egerlach

@egerlach@lemmy.ca

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of August September 7th⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I never beat Hollow Knight (yeah yeah, I know), so I’m working my way through that. I think I’m about half way? Obviously hard to tell.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨LPT: Go get a shot, now.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  My understanding is that because of the type of protien that it encodes for, the immunity imparted by the vaccine decreases over time (because of complex immune system reasons). Never to 0%, but lower. The annual booster not only prepares you better for oncoming strains (in theory, when the vaccine research, development, and approval systems work as expected), but re-ups your immunity to existing strains.

  The theory as I understand it is that because viruses like COVID-19 pass through populations in waves, your body is developing a very strong short-term immunity to neutralize any immediate “rebound” waves (imagine a wave bouncing off the side of a pool, yes, viruses move through populations like that). It then maintains a weaker, long-term response. By fooling your immune system into thinking you have COVID-19 right now, the vaccine bumps your body ino “short-term” response mode, so your best possible immune response is at the ready if the real thing shows up.

  I am not an epidimeologist, but I read a lot of their work from 2020-2023. I might have details wrong, but if it’s been >6mo since you’ve had a booster, you would probably benefit from getting another one.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨When Americans Fly Economy, They're Actually Paying for Someone Else to Fly Private⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Sorry, been offline for a few days. I’m curious, so let’s check the math:

  Their example is a flight from Atlanta to Orlando. The most common flight on that route is a Delta B757-2001. SeatGuru can provide us with the most common seating layout: 24 First class, 21 Comfort+, and 135 Economy.

  The tax that the NYT Editorial Board is looking at is mostly likely the 7.5% Passenger Ticket Tax, which is about 1/3 of total fees on a two-leg itinerary2.

  Looking at Delta’s fares for about two months out on randomly chosen dates in October, I see economy fares of about $270, economy plus at about $350, and first at about $570 (I tried to take a median, but it’s very approximate). Those fares are round-trip, so let’s cut them in half for $135/175/285. At 7.5%, the tax comes out to ~$10.13/13.13/21.38 per seat. That tallies up to $2156.40 when we multiply out by the number of seats, pretty close to the $2300 value the video claims, so I’m comfortable saying my numbers are “right enough” for the example.

  Depending on how one structures the ownership of their private jet, the equivalent tax for them is zero dollars (they are exempt).

  There are then taxes that both flights would pay on a per flight basis or based on fuel consumed. A private jet would pay proportionally more of those than a commercial airliner (due to the lower % passenger weight of total weight), but those are a small part of the total fees, especially for the commercial flight. (I’m seeing about $300 per plane, so I think NYT was counting some of those fees but not all, as they said that the private jet would be paying about $60 in fees).

  The problem with the whole “subsidizing” conversation is that it depends on what perspective you take. If you look at it on a person-by-person basis, then sure, each passenger on the commercial flight probably pays less than the passengers on the private jet (assuming 2 ppl or something).

  But FAA resources aren’t provisioned on a “per-passenger” basis, they’re provisioned on a “per-flight” basis, with some modifiers based on:

  1. Origin and destination airspaces: busier ATC spaces require more resources, and the gain for an additional resource is not linear because of handoffs;
  2. Size of plane: bigger planes do take up “more room” in the sky, and therefore tax the ATC more than smaller planes, plus they compete for larger runways, where smaller planes can use smaller runways at airports that have them;
  3. Distance flown: Planes that fly farther use more ATC resources en-route.

  Let’s be generous and say that our B757-200 takes 4x the ATC resources that the private jet does (I would bet the real factor is closer to 1.5-2.5x). So for a total of 5 units of ATC resource, 4 are used by the commercial jet, and 1 is used by the private jet.

  The commercial flight therefore pays $(2156.40+60)/4=$554.10 per ATC resource, and the private jet pays $60 per ATC resource. Equal distribution would be $(2156.40 + 60 + 60)/5=$455.28. So the private jet is receiving a “subsidy” of $455.28-60=$395.28 per flight.

  If we divide that subsidy over all of the passengers on the flight by fare, then we get about $1.81/2.34/3.81 based on seat class. That isn’t much of a subsidy per passenger, about 1.4% of your ticket price.

  But let’s think about the other side of the equation: Chartering a plane from Atlanta to Orlando costs about $12,5003. Taking on an extra $395.28 would be an additional 3.2% per flight, which is admittedly more than the 1.4% of the fare for the commercial passenger.

  And hold on… we are talking about passenger transport when we’re talking about both flights… so let’s look at how efficiently those FAA resources are used. Keeping that 4x factor for a flight of the same distance, we have 4 FAA resources spread over a flight with a capacity of 180, let’s assume 80% full for 144 passengers, using about 0.03 FAA resources/person. Now let’s look at the private jet, which recall uses 1 FAA resource for the same flight plan. Let’s be generous and assume 6 passengers. That’s 0.17 FAA resources/person. The commercial jet is more than 5x more efficient in its use of FAA resources.

