Linux: just for fun. Congrats to this release. I vividly remember playing all sorts of Linux games when I was younger. Helped me to feel not as lonely as I was.
You can even mmap a socket on some systems (iOS and macOS via GCD). But doing that is super fragile. Socket errors are swallowed.
My interpretation always was the mmap should only be used for immutable and local files. You may still run into issues with those type of files but it’s very unlikely.
It’s also great for when you have a lot of data on local storage, and a lot of different processes that need to access the same subset of that data concurrently.
Without mmap, every process ends up caching its own private copy of that data in memory (think fopen, fread, etc). With mmap, every process accesses the same cached copy of that data directly from the FS cache.
Granted this is a rather specific use case, but for this case it makes a huge difference.
Even poor people carry phones that have the internet, news, weather, and a million useful apps. Food is available to everyone, nearly every church has a food pantry. Even cheap houses are climate controlled. Even the homeless have shelters in most places.
For garden variety household emergencies, GoFundMe is democratized charity. It seems it often comes to the rescue for people suffering terrible luck.
Healthcare is expensive, but ACA makes it more available than before. Even early retirees get it.
Cars are expensive, too, but the get great mileage, better performance, and last longer than what we used to have.
Having grown up in the 6s and 70s, I can say with confidence that even less fortunate people have better lives than almost everybody 50 years ago. ( At least as far as material things go. )
The people who are unhappy are often comparing themselves to other people as portrayed by media and social media. That’s a sure way to feel you aren’t doing very well.
>America is pretty great if you're in the upper 20% or so, and otherwise it's losing ground fast.
The bottom 80% is also going to find it hard to move to another rich country. Countries in general want highly paid professionals, not a 50th percentile desk jockey.
Perhaps, but the places where it’s arguably nicer (than US) to be bottom 50% are that way because of side-effects of America being how America has always been. Without things like US NATO membership, someone in, let’s say Europe, might eventually find themselves made forcibly familiar with what actual fascism is, by being “welcomed” into Soviet Union 2.0, now without the communist trappings. If you think Soviet bread lines are better than SNAP benefits, I don’t think you’ve read enough history.
I live in Germany and I'm not afraid of Russia. If they had more manpower they would have overrun Ukraine by now. They do not. I'm not saying it would be an easy fight, but Russia stands no chance. Not even with Belarus on their side or some other satellite states.
That's foolish. If Russia wins in Ukraine, they would have the two strongest armies in Europe. European states simply don't have enough ordinances and gear to survive a long war.
The idea that Russia would “have the two strongest armies in Europe” if it won in Ukraine doesn’t make sense. A defeated country’s army doesn’t magically become part of the victor’s forces. Ukrainian soldiers wouldn’t serve Russia, many would withdraw, go underground, or continue resisting.
Even in a hypothetical total Russian victory, Moscow wouldn’t “gain” a second army. It would inherit a hostile, traumatized population and an ungovernable territory, not a usable military force. And in any case, Europe’s combined militaries (and economies) are still far larger than Russia’s, so the claim simply doesn’t hold up.
Did you link the wrong article? This one says they are only working on maybe making that happen, and the article is only a month old, so they haven't conscripted any yet?
So true; Russian MO is to use ~18-60 year old males from occupied territories as cannon fodder. Europeans should be flooding Ukraine with weapons (and other kinds of support) and thanking their luck that somebody else is willing to risk their lives and use them against the onslaught that would otherwise be directed at the EU countries.
That's an example. What would you do if the next government pulls Hungary or early Putin on you and starts banning opposition media with courts saying it's fine refusing to hear the case?
Germany can slide, but it’s much harder than in Hungary or early Putin’s Russia. The Basic Law has built-in guardrails: core rights can’t be abolished, the Constitutional Court can block illiberal laws instantly, power is decentralized across the Länder, and changing the constitution requires supermajorities no extremist party can reach.
The domestic intelligence service can monitor or restrict anti-democratic parties, and Germany’s civil society, courts, and media are structurally hard to capture. An AfD-led government would hit legal and institutional tripwires long before it could rewrite the system.
