Unemployed = 21st century draft horse? - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2010/08/08/unemployed-21st-century-draft-horse/ <comment><USER2> Let us assume, for a moment, that Ray Kurzweil's thesis of accelerating returns is correct. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerating_change#Kurzweil_an...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerating_change#Kurzweil_and_The_Law_of_Accelerating_Returns)

It therefore follows that as the pace of change increases, the length of time before an education becomes out of date or stale decreases. There is some percentage of the population today who would rather be poor than retrain. It stands to reason that as the rate of change increases, that percentage of the population will also increase.

Therefore, we as a society have two choices. 1) Let people be poor. 2) Pay for them to live like human beings not because they deserve it, but because they are alive. This is the crux of the choice. Will the haves (people with relevant education, who are disproportionately represented here of HN) give some of what they have to the have-nots just because they are human?

<comment><USER3> I've seen economists mulling over your second point a little lately - it's not a new concept though, it's called "basic income": <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income>

A fictional basic income exists in Star Trek TNG in relation to Federation credits. This is achievable because the Star Trek TNG universe is post- scarcity but credits are used to ration non-replicable goods.

<comment><USER4> This is a pretty interesting idea. I actually saw it discussed in the Norwegian popular financial magazine Your Money (Dine Penger) last year. In this instance, the relevant point was that Norway already has a sort of de facto basic income system. It's called "uførepensjon" (a rough translation would be "pension for those unfit to work"). It consists of approximately 23,000 pre-tax US dollars per year, and it's where you end up if you are sick, disabled or otherwise unable to acquire a decent job over a period of a few years; basically if you have received unemployment benefits for years and all attempts by the bureucratic system to get you back into the workforce have failed.

Approximately 7% of all Norwegians currently receive these payments. The author of the article in question suggested a system of gradual negative taxation for very low wages, so if you earn less than 23000 USD per year at your current job, the missing part will be paid to you by the government. The line of reasoning is that most people will not be happy without more money than this, and hence will work normally.

I'm not sure if even Norway is rich enough to support a system like this on a full scale, and taxation in the US is _definitely_ not harsh enough to do it, even with the amount adjusted to GDP per capita. But it would be nice if we someday ended up rich enough that extreme poverty could be eliminated in this way. None of the people covered by this system have to starve, and all health payments are also handled through the official system.

<comment><USER5> "taxation in the US is _definitely_ not harsh enough"

It seems to me that the US spends 46.5% of all money spend world wide collectively by all nations on military spending. China, France, UK, Russia, and then next 10 biggest spending countries spend less than the US when they are all added together.

In addition the US imprisons more of its population than any other country in the world, including totalitarian police states, and a much greater proportion than any modern western nation.

In addition, the US spends a fortune on education and gets very poor outcomes.

In addition, the US spends far more per capita on health care than any other country in the world and has far worse outcomes than most countries, with infant mortality now falling behind many third world nations, and the interesting reality that the life expectancy of an indigenous Lakota indian man living in South Dakota receiving free unlimited federal health care is now 44 years. This is lower than 187 out of 195 of the nations in the world and is only higher than nations which are afflicted with BOTH massive civil war AND endemic AIDS, Malaria and Cholera.

Surely there is a way to pay for a basic living standard for the unskilled without raising taxes.

<comment><USER6> "It seems to me that the US spends 46.5% of all money spend world wide collectively by all nations on military spending."

Which is probably the real reason that we're in such debt -- it should be blindingly obvious to the entire world that there's no longer any valid reason to dump such an astronomically large amount of money into armed forces that we clearly don't need. Unfortunately, the magnitude of that spending is probably related to the fact that a sizable chunk of it winds up in congressional (etc) pockets, and has nothing to do with the actual military itself.

"In addition, the US spends a fortune on education and gets very poor outcomes."

Which agrees with the author's assertion that high school graduates are less skilled now than their predecessors, a trend that I've been seeing as well.

"In addition, the US spends far more per capita on health care than any other country in the world and has far worse outcomes than most countries,"

This is probably a combination of excessive organizational bloat and decreasing quality of the medical staff themselves. (The stories a close friend of mine told me about his medical school compatriots were nauseating... these people obviously didn't understand a single bit of the chemistry that they studied in college, and it became blindingly obvious that neither did most of the biochemistry professors at Johns Hopkins of all places.)

We're heading into a downward spiral, since these are the people who will be taking over and running the show as well as "mentoring" the next generation of educational victims.

It's a breakable spiral, but it won't happen unless a lot of people get a clue and recognize what's happening. Sadly most of them have been culturally conditioned to be automata, and avoid thinking for themselves, which is going to make this tailspin hard to break out of.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> We live in a time where the workforce is going to have to be retrained 3 or 4 times in their lifetimes. That means that 4-year universities wouldn't work even if they were functioning correctly, which they aren't.

There's a larger question of whether this workforce can be trained that many times or not. I don't think we have a choice, so I'd rather just go out and fix the problem instead of ruminating over it. We have a very nasty tendency to ruminate and self-flagellate over structural problems instead of just going out and fixing them.

I _do_ know that we can't use the same institutions, programs, and policies that got us into this to get us out, and I know that there is a huge population that is going to resist the necessary change.

(and btw, "fixing the problem" may not involve retraining. Hell, we might end up personally outsourcing each of our lives to several generations of folks in developing countries and picking up a profit on the difference in standards of living over the next 50 years while the average skill level in the world equalizes. Lots of possible solutions, and I'm not sure I would define the problem as simply as an obsolete workforce)

<comment><USER8> > question of whether this workforce can be trained that many times

You're missing the point that roughly 25% of the population can't be trained to a modern skill in the first place. They simply aren't smart enough. A fifth of people are "functionally" illiterate. It's a real stretch to blame that on training/schooling rather than dim wits.

Fifty years ago these people could earn a decent living tightening nuts on an assembly line or picking fruit. Now they're just borderline useless as we have machines to do most of that sort of work. It takes 100 people to build a sky scraper, whereas there used to be an army of men running around with wheel barrows.

The whole point of the article and the referenced book, "A Farewell to Alms", is that people have different genetic and cultural potentials in a modern industrialized society. The book documents how the English gene pool changed (eugenic forces) leading up to the industrial revolution. It argues that the industrial revolution happened in England because the English people had become smart and disciplined enough to work in factories. English industrialists in the 1800s kept on trying to take factories to cheap third world labor, and over and over it failed because the local population couldn't hack it. Productivity was too low. It was not a matter of training.

The point here is that we are dealing with uncomfortable issues that transcend something like a "no child left behind" act. A large fraction of humanity may simply be useless to modern commerce.

<comment><USER9> Note that in addition to the functional illiterates there are a lot of people who can read basic material (eg "My dog Spot"), but who in daily life regularly run into material that they are unable to understand (like newspapers, or the instructions on medicine bottles).

I would not be surprised if the fraction of people with basic competency at reading and wrong is under 50%.

<comment><USER10> Functional literacy is about the ability to function, i.e. fill in tax forms.

In Sweden functional literacy is in the high 90% range.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> >Or we can rephrase the entire posting as "How comfortable would you feel working at your present job alongside someone whom you would rate as among the least competent 25 percent from your high school?"

Middle management are also part of the mass of unemployed.

</comment><comment><USER12> From the tone of the article it sounds like the government has made it too risky and expensive to hire unskilled employees(combination of lawsuits, expenses, higher minimum wage and taxes).

Isn't this the group of people that the government is supposed to be protecting?

<comment><USER13> the interesting bit here is that most of those things are really only risky for entities who have money; larger entities. You are going to have a pretty difficult time getting a lawyer to bring an employment lawsuit against, say, me- the problem is that I don't have enough money to make it worth the lawyer time.

(I mean, yeah, if you really have it in for me, you could pay the lawyer yourself, or try to make it a criminal matter (usually a /much/ higher bar) and take me down... but few self-interested lawyers would take the case for a cut of the winnings, simply because the winnings would be so small.)

and the problem of expensive mistakes is also mitigated; you can't make a mistake at a company that does worse than bankrupting the company and the owner personally; And, uh, I don't consider myself a low-skilled worker, but working for other people? I've made at least one mistake expensive enough to bankrupt my company and myself personally, had my company been liable. (the thing was, I didn't get fired... in fact, my review that year at that job was mildly positive and included a 4% raise. That was, apparently, a relatively minor mistake at that company? I mean, I felt pretty horrible about it, and took steps to prevent it from happening again, but there weren't the heavy consequences from above you'd expect from blowing many years of your salary.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think the future of work, then, has to be creation. It just can't get any more singular and essential than that. It's the work of ideation - a terrible biz-buzzword that means "creating ideas".

Not the type of namby-pamby aleatoric nonsense that people boozily tell you is a million-dollar idea that they thought of like "I thought of eBay before it was around" or the Hollywood pitch-type ideas like "it's a cross between Facebook and tumblr... wait for it... for book lovers."

