Slashdot Mirror

Apparently I chose the wrong example from a quick google search. But there has been a lot of talk in the press about how the new LiDAR chips will revolutionize self-driving cars. It's definitely on the way, it's just not here yet.

As for fog, humans can't see through it either. I think the point is to have a broad spectrum of inputs -- LiDAR, radar, ultrasound, cameras -- to get the best possible "picture" in the given weather conditions.

China is pushing really hard and exceeding its quite ambitious goals.

I take it you haven't actually visited China lately, or you'd know firsthand what baloney that is. China may say all sorts of high-minded things in political contexts, but at the end of the day its economic growth comes first and the environmental implications of that growth come second.

For those wondering, the research is sponsored by tax-dollars.

Such control of private enterprises by government officials is Crony Capitalism if one wishes to be charitable, and Fascism in other cases.

How is Iran a rogue nation? Here's a start:
It's a state sponsor of terrorism.
It has an unaccountable paramilitary force, the Revolutionary Guards, who regularly attack and detain foreigners, among others.
They flirt with nuclear proliferation, to the extent that Israel has unilaterally attacked them in the past.

Any one of these would be enough to label it a rogue nation.

This type of building is not sustainable. What happens when you want to make additions?

Hyperbole? LoL. It's people like you who are the problem. You think climate change is just another Hollywood disaster flic that ain't gonna happen. Despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, your mind is not able to step out of its comfort zone because it is too lazy or complacent, or simply lacks the imagination to envision things that go beyond your immediate experiences.
Do you think "The Economist" is a magazine that engages in "irrelevant pap"?
http://www.economist.com/clima...

Or maybe you were referring to my depiction of Donald Trump? in that case open your eyes man!

Hyperbole? LoL. It's people like you who are the problem. You think climate change is just another Hollywood disaster flic that ain't gonna happen. Despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, your mind is not able to step out of its comfort zone because it is too lazy or complacent, or simply lacks the imagination to envision things that go beyond your immediate experiences.
Do you think "The Economist" is a magazine that engages in "irrelevant pap"?
http://www.economist.com/clima...

Or maybe you were referring to my depiction of Donald Trump? in that case open your eyes man!

Rent control is in general a terrible idea which results in more economic problems rather than less. It destroys most incentives to make new housing. https://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2015/08/economist-explains-19 and http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/ed-miliband/10802231/Low-rent-Labour-is-positioning-itself-as-the-Ukip-of-the-Left.html are both detailed discussions of the many problems.

No one 'has to' sell services to people

That has yet to be decided. Sometimes the State will compell you to provide services or goods to others, even if you don't like it. I assume all those who denounced the "gay wedding cake baker" will of course denounce the websites dropping this Nazi group, too.

Don't even need CO's, any more than we need massive offices filled with telephone operators.

And you just lost all credibility right there.

You really hate that your useless objections aren't persuasive, don't you?

You've been sputtering them for a while now, complaining again isn't especially informative.

  Just means I know that your outdated conception of telecommunications infrastructure is wrong.

I know, I know, contact with the telephone operator is so important to you.

But you should give up on that, just like you should give up on your useless reliance on population density to drive your arguments.

Leningrad 2 was already delayed twice actually... and the russian commission in 2015 basically acknowledegd nuclear power incurs regularly in construction delay and increased costs, often one leading to the other.

On top of that, it's not only the US: France nuclear power industry is in pretty bad shape too with huge debt, underfunded decommissioning plans and new constructions incurring huge delays and budget overruns.

Actually, of the 55 nuclear power plants under constuctions in the World, 35 are behind schedule and only 4 of these are in the US: https://www.economist.com/blog...

As I said I don't think nuclear has to be discarded as option, but I doubt nuclear will have a big comeback until generation 4 reactors get productive, if and whenever that happens.

On the negative side, their GDP per capita is about $42k vs $57k in America.

