fix many usability shortcomings like this one and too tiny UI elements on mobile etc. - all of that despite multiple complaints over years..

<comment><USER35> Mobile works fine for me and the UI elements as shown honor my text size setting accurately. Using code formatting for non-code results in broken formatting for non-code. This should come as no surprise to anyone. Indents aren't worth a semantic violation. Use "> " prefixes like classic email, and optionally _italic_ asterisks if that's desirable.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Well-fitting Slack: tailoring a new Slack app - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@ScatterdotHQ/well-fitting-slack-tailoring-a-new-slack-app-35fdf6b48777#.tbdsd4kyc <comment><AUTHOR> I helped make Scatterdot, and would be happy to chat about some of the things we talk about here. We thought this might be a helpful thing for Slack app authors.</comment>


Throwing K-Cups in Glass Houses - <AUTHOR> http://www.marco.org/2014/03/31/throwing-k-cups-in-glass-houses

<comment><AUTHOR> Posted not for any particular interest in K-Cups or Coffee, but because the message probably applies to a lot of other areas as well.</comment>


Microsoft readies antivirus for Linux, Android - <AUTHOR> https://www.theregister.com/2020/06/23/microsoft_defender_atp_linux/ <comment><AUTHOR> An act of goodwill? or a clever way to potentially spread an invasive full access memory resident program across the Linux ecosystem?

</comment><comment><USER2> Extend</comment>


Former Stanford dean explains why helicopter parenting is ruining a generation - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/education/wp/2015/10/16/former-stanford-dean-explains-why-helicopter-parenting-is-ruining-a-generation-of-children/ <comment><USER2> Dean complains about helicopter parents at Stanford and yet admissions essentially requires incoming students have helicopter parents. To get into a school like this you need to be exclusively focused on exactly the arbitrary criteria that will get you accepted into a school like this -- grades in the "right" classes, enough sports to talk about it in an essay but not too much, extracurricular and volunteer work at the "right" organizations, tutoring for the standardized exams. No teenager has a passion for SAT prep. If you stop pushing them and let them be human beings there are plenty of other children of helicopter parents who will be happy to take their place in the incoming Stanford class.

<comment><USER3> Unfortunately, his position as a Dean prevents him from getting "too real" in this article, because what he should be telling these over-stressed and over- worked parents (and kids) is that you don't need to go to Harvard, or Stanford, or any Ivy League school really, to get a good education.

<comment><USER4> Her. It's literally the first line of the article. And also she's the _former_ dean.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As someone with children and living in NY, my wife and I are very aware of not trying to push our kids in a specific direction or to interfeer too much if they are having trouble solving something themselves.

The problem once we start coaching our kids in an early age is that we are denying them to find a lot of subtle things out on their own.

It's very easy to think you are helping your kids to learn by removing what seem like unnecessary obstacles and of course sometimes you are. But a lot of the time it's those obstacles that build some sort of character in the kids and allow them to find out things by finding out things. By being too proactive as a parent we can take a lot of motivation away from them.

Our kids have bruises all over their body because they are allowed to do things other kids aren't. Of course we watch over them and make sure they don't do completely crazy things but they are capable of much more than one might think. By allowing them to find that out they will hopefully learn that themselves too.

Raising kids isn't a science it's an art. The art of creating a canvas for them but not decide what they want to do with it.

I think this comic shows one of the big differences between our parents generation and ours (I am 41)

I am always reminded of this [http://i.imgur.com/LglSapk.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/LglSapk.jpg)

<comment><USER6> I grew up with parents who worked all the time and barely took part in their childrens lives. We cook dinner by ourselves a majority of the time. My 10 year old brother has to mow the lawn and do his own laundry. We get yelled at all the time like in the first column of the comics. At first I felt mad for it but now I'm realizing the benefits. I can take care of myself so well. I can cook, I keep my room clean, and I am on track to a great career that I like. Not to mention my brother and I have both solo travelled to some crazy places like Nepal, Peru, Norway.

My 21 year old friend has had his parents take a big part in his life. He has upper middle class parents who watch his every move, sign him up for SAT tutors, force him to take piano lessons. Has no clue how to cook, found freshman year comp sci too hard and switched to communications and now philosophy major, has not really gotten good at anything in life. If I majored in Philosophy my parents would probably yell at me and not help with tuition. Probably will depend on his dad's connections to get an office job.

On one hand having a nice, loving parent would be nice. I am not as socially capable as some of my other friends who had loving parents. I am not as loving or caring as them. On the other hand, my parents' harshness and indifference helped me get used to the grittiness of real life and I'm glad for it.