You honestly believe that a combined Germany-Poland-Baltic army, maybe with Italy's help and absolutely no USA involvement and manufacturing is today a viable threat to ruzzians? And that such an army is somehow more capable than today Ukrainian army in an all-out land battle with combined forces, permanently fighting for a decade now?
Of course such coalition has a big number of ultra expensive and effective weapons like planes, ships and tanks. That number of weapons will last for 3 months or so. Then what? Ruzzia is not a Taliban or Hamas, you can't just bomb them with impunity. Even half a century old soviet SAMs are valid threat to anything in the air, let alone newer ones. Plus Ruzzia is not alone, they have whole Axis manufacturing power potentially behind them - Iran, China, NK etc.
I would be very concerned about Ruzzia, if I were you. Just a thought experiment, what would Germany do when Ruzzian force will appear on the Poland-Lithuanian border, annexing all Baltic states?
When they come for Europe, they will come with nukes. It's clear they only need to protect St Petersburg and Moscow with SMD. The rest they are happy to let burn. Can England and France threaten Russia with retaliation? Trump has made it clear that Europe (maybe minus the UK, just maybe) is in the Russian sphere of influence, and we can't really count on the English to not Neville Chamberlain their way out of this.
When you say 'everything is better' are you just talking about higher compensation > *? Cause I can think a number of 'quality of life' things that europe does better.
Money can buy quality of life, and people earning 100-150k in USA per person in household do confirm this. And this purchasing ability is not linear, because of the fixed costs for many good and services. Previously many countries with low salaries had corresponding low cost of life (and cost of quality of life), but today the costs are rising faster than salaries everywhere across the globe, so the biggest winners are people who earn more in absolute values, hence rich Americans.
It actually can't, not generally at least for US labor.
One of the most important measures of quality is work-life balance. Basically, your life kinda sucks if you work all the time, and then you also get fat and sick and die young(er).
People in the US work a lot, and often the more wealthy, but not most wealthy, work A TON. In programming, it's not atypical to have "superstar" staff engineers putting in easily 60-70 hours a week. Of course, not including the commute.
But then there's the time off. Oh, where to begin. We're at a point where 10 days of PTO accrued a year is considered decent. It's work work work, and you can put in 20 years of service... and get, like, an extra couple days. Maybe.
None of this scales down. For example, I'm supposed to be working 40 hours a week. I'm not of course, the baseline is 45 because 9-5 is actually 9-6. And I haven't left at 6 in at least a year, so even that is underestimating it. But suppose I do work 40 hours a week.
Would I take a 50% pay cut to work 20 hours? Fuck. Yes. Yes. In a heart beat. But I can't, I'd actually be taking an 80% pay cut if I do that, so I couldn't live. And it's like this for literally ALL jobs. I can't just "move up", because the work-life balance doesn't get better, it actually just gets worse! And at no point can I take a "step down" and work less, because then I'm flipping burgers.
Guns and (relatively) freedom of speech (yes I'm aware it comes with asterisk) are the two big ones. If I left the USA it would probably be to a place with weak governance on these points in practice rather than on paper. Only Yemen, Iraq, Somaliland, parts of Pakistan, parts of Rojava and maybe KRG (Kurdistan), Idlib, and Palestine are only places I know of with looser (to me better) gun laws than America and out of all those I'd only really consider Somaliland & KRG & Rojava as places where a westerner could probably settle without getting their head cut off. Freedom of speech, IDK where, hard to find anyplace with looser speech restriction than America.
However if you are willing to go with de facto rather than de jure, plenty of places in Africa and Latam can be freer on these points, especially if you have a little coin.
Financially though, places like Dubai blow away the absolutely dystopic USA controls like FATCA and world taxation/filing, KYC, AML and other madness USA uses to keep an iron grip on traditional finance channels.
For me it was a factor to some degree. I am not a firearm collector. For me it was knowing that I was moving from a state that hates firearms and wants to justify law enforcement budgets by punishing anyone that defends themselves to a state that not only has very few restrictions on firearms and ammo but also actively and legally supports people defending themselves and their neighbors. That was just one of many factors however. No state income tax was also a big plus for me personally.
