Here in the USA, we have numerous substantive and procedural criticisms of the legal system, and while IANAL, the latter is of particular interest to me and is the domain of your questions. I will try to address each in turn, since they kinda build upon each other.

Shouldn't [providing a lawyer] be the default and not require the suspect/subject to actually ask for one?

To get to the answer, we need to step back and examine what the exact obligation is. In the USA, the specific right in question is the individual's right to choose legal counsel. That is, a person has the final authority as to who will represent and advise them in legal proceedings. This right isn't unlimited though, and it doesn't mean that they ought to be represented by a specific lawyer for free. But rather, the right means that no one else can make that decision on that person's behalf.

But in the Anglo-American formulation of what a right is, it is also an obligation upon everyone else. Specifically, the government is obligated to not interfere with a person's free choice of lawyer. This was poignantly and recently examined by the federal court in DC, as it pertains to the executive's attacks on the law firm Perkins Coie, where the federal judge ripped the government for interference with due process rights, from which the right to choice of lawyer comes from.

But there's a wrinkle with rights: if the liberty it affords is the ability to choose, how would choosing nothing be handled? That is, if a person wishes to not choose, how can they affirmatively decline to choose? There are -- and it's a foolhardy exercise -- criminal defendants in the USA that plainly choose to represent themselves in court, not wanting a lawyer to aid them. The general rule for a "unilateral" right such as this one is that it is "optional", where affirmative actions are needed to involve the right, otherwise the default is that the right isn't invoked.

And that sits fairly well in the breath of rights that civilians enjoy, such as the right to travel the public lands (eg walking or riding a bicycle on the street) to the First Amendment's right to petition the government. After all, no one from the govt is phoning people up every day to ask "do you wish to unicycle on Main St today?" or "would you like to comment on the city budget next Tuesday?". More clearly, those rights are fairly obvious when they wish to be used, or when they don't wish to be used. (Though I grant you that the latter implicates a right to notification, but that's a whole different matter)

The system of rights gets even more complicated when someone holds two opposing rights. For example, in the USA, everyone has both the right to free speech, plus the right to silence. In that case, it absolutely forces the matter, because the absence of speech is very much a matter than can be criminalized. For example, failing to mention something relevant when under penalty of perjury. How this is handled gets complicated, and generally speaking, such actions or inactions have to clearly show intent to invoke (or not) the specific right. This is precisely why it's important to say "I wish to invoke my right to silence and to an attorney" when arrested, because otherwise the government's obligations are confused, since the rights are confused. That statement unquestionably clears up the situation for how the govt must behave.

Basically, in order for the govt to meet its obligation not to interfere with someone's choice of lawyer, it would not be proper if they proposed a lawyer by name to represent that person. Even just making such a proposal is coercive, since the govt holds most of the power and clout when in court. People unfamiliar with the legal system might just go along with it, unaware that the govt is there to prosecute them, not necessarily to aid them. Instead, in the current system, if the person voices their request for a lawyer, then that sets into motion the court's apparatus for verifying their eligibility for a public lawyer from the Public Defender's office -- btw, these offices are woefully underfunded, so contact your representatives to fix this! -- and then finding such a lawyer to represent the person.

All of this stems from due process, and the "Miranda warning" is the practical implementation of due process. Since if someone doesn't even know they have a right, it might as well not exist.

I think the only question should be "do you have your own lawyer you like to use, or are you happy enough with the court-appointed one?"

This is the obvious question, following notification that the right even exists. But again, if the appointed lawyer has already been selected and it's only a trinary choice - your own lawyer, this specific public defender, or no one -- then that's still somewhat coercive. It precludes the possibility of having a different public defense lawyer, of which the existing process already handles.

When I say that the public defender's office finds a lawyer to represent someone, they do so while mindful that not every lawyer can represent every client. After all, Greenpeace wouldn't want a lawyer that's also currently working a case for Chevron, the oil giant. Conflicts of interest may arise, as well as any other scenario that would make said lawyer less effective at their job: zealously advocating for their client.