<comment><USER7> What you wrote makes no logical sense. It's simply confirmation bias.

> My 21 year old friend has had his parents take a big part in his life. He > has upper middle class parents who watch his every move, sign him up for SAT > tutors, force him to take piano lessons. Has no clue how to cook, found > freshman year comp sci too hard and switched to communications

Having parents who take a big part of your life has no bearing on whether or not you'll do well at Comp Sci 101.

> Probably will depend on his dad's connections to get an office job.

After your first job out of college, subsequent jobs are found based on your "connections." That's networking.

Also learning to cook isn't difficult. It just takes practice.

<comment><USER5> Most things just take practice especially being a human being.

The point — I think — is not that you become superman by being able to cook yourself. The point is that helicopter parents are wrong in thinking that they are doing their kids a favor by being constantly there for them.

Whatever their motives are they are not putting them in a better position in the long run. It's more an attempt to control the destiny of their childs future by controlling it for as long as they can.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> You know what. Those parents got those kids into Stanford. Obviously helicopter parenting is working for them.

90% of the decisions people make are based on the environments they are in. Today's environment is extremely competitive and the margin for error is lower. Nobody wants to be the parent of the most mentally stable Starbucks Barista... Get them into Stanford, then they have the rest of their life to "fail"

<comment><USER9> > Today's environment is extremely competitive and the margin for error is > lower.

The margin for error is enormous, compared to previous generations. The probability that a mistake in life will lead you to die of starvation or cold is smaller than ever.

What I think is happening is that global communication is leading to increased status neurosis. Before, you could compare your kids to the neighbors'. Now you can compare them with everyone's kids, filtered through the lens of social media.

<comment><USER10> Margin of error: go to Stanford, make the right connections, become a billionaire in 8 years versus go to a state school and work for the billionaires while making 1/5000th to 1/150000th as much as they do, yet you're doing all the work that makes them richer.

<comment><USER11> Stanford has 27 billionaire alumni. At any given time, there are ~15,000 students studying at Stanford.

Getting the top 10 schools for creating billionaires, it accounts for 206 total. (Though this number also includes Cambridge, and I'm not sure if the 11 billionaire alumni from there are part of the same 500ish US billionaires)

Out of the 500ish billionaires in the US, nearly 100 of them have no degree at all.

So, these top schools produce about double the amount of billionaires that zero degrees do, and roughly the same number as the rest of the schools combined.

This is such a relatively small sample size and there are so many factors in play here that it would be silly to draw any sort of strong conclusion from this, but even going with shoddy science on this and playing fast and loose, we can see that while, yes, you do gain an advantage in the 'become a billionaire' game, it's still a ridiculously insignificant chance, and the population of billionaires without a degree or with a degree from a school not known for producing billionaires is still higher.

All of this to say: There ain't no easy path to billionairehood besides being born one, and getting in to Stanford or any other school does not increase your chances of becoming one to a statistically significant number.

<comment><USER10> _nearly 100 of them have no degree at all._

Because many of them dropped/stopped out of Stanford after being accepted.

You can ask the same of NYC. How many supreme court justices are from NYC versus Idaho? Location matters. Location changes you. Peers change you.

 _relatively small sample size_

Outliers can't be analyzed using aggregate methods. Powerlawpeople.

<comment><USER11> >Because many of them dropped/stopped out of Stanford after being accepted.

Really? There's obviously a few well known cases of this, but I doubt you're looking at any hard data when you make this claim.

>Outliers can't be analyzed using aggregate methods. Powerlawpeople.

Sure you can. When you're comparing 500 billionaires, they're no longer the outliers in the data set. They're the norm for the data set.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I believe there are two different things at work here. One is being an active parent and the other is helping your child develop grit[1] and I don't think they are mutually exclusive.

At what age can I let my child walk to school by himself? It all depends on the child, neighborhood, and other characteristics. But if my son never walks to school by himself (elementary and middle), that doesn't mean he is going to fail in the face of adversity.

Grit is about not saying "good job" all the time and instead saying thing like "you worked hard". You need to teach your children to embrace failure as the best way to learn.

I see this in myself. I walked to school by myself, wasn't really helicopter parented, but found school very easy and breezed through everything and was never challenged. When I faced real challenges, I had a hard time learning how to overcome them.

I don't know what kind of parent I will end up being, my son is only 3, but I can see myself being very involved in his life and decisions and making sure he is safe. It will be hard to balance between being involved and being a helicopter, but I think helping him embrace failure is the greatest thing I can do.

