Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2023 February 23

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February 23

US government programs

I was just reading about the development of the U-2 spy plane. It was delivered on time and under budget in the late 1950s in under a year and took just several years from design to manufacturing. Just curious why this appears to be impossible today, with projects like the JWST taking two to three decades from start to completion. Viriditas (talk) 00:50, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

The U-2 was built by Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works. "The Skunk Works name was taken from the "Skonk Oil" factory in the comic strip Li'l Abner. The designation "skunk works" or "skunkworks" is widely used in business, engineering, and technical fields to describe a group within an organization given a high degree of autonomy and unhampered by bureaucracy, with the task of working on advanced or secret projects." I added the emphasis in bold to make clear that I am fairly sure that this answer is certainly necessary even if not sufficient. Lockheed was already adept at building planes, so it's not surprising they were quick. Modocc (talk) 02:31, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

Thank you. So here’s the thing I don’t understand: if the Skunk Works approach works so well, why isn’t it the default style? In other words, why does the bureaucratic approach dominate in industry/government instead of the SW structure, approach, and style of project management? Viriditas (talk) 07:42, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

Because the people who are in the position there to abolish bureaucracy are bureaucrats.  --Lambiam 08:13, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

The design of the Lockheed U-2 was based on an existing model, the Lockheed XF-104 Starfighter. While the adaptations for its spying mission were not trivial, the engineers could mostly rely on proven theory and tested technology. Before deployment, the plane could make test flights, and any issues discovered could be ironed out. In contrast, the design of the JWST started out on mostly unbroken and even uncharted territory. Its design brought many new, untested ideas together. Its design complexity was substantially larger than that of the U-2 and its launch would be a one-shot chance: there could be no realistic prior test runs, and there would be no opportunity to fix any problems only discovered once deployed, unlike with the Hubble Space Telescope. The main reason for schedule and cost overruns was IMO an initial underestimation of the complexity of the undertaking.  --Lambiam 08:39, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

A few other factors to consider:

• In NASA projects, it's very important that each US state gets a fair share of the work, even if that means hiring inferior contractors or getting unnecessarily many parties involved. For secretive military projects, Congress doesn't even know the details.
• For the U-2, there was a sense of urgency: the US needed a new spy plane to spy on the USSR and they needed it quickly. For JWST, there was no hurry. In fact, as long as they were developing and building the thing, it created more jobs then when it was launched.
• There's always more money for military projects than for science projects. PiusImpavidus (talk) 10:34, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

Hypothetical use of AI models in conjunction with others to write the entire campaign story for the hypothetical game

BLP violation
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
@The Transhumanist and Nil Einne: Continuation of a discussion regarding use of LLMs to write rough draft of in-depth stories, the short conclusion is hiring ones unqualified for writing something detailed and using AI to ease out the transition to in-depth writing are not enough by alone. But what about Marcus Bromander and other unqualified persons writing a rough synopsis of Titanfall 3 campaign with help from AI models like ChatGPT and hiring former Bungie (that involved in development of original Halo trilogy) and 343i writers who involved in development of Halo Infinite's campaign that got fired during the infamous Microsoft layoffs, and leave the AI-assisted works from these unqualified persons to both existing experienced writers from Respawn and ones previously worked for Halo Infinite's campaign for peer-review (to make sure little to no contradictions in previously-established lore) and expansion into in-depth Titanfall story and lore? 2001:448A:3046:59C8:693C:6C8F:8FD2:B68 (talk) 04:48, 23 February 2023 (UTC) The RD isn't the place for random speculation, however as I said your proposal makes no sense. We can be confident that whatever barriers there are two Titanfall 3 happening, the money and ability to hire sufficiently qualified and experienced writers for a story are unlikely to be a significant one. It's really unclear to me why you think it is or why you think AI is needed to solve it. EA is no small company and the Titanfall IP is used in one of their most important games (Apex Legends) [1]. I don't understand why you even think any of these people you keep naming would be interested in using AI to write stories for anything let alone Titanfall. I mean it may be they would be interested in working on Titanfall, but it could be they would not be; but even if they are once EA tells them 'well we know you can't do it by yourselves, so we're going to use an AI model to help you' there's a very good chance their reply will be something like 'Sorry what? I'm out. Good luck with that. Well actually not really. There's no NDA right? Because I'm going to tell all my friends they need to sell any EA stock and avoid working at EA at all costs, since their management have gone crazy.' (okay maybe not speaking the last part out loud but still). Nil Einne (talk) 05:07, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