It seems so weird to even know which states "hate firearms" and which ones support them, let alone care. It's not something that would even appear on my radar if I had to move across the country to some new town. I'm worried about things like good schools, access to amenities, commute times, access to fresh air and nature, stuff like that. How gun-friendly the place is? It wouldn't even make my top 20 or even cross my mind. Do Americans really factor this into their decision when they move somewhere?
I take it as a given that being in America in general means you could be shot randomly, with a uniform, but low probability distribution. It doesn't really matter what the state's gun laws are. So outside of notoriously "unsafe" areas, it doesn't play into my mind at all.
Who would tell you they have them if you are in a country where it is illegal? For instance the fgc-9[] commonly seized in parts of Europe was invented by a German in Germany (ethnic Kurd though).
No one knew who he was until he was arrested and for the most part until he was dead. His european friends would be saying the same thing as you, "don't know anyone with guns..."
Lots of guns in Europe by people who aren't supposed to have them. Either because they are criminals thus don't care about gun laws, or if they are 'good' people then they should know not to pull out a gun unless their other option is to be dead -- at which point 'fuck the law' and better to be in a jail cell than dead.
At least in Germany they are legal in general, only highly regulated.
Most guns are owned by relatively few people. Nobody from the common crowd here thinks about owning fire arms, virtually nobody does. Maybe that's a cultural gap hard to imagine from an US perspective.
The question remains, against what and who are you even defending? Maybe it's different in Europe because it's densely populated, but people generally don't consider fire arms being a net plus to the security of themselves and that of their family.
It also just doesn't seem useful to move to a state with loose fire arms laws - it's much better to move to a state/city/neighborhood with low crime rate instead.
I've repeated it several times in this thread, but it absolutely helped those in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising gain hours to days, and a couple women who had their lives spared because the Nazi or Nazi-allied officers decided at least a couple of jews (see woman on right here for example[]) were humans with bravery rather than just more carbon for the incinerator.
Although I'll grant you, that took place in Poland, but it happened largely due to the German government.
Yes the last option, like a fire extinguisher or seat belt. It doesn't become useful until the very last moment, but you'd give the world to have only have learned how to use one when days were better, and also to not be trying to buy one at at time where everyone's house is already on fire.
In your example, virtually everybody died, even with fire arms.
So I still wonder against what / who you are really defending.
Needing a seat belt is much more likely than needing a fire arms, at least in Europe. Focusing on fire arms means focusing on the wrog things. It's about a feeling of security, not actual security.
To use your wording: You'd give the world to have focussed on something else instead of buying a fire arm.
You could live in Norway. Guns are very popular there for hunting, biathalon, target shooting, etc. you can even have silencers which are banned in USA.
Not a bad choice. I'd probably pick Greenland out of the European (Denmark I think?) jurisdiction territory. You can buy bolt action rifles like a hammer at hardware store. They are looser than the USA on that point, though I didn't initially include them because they are stricter on most everything else. But open carrying a rifle probably isn't frowned upon in Greenland, so it might not matter that you can't carry a handgun.
When was the last time that guns protected someone in the US from an ICE raid? Basically never. Now imagine ICE five years in the future as a much more ingrained police state when they actively start hunting citizens.
It bought quite a few people some extra hours or days during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. And a couple women their lives, since one of the officers that saw them fight decided a few of the Jews were people with courage rather than just more trash for the incinerators and actually went out their way to send a couple of the brave fighters to the work camps instead of the gas chambers. (See woman on right here[], for example)
Sure but bearing arms is a lot more restrictive in Switzerland. I'm not claiming you can't have guns in other countries, hell you can have a gun even in places like Japan in a limited capacity with the right permits.
Where I live in Arizona you can 3d print a handgun, load it, stick it down your pants, and walk around with it around town all day doing basically whatever (as long as you don't go to a school, jail, or courthouse basically). All with zero background checks, licenses/permits, or even needing to carry an ID. Can I do that in Switzerland? I doubt they would let you do that even with a long rifle, unless you are going to/from some sort of approved activity.
