Slashdot Mirror

Healthcare is not a universal certainty. When my kid was brought into this world it popped out, cried a bit and we had it home no fuss...

Well, of course. Instead of saying "healthcare is a certainty," it would have been more accurate to say "routine low-cost procedures, such as having an annual physical, are a certainty." Don't throw out the entirety of a good post, just because one part had a less-than-ideal choice of words.

I live in a first world country which has socialised healthcare so the concept of using insurance to fix this problem just seems so dumb.

If socializing is a great solution, why not apply it to other things covered by insurance, such as auto collisions and structure fires? Answer: because insurance companies compete with each other on the basis of better coverage and/or lower premiums. (Surely you have noticed that gasoline prices are significantly lower in locations where there is more than one gas station competing for your business.) If I don't like the fact that Insurer A is slow to add newer, more effective cancer drugs to its formulary, I can switch to Insurer B.

But where insurers are replaced with a single government entity run by government bureaucrats, there is no longer any competition, no way to seek a better alternative if you're dissatisfied, and no economic mechanism to pressure the entity to apply innovations.

Canadians cross the border in large numbers to pay out-of-pocket for medical treatments that they either can't get in a timely manner, or can't get at all:

In the United States, suffering for a year or more before receiving a joint replacement is unheard of. In Canada, it's normal.

Back when MRI was a relatively new technology, there were more MRI machines in the city of Philadelphia (population 1.5 million) than in the entire nation of Canada (population 37 million). Not because Philadelphia is a particularly wealthy city (it is not); and not because of government largess, but in spite of it. Free markets really are more innovative and more responsive to customer needs.

If the U.S. system becomes as dismally socialized as Canada's, it won't be long until both Americans and Canadians start booking trips like these in large numbers. And if those countries become dismally socialized, we're all just screwed. Progress in medical technology will slow to a crawl, because all the customers for new technologies will be gone.

whatever you say my dude enjoy eating your pets commie

Yes it is internal. It is local government debt, not national, that is most worrying. A totally different situation to US or other countries.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/p...

And we see how well THAT worked!

https://www.forbes.com/sites/c...

Falling shot should be pretty safe.

That is not a universal opinion. See this explanation.

You need to stop it from happening. https://oceanconservancy.org/

Now THAT looks like a scam. I mean what is $75 sent to those guys going to do about the people in China and Vietnam (among others in Asia) dumping plastic?

I'd way rather fund the boom trying to actually clean some of it up than give some hippy $75 to yell at me about using a plastic bottle from time to time. Even if we stopped everyone dumpling plastic tomorrow there's still plenty to clean up so it's important to fund that, and might actually accomplish something.

>"I do agree that talk and action don't always match up, but I'm pretty sure most conservatives want or support a bigger military relative to progressives"

I will agree with you on that. However, "progressives" would love to spend lots of money on nonsensical stuff, too. In any case, both parties will spend and spend and spend on more military, regardless of the size of the military at that moment. The real problem is defining how big/strong is big/strong enough. One-size-fits-all doesn't describe conservatives or libertarians any more than it does for liberals or progressives.

My point was that big military spending keeps happening, regardless of which of the two parties and that most conservatives do not support excess spending of any sort, including military spending. Neither party really represents the ideals that supposedly drive them. And as you pointed out, what they say isn't often what they do. This is why I am so fed up with our rigid, entrenched, two-party system. Both are so corrupt now that I often wonder if it even matters which is in "control". And it is really a gross oversimplification to think that all issues are either A or B, left or right, R or D.

A quick search for just RECENT history turns up this: https://www.forbes.com/sites/e...

Sigh. About all I know for sure is that year after year, regardless of party, we spend more and more, go more and more in debt, have a larger and larger government, less and less privacy, more and more laws and regulations, and less and less freedom. It is a scary trend.... one that should scare all of us.

Obama and other have claimed that everything was paid back and "the taxpayer made a profit". Well, I doubt if any taxpayers have seen any of the money that was paid back. That will have gone straight into killing people in Asia and Africa, and maybe trying to make the F-35 fly in the rain without killing its pilots.

