I just can’t resist myself when airplanes come up in discussion.
I completely understand your analogy and you are right. However just to nitpick, it is actually super important to have a weight on the airplane at the right place. You have to make sure that your aeroplane does not become tail heavy or it is not recoverable from a stall. Also a heavier aeroplane, within its gross weight, is actually safer as the safe manoeuverable speed increases with weight.
If someone adds more code to the wrong places for the sake of adding more code, the software may not be recoverable for future changes or from bugs. You also often need to add code in the right places for robustness.
Just to nitpick your nitpick, that’s only true up to a point, and the range of safe weights isn’t all that big really - max payload on most planes is a fraction of the empty weight. And planes can be overweight, reducing weight is a good thing and perhaps needed far more often than adding weight is needed. The point of the analogy was that over a certain weight, the plane doesn’t fly at all. If progress on a plane is safety, stability, or speed, we can measure those things directly. If weight distribution is important to those, that’s great we can measure weight and distribution in service of stability, but weight isn’t the primary thing we use.
Like with airplane weight, you absolutely need some code to get something done, and sometimes more is better. But is more better as a rule? Absolutely not.
right, thats why its a great analogy - because you also need to have at least some code in a successful piece of software. But simply measuring by the amount of code leads to weird and perverse incentives - code added without thought is not good, and too much code can itself be a problem. Of course, the literal balancing aspect isn't as important.
This is a pretty narrow take on aviation safety. A heavier airplane has a higher stall speed, more energy for the brakes to dissipate, longer takeoff/landing distances, a worse climb rate… I’ll happily sacrifice maneuvering speed for better takeoff/landing/climb performance.
Again, just nitpicking, but if you have the right approach speed, and not doing a super short field landing, you need very little wheel brake if any. ;)
Sure, as long as you stick to flying light aircraft on runways designed for commercial air transport. I would also recommend thinking about how you would control speed on a long downhill taxi with a tailwind, even if you didn’t need brakes on landing.
> the safe manoeuverable speed increases with weight
The reason this is true is because at a higher weight, you'll stall at max deflection before you can put enough stress on the airframe to be a problem. That is to say, at a given speed a heavier airplane will fall out of the air [hyperbole, it will merely stall - significantly reduced lift] before it can rip the wings/elevator off [hyperbole - damage the airframe]. That makes it questionable whether heavier is safer - just changes the failure mode.
> That is to say, at a given speed a heavier airplane will fall out of the air [hyperbole, it will merely stall - significantly reduced lift] before it can rip the wings/elevator off [hyperbole - damage the airframe]
Turbulence, especially generated by thunderstorms, or close to it.
Yes, get a trunk from someone like BulkVS, SignalWire and run your own freeswitch or asterix. You can set up arbitrary “allowed” lists. Hell you can even get fancy with lookups and decide on the fly to allow a call or not.
There are other comments about providers, but my way is way cheaper and you can run you EPBAX on a pi or even get a pre made VM from Azure, Amazon, etc.
Whoa, love this. Do you have any recommended resources if I wanted to try this out? Any comments about FreeSWITCH vs Asterisk, or BulkVS vs Signalwire for a simple setup like this?
Freeswitch is more complicated and has a steeper learning curve, but you can pair it with FusionPBX and it will make things a lot more palatable. Asterix is the grand daddy of this stuff. The community is stronger for Asterix. Freeswitch is pretty much infinitely customizable.
SignalWire is the primary sponsor of Freeswitch but is mainly geared towards HUGE installations. BulkVS is cheaper and better in my opinion. You can also look at AnveoDirect, which is more raw than BulkVS, but you can become really really fancy with it. Like, call center fancy.
> Bulk of the instrument flight training is "mindgames" anyways - you see nothing other than instruments, your "seat in the pants" is likely to cheat you..
Eh, I guess I can flex a little. Living in the Pacific North West, I do not have to play mind games. I can almost get IMC delivered on demand. :P
> DIY makes sense if you either 1) enjoy it or 2) are in a position to need to spend your time to save money (and carefully evaluate tradeoffs about when it would cost you more money to DIY because a professional will have everything they need and you don't and won't need it again).