I'm talking about, everyone basically becomes an entrepreneur, or at least is the equivalent of the starving artist, essentially singing for their meal. If necessity is the mother of invention, well then that's a relief because we're headed for some Needful Times.

Of course, _ALL_ of this is assuming that China or some developing country will always have an abundance of cheap labor, which is more quickly evaporating than we want to see. There is a reason why China's middle class just recently eclipsed the US in size, and it's not only because they have 5x the people. They are starting to take care of their own, and realizing their own labor's affordability. The rich here in America may not need us in the short-term, but Comparative Advantage doesn't work when the formerly disadvantaged country suddenly holds all the chips.

<comment><USER15> That is assuming we can't figure out how to make computers create on their own (which right now, does sound almost impossible). If at some point we figure it out, all humans become obsolete.

<comment><USER16> True - and what a fantastic boom to humanity that would be. Create a world in which we don't have scarcity but true abundance? Count me in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> In previous times, there was a liquidation event such as war which then made humans in whatever capacity scarce again.

<comment><USER18> I don't think you can call them "previous" just yet. It's entirely possible for the world to erupt into a ww3, simply due to hundreds of millions of seriously unemployed people. Arguably that was the reason for ww1 as well as huge number of people were made redundant in agriculture.

It's frightening to think about that.

<comment><USER19> It was also the reason for WW2. Germany put all those unemployed people to work on many national projects. Projects which were aimed at world domination.

<comment><USER20> All this was before unemployed people could spend 12 hours a day killing people in Call Of Duty 4, though. I think the availability of cheap distraction ( _interactive_ distraction at that) might have some effect here.

<comment><USER15> In most third world countries, unemployed don't have that one, or any other cheap distractions for that matter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm 'work-vacationing' in Brazil right now, and for some reason this is very much on my mind. Labor is very cheap here. Restaurants are heavily overstaffed by American standards, as are grocery stores and even hair parlors. I can't help but wonder what would happen here if cheap robotics existed. For most of the lower class here "retraining" probably isn't a possibility.

<comment><USER16> Why wouldn't retraining be a possibility in Brazil but be possible in the US.

<comment><USER21> The difference in education level between poor Brazilians and poor Americans is very large. Retraining requires a base to start with, and most poor Brazilians simply don't have that base.

I'm skeptical to some degree about the potential for retraining of Americans too, but I at least have some optimism there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Workers are replaced in industry by machines and computers <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1157018> and they move to services.

Services are funny things. If I clean up your place for 1 mln dollars and you cut my hair for 1 mln dollars then we raised GDP by 2 mln.

As technology progresses economy becomes more and more detached from reality. People manufacture insanely advanced items almost for free and produce most complex intellectual property literally for free and money more and more represents just back-rubbing and gambling.

</comment><comment><USER23> Time to embrace genetic engineering in humans.

<comment><USER24> It is the height of hubris to presume that genetic engineering can produce better results than billions of years of evolution. Tweak our genes to improve our abilities in one area and you'll end up with unintended problems in another area. Hypothetically, would you take a 20% improvement in intelligence if it came with a 50% risk of schizophrenia?

Almost all of the genetic engineering done so far has been targeted toward a single goal: improving the productivity of domesticated plants and animals for agriculture. And while it has been successful in increasing food production, it has also produced breeds / strains that that are incapable of surviving without humans. There is no free lunch in genetic engineering.

<comment><USER25> The 50% with the schizophrenia will die or be locked up, and the rest will be smarter. So as a whole the species will become better with each iteration. Evolutionary selection will still march on, the source of improvements (natural variation or bio=engineered) is irrelevant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Interesting article, but populist, not quite what would you expect from an article on Harvard.

As another person mentioned, people are not horses. A horse is a slave, people always have options, in the most drastic case, crime. It pays well for those with the intelligence I think but the risks are astronomical compared to a 9 to five job.

I think our society if it wishes to become more prosperous needs to realise two things. First, everyone has the potential to be smart at least at the level of the skills needed for many of today's jobs. Thus if someone does not have the skills of this century but that of the last century it is almost everyone's fault, that is the society, the institutions, the culture, but him. Unless of course he or she is biologically mentally inferior in which case it is just and decent to pay taxes to support them.

The second thing is that the Industrial Revolution has moved on to china. It no longer is here. We produce things, but things like software development, biotech, nanotech, high physics, a lot of research, innovative and new products. Not, TVs and cars and that sort of thing. We are so prosperous because we keep making things better and inventing things and finding things and of course because of trade. Once so it is, the automated reproduction, after a certain time shifts to the Industrial Countries.

So, in this economy, you need to use your brain a lot and be taught so since early childhood. It is no good that someone can just fail in school or get Ds, because that someone will probably be tomorrow's unemployed, well conventionally unemployed. Events might be so lucky for him as to stumble upon creating a business, or not so lucky as to stumble upon crime.

I think therefore that if we want to move forward in the most prosperous way it is advisable to not leave anyone behind especially when we have the ability to take everyone with us.

</comment><comment><USER27> While I agree with the premise and have often tried to discuss the need to look at the distribution of leisure that the technological revolution has brought upon us, the comparison to the horse is apt because :

> Best case: IT department spends $50,000 cleaning up; worst case: customer > lists, customer credit cards, and other private data are compromised, > costing millions of dollars.

Those millions of dollars are after the damn thing bolted and it's your own negligent fault for not doing a risk assessment and cutting corners on your IT system. As a no-doubt highly paid suit it's _your responsibility_ to think of these things before they happen. It's not like it never happened to anyone else before.</comment>


A Population-Specific HTR2B Stop Codon Predisposes to Severe Impulsivity - <AUTHOR> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3183507 <comment><USER2> I'm not sure what to take away from this:

"In the domain of complex disorders, sequencing revealed putatively functional alleles at a gene previously implicated by GWAS of Type 1 diabetes."

Does that mean that the same gene is potentially causal in type 1 diabetes as well as impulsivity?</comment>


Blackbird SR-71 Flight Manual (2010) - <AUTHOR> https://www.sr-71.org/blackbird/manual/ <comment><USER2> A comment[0] by ehnus[1] from last time this was submitted[2] said:

> _My favorite section is emergency procedures which contains gems like this:_

> _" If both the A and B hydraulic systems fail as indicated by illumination > of the A HYD and B HYD warning lights and confirmed by loss of A and B > hydraulic pressure and deteriorating control effectiveness:_

> _1\. Eject "_

</comment><comment>==

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1338777](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1338777)

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=ehnus](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=ehnus)

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1338504](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1338504)

<comment><USER3> I flew an L-39 with inoperative ejection rockets. The bailout procedure was:

1\. Roll inverted.

2\. Trim full nose down. (Down = skyward at this point.)

3\. Blow canopy.

4\. Fall out.

<comment><USER4> So... What do you suppose the chance is you would have hit the tail fin?

<comment><USER3> Less than the chance of the original emergency killing you!

That's what the full trim is for. It makes the aircraft pitch away once you let go of the stick.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> No Blackbird post is complete without a link to the Speed Check story:

[https://www.thesr71blackbird.com/Aircraft/Stories/speed- chec...](https://www.thesr71blackbird.com/Aircraft/Stories/speed-check)

 _It all had lasted for just moments, but in that short, memorable sprint across the southwest, the Navy had been flamed, all mortal airplanes on freq were forced to bow before the King of Speed, and more importantly, Walter and I had crossed the threshold of being a crew._

<comment><USER6> Executive summary:

Cessna: How fast.

Tower: 6

Beechcraft: How fast

Tower: 8

Hornet: Yo how fast bro

Tower: Eh, 30

Sled: mfw

Sled: How fast sir

Tower: Like 9000

Sled: More like 9001 amirite.

Tower: ayyyyy

Sled: ayyyyy

<comment><USER7> Yes, but the telling is well worth listening to, as are his longer speeches. Including this gem: Navy pilots: "What did YOU do today?" Sled pilots: "Nebraska in 4.5 minutes, which is the best way to do Nebraska."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I once got around two thirds through a certificate for flying ultralight planes. It sort of stopped making sense to me when we were practicing emergency landings over forest and I was told to aim for trees with thinner trunks.

This is sitting inside a cramped metal can with the engine in your lap and propeller in your face. There are so many ways to die in that situation that focusing on the diameter of tree trunks was just too much for me.

<comment><USER9> I would think you'd want a good clump of green tree canopy to hopefully take the impact "slowly" and stop the plane without the sudden smashing associated with crashing.

Such as:

[http://www.fox5ny.com/news/plane-stuck-in-tree- idaho](http://www.fox5ny.com/news/plane-stuck-in-tree-idaho)

<comment><USER10> Perhaps the smaller trees would be more likely to bend/snap, absorbing more energy

<comment><USER9> 1\. Scout out some good softwood.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Skunkworks [1] is a really great book by the designer of the propulsion system (and subsequently the first stealth airplane). I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to know how many drill bits you burn through trying to build a titanium airplane.