Precisely. The Germans didn't get to save their manufacturing jobs without cost. In their case the Faustian bargain was lower wage growth and thus a lower share of GDP going to labor. This means that Germans work hard for less money and enjoy less consumption than other first world economies. This hurts not only the Germans but other economies too, especially in the Euro zone where trade adjustments are needed to put people back to work but are stymied by low imports and consumption in Germany due to the stickiness of wages. The problem is compounded by the fact that the low growth wages are not so much enshrined in German law as they are in contracts between labor unions and large employers bound by tradition. The Economist ran this as the cover story not long ago.

Fortunately there is a cure for almost everything these days including aging. The only thing needed is young blood. Seems like dream come true and there is already a company providing the appropriate service. As always the ones getting service are people with thick wallets. So the only problem there is then is population size.

They do? Only if they have means to either rent or buy property. There used to be an alternative - work on farm of other people but that seems to be less and less needed thanx to automation (or whatever that is called in farming). There used to be other jobs but if one is believe this than there is much less summer jobs now than in the past.

So stupid

http://www.economist.com/image...

It's widely known birth rate reduces with the increase of the standards of living.

Not fundamentally standard of living, but rather female education.
Although those two tend to be correlated as well.
e.g.
http://www.economist.com/node/...

how about the presidents own clear language....WHILE HIS LAWYERS WERE ARGUING IT BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT:
http://www.economist.com/blogs...

So a Syrian software engineer should stay in the ruins of Allepo and start his startup there?

When people migrate and start companies outside their native land, they create networks that benefit their home countries. An Irish software engineer goes to Silicon Valley, starts a successful startup, then eventually partners with people back in Ireland where he can sell his stuff and create more business opportunities for people there.

"If people were goods, the solution to different wage and employment levels would be obvious: encourage the transfer of ‘surplus' people from poorer to richer nation states, which should benefit individuals whose incomes rise, increase global GDP, and promote convergence in wages and opportunities between sending and receiving areas that eventually reduces migration pressures."

Migration and development

Jamie Dimon didn't get to his position by running retail banking.

The dollar value on the derivative books these days is larger than all net activity in the non financial sector of the economy.

http://www.economist.com/blogs...

They aren't exceeding their goals.

In fact, they are. You haven't paid attention the last few months.

They set goals 20 years into the future to begin with because they know that technology is already on its way to making these changes.

When the Paris Accord was written, China did indeed set low goals for itself. But more recently -- especially since Trump's election -- China has reconsidered and begun investing heavily in green energy production both domestically and around the world.

The rest is just a grab for cash.

Actually, you're on to something there. China seems to have recognized that it can offer significantly-subsidized Chinese-made green energy infrastructure to the developing world and thereby accomplish two goals at once. First, it can comply with (and exceed) its commitments under the Paris Accord. Second, and much more important, it can become the provider of (and in many cases owner of) core energy infrastructure throughout the developing world, positioning itself to reap huge economic rewards as those regions' economies develop. Along the way it will obtain tremendous political influence, both in the developing nations where Chinese goods and services will be so important to their economic progress, and throughout the developed world where it will be seen as the nation that stepped up to solve the problem while America dithered.

China's climate change response looks likely to position it as the leader of a new world order that will replace the one established by the US in the aftermath of WWII. The US established itself as the leader of the world by stepping in and solving big problems that affected the whole world, first by defeating the Axis militarily, and then by funding much of the cleanup. China appears to have realized that there's a chance for them to use the climate change situation to repeat that trick, and American voters seem to want to let them.

What matters are future results, and that the effectiveness of whatever algorithm is used is continually measured. There's also question of whether sentencing alone can effectively reduce recidivism. The Economist has an interesting article on making America's prisons work better.

If you look at the 7/7 bombers, or the Manchester bomber, they were heavily invested in British culture and most of our values.

I'm calling bullshit on this. The Manchester bomber - Salman Abedi - is the one with which I'm familiar. He was from a traditional, "super religious" family, according to his neighbours. Even leaving aside the matter of which religion it was, being devoutly religious is already antithetical to mainstream British culture - and the fact that the family kept up a traditional Libyan lifestyle after immigrating suggests that they didn't really take on British culture, except for a few of the more superficial ones, like football and console games.