But again, this isn't an unlimited right of the person, so a case cannot be delayed indefinitely because the client doesn't like any of the public defender lawyers. But a case can absolutely be parked due to no available public lawyers, though if this happens, courts typically have other avenues to clean the logjam but without infringing on civil rights.

Has there ever been any attempt to make that the norm in any countries?

I'm only vaguely familiar with Anglosphere jurisdictions, and haven't come across a system that improves on this situation. Though quite frankly, if it's going to happen, it should be tried at the state level in the USA, where there's the most room and latitude for improvement.

I'm not even sure opting out should be allowed, but I'm open to hearing reasons why that would be a bad system

The coercion issue from earlier can be turned to 11, if the govt is operating in bad faith. Imagine, for example, that the govt charges someone with bogus accusations, then bribes a corrupt lawyer from out-of-state to come represent the defendant against their will, who will then "throw" the case and land the defendant in prison. There are a lot of norms and procedures that would have to be violated to do this, but that's kinda the point: defense in depth is equally applicable to computer security as it is to civil rights.

An institution that assumes good faith govt will be hard pressed to deal with a govt that acts in bad faith. I make no excuses for the numerous American federal and state-level judicial fails, but when it comes to institutions that will uphold civil rights, individual liberty with regards to accessing the legal system is crucial.

Some are even the exact height of common storage tubs!

Answering the titular question, I personally don't find it weird that someone might avoid certain types of aircraft, in the same way that some people strongly prefer certain aircraft. For example, the big windows and the more-comfortable pressurization of the Boeing 787 is appealing for some. But alternatively, some might prefer the modern Canadian design of the Airbus A220.

Objectively speaking, though, propeller planes is a very wide category, and I'm curious which specific aspect you want to avoid. Piston-powered propeller craft are basically non-existent in commercial passenger airline service, with the exception of small "puddle jumper", 15-seat air taxi services. Such airplanes tend to be loud and also use leaded gasoline -- hilariously still called "low lead" despite apparently having more lead additive than what motor gasoline had in the 1980s.

Then there are turbo prop aircraft, like the ATR-72, which are basically a propeller taking power off of a jet engine core. No lead here, and noise is slightly less bothersome due to continuous jet combustion, but the sound of the propeller remains. Though this is offset by the lower cruise speeds, so less "wind noise".

If perhaps the concern is about propeller failures, bear in mind that commercial passenger aviation is exceptionally safe, across all aircraft types. The propulsion method is small-fries compared to the backend support and logistics of an airliner and ATC, plus having two pilots, and all manner of other things which blend into the background but are essential for safety. Pretty much only the elevator would be safer than air travel, even accounting for some rather unfortunate recent incidents here in USA airspace.

That said, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that propeller and jet fan failures have had fatalities in living memory, with a notable event being the blade ejection of a Southwest Boeing 737 that pierced the fuselage and partially ejected a passenger.

Overall, I personally have zero qualms about commercial passenger propeller aircraft, and up until the Boeing 737 MAX fiasco, most people did not care at all which type of airplane they were boarding. Since that event, booking websites added filters to allow excluding specific types of aircraft by model. But I've not seen one which excludes by propulsion type.

Presumably there's the small benefit of not having to remove two links at a time, since there's no longer a distinction between a link with outer vs inner plates.

I do wonder how this affects coupling (aka master) links.

I've always found it unintuitive that soldering and brazing are the same process -- melting filler material into a joint without melting the base metals -- but distinguished by whether the filler melts below 450 C (thus soldering) or above (thus brazing). Whereas welding will melt the base material, which necessarily must attain at least 600-660 C for aluminum or aluminum alloys.

I don't doubt that soldering might provide sufficient stength for certain aluminum projects, but the hard part is getting the solder to stick. With aluminum being a very good heat sink, a 30 W soldering iron won't cut it. Using a butane flame is probably necessary, though at that point, might as well braze the joint.