1- [https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/skunk-works_ben-r-rich_leo- jan...](https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/skunk-works_ben-r-rich_leo- janos/250049/)

<comment><USER12> I'd like to second that recommendation. The book certainly won't win any literature prizes, but it does tell a fascinating story and gives a glimpse into the "wild west" engineering culture that created the Blackbird.

<comment><USER13> Skunkworks _is_ a legend in aerospace, and rightly so. Shows what's possible if give brilliant people a common goal, some resources and leave them otherwise alone. The fact that the F-117 was developed in time and within budget says a lot. As usual nobody drew the right lessons from it.

I got my fingers on a report about the F-16 development from the eighties from the budget office. Funny to read it, especially the questioning of staggering spare part needs today when you know that Skunkworks "sourced" the F-117 material from the F-16 and F-15 programs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The maintenance manual is a fun read too. A lot of the repair procedures end with PTF.

That means "Pound to Fit" (with a hammer or mallet). The panels flexed so much that they would come back a different shape than they were manufactured and had to be hammered into place.

<comment><USER15> Why were instruments (instruments? or panels?) so flexible? Was ut to sustain altitude, pressure, G and speed?

<comment><USER16> If I recall correctly the plane was built to stretch at high speeds, so the panels were designed to be loose, and the plane would leak a lot of fuel until it reached optimal speeds.

<comment><USER17> Q: How do you know there's fuel in the Blackbird?

A: It's leaking.

<comment><USER13> Same goes for oil in old Land Rovers!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> There's a video walking you through the SR-71's cockpit which I found really interesting:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tj9UwKQKE3A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tj9UwKQKE3A)

<comment><USER19> 13m04s: "Some guys were getting bank angles up around 60 degrees of bank at mach 3 and it just, uh, that's not good. Come very very close to losing the airplane." [He then proceeds to talk about a lamp.]

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Thread needs a link to this great story about the sr71's slowest speed : [https://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/the-sr-71-blackbirds- most-...](https://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/the-sr-71-blackbirds-most- spectacular-flyover-was-also-1719654907)

</comment><comment><USER21> For some not so heavy reading for SR-71 enthusiasts, I highly recommend Brian Shul's book "Sled Driver". They are out of print now I believe, and I've seen them on eBay for about $3000 at one stage, but I think they are more generally available at reasonable prices now second hand. I was lucky enough to be given a copy as a gift by a friend a couple of decades ago.

Beautiful book with amazing pictures and stories by a long time SR-71 pilot. A lot of the 'urban legend' stories going around about the Blackbird come from that book.

"Skunk Works", as mentioned by other posters here is also a good read.

</comment><comment><USER22> Chart of speed vs altitude:

[https://www.sr-71.org/blackbird/manual/5/5-9.php](https://www.sr-71.org/blackbird/manual/5/5-9.php)

<comment><USER23> Does anyone know what the break in the Minimum Airspeed Restriction at Mach 1 is about?

<comment><USER24> Yes, Google for "Mcrit" or critical Mach number. It's the free stream airspeed at which any part of the airflow over the aircraft first becomes sonic. Usually the inner part of the wings near the root, the thickest section.

Airliners have the same but it happens below M1.0 because of the thicker wings. And it causes a much bigger change in drag and lift compared to an aircraft capable of super sonic flight, enough to make it impossible to take an airliner super sonic without losing longitudinal control and crashing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I once took a filmmaking class from Robert Mehnert who directed a documentary about the SR-71 at a time when its production was at risk of being discontinued. At first only a few hundred people in Congress saw it, but based on the size of the order for new planes, he called the highest-grossing opening weekend of all time. (I haven't been able to find the film online anywhere.)

<comment><USER26> I tried too, but since the documentary is simply called "SR-71 Blackbird", it makes it hard. The subtitle "To keep the peace they fly alone... unarmed... into the unknown" ist cool but yields one result: an auction of the movie poster [0]

In turn, the movie poster however let me to a reverence to the movie in the book "SR-71 revealed the inside story" by Richard H. Graham, Col. USAF (Ret).

0: [http://auctions.emovieposter.com/Bidding.taf?_function=detai...](http://auctions.emovieposter.com/Bidding.taf?_function=detail&Auction_uid1=5161625)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I liked

 __ _" Maximum altitude is 85,000 feet. Do not fly over 85,000 feet unless you have prior authorization"_ __

 __ _" No turns are allowed over 70,000 feet. Descend 2,000 feet prior to making any turns is recommended"_ __

<comment><USER28> "The ANS is an inertial navigation system employing a star tracker to eliminate gyro drift and to limit position error."

Not your run-of-the-mill airplane, that's for sure...

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Posting this here hoping that someone with more knowledge can enlighten me about this. After going down a bit of the rabbit hole, I see that the SR-71's first flight was in 1964. It has held the record for fastest air-breathing manned aircraft[0] since 1976. What is the reason that given all of the technological advances that record hasn't been broken?

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_airspeed_record](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_airspeed_record)

<comment><USER30> No one has answered why; only answers have been "no marketable product".

There are several technical reasons why, none of which have been been subject to any technological advances in half a century.

1) There's a buffer factor where burning fuel adds a thousand degrees (or whatever) to temp of the air in the engine and steel / titanium / classified will melt several hundreds of degrees above that. Most all jet engines can only work with subsonic airflow. Supersonic aircraft use exotic inlet designs that are inefficient but can convert fast air into very hot compressed air. Somewhere around mach 2 to mach 4 the inlet air temp plus the heat of burning fuel will melt any metal turbine blade. You can pay a lot of money to get a couple mach numbers but fundamentally cheap steel gets you mach 2 and price is no object aerospace material tops out in the mid mach 3 range. True lab experimental materials might survive mach 4 temps, maybe. You just can't get a usable thrust to weight ratio inlet design that works above mach 4 or so.

2) Second aerodynamic problem is if you define "fly" as a lift to drag ratio better than a lawn dart, optimizing wing sweep etc for mach 3+ means its a truly awful performer below 5000 feet or so. Its hard to make an aircraft that actually "flies" above mach 4. Space shuttle L/D ratio was around or below 1:1. Essentially things flying thru the air above mach 4 don't fly in the sense of wings producing lift, they're ballistic trajectory like a missile or bullet, don't bother slapping wings on them.

None of the above can be solved with faster computer cycles. Titanium still melts at the same temp, etc.

<comment><USER31> There are relatively simple ramjets that fly at around Mach 4 speeds. They are unmanned and are accelerated to speed by solid rockets. Probably the ramjet can't even start below Mach 1 or so.

Designing an air breathing propulsion system for a wide speed range is difficult.

Rockets are much easier after a certain point. McDonnell Douglas and Paul Czysz had interesting projects. If you want manned reconnaissance, a Mach 6 air launched liquid rocket powered lifting body would probably be the next logical step from the Blackbird and would not even be super hard. With rockets you don't have the inlet problem at all and they have excellent thrust to weight ratio.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I remember being reported that SR-71 missile evasion procedure was simply to "accelerate and outpace". But I cannot find it in the manual :( !

<comment><USER33> This is what you are looking for: [http://www.onceagreenberet.com/wp- content/uploads/2008/02/sr...](http://www.onceagreenberet.com/wp- content/uploads/2008/02/sr71.html)

<comment><USER34> To think of it - I might have heard these two pass by. Not on that flight, but I lived with my parents in northern germany, not far from the danish border, and en route from the north to the baltic sea and on to russia. I often heard the badam, accompanied by a creak of the wooden roof.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> This is a remarkably slow website for such a fast plane.

<comment><USER36> Appears to be crushed under the load of the flight enthusiasts found on HN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Is content of this site a subject of ITAR restrictions?

<comment><USER38> No, everything about the aircraft is obsolete which is why no other country has attempted to develop anything similar. The J58's are really dated, though most of the thrust is generated by the inlets when supersonic.

<comment><USER39> > most of the thrust is generated by the inlets when supersonic

I've often heard this (also about the bypass in Concorde's engines), but I've never heard a clear explanation about how some element of an engine which doesn't involve burning fuel can generate thrust. Can anyone explain it?

<comment><USER40> If I remember correctly, in the book Skunkworks they explain that it would increase the air pressure. The analogy made was that it was similar to putting a finger on a garden hose to partially block it, thus increasing the water pressure.

Obviously there must be some complex physics going on but that was the gist of it.

Probably someone with more knowledge can confirm or correct me :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I recently saw the one exhibited in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, close to IAD airport: [https://airandspace.si.edu/udvar-hazy- center](https://airandspace.si.edu/udvar-hazy-center)

It got there from LA, and on it's way set 4 speed records: [https://airandspace.si.edu/udvar-hazy- center](https://airandspace.si.edu/udvar-hazy-center)

</comment><comment><USER42> Just to throw my one cent in on these matters.