The only euro-controlled place I know where you can basically do that is Greenland, as long as it is a bolt action rifle. Greenland is actually looser than USA in that regard, you can buy a bolt rifle like a hammer from a hardware store in Greenland with zero checks or license (IIRC, even as a foreigner) whereas in USA you could only do that if you bought it privately or made it yourself.
If I'm not allowed to have guns, then I am physically unsafe, because someone from government will use violence against me if they both discover it and have the ability to do something about it. I wouldn't feel safe anywhere violence is used for malum prohibitum 'crimes.' In fact I don't feel safe basically anywhere a government exists because they all do this; this is part the reason why I live in a rural area with basically no government services, no police, no public utilities or anything like that with involvement by the state beyond the bare minimum possible in the USA.
Your proposition also relies on the place itself not changing, and my and my offsprings atrophying their practice of skills of self defense and therefore not needing them when moving elsewhere. But sure if you had a magic wand and could trade 'no guns' for anyone for world peace, I'd take it.
Are there any examples of someone in the US successfully defending themselves from “government violence” using a gun? I mean, examples where it ultimately worked out for that person?
Yes, American Revolution. More recently, Battle of Athens[0]. Also see the Bundys who are still (as far as I know, to this day) ranching on the land they had an armed standoff over the BLM with in Nevada [1].
Ok, I guess you’d be the first in ~100 years. Crazier things have happened. But the much more likely outcome of meeting government violence with lethal violence of your own is that you are now dead. That’s a scenario that plays out all too often in this country; no need to reach into the distant past for examples.
Kudos for engaging civilly and earnestly on this even though the majority here seem to disagree with you. It’s rare that I encounter someone coherently articulating a belief system so wildly divergent from my own.
Oh wow! I wonder what must have happened to you that you feel so threatened. I only have positive experiences with government and police interactions. In multiple situations they made me feel safer and protected. I would however not feel safe around a gun, regardless of who owns it. Too much can go wrong.
>> I am physically unsafe, because someone from government will use violence against me
And how your gun can prevent this now? If you are allowed to carry a gun police will act like you have one lane shoot you. While in other case they will just beat you with stick.
(coming from a country where having guns at home or seeing a civilian with a gun is very very strange and an huge emergency so maybe my question is stupid)
IF the government decides to use violence against you do you really have a chance with a gun? or 10?
I'm not claiming you'd be safe even with a gun. I'm not claiming there is any real government you are safe living under given a long timespan (maybe longer than even your own lifespan, but still these skills are passed down in families so breaking the chain during 'safe' times is still harmful).
To your specific question, probably not, but the better question is whether you have more of a chance with or without a gun? If you look at the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising for example, having a gun bought those people hours to days, which is better than nothing. Of course if you look at places like Chechnya, it bought them outright years that they were able to obtain independence from the brutality of Russia (even if not from their own brutality) as a result of militia activity in the first Chechen war.
(don't know why you were downvoted for an honest-sounding response)
If I understand correctly, the reasoning is a kind of long-term best-practice thinking?
And that best-practice is a high enough priority that it would prevent you from moving someplace that was otherwise better than a place that would let you have guns?
Is it only reasoning, or it there also a psychological component, like you'd also feel unsafe without guns, maybe due to past or current threatening situation (e.g., physical danger, or economic)?
My reasoning is that if firearms are banned then the underlying threat is that violence will be used against me for obtaining them. I consider myself unsafe if 'legitimate' violence will be used against me despite the fact I have deprived no one of their life, liberty, or property.
Thanks, I have a better idea where you're coming from.
If I understand correctly, you have both practical (near-term or long-term) and also philosophical objections, to the power imbalance between citizen and state, when citizens can't have guns. And it's a high priority.
FWIW, I sympathize with vigilance. Though my own priorities around guns are different. I live in a fairly safe city, with good police. Where I live, the prevalence of citizen guns seems to create more problems than it solves. The problems I have don't seem to be solvable with guns. I might feel differently, if I lived in a less-safe place or in different circumstances.
> someone from government will use violence against me if they both discover it and have the ability to do something about it
This is a statement so far removed from reality that it makes anything else you say immediately suspect.
