skybrian's recent activity
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Comment on An open letter to the University of California Regents requesting that standardized testing be re-introduced into admissions, >200 UC Professors signatures in ~life
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Comment on An open letter to the University of California Regents requesting that standardized testing be re-introduced into admissions, >200 UC Professors signatures in ~life
skybrian Link ParentIncentives are often bad and they're always a blunt instrument, but in general, wanting to be broadly seen as useful by colleges and accepted as a legimate test by the public seem like good...Incentives are often bad and they're always a blunt instrument, but in general, wanting to be broadly seen as useful by colleges and accepted as a legimate test by the public seem like good incentives?
It sounds like you're hoping for a government that has good incentives, but we don't have that and aren't likely to get it. It all depends on who is in power. I do hope the Democrats get in again, but they will have their own agendas. They're likely to be interested in pleasing interest groups. Better to be an NGO and somewhat insulated from that.
Also, I think it's good that there are many colleges, public and private, and they can make their own decisions about admissions. If it were centralized then there would be less choice.
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Comment on When did you realize you were different? in ~talk
skybrian LinkUh, it was the usual nerd stuff. It was probably in kindergarten when they made a big deal out of already being an avid reader and being able to count as long as they're willing to listen. I got...Uh, it was the usual nerd stuff. It was probably in kindergarten when they made a big deal out of already being an avid reader and being able to count as long as they're willing to listen. I got praised for it and it seemed like a good thing. And later, being bad at sports was embarrassing. But I pretty much just accepted that this was who I was and that other kids had different strengths. I didn't question it and didn't think I could become good at non-academic stuff too.
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Comment on An open letter to the University of California Regents requesting that standardized testing be re-introduced into admissions, >200 UC Professors signatures in ~life
skybrian Link ParentIt would be good to have public funding so every student can take the SAT/ACT, but I don't see any advantage to having the government administer it. It seems like it's all downside? Similarly, the...It would be good to have public funding so every student can take the SAT/ACT, but I don't see any advantage to having the government administer it. It seems like it's all downside? Similarly, the TSA being federal employees at most airports turns out to be a bad idea, particularly for the employees, and I'm glad it's not the case at SFO.
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Comment on Waymo pauses Atlanta service as its robotaxis keep driving into floods in ~transport
skybrian Link ParentThis is a "pause" while severe weather is likely. The comparison is between driving in such conditions or not, rather than whether they will be in Atlanta or not. It seems similar to how airlines...This is a "pause" while severe weather is likely. The comparison is between driving in such conditions or not, rather than whether they will be in Atlanta or not. It seems similar to how airlines cancel flights when the weather looks too bad?
They are relying on weather forecasts to avoid driving in severe weather, but it turns out they needed to be more conservative about that, as well as improving their cars' ability to cope when the weather suddenly turns bad.
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Comment on Waymo pauses Atlanta service as its robotaxis keep driving into floods in ~transport
skybrian (edited )Link ParentWaymo maps the roads where they will be driving. I imagine they could predict where flooding might happen based on things like elevation to bridge underpasses, erc. Also, the cars could compare...Waymo maps the roads where they will be driving. I imagine they could predict where flooding might happen based on things like elevation to bridge underpasses, erc. Also, the cars could compare current conditions to what the road looks like when it's dry.
It will be a project, but it seems doable?
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Comment on Donating 80% while it still counts in ~society
skybrian (edited )LinkFrom the article: [...] The "earn to give" thing isn't an essential part of Effective Altruism, but Jeff and Julia are a fairly extreme example showing that it's not just talk.From the article:
Julia and I had been giving half since 2014, but in 2025 we drew on our savings to donate 81%. It looks to us like we're in a critical window for keeping the introduction of very powerful AI systems from being disastrous, and we want to do what we can while we still can.
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We've been prioritizing donations for a long time, but it feels very different now because of the AI boom. Some of this is that people who've made money in the boom will likely be giving more soon, and so money spent now can help set up organizations to spend future money more effectively. But more importantly, this is a key window of opportunity: transformative AI is coming very quickly, for better or worse. We want to push hard for "better".