Unfortunately, the aspect of modern British culture that he did take on was social-justice activism: he lodged a complaint about Islamophobia on the part of a teacher who expressed disapproval of suicide bombings. There seems to be a worrying, and increasing, alliance between radical social-justice activists and Islamist terrorists.

Sources: A, B.

the majority of murderers and terrorists in the west are... Westerners. [...] Look at that Ander Breivik guy. Killed nearly 100 people

Anders Breivik's shooting spree in Oslo was, in fact, the third-largest attack in Western Europe since 2001 (source). Of the top ten attacks in this era by death toll, seven have been ideologically motivated by Islam, one (Anders) was extremist right-wing, and the other two were unaffiliated or unclear.

So the majority of terrorists in Europe come from the 10%-or-so of the population that are Muslim. And within that, the evidence suggests (see Salman Abedi), the terrorists come from the small subset who are devoutly religious, never really integrate into their host communities, and react negatively to any criticism of Islam, or even of violence done in the name of Islam.

"The jobs crisis we have in the U.S. is that we don't have enough workers," he said.

I don't understand. If that was true, why have wages remained stagnant? If wages can't beat inflation, then surely, the supply of workers is really high and demand for workers is low. If demand for workers was high because the supply of workers was low, then you would expect to see a laborer's market.

This quote doesn't appear to be in TFA so I'm not sure where it comes from or what the context is. I don't know if there's more to it but it seems a prima facie absurd statement.

The next step is to bring any worker in from a low cost, poor nation and pay them a different nation wage in the new nation for a short time.
"Going posted" (Jul 7th 2016)
http://www.economist.com/news/...
"While French workers command high wages under the country’s sectoral labour agreements.. "
"... contracted in their home countries to work in another European Union country"
.."“posted workers”"..
"need only receive the local minimum, under EU law. "

There was a recent article in the Economist about publishing in the Arab World. With the turmoil in Iraq, Syria, and Egypt, Arabic publishing is dying. In Beirut bookstores, 40% of the books are in English, 40% in French, and only 20% in Arabic. Part of this is because Arabic is designed to be written by hand, and not printed. The shape of individual "letters" depends on the preceding and following "letters", much like English cursive, except even worse.

Fixed it for you:
The part that you're overlooking is that roads are a scarce resource in cities, so we really don't want a large number of private cars looking for free parking adding to congestion. See: http://www.economist.com/news/... and http://www.economist.com/news/...

Fixed it for you:
The part that you're overlooking is that roads are a scarce resource in cities, so we really don't want a large number of private cars looking for free parking adding to congestion. See: http://www.economist.com/news/... and http://www.economist.com/news/...

There are several different issues here which may be conflated.

Firstly, the GP said that most terrorism "in today's world" is Muslim terrorism, which is correct. The link you provided discusses only terrorism in the US.

Secondly, restricting ourselves to the US, there is the distinction between terrorism carried out by immigrants, and terrorism carried out by native US-born citizens. This is an important distinction to make when discussing immigration policy, but is not the same as the distinction between Muslim and non-Muslim terrorism: it's possible for native-born citizens to be Muslim, or for immigrants to be non-Muslim.

Thirdly, there is a distinction between non-Muslim terrorists and "Right-wing white supremecists [sic]", who constitute only a subset of these. Islam aside, the left wing is perfectly capable of producing its own terrorists.

Fourthly, there is a difference between a group supplying a majority of terrorists, and a group which is disproportionately likely to be terrorists. Muslims in the US may or may not meet the first criterion, depending on how you play with the definition (e.g. excluding 9/11), but - being a tiny minority, but responsible for at least a substantial fraction of terrorism - they certainly meet the second criterion.

Not exactly a "bank account". An account managed by a cell phone company with convenience stores and such acting as tellers. Google M-PESA. The M-PESA system is said to work pretty well in Kenya and Afghanistan. Here's a link http://www.economist.com/blogs...

http://www.mountvernon.org/geo...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
http://www.economist.com/blogs...

