Not listening to engineers is a serious engineering problem that's played out in construction, automotive and software engineering dozens of times over.
The penalty for Microsoft ignoring their devs might just be a slow decline into irrelevance, not a bridge collapsing, or an autonomous vehicle hitting the lane barrier because the boss refuses to use LiDAR, but it's all bad management causing an engineering problem.
> Not listening to engineers is a serious engineering problem.
No, that's the very archetype of a political problem. It is a political problem that impacts the engineering output, yes, but still a political problem.
This sounds incredibly naive. Competition does not magically prevent monopolies -- once you have a dominant player they just buy or undercut the occasional competing startup.
Every market exists within a regulatory system, which exerts power over the participants in the market. Using wealth, you can acquire influence, and thereby direct the power of the regulatory system to inhibit your competition, or create a legal monopoly for yourself. A free market is not magic; people have to make it happen, and people have many motivations beyond the freedom of markets.
> In a free market, you get wealthy by creating wealth, not concentrating it.
Unregulated capitalism inevitably trends towards a mafia state with an oligarchic structure and concentrated monopolistic power. It’s just an empirical fact at this point.
The engine that really drives innovation and wealth creation is regulated capitalism that preserves competitive markets by restraining anticompetitive behavior.
If you’re ideologically attached to capitalism I have good news for you. That’s the approach that leads to its most effective implementation.
If you’re ideologically attached to “market fundamentalism” as I suspect, which is a reflexive opposition to regulation, then this concentrated market structure is what you’re advocating for.
> Unregulated capitalism inevitably trends towards a mafia state with an oligarchic structure and concentrated monopolistic power. It’s just an empirical fact at this point.
Has there ever been a jurisdiction with unregulated capitalism? I'm unaware of any.
Even the most laissez-faire economies have had bedrock legal infrastructure: property rights enforcement, contract law, courts, which is regulation.
Maybe you’re thinking of anarcho-capitalism? But that has never worked at scale.
It's one thing for you to put a banner up on your web page, which I will see when I visit you. I can just choose not to visit, if I don't want to see your message.
It's another thing for you to put a banner inside my computer, on the software I use to manage my own data: that ought to be a tool I use for my own purposes, and not a place for you to do what you want.
A tool which starts acting as an agent for its developers, not as an agent for me, is not a tool I want to continue using.
If I create software I can do whatever the heck I want and that includes displaying a billion banners. And you got the right to not use my software.
If you trust the makers of LibreOffice enough to run their software on your machine, you might also consider trusting them on this decision. Unless of course you know better than them about what it needs to keep the software alive, in which case you might wanna give them a hint (e.g. by detailing how you would imagine it would work instead in terms of finances).
If I create software I can do whatever the heck I want and that includes displaying a billion banners. And you got the right to not use my software.
If you trust the makers of LibreOffice enough to run their software on your machine, you might also want trust them on this decision. Unless of course you know better than them about what it needs to keep the software alive you run regularly.
How are you supposed to make an informed decision to simply not use libreoffice when they pop something like this on people unannounced, undisclosed, without precedent?
The level of arrogance some western-hemisphere Spanish speakers have, trying to tell foreigners that the name they use for their own country in their own native language is wrong, demanding that they translate the Spanish name and use that instead, is so absurdly entitled that it's just... hilarious.
In your world, then, is it normal to complain about other people's names, and expect them to change what they call themselves to better suit your preference?
You must be young. Many of us who are middle-aged or older clearly remember what the US was like before it created the present security apparatus, and "total collapse of the social safety net" is quite the opposite of what I would expect if we rolled it back.
Wouldn't it be nice if we could use the billions we waste on this repressive jackboot-theater for an actual safety net instead? We could live in a less brutal society.
Last year I flew out of Costa Rica and London. They have the same security requirements except the removal of shoes as does getting on the Chunnel between London and Paris.
Is there any country anywhere in the world that doesn’t have basically the same requirements?
You seem to be glossing over all of the hijackings that happen back in the day.
What do hijackings have to do with a social safety net?
> They have the same security requirements
Yes, the US has significant influence over international aviation security regulations.
There are two reasons that no US airliner has been successfully hijacked in a quarter of a century, and neither has anything to do with TSA screening: first, cockpit doors are now locked during flight, and second, passengers now know that there is nothing to be gained by cooperating with hijackers and nothing to be lost by fighting back.
> What do hijackings have to do with a social safety net?
Many of us who are middle-aged or older clearly remember what the US was like before it created the present security apparatus
> passengers now know that there is nothing to be gained by cooperating with hijackers and nothing to be lost by fighting back.
Yes passengers are going to rise up and fight people with guns? How do you fight back against a terrorist with a bomb on board?
Even trained SWAT teams basically know that if you try to take over a plane from terrorists, who ever goes in front is going to get shot at, aisles are the perfect kill zone.
Just from me flying on a plane as much as I do, the perfect way to take over a plane would be to book first class tickets in the front of the plane - less crowded, usually with people who are less willing to fight back and you’re not surrounded by people on both sides and sweep the aisle.
This reminds me of the yokels running around in the South playing militia in the woods thinking their cache of guns can take on the US military or even a well trained local SWAT force.
And guess how many guns the terrorists had? People are recommending getting rid of security at airports. It’s a lot easier to gang up and fight someone with knives than guns
It would probably cost less money and man-years of life to let every once in awhile some dumb terrorist blow up the plane while fruitlessly trying to access the locked cockpit to convince them to bring it to a juicier target, than it costs to put a gazillion people in long lines, tax the shit out of them for DHS (including the murderous ICE agency), and put them through security theater while also costs many many many man-lives of time by TSA agents.