[http://www.avialogs.com/index.php/en/aircraft/usa/northameri...](http://www.avialogs.com/index.php/en/aircraft/usa/northamericanaviation/xb-70/to-1b-70xa-1-interim- flight-manual-xb-70a.html)

</comment><comment><USER43> Is there a single page PDF?

<comment><USER44> I've created a pdf based on the available scans I could find on the site.

Added blank pages according to the a, b, and c pages. Added table of contents for the major sections. Also tried to do some ocr on it, it seems good enough for searching at least.

[https://bayfiles.com/N9m6nbtfnc/SR-71_Blackbird_Flight_Manua...](https://bayfiles.com/N9m6nbtfnc/SR-71_Blackbird_Flight_Manual_sr-71.org_ocrmypdf_pdf)

<comment><USER28> I hate to sound like a choosy beggar, but any chance of putting it on a less- skeevy download site?

How about a Dropbox link?

<comment><USER44> Sure thing: [https://www.dropbox.com/s/i5eucyo7gm67bv6/SR-71%20Blackbird%...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/i5eucyo7gm67bv6/SR-71%20Blackbird%20Flight%20Manual%20%28sr-71.org%29%20ocrmypdf.pdf?dl=1)

I don't really use dropbox any more so bayfiles was just the first thing that came to my mind, it's better than most free file hosting sites (no waiting and no excessive throttling)

<comment><USER28> Awesome, thanks! That worked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> In 1990/91 I was stationed at a base that once was a home for the SR-71. By the time I got there, though, they'd been retired.

Some of the spoken-word mythology that was shared with me by some of the AF elders:

* Each flight cost about $1M

* The SR-71 was so loud and created such massive sound waves, the crew chiefs had to be really far away from the ship when talking to the pilots inside so that their internal organs wouldn't be damaged...

* The engine cowling of the Blackbird would get so hot that the metal would be slightly transparent, where you could see moving parts _inside_ the engine.

* All of the pilots wore astronaut suits.

Worth noting all the above could be entirely false. But it made a big impression on me.

<comment><USER46> Point 3 goes against normal behavior of hot metals, which emit infrared or visible light as they get hotter. It's called black-body radiation, and it's why iron and steel glow in a blacksmith forge.

The "moving parts" may be due to heat waves moving through the air (see also: mirage at a distance)

<comment><USER47> >Point 3 goes against normal behavior of hot metals, which emit infrared or visible light as they get hotter.

You're right. People refer to it as 'transparent' because it begins to glow the same color as the jet plume under afterburner use.

[https://gizmodo.com/this-is-an-image-of-the-very-last- test-o...](https://gizmodo.com/this-is-an-image-of-the-very-last-test-of-the- pratt-w-1484943138)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> It is safe to travel to Georgia after having read and downloaded this?

</comment><comment><USER49> Site's crashed apparently, does anyone have a mirror or a PDF?

</comment><comment><USER50> This is one of the reasons I love Hacker News

</comment><comment><USER51> What's the procedure for runaway trim?

</comment><comment><USER52> This thread is lacking the Blackbird ground speed check. [https://oppositelock.kinja.com/favorite- sr-71-story-10791270...](https://oppositelock.kinja.com/favorite- sr-71-story-1079127041?_gl=1*12qhykb*_ga*YW1wLUR6RjBSdkdUWVJicnBDOFo3UHdrQkx6bUxnclZfX3plYUdNaVZXS0MwTE5HeVRFSm9ISlItX0V3ZV9DbmthOU4).</comment>


Illustrated guide to a Ph.D - <AUTHOR> http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/

<comment><USER2> Dup:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1588727> <\- Many many comments

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1594021> <\- Blatant steal</comment>


Y Combinator Offices Rendered In 3-D With MatterPort Camera (YC W12) - <AUTHOR> http://vimeo.com/39083029

<comment><USER2> This is actually pretty cool technology. Check out this video: <http://vimeo.com/39027193> I am glad someone is finally turning this into a product. I am wondering if it's also easy to do this on a smaller scale. Say I could scan just a chair, a car or a teapot.

<comment><AUTHOR> Seems like sonar used by bats. Or a submarine. It would be interesting to see somebody hook up a MatterPort camera to a small remote control car and drive it through a cave or a pyramid.</comment></comment>


What the Obama Presidency Will Mean For Small Businesses - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/independentstreet/2008/11/05/what-the-obama-presidency-will-mean-for-small-businesses/

<comment><USER2> where is the math that shows that raising taxes on the wealthy will actually result in increased tax revenue?</comment>


New York, Gay Marriage and The Bible - <AUTHOR>

I have a very religious acquaintance that lives in New York.  Knowing my libertarian political stance and my extensive knowledge of the Bible he asked for my opinion on the recent decision in New York to allow Gay Marriage.  Below is the reply I sent him.  I thought I'd share it here because I think a lot of the non-religious people who frequent HN will get into a debate about this at some point in the next few weeks.  I've found most HN type people tend to argue against religion in these debates which is ineffective.  You aren't going to convince a Christian to stop being Christian by telling him you think the Bible is unrealistic.  So I post this here in the hopes of giving you some arguments that would actually hold weight with a religious person.
-----
The first thing you should know is the Bible's prohibition on Homosexuality is over blown.  There are basically three points people use to justify the idea that God is anti-Gay.  They are…
1.  Sodom and Gomorrah – This story has been co-opted as anti-gay but it's really about heathenism.  The heathens come to Lot's door demanding to have sex with the male angels.  To prevent this Lot offers them his virgin daughters. This, to me, indicates the mob wasn't gay they were simply people who would screw anything that moved.  Lot is obviously willing to be physically assaulted to protect the angels since the mob attacks him and he fights back (and is eventually saved by the angels).  So if they were just Gay wouldn't he have offered himself?
People see this story as anti-gay because the mob turns down Lot's daughters in favor of the male angels but this could just as easily be related to them being "new" (as the new girl is school gets all the boys' attention even if she is only as attractive as the other girls).  Or, as I personally believe, it's just a function of the story in that the evil mob is obsessed with assaulting the righteous angels.  Biblical stories, true or not, are fables designed to convey a message and the message of Sodom and Gomorrah is clearly good vs. evil.
But again the lesson is against heathenism not homosexuality.
2.  God's prohibition of homosexuality in Leviticus 17 & 20 – The important point here is context.  This prohibition is made while God is giving Moses rules that the Jews who left Egypt must live by.  These rules included everything from not eating meat from dead animals to not having sex with your daughter. But the one thing all the rules have in common is they are designed to promote the continued existence of a small group of Jews (God's chosen people).  Eating meat from a dead Animal promotes disease, having sex with your daughter causes genetic defects and being gay in 4000 b.c. prevents reproduction.  So these rules were given specifically to the Jews in that time frame to ensure their continued existence as a group and weren't necessarily meant for all time.  This is why, to give an everyday example, most Jews and Christians don't observe kosher laws in modern times.
Now some will dispute the above statement because God's punishment for being gay was death in Leviticus 20.  But this again ignores the context.  That area of scripture also prescribes death for cursing your mother and father, adultery, sleeping with your daughter-in-law and so on.  If you read the whole passage it becomes clear God prescribed death for any action that would be caused by a hard to control urge.  This is understandable when you consider the group he was talking to which were essentially roaming nomads who had lived as slaves for their entire lives (and as such couldn't have been the most sophisticated).  Prescribing death seems harsh in our modern times but may have been the only way to get the rather savage Jews of that time to practice impulse control.
3.  Various New Testament Passages against homosexuality – The important point here is Jesus never spoke about homosexuality.  The entirety of the New Testament's preaching against homosexuality comes from St. Paul.  But two points are important there.  First, St. Paul never met Jesus, never had a conversation with Jesus and knows no more about Jesus than you do from reading the New Testament.  Second, Paul's opinion is not in itself divine.  As Paul was a Jew before accepting Christ any prohibition Paul spoke about was derived from the previous two points of the Old Testament meaning if he was in error about their meaning his preaching against homosexuality is in error as well.
So I don't think you have much to worry about as far as God's disapproval of the State of New York. That said let me throw you one more curve ball.  While I don't think God has a problem with the law in New York I do think he has a problem with the gay folks celebrating it.  In fact, I think he'd be appalled.   Let me explain…
In The book of Samuel the people of Israel come to the prophet Samuel and demand a King be appointed over them.  At such a request Samuel feels rejected and prays to God.  God replied by saying this…
"Heed the voice of the people in all that they say to you; for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected Me"
God considered the people wanting a King as a rejection of him.  Because God is all about individual freedom.  God prescribes very few actual laws to modern people (essentially the 10 Commandments and the Golden Rule).  God's model given in the bible is that people act morally and govern their own behavior and all will be well.
Read the message God told Samuel to deliver to the people wanting a King…
"This will be the behavior of the king who will reign over you: He will take your sons and appoint them for his own chariots and to be his horsemen, and some will run before his chariots. He will appoint captains over his thousands and captains over his fifties, will set some to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and some to make his weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers, cooks, and bakers. And he will take the best of your fields, your vineyards, and your olive groves, and give them to his servants. He will take a tenth of your grain and your vintage, and give it to his officers and servants. And he will take your male servants, your female servants, your finest young men, and your donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take a tenth of your sheep. And you will be his servants. And you will cry out in that day because of your king whom you have chosen for yourselves, and the LORD will not hear you in that day"
In other words God, is a Libertarian.
So while I don't think God would have a problem with Gay Marriage in New York I do think God would have a problem with gay people celebrating the fact that their government masters have allowed them to get married.  That somehow their love was incomplete until the government decided to approve of it.
It's something to think about. <comment><USER2> I don't exist</comment>


Haskell as a JavaScript MVC framework - <AUTHOR> http://tonyday567.github.io/blog/mvc-todo/

<comment><USER2> I'm sure it's very clever, but the result ([http://tonyday567.github.io/static/index- auto.html](http://tonyday567.github.io/static/index-auto.html)) didn't work for me in Chrome (but did in Firefox). I suppose the unfortunate problem with this is that delivering it with an issue like that would mean that approximately 99.99% of the web developers out there would have no idea how to fix it (the generated JS is utterly incomprehensible, of course).