Shinplasters now

Would the modern usage of shinplasters worldwide be more convenient than coins? As I see it, they may be multiple advantages: 1) no metal is required which could be used elsewhere 2) more convenient in circulation than small coins, e.g. more handy in counting both by sellers and buyers compared to fractional coins 3) paper shinplasters are less likely to fall out of pocket, would not beep and bother during metal detector checks 4) ATMs may be able to give out and receive fractional currency which is not generally possible for coins. Thanks. 212.180.235.46 (talk) 12:10, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

One thing I thought of: coins last, on average, much longer than paper currency, they are much more durable. --Ouro (blah blah) 13:56, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

See Vietnamese dong. The current 5,000 dong note is worth less than 20 US cents. The practical use (OR, 30 years ago) was to sew together bricks of notes to a large enough value to be useful. DOR (ex-HK) (talk) 15:49, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

Could you flip through them like a picture book to reduce the chance of fraud? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 16:34, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

Yes, the "sewing" was a bit of thick string rammed straight through the center of the notes. Still, a good fraudster might net as much as a dollar a week ... DOR (ex-HK) (talk) 21:03, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

America is one of the few rich countries to even have bills this cheap, the first world governments apparently don't even like USD-sized bills. If we had both shinplasters that would work in vending machines and large coins that would work in vending machines ($0.50, $1, $2 and $5) then everyone could use what they liked. Vending machine companies probably wouldn't like more forms though. Sellers of dollar bill materials would probably like the idea of adding shinplasters while miners of manganese would surely like $2 and $5 coins if they were the same manganese-containing gold simulant as post-'99 dollar coins but 2 and 5 times the weight. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 15:54, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

In the UK, we got rid of our £1 notes (about $1.3 then) in 1988 and replaced them with coins. I think Scotland held on to theirs a bit longer, just to be different I suspect. I can still remember 10 shilling notes (half-a-pound or 50 pence now) which went in 1970. The reason given was that coins last an awful lot longer than banknotes and so cost less in the long run. Alansplodge (talk) 16:06, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

They also expand some parts of the economy, by compelling men to abandon wallets and buy purses to carry those much-heavier coins. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:23, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

Over here, we have trouser pockets which work well. Alansplodge (talk) 09:49, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

Provided you wear suspenders. Although the Man purse has been around for quite a while, it gained currency (!) as more countries switched from paper to coins. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:46, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

There were a lot of similar comments here before the demise of the pound note, but they proved to be groundless. I don't own any braces. Alansplodge (talk) 16:04, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

ATMs in my area generally provide notes of €10, €20 and €50, not €5, so it doesn't look like there's much need of machines providing even smaller units. (Notes of €100 and larger are only popular amongst criminals.) Vending machines accepting notes existed for a while in the 1990s, when staffed counters for things like train tickets started to disappear, but PIN-secured debit cards were still something new. Those machines filled with paper money turned out to be popular amongst criminals, so instead of modifying them for euro notes, they disappeared in 2002. And paper money is more likely to be blown away by the wind, so it's harder to handle when outside. PiusImpavidus (talk) 20:29, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

How many backward countries still use paper money? HiLo48 (talk) 22:10, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

I suspect that any sort of cash will be obsolete within a decade or so. In the UK, it is not uncommon for shops to be "card only" since the Pandemic, and the contactless payment limit is now £100. Also parking and rail ticket machines are often card only. Road tolls and congestion charges generally have to be paid online. Many people do all their shopping on the internet now. The only reason I need cash now is for our local fish & chip shop, but it's only a matter of time. Even my 12th-century parish church has a card reader. Cashless society draws closer with only one in six payments now in cash and that was more than a year ago. Alansplodge (talk) 10:01, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

The U.S. is the outlier on the trend towards cashless payments in large part because the banking system is so fragmented there. There is also some strange conservatism about what constitutes "good money". The contrast with its neighbor Canada in terms of this is pretty stark: the U.S. still uses the basically worthless copper penny coin; Canada got rid of it a decade ago; the U.S. one-dollar bill is ubiquitous but in Canada it's been gone since the 1980s, replaced with a dollar coin (and a two-dollar coin) whereas in the U.S. not only did the two-dollar bill never catch on, neither has the dollar coin in spite of pleas from the vending machine industry. And payment by card is way more common in Canada or Europe than in the US (there may have beeen some catching up since the pandemic, but the contrast was enormous only a few years ago). Xuxl (talk) 13:40, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