[1] [http://mindsetonline.com/abouttheauthor/](http://mindsetonline.com/abouttheauthor/) \- It is ironic that the leading researcher in this field is at Stanford.

<comment><USER13> The conversation about grit needs to be balanced by a careful critique of the work we're asking students to engage with. If a school has a great climate and academic rigor, then by all means develop resilience and grit in students. But if a school is giving largely meaningless busywork, that needs to be addressed before telling students to work hard.

Here's a great critique of the current conversation about grit:

\- [http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/classroom_qa_with_larry_fer...](http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/classroom_qa_with_larry_ferlazzo/2015/10/response_is_grit_an_asset_or_an_excuse.html)

<comment><USER12> Great, thanks for sharing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The idea that "today's youth" are more fragile than the youth of yore seems to be a growing meme. I do believe that there is a rise in mental health issues among young adults, but there are many potentially interacting causes. I haven't read the book in question, but I hope that anyone who tackles this subject addresses all the possibly relevant social phenomena before pinning it all on one root cause. Some things I hope would be factored in are:

\- The tightening economic climate and increasing difficulty of staying in the middle class. Especially when it relates to the panoply of difficulties young people face: student debt, high cost of housing, the gateway of unpaid internships, the declining number of professions that can support a middle class existence, the clustering of opportunity in a few high-cost urban areas to the detriment of the rest.

\- All the new systemic and political sources of anxiety - climate change, destabilizing politics in North America and Europe, mass migration, ambiguous wars, extremism, etc.

\- Increasing diagnosis of mental health issues and occasional pathologization of everyday troubles.

\- Decreasing stigma of mental health issues resulting in more young people seeking help.

\- Weakening of existing family structures and modes of monogamous relationships, along with the appearance of a multitude of new family and relationship structures.

\- "Helicopter parenting".

\- The decline of the "traditional job" and all the security that came with it.

\- All the various information overloads, distractions, and paradoxes of choice that come with the internet.

I'm sure there are plenty of things that could be added to this list. But generally, I think we are exiting a period of relative postwar stability and returning to a more chaotic status quo. But now a majority of people of all socioeconomic brackets yearn for a middle-class existence, and without the support of old rigid-but-secure (for some) social structures. The millennials- and-forward generations are going to manifest the stress of all these things in many, frequently-unexpected ways. Pinning it all on "helicopter parenting," IMO, is cruel and facile.

EDIT: Formatting.

<comment><USER15> > The tightening economic climate and increasing difficulty of staying in the > middle class... > But now a majority of people of all socioeconomic brackets > yearn for a middle-class existence...

There is no middle class. This framing is itself toxic.

There are only people who have to work for a living (i.e. the working class), and people for whom paid labor is optional due to accumulated capital of various forms (for simplicity, let's call them the rich.)

Focusing on distinctions between substrata of the working class mainly benefits the rich.

<comment><USER14> Although it's certainly subjective, I don't think what we call the middle class is such a fine-grained entity, and I do think the distinction between "working class" and "middle class" is useful.

I would define "working class" as people who are resigned to whatever paid labor they can find on pain of hunger and homelessness. Anyone in this class wants to get out of it.

The middle class, on the other hand, expect to get to pick the labor they perform, and in return expect a comfortable and secure existence as well as a good amount of leisure time and luxury to be attainable through their labor. Many in the middle class hold no ambition to climb still further, but are desperate to not fall out of it.

The distinction is useful for shaping policy - we want to help as many people as possible into the middle class and out of the working class (as defined above), and then do everything possible to keep them there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Universities love to complain about needing to react to what parents are saying, but this seems like something they bring on themselves. With such expensive tuition, a student's choice of college often cannot be made independently, and parents feel like they are buying their right to hassle higher educators. I would love to see a world where students truly decide on their own university and the ability for parents to affect the day-to-day of a university is drastically reduced. To me, this is the most interesting aspect of the push for free college.

<comment><USER17> I don't think it has as much to do with parents paying for college as it does the fact that it's an almost-requirement to have a parent paving the way for the vast majority of kids to make it into a Stanford. Normal human beings don't exhibit the level of dedication required, but parents know they can set their kids up for life if they remove a lot of the obstacles. It's not surprising to me that pattern doesn't stop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is the result of the society the US built.

To get a 'good' job, you need to have attended the 'right' school. To get 'good' investors as an entrepreneur, you need to know the 'right' people (which is also influenced strongly by where you went to school).

To get into the 'right' school, you need to optimize for that result. If you're working full-time and trying to pay your own way, good luck. Kids that have 'helicopter' parents who have the means to support them and encourage (or force) them are already a leg up on the poorer competition.