The "earn to give" thing isn't an essential part of Effective Altruism, but Jeff and Julia are a fairly extreme example showing that it's not just talk.
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Donating 80% while it still counts
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Comment on Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of May 25 in ~society
skybrian LinkIf you're in California, Scott Alexander's choices on the primary elections might interest you.If you're in California, Scott Alexander's choices on the primary elections might interest you.
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Comment on Everyone against us in ~society
skybrian LinkFrom the article: [...] [...]From the article:
Being a public defender may be unrewarding in terms of both pay and respect, but it is a noble calling. Protection of the accused isn’t charity. It’s necessary because of the possibility of mistakes, farcical legal processes, and the weaponization of false accusations. For public defenders, it’s a special badge of American pride to work for the government and against the government at the same time. We work to try to counteract state abuses; that’s our contribution.
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The most intense pressure that ate at me as a criminal defense attorney came from the split in reality that occurred depending on whether I won or lost a trial. It strains every boundary of expression to attempt to describe the difference between incarceration and freedom, and it defies all reason to consider just how thin the line can be. Especially if I thought I should win, defeat was devastating. Crying on the floor of the lockup is not a good look for any lawyer, but I’ve been there, and I can promise you I’m not alone.
Most cases simply never get to any kind of hearing or trial due to plea agreements. Among the cases that do, there is an old unwritten rule floating around Cook County defense practitioners: Take winners to a bench, take losers to a jury. “Heaters” — cases with intense public pressure — usually have to go to juries. And there are times when judges will tell the defense attorney, either point-blank or via hints, that he or she will not get a good outcome from them and should not try a bench trial.
The inverse is known as a “jury tax.” I’ve also heard it referred to as the “asshole penalty.” Judges have been known to sentence defendants more harshly after a jury loss than they would have if the defendant pleaded guilty.
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For a very high portion of PD investigations, it’s absolutely critical to just go check. Check the details of the narrative that the police have laid out, and check what the defendant tells you. Go to the scene and observe the physical layout to view sightlines, lighting, cameras, distances, and see what else isn’t in the reports. People might be surprised to learn just how often the defense finds some evidence to suggest that the police “clean up” their cases with exaggerations, simplifications, convenient omissions, and outright lies.
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Everyone against us
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Comment on Squillions: where’s all the cash? in ~society
skybrian LinkFrom the article: [...]From the article:
So where is all that cash, who’s using it, and for what? The answer proposed by Bullough is bizarre: nobody knows. ‘The number of banknotes is increasing, and the question of why the value of banknotes has increased so markedly remains unanswered.’ Central bankers don’t have much interest in the question. It is immensely valuable for any country to be able to produce currency that’s in worldwide demand: for the cost of printing a few bits of paper, a developed economy receives billions of dollars of value in pounds, dollars or euros. This is called seigniorage, and central bankers are as keen as anyone else on what is in effect free money. But the incuriosity they’ve developed around the question is remarkable. Especially when you home in on what all that cash is actually being used for. According to the Financial Action Task Force, which was set up in 1989 to fight financial crime at a global level, ‘it does not seem unreasonable to suggest that the total amount of cash physically transported for money laundering purposes globally is in the order of hundreds of billions of dollars.’ This seems to be the amazing answer to the question of the missing cash: it’s being used in criminal transactions.
This theme – something not fully understood is going on at a massive scale right under the noses of governments – is dominant in Everybody Loves Our Dollars and in How to Launder Money by George Cottrell and Lawrence Burke Files. Bullough is a star investigative journalist with a long track record in writing about illicit financial flows. Cottrell and Files are also expert witnesses, though they’re an unlikely pairing. Files is an American financial investigator and specialist in due diligence, a veteran in the field – his name comes up in Bullough’s book. Cottrell is a young British man, born in 1993, with an aromatic CV. He was brought up on the toff-infested Caribbean hellhole of Mustique, sent to and then expelled from boarding school in England, supposedly worked in banking for a while, became deputy treasurer of Nigel Farage’s Ukip in 2015, was arrested by IRS agents at Chicago O’Hare in 2016 and charged with 21 counts of money laundering, pleaded guilty to one of them, did eight months’ federal time, went to work for the Brexit Party and currently lives in Montenegro, though he’s still often seen with Farage. He owns a company called Geostrategy, whose website has the unimprovable tagline ‘Reputation is built brick by brick.’ How to Launder Money is no masterpiece, but it is full of good stories and juicy details, and together with the vastly superior Everybody Loves Our Dollars helps us, if not to understand what’s going on (nobody does, apart from the money launderers themselves), at least to begin to understand the known unknowns.