My understanding is that welding aluminum can only be done with TIG and requires 100% Argon shielding gas, so brazing for aluminum bike parts begins to look very appealing and with a lower barrier to entry. Though TIG is very versatile in its own right.

Very nice! For FOSS 3D modeling, I've been using FreeCAD, which is capable enough for my fairly straightforward designs. But I'm not a mechanical engineer, so take that with a grain of salt.

For design prototyping, I like to use my ABS 3D printer to check dimensions and fit-and-finish, before sending out to a CNC fab for final production. Though I've not (yet) had a design which called for laser metal cutting followed by welding; I only have capabilities for welding steel, although I can see a TIG welder in my future for aluminum.

Setting aside whether such seats are actively hazardous to passengers for anything more than a short-haul flight -- they almost certainly are -- we can fairly easily rule out the possibility based solely on one of the more important airline test criteria: evacuation time.

For all commercial passenger airliners, the primary limiting factor for economy seating is how to get everyone out of the airplane in an emergency situation within the stipulated time, in ideal circumstances. In the USA, that time is 90 seconds, based on research that the inferno post-crash due to ruptured fuel tanks would only allow the plane to remain intact for about two minutes. From that article, the largest passenger jet in the world -- the Airbus A380 -- could evacuate 873 people through 16 doors on two dual-aisle decks. A typical short-haul, single-aisle Boeing 737 has only six doors and carries a maximum of 230 passengers with the still-being-certified 737 MAX 10 variant.

The benefit of having more doors and more aisles must not be understated, but even then, another limiting factor is takeoff weight. Using the 737 MAX 10 as an example, the difference between its empty weight and maximum takeoff weight is some 40,000 pounds. But 230 people already accounts for around 20,000 pounds, so the aircraft already cannot be fully loaded with its full 44,000 pound fuel capacity. Packing more people into this aircraft would steal even more capacity and leave the aircraft unable to support transcontinental USA flights.

But supposing that was overcome, and flights with so-called standing seats were only about 2 hours long or so, the problem would then be with seat durability during a crash scenario. Jet airlines seats are designed to absorb energy, since excessive G-forces would kill a human well before any fire might get to them. A seat which relies on human legs for vertical support would be unable to adequately absorb downward forces from a hard touchdown, nor from forces from the jet hitting an obstacle ahead or being rammed from behind. These two directions are what humans are best able to cope with, and a standing seat steals these benefits away.

Thus, a seat that complies with energy absorption requirements would be at least as equally thick as existing seatbacks, and would probably be thicker or heavier, further reducing available payload.

The only conceivable cabin configuration would be one where economy class uses so-called standing seats, in order to free up room ahead for business or first-class seats, staying within the existing seat limits for existing aircraft. However, the time to board such an aircraft would be noticeably slower than with a conventional seat aircraft, so at some point, such an airliner would need to consider whether a stopped aircraft loading passengers is better value than an aircraft which can be quickly turned around for another flight segment. The savings of even 10 minutes per flight can make the difference between a low-cost carrier being profitable or carrying losses every year.

All of these factors point to a technical inability to squeeze more passengers into less space. And remember that there's no free lunch: a "standing" passenger frees up space between rows, but requires more height at each seat. At least from my experience, one cannot stand up in a conventional seat, without hitting the ceiling. How would a typical 5 ft 9 in (175 cm) American be able to use a "standing" seat safely?

It would also eliminate under-seat bags to anything except maybe a clutch handbag, and then the quandary of where the extra people's carry-on luggage would go. For wide body jets, it would actually be more reasonable to create an additional deck by repurposing the cargo hold, but such provisions are akin to building a new aircraft variant outright. Nevermind that passenger aircraft actually make a decent amount of revenue from cargo/freight carriage.

I personally discount the possibility of "standing" seats deployed on existing and proposed aircraft, so it would be at least 10-20 years before we even see such a thing for future revenue passenger aircraft.

PS: Reddit doesn't allow edit post titles, needed to repost

But this is Lemmy.