... and I doubt Seattle is the only city that has made these choices.

Go visit Tokyo, which has very little street parking. Downtown street parking is wasteful. Streets should be for driving, and parking lots/garages should be for parking. Eliminating street parking frees up lanes for traffic, and cuts down on the number of cars circling the block looking for a space. In SF about 40% of traffic is people looking for parking.

But changing to a more efficient system is difficult because of the politics of parking.

You read the chart the wrong way, and you don't even know when the EU was actually born. Firstly, the red lines mean that Italy is a net contributor, not taker:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

According to your (unkonwn) source you need to go back to 1984 to see something different, except that the "European Union" didn't even exist, it was a simple trade deal called "European Economic Community", with a minuscule budget if compared to today. The EU was actually born in 1993 with the Maastricht Treaty. So, yes: it is demonstrated that Italy has always been a net contributor to the EU (not that this is something to be proud of, it's actually silly).

Secondly, this is Germany in the '90s:
http://www.economist.com/node/...

And this is the german growth rate between 1995 and 1998, just before the eurozone was born. It's lower lower than Italy and France:
https://www.imf.org/external/p...

And I'll tell you more, you didn't even make up for the private wealth gap: still today, the Italians, the French, and even the Spaniards have a higher median net worth per capita than the germans:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Can you read those data? You're at the same level as the Greeks! Lol!

Basically your recent "growth" is based on 4 million, low-cost, 450-euro-per-month "minijobbers". You're basically the european version of China, what a fantastic place to live.

As per this article the fact that somebody said something may not be a fact after all.

...58 papers were retracted from seven different journals...

But 58 is. And then there is this, and this.

And why is that such a bad thing?

I passed no judgment, actually. I just pointed out, the deck is not stacked in Trump's favor — certainly not "entirely".

Sadly, in US politics these days if you are seen even eating in the same restaurant as someone from the other party you are vilified and torn down the next time you come up for re-election as a traitor to the party.

Apparently, people are periodically shifting in their opinion on whether or not party-loyalty (and consequent predictability) are a good thing. For every time you blast one's sticking to the party line, I can counter, that it is good thing, that a politician not doing that is not fulfilling the promise his party-affiliation made to the electorate.

The best example I can think of it that damn loyalty and support pledge the Republicans were demanding all Presidential candidates take, promising that they would support the nominee no matter who it was. How can you stand there one day and tell people that someone is incompetent, wrong, and unfit to rule, and then turn around and declare your full and unconditional support to them the next? Either you lied to the electorate or you are giving up on your principles, both in the name of party loyalty.

And why is that such a bad thing?

I passed no judgment, actually. I just pointed out, the deck is not stacked in Trump's favor — certainly not "entirely".

Sadly, in US politics these days if you are seen even eating in the same restaurant as someone from the other party you are vilified and torn down the next time you come up for re-election as a traitor to the party.

Apparently, people are periodically shifting in their opinion on whether or not party-loyalty (and consequent predictability) are a good thing. For every time you blast one's sticking to the party line, I can counter, that it is good thing, that a politician not doing that is not fulfilling the promise his party-affiliation made to the electorate.

Asian-Americans have lower default rates than whites, in spite of the fact that universities actively discriminate against them.

Members of one minority (Asian-Americans) need to score a whopping 450 SAT points higher than members of another minority (African-Americans) for an equal chance of admission to private universities. Source: The Economist

no tax on food

Why? Such capricious exemptions is the reason, our current tax-code does not fit into an oversized book case.

Not only is there no logical explanation for exempting food (but not clothes?), now you'll need to define "food". And then someone will say, screw the billionaires, let's tax caviar — even though it is "food". Then someone else will argue for exempting gardening, fishing and hunting equipment — but only if the buyer plans to engage in the activity for good, not entertainment. Then the IRS will conduct sting-operations to catch evaders, who bought a rifle without the sales tax, but left a shot deer's carcass in the woods. And so on...

