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You could always just print a QR code as well if that's the issue

Sure, but it'd take a literal Act of Congress to force all these states to force all their independent vendors to do a thing, so good luck. And each vendor would probably charge about a million dollars to each state to do the work, in government contracting world. So, probably better to just use AI to OCR them.

Or print in the OCR-B font.

Is It though? You won't get it on an embedded device (maybe) but you could install a thousand of these tools and barely even notice the space being taken up on most machines

I think that’s a lame argument. First because it’s kind of a fallacy. Size is absolute not relative to something. Especially for software. No one thinks of software size primarily in the context of their disk space.

Further I think everyone keeps getting larger and larger memory because software keeps getting more and more bloated.

I remember when 64gb iPhone was more than enough (I don’t take pictures so just apps and data) Now my 128 is getting uncomfortable due to the os and app sizes. My next phone likely will be a 256


I’m usually the first to complain about bloat but your counterpoints to the GPs “lame arguments” are themselves, fallacies.

> First because it’s kind of a fallacy. Size is absolute not relative to something. Especially for software. No one thinks of software size primarily in the context of their disk space.

That’s exactly how most people think about file sizes.

When your disk is full, you don’t delete the smallest files first. You delete the biggest.

> Further I think everyone keeps getting larger and larger memory because software keeps getting more and more bloated.

RAM sizes have actually stagnated over the last decade.

> I remember when 64gb iPhone was more than enough (I don’t take pictures so just apps and data) Now my 128 is getting uncomfortable due to the os and app sizes. My next phone likely will be a 256

That’s because media sizes increase, not executable sizes.

And people do want higher resolution cameras, higher definition videos, improved audio quality, etc. These are genuinely desirable features.

Couple that with improved internet bandwidth allowing for content providers to push higher bitrate media, however the need to still locally cache media.


> That’s because media sizes increase, not executable sizes.

Part of it is app sizes on mobile. But it's apps in the 200mb - 2gb range that are the problem, not ones that single-digit megabytes.


200MB apps wouldn’t even make a dent on a 64GB device.

The 2GB apps are usually so large because they include high quality media assets. For example, Spotify will frequently consumer multiple GBs of storage but the vast majority of that is audio cache.


I currently have 355 apps installed on my phone, so if they were all 200mb then they wouldn't fit on a 64GB device.

I agree that the largest data use tends to be media assets.


I’m intrigued, how many of them are actual 3rd party apps though? And how many are different layers around an existing app or part of Apple / Googles base OS? The latter, in fairness, consumes several GBs of storage too.

I’m not trying to dismiss your point here. Genuinely curious how you’ve accumulated so many app installs.


It's an interesting question. Some of them are definitely from the OS (either Google or Samsung).

Looking through at categories of app where I have multiple, I'm seeing:

- Transport provider apps (Airlines, Trains, Buses, Taxis etc)

- Parking payment apps

- Food delivery apps

- Hotel apps

- Payment apps

- Messaging / Video calling apps

- Banking apps

- Mapping apps

It's especially easy to accumulate a lot of apps if you travel through multiple countries, as for a lot of these apps you need different ones in different countries.


> No one thinks of software size primarily in the context of their disk space.

This is wrong. The reason why many old tools are so small was because you had far less space. If you have a 20tb harddrive you wouldn't care about whether ls took up 1kb or 2mb, on a 1gb harddrive it matters/ed much more.

Optimization takes time, I'm sure if OP wanted he could shrink the binary size by quite a lot but doing so has its costs and nowadays its rarely worth paying that since nobody even notices wether a program is 2kb or 2mb. It doesn't matter anymore in the age of 1TB bootdrives.


So bloated software is motivating you to spend more for the larger capacity phone?

What incentive does Apple have to help iOS devs get package sizes down, then?


Size may be absolute, but bigness and smallness are inherently and inescapably relative.

Manual wasn't a religious choice. They were cheaper, used to have better fuel economy and quality of the drive was better

New automatic gearboxes are pretty much better in any way other than raw cost and with things like hybrids and cruise control etc I imagine it'd actually end up costing more to adapt a manual to all that than just using an automatic


> New automatic gearboxes are pretty much better in any way other than raw cost

And reaction time. I drive a manual. When I get into an automatic, the thing that annoys me most is it's in the wrong gear and takes a while to react to the press on the accelerator. I generally know what gear I need in a couple of seconds time, so when I'm driving a manual it's already in that gear when the time arrives. I'm amazed at how often I thinking "oh for pete's sake, do catch up" to an automatic gear box.

That said, that's an ICE problem. Their low torque at low revs is means you have to be in the right gear to accelerate quickly. In EV's the effect isn't noticeable.


Have you tried putting it in sports mode?


The cost might not be negligible for everyone?