To start, let's verify that Bluesky the app is indeed open-source. Yep, it is. But that's not the same as having all the machinery be open-source, where anyone could spin up their own, compatible service; maybe named ExampleSky. To be compatible, ExampleSky would need to use the same backend interface -- aka protocol -- as Bluesky, which is known as ATProto. The equivalent (and older) protocol behind Mastodon and Lemmy is ActivityPub.

ATProto is ostensibly open-source, but some argue that it's more akin to "source available" because only the Bluesky parent company makes changes or extensions to the protocol. Any alternative implementation would be playing a game of chase, for future versions of the protocol. History shows that this is a real risk.

On the flip side, Mike Masnick -- founder of Techdirt, author of the 2019 paper advocating for "protocols, not platforms" that inspired Bluesky, and recently added member of the board of Bluesky, replacing Jack Dorsey -- argues that the core ability to create a separate "Bluesky2" is where the strength of the protocol lays. My understanding is that this would act as a hedge to prevent Bluesky1 from becoming so undesirable that forking to Bluesky2 is more agreeable. To me, this is no different than a FOSS project (eg OpenOffice) being so disagreeable that all the devs and users fork the project and leave (eg LibreOffice).

But why a common protocol? As Masnick's paper argues, and IMO in full agreement with what ActivityPub has been aiming towards for years, is that protocols allow for being platform-agnostic. Mastodon users are keenly aware that if they don't like their home instance, they can switch. Sure, you'll have to link to your new location, but it's identical to changing email providers. In fact, email is one of the few protocol-agnostic systems in the Internet still in continued use. Imagine if somehow Gmail users couldn't send mail to Outlook users. It'd be awful.

Necessarily, both ActivityPub and ATProto incorporate decentralization in their designs, but in different fashions. ActivityPub can be described as coarse decentralization, as every instance is a standalone island that can choose to -- and usually does -- federate with other instances. But at the moment, core features like registration, login, or rate limiting, or spam monitoring, are all per-instance. And as it stands, much of those involve a human, meaning that scaling is harder. But the ActivityPub design suggests that instances shouldn't be large anyway, so perhaps that's not too big an issue.

ATProto takes the fine-grained design approach where each feature is modular, and thus can be centralized, farmed out, or outright decentralized. Now, at this moment, that's a design goal rather than reality, as ATProto has only existed for so many years. I think it's correct to say for now that Bluesky is potentially decentralizable, in the coarse sense like how Mastodon and Lemmy are.

There are parts of the Bluesky platform -- as in, the one the Bluesky organization runs -- which definitely have humans involved, like the Trust and Safety team. Though compared to the total dismantlement of the Twitter T&S team and the resulting chaos, it may be refreshing to know that Bluesky has a functional team.

A long term goal for Bluesky is the "farming out" of things like blocklists or algorithms. That is to say, imagine if you wanted to automatically duplicate the blocks that your friend uses, because what she finds objectionable (eg Nazis) probably matches your own sensibilities, then you can. In fact, at this very moment, I'm informed that Bluesky users can subscribe to a List and implement a block against all members of the List. A List need not be just users, but can also include keywords, hashtags, or any other conceivable characteristic. Lists can also be user-curated, curated by crowd sourcing, or algorithmically generated. The latter is the long goal, not entirely implemented yet. Another example of curation is "Starter Packs", a List of specific users grouped by some common interest, eg Lawsky (for lawyers). Unlike a blocklist which you'd want to be updated automatically, a Starter List is a one-time event to help fill your feed with interesting content, rather than algorithmic random garbage.

So what's wrong with Bluesky then? It sounds quite nice so far. And I'm poised to agree, but there's some history to unpack. In very recent news, Bluesky the organization received more venture capital money, which means it's worth mentioning what their long term business plan is. In a lot of ways, the stated business plan matches what Discord has been doing: higher quality media uploads and customizations to one's profile. The same statement immediately ruled out any sort of algorithmic upranking or "blue checks"; basically all the ails of modern Twitter. You might choose to take them at their word, or not. Personally, I see it as a race between: 1) ATProto and the Bluesky infra being fully decentralized to allow anyone to spin up ExampleSky, and 2) a potential future enshittification of Bluesky in service of the venture capitalists wanting some ROI.