You appear to view "government" as an entity whose primary purpose is to bring violence against anyone who cannot resist that violence with lethal force. There is no possible justification for that as a blanket definition.
If you are omitting, perhaps, the fact that you are a wanted and dangerous person, who has, for instance, committed a string of murders, and that is why the government would "use violence against you", then that would seem to make anything you say quite inapplicable to anyone else's situation.
i myself am a maximalist about this and i don't feel safe unless i carry some strains of ebola with me. it would be nice if you could support my ebola open-carry efforts (dm me for details).
Simply owning or encountering a seat belt also 'increases' your risk of dying in a car crash. This is the kind of nonsense causation-correlation mix-up statistics you are operating on.
It's not, because most gun death are actually from the person owning the gun or people close to them.
It's much more likely that you shoot yourself or your kid shoots you or your husband/brother/other-troubled-man has a bad day and shoots you than a criminal shooting you.
The relationship between gun deaths and guns is not correlative, it's causative. Because, surprise! Guns cause gun death.
Generally, less guns = less gun death. Which might seem like such a simple understanding that it must be naive or stupid. But no, it's actually just that simple.
On a related note, less automobiles = less automobile deaths.
Show the evidence you have that it is causative rather than correlative.
>Generally, less guns = less gun death. Which might seem like such a simple understanding that it must be naive or stupid. But no, it's actually just that simple.
It does not assert what you've claimed. It found correlative association. They did not conclude that the gun was causative of the homicide.
Even thinking this through for a second, it makes sense someone expecting to be murdered by a family member or intimate partner might be more likely to keep a gun, as it might be useful in frustrating that effort.
I think it's just plainly true that guns cause gun homicide and obviously having more guns means more gun homicide. And suicide. And other stuff, too, like kids shooting themselves in the face on accident. Surprisingly common, which is why you probably should not have a gun in your home with children.
Look, it's just a simple matter of probability and being honest about the world. Bad things, like robberies, are very, very, very rare. Heat of the moment disagreements and accidents are not.
You're optimizing for something that you know, deep down, does not matter - and to do it, you're actively making a bunch of MUCH MORE LIKELY stuff easier. And even here I am being far too charitable to you - I'm assuming the gun would help you in the case a crime is committed. It probably won't, especially if you follow safe gun keeping guidelines.
My guess is sense of security. Although that just works if you ignore the fact that now everyone has more access to guns, including criminals! And they typically get to shoot first..
Switzerland is one of the best countries to be if you are rich, because it's safe and nobody will target you for driving a Porsche (probably the most common car brand in canton Zug), or similar.
So I'd be interested what he means too.
What is for sure better in the US: There is way more space.
It's a small country, relatively speaking. Rather dull cities, again relatively speaking. Rural land is hard to come by and expensive. Not a lot of sunshine hours either. Not English speaking, not an immigrant culture, and quite an insular society so if you're not born there it kinda sucks. The cities punch way above their weight, but in total the tech job market is still tiny compared to the US.
If you like being outdoors, Switzerland has one landscape, pretty much.
It's heaven for rich people, but a very specific kind of heaven.
...do you really need examples? In America, *if* you have money, everything is better than anywhere else. Maybe Dubai can compare but there are some strong trade offs.
America has the best healthcare. Not the best value, but the best healthcare. It has low taxes, lots of world class cultural institutions, and varied beautiful geography. It is the Rome of our age. Corrupt, amoral, and exploitative? Sure, but with money you can overlook that.
I have a chronic disease making over 500K dollars and I can tell you the US healthcare (from primary care to specialists) ability to help me stay on track or identify health issues has been null. If it wasn't because I second guess every recommendation, go and pay out of pocket tests (even though I gotta pay 4K+ in insurance premiums) I would have been dead by now. No, the US does not have the best healthcare not even close.
Scenario 1: You fall head first from a 10th floor. US healthcare has higher chance of saving your life.
Scenario 2: You are an average person that hopes to get preventive medical care. You will die in the U.S of the most basic medical condition.
