longerthoughts

I can't be the only one who read this in that old-timey radio voice

Yep you’re describing an RSL - it’s a line that should deploy the reserve as the main gets cut away (although good practice to pull the reserve handle anyway as a precaution).

In my hypothetical failure case you referenced it wouldn’t help because the instructor didn’t cut away the main - they went straight to their dedicated reserve handle.

Cutting away should automatically deploy the reserve, but deploying the reserve from the reserve handle doesn’t automatically cut away the main.

ah true, openings would still be harder - bigger canopy only saves you on landings

Not that watching the safety video would have helped in this case, as the instructor was not properly trained and vetted in the first place.

The article is a little vague about the failure but I'm a skydiver and this might not be the instructor's fault. I know that sounds insane but hear me out.

The article says "main and reserve parachutes had tangled, preventing either from opening". This could mean a few things:

1. Neither chute was ever deployed - "total malfunction" on main and reserve where they're both stuck in the container (backpack thing holding the parachute).

An instructor following perfect protocol with a poorly packed reserve would have died here, and they likely did not pack the reserve themselves. Reserve chutes are packed by a master rigger who's required to apply a seal and update a little paper record on each rig indicating when it was packed and by whom. These are meant to be checked before you're allowed to get on a plane. Reserves are (thankfully) rarely opened until they're due to be repacked based on time. There's overlap between master riggers and instructors who handle tandem jumps, but the reserve was most likely not packed by that instructor.

2. Main deployed but has a "partial malfunction" (out but not fully open), reserve then deployed and tangles with the main.

This would be the instructors fault - in this case they should cut away the main before deploying the reserve.

3. Main has a "total malfunction" where it doesn't come out at all, instructor deploys reserve, then main deploys late and tangles with the reserve.

This one is inconclusive but probably not the instructor's fault. Protocol here is don't waste time cutting your main because you're falling fast with no drag from a partially deployed chute and the main is unlikely to ever open. The reason it could still be the instructors fault is if they had a chance to cut away the main after it came out and failed to do so before they tangled.

Lodi is a notoriously unsafe drop zone (I'm an experienced skydiver in the bay area). I don't know if it's a cold-hearted greed thing so much as it's an anti-rules, anti-establishment thing where they like to scoff at safety and protocol. I wouldn't jump there or even do a group dive with anybody who regularly jumps there.

Not sure when the people you know were jumping but I've heard a few older (non-military) guys at drop zones complain about shoulder, back and hip issues from harder openings with the rigs they used in the '90s and early '00s.

Parachutes are typically sized according to weight to manage rate of descent, so the extra weight shouldn't be an issue. Given the context I wonder if the military just calibrates around faster rate of descent because it's risky to stay in the air too long.

I'm an experienced skydiver - one death per year is an insanely low bar for any drop zone. Lodi is notorious for incidents and I would never jump there.

Skydiving seems insanely risky because it's scary but it's statistically not particularly risky [0], especially for conscientious skydivers at well-run drop zones. The calculation on "calculated risk" changes dramatically once you start blowing off safety protocol, which are what keep the sport relatively safe.

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9859333/

it’s possible to think extreme wealth disparity is a bad thing without needing every single action taken by its beneficiaries to be a bad thing.

yeah, i got it. and the point i’m making is i’m not getting outraged over it because it is a charitable contribution and he has an incentive to report it. does it feel a little gross and is this whole thing probably a PR stunt? sure. but i’ll settle for letting billionaires be charitable for the wrong reasons if it means they’re being charitable. i trust people to see this for what it is. i’m not sure why anybody feels obligated to leap into threads like this and strain to reframe neutral-to-positive events as profoundly negative. you don’t need to save us from possibly thinking a brief positive thought about a thing a billionaire did. we’re fine.

what else would you call it?

was this really about whether or not Figma had a right to fire her if they’d decided to? afaict the intended point was that Sprinklr exposed themselves as insecure and vindictive over something relatively small and still haven’t been able to let it go.

I'll assume that he wasn't white, or else that likely would have been mentioned as well

you are wrong. he is.

it costs nothing to delete a tweet

this assumes placing no value on principles or pride, which is probably not true of most people and varies by individual. you can’t reasonably price this for a person you don’t know.

but the loss of her job could potentially cost her everything

again, you can’t answer this for somebody you don’t know. she’s in a better position to estimate the probability of being fired and how much it would cost her.

clearly she thought a 100% probability of giving in was more downside than an x% chance of losing her job. the preference is individual even if we know all of the variables, which we don’t.

they are usually short and lacking in citation, evidence, or persuasion

He’s not writing research papers. He’s just a thoughtful guy with a lot of experience sharing his ideas as concisely as possible. Part of the reason the posts are so interesting is because of the discussions they prompt - I wouldn’t mistake the level of interest on HN for everybody treating these as gospel.