But what do you mean by "the bank bailouts"? Obama mentioned a few hundred billion - lunch money to the Pentagon. How about $16.8 trillion and counting as of 2015? Who has paid THAT back - and why haven't we heard about it?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/m...

Being stuck here is all about mass conversion and exhaust velocity. In fact, the faster you go the less time it takes to get there.

Time Dilation wrt Space travel
Dilation Calculator

I think the biggest issue with interstellar space travel is collision with anything larger than a grain of sand.

So its valuation earlier this year was externally estimated to be $26 billion and just two months ago was self-reported at 27.5 billion, and securing an additional half billion in funding suddenly pops it to $30.5?

Ali G would be jealous.

Conservatives are the real psychopaths.
And more from you psychopaths

You've taken no account for a growing economy.
https://www.investors.com/poli...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/n...

Oh, and go figure...the CBO has revised it's estimates upwards. From their site...
GDP Is Projected to Be Greater Than CBO Previously Estimated

CBO’s current economic projections differ from those that the agency made in June 2017 in a number of ways. The most significant is that potential and actual real GDP are projected to grow more quickly over the next few years. As a result, the levels of those measures are 1.6 percent higher than CBO previously estimated for 2027 (the last year in the previous projection period). Projected output is greater because of recently enacted legislation, data that became available after CBO’s previous economic projections were completed, and improvements in the agency’s analytical methods. Also, because inflation is now anticipated to be higher, the level of nominal GDP is projected to be 2.4 percent higher in 2027 than previously estimated

15+ years?

Ah, how time flies. I had no idea that it had already gone 15 years since those days.

Wages have been stagnant for a loooong time, so this is old news. Until the early 1970's, wages and productivity grew in lock-step with each other, but then they started to diverge. Productivity kept rising ever upward but wage growth slowed and has been largely flat. For the last ten years, I've been an advocate of having multiple streams of income as way to (A) Not be 100% financially dependent on one's job and (B) Overcome wage stagnation. My job's annual wage increase was usually 3%, which meant I was keeping up with inflation, but not really getting ahead. But since I got into dividend investing 10 years ago, my dividend income has risen at about 10% annually. It doesn't take a genius to see that being an investor is better in the long-term than being an employee.

People are making fun of your noise sensor idea because airports are already really loud. But even if they were completely quiet, I can't imagine that any sort of sensor to "hear" a quadcopter would work at a distance more than a few hundred feet.

In any event, yes, these things have been traced back to their owners by the parts -- for example, this case. I can't find the article where they revealed this now, but as I understand it they found the owner by the serial number of the brushless motor (one of four) from the Phantom 4 that was stuck on the helicopter.

(Presumably, the electronics would make finding the takeoff point and probably a whole lot more even easier, but I imagine that stuff was not available.)

Apple is a big winner on the software side too. 2/3rds the number of iOS app downloads generates five times the amount of revenue as Android apps.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/t...

Considering that humans could quite possibly be fooled by a 3D printed head in similar conditions, I'm actually very impressed they weren't all cracked. I also think this is an edge case scenario- Your phone is taken by someone who has the data, resources, and the will to make a 3D model of your head just to open it. Usually people would point to the government as a possible culprit here, but the government doesn't need to go to these lengths, they can use your actual face.

Why would you believe a government that scammed you a trillion dollars by falsifying claims of Iraq WMDs, that was shown to spying on China, their own "friends", and you, and that hijacked a hostage for negotiation just last week?

Let's imagine that was true. It isn't, but let's pretend.

It is true. Current EV rebates in California are about $10,000. With half a million purchased, that's around $5 billion; if anything, the original estimate may be a bit low.

We know that fossil fuels get $22 trillion in subsidies EACH YEAR.

That's not true... Citation needed. That is greater than the GDP of the US, the EU, or China. That's pretty much a straight-out lie. So - yeah. Citation needed.

Now, want to tell me which of those numbers is the more significant?

