My (late) kid brother did that for a number of years. Big time sink and PITA.

(Sarcasm noted.) There was a bitter joke about Islamist takeovers by elections after the Arab Spring: "One man [literally], one vote, one time."

I haven't calculated a cube root by hand since, what, sixth grade? (It's been so long I don't remember.) I'd hate to spend the mental cycles having to do that kind of task.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49629685

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

(I use the flipped classroom approach extensively. But the legal profession being the eager embracers of novelty that we are , I refer to the approach as "enhanced Socratic method," given that Socratic method was something we all endured in law school.)

For math and engineering courses, the basic flipped-classroom approach was used at West Point for over 150 years: In the so-called Thayer method, students study textbooks in advance, then in class, they work on problems on chalkboards. The instructor moves from chalkboard to chalkboard, coaching the students in real time. [1]

(I do much the same thing in my contract-drafting classes: In small groups, students do drafting exercises using online whiteboards. I lurk on my laptop, quietly coaching in person as needed.)

[0] https://bokcenter.harvard.edu/flipped-classrooms

[1] https://flippedlearning.org/syndicated/avoiding-flipped-lear...

When I moved to Houston just after law school, I found a doctor and made an appointment to get a routine physical exam; I hadn't had one since getting out of the Navy three years earlier.

Doctor: So what brings you here?

Me: A triennial physical exam.

Doctor (incredulously): You get a physical exam three times a year?

Me: No ....

"But since Trump said in an interview with Time in 2017 that he told the Navy to go back to “goddamn steam,” top Navy and industry leaders have resisted the move because of the enormous expense to tear out such a complex system that was integral to the design of the Ford class."

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49291907

Points: 14

# Comments: 9

Having also done both: In legal drafting work, there's less systematic pre-release testing before the equivalent of a "program" is loosed upon the world. There's not much in the way of counterparts to software unit testing and regression testing, in part because legal-drafting clients can be vociferous in demanding that their lawyers keep costs down.

Lawyers who like to tinker with words can fuck things up more often and at greater scale — e.g., by inflicting compulsory burdens and costs on others — than can most programmers. That includes, e.g., contract drafters and litigation counsel, plus lobbyists trying to influence draft legislation and regulations.

I'm not-infrequently dismayed by the quality of the contracts I review for clients because of the "tinkering with words" by the lawyers on the other side of the deal. Back when I did IP litigation, I was sometimes likewise dismayed by the bullshit arguments that some lawyers felt free to make in their court papers because what the hell, the worst that can happen is almost never more than the judge just saying "no." And as mostly a law professor these days, I review court opinions all the time and am regularly amazed how judges (and their law clerks, such as Rayiner used to be) can be so patient in responding to such arguments.

Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress implicitly predicted this (albeit for Luna, which was obviously modeled on the U.S.).

(Heinlein was right about so many things ....)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moon_Is_a_Harsh_Mistress

And from a WaPo summary: "Contrary to the future envisioned by doomers, AI will drive more independence in the labor market by reducing the costs to owning your own business." https://wapo.st/3ToNK0o (gift link)

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49052225

Points: 7

# Comments: 2

Absolutely correct — and that's not sarcasm or irony. (Gore never claimed to have "invented the Internet"; that was a calumny spread by Republicans.)

Again: Catastropic naïveté.

That was true among some of the players in various governments — Kaiser Wilhelm being a prime example. Can you cite any (reputable) historians who think that was a general attitude?

Sinking or even just seriously damaging a U.S. aircraft carrier — approx. 5K people in crew + airwing, billions of dollars in ship and aircraft — might trigger a Pearl-Harbor or 9/11 fury among the American public. No U.S. president could get away with even a "proportionate" response, let alone doing nothing.

Think of the Tonkin Gulf incident in 1965, which led to the U.S.'s widened involvement in Vietnam on the basis of grossly-distorted reports about alleged attacks — which never happened — on U.S. destroyers (which are comparatively small ships). [0] If Iran were to actually sink a U.S. aircraft carrier, then Trump-Hegseth-Miller might well nuke Tehran in response.

We sure as hell don't need anything like the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914 by a terrorist. It triggered a cascade of some of the stupidest and costliest government decisions in history. Belgrade, Vienna, St. Petersburg, Berlin, Paris, London, they all effed it up almost beyond belief. WWI cost millions of lives and untold billions in resources that could have been put to far better use. Iran sinking a U.S. carrier could be a similar trigger.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_incident