First hand experience. I have a 2 story house. I was going crazy with people walking upstairs while I was trying to work in my office downstairs. Got hold of a flooring guy who has hundreds of glowing positive reviews, and offered multiple references. He wanted to rip out the carpet and screw the floorboard to the joists, more. Got his work contract and added the clause that he will not get paid unless the sounds stay gone for 3 months after the job. Paid a premium for the clause. The creaking came back in 2 months and the impact noise never went away.
Got hold of another guy and he said, sorry can't do anything about the noise beyond what is already done. The third one said the same as well.
Finally got frustrated enough to do my own research and came up with materials and techniques that I had to "import" from California to Washington. Bought a bunch of tools. Now I have no noise, and as a bonus, ran conduit in the floor to have OS2 fiber everywhere in the house.
DIY is not always about saving money. It is also about getting the job done so it stays done and not doing the bare minimum to make it legal and to get paid.
We bought an old (1930s) 2 story single-family home last year which needed to be gutted almost entirely.
Except the plumber, all trade folks we had tried to cut corners and delivered subpar quality. Even the ones that came recommended.
We did a lot of the destruction work ourselves as that was not complicated or dangerous (under the guidance of a structural engineer and proper protective equipment).
Our walls are entirely out of brick and not 100% straight. Our plasterer somehow managed to make them curvy. He is licensed in my country and not some general handyman.
We had to sand down the walls ourselves to get them straight. He tried to charge us for that.
Electrician started the job but now never shows up. We still have some of his tools he left here, but won't answer texts or calls.
Family member thankfully is an electrician but doesn't live close to us. We paid them to plan everything for us, we'd install it, they'd come check and do the mains connection.
Drywallers put drywall on walls that shouldn't have any. We provided them plans that clearly detailed instructions. They admitted they were wrong but still wanted to charge us for the work.
We ended up doing most the work ourselves. Not necessarily because we wanted to, but calling, organizing, and ultimately arguing and running after the trades folks was such a pain in the ass. At some point I decided to keep track of much time I spent on quality checks and running after them and I figured out it wouldve taken me less time (and money) to just do it myself from the get go.
In Germany for private residences you often only have a general contractor if you're building a new house.
Alternatively, an architect often takes over coordinatation for renovations like this as well. They usually work on % basis though so they can add significantly to the expenses.
> So £64 for the lot - about US$ 80. If you're in tech, the value of the time you spend driving to the store will probably be higher than all the tools you'll buy while you're there.
Unless you are billing by the hour (ie in consulting), you are driving to the store during the time you would be parking your butt in the couch and viewing, reading or thinking about something that does not generate cash. At least that is what it is for me. If you literally lose money by driving to the store, your argument holds.
> And if you're thinking "Oh at those prices the tools will be low quality" I can assure you, they'll be good enough for this job.
Maybe they are, maybe they are not. I tinker with cars and motorcycles. Every single piece of my tools is Snap-On or something really comparable. If I use a cheap Chinese brand and round off a nut, that is really going to hurt. It will hurt more than what it hurt to buy a socket set for close to $200.
Also, if you are approaching something the first time, low quality tools will get you bad experience that will resist, maybe prevent you from trying it again. I might be one of those weird ones, but for me, Buy once, cry once.
I've turned a few wrenches as a life-long DIY mechanic, a former aircraft mechanic, and a mechanical engineer. I use the Hazard Fraught method of tool purchases:
I will buy a tool from Harbor Freight once. If it fulfills my needs great. Job done and it goes into the toolbox. If I use it so hard it gives up the ghost, then it gets chucked into the fuckit-bucket and I go buy it at higher quality.
To be honest, Harbor Freight and other store brands (Husky, Kobalt, etc) have always been reliable enough. As a home-gamer, I certainly couldn't see being able to have a toolbox full of Snap-On, especially before completing my engineering degree.
