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An opensource alternative for the TSA’s $300k line assistant

tsa.arik.io

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Re: An opensource alternative for the TSA’s $300k line assistant

#51

Post by deelowe »

wingless wrote: post #45
aurelius12 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been all of one week since a plane was hijacked. http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/29/europe/hijacked-egypt-air-jet/

According to Wikipedia there have been 6 notable hijackings in the last 5 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_hijackings#20... There are roughly 100k commercial flights per day, 36m flights per year. Therefore, the probability of your flight being hijacked is 1 in 30 million, which is an absurdly low number. Note that only one of the 6 hijackings resulted in casualties, so the mortality rate even lo…

And none were in the US.

Re: An opensource alternative for the TSA’s $300k line assistant

#53

Post by kough »

pw wrote: post #42

I feel like HN's nerd rage at stuff like this (the TSA expenditure) is the same reason many (if not most) engineers make less than they could. It's a very willful denial of a fact of how the world works (large organizations routinely pay large sums for seemingly very simple work).

Exactly. Where's @patio11 with some contract negotiation advice?

Re: An opensource alternative for the TSA’s $300k line assistant

#54

Post by kough »

Gratsby wrote: post #17

I have a cheaper alternative. Get rid of TSA altogether. Travelling was a whole heck of a lot more fun in 1975. Since then it's been overreaction upon overreaction. Nobody is going to hijack a plane in this day and age because of the simple fact that the passengers will immediately revolt.

What a new and interesting opinion! I'm sure there are many Hacker News readers who hold the opposite viewpoint /s

Re: An opensource alternative for the TSA’s $300k line assistant

#55

Post by kough »

wingless wrote: post #45
aurelius12 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been all of one week since a plane was hijacked. http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/29/europe/hijacked-egypt-air-jet/

According to Wikipedia there have been 6 notable hijackings in the last 5 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_hijackings#20... There are roughly 100k commercial flights per day, 36m flights per year. Therefore, the probability of your flight being hijacked is 1 in 30 million, which is an absurdly low number. Note that only one of the 6 hijackings resulted in casualties, so the mortality rate even lo…

Most likely due to the TSA's efforts! Can you imagine how many would be hijacked if there weren't a TSA?

Re: An opensource alternative for the TSA’s $300k line assistant

#56

Post by corysama »

jrockway wrote: post #27
zappo2938 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

13. Rule of Economy: Programming time is expensive; conserve it in preference to machine time. 15. Rule of Optimization: Prototype before polishing. Get it working before you optimize it.[1] [1] https://www.slingcode.com/ref/ProgrammingPhilosophies.pdf

Is programming time expensive? Let's say you have a mobile app used by 1 billion people every day. It sounds crazy, but I bet a fair number of people in this forum contribute to such an application. Imagine you want to make an optimization that increases battery life by 1%. Assume a 30Wh battery and that it's charged once per day. Over the two year lifetime of the phone, at $0.10 per KWh, that change would save your…

Similarly, my general rule for optimization is: Add up all the time that will ever be spent waiting on this code by all users ever. If that's less than the time required to implement the optimization, don't bother.

That eliminates a surprising number of tempting gold-plating situations that occur in rarely-executed code.

On the other hand, cutting 1 second of wait from a million daily active users adds up to whole human lifetimes saved rather quickly.

Re: An opensource alternative for the TSA’s $300k line assistant

#57

Post by throweway »

bogidon wrote: post #46
tcfunk wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make a thing responsive, people bitch about how many plugins you're using. Make a thing vanilla, people bitch about how it doesn't work on their phone.

But the app only needs to work on Mobile Safari (let's say 8 or higher?). Not rocket science to make it vanilla.

No it needs to work in any hn readers browser. Different business requirements entirely! The business case here is to get hn traffic to that site and start a discussion.

Re: An opensource alternative for the TSA’s $300k line assistant

#59

Post by throweway »

pw wrote: post #42

I feel like HN's nerd rage at stuff like this (the TSA expenditure) is the same reason many (if not most) engineers make less than they could. It's a very willful denial of a fact of how the world works (large organizations routinely pay large sums for seemingly very simple work).

No different to the difference between the landed cost of whatever crap you buy and the retail price of the same crap.

Re: An opensource alternative for the TSA’s $300k line assistant

#60

Post by manigandham »

tcfunk wrote: post #29
solomone wrote: post #2

I get that it's trying to be funny, but is it really no longer possible to create a website with a single arrow that doesn't have to pull down all this cruft ? window.jQuery || document.write(' ')

Make a thing responsive, people bitch about how many plugins you're using. Make a thing vanilla, people bitch about how it doesn't work on their phone.

None of that stuff is necessary to make things responsive. In fact HTML is responsive by default.
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