<comment> a-saleh That is something I was worried about, because afaik, ghcjs is still fairly experimental. But ability to use ghc's magic to produce javascript sounds aluring :-)

I think, that if you could integrate source-map capabilities (haven't tried [http://hackage.haskell.org/package/sourcemap](http://hackage.haskell.org/package/sourcemap) yet) it might make the debug process more bearable.

But if you would be looking for haskell-like-language with more comprehensible to-javascript output, [http://www.purescript.org/](http://www.purescript.org/) pleasantly suprised me (even though I had time to barely get past the hello world :-)

<comment><USER3> I wanted to use PureScript, but the language is too unstable for me. They're getting rid of lists and pattern matching for them in the next version, for example, because they made the mistake of using JS's Array type.

<comment><USER4> Can you list some ways/reasons Purescript is too unstable for you? Maybe a link to the JS Array type mistake? I've used purescript for some semi-serious stuff before and didn't notice anything unstable.

<comment><USER3> The next minor version of PureScript is changing everything. That's scary.

<comment><USER5> s/minor/major

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Good article, I really like the insight of how sum types can be used in MVC, and how the OO community is oblivious of this.

Nice short read.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm a big fan of static typing, including sum types. But can someone explain to me what's so great here?

The highlight of the article is having a unique Action sum type instead of a myriad of separate functions. But the action still has to be processed by a myriad of separate equations (is that the correct Haskell term? Not familiar with the language):

        apply ClearCompleted tds = over todosItems (Map.filter (\x -> view itemStatus x /= Completed)) tds
        apply (DeleteItem x) tds = over todosItems (Map.delete x) tds
        apply (EditItem x) tds = set todosEditing (Just x) tds
        ...

"Only one of the 68 frameworks defined an Action" is probably because it's simpler to directly call the right function, rather than over-engineering things with a short-lived intermediary representation.

If actions need to "be serialized, recorded for later analytics, and generated automatically" then it makes much more sense. But this is a TODO sample app. YAGNI.

And if we really need it, it's not like JS cannot do it:

        function apply(action, todos) {
            switch (action.type) {
                case 'ClearCompleted':
                    return todos.filter(todo => !todo.completed);
                case 'DeleteItem':
                    return todos.filter(todo => todo !== action.todo);
                ...
            }
        }

The above has probably been done a billion times in one form or another. Of course it's not safe from typos in the case strings or missing cases, but that's a broader issue with JS in general, not specifically related to sum types.

I'm not trying to shoot down Haskell here, I really wish someone will point to something I'm missing and make it click. But right now it just looks like over-engineering that JS _could_ do but _chooses_ not to.

(Regarding footnote #4: Swift also has sum types and is fairly popular.)

<comment><USER8> You're not missing anything. What you and the author are describing (in terms of pattern/architecture) has existed for quite a while but was widely popularized recently by Facebook's [Flux]([https://facebook.github.io/flux](https://facebook.github.io/flux)). The author is either naive towards current state of the JavaScript landscape or their just being arrogant about what is actually unique to 'functional' programming.

<comment><USER9> Yep, was thinking the same exact thing when I saw "actions".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Yikes, 1,670KB for generated javascript alone, that's kind of a deal breaker.

GHCJS has a ways to go methinks. Js_of_ocaml and Scala.js are far better suited for production use today as the type safety "tax" is much smaller (i.e. binary is at most 1/4 the size for equivalent functionality).

EDIT:

didn't realize you cannot yet call into Haskell from GHCJS, and even Haskell to GHCJS requires going through FFI[1]

Meh, might as well use Fay or Haste if that's the caste.

[1] [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/29967135/how-to-call- hask...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/29967135/how-to-call-haskell-from- javascript-with-ghcjs)

<comment><USER3> I quite like Haste for Haskell to JS compilation. Its output isn't too bloated.

<comment><USER4> Purescript (while not quite Haskell) also has very small output and is strict by default. There's also the very fun, informative, and productive "Purescript By Example"[0] book.

0: [https://leanpub.com/purescript/read](https://leanpub.com/purescript/read)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Github link is broken .org instead of .com [https://github.com/tonyday567/mvc- todo](https://github.com/tonyday567/mvc-todo)

<comment><USER6> I did not even find the GitHub link... This brings you straight to the meat of the project:

[https://github.com/tonyday567/mvc- todo/tree/master/library/T...](https://github.com/tonyday567/mvc- todo/tree/master/library/Todo)

<comment><USER6> And the actual Action sumtype is here:

[https://github.com/tonyday567/mvc- todo/blob/cb4bbb613aa31ba6...](https://github.com/tonyday567/mvc- todo/blob/cb4bbb613aa31ba6d2da17db0d1c00a34c3581bd/library/Todo/Model.hs#L71)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "It's going to become much harder for haskell to avoid success"

I have 100% faith in the Haskell community's ability to keep doing what they've been doing for years. ;)

</comment><comment><USER13> I start to like Haskell and would enjoy learning to use it for the Web, but look at the size of it:

[http://i.imgur.com/kPHl4L7.png](http://i.imgur.com/kPHl4L7.png)

7834KB is way too large for just that, I'm afraid.

I've 120Mbit/s, that's why it still loads fast, but I remember how slow, but fascinating surfing with 56K modem was.

<comment><USER14> I've explored ghcjs. I had a reasonable react based site down to ~400k after dead code removal and minification. Still biggish, but not multi-megabyte.

The raw unoptimized code was in the several megabyte range though.

<comment><USER13> I think it would be worth sharing that on a blog post submitted to HN. Sounds like a lot of work, maybe there are ways to automate that with a shell script or a Haskell program. 400KB is absolutely okay I think.

<comment><USER4> I agree, that would be awesome to study/emulate. Possibly use some of the techniques to make GHCJS programs smaller.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Deploying lighttpd, your flask-apps, gunicorn, supervisor with Ansible on CentOS - <AUTHOR> https://www.zufallsheld.de/2014/11/19/deploying-lighttpd-your-flask-apps-gunicorn-and-supervisor-with-ansible-on-centos/

<comment><USER2> Why would I want to deploy lighttpd?</comment>


I wrote this geometry library based on the lectures on projective geometry - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jan-mue/geometer <comment><USER2> Thanks for sharing, probably should make this a Show HN though?</comment>


What prompted Apple's transition to Swift? - <AUTHOR>

From a business / analytical point of view, what does this do for Apple? <comment><USER2> John Siracusa has been beating this drum for a while now. Basically, good platform stewardship requires advancing the state of the art in development at best, or at least keeping pace. The worry was that apple had ceased caring about the future of their platform from a developer standpoint. [http://arstechnica.com/staff/2005/09/1372/](http://arstechnica.com/staff/2005/09/1372/)

</comment><comment><USER3> From a business metric point of view: it is probably one of the best things they can do to reduce the global number of app crashes, which I would think is a driving factor in customer satisfaction.</comment>


Being a student isn't easy, it requires actual work - <AUTHOR> http://dr-josiah.blogspot.com/2010/10/being-student-isnt-easy-it-requires.html

<comment><USER2> _when confronted with this type of instructor, a student is given an opportunity to engage themselves in learning. Classes come with books, and instructors are meant to help the student understand and integrate the knowledge and wisdom within those books._

These words remind me of my introductory class in graduate solid state physics. The instructor was teaching the course for the first time, or at least the first time in a while. His lectures were very difficult to follow, the notes we took weren't of much use, and he hadn't calibrated the problem sets quite right. So, omigod, the problem sets were difficult. They were due weekly, they took two or three days each, and usually at least one all- nighter.

It was hell. But in retrospect it turned out amazingly well. The first thing that happened was that every member of the class bonded with every other member of the class. We solved those problems as one giant team. We would band together in the student offices, in groups of three to five, and then representatives from each group would go wandering late at night from one office to the next, trying to see if one of the other groups had found a promising line of attack. All the experimentalists made friends with the theorists. All the theorists made friends with each other. Half of my best friends in grad school came out of that one course.