If I were a pro and feeding my family depended on what those tools did, then I could certainly see Snap-On as an investment, as my father did when he ran his own shop. But, to the point about rounding off a nut, something like that is rarely a function of tool quality and more about technique. Yes, a cheap 12 point socket or wrench can round off a hex pretty badly, but if it happens, the whole setup has probably been giving warning signs the entire time. My experience is that cheap tools are more likely to snap, break, or shatter during heavy loading, but that's not often the default use case.
> I've turned a few wrenches as a life-long DIY mechanic, a former aircraft mechanic, and a mechanical engineer. I use the Hazard Fraught method of tool purchases: I will buy a tool from Harbor Freight once. If it fulfills my needs great. Job done and it goes into the toolbox. If I use it so hard it gives up the ghost, then it gets chucked into the fuckit-bucket and I go buy it at higher quality.
Now you either have a tool that might be unreliable and can cause you trouble for the next job. Or, you spent money that you didn't have to spend by buying the lower grade tool when you needed to buy something better anyway.
> To be honest, Harbor Freight and other store brands (Husky, Kobalt, etc) have always been reliable enough. As a home-gamer, I certainly couldn't see being able to have a toolbox full of Snap-On, especially before completing my engineering degree.
Here you have a solid point. I am thankful that I am able to afford good tools. But if someone in unable to justify, I would say either work to be able to justify it, rent, or buy the best you can afford if you need the tool right now.
> But, to the point about rounding off a nut, something like that is rarely a function of tool quality and more about technique.
Maybe you are right. But here is an exaggerated example. You have a socket that has more clearance than ideal. You loosen one nut, and that was okay, you loosen the second one, that was a little tighter and that whole setup flexed a bit, but turned out okay. The third one is where things slip. Now, you have a problem. At least that is more or less how I land into trouble.
> Now you either have a tool that might be unreliable and can cause you trouble for the next job. Or, you spent money that you didn't have to spend by buying the lower grade tool when you needed to buy something better anyway.
The "unknowns" point is valid, but the advice to buy something cheap to start with still comes from a good place.
Even from a cost perspective, I've snapped a few wrenches and upgraded my box saw (,and will splurge on a solder iron the next time I do anything serious), but the money wasted in those mis-purchases is vastly less than the money I would have spent on getting the "right" tools at the outset.
You also have the problem of unknown unknowns. Plenty of people are willing to sell you a $25 tool for $250, and we all know how reviews work, so the presence of good reviews and a high price tag isn't sufficient to guarantee quality. Even going with a "good" brand doesn't suffice if the brand is willing to increase profits on a few duds here and there (or, more charitably, just doesn't always hit them out of the park) or goes the way of Lenovo after an acquisition. Buying a good tool is often a nontrivial effort, and (when directing that advice to your average homeowner rather than a professional with that particular tool) the experience you have with the bad tool gives you a starting point for figuring out which aspects you do or don't care about.
For a few small examples, I own the cheapest immersion blender, 16oz claw hammer, precision screwdriver set, ... that I could get my grubby little hands on. I'd make those purchases again in a heartbeat.
For a counter-example, I did the same thing with a diamond stone. It turns out I don't care about the surface area or most characteristics (and now I know), but I care quite a lot about the depth and longevity. I'll save more money getting a longer-lasting stone that's a size I need, despite having "wasted" money on the cheaper stone, since I won't be inadvertently getting something bigger than I need or want. Since those things last ages I'm not sure the point really holds, but it also lasted for years and was purchased at a time when money was tighter, and spending more money then would have been much more expensive than spending it now.
For an actual counter-example, now I know that any wrench where I'm applying more than a few hundred foot-pounds of torque absolutely needs to be forged, and I'm willing to splurge to avoid low-quality steel. The cheaper wrenches were properly wasted money. Compared to all the time and money I've saved only purchasing nice tools when something failed though, I still think it was a good strategy.
>> I've turned a few wrenches as a life-long DIY mechanic, a former aircraft mechanic, and a mechanical engineer. I use the Hazard Fraught method of tool purchases: I will buy a tool from Harbor Freight once. If it fulfills my needs great. Job done and it goes into the toolbox. If I use it so hard it gives up the ghost, then it gets chucked into the fuckit-bucket and I go buy it at higher quality.