A real $5 billion, or a fake $22 trillion? The real $5 billion. Additionally, the $5 billion is directed to those who can afford, on average, $60,000+ cars. So it's a gift to the top 10%. Any subsidies to oil benefit everyone, from the rich with their supercars and private jets to the poor using a plastic bag at the grocery store or buying new tennis shoes.

If you think cars shouldn't be subsidized, fine. Abolish the subsidies on fossil fuels as well. All of it. Go on. Or is it only causes you agree with that get handouts?

Great! Let's do it! And let's also include subsidies for renewable energy - energy source for energy source, right? Because actual US subsidies don't fall as you think they do. Taxes paid by just ExxonMobil and Chevron are easily 3 times the most generous "subsidies" list you can reasonably come up with. ExxonMobil and Chevron paid $45 billion in just Federal taxes in 2012, compared to a supposed $15 billion in "subsidies" for the entire US industry.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/j...

Yet, beyond power rates 45% above the U.S. average, California has another problem that makes it less of a model than some proclaim. California now imports 33% of its electricity supply from fast growing neighbors, with about 65% of that coming from the Southwest and 35% coming from the Northwest. These numbers increase most in summer months when air conditioning loads peak. Imports have been rising rapidly: in 2010, California "only" imported 25% of its power.
It's good that they are going EV, but they are the ones that complain about the rest of the nation. But who are they getting a third of their electricity from? The deplorable s.

Unfortunately, we do not we do not teach what it is or how to get better at it at either school or university. http://www.forbes.com/sites/fo...

Google is helping al-Qaeda censor the internet.

They and their partners intentionally rig information services to control elections so that the winners won't prosecute them, they will suppress their political opposition, and they keep getting government funding.

Google Is Not What It Seems

https://www.forbes.com/sites/e...

Mods: Parent is OFF-TOPIC.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/e...

Re that salt mine. This was an interesting Forbes story:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/h...

Yay, more subsidies to nuclear! An industry that has lived on gigantic subsidies since the 40's and has never spouted out a single fully non-subsidised, private-funded plant anywhere in the world, that still promises only economic disaster with yet another generation of miserable failures like the now-legendary 3rd+-generation Olkiluoto 3, 10 years late and procrastinating (I am thrilled to see whether they break the record of Duke Nukem Forever, they are quite close), while renewables have a proven track record of plummeting CAPEX and OPEX, are already competitive with ridiculously low prices (seriously: they hit 17 $/MWh in Mexico, and this is a company committing to deliver this and putting their money behind it, not an estimate).

The most obvious proof that world leaders know nuclear power is just a boondoggle, good only as a support to military nuclear? When Iran announced they wanted to build nuclear power plants, no one believed them for a second. They knew the economics.

No no, let's China take control of the world's renewable tech, just like we did with rare earths. What could possibly go wrong?

That was my initial reaction. But a little research turned up that Lenovo only made about $250k from Superfish. So the condition that the fine greatly exceeds the profit has been met. Though I would've added a stipulation that in addition to the fine, they have to reimburse users for any expenses they incurred due to security breaches caused by Superfish-related vulnerabilities.

https://www.npr.org/2018/09/13...

https://www.fb.org/news/farm-b...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/c...

And now we have a 12 billion dollar fund of taxpayer money to pay for a small amount of farmers losses...which they're only losing because of this trade war bullshit. Try to spin it however you want, but this entire thing was Trump being a whiny little bitch and doing potentially severe damage to farmers in this country, and wasting more taxpayer dollars. It's not a good outcome, it's a fucking bad outcome because of stupid fucks like you. The remaining issue is Trump is still a fucking idiot, and sycophants like you still exist sucking his dick every chance you get.

1. Coal is heavily subsidized in the US

No, it's not. Not on a per kWh basis. https://www.forbes.com/sites/j...

2. Coal is not made to bear external costs.

Nothing is going to change that. Carbon taxes won't fix that because the people that sell the carbon based fuels just pass that cost on to the people buying the fuel. The people buying the fuel bear this external cost in whatever form that takes, be it global warming or air pollution. The only way to fix that is to use an alternative that is cheaper and cleaner than coal, that's nuclear power. Nuclear power has it's own external cost but that's far lower than anything else.