Rust is being used and is designed to be able to be used everywhere from top of the line PCs, to servers to microcontrollers to virtual machines in the browser.

Not all tradeoffs are acceptable to everyone all of the time


It's quite simple. The EU can't tell member states how much to tax and even if you cut out all of its budget you'd save maybe a percentage point or two in taxes

On the other hand the EIB (which is anyway not directly controlled in their executive actions by the EU) can grant funds since it's kind of it's role as an investment bank


A big factor is which country is actually disbursing the funds, the EC doesn't really do so directly


No, it's the result of the public's/politicians' pathologic risk aversion and swiftness in calling everything corruption

Since it'd be obviously bad (sarcasm) if public money were spent on projects that deliver nothing or the people receiving them used them for anything other than the narrowest interpretation of the goal then you absolutely (sarcasm^2) have to have 50 different layers of checks and plans and assessment to make sure the little money is spent on the entities that lie the best. But at least no opposition politician can complain someone bought a fancier watch than they'd like or didn't deliver enough

Anyway the EIB is a different kind of funding process than EU grants and should be more effective (even just because capital doesn't come out of the EU budget or member states directly), though how much I don't know


In the EU it means next year member states have to pay a little bit less into the budget

The EU budget itself doesn't really change so it's not "more money" in a practical sense

(I realised I might've skipped a step but this fine is EU wide, not Ireland specific, the fine gets paid to the EU IIRC)


I think there were multiple competing suggestions at the time, the grandfather clock was one while the standard ended up being the French proposed one that you mention


> to review startups' business plans

How exactly do you imagine a government contract working if it's not reviewed before being granted?

> That they're still ambivalent whether they should pursue reusability or not

So they shouldn't verify if a proposal is credible because that's too much bureaucracy but they should dictate to the companies how they want to approach the problem rather than letting each company make their own plans and see who comes up with the best proposal?


> How exactly do you imagine a government contract working if it's not reviewed before being granted?

This. ESA's grant approval process is, to its credit, usually considerably more focused on technical excellence than handwavy projections and box ticking common in other government grant applications and tenders, and whilst PSS forms may be a PITA, you'd think a company destined to solve the hard physics and unit economics problems of building a viable commercial launch service could figure out how to fill them in when given a EUR160m incentive to do so.

The European Launcher Challenge is based off the NASA COTS programme that originally funded the Falcon 9 (just with less money, because Europe, which is a bigger problem than straw bureaucrats) Don't know why people seem to think SpaceX got that money through NASA's magical genius American foresight anticipating Starlink, as opposed them being impressed with how SpaceX complied with their requests for very detailed milestone based plans (which two companies that failed to make progress also managed...)


- "they should dictate to the companies how they want to approach the problem"

No; I mean they should define the problem they need solved. If they're too unfocused to define that problem as "mass-produced reusable rockets", that's a strong signal they've already lost.

There's a dozen newspace startups pursuing reusability, and it's Europe's loss that none of them are in Europe.


No, the problem should be "find a way to launch x tons for <€Y, and be able to do that z times a year".

If mass produced reusable rockets are the best solution then companies will propose that.


Do you actually think that there are any viable alternatives to reusable rockets as a solution to this problem?


There could be? People are smart, maybe someone would come up with a viable approach. Point is, if reusable rockets are the only viable approach, then everyone will use that approach to meet the requirement.


The government should be a regulator and set ground rules. It should provide a market and clear requirements. Then leave private business alone to meet those requirements. If they need funding, leave the business to the VC industry.


They’re offering to fund 160 million euros to bootstrap private enterprises providing launch services to the ESA. Of course they want to review the business plan to make sure it’s viable before dropping a bundle of government money on some random company.


Which is completely the wrong way of doing it. They are the market. So define it and leave it to private industry to fund and develop the capabilities to meet their requirements.

If they say, we are willing to spend X amount of money on Y number of launches. You can rent our launch sites for tests. Here is a list of requirements. They would see incredible results.

But no europe must micromanage and do things in their own bureaucratic way that has always failed.


To compare, meanwhile Astra just $80 million to relaunch (so to speak).


The EU is mostly stringent on the environment, and single-use rockets are pretty bad for the environment: all the metal and sophisticated parts must be produced, only to be thrown into the ocean.

I would expect reusability to be a requirement based on that factor alone. You ca produce carbon-neutral fuel, but there is a lot of environmental load involved in production of the very rockets.


reusability is mainly done for cost instead of environment, but you need to launch a lot to re-cup the costs, and esa is not a commercial org like spacex.

I do think the ESA rockets use a more eco friendly fuel then others, that is probably more important then some metal on the seabed.


Solid rocket fuel is one of the less eco-friendly things that exists. A fully-stacked Ariane 6 is, by mass, 11% chlorine.


That doesn’t really work if you try to create competitors to already established companies in a limited market


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