From the article:

The figures come from a survey of members belonging to songwriters’ body The Ivors Academy and the Musicians’ Union

Combined membership of the two organizations is around 32,000 [0][1] dues-paying members in the UK. We can safely assume the survey response rate was not 100%.

I believe that most musicians make little to nothing from streaming. I would be shocked if this survey data was representative of professional musicians more broadly.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ivors_Academy

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musicians'_Union_(United_Kin...

This is needlessly adversarial. Thinking about your colleagues as assailants and parasites certainly doesn’t help your product development process. Alternative titles include:

“Why everybody sucks but you” “How to point out problems and suggest vague, empty solutions” “We asked GPT-3 to write an inane thought leadership piece”

You’re presuming a few things:

1) they believe your characterization of their impact

2) they believe that your characterization is complete (vs outweighed by some greater good - don’t have anything specific in mind here)

3) good for music = good for musicians = good for the industry

Starting with (1) and (2). Regardless of the merits of your argument it’s hard to talk people out of self-deception that lets them keep their jobs, esteem, etc.

Point (3) is a little more complicated. There’s a lot for reasonable minds to disagree about when defining “good” for musicians, music, or the music industry independently, let alone collectively. There’s a very strong argument that many musicians are currently making less money than they would’ve 20 years ago because of streaming services like Spotify. The argument that Spotify is destroying music itself is significantly weaker and does not necessarily follow from the first. Great music was made long before the modern music industry existed. Great music has been made by people who were not fairly compensated for their work. I want people to be fairly compensated for their work but I can’t definitively tell you it will make music better.

Spotify should definitely allow users to shift self created playlists

If their ultimate goal was to make a universally beloved product, they should absolutely do this. But their ultimate goal is presumably to make money, so I don’t expect them to make it easier for their customers to leave unless they’re forced to by regulation or an improbable level of churn over this particular issue. I’m not arguing that it’s morally right (or wrong, for that matter), but it’s exactly what I’d expect them to do given their incentives.

I posit that nobody in any of these orgs deeply cares about music.

I know people who work for “these orgs” and most (albeit not all) deeply care about music. Some were previously full-time musicians. Many make music as a passion/hobby but never pursued it professionally. Some are ashamed of or uncertain about the impact they’re having on music and the industry. Some seem to genuinely believe they’re helping push music forward. None of them are perfect stewards for music or the music industry, but none are the cold, greedy caricatures you’re imagining. I can only speak for the people I’ve met and they may not be representative, but the bar you set was “nobody” and it’s just not that simple.

How would you change things?

Yes, but there’s some asymmetry in this case because one side of the spectrum is reaching conclusions that are exceptionally inconvenient for them while the other end of the spectrum is reaching conclusions that justify as little personal sacrifice as possible. It proves nothing but there’s reason to be suspicious of people who always seem to reach a “rational” conclusion that directly benefits them.

Because one does not reach the same conclusion as you does not make their conclusion automatically irrational.

A very large part of the online community is irrational indeed. Irrational about the true danger of the virus.

Pick one. It’s hard to be persuasive when you hold your critics to a higher standard than you hold yourself.

Most people who criticize defense/police have no clue what it takes to keep everyone safe.

Yes and somewhat amusingly this is also true of most people who bash critics of defense/police.

I agree but don’t think “don’t run out of money” makes for very helpful advice, hence a bunch of other suggestions that help you not run out of money. If a doctor told me “don’t have a heart attack/stroke/etc” I’d probably have some follow-up questions.

If they’d said something like “they’re effective but it’s better for all of us if these people get them instead of you” would that have been effective?

They were making a joke about the phrasing because it sounds like it was 10 days of travel to reach Italy.

They were making a joke about the phrasing because it sounds like it was 10 days of travel to reach Italy.

But you can't do upfront pricing under CA law - the driver has to be able to earn whatever they earn from driving

I think the two parts of this statement can be decoupled. Couldn't Uber feasibly keep fixed upfront pricing on the customer side but provide variable payouts to drivers to be compliant with the law? They probably wouldn't do this because it exposes them to risk on every ride (i.e. they might undercharge for the ride and have to pay up to the driver anyway) but the law is not directly forcing them to provide a worse experience - they're doing that by passing the risk to customers.

I didn't see any distinction between types of "deception" in the paper which means it's classifying things like social anxiety and generally self-conscious behavior as deceptive. While strictly true it makes the algorithm useless for detecting security threats at this stage.

I really don’t think OP meant “there is no way to avoid using Search”. The point is that nothing that you described is a serious competitive threat to Search.

You might get a lot of gratification out of avoiding giving Google your data but the reality is most traffic is coming from people who will choose convenience.