And because the lecture notes weren't comprehensible, we were forced to read the book _very_ carefully, page by page. And the book happened to be Ashcroft and Mermin's _Solid State Physics_ , which is one of the best textbooks I've ever known.

In the end, I got fairly good at solid state physics (for an experimentalist, anyway). I later signed up with an adviser who was well known for asking tricky questions about solid state during oral exams, but I was well prepared. My thesis ended up being all about topics that I learned in that class, and I even put the lecturer on my thesis committee, because he turned out to be a very nice guy and quite smart.

<comment><USER3> As a returning adult student who is currently struggling to complete a bachelor's on a part-time basis, this type of study is not always feasible. I am more than capable of learning advanced material but it does take effort, and poor teaching becomes a huge time-management issue for a number of reasons.

A teacher who can explain difficult concepts can save you literally dozens of hours of self-study. At least, this has been the case in my experience. Having someone to ask questions of is huge. Having a good study group is not always a dependable solution.

On a more immediate level, if I have to spend three or four hours of useless time in class, that's time taken out of my schedule to actually learn the material.

Granted, I have a commute and a job and family, so it's not quite the same as if I were a 20-something undergrad, but should we value their time less than my own? Many universities are chock full of teachers who are good researchers and grant writers, not necessarily good professors, and I do feel that this is a big problem.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a very good point. Some University professors get into it for research, some for teaching, not many for both. The problem is that Universities will typically cater to one type of professor, leaving the others scrambling to spend a lot of time doing the thing that they don't like (and which takes a lot of their time).

Also, Teaching Assistants really should be offered more in every level of education. A good TA can reduce the instructor's load significantly, while at the same time offering much better interaction ratios with students with questions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I call bullshit.

Yes, learning takes effort even with the best teachers. Yes, it's good to be self-motivated and seek out more information on your own. But if this guy is right that an incompetent teacher is no barrier to learning, then why do we need teachers at all?

My experience in grad school was that a course with a bad teacher took three to five times as much work as the same course with a good teacher. That's mostly because advanced texts in technical subjects are supposed to be exhaustive references. They're full of details and corner cases that make it impossible to get the big picture without reading them several times over.

Showing you the big picture is the teacher's job. If they can't do that, they're basically _forcing_ you to read and reread a thousand pages of reference material, looking for a synthesis that isn't there. Eventually all the repetition forces your brain into a kind of acceptance, but it's not the same as understanding and it isn't worth thousands of dollars a class.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm sorry you didn't like my post, but I think you sort-of missed my point. It's not that an incompetent teacher is no barrier to learning (because learning is definitely enhanced by a good teacher), it's that students have choices in what and how they consume education. If you don't like the way you are being taught, then find a better source for what you want to learn.

In particular, there are people who have taken your class before. The teacher is the primary person who has ostensibly taken that class before, but when that fails, there are students who have taken that class before. Find the few who got As, and ask for help. Or if the book is awful, ask around for a better book. Or hell, MIT's got their OpenCourseWare for more and more topics every year. As students (really, we all are), it has never been easier to learn.

<comment><USER4> _> If you don't like the way you are being taught, then find a better source for what you want to learn... [T]here are students who have taken that class before._

Why should other students do the teaching -- don't they have their own classes to worry about? Why would your students want to learn from other students, or from a website, instead of from an expert? And isn't teaching what they pay you to do?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not defending poor teachers, nor am I defending teaching poorly. Teachers should teach students well.

But if a student isn't learning, they have choices. That's it. If a student has a problem asking peers for help (who may be better experts than their teachers), doing reading beyond their book (which may offer better or more recent information than available in the text), or _finding_ a way to learn what they need to learn, then they aren't going to be able to function in the real world. Because in the real world, people don't teach you things, you must seek knowledge.

 _I_ am not being paid to teach anymore, I went off to industry after grad school because I needed to make a living. When I taught, I was engaged every day, and was the best teacher I could be. That included 6 hours teaching every week, 3 hours of attending the course that I was teaching (I sat through the same course 7 times), with another 4-6 hours of office hours every week, in addition to any other courses, research, and contracting work that I was doing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Being a student is easy. Learning requires actual work.

<comment><USER6> Even if it requires work, I'd rather be in an environment where I don't perceive it as such. This is actually a continuous goal I have in life.

Some wise words from Max Levchin - <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWDMaLgT7is#t=4m35s>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Who needs instructors, for Christ's sake?

<comment><USER8> Different people have different learning styles.

<comment><USER7> Agree. But I'm deeply convinced that frontal lectures belong to the past, pre- Google past,

and it is the predominant way of instruction today, regardless of student's personal learning style or preferences.

<comment><USER9> Traditional lectures, where one guy is standing in front of a room doing all the talking? Sure, those should die. Recorded lectures from a really good lecturer are a superior replacement.

Instructors, on the other hand, are not obsolete. It's great to have someone who can answer questions, lead discussions, guide your study, and so on. If anybody wants to know what the university of the future should look like, this is a good place to start.

<comment><USER10> <http://philip.greenspun.com/teaching/undergrad-cs>

<comment><USER11> Very interesting read.

I have always liked the art school approach, portfolio to get in and a polished portfolio when you leave.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Welcome to the Locker Project: TLP - <AUTHOR> http://blog.lockerproject.org/welcome-to-the-locker-project-tlp

<comment><USER2> I've been working on something like this, but from a different angle at <http://lifetrckr.com/>

It's all functional, even though it's extremely bare at this point, but the goal is to help people distill all these things they do online into a single readable format. For the initial pass for me, it seemed easiest to take all of that 'stuff' and turn it into a calendar subscription. It's a neat and simple way to visualize all of these things that are floating around out there.

So as not to highjack this post, the biggest problem I saw with The Locker Project is that it's very unfriendly to normal users. I'm sure eventually apps will be built on top of that people can run locally to view and manage their data, but in the mean time, it's very much a toy for geeks and not much more.

<comment><AUTHOR> I believe they are aiming to be the framework for other apps to build upon; I think that was their original statement--Singly I think would be their user friendly tool on top of the Locker they are working on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The Locker Project and Singly have been picking up speed since around the time of the Strata Conf: [http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/creator_of_instant_mess...](http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/creator_of_instant_messaging_protocol_to_launch_ap.php)

</comment><comment><USER4> Gosh, I hate this semi-transparent gray box at the bottom of webpages like that one. I'm using a netbook so screen estate is quite limited, and these boxes are really obnoxious. Is there a way to turn them off?

<comment><USER5> You could modify your user stylesheet:

        #posterous_footerbar { display: none; }</comment></comment>


Show HN: statistic.li - dead simple real-time site statistics - <AUTHOR> http://statistic.li/

<comment><USER2> Thanks for this! This is exactly what I needed for my personal site.

<comment><AUTHOR> Pleasure! Let me know if you find any issues. You're probably the first person to use it!</comment></comment>


CNNGo – should disable their paywall during the crisis - <AUTHOR> it would be the right thing to do now for society. <comment><USER2> Can't you also get an extension to disable JS to stop the subscription prompt?

</comment><comment><USER3> If you think it should be free for Coronavirus updates, there are other paywall sites offering conditional free access to coverage.

NY Times is one: [https://www.nytimes.com/news- event/coronavirus?action=click&...](https://www.nytimes.com/news- event/coronavirus?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage)

</comment><comment><USER4> Why?</comment>


Building a Map Application in C++ & Qt - <AUTHOR> https://www.maptiler.com/blog/2019/04/using-maptiler-maps-inside-qt.html <comment><USER2> Also be aware that QGIS is written in Qt with a pretty stonkin good Python and C++ API. If you need to do anything beyond basic map presentation, consider using it!

</comment><comment><USER3> This reads like a thinly veilled advertisement for mapbox's map tiles services.</comment>


So you wanna try Deep Learning? - <AUTHOR> http://snippyhollow.github.io/blog/2014/08/09/so-you-wanna-try-deep-learning/

<comment><USER2> "Always answer 'Do you want more data?' with 'Yes, please.'" \-- ehhh more data isn't necessarily "Good" Data, there are hundreds of MTurk collection studies to verify the old phrase "Garbage in, Garbage out"

<comment><USER3> You can always ignore data that you have, but you can't use data that you don't have.

<comment><USER4> Be careful about spending resources on collecting useless data though.

<comment><USER3> That is a very good point. If you have data lying around, you might as well take a look at it, but think two and three times before you spend time and money collecting new data.

<comment><USER2> this is more what i'm getting at - collecting more data is good, but just having more data isn't necessarily 'good'

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The Java library Encog ([https://github.com/encog](https://github.com/encog)) has a huge number of features out of the box for building neural networks.

</comment><comment><USER6> BTW ersatz has recently started to offer a deep learning cloud service, which it claims is very easy to use. Has anybody used it ? how is it ?