Xuxl, the US penny is not made of copper these days. Since 1982, they have been made of copper plated zinc. Cullen328 (talk) 21:46, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

Two dollar bills were often associated with race tracks, which gave them a "bad luck" reputation. And how many Canadians actually wanted the "Mulroney Loonie"? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:53, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

It was accepted very quickly and no one ever clamored for the return of the dollar bill. In contrast to other changes like the introduction of the metric system, for example. Xuxl (talk) 23:56, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

Like they had a choice. And how did they deal with eradicating the one-cent piece? By rounding up to the next five cents? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:23, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

No, to the nearest multiple of 5¢, just like in other sensible countries. --174.89.12.187 (talk) 05:25, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

In theory. But what's to stop retailers from rounding the price up before putting the price tag on? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 10:38, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

See cash rounding. What's to stop a retailer increasing their prices anyway? Answer: competition and the free market. Alansplodge (talk) 18:43, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

The rounding is for the total transaction. If you buy 99 items at $0.09 each, the total transaction is $8.91 (I'm ignoring sales tax) and, if you are paying cash, you hand over $8.90. (If you are paying electronically, you are charged $8.91.) You can't gain or lose more than $0.02 on the whole transaction. But you can save a lot of weight in your pocket, germs on your skin, and time.Hayttom (talk) 19:41, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

So they haven't eliminated the "virtual" cent, just the physical cent. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:35, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

Yes, see We removed the penny (1 cent) in Canada. Why are some items still sold for .99?. Alansplodge (talk) 16:29, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

Adding on to what everyone else has stated, the Federal reserve used to sell dollar coins on its website for a dollar each, and you could pay by card. The reason for this program was the dollar coins were considered cheaper than dollar bills to produce (because of their longevity), and the Mint really wanted people to adopt them. Some smart people realized that you could accumulate a large number of credit card points by buying dollar coins through the website, re-depositing the coins, and repurchasing more coins. The program ended a year later as a failure and Americans still don't use dollar coins. Freedom4U (talk) 22:37, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

There seems to be an subtle theme here that cashless is better. That might be true for those in the mainstream of an economy, but for the folks without bank accounts, cashless generally means "not available to you." Yes, it is possible to buy card-based money with cash, if you happen to be in an economy that provides such services. But, even those may not be accepted in some cases (ever been asked for a billing address when using a card?). DOR (ex-HK) (talk) 16:48, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

The Penny Inquisition is out at all hours, demanding to know if you are or have ever been a penny-pincher. To listen to "Pennies from Heaven", you have to go to a speakeasy. The Threepenny Opera: strictly verboten. Numismatists have gone underground or fled the country. Clarityfiend (talk) 18:39, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

In the UK, even the homeless can have a bank account; see No Fixed Address service. Alansplodge (talk) 18:38, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

But can they keep it open when they don't have any money to be in it? --174.89.12.187 (talk) 22:36, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

Why not? Homeless people are generally eligible for Universal Credit which is paid directly into your bank account. Alansplodge (talk) 12:17, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

"Why not?" Because requiring an account to contain some money or be closed sounds like the sort of thing banks do. Fortunately I have never been in that situation, so I don't know if they actually do it here, let alone in the UK. (I have had an account that was charged a monthly fee if the balance was below a certain amount, though, so if it got to zero, you'd be overdrawn at the end of the month.) --174.89.12.187 (talk) 20:38, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

It wouldn't be very good publicity for the bank. Here the "high street" banks spend millions on advertisements telling us how caring and supportive they are - like this for example. Alansplodge (talk) 13:54, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

Homeless people can have bank accounts, but in practice it is very hard for them to get one. The service linked to above requires applicants to be in receipt of support from a charity approved by the bank - and isn't available at all that bank's branches. Harder still to maintain one if you have nowhere safe to keep the details. Making the poor jump through hoops to get what the rest of us take for granted, and then saying "Oh, but they can get it so it's not a problem" is, and has been for years, the disease of British welfare. DuncanHill (talk) 14:06, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. Hopefully things will improve if we do get to be "cashless". Alansplodge (talk) 09:19, 2 March 2023 (UTC)