All of these factors of course just serve to entrench the upper classes, and reduce social mobility (which, while it exists, it's very difficult to move up). Poorer students have much less time and money to do the 'right' things, and while there are always outliers, they don't determine the direction of society.

We could always build a more egalitarian society (basic income, free health care and post-secondary education), but equality doesn't always appeal to our perception of 'fairness'. And the benefits of equality (a happier, less stressful society) aren't something that we can necessarily quantify, especially when it's 'our' taxes that pay for it.

Anyhow, my point is, this trend will continue, because it's nothing more than a reaction to institutions already in place.

</comment><comment><USER19> I grew up in the kind of area that specializes in what this article is talking about. I had a lot of friends in high school who were forced into honors and AP classes by their parents. Who were forced to do anything and everything to set themselves up for college. Who would stay up til 1am on a Tuesday just to make sure they got all of their homework done and had studied properly. I can tell you that "helicopter" parenting has not ruined any children and it never will. What it's done is it's pushed children into schools where they don't belong. Meanwhile it's pushed a lot of smart kids out. What this dean has experienced isn't kids becoming less self-sufficient, but instead less self- sufficient kids getting into college because the kids who are pushed by their parents have a higher likelihood of getting in.

</comment><comment><USER20> The term "helicopter parent" is more than a generation old. Here are some examples:

1994 - "Helicopter parents" make excuses for their children, rescue them from the consequences of putting off their chores, ... - [https://books.google.com/books?id=kXkT2dXGjtYC&q=helicopter+...](https://books.google.com/books?id=kXkT2dXGjtYC&q=helicopter+parents&dq=helicopter+parents&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y)

1991 - "'Those helicopter parent of mine' ... Translation: a nosy grownup who is always hovering around" \- [https://books.google.com/books?id=AfQDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA6&dq=hel...](https://books.google.com/books?id=AfQDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA6&dq=helicopter+parents&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=helicopter%20parents&f=false)

Ahh, the Wikipedia entry traces the metaphor to the late 1960s - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_parent](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_parent) .

Of course _the underlying concept is even older_. The grousers of yore just used different phrases. Here are Google Book Search snippets predating 1970 for search "expect everything to be handed to them on a silver platter": [https://www.google.com/search?q=expect+everything+to+be+hand...](https://www.google.com/search?q=expect+everything+to+be+handed+to+them+on+a+silver+platter&biw=1382&bih=695&source=lnt&tbs=cdr%3A1%2Ccd_min%3A1%2F1%2F1900%2Ccd_max%3A1970&tbm=bks)

This includes from a 1960 PTA magazine:

> 'I've known a lot of kids who were treated like little heroes. Afterward, > they expected everything to be handed them on a silver platter— and it > wasn't. They couldn't adjust.' "Beyond any doubt, the boys in Williamsport > last week were treated as ...

A Boys' Life article from July 1937 at [https://books.google.com/books?id=agt7vyGWtXoC&pg=PA14&dq=ex...](https://books.google.com/books?id=agt7vyGWtXoC&pg=PA14&dq=expect+everything+to+be+handed+to+them+on+a+silver+platter&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=expect%20everything%20to%20be%20handed%20to%20them%20on%20a%20silver%20platter&f=false)

> We want to teach them not just to sit back and expect things to be handed to > them on a silver platter but with confidence, based on their training, to go > out and get what they want. We need to stiffen a moral flabbiness that has > been affecting our youth.

Life Magazine, March 29, 1949 at [https://books.google.com/books?id=b00EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA6&dq=exp...](https://books.google.com/books?id=b00EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA6&dq=expect+everything+to+be+handed+to+them+on+a+silver+platter&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=expect%20everything%20to%20be%20handed%20to%20them%20on%20a%20silver%20platter&f=false) :

> We have reared a bunch of weaklings in our young marrieds of today. Too much > has been handed to them on a silver platter without their having had to work > for it, and they lack the intestinal fortitude to meet life as a challenge.

</comment><comment><USER21> It seems a bit rich for the Dean of an educational institution that demanded, during her tenure and after, the sort of qualifications and CVs that encourage this behaviour to protest it. If you don't want it around, stop providing the incentive for it.

<comment><USER22> Of course it's not quite so binary. The dean wants a strong applicant pool as well as to dissuade helicopter parenting. I don't believe it's a contradictory stance she's taking.

<comment><USER23> if "strong" applicant is defined by things that are not possible unless they have an helicopter parent it is fairly binary...

What teen would be able to have the breadth and variety of experiences that seem to be required nowadays to stand out in a university application unless they have a set of parents that make them possible?

