Philip Greenspun’s Weblog

Those of you who are approaching 100 may recall that I started photo.net back in 1993. It started out as a place for people to learn from tutorials (example: Making Photographs) and engage in a text-based discussion of technique- and gear-related issues (there was no Trump v. Hillary campaign at the time to consume 100 percent of Internet users’ attention). In the late 1990s we added a photo sharing system that let people show off their best work and/or get feedback on attempted great work. I spun off the site in late 1999 to some grad school friends who had a plan to surf the dotcom wave with photo.net as a base, but instead they were pounded into the sand when the market collapsed.

Continuing the occasional theme of this blog of “What is the point of the Internet if we have Facebook?” I am wondering if there is still a place for online communities for photographers and, if so, what the main purpose would be. Gearheads seem to post a lot of comments on the articles at dpreview.com. Is this sustainable, though? If you care about photo quality a little you would presumably buy either the latest iPhone or the latest Samsung, If you care a little more you buy a Sony mirrorless such as the A6300 and leave it on green idiot mode or maybe kick it into “sports” mode as the occasion requires. How many people are there for whom anything further is required these days?

How about showing off one’s best work? If the audience is on Facebook, why display photos anywhere else? Admittedly most people have only 500 or so Facebook friends, but isn’t it possible to mark a posting as available to the public and then a great photo can get more widely shared on Facebook?

Discovering the best work of other photographers? That seems like something that is hard to do on Facebook.

What do folks think? The things that people accomplished with photo.net in the 1990s… what’s the most popular way of accomplishing those things now? And is there a long-term place for niche online communities such as photo.net and, in particular, niche online communities for photography enthusiasts? (If the answer to the latter is “yes”, to what extent is it required to tie in with Facebook, e.g., for user authentication and maybe to users’ public content from Facebook?)

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Icon, whose amphibious seaplane has been the biggest news in the light aircraft world for about six years (during all of which the plane was 1-2 years away from first deliveries), is setting up a factory in Mexico (Avweb).

The FAA approval process for a factory is painful. However, given the labor-intensive production processes used to build airplanes (many unchanged since the 1930s), I continue to be surprised that more work isn’t done in Mexico. Stripping and repainting an airplane is particularly labor-intensive and painful yet most planes operated in the U.S. are repainted in the U.S. (cost range for a private plane: $20,000 to $200,000, depending on size).

One good thing: Airplanes can fly over Donald Trump’s proposed wall! (or the 580 miles of existing border “fence”)

Related:

• Cessna setting up airplane component production in Mexico (2010)
• Icon A5 limps into production surrounded by a phalanx of lawyers
• Icon A5 update from NBAA 2015
• Icon A5 Seaplane follow-up (2012)
• Icon A5 review with shopping video (2010)

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Photo nerds: Who is sick of having electronic flash units destroyed by leaking alkaline batteries? But who is also sick of paying big $$ for lithium AA batteries? You can buy 8 batteries on Amazon for $13.75. That’s $1.72 per battery, about half the price compared to 15 years ago? A 24-pack of same-brand alkaline batteries, however, is just $9.59, or 40 cents per battery.

I think that rechargeable lithium batteries have gotten cheaper much faster. If we can have a Tesla (3) in every driveway why haven’t leak-prone not-very-power-dense alkaline batteries disappeared in favor of sub-$1 lithium disposables?

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American politicians love to talk about deporting illegal aliens (e.g., Bill Clinton in 1995). Yet one of the things that foreigners like to do once in the U.S. is have children. The kids are entitled to U.S. citizenship and, once they turn 21, are entitled to bring their parents back to the U.S. as permanent residents (process explained).

Is the current election debate about immigrants therefore mostly irrelevant? A lot of the stories in the media seem to concern families in which the U.S. citizen children are pretty close to 21 and the parents are undocumented immigrants potentially subject to deportation.

[What about consuming welfare benefits? At least here in Massachusetts, once the parents have green cards they are entitled to free housing through various towns’ public housing programs. They are entitled to free healthcare through Obamacare. Once in the public housing system they can get an Obamaphone (eligibility requirements). So to the extent people are unhappy about paying higher taxes to provide welfare to undocumented immigrants they should be just as unhappy about paying the same higher tax rates to provide welfare to documented immigrants, no?]