It's likely that you'd have issues in pretty much any country in the world with your conditions. For example many european single-payer systems have tons of exceptions. Covering only basic tests/procedures/drugs (premium available out-of-pocket only), queues (jumping queue is possible by paying out-of-pocket) and incompetent doctors (longer queues at the good ones). And you pay a huge insurance for this, so there's not that much money left to pay out-of-pocket for most people.
If I want to use an extension that needs full permissions on sensitive websites, I just download it and install it manually after looking at the source code. I rarely have to update them, and I'm not worried about future injections at that point.
It’s been a while since i mucked around with browser extensions, but i assume they don’t have network access by default. Surely there is an extension with page read access and without network access, no?
I don’t think that’s an accurate description of browser extensions. Content scripts work that way, and many browser extensions include content scripts… but not all browser extensions use content scripts.
Anyway, a quick readthru of the code of the extension i linked shows it does use content scripts, but also it doesn’t do any network access.
Listen to this guy defend trash web browsers to support google! Tell me more about how traditional forums are unacceptable and your daddy with billions for shareholders but not customers has the right idea.
The AI only sees a bit of HTML plus a bunch of JS that, when executed, generates more HTML. If the AI does not run the JS it won’t see everything. During training they probably use a crawler that runs a headless browser behind the scenes to get everything a human would get.
So... The answer is to use during the real-time access the same headless browser as they used during the training? Which they already do, unless you ask specifically to write and run a python script that uses simple requests?
It is like generating static webpages just for SEO: obsolete since 2012[1], and few years later for other major websites.
Best way for me to get rid of my tinnitus was to get a hearing aid. In my specific case I got the Lyric hearing aid which is a totally invisible hearing aid positioned deep inside the ear canal and it is worn 24/7. It is known to reliably eliminate a tinnitus that is caused by hearing loss in the high frequency range.
Sadly not everyone is able to keep anything in their ears for a longer period of time. For me, it quickly gets very tiresome to the point where my ears start to hurt.
According to German law every website who is owned and operated by a person or entity in Germany needs an imprint with full name, address, email address and phone number… (of the owner 2 owning entity)…
a) This is only for commercial websites although what counts as commercial is vague and probably not something you want to argue in court so it's safer to just add it unless you are absolutely sure.
b) You need a valid postal address where you can receive mail but this doesn't have to be your home address. A PO box is fine.
c) You don't need to have a phone number in your Imprint.
The base requirement of commercial operations having to have valid contact information (that can be used for legal communication) is pretty sensible. The details could be a bit friendlier towards individuals running purely personal sites.
So this in practice is a massive push to centralization: if you have a Facebook page or Instagram account, you don't need to risk that level of privacy compromise.
Concord was actually a cash cow for all airlines who had them. The only reason why airlines stopped using Concord was because of the crash and the inherent safety issues that were found. But the actual business model worked - limited in scope but it was highly profitable.
“That said, the airlines that flew the Concorde did make a profit. Concorde was only ever purchased by two airlines: BA and Air France. While the concept of the Concorde might not have been a worldwide hit, it was certainly a good market fit for these two airlines at the time.”
Overall it was obviously a money looser because of the high development costs (paid for by the governments).
It worked because not just the development costs were paid for by the government, but acquisition costs were, too. Planes were given to the airlines for free, completely paid for by the states.
Also, only be BA made good profit on it and only after mid-1980s. Air France could barely break even.
If not the PR effect that put those airlines above all others as the only ones flying supersonically, they'd never make any sense to either of them.
These days, they'd certainly not be viable as private planes are now much more available and much cheaper than they used to be back in the day and these save a lot more time than supersonic flights. BA fare for LHR-JFK roundtrip was 10K pounds back in 2000, $15.2K at the average exchange rate, that's $28K inflation adjusted! Who'd pay that kind of money today for a commercial flight?
Is Boom aiming to be faster than the Concorde? I don't think so.
Their website says:
> Overture will carry 64-80 passengers at Mach 1.7
Concorde flew NYC<->LON in 3.5 hours. I guess Boom will fly the route in about 4 hours. Also, regular commercial flights on NYC<->LON are currently 7 hours.