The first of these is how much money laundering takes place. Bullough quotes Jason Sharman, a professor at Cambridge, whose estimate is ‘squillions’. That is an accurate summary of the current state of knowledge. An informed guess, from Michel Camdessus, the longest-serving head of the International Monetary Fund, is that it is somewhere between 2 and 5 per cent of global GDP. The lower figure puts criminal activity at $2 trillion, or the same size as the Russian economy. The higher puts it at $5 trillion, or the same size as the German economy, the third largest in the world. (Cottrell and Files use the higher number.) If it were an industry, money laundering would be the third biggest business in the world, behind commercial property and ahead of pensions.
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Chinese money laundering is involved in some extremely dark gambling-related activities, which Bullough describes. Money is moved abroad not in the form of cash but in the form of credit transactions through overseas casinos. ‘Handing over control of both debt and debt collection to organised criminals was hugely profitable for everyone,’ he writes. Some Chinese money laundering is less sinister, verging even on the comic. Example: Bicester Village. This extremely successful shopping venue is, according to Bullough, a prime route for Chinese criminals to launder cash. It works like this. A Chinese gang sends drugs to the UK. British drug dealers sell the drugs for cash. British drug dealers give the cash to Chinese students. Chinese students buy luxury goods from Bicester Village. Chinese students ship the goods back to China, where they’re sold and the money given to the drug dealers. Bullough estimates that the Bicester trade is worth £2 billion a year, just from tourists arriving by train. This kind of activity is an issue for the whole luxury market. Bullough asks a police contact about luxury watches, which are a notoriously effective way of moving monetary value. ‘I reckon the luxury watch trade is 80 per cent money laundering. Why wouldn’t it be? You can carry a huge, big bag of money and be very noticeable, or have the same value strapped to your wrist, and be completely anonymous.’ All this is invisible to the modern AML apparatus, which is focused on money that moves through the official financial system.
‘Trade-based money laundering’ follows a similar pattern. Bullough gives the example of a Mexican drug dealer who smuggles product across the border to the US. The drug in question would once have been marijuana, then cocaine, and is now likely to be fentanyl, which is cheap to manufacture and easy to conceal. The drugs are sold in the US for cash, which is used to buy, say, agricultural equipment. The machinery is shipped to Mexico, invisible as part of the $2.2 billion of physical goods that cross the border every day – that’s a total of $800 billion a year. Back home, it is sold by the drug dealer for pesos, which are now clean. The gangsters have exchanged drugs for clean peso bank deposits, without any record of the kinds of financial transaction that the AML/KYC/CTR/SAR apparatus is intended to detect.
It’s ingenious, and it’s also the origin story of modern banking, since it was bankers such as the Medici, originally cloth traders, who pioneered the practice of exchanging goods in one place for credits in another. That’s the reason so many banks have their origin in trading companies: Lloyds in iron, NatWest in cloth, Lehman Brothers in cotton and so on. The modern world economy offers a huge variety of techniques to conceal the movement of money in the flow of trade. Freeports and bonded warehouses, free-trade zones and forged bills of lading, under-invoicing and over-invoicing: all these things provide opportunities to camouflage the flow of illicit money in the mostly legal, overwhelmingly large flow of physical goods. Add the extensive repertoire of tricks used by launderers – shell companies in multiple jurisdictions; hidden ownership; paper trails that run out in long-defunct legal practices and accountancy firms – and it’s a miracle any of the illicit money is ever detected.
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Squillions: where’s all the cash?
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Comment on Announcing web serial support in Firefox 151 in ~comp
skybrian Link ParentAnd yet, some of these API ‘s are very useful for the small number of websites that need them, like the Web Serial API. The situation reminds me of how the Go language didn’t have generics for...And yet, some of these API ‘s are very useful for the small number of websites that need them, like the Web Serial API.