Related:

• “US twice tried to deport man killed by police in California” — Maybe not too many people will actually be deported because their native countries will refuse to accept their return. (People who don’t want to be deported could simply ask officials in their original homeland not to cooperate and/or pay a non-cooperation fee.)

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Readers: Who has been to Cuba on one of the newly approved flights? If so, what is it like?

[I’d be more interested in going if the Central Planners in D.C. had decided to favor Boston, but apparently the Great Father in Washington thought that consumers should fly from other cities (see “Boston loses out on commercial flights to Havana”).]

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Most articles on immigration talk about the number of people arriving in the U.S. “Thousands Eager to Vote Won’t Become Citizens in Time” (nytimes) instead looks at the number who are becoming citizens:

In the last year almost 940,000 legal immigrants applied to become citizens, a 23 percent surge over the previous year.

If we want to see what kind of politician will be successful in the U.S. ten years from now should we look at what kinds of politicians are successful today in the countries from which immigrants are arriving? Or are there specific things that American politicians can promise immigrants in order to gain their votes?

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One thing that Americans like to do is express outrage that leading Russian politicians and/or their friends are getting rich. How new is this? “Not very” is the answer from Peter the Great: His Life and World:

Bribery and embezzlement were traditional in Russian public life, and public service was routinely looked upon as a means of gaining private profit. This practice was so accepted that Russian officials were paid little or no salary; it was taken for granted that they would make their living by accepting bribes. In Peter’s time, only a handful of men in government were said to be honest and imbued with the idea of conscientious service to the state—Sheremetev, Repnin, Rumyantsov, Makarov, Osterman and Yaguzhinsky. The others were loyal to Peter personally, but regarded the state as a cow to be milked. As a result, the majority of administrators were motivated less by a sense of service to the state than by desire for private gain, mingled with the effort to escape detection and punishment. Thus, two powerful negative motives, greed and fear, became the predominant features of Peter’s bureaucrats.

Disappointment followed disappointment, not only at the highest levels. Once, Peter elevated an honest lawyer to a judgeship. In this new position, where his decision could become an object of bribery, the new judge became corrupt. When Peter found out, he not only absolved the judge, but doubled his salary to prevent further temptation. At the same time, however, the Tsar promised that if the judge ever again betrayed his trust, he would surely hang. The judge fervently promised that Peter’s faith was justified—and soon afterward accepted another bribe. Peter hanged him.

Peter, a man of simple tastes, was distressed and disgusted by the shameless rapacity of his lieutenants clutching at every opportunity to rob the state. On all sides, he saw bribery, embezzlement and extortion, and the Treasury’s money “flowing from everybody’s sleeves.” Once, after hearing a Senate report listing further corruption, he summoned Yaguzhinsky in a rage and ordered the immediate execution of any official who robbed the state of even enough to pay for a piece of rope. Yaguzhinsky, writing down Peter’s command, lifted his pen and asked, “Has Your Majesty reflected on the consequences of this decree?” “Go ahead and write,” said Peter furiously. “Does Your Majesty wish to live alone in the empire without any subjects?” persevered Yaguzhinsky. “For we all steal. Some take a little, some take a great deal, but all of us take something.” Peter laughed, shook his head sadly and went no further.

Related:

• Were American politics better 50 years ago? (quote from Sam Rayburn: “I have been unable to save much money in my life. I have been in politics, and in politics an honest man does not get rich.”)
• “How Hillary and Bill Clinton Parlayed Decades of Public Service into Vast Wealth” (Fortune)
• “Cash Flowed to Clinton Foundation Amid Russian Uranium Deal” (nytimes)

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Today is my birthday (39 again!). I think that I deserve an iPhone 7 Plus as a gift to myself.

The Chipworks teardown shows that the phone contains two Sony camera sensors.

Why no wireless charging, though? Especially given that the only way to use conventional headphones is via the Lightning connector, wouldn’t it have made sense to enable the phone to charge on a bedside pad?