</comment><comment><USER7> Is anyone else seeing `[Math Processing Error]` in big red italics at random points?

<comment><USER8> I just get a bunch of $ symbols around the math parts.</comment></comment>


Instacart: We're Sorry - <AUTHOR> https://www.instacart.com/blog/2013/04/02/we-are-sorry <comment><USER2> If any company I did business with changed the terms of the business such that I would be charged when I previously wasn't, and then they automatically charged me, I'd be absolutely livid, regardless of whether they sent me an email (that may or may not be sitting in the bottom of a spam folder) or not.

I don't think they should be on the hook for providing people with free service that costs them money if they need to change the terms, but it should be 100% manual opt-in (with people who don't opt-in having their service canceled) if it involves a price increase or wholly new charges where there were previously none.

Based on the fact that their apology seems centered around the email bug and not the initial premise of adding charges without users having to opt-in to them, I have to disagree with some of the comments here that this proves they "get" customer service.

<comment><USER3> I see it the opposite way — I do not want my service arbitrarily canceled just because I didn't see an email sitting in the bottom of my spam folder. Unless we're talking about some exceptionally expensive service here, any plausible price increase is unlikely to be more upsetting than total loss of a service that I apparently considered worthwhile in the first place.

IMO, the best thing is to grandfather people in. The next best thing is to just let people know what's going on, move them over and offer a refund if they are dissatisfied with the new plan.

<comment><USER4> One does not simply change the conditions of a contract.

<comment><USER3> Of course not. That's why you put in the contract that you can raise prices with 30 days' notice.

<comment><USER5> So you believe a company can charge $99 for a yearly service and then say "by the way, we may increase prices in 30 days if we decide to do so." So what happens to the $99 I paid?

They breached the contract by charging the additional fees. A company can't change the terms and say "whoops, that plan didn't work better start charging for small orders."

<comment><USER3> > So you believe a company can charge $99 for a yearly service and then say > "by the way, we may increase prices in 30 days if we decide to do so." So > what happens to the $99 I paid?

Uh, it would still be paid? Price increases only apply to new billing cycles, not retroactively, so I don't understand what you're getting at here.

The point is that it's incredibly easy — and relatively standard — to incorporate the possibility of changes into a contract.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is an excellent piece of strategic PR inasmuch as it refocuses the debate on the email issue (as is evidenced by the below posts), and obfuscates the real issue, which is that Instacart changed the terms of service and proceeded to charge people, something to which they never consented. Whether or not Instacart bothered to inform their customers about this fact is irrelevant; they shouldn't have done it.

From a customer standpoint, their actions are appalling and the apology is obviously unfulfilling and fails to recognize or rectify the true issue. But, from a business standpoint, this post is very strategic and effective at mitigating public outrage. Although I'm still upset by the choices that Instacart made, I can't help but appreciate the effectiveness of their response tactics.

<comment><USER7> For some reason this strikes me as the rule "it's better to ask for forgiveness than ask for permission." If I'm being pessimistic, I would assume they decided to automatically opt users in, charge them, and create this hubbub and just apologize about it later. However, the good person in me decides to believe that they are sincerely apologizing for a bug.

<comment><USER8> I don't think that rule applies to credit card thieves.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Less than 4 hours after finding out about the issue here's a complete explanation of what happened, a public apology, and an appropriate fix. This is good customer service.

<comment><USER10> > Less than 4 hours after finding out about the issue here's a complete > explanation of what happened, a public apology, and an appropriate fix.

Or it indicates that they knew about it before hand and were working on it. Either way, I agree with you. Good customer service.

<comment><USER11> good customer service would have been to notify their customers every time they are going to charge against their card vs having to have the customer monitor explicitly what charges instacart is making.

<comment><USER12> They made a mistake. They admitted it. Your argument is an appeal either to time travel or omniscience. It is hard to understand what you expect from them at this point.

<comment><USER13> They admitted (claimed?) they had a bug and apologized for the bug. They didn't acknowledge the real mistake: converting people from free to paid without their explicit approval (not just emailing them altered terms). That needed to be opt-in, not opt-out.

It appears as though they haven't even rectified that. It's still opt out. They're going to email 71 customers asking if they want a refund. What if they don't respond? No refund, right? What about the people who got the first email but didn't cancel, they still get charged, right?

I would find it difficult to trust any company with my credit card info if I knew the only thing standing between me and new charges for things I don't want was reading every email they send me.

<comment><USER12> They acknowledged exactly that, reversed the charges, and offered a full refund. I am again left wondering what you actually expected them to do.

<comment><USER14> I don't understand the situation of the other n-71 users. Instacart send an email to them, but apparently the users didn't have to confirm the upgrade.

What happened with the mails that got lost, went to the spam folder, where ignored because it looks like standard press release, went to the secondary mail account?

<comment><USER15> There was a post by someone who seems to have worked there claiming the mistake was when they were querying for the users to send the email to. Basically 71 of us were not included in the results of that query so the email was never actually sent to us.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Instacart is one of my favorite services. I use them every week. I want them to build a sustainable business and last forever, since I never want to visit a grocery store again.

When I saw this on HN this morning, my reaction was that it's easy for things to get missed in the chaos of startups.

Remember, these guys run a startup. They're juggling a million things, including a company that's growing fast due to high demand. These things will happen. It's how the team deals with issues like this that will make them a great company.

<comment><USER17> "They're a startup, things will go wrong" is a valid argument to use for anyone not charging things to my credit card.

<comment><USER16> Sprint makes credit card errors all the time. It's business as usual.

Instacart makes a mistake and writes an apology on its company blog. I wish I lived in a world where there were more Instacarts and less Sprints.

People are fallible. Companies are fallible. The real indication of character is what they do to fix things when they go wrong.

<comment><USER18> This isn't a credit card error. This would be like signing a contract with Sprint for 500 minutes a month for $20, getting charged the $20, and then being charged an extra per-minute fee that wasn't in the contract.

<comment><USER19> Kind of like when you get your latest Comcast bill, Sprint bill, natural gas bill and see that "effective $DATE we will be increasing our price by $X% due to $Y". Happens all the time unfortunately.

<comment><USER18> It doesn't happen like that though. Natural gas, sure. Power bill, definitely. I've never had natural gas or electric service where I entered a contract for a service at a fixed price. My cable and cell phone service are on a contract, they can't increase the cost during the contract period.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Never, never, never, NEVER, NEVER, NEVER EVER charge people when they didn't explicitly agree to the charge.

      NEVER.

This is a huge NO-NO for any business. Big red flag. Stay away from Instacart.

<comment><USER20> They'll probably learn it themselves after a first wave of chargebacks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Wait, so you knew about the 71 emails not being sent and did nothing? Also, I find it hard to believe it was only 71 emails because of the number of complaints I saw in the original thread, unless the majority of your customers are HN members.

<comment><USER22> What happened is that we made a mistake querying for the email addresses, causing us to miss a group of the first people to sign up for Instacart Express. This skewed heavily towards HN members. We knew a few people had been missed (because they emailed us after seeing the charge, and said they didn't get an email) but not why or how many.

<comment><USER23> I am checking out instacart, and a popup is being thrown on my face to register/login without the option to dismiss it! Seriously, WTH? This is beyond bad design, when your design is to extort the emails registration out the users. Not impressed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This fix seems a little lackluster. It would seem more upstanding to honor the agreement they had made, and collected money for: i.e. let the 71 users continue the delivery-fee-free plan (with no minimum) for the end of the term.

<comment><USER12> It does not seem reasonable for a tiny startup to accept an unbounded downside risk just for PR purposes. The refund they're offering is fine.

<comment><USER25> No, Instacart made an agreement which they need to honor more faithfully. If the 71 customers had decided to change the terms of a business agreement similarly, their accounts would probably be closed and referred for debt- collection.

The fact that Instacart is a tiny startup has no bearing on whether they should honor their agreements.

<comment><USER26> What is the agreement that they are honoring in this case? They didn't have a plan for further $35 subscription, people were either moving to the more expensive subscription or canceling.

Allowing the customers who weren't aware to retrospectively cancel and also keep any value of the service they already used seems fair.

<comment><USER25> > First, we're going to refund all delivery fees paid by the people affected > by this bug.

I think I misunderstood that the first time, or just plain missed it. I'd be okay with it as long as what I quoted above means what I think it means.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> > If there is anything else we can do - please let us know: > email@example.com or (910) 817-2278

I wonder what it is like to be really upset and then email an alias called happycustomers when you really aren't happy.

<comment><USER28> It's incredibly annoying and offputting, much like when Tech/Billing Support at my phone company plays hold "music" filled with cross-sell/up-sell advertising.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Offering a refund after asking? Awww, how cute. But since a customer needs to explicitly ask for returning money that she hasn't authorized taking, why not just start a chargeback process at the credit card issuer?

Seriously, automatic refund should be their first and default action AND THEN offering some kind of compensation for the inconvenience.