------- re: below due to throttling ---------
Most people are not suggesting getting rid of security at airports. They are recommending getting rid of DHS and government employees performing security at the airport.
The airlines themselves will search for explosives if it is affecting their bottom line, although I do suspect they will do a worse job because they won't be using the DHSs budget but rather some maxima on ROI. Except with a guy who can't summarily legally steal your shit, put you in a concentration camp, and ship you off to CECOT. Use their paranoia of being sued against them, and then their security will not be paranoid enough to call the cops unless there is an actual bomb and not just some brown guy that renewed his visa 5 days late.
---------------------
>You realize you’re suggesting something that absolutely no country in the world does as far as I know.
Intrastate flights in Alaska don't, at least through all the areas of the state I've been in (Including Fairbanks). Nothing. Not even a metal detector. I'm sure a few people have died as a result but it still likely saves net lives not to have security once you add up the man-years of time cost in security and earning the money to pay for it. (Note if you leaving Alaska you then do have to go in a different line and clear security)
Most people don't know it though, because as it turns out having zero security even in a place where every crazed man has a gun is not much a problem. Someone that wants to kill people can kill more people faster and eliminate more valuable targets elsewhere than getting on an airplane with a locked cockpit that can't be steered into a juicier target. It just turns out the security thesis is largely a flawed one.
When you add it all up locked cockpits plus passengers fighting back are pretty much all it takes to turn the game theory into airplanes not being the weakest link. Sure terrorists could get on a plane with a bomb but the best they can do is blow up a single airplane, they could have done way more than that on the ground so it doesn't make sense given their relative options.
---------------
>So mothballed knows more about costs benefits of security than the entire world?
Apparently I only know as much as the State of Alaska, who by far have the best airline experience of anywhere I've been. Though I'm told a few regional airlines in the South don't do security either (one guy told me a story of the pilot handing him his gun back after he boarded), though I'm not sure how they get away with it, since AFAIK it's required on interstate flights. And of course chartered flights, which generally don't require security either.
---------------------------
>How exactly would a pilot have the gun that TSA took from him?
"Checked" Luggage is accessible from the cabin in some smaller prop planes. I couldn't tell you which security they used. The story I got was the pilot for whatever reason had occasion to look at the luggage (tiny plane and weight distribution concerns? I'm not a pilot) and noticed it was a gun case and just handed it back to the passenger. Could be a fake story, though I've heard a few things like this about regional airlines before, I've only personally seen zero weapons controls on intrastate Alaskan flights (which FWIW often land in fairly remote areas where you could be confronted by a bear straight out of the dingy airport).
Yes that’s the entire terminal, it’s an internal flight in Costa Rica on a really tiny plane. Even they have metal detectors. Costa Rica doesn’t even have a military so they aren’t a militarized state.
I have flown in an out of many airports in the south - Atlanta, Nashville, a small regional airport in South GA, Savannah, Raleigh, Charlotte, both Houston airports, Dallas, South Carolina, etc. You can try to get a gun through if you want to
> Though I'm told a few regional airlines in the South don't do security either (one guy told me a story of the pilot handing him his gun back after he boarded), though I'm not sure how they get away with it, since AFAIK it's required on interstate flights. And of course chartered flights, which generally don't require security either
How exactly would a pilot have the gun that TSA took from him?
I’m sure if we get rid of security, every other country in the world that basically has the same requirements for planes (and in my n=1 experience with with the Chunnel between London and Paris) trains will get right on that - especially countries like Isreal.
You do realize it only takes a couple of planes being blown up for people to lose all confidence in airline travel not to mention plate airlines will be sued out of existence like they would have been after 9/11 if the US hadn’t had a settlement fund?
I started out with film and took my camera all over everywhere with me for years. I switched to digital as soon as I could, before it was really even practical, fully embraced it, and ran with it for a long time. But I eventually got bored, and stopped carrying a camera at all for while.
Last year, though, I got back into film, and I'm having a ball! The point of the retro process is not that it's better, it's that I'm enjoying the time I spend with it. The constraints are interesting. The technique is challenging. It's not so much about the photos as it is the photography: I enjoy the practice of making images, and dealing with the challenges of vintage equipment is part of the skill I'm practicing.
It doesn't actually matter whether I take any of these photos or not, you know? I'm not a professional; I'm not making unique art, or documenting historic events. I'm doing this because I enjoy watching the light, looking for interesting frames, and trying to capture them. Right now, the most enjoyable equipment for that purpose happens to be an all-mechanical, medium-format film camera.
It seems more likely to me that the Windows API will become the de-facto Linux gaming SDK, and the idea of porting a game to Linux will become meaningless.
A startup I worked for twenty years ago used that approach: we shipped an update once a quarter, every quarter, no matter what. We'd begin with a week of planning, build as much of the plan as we could, then cut anything we hadn't finished and release whatever was left. Of course the trick was to build the high-priority items first.
I loved it and I think it was one of the more productive development methodologies I've ever seen. It made sense, it was honest, it required no heroics, and it improved our long-term design work by forcing us to break every grand plan down into a series of incremental deliverables.
There is so little context here that I cannot tell what this author was trying to measure, what their categories mean, or what conclusions they might draw from this experiment.
Generically I like the idea that you could identify attributes a text has and have a classifier attribute those attributes to documents and make some kind of report on it -- but this is so vague I just don't get it.
reply