Related:

• my iPhone 7 presentation comments
• DxOMark’s objective review of the iPhone 7 (not Plus) camera, in which it seems that there is no substitute for a larger sensor (even an old Samsung S6 turns in a slightly better performance). See the “image quality versus super-slim phones” section toward the bottom of the article: “Samsung also made an interesting choice by managing to pack into an equally-thin handset an f/1.7 lens and a sensor whose area is 35% larger than the iPhone 7’s sensor. … Samsung chose to use a lens with a wider field-of-view to reduce the thickness of the Galaxy S7 Edge.” (i.e., you can’t have a big sensor, a not-super-wide lens, and a thin phone)

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About 2.5 years ago I wrote about a talk by Charles Isbell, one of my grad school classmates who is now at Georgia Tech, describing an online Master’s in Computer Science program. Today’s New York Times has a story on the same subject. Could it be that a crack in the edifice of high-priced higher education is developing? I wonder if people will look back 50 years from now and say that it was Georgia Tech that brought everything down.

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Two friends and I watched the Trump debate from the Trump hotel in Chicago (one of the best hotels in the U.S.) while savoring the taste of Trump-brand Virginia wine (“pretty good” was the verdict). This was a violation of my normal policy to avoid watching politicians give speeches, but given our location it seemed worth making an exception.

One thing that confused me about the debate was Trump missing seemingly obvious responses to Hillary attacks. For example, Hillary said “you’ve taken business bankruptcy six times. There are a lot of great businesspeople that have never taken bankruptcy once.” Trump responded with “on occasion, four times, we used certain laws that are there. …  I take advantage of the laws of the nation because I’m running a company. My obligation right now is to do well for myself, my family, my employees, for my companies. And that’s what I do.”

“I take advantage of the laws” doesn’t seem to me like the best answer. Why not “I’ve done approximately 100 business projects over my lifetime and about 10 of them didn’t work out as I’d hoped. In fact, four of them went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization, which saves jobs for employees at the expense of investors. So I’ve had a 90-percent success rate rather than the 100-percent success rate that you seem to be demanding. If you have had a 100-percent success rate in the projects that you’ve done over your lifetime then I congratulate you. If you don’t think businesses should be able to reorganize under Chapter 11, why didn’t you work to change the law when you were a senator?”

Similarly, when Hillary attacked Trump for not paying every contractor whatever amount the contractor had billed Trump could have said “I have built or renovated X million square feet of space. If you’ve ever owned a 2500-square-foot house you may have have a dispute with a contractor over what was the fair amount to pay for the work done. I wish that we had never had any disputes while building X million square feet, but that’s not realistic.”

Trump could also have pointed out that he wasn’t able to find a friendly commodities broker to stick another customer with losing trades (Hillary’s 100X return on investment). Nor could he get companies and countries seeking Washington access to pay him speaking fees or donate money to a foundation that he controlled. So he had no choice but to take risks in the marketplace. Yet the words “donation” and “foundation” don’t appear in the debate transcript.

He could stick in some jabs against Hillary and Obama, e.g., “It is easy to be successful 100 percent of the time when you are spending tax dollars and making up your own criteria. You spent $1 billion on a web site for Obamacare and now you call it a success. I’m sure the contractors were happy that you paid all of their bills for that project, but if a private business had spent $1 billion on a web site it would be bankrupt.”

[This is not to say that I think Trump is a better candidate than Hillary. As a Massachusetts resident whose ballot is primarily candidates running unopposed (and the races in which there are multiple choices are seldom in doubt), I haven’t educated myself on the relative merits of these two. The point of this posting is just to show that Trump could have done a lot better by practicing standard responses to a handful of predictable attacks.]

[Separately, a bunch of my Facebook friends have complained about me choosing to stay in the Trump hotel. I wonder if they are missing one of the good things about a market economy in terms of breaking down prejudices and barriers among groups. In a market economy you may choose to do business with people whom you wouldn’t ordinarily be friends with or socialize with. This can be the first step toward harmony among groups of disparate people.]

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