Also, using Google Flights, I priced LHR<->JFK on first class about T+1month for 7 days (Mon->Mon). It is about 5.3K USD round trip. I am surprised that it is so cheap. I guess that route is very competitive.
I don't understand the excitement on HN about Boom. The market is tiny. This is a terrible investment. What is the global demand for this aeroplane (if they ever build it)? Maybe... max 200. Look at the order book from the 1960s when the Concorde first flew. Less than 100 total orders. Are people forgetting about how incredibly loud is a sonic boom? It is unlikely that it will get rights to fly over land, just like the Concorde. Also, it is terrible for the environment. The Concorde burned fuel (passenger miles per liter) at roughly twice the rate of non-supersonic aeroplanes.
> Are people forgetting about how incredibly loud is a sonic boom? It is unlikely that it will get rights to fly over land, just like the Concorde.
Remember a few years back when the Canadian-made Bombardier C-Series was selling well, so Boeing got their allies in the US government to impose a 300% tax on them as an "America First" policy?
Well, the rules around sonic booms were similar. Were there sonic booms? Sure. But the real reason for the ban was that they were foreign-made sonic booms.
Now the world's only supersonic passenger plane is being made in America, you might find Congress is much less worried about sonic booms.
This was done to prepare people and gauge the reaction to BOEING sonic booms, for the SST. Everything about a supersonic future was scuttled when it became obvious that people clearly suffered when planes flew supersonic above them.
Keep in mind that the US Air Force still does not go supersonic over populated areas except when absolutely necessary, like during 9/11.
This study mind you was done with SCHEDULED sonic booms. Now imagine, instead of being able to set your clock to a loud, disruptive noise and plan around it, you must deal with completely unpredictable and variable EXPLOSION of sharp noise (130ish decibels is standing 100m from a jumbo jet as it spools up or a trumpet being blasted directly into your ear from a couple feet away)
People already hate the noise of cities when that noise is an occasional quiet siren heard from a mile away a few times a day. Imagine instead if the noise was completely unpredictable explosions. Also imagine you can't move out of the city to get away from it, because the sound blankets an entire flight corridor.
Unless NASA finds a way to magically evaporate all the energy in a sonic boom such that it makes almost no noise at ground level, we would have to literally depopulate mile wide corridors of the US just so a bunch of stupidly rich people can get from NY to LA in an hour? Nah
This isn't true. The backlash to sonic booms grew well before Concorde and was part of why the US government canceled its support of the SST program. Boeing canceled their part of the 2707 because of the (extremely) unexpected success of the 747 program (a larger plane slower addressed a larger market) and the 737 success.
Sources:
Joe Sutter, Creating the worlds first Boeing Jumbo Jet
Sure, being a domestic enterprise might help here, but you will have to deal with regulations abroad, too (and Concorde had arguably the edge there because it had both London and continental Europe as home court).
I'm also fairly sure that softening/undermining noise regulations in general has become harder (less tech enthusiasm, more NIMBYism, especially in Europe).
> Are people forgetting about how incredibly loud is a sonic boom?
Is it? I lived in Kansas in the 1960s. Sonic booms from the AF base were common. They weren't that loud. Electric storms (a regular in Kansas) were considerably louder.
> The Concorde burned fuel (passenger miles per liter) at roughly twice the rate of non-supersonic aeroplanes.
5-7 times as much.
My dad said when he pushed his jet supersonic, you could watch the gas gauge unwind.
> My dad said when he pushed his jet supersonic, you could watch the gas gauge unwind.
Did your dad fly military jets? Most older jets can't supercruise, i.e. go supersonic without using afterburners, and afterburners consume unholy amounts of fuel. Concorde did consume quite a lot of fuel per passenger mile, but it could supercruise.
The one new factor is the route fragmentation that occurred over the Atlantic with the 757 and 767 and the fragmentation that occurred over the Pacific with the 777 and 787. These changed from a model where only hub to hub flights where every seat had to be sold to be viable from a financial point of view to enabling many city pairs to work, and airlines still to make a profit, even if the business class seats are not fully sold. This led to a much larger market, which plenty of room for 3-10k "business class" tickets on these flights.