If scenario 1 happens first, then everyone wins, as bridging between ActivityPub and ATProto would make leaps and bounds, and anyone who wants their own ATProto instance can do so, choosing whether they want to rely on Bluesky for any/all features or none at all. Composability of features is something that ATProto can meaningfully contribute to the protocol space, as it's a tough nut to crack. Imagine running your own ATProto instance but still falling back on the T&S team at Bluesky, or leveraging their spam filters.

But if scenario 2 happen first, then we basically have a Twitter2 cesspool. And users will once again have to jump ship. I'm cautiously hopeful that the smart cookies at Bluesky can avoid this fate. I don't personally use Bluesky, being perfectly comfortable in the Fediverse. But I can't deny that for a non-tech oriented audience, Bluesky is probably what I'd recommend, and to opt-in to bridging with the Fediverse. Supposed episodes of "hyping" don't really ring true to me, but like I said, I'm not currently an invested user of Bluesky.

What I do want to see is the end result of Masnick's paper, where the Internet hews closer to its roots where interoperability was the paramount goal, and the walled gardens of yore waste away. If ATProto and ActivityPub both find their place in the future, then IMO, it'll be no different than IMAP vs POP3.

At its very core, an insurance company operates by: 1) pooling policyholder's risks together and 2) collecting premiums from the policyholders based on actuarial data, to pay claims and maybe make a small profit. But looking broader, an insurance market exists when: a) policyholders voluntarily or are obliged to obtain policies, b) insurers are willing and able to accept the risks in exchange for a premium expected to support the insurance pool, and c) the actuarial risks are calculable and prove true, on average.

The loss of any of A, B, or C will substantially impact a healthy insurance market, or can prevent the insurance market from ever getting started. For some examples of market failures, the ongoing California homeowner insurance crisis shows how losing B (starting with insurers refusing to renew policies near the wildland-rural interface) and C (increase in insured losses due to climate change) results in policies becoming unaffordable or impossible to obtain.

As a broader nationwide example, an established business sector that operates wholly without insurance availability is cannabis. A majority of US States have decriminalized marijuana for medical use, and a near-majority have legalized recreational consumption. Yet due to unyielding federal law, no insurer will issue policies for marijuana businesses, to protect from risks that any business would face, such as losses from fire, due to a product recall or product liability, or for liability to employees. These risks are calculable and there's a clear need for such policies -- thus meeting criteria A and C -- but no commercial insurer is willing to issue. Accordingly, the formal market for cannabis business insurance is virtually non-existent in the USA.

With these examples, we can see that the automobile insurance market meets all three criteria for a healthy market, but it's how these criteria are met which is noteworthy. Motorists in the USA are obliged to insure in every state except New Hampshire and Virginia: it is a criminal offense to drive a car without third-party liability insurance, meaning the motorist might spend time in jail. Note: NH and VA won't send a motorist to jail, but they do have administrative penalties for driving without "financial responsibility", which includes insurance or a bond at the DMV.

The exact requirement varies per state, with some requiring very low amounts of coverage and others requiring extra coverage like Personal Injury Protection (PIP, aka no-fault insurance). The point is that criteria A is easily met: motorists want to avoid jail, but also want to avoid the indignity of being sued after having caused a road incident, in addition to protecting their apparently only viable mode of transportation.

Insurers can take into account the overall trends in national risks trends for automobiles (eg new car safety, through the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, IIHS) as well as local or hyper-local risks (eg hail damage in the southeast, property crime in a particular zip code). And as a large country with nearly as many cars as people, many insurers are willing to meet the demand. This satisfies criteria B and C.