<comment><USER29> Agreed. If I were one of the 71, I wouldn't bother requesting a refund. I'd just call up the number of the back of my card and say "I didn't authorize this charge."

<comment><USER30> Why only the 71?

71 people got no notification that the charges were coming. That's terrible.

As far as I can tell, everyone else got an email saying "we're about to charge you $99 unless you ask us not to". Not responding != authorizing

If I had any charges from Instacart relating to this mess I'd be claiming them back (but I might be nice and give IC the chance to refund it first)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Kudos for the apology, unfortunately it took for this to go to the top of Hacker News before an apology arrived.

</comment><comment><USER32> The also on HN Instacart post by a user says:

"Did not receive an email about this change of policy. Not only did I not receive this email, neither did my wife nor a colleague, who also is a Instacart Express user."

\+ in this thread "A few days ago, my gf started complaining about some sort of $3 extra charges she noticed."

This makes the 71 user remark looking suspicious, except the 71 were based on some geographical selection error.

<comment><USER33> That does sound suspicious. I thought there were 71 total who bought the deal, but it does say "71 of these emails" which seems to indicate that it's a proper subset of the total emails that were to go out. It seems like an unusual coincidence.

Another possibility would be that the selection was based on when the orders were placed, and that the three of them all bought it at the same time because they decided together to buy it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I think this is a really good response from Instacart. Heroku could learn a few things from them I suppose. But again, good response from the Instacart team. well done.

</comment><comment><USER33> As with Joyent and TextDrive's lifetime hosting, this company going out of business is a valid solution to what they claim is an unsustainable promise they made.

Reneging on their promises is not.

P.C. Hodgell - "That which can be destroyed by the truth should be."

In these cases I doubt that faithfully keeping the promises they made would destroy either company. They just feel they can get away with it, and so they break their promises to save some money.

</comment><comment><USER35> Anyone who remembers Kozmo should know that the original pricing model is doomed to failure. Grocery delivery doesn't scale well, and 14 years of technological advancement doesn't change this fact.

</comment><comment><USER36> I can see that there are many different opinions about this, but I think this raises an important question to startups that start free and plan to convert into a paid service on how it should be done the right way, without upsetting customers.

IMO, I think it depends on when they made these plans. If this was their path from the beginning and the service was free for a specific reason, I think it should be clearly pointed out on the website that the service is free for only a specific period of time.

If the plan of charging customers was added later on (after customers stared using the service), the solution would be to: definitely don't charge customers without them opting in, even if you send them an email, even if you wait for some days after to start charging. Changing customers to a temporary "trial" phase would be a good idea I think. This way, customers will know that they need to pay when they use the service the next time.

</comment><comment><USER37> Off-topic, but if you're in the Kitchener/Waterloo Canada area and are looking for an Instacart type service, try <http://www.grocerygateway.com>. I've been using it for months and am quite happy with it.

</comment><comment><USER38> Good apology but I don't think its enough. Grandfathering the 71 people wouldn't cost Instacart more than 10-20k.

There will still be a lot of people with a bad taste in their mouth. Public perception to a service like this is key.

</comment><comment><USER39> considering that this is coming as a _response_ to the fact that they charged people without notice, it's not enough to _just_ refund the money (as that option should have been available in the first place when they changed their terms). making up for something like this requires that you go above and beyond just "catching up" to where you should have been before. imo, since this is coming after the fact, they should refund the money _and_ honor the terms of the arrangement their customers thought they were getting into.

</comment><comment><USER40> Why don't they let people see their website? When you go to their homepage an ugly login box pops up in front of the content and you can't close it without removing its DOM element... Even if you do, the site becomes non-functional, you can browse the menus but they don't work... I'm not giving access to my Facebook account to someone I don't know and I'm definitely not registering just to check them out.

</comment><comment><USER41> Do you want to be charged $99? YES / NO

</comment><comment><USER42> The right thing to do would be to grandfather those users and move them off the plan by trying to upsell them in someway. This is an okay solution, but I'm still tainted by the thought of arbitrarily changing terms instead of grandfathering everyone.

</comment><comment><USER43> IMHO Compagnies should not change their TOS just by sending an email. On logging in the site, users should be updated, on the screen, with the new TOS and should accept them.

That's what Apple does on the iOS devices and I find it acceptable.

</comment><comment><USER44> Well done. Always good to see a startup take real responsibility for their actions.

</comment><comment><USER45> My gf started using Instacart and _I_ completely fell in love with it. A few days ago, my gf started complaining about some sort of $3 extra charges she noticed. Being a startup founder myself, I reminded her that they are trying to build a sustainable business model because I absolutely _hate_ having to deal with parking after going out for groceries. The word "parking" made her switch her mind immediately. The truth is that changing pricing structure is hard for any company, but I sincerely applaud what these guys are doing and don't mind at all if I have to order more to make it a sustainable business. I don't want another thing I liked destroyed by the silly Kozmo.com business model.

<comment><USER12> Yes, this: add to the fact that upward price moves will make your users revolt _irrationally_ (that is, they'll revolt without considering whether any substitutable good or service would be less expensive), but that you have to execute the change perfectly to avoid transforming your customers into an angry aggrieved mob. Bumping up prices is the Triple Axel of startup moves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> "we charged your credit card without your permission so we will keep the money and continue charging you unless you tell us to stop" - lol WUT?

</comment><comment><USER47> Relevant: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9u0EL_u4nvw>

</comment><comment><USER48> Somebody at Instacart read Hacker News?

<comment><USER17> and responded in the thread, yes.</comment></comment>


Federal Court Rules Politicians Can't Block Constituents on Social Media - <AUTHOR> https://edgylabs.com/politicians-cant-block-constituents-social-media/ <comment><USER2> While I certainly think it makes sense to be able to criticize and discuss politics and politicians in any medium you have available, the right place for _unfiltered_ commentary is _on your own page_ , or _in a letter_ , not _in comments on someone else 's page_. Doesn't matter if they're a public official; comment pages need moderation.

This is not a good precedent; this means that if someone wants to spew incoherent, hate-filled invective, the basic tools of moderation are unavailable to deal with that.

The right analogy here is not to a letter or demonstration; the right analogy is the peanut gallery at a courtroom or legislative body. If you decide to start screaming in the middle of such a location, you'll be told to shut up or be removed as disruptive. You can take it right outside if you like, or stick it on a giant poster on a stick.</comment>


Consumer Vs. B2B: Why Not All Startups Are The Same - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/groupthink/2014/06/12/consumer-vs-b2b-why-not-all-startups-are-the-same/

<comment><USER2> Well said. Doing the enterprise / B2B thing is a whole different world than doing something consumer oriented. I wouldn't trade it for the world though... I'd much rather try to build something and then sell it to somebody for actual money (and by "somebody" I mean a company with a budget and money to spend), as opposed to the standard "get a lot of users first and then figure out how to monetize it" model.

On the flipside, as this article alludes to, it's not _easy_ to get companies to part with their money, and it's definitely not fast. Learning to do B2B sales is a whole new beast if you havne't done it before (I hadn't, and I'm still trying to figure it out).</comment>


Another 1.006M Americans filed new unemployment claims last week - <AUTHOR> https://finance.yahoo.com/news/jobless-claims-coronavirus-unemployment-week-ended-august-22-2020-181644541.html <comment><USER2> > the weekly new jobless claims sum of 1 million remained far above the > 665,000 new claims filed at the pre-pandemic high in March 2009.

That really puts it into perspective

<comment><USER3> But most of these jobs are only temporarily gone.

<comment><USER4> And you know that because...?

<comment><USER5> Because net employment is down around 15M since the start of the pandemic, while there have been over 40M gross unemployment claims since March.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Just a data point: A lot of people I now are filing unemployment and working for cash or other part time jobs. Some people aren't even looking for jobs. Because of my bias, I personally don't take these numbers too seriously.</comment>


Protect Your Laptop Against Theft / Trace Stolen Laptop For Free - <AUTHOR> http://blog.icyse.com/2010/12/06/protect-your-laptop-against-theft-trace-stolen-laptop-for-free/ It is no secret that in a weakened economy, theft rates—especially for small electronics—rise. Since many computer lovers carry their laptops absolutely everywhere, it makes sense to be especially vigilant in safeguarding these devices. <comment><USER2> Your laptop may be marginally safer from irrecoverable theft (if the thief doesn't bother to reinstall the OS), but it becomes vulnerable to the LockItTight service. They are, after all, getting a live feed of your location and keystrokes.

Do firmware-based (rather than OS-based) solutions exist for such tracking purposes?

</comment><comment><USER3> I like prey project... Has some really cool features and is free (paid upgrades available).

<comment><AUTHOR> Ya, it's Awesome...</comment></comment>


Five Things You Should Stop Doing in 2012 - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/12/five_things_you_should_stop_do.html

<comment><USER2> Ads that obscure your content on page load would be a nice inclusion if you ask me.</comment>