>Now you either have a tool that might be unreliable and can cause you trouble for the next job. Or, you spent money that you didn't have to spend by buying the lower grade tool when you needed to buy something better anyway.
An important note is that this is a conscious decision. I know that I cheaped out on something, and I'm often pleasantly surprised that it didn't break. But I'm not depending on it for food, and we have backup transportation methods, so I'm not completely hosed if it gives up. For example: I once spent $20 on a Harbor Freight corded angle grinder, with the understanding that it'll probably work for the one job I really needed it for at that moment. 15 years and half a dozen smoke checks later, the damned thing still runs hard.
>> To be honest, Harbor Freight and other store brands (Husky, Kobalt, etc) have always been reliable enough. As a home-gamer, I certainly couldn't see being able to have a toolbox full of Snap-On, especially before completing my engineering degree.
> Here you have a solid point. I am thankful that I am able to afford good tools. But if someone in unable to justify, I would say either work to be able to justify it, rent, or buy the best you can afford if you need the tool right now.
If you can, that's great. Most of my wrenching life, including working on multi-million dollar automation equipment, has been well serviced by budget tools. Anything pro-grade was handed down from my father after he closed his shop. I'm to the point now where I could reasonably afford to upgrade, but the handtools still work well, and my money/time is honestly spent better right now paying a reputable shop to do what I need. Starting out in the world, I never thought I'd be able to say that, but I'm happy to be here now.
I'll have a project car again some day, and then I'll look hard at what is needed to accomplish my goals.
I think a lot of your thinking here is assuming somewhat frequent use - and I agree when you are going to be using the tools often, just get a decent or good one. For a lot of tools though - well lets just say my tool chest has an awful lot of things I need that one time 20 years ago, and haven't needed since. Often I don't know which tools are going to be in that one-use category, so the algorithm "buy the cheap one, upgrade when needed" has overall saved me more than enough money to upgrade to the really good version even for tools I use relatively rarely.
The other thing that I'll add here is that if the tool has a battery, then I'm going to a well established and supported brand. I know they love to change the technology (Lookin' at you DeWalt) but there are often workarounds. I'll buy into the tool ecosystem because the last thing I want to do is stop my flow to figure out which tool/battery is ready for the task at hand.
> But, to the point about rounding off a nut, something like that is rarely a function of tool quality and more about technique. Yes, a cheap 12 point socket or wrench can round off a hex pretty badly, but if it happens, the whole setup has probably been giving warning signs the entire time.
In the rust belt, about every bolt has lots of warning signs and each job is a gamble. I really need to get a torch.
Knowing the tricks that come with your location are a big deal. I'm in a minor salt part of the US, so I don't often have to worry about pre-treating a fastener on our daily drivers. If it gets to the point that I'm breaking out the torch, I'm working on an outlier.
Snap-on is a brand that is generally sold out of panel trucks like ice cream. They're very expensive but have great warranties. They also go to your shop, on a schedule.
I've never owned any snap-on but I'm friends with mechanics that have lots of fun jokey names they call them.
I agree that some high quality tools are required to not escalate your problem, but I like the incremental purchase methodology for most tools.
Buying cheap (good enough) allows you to figure out what tools you actually need to upgrade on. I had a lot of pain in my high school days fixing a beater car which required me to purchase some higher end socket sets. You learn from some of those stripped bolts which tools to upgrade, but you don't want a whole garage full of high quality tools you don't really use.
If you have a stable hobby, buy quality first, and maybe build up inventory when you can so you don't have to make frequent trips.
If you don't and you just want to do some odd things spanning multiple trades, buy cheap and upgrade if you rely on them frequently.
I completely understand your analogy and you are right. However just to nitpick, it is actually super important to have a weight on the airplane at the right place. You have to make sure that your aeroplane does not become tail heavy or it is not recoverable from a stall. Also a heavier aeroplane, within its gross weight, is actually safer as the safe manoeuverable speed increases with weight.