<comment><USER24> A very small number of teens do, which is fine with them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> As a parent of 3 boys, the biggest challenge today are personal electronics. Every parent I know has immense challenges setting guidelines on screen time. In this new tablet/smartphone era we are really in new and unfamiliar territory. Yes, we had our nintendos and our handhelds. Yes we had tv. No we didn't have networked devices in our pockets and incredibly addictive games like clash of clans, etc.

I don't know what it all means - I just know it's a big factor of discontent in most families I see.

Helicoptering of course has it's issues - but I think it's secondary to this new tidal wave of screen time.

</comment><comment><USER26> "Lythcott-Haims said many parents ask how they can unilaterally deescalate in what feels like a college-admissions arms race. How can they relax about getting their child into Harvard if every other parent is going full speed ahead?"

Uh, I think there are other schools ... and by the way they all use the same textbooks. Maybe the problem is American credentialism?

</comment><comment><USER27> Perhaps obviously I resonant with her message, not letting your kids stand on their own, gives them weak legs. But as a parent I am viscerally aware of how hard it is to watch your child make bad choices.

From the parents perspective looking backwards through time they "see" how something today will have huge repurcussions later. Nobody can stand by and watch their child turn down a dark alley filled with hazards.

So what to do? Find ways to teach your kids failure is the step toward success early in life. Let them work out things for themselves, talk with them about how they went about it. And most importantly _start early._ As kids get older their ability to completely screw up their life goes up exponentially.

I don't think anyone who is not a parent can internalize how hard it is to do.

<comment><USER28> > _From the parents perspective looking backwards through time they "see" how > something today will have huge repurcussions later. Nobody can stand by and > watch their child turn down a dark alley filled with hazards._

> _As kids get older their ability to completely screw up their life goes up > exponentially._

If one reconciles those two points one can see that a lot of what parents obsess about is without any real consequences. An example of utterly irrelevant worry is breaking an arm as a kid - it will hurt for a while, but you'll be fine. Nothing one can't recover from. As you note, it's important to let a kid fail and learn from that failure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I know at least one recent graduate of Stanford University who is an exception to this generalization. He is a childhood friend of my oldest son's, and graduated with Stanford class of 2013. If the general observation at Stanford is that Stanford students are highly dependent on their parents and unable to take care of themselves (as it may be, for all I know), then all I can say is that Stanford has an unusual intake of admitted students. For information on "a generation of children," I'd ask college officials at community colleges and military officers who deal with new recruits, as well as big employers of first-time employees. (What employer employs a lot of first-time members of the labor force these days? McDonald's? Some other kind of employer?).

This article sparked a lot of discussion among my friends on Facebook, where I shared it after reading the article from the submission here. A friend there commented, "I am so tired of colleges and universities whining about the students _they chose_ to admit. Maybe they need to take a look at their admissions policies." Yes, I think college admission officers, especially at the most selective colleges, have to grow up and take their own responsibility for the incentives that their admission requirements set up. I note as a teacher at a private school that students today can certainly have issues of overdependence on others as they face life challenges. That has probably existed in all previous generations of students. The way to change the incentives, of course, is for admission officers to figure out reliable signals of life independence as they decide whom to admit. Parents will get that message loud and clear if admission officers figure out the reliable signals. Meanwhile, it is always permitted for parents (although sometimes difficult for parents to achieve) to encourage young people to develop self- reliance and independence as they grow up. That is what I have attempted to do as I homeschooled my four children, two of whom are now quite self-reliant adults, and two of whom are now very responsible adolescents who are well regarded by other adults who know them.

</comment><comment><USER30> Just went through the whole application & admissions process with my older daughter. It was horrible. It's a mess. It's sinister in the way it affected our family.

Pursuing a high school diploma should start with an exploration of:

\- "What am I good at, really?"

\- "What do I love, really?"

\- "What matters to me, really?"

But what we saw all through high school was simply:

\- "What can I do today that will improve my chances of getting into Harvard?"

Humans are prone to wanting the wrong things, and especially so when misperceptions lead us to believe they are the right things. I don't know how to ultimately fix the college-chasing-helicopter-parenting-test-prepping- personality-skewing of today's admissions process, but I've started by reinforcing to my younger daughter that what matters is her, not the the university she goes to.

</comment><comment><USER31> I don't know if this is more about helicopter parenting, as some of the comments might suggest, but coddling kids, and keeping them away from anything which might make them feel bad, uncomfortable, etc. I feel like universities are removing discourse and uncomfortable topics to the detriment of students. College should not be daycare, where everything is padded, safe, and you're protected from anything which might make you uncomfortable. It should be the place where you face those uncomfortable topics, ideas, and people, so you can learn to deal with it in the real world...