3. Despite this, coal _is_ losing in the marketplace, in the sense that its absolute use and relative use in energy consumption are decreasing.

Coal is losing to natural gas and nothing else. This is a good thing.

So what are you talking about?

I'm tired of the lies. I'm tired of promises of future technologies that never come to be.

Wind and solar cannot displace coal, at least not any time soon. This might change in the future with the batteries that keep getting promised so we need something that works today. Nuclear works today. Most everything I hear against nuclear power is a lie or a political construct. Most everything I hear in favor of wind and solar is also a lie. Maybe it's true that wind, solar, and batteries are the future but that's not helpful today. What can you offer *TODAY* as a solution? Batteries are not a solution today, therefore wind and solar are not a solution today. What works today is nuclear power, as proven by hundreds of operational nuclear power plants all over the world.

Here's an idea, let's not put our eggs in one basket. I keep hearing that nuclear power is not helpful because it takes ten years to finish a single nuclear power plant. That's a lie but let's go with it. Another lie I keep hearing is that in ten years we will have solved the problems of making batteries big enough and cheap enough so that wind and solar power can replace all the coal. Okay then, let's start building those nuclear power plants, and work on those batteries. In a decade from now let's see who cleans up the air and water first.

Here's the neat part about that nuclear power, they aren't asking for money from the government, they ask only for permission. Give them permission and nuclear power plants will get built. If you say they can't get built without a government loan then I say fine, don't give them a loan. I'm still quite certain that they get built. They need a permit though, but the government has issued maybe a half dozen in the last 50 years. They'll have to issue a dozen every year if we are going to solve the problems of global warming, pollution, and so on. That's not growth by the way, that's just replacing the existing coal power plants being shut down. If you want to see natural gas get replaced too then that means 24 new gigawatt sized nuclear power plants every year, or more likely half nuclear and half wind/solar/batteries/whatever.

If we don't see nuclear power plant permits then we will just see more natural gas. I'm fine with that too, because I'm not convinced global warming is a real problem. If you think it is then we can't wait for battery technology to save us, we need a solution *TODAY*. If the global warming alarmists can't agree on more nuclear power to solve this problem then I have to wonder just how seriously they take this problem.

Not saying it doesn't mean their findings shouldn't be looked at more closely since they clearly have an agenda. But it's in line with the coal plant closings we're seeing. Can you site a study where coal plants _are_ profitable in aggregate?

Put another way, here's the left wing bastion of Forbes discussion the same thing.

Posting this particular study on /. is just an excuse to talk about a trend that seems pretty obvious. If Coal wasn't losing ground Trump wouldn't have been able to capitalize on out of work miners. The market would have those folks well employed.

You are trying to gaslight us all...

In 2018 (and 2017) all H1B Visas were fully filled just like any other year for the last 16 years.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/s...

What has changed is that the number H2B Visas where expanded by 20K positions between 2017 and 2018... gotta have low paid grounds keepers... you know at private Golf Clubs and such.

In USA, Your Card IS Talking To the Government: https://www.forbes.com/sites/t...

It says over and over in that article that they weren't spying, they had to get a warrant. In one case, it was a rental car. Remember, when you rent a car, it isn't your car.

In USA, Your Card IS Talking To the Government: https://www.forbes.com/sites/t...

Right, but those stats are heavily biased by infant mortality rate definitions where the same baby who dies in Cuba and the US gets eliminated from the stats as never having been born in Cuba, but as a very short life expectancy in the US.

Creating a huge negative based on the fact that in the US they're extremely more likely to try and save severely premature babies than they are in Cuba is a bit ridiculous and renders those stats effectively meaningless.

For example:

In the U.S., very low birth weight babies are considered live births. The mortality rate of such infants – considered “unsalvageable” outside of the U.S. and therefore never alive – is extraordinarily high; up to 869 per 1,000 in the first month of life alone. This skews U.S. IM statistics.