The situation reminds me of how the Go language didn’t have generics for many years and there were apologists saying they’re unnecessary, and then after they implemented them, apparently they’re not so bad after all.
I think you have to look at it case by case, rather than assuming Firefox is probably right.
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Comment on Announcing web serial support in Firefox 151 in ~comp
skybrian Link ParentI don't know; it depends on whether it uses WebUSB or Web Serial. Web Serial is one kind of connection that typically uses a USB cable, but there are other kinds of device connections.I don't know; it depends on whether it uses WebUSB or Web Serial.
Web Serial is one kind of connection that typically uses a USB cable, but there are other kinds of device connections.
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Comment on Announcing web serial support in Firefox 151 in ~comp
skybrian LinkFrom the article: [...] [...]From the article:
Firefox can now connect directly to microcontrollers, development boards, 3D printers, power meters, and other serial-connected hardware from the web. Starting in Firefox 151 for Desktop, support for the Web Serial API allows web applications to communicate with compatible devices without requiring native software.
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Ports are allowed on a per-site and per-port basis. The Web Serial API requires websites to call
navigator.serial.requestPort(), which lets the user choose which port to allow access to, or disallow all access entirely. This means websites do not receive a list of connected devices and there is no useful fingerprinting information outside of the port the user selects.[...]
While Web Serial still resides in the Web Incubator Community Group (WICG), we’re optimistic there’s a path to standardization given its scope and long-running incubation. We are pursuing standardizing the Web Serial API in the WHATWG in a new Workstream proposal and are excited to work with ecosystem partners and standards bodies to help shape access to peripherals on the web.
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Announcing web serial support in Firefox 151
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Comment on Project Glasswing: An initial update in ~tech
skybrian Link ParentUh, go back and read the article again. It was not just raising valid concerns. It was a confident hit piece that said it was all bullshit using gleefully inflammatory language, going well beyond...Uh, go back and read the article again. It was not just raising valid concerns. It was a confident hit piece that said it was all bullshit using gleefully inflammatory language, going well beyond reasonable skepticism.
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Comment on Why airlines are always going bankrupt in ~transport
skybrian LinkFrom the article: [...] [...] [...] [...] [...]From the article:
The collapse of Spirit was unique in that in its death throes it managed to solicit a bailout offer from the U.S. government; but it was not unique among its fellow airlines in going broke. Airlines are a bad business: a really, really bad business. The International Air Transport Association, the trade body of the global airline industry, has documented for years that airlines as a sector destroy investor value in the aggregate. The IATA’s 2026 outlook, looking forward to a quite strong year—this was before the Iran war broke out and oil prices surged—projected an average return on invested capital of 6.8 percent, against a weighted average cost of capital of 8.2 percent. As the IATA’s report said, “the airline industry collectively does not generate earnings that cover its cost of capital.” This has been the case for a long time. From its deregulation in 1978 to the end of 2025, the airline industry has cumulatively lost money: its net profit over those 47 years sits at negative $37 billion.1
Given these grim economics, you won’t be surprised to hear that airlines have a bad habit of going insolvent. This includes many of the most famous names in the history of aviation. Pan Am, long the unofficial flag carrier of the United States, ceased operations in 1991; Eastern Air Lines liquidated the same year; TWA, the carrier of Howard Hughes, was absorbed into American Airlines after a third bankruptcy filing in 2001; Braniff died in 1982. And those are only the most famous names; countless aviation startups have come and gone. (Have you ever heard of Trump Shuttle?) Even airlines with the backing of a national government go bankrupt all the time: Alitalia, Italy’s flag carrier, reported only a single year of profit since its founding in 1946 and was saved countless times by the Italian government before ultimately ceasing operations in 2021. Even those airlines that survive for long periods of time are perpetually in financial distress. Between 1978 and 2005, more than 160 airlines filed for bankruptcy; virtually every major U.S. carrier other than Southwest has been to bankruptcy court at least once. In September 2005, every one of the four largest American airlines—United, Delta, Northwest, and US Airways—was operating simultaneously under Chapter 11 protection.