</comment><comment><USER32> While it is easy to mock helicopter parents, it also dawns on me that there are literally twice the number of kids today competing for the same placements first in school and then jobs as say 20 years ago.

</comment><comment><USER33> I would like to see objective numbers. I know it feels good to think that individuals who make it into Ivy League because of helicopter parents are somehow undeserving or damaged or whatever.

But I am pretty sure that getting into an Ivy League leads to statistically better live time earnings and more career success (in part because of the connections.)

I would like to see some objective numbers rather than a story that resonates because it jives with how we want to feel about those with success.

</comment><comment><USER34> I agreed with most of Dean Lythcott-Haims' ideas except the following one:

> perhaps top-tier schools could agree to limit the number of such schools > that each student may apply to, she said.

This would put financial aid candidates at a disadvantage, limiting any given HS senior's ability to collect scholarship offers and use them as leverage in getting the best possible deal at the best school they get into.

</comment><comment><USER35> I dunno. Whilst I don't endorse the idea of helicopter parenting I think it is hard to judge how it affects kids. Helicopter parenting could have been fatal for some one like Richard Branson. But most people are not Richard Branson. That kid who is going to be a middle manager will have a hard time competing with his fellow students when there is no parent helping him to the same extend as other parents do help their kids That is, s/he has to work harder as everyone else. Up to a degree that might be considered character building but at one point we might have syllabi that are involuntarily designed for students with helicopter parents so that grades are more normally distributed again. The student who is on his/her own will note make it.

</comment><comment><USER36> My wife and I just had our first baby and were having a similar discussion, re letting our kid fail to learn to succeed and not being helicopters.

Historically speaking, most of the really successful people now aren't successful because they went to an Ivy League school (though maybe those connections help), they succeed because they TRY despite the chance of failure and learn from the failures (and smaller mistakes) to not repeat them.

</comment><comment><USER37> So how many students get into Stanford with the attestation that their parent's didn't helicopter parent them? I challenge every student to put as their first sentence on their essays, "I am not the product of helicopter parenting." followed by a list of all their accomplishments, goals, and dreams and see if it gets them into $top_school.

</comment><comment><USER38> The criteria for entering top universities causes this behavior, just do like [citation needed] proposed: set a public set of pass/fail requirements for admissions, then do a lottery from the candidate pool that passed the criteria.

</comment><comment><USER39> I first heard complaints about 'helicopter parents' a full twenty years ago.

</comment><comment><USER40> Parents doing their best to help their children, thinking if they didn't work so hard to help their children end up being criticized for being good parents. Got it.

</comment><comment><USER41> In many cases failure to helicopter parent is a crime. If a minor under, say, 14 or 15 is caught without an adult their parents can be cited for neglect.

</comment><comment><USER42> This ia a bit like making sure you don't get sick until your 20s and not letting your immune system develop robust responses to disease agents.

</comment><comment><USER43> A self-correcting problem, since the next generation of kids will be left to fend for themselves by their helpless, helicoptered parents. :)

<comment><USER10> Yeah, there was a time when parents didn't even necessarily default to liking their children. Children were just additional labor for the family business, not the parent's hopes and dreams and failed aspirations and regrets walking around outside their body.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> please don't post these asinine articles here. there is not even an attempt to furnish data to back up any of its claims, including: (a) are parents today more involved in student's lives? where's the data besides anecdotal? (b) are children today less prepared for life? where's the data? and (c) are these causal?

<comment><AUTHOR> > please don't post these asinine articles here

HN's guidelines state _Please don 't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think a story is spam or off- topic, flag it by clicking on its "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.)_ [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> So I fit right between Generation X and Y, depending on which timeframe reference used. I mention this as context because it feels as though I've had a first-hand view of public and private education trends. Also, a chance to see how the parents of friends and other students behaved.

Is there some logic and basis for this person's perspective? Yeah, I'm sure there are plenty of anecdotes from her career - but I also categorize Stanford as an outlier of access. As in, to get in typically (but not always) entails much parental investment and, well, access to resources. Could a person who worked at a troubled youth center tell stories of a lack of parental involvement or outright neglect? Probably.

Both are significant issues regarding the health and future of society in the US: each group needs to find a place in the working world. If neither is prepared, then what will happen to the traditional relationship between employer and employee? Can new hires adapt, or will they commit career suicide?