No. Sales tax and flat tax on everyone. And the vast majority of accountants and tax-lawyers can start doing something more productive...

no tax on food

Why? Such capricious exemptions is the reason, our current tax-code does not fit into an oversized book case.

Not only is there no logical explanation for exempting food (but not clothes?), now you'll need to define "food". And then someone will say, screw the billionaires, let's tax caviar — even though it is "food". Then someone else will argue for exempting gardening, fishing and hunting equipment — but only if the buyer plans to engage in the activity for good, not entertainment. Then the IRS will conduct sting-operations to catch evaders, who bought a rifle without the sales tax, but left a shot deer's carcass in the woods. And so on...

No. Sales tax and flat tax on everyone. And the vast majority of accountants and tax-lawyers can start doing something more productive...

Rangers can't figure out how hat happened.

Simple, actually. Building codes in Canada encourage (require?) the installation of door handles instead of knobs. But bears have figured out how to operate the handles to gain access to the soft, chewy goodies inside. Mom probably opened the door and the cubs walked in.

you throw around 'constitutional duty' like that means something. please clarify what you think the relevant passage actually means.

https://aclj.org/supreme-court...

i'd think you'd be a little more worried about executive discretion

http://www.economist.com/blogs...

i don't care if you're left or right or middle, the president doesn't does not and should not have the power to unilaterally ignore laws. vis a vis obama's daca and dreamer's stance, i'm on the right...ish. i'd consider myself a liberal, but the left pulled the hell to the left and now i'm left center-right. regardless... if the president has the authority to unilaterally ignore the enforcement of entire laws passed by congress... it's not good. the legislature of our country does not pass suggestions. if you want to rewrite immigration laws. pass a fucking law. if you can't pass a fucking law because you don't have the votes, convince people and win a fucking election.

i support gorsuch, i want our government to run within the bounds of their constitutional powers. i think they've worked pretty well and don't want them to be simply 'suggestions.' judicial activism is bad, executive overreach is bad. power should lie with the people, and the people's house is the closest we can get to that... not a single person, and not 9 unelected life-time appointments. the men and women who have to go back to THE PEOPLE every two years and make the case that they're not fucking up, and sometimes those fuckers in the senate.

http://www.economist.com/news/...

Why are people born into poverty generally stay poor? Why are people born into wealth generally stay wealthy? "Poor people teach their children to be poor; rich people teach their children to be rich." You could blame the parents, but it's generally poor people all the way down.

There are outliers, but to a large extent people are a product of their environment. The parents are christian; the person is probably christian. The community is conservative; the person is probably conservative. That's the reason elections (in many places) are intentionally not based on majority votes; people who live near one another generally have similar views.

Parents do what they can to give their children the best chance of success. But if "you did it all on your own," are you saying that all the effort your parents, teachers, and anyone who happened to help you along the way, was wasting their time on you? You would still be just as successful without their efforts?

http://www.economist.com/news/...

Where is the right trying to "deplatform" left-wing speakers?

On News Corp platforms, Breitbart, twitter, 4chan, all sorts of places?

Just look for all the hand-wringing over "BLM" and "Anti-Trump" riots, against "Planned Parenthood", all the "Birther" claims, and you''ll find it.

Let's see, who is committing the violence [rollingstone.com] and trying to prevent the speech of others? That would be the left.

Also, case in point, here, by a user named Raenex. Who will never look at the right's actions.

But you, you want us to be upset over Milo's hiring a bunch of guys in masks to disrupt his own rallies and get attention. But Milo is out so you didn't even get your memo about that.

Which political party responds to critiques of Islam with cries of "Islamophobia" and "racist"? Which political party is against restrictions on Muslim immigration? Which political party has apologists for Sharia law leading [breitbart.com] women marches?

The left went from fighting political Christians to embracing Islam.

Which political party denounces Islam and creates lies about Sharia law? Which political party tries to convince us that Islam is a material threat? Which political party wants to ignore the terrorists among us?