So well-organized is the automobile insurance market that you could almost say that it's vertically integrated: the largest nationwide insurers have contracts in place with every dealership network, auto collision chain, new and used parts dealers, as well as automatic data sharing with state DMVs, plus with firms like CarFax that buy information. Despite each state being slightly different, the insurers have overcome and achieved a level of near uniformity that allows an efficient market to exist.

Things are drastically different for the American healthcare system and for American health insurance companies. While most think of their healthcare provider as a national name like Anthem Blue Cross or Kaiser Permanente, the reality is that each state is an island, and sometimes counties in a state are enclaves. Even federal programs like Medicaid and Medicare are subject to state-level non-uniformities. For example, hospitals can be either privately operated (eg religion-affiliated, or for-profit) or run by a public entity (eg county or state), and can exist as a single entity or form part of a regional hospital network. Some entities operate both the insurance pool as well as providing the health care (eg HMOs like Kaiser Permanente) while others dispatch to a list of contracted providers, usually being doctor's own private practices or specialist offices.

With so many disparate entities, and where healthcare is a heavily-regulated activity by each state, the cost of insurable risks -- that is, for routine healthcare services -- is already kinda difficult to compute. Hospitals and doctors go through intense negotiations with insurers to come to an agreement on reimbursement rates, but the reality is that neither has sufficient actuarial data to price based on what can be borne by the market. So they just pass their costs on, whatever those may be, and insurers either accept it into their calculations, or drop the provider.

Suffice it to say, there are fewer pressure to push the total cost of healthcare down, given this reality, and more likely prices will continue to climb. This fails criteria C.

Source

Briefly speaking, it's fairly self explanatory why people would want health insurance, since the alternative is either death or serious health repercussions, paying out-of-pocket rates for service, or going to the ER and being burdened by medical debt that will somehow haunt even after death. Criteria A is present.

As for Criteria B, that was actually resolved as part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). During discussions with the drafters, insurers bargained for an obligation for everyone to have insurance (aka the individual mandate, bolstering criteria A), in exchange for an obligation to issue policies for anyone who applies, irrespective of pre-existing health conditions. Thus, Criteria B is present for all ACA-compliant policies in the USA, even though the individual mandate was later legislatively repealed.

So to answer your question directly, the costs for healthcare in the USA continue to spiral so far out of control that it causes distortions in the health insurance market, to everyone's detriment. Specific issues such as open-enrollment periods, employer subsidies, and incomprehensible coverage levels all stem from -- and are attempts to reduce -- costs.

Enrollment periods prevent people from changing plans immediately after obtaining an expensive service, like a major surgery. Employer subsidies exist due to a federal tax quirk decades ago, which has now accidentally become an essential part of the health insurance and health care situation. And coverage levels try to provide tiered plans, so people can still afford minimal coverage for "catastrophic" injuries while others can buy coverage for known, recurring medical needs.

But these are all bandaging the bleeding which is unchecked costs. It would take an act of Congress -- literally -- or of state legislatures to address the structural issues at play. The most prominent solution to nip costs is the bud is to achieve the same near-vertical integration as with automobile insurance. This means a single or very few entities which have contracts in place with every provider (doctors and hospitals), negotiated at once and uniformly, so as to achieve criteria C. The single-payer model -- which Medicare already uses -- is one such solution.

Going further would be the universal healthcare model, which discards the notion of health insurance entirely and creates an obligation for a government department to provide for the health of the citizens, funded by taxes. This means doctors and hospitals work at the behest of the department for the citizenry, or work privately outside the system entirely, with no guarantee of a steady stream of work. Substantial administrative savings would arise, since the number of players has been reduced and thus simplifies things, including the basic act of billing and getting paid for services rendered.

These models could be approached by individual states or by the nation as a whole, but it's unclear where the Overton window for that idea currently is.

For other people's benefit beyond my own:

RIIR: "Rewrite It In Rust"

OSM can definitely find you a bank near a freeway ramp, but it can also find you a bank near a creek to make an inflatable boat getaway. What it can't do is arrange for decoys to confuse the police while you eacape.

The inflatable boat robber was ultimately caught and sentenced a year later.