To me, "helicopter parenting" is an indicator of the selfishness that pervades a select cohort of parents. Successful. Relatively affluent. A sense of entitlement that comes from not having to do without as a baseline, and furthermore, is used to being able to bend the will of those with less power. How did I come up with this perspective? I've worked for them.

This cohort is full of Senior Vice Presidents and Managing Directors. They work for "important companies" doing "important things" and therefore feel they are, well, quite important! Even when I was in charge of projects, their projects and in turn them, I was frequently rebuffed, ignored, or otherwise minimized by certain personalities. Those who had a different mentality? Gracious, collaborative, and, no lie, would sometimes send thank-you notes in gratitude. For many years, the self-centered outlook has been rewarded, and framing it as such in a child development process is consistent with the behavior noted in the article.

It's one thing to have high standards. It's another thing to be so afraid of failure or short-comings that the worry gets manifested in mental health issues. Looking good on paper is actually quite easy to do with the right means. Becoming a well-rounded individual with hobbies and stories of learning from life by working, getting perspective, and occasionally screwing up - hopefully not on the scale of jail - isn't easily quantified in a "how to raise a kid in the modern US" book...cough _Tiger Mom_ cough...there's no manual except the one each family writes for themselves. That might sound wishy-washy, but it's a reasonable outlook when considering the haves, the have nots, and those who "overcome" their environment, whether over-interested or completely disinterested upbringings.

</comment><comment><USER46> As someone who went to a top ranked school in Engineering , I have an interesting anecdote that reveals perhaps a disturbing trend my friends and I have noticed in these engineering schools as we talk to more and more peers about it, which I think is important because this issue impacts more areas than just how these kids do in college, it effects every area of their life.

Me and some of my other female Engineering friends, just got out of long term relationships with boys we went to college with in Engineering, and while anecdotally its a coincidence that in this case I'm speaking from the perspective of three females (because the genders could be reversed with potentially the same problems), after much discussion we've realized the biggest issue with our exes is that their mothers practically ran their lives, even at the age of ...25.

Two of us came from a poor background with uneducated parents, so getting into a good college was completely of my own motivation and that characteristic of mine continued to play out and earn myself a role of success in life, and hers as well. The other had a mother that came from a very poor background with uneducated parents but paid her way through college and become a high end Executive on Wallstreet, and pushed her daughter to have the same ambition she did.

All three of our ex boyfriends however came from multigenerational inherited affluent wealth with stories about their grandparents creating legacies at fancy boarding schools and their parents played a role in everything they did. While this did print them a resume to get into a good college (and they were also smart and did actually perform well in school but that's ALL they had to do, was show up to classes chosen for them and do well). Once they got there, academically they were unmotivated and did poorly in classes while playing video games. When they graduated all three of them had "no idea" what they wanted to do post college. They all got ok jobs making entry level salaries but have sat in those positions for going on 5 years, miserable.

Meanwhile the three of us females were, in college: doing graduate research, taking grad classes, working part time jobs and had both started, taught ourselves investing etc etc. and now going on 5 years post college we are all age 26: one is the director of Marketing for a top ranked Bank, One of the cofounder of a trending tech startup, and I work in Engineering for a nonprofit in energy resources setting precedents in the Supreme court and free market economics for challenging resource monopolies and making energy resources more competitive, and all have surpassed our ex boyfriends salaries years ago....

All three of us one night discovered that not only had we all done our boyfriends resumes in college and updated them since college, all three of them asked us to do it for them, because their parents were sick of doing them as they had created them for their college admissions as well. Hmm...interesting...

Our exes were sitting at home in dead end jobs they admittedly hated, but couldn't stop playing Halo to update their resume unless their mothers called them and told them to do so, or their dads offered to look around for an opening in their respective companies. It boggles our mind but more importantly..

this same lackadaisical "wait for somebody else to swoop in and solve this problem for me" attitude became a problem in our interpersonal relationships. All of them had a hard time expressing their emotions or even being in touch with them, or knowing what they wanted or even verbalizing their own perceptions of problems because all of those things? someone had been doing that for them their whole lives.

This left all of usfrustrated with emotionally disconnected exes sitting at home not even knowing how to work on their own problems, much less adequately address issues in a relationship that involves two independent humans. All three of them kept running back to their estate to take time "off" and pout whenever a problem occurred at work or personally and hide from their problems while their mothers doted on them.

It also caused us to decrease our sympathy for them over time because they had everything handed to them yet still had excuses about why they hated their jobs and life so much. But we came from a world where excuses were not a luxury we had if we wanted not even a successful life but an even slightly comfortable one.