  Since 2000, 42 of the world’s 52 surviving babies weighing less than 400 grams (0.9 lbs) were born in the U.S.

  Some of the countries reporting infant mortality rates lower than the U.S. classify babies as “stillborn” if they survive less than 24 hours whether or not such babies breathe, move, or have a beating heart at birth. But in the U.S., all infants who show signs of life at birth (take a breath, move voluntarily, have a heartbeat) are considered alive and are reflected in our IM statistics.

This is one of the most twisted attempts to wish away America's appalling problem with infant mortality I've ever seen.

It's not because you're so good. It's because you're fucking shit. Also you're quoting Forbes, in case anyone was in any doubt what a cunt you are.

Right, but those stats are heavily biased by infant mortality rate definitions where the same baby who dies in Cuba and the US gets eliminated from the stats as never having been born in Cuba, but as a very short life expectancy in the US.

Creating a huge negative based on the fact that in the US they're extremely more likely to try and save severely premature babies than they are in Cuba is a bit ridiculous and renders those stats effectively meaningless.

For example:

In the U.S., very low birth weight babies are considered live births. The mortality rate of such infants – considered “unsalvageable” outside of the U.S. and therefore never alive – is extraordinarily high; up to 869 per 1,000 in the first month of life alone. This skews U.S. IM statistics.

  Since 2000, 42 of the world’s 52 surviving babies weighing less than 400 grams (0.9 lbs) were born in the U.S.

  Some of the countries reporting infant mortality rates lower than the U.S. classify babies as “stillborn” if they survive less than 24 hours whether or not such babies breathe, move, or have a beating heart at birth. But in the U.S., all infants who show signs of life at birth (take a breath, move voluntarily, have a heartbeat) are considered alive and are reflected in our IM statistics.

Only a small subset of the species is "bad". As long as only those are targeted and the rest are left alone, it shouldn't be a problem.

Good read about it here:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/q...

It's a cherry-picked survey where those who were stated as 'explicitly endorse human-caused climate warming' directly refute the classification. When your data - which is surveyed papers from authors - literally comes out and says you're wrong, well - you should question the accuracy of the survey in the first place.

You don't manufacture the most WindBourne, why the constant lies? https://www.forbes.com/sites/b... https://www.greencarreports.co...

The 99%/97% number is based on a review that was papers reviewed and is bogus.

- tax reform, including finally fixing the highest business tax rate in the world

The US had the third highest business taxes worldwide ON PAPER, but anyone not a lying sack of shit (unlike you) knows that's not even remotely close to the actual rate businesses are taxed. I get it, stupid fucking idiots like you can't think passed the 5 second sound bite of your hyper-partisan political fuckery, but the EFFECTIVE TAX RATE is what they actually pay...and it's not the highest at all. https://www.forbes.com/sites/e...

"In any one of these years (2006-2012), at least two-thirds (between 67% and 72%) of all active corporations had zero tax liability after credits."

"The average effective tax rate among the profitable large corporations was 16.1%, under federal tax treatment."

The difference between "top marginal" and "effective" is well known, and only a complete fucking idiot or a pathological liar would keep bringing up this pathetic talking point. Which are you?

In addition to this, the cost of this "tax reform" will add 11.7 trillion to the national debt over the next 10 years, after taking into account growth. https://www.reuters.com/articl...

"But those growth rates will not offset the deficits, which will “increase rapidly this year and over the next few years,” then stabilize, resulting in a projected cumulative deficit of $11.7 trillion for 2018-2027, CBO forecast."

Clearly there are no such things as fiscal conservative republicans.

Actually, those very models (Tree rings, Ice cores) are constantly adjusted so that they better fit surface temperature records over the last hundred years. Specifically, the same surface data that showed significant cooling from the 1930s to 1970s and was massaged out of the record. Whenever someone finds a model that doesn't agree with the current consensus, they tweak and correct their models until they provide the conclusion they were seeking. e.g. Doctored Data, Not U.S. Temperatures, Set a Record This Year . This happens, by the way, in much less politically charged scientific fields than climate science. P-Hacking is a frequent and constant challenge in much less politicized fields, including medicine and physics.