If boom can hit that same number, they will have success out of the USA <-> Europe market and premium intra-asia flights - the two most profitable route systems in the world.
They claim they have sonic boom solved by modifying the airframe shape. Otherwise, i agree with you. It will be a thing of no real consequence just like the original Concorde.
Firstly, my claim that they say this is evidenced by the link. I did not assert it as historic fact that this thing works, just that this is what they say. The words "Selling point" and "proposed" are in that sentence for a reason: it's not actual yet. But if you think it's a deliberate fraud, then say so.
Secondly: Although the final proof of it is in the full scale aircraft for sure, a lot can be done with software modelling (1) and wind tunnels these days. And with the scale model that just flew, to be followed by "checking the actual performance that was demonstrated against what our models predicted, and how we expected it to fly." (2)
Thirdly, I point you to other "quieter supersonic" aircraft work in progress, the X-59. Some of their evidence-gathering process is detailed at the Wikipedia link, "development" section. (3)
It will be interesting to see how these work out; but if they do not, then it's a failure of modelling and design, not because they missed the directly obvious. But if you are an aerospace engineer and know more about this subfield, then say so.
1) "Boom has perfected its aircraft’s efficient, aerodynamic design using computational fluid dynamics, which “is basically a digital wind tunnel"."
A sonic boom is not necessary when moving faster than sound, the Busemann biplane resolves that completely.
There's been considerable work on sonic boom mitigation for many decades. Boom's long nose, flat underside, top engine, small wingspan delta wings are all designs expected to mitigate a sonic boom. Let's see if it works in practice.
> Concorde flew NYC<->LON in 3.5 hours. I guess Boom will fly the route in about 4 hours.
I feel that you're getting diminishing returns at the point of reducing 4 hours to 3h30, given that flight time is just a part of the whole "door to door" time, there are several hours at least that aren't flight time, and that the expensive tickets all come with an hour or three in an airport lounge.
I think the real advantage would be for transpacific flights. San Francisco to Tokyo is currently about 11.5 hours, assuming a similar ratio (maybe slightly better due to flying supersonic for longer), Boom’s time would be around 6.5 to 7 hours. Savings would be more significant for East Coast flights, ATL-HND would go from 14.5 hours to under 8.5.
East Coast US to Japan supersonic? This is the stuff of fantasy. With the insanely high fuel burn and very small aeroplane body size, where are you going to put all the fuel for a trans-Pacific flight? NYC<->LON was already nearly the limit for the Concorde. As I understand, they had high priority when landing due to low fuel.
Interesting, I hadn’t realized the range was so short. I guess if they did trans-Pacific it would mostly be limited to Seattle to Tokyo, or routes with a stopover in Hawaii.
The problem with $50,000 tickets is a higher price means fewer customers, and at a certain point that means less money coming in overall, worse economies of scale, and less ability to cover your upfront engineering costs.
The Toyota Camry is a $30,000 car that sells 300,000 units per year. The Lamborghini Huracan is a $300,000 car that sells 600 units per year. Much easier to cover the costs of developing a reliable electrical system, or a new hybrid drivetrain, when you're Toyota.
Concorde couldn't repay its development costs for the same reason.
In fairness, there's little practical benefit (and, in fact, a lot of downsides) to a supercar whereas a plane that does trans-oceanic in half the time is useful--of course, if you can build it, and sell tickets economically for maybe today's business class prices--keeping in mind that a lot of people flying business are doing so on upgrades/miles.
I used to work for a big 6 accountancy and audit firm. their senior partners used to fly concorde, wheras us underlings flew virgin upper class (like first class on other carriers).
> Who'd pay that kind of money today for a commercial flight?
Nobody. That's part of Boom's plan: they want to make the Overture jet cheap enough to fly that tickets will cost about what business class costs on regular intercontinental flights. They're keeping the problems of the Concorde in mind as part of the design process.
> Who'd pay that kind of money today for a commercial flight?
People willing to throw money at connecting with others who do the same thing. That was the main value proposition back then I think, getting from continent to continent in a short time has never been more than a tangential benefit. Of course this type of business only really works when everybody involved claims the opposite.