Meanwhile, we are traveling the world, doing well in our careers and also trying to figure out how to verbalize their perspective and then ask them if what we said was what they were feeling. Like, we had to present multiple choice options for them because they had no voice of their own.

Needless to say, these relationships did not work out. Everyone has issues and we were willing to admit to our own and take constructive feedback, but there was no constructive feedback, because they had never had to do that in their lives.

The most heartbreaking part was, in their careers and in their personal lives, they wanted a good career and they didn't want us to leave them, but they had burned their bridges and were left clueless on how to go about to their next phase of life. It was sad but we did not have time to raise children as 25 yr old females busting our tails in the tech environment. There's a reason we don't have kids right now, because we don't have time.

We each loved them dearly but we needed emotional equality and people who supported our ambitions and also had their own.

I'm not sure if these issues were also paired to be more likely outcomes with their personality types, or what the true root cause is, as I'm an Engineer, not a psychologist, but being able to talk to someone else going through the same thing, we saw some eerily similiar trends, and it always related back to their parents effectively babying them in areas of their life, that were embarassing from the perspective of highly independent and motivated people we had to be to effectively reach the same socioeconomic status they were born into.

Moral of the story: While having an Engineer Degree is important for Engineering (but not so much coding if at all)

the MORE important factors in success are 1\. Knowing what you want and going after it

2\. Being self motivated

3\. Being able to clearly communicate your position whether its emotions, needs, or negociating a raise or why you feel you are up for the challenge of a new job position, etc

4\. independent ability to not only a. identify b. define, but c. solve problems on your own

Sorry helicoptor parents but your missing the point. As someone else said earlier (whom I completely disagree with) he said "helicoptor parenting is working, get them into stanford and then they have the rest of their lives to fail"

woops, college is not the ends to a means, its a means to an end and if the means is handed to them, then they will not be able to fish in the real world by themselves. Teach them how to fish.

</comment><comment><USER47> Classic PR.

<comment><USER48> PR for what/who?

<comment><USER47> "Lythcott-Haims argues in her book "How to Raise an Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kid for Success.""

Here are some similar articles in suitably similar publications:

[http://time.com/3910020/the-over-parenting-trap-how-to- avoid...](http://time.com/3910020/the-over-parenting-trap-how-to-avoid- checklisted-childhoods-and-raise-adults/)

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/julie- lythcotthaims/helicopter...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/julie- lythcotthaims/helicopter-parenting-is-a-trap_b_7586656.html)

[http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/21/books/review/how-to- raise-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/21/books/review/how-to-raise-an- adult-by-julie-lythcott-haims.html)

[http://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/books/ct-prj-how- to...](http://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/books/ct-prj-how-to-raise-an- adult-julie-lythcott-haims-20150611-story.html)

It reads like PR, focusing on one author and their opinion (expressed in a recently released book) rather than a spectrum of writers / researchers. This is unfortunate given the historical references to 'helicopter parenting' and other writing that has covered the issue.

I'm not saying it wasn't an informative and interesting read, on the contrary, it was. I was merely pointing out the PR nature of the article.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are the next big niche products right now ? - <AUTHOR> What is the next Facebook, next Bitcoin, next Instagram, next Google...etc. In short, what are the next niche products right now. <comment><USER2> For a product to become huge it has to be general and appeal to many users, not niche. If someone knew what the next huge product opportunity was going to be, why would they tell you instead of pursuing it themselves?</comment>


The business case for shipping more often - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/gavincampbell/the-business-case-for-shipping-more-often-ccd <comment><USER2> This entire article is an idea Joel Spolsky wrote about five years ago: [https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2012/07/09/software- inventory...](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2012/07/09/software-inventory/)</comment>


What One Man Learned When He Treated His Autism Symptoms with Shrooms - <AUTHOR> https://tonic.vice.com/en_us/article/pa58xy/what-one-man-learned-when-he-treated-his-autism-symptoms-with-shrooms <comment><USER2> I can sort of relate to this, im autistic and i have a habit of picking up an interest and becoming obsessed with it for a while, at one point it was psychoactive chemicals that became such an obsession, due to this i spent a good while researching and then personally testing out a staggering number of chemicals.

One thing i did notice was that in almost all cases chemicals seemed to have a different effect on me than they did on others, not in a huge way but certainly enough to be notable. The only one to actually benefit me life wise was amphetamine which made a big difference to my life but i also have ADD which explains that

i think it would be quite interesting to see a comparative study of the effects of psychoactives on autistic people vs neurotypical (god i hate that word) people, obviously itll never happen but itd be interesting</comment>