There's a great video out there by Tom Heller who calls out many of my own frustrations. I personally am a big believer in the scientific method and the scientific community in general. But it would be ignorant to claim that climate science was completely apolitical and there was no fraud or misrepresentation whatsoever.

Not even close to the busiest shopping day of the year compared to Singles Day.

What's the big deal? Just think of it like China is adopting a big Code Of Conduct, and people who don't behave accordingly will be blacklisted, but instead of just from open source software development, from life!. Isn't that your tranny SJW end game?

Dude literally stated that he's opposed to all of this as a liberal and you went and argued the exact opposite point because apparently either you cannot read or just enjoy building massive strawmen. How 'fun'. I can do this too, watch me:

"What's the big deal, China's just making sure no-one can openly criticize the Dear Leader or his party, and those who dissent too hard or belong to the wrong religion/ethnicity/political movement will be taken to 're-education camps' where if need be they can be killed and their organs harvested if some Good Loyal Citizens(tm) are in need of them, isn't that your ultra-conservative Trumpian end-game; to have the government be able to operate with impunity, above the rule of law and get rid of the pesky media that Trump calls 'the enemy'?"

See how easy this is? Now Is this productive for the discussion at large in any way? Nope. It's just 'ooh I'm so right they're so wrong aah' -partisan ego jerk off for cunts like you. Grow the fuck up man.

It means banking with a foreign bank. Like ING, Deutsche Bank, Toronto Dominion, etc. It's what a lot of businesses did when the US banking system seized up in 2008. Until the US threatened to audit any foreign bank with an American customer until they screamed and cried 'Uncle'.

Moving your money to a European bank back then would have been dumb. European banks during and after the 2008 crisis were in much worse shape than US banks, and the European banking system faced total collapse until the US Fed stepped in and bailed them out with 16 Trillion dollars.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/t...

The Five Eyes have already attacked China. Now, can the Five Eyes just tell us where the Weapons of Mass Destruction are in Iraq?

Interesting, because Amazon's numbers from 2014 suggest that 60% of their employees are "white". That of course includes people at all levels. Managers are 73% white.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/r...

So either it's a problem very specific to development, which isn't born out in more detailed numbers we have from other companies, or you were extremely unlucky.

Excuse me for being skeptical, but I hear these 90%+ claims and never see a shred of evidence of it being true anywhere. When I ask people get evasive or the available evidence doesn't back them up.

What It's Like To Stay At A Japanese Capsule Hotel

For those asking for citation, The first link is the WAAS (windows as as service is the microsoft name) information for businesses, IIRC business deployment is scheduled for first deployment with retail deployment afterwards. WAAS will follow the same model as office 365, it'll likely start as an optional subscription for a year or two before the only option will be the monthly subscription just like office 2019 is the last standalone version after only a few years of 365 existing.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-...
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-...

The microsoft windows 365 plan, like office 365 will be the first step in the shift:

https://wccftech.com/microsoft...

Other sources without looking too hard:

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella reportedly told financial analysts at the Build conference in the spring, "We are moving from a product that is perpetual to one that is always up to date. In the past we've always had revenue per license. Going forward we'll have revenue per device, and we'll have revenue per device gross margin."

https://www.informationweek.co...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/g...
https://blog.juriba.com/window...

As you'll note in the links most of the information is in the financial press that the bulk of the public doesn't pay attention to, but what Microsoft promises wall street will occur.

We didn't. Only YOU did.

And, FWIW:

a) Having multiple models is good. You can draw a graph of best/worst cases and a line through the middle. Unfortunately that median line doesn't look good.

b) Even the earliest models are working out quite well:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/s...

yes it is what Bell's theorem shows.

Here's how. Bell's theorem requires acting on the entangled pair in a way that will change the pair relationship. If you simply force one of the particles to a specific state then it breaks the entanglement and the other particle becomes independent. (thus no FTL info). And if you act on the entangled pair, then when you measure the local particle's state you also break the entanglement (thus no FTL).

here's a layman's description:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/c...