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One of the central ideas in the study of cooperative games is the idea of the core. The “core” of a game is simply the set of outcomes that no coalition of players can improve upon by breaking away and dealing among themselves. If an outcome is “in the core,” it’s stable, such that nobody can propose a side deal that makes every member of some subgroup better off; if the core is “empty,” then every arrangement is vulnerable to being undercut by some side-coalition, and the market has no resting point, no stable equilibrium. It cycles, destabilizes, and, without outside intervention of some kind, eventually breaks down.
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Suppose you try to run the industry with just two firms. Demand exceeds supply, such that prices are high and there’s plenty of profit to enjoy. But that profit is exactly what invites a third firm to enter, undercut both incumbents, and still cover its costs. Now there are three firms, and supply exceeds demand. Someone has to operate below scale and bleed money on fixed expenses; eventually one of the firms will have to leave the market. Now you’re back to where you started: prices recover, profits climb higher, and the cycle begins again.
So whichever side of the integer you land on—one firm too many, one firm too few—there is some coalition of firms and customers that can profitably reorganize the market against the existing arrangement. In the language of cooperative game theory, the allocation is always vulnerable to defection by some coalition. The core is empty.
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You find the empty-core syndrome, for example, in the railroad industry of the nineteenth century. Building a railroad required vast capital expenditure on track, rolling stock, depots, and bridges; but once the infrastructure was in place, the marginal cost of carrying an additional ton of freight or another passenger across it was almost zero. Two railroads running competing lines between, say, Chicago and New York could not both operate at full cost recovery; so they spent the 1870s and 1880s alternately forming pools and rate-fixing agreements, then watching them collapse into ruinous price wars, going bankrupt, reorganizing, and starting the cycle over again.
And you’ll find the same dynamic in the contemporary airline industry.
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The economics of a genuinely competitive airline industry, then, are really bad—for the same reason the economics of any empty-core industry are bad. And this suggests that, in search of stability, the market participants will eventually try to suppress competition, if only so they can survive.
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In the course of this long path of suffering, every airline has decided, in one way or another, that the competitive airline industry is structurally unprofitable, and not really worth participating in.
One response is to cartelize the industry through means other than direct rate-fixing: to recreate, by private contract, the kind of competition-suppressing arrangements that the CAB previously wrote into statute. The international alliances of which airlines are so fond—Star, SkyTeam, and Oneworld, with their codesharing and antitrust-immunized joint venture agreements—are one form of this: they allow nominally competitive airlines to coordinate scheduling, share revenues, and refrain from undercutting each other on high-value trans-oceanic routes.
The hub-and-spoke model that dominates domestic aviation is another form of this tacit cartelization. By concentrating its operations at a few major airports, an airline can turn those airports into something close to local monopolies. American Airlines, for example, carries about 90 percent of passengers at Charlotte Douglas and 82 percent of passengers at Dallas-Fort Worth, but only about 7 percent of passengers at San Francisco, where the market is dominated by United, and 2 percent at Atlanta International, which is the central hub for Delta. In effect, major domestic airlines have carved up the country into a sort of feudal map of fortress hubs, with each one operating a quasi-monopoly through which it produces the margins that cannot be earned in genuine competition.
But the other response, and perhaps the more interesting one, is to leave the airline business entirely: to treat the planes as a kind of loss-leading distribution channel for what has become the actual product. The main innovation of the airline industry of the last few decades, from this vantage point, has been the frequent flyer program. Invented in the immediate aftermath of deregulation as airlines scrambled for ways to lock in customer loyalty, frequent flyer programs have become something quite different: enormous, free-floating financial businesses, miles-as-currency operations whose value bears essentially no relationship to the cost of the seats backing them.
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Why airlines are always going bankrupt
41 votes
In this case, the University of California Regents doesn’t seem very responsive to the needs of UC Faculty? More generally, I don’t see why we should assume people working for one part of a government would be responsive to the needs of some other part of a government. It might be true in specific cases, but there’s no general rule about how well or badly a bureaucracy works.