  These are people who literally create complex corporate structures for their private jets just to avoid that 7.5% excise tax, AND they tend to have much more disposable income. I think they can pay the extra $400 for their inefficient use of FAA resources.

  If I were making the rules (which is absurd because not only am I not an expert but I am also Canadian), I would make the FAA fees per-itinerary filed with the FAA and incorporate three factors:

  1. Category of departing and landing airports4
  2. Takeoff weight of aircraft
  3. Itinerary flight path length

  The FAA has a whole section on their website about airport planning, so I would use that to figure out how to apportion these factors to best approximate the factors required for FAA resource allocation. I’m sure there are planners at the FAA that have this all broken down already.

  So yes, unless you get a super-discount fare, you are subsidizing private jets assuming that the fair apportionment of costs is based on how FAA resource capacities are planned. It’s not much per passenger, but it adds up across all of society, and is another way that the US economy moves wealth from the lower classes to the upper class.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨When Americans Fly Economy, They're Actually Paying for Someone Else to Fly Private⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  While that’s true, and so First Class and Business Class subsidize private jets more than Economy Class does, that doesn’t change the fact that Economy also subsidizes private jets.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨When Americans Fly Economy, They're Actually Paying for Someone Else to Fly Private⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  As a percentage of the total weight of a plane, passengers and their luggage constitute a much larger percentage of a commercial flight than a private one. So they are “more utilized” than a private jet, and can spread that cost over all their passengers.

  Also, larger planes that fly longer distances cross more ATC zones, using up more ATC resources. They also take up more “room” in the sky, as e.g. ATC needs to leave more room for jet wash behind a heavy. So it makes sense from multiple perspectives that bigger planes pay more.

  You also have to consider hobby pilots. Charging them the same amount as a 747 would be insane.

  So it’s a tradeoff: the Canadian system makes smaller planes pay more, proportionally, than a per-ticket model; but not so much more that it harms the smallest personal planes.

  It’s also just simpler. Personal plane? Private jet? Commercial passenger flight? Cargo plane? Same calculation for all of them.

  (Yes, you could try to make it “only for flights with paid passengers”, but then pilots of private jets would all of a sudden have a lot of very rich friends with whom they do a lot of personal flying. It’s just so much easier if there’s nothing subjective about it.)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨IT’S THE FEDS!⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  No, Bastard (Operators from Hell).

  Hopefully that checks out, even though it’s an old reference.

  (Also, agree with the original expression of the negative systemic evaluation of the US policing system, even if I don’t love the crude expression; and even though I’m contributing in a humourous satire of the expression)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨After shutting down several popular emulators, Nintendo admits emulation is legal⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Not really. It sounds like they haven’t gone after them for emulation, but instead for emulation-adjacent things: copying ROMs, circumventing digital locks, etc.

  They explicitly mention (one of?) the developers of Yuzu sharing ROMs in the article.

  In other words, the emulator itself isn’t illegal, but in order to use the emulator the way most people want, you have to do illegal things, and that’s what they go after you for.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Pocketpair Confirms Which Patents Nintendo And The Pokemon Company Are Suing It Over⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  They’re Japanese patents, so maybe they’re already circulating in Japanese media and haven’t been translated yet.

  Alternatively, maybe the Japanese Patent Office requires you to follow some bureaucratic process to get a copy: like you have to be a lawyer and it takes 4-6 weeks to get your reply. I don’t know, but Japan just finally got rid of its last laws requiring floppy disks for certain processes a few years back, so it’s not out of the realm of possibility

  I’m sure we’ll hear the details soon.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Tried it out. Liking it so far, but I might have soft-locked the demo? I think I got into a state where I can’t get a key to progress. Or at least I can’t seem to find it. Happy to send pics of map or copy of save file if it would be valuable.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Adobe tells you to use Chrome, not Firefox⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t fully agree with these, but these are the cases I’ve heard of:

  • Deeper integration with webcams
  • USB authentication devices like Yubikeys

  I think these are better served with extensions or specific browser protocols that communicate with native apps in order to keep the crazy web world more isolated from the high-value computer world, but what do I know? My guess is that someone at Google went “You know, we’re creating a lot of these specific protocols to communicate with webcams, printers, and now we want to do authentication dongles. You know what? They all use USB? Why don’t we just create a general way to access USB?”

  In the immortal words of Dr. Ian Malcolm:

  Image

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Adobe tells you to use Chrome, not Firefox⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  There’s the topic of this conversation, WebUSB. I happen to believe that a missing feature here for Firefox is a good thing, mind you…