Which political party lies about Planned Parenthood? Which political party has been found in court to engage in unlawful gerrymandering? Which political party is threatening judges who dared to reject Trump's unlawful ban? Which political party attacks how women dressed? Which political party claims to be pro-life, but resents paying for maternity care?

The right is the party that loves everything about radical Islamists, except the name they operate under.

Sure, welfare spending is the problem, not rampant corruption.

You're a special kind of stupid, aren't you? South Africa has 18m-21m welfare recipients (figure varies depending on who you ask) who live off around 6m taxpayers.

Do you know why the corrupt government is always re-elected? It's because those 18m-21m recipients vote for more welfare. The corrupt government doesn't even bother to hide their corrupt activities any more, because the welfare recipients keep it in power.

Let South Africa be a lesson to the world - if the majority of the population live off of welfare payments, then only a corrupt government with no interest in improving things will gain (and retain) power.

Taxpayers are overwhelmingly rejecting the current administration (see the voting patterns in areas populated by taxpayers), but because there are so few of them compared to the welfare recipients they are unable to elect a different government as the welfare recipients are more numerous. A quick analysis of the voting patterns in the last election display this quite nicely.

Society stops being viable when each taxpayer is tasked with supporting him/herself as well as 3-4 other adults.

Sure, welfare spending is the problem, not rampant corruption.

And if you actually read the news you'd know Russia has a nasty habbit of invading countries in their little sphere of influence that try to align themselves with us. As far as their hacking, the DNC hack is a million miles from Russia's only antiwestern internet mischief. Eastern Europe's internet infastructure faces continual harassment from the Russians or in other words, our allies are suffering constant harrassment by Russia.

Horseshit.

Reality: the United States overthrew Ukraine's elected government, after the duly elected government went with a low interest loan from Russia instead of one from the IMF, with the usual austerity measures attached. Do any of you American Exceptionalists think the U.S. would stand idly by if Russia had overthrown the Mexican government, complete with a Russian foreign minister bragging on video about the money they spent to do so? And then have the nerve to whine about Russia's [nonexistent] interference in our election. The "harassment from Russia" is even more laughable when you remember how much NATO has expanded since the fall of the Soviet Union.

So even if Russia had invaded Ukraine, it would only be a million times more justified than any American intervention you can name. But they haven't, or you'd have more than laughable evidence collected from the Facebook pages of Ukrainian fascists. If you think the existing Russian military base in Crimea is an invasion, then the U.S. has been conducting 900+ invasions around the world for some time now.

As for the election hacking, those who believed that story from the start showed they didn't learn a damned thing from the lies told about Saddam's WMD's and involvement in 911. Anyone who still believes anonymous sources in the CIA-funded WaPo after the last Wikileaks dump is now an outright fool. Even moreso when high level officials would rather accuse a right-wing Fox News host of working for Putin when asked to look in to the camera and say Russia was behind a specific attack.

dl;dr Russia isn't the problem. Your dumb imperialistic, American Exceptionalist ass is.

Horseshit. The correlation is quite weak and the causation is virtually non-existent. Otherwise we wouldn't see parental income predicting a child's future income. We would see a lot of very rich construction workers - and you wouldn't see silicon valley workers taking extended vacations and lounging about in office play rooms.

Do you believe somewhere between a minivan-full and two double-decker-buses full of people are more productive, combined, than half the world's population?

The dice are fucking rigged and only those who have it rigged in their favor want us to believe they aren't. This "neutral" system brings evil results every single time it's given a chance to do so. It's time to call it what it is according to its actions - an evil system.

Which may be a good thing in the long term as investing in Solar will become more of an economic necessity rather than a ecological statement.

Maybe, but like most things here in the real world, the truth is rather more complicated. The economist had a good article in their recent edition, Clean Energy's Dirty Secret , discussing the economics of renewable energy vs fossil fuels and the electric grids and where there are some interesting pitfalls that all green power advocates need to be aware of if they don't want to see renewable energy adoption start to go sideways.

The Economist also wrote about this in 2015.