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And the S&P500 correlates with butter production in Bangladesh.

http://business.time.com/2009/...

Correlation, causation etc.

I don't understand how Uber is a taxi service. They don't take street fares. At best Uber is a car service.

This. The ability to be hailed from the street (and in some places, use special lanes/stands at public transportation hubs) is what makes a taxi, what requires a medallion, etc. Uber, Lyft, and friends cannot be hailed from the street, so they are not taxis in the strict sense--they are a car service that utilizes personal-use vehicles.

Although for the purposes of some /.er outrage, there is no practical difference. For instance, the need for adequate insurance applies to both taxis and car services. I'm all about consumer protection, so I have no problem with requiring the corporation to insure at commercial liability levels (which they do, but the different coverage permutations could definitely use more clarity). This also makes me a big fan of the driver pictures and ride tracking Uber employs.

Licensing I'm on the fence about. I'd like to see some data on accidents per mile driven by ridesharing drivers vs taxi and car service drivers. My personal, anecdotal experience is that taxi drivers have been more reckless and less knowledgable; YMMV. If the data were to consistently show that Uber had fewer accidents and other incidents, what's the point in making all those people get CDLs? It would just be a barrier to entry without demonstrable safety benefit. If it went the other way, or even if it was lower but not low enough, I'd be in favor of some sort of class or cert (akin to a defensive driving course).

I'm even less inclined to buy in to non-safety related regulations, which are largely relics of a bygone era or straight buttering the biscuits for the taxi lobby. IIRC the major traffic engineering burdens in this arena are from street hailable taxis (even when they aren't intentionally shutting down a city), but if there are studies showing RS is a major independent contributor, I'm all ears.

As for other regs, metering is even less reliable than the fare estimates given before RS rides. RS may already be better serving underserved areas. I am in favor of requiring more handicapped-accessible vehicles, and Uber has the resources to make sure there is an appropriate ratio if there aren't enough.

I don't understand how Uber is a taxi service. They don't take street fares. At best Uber is a car service.

This. The ability to be hailed from the street (and in some places, use special lanes/stands at public transportation hubs) is what makes a taxi, what requires a medallion, etc. Uber, Lyft, and friends cannot be hailed from the street, so they are not taxis in the strict sense--they are a car service that utilizes personal-use vehicles.

Although for the purposes of some /.er outrage, there is no practical difference. For instance, the need for adequate insurance applies to both taxis and car services. I'm all about consumer protection, so I have no problem with requiring the corporation to insure at commercial liability levels (which they do, but the different coverage permutations could definitely use more clarity). This also makes me a big fan of the driver pictures and ride tracking Uber employs.

Licensing I'm on the fence about. I'd like to see some data on accidents per mile driven by ridesharing drivers vs taxi and car service drivers. My personal, anecdotal experience is that taxi drivers have been more reckless and less knowledgable; YMMV. If the data were to consistently show that Uber had fewer accidents and other incidents, what's the point in making all those people get CDLs? It would just be a barrier to entry without demonstrable safety benefit. If it went the other way, or even if it was lower but not low enough, I'd be in favor of some sort of class or cert (akin to a defensive driving course).

I'm even less inclined to buy in to non-safety related regulations, which are largely relics of a bygone era or straight buttering the biscuits for the taxi lobby. IIRC the major traffic engineering burdens in this arena are from street hailable taxis (even when they aren't intentionally shutting down a city), but if there are studies showing RS is a major independent contributor, I'm all ears.

As for other regs, metering is even less reliable than the fare estimates given before RS rides. RS may already be better serving underserved areas. I am in favor of requiring more handicapped-accessible vehicles, and Uber has the resources to make sure there is an appropriate ratio if there aren't enough.

Really cool movie.

Yes, but with lots of inaccuracies.

Yeah, saw it, and read the article. Now... parts of the movie are NOT as inaccurate as you might think...

Time (and Neil deGrasse Tyson, who also took issue with the film's accuracy or lack-thereof,) both got this basic point wrong: They both basically stated that there's no way that would/could happen because they're in different orbits. (Tyson also pointed out that nothing orbits in that direction anyway, which is also right, but simultaneously wrong.)

They both failed to consider the possibility of something going horribly, catastrophically wrong. Sure, in the course of the film they neglected this possibility but... suppose a Russian satellite launch aimed and intended for a higher and faster orbit, (fast in terms of tangential velocity, NOT orbital period,) but that something went wrong with the vehicle during the initial boost phase. Suppose first that the controllers have no means to control or abort/detonate the launch. Compound that with the craft heeling over the wrong way, (something wrong with guidance,) and accelerating into orbit in the wrong direction.

This could easily happen. Now of course, it would not be able to get as high, since instead of benefiting from the starting rotational velocity of the Earth's rotation, it instead has to COUNTER that to get into space. Not that hard, actually, it simply means that when the craft shut down the engine, it would be traveling about 2000 miles per hour or so more slowly than it would have, tangentially with respect to the Earth, (about 1000 mph each for missing the rotational assist, and for having to OVERCOME the same by flying in the opposite direction,) roughly. That simply means a somewhat lower orbit, and it WOULD be in the wrong direction. Now suppose the system later realizes there's a mistake OR it plows into something? End result? A counter-orbiting debris cloud, (depending on how and when it was initially destroyed) of deadly satellite shrapnel that also, oh, P.S., by the way, would slowly de-orbit spontaneously if it were low enough, periodically to encounter the occasional stray wisp of atmosphere, as occurs in very low Earth orbit.

(If you're having trouble understanding this, consider this. A kid on a skateboard traveling 5 miles per hour north, throws a softball at 35 miles per hour with respect to him. The speed of the ball when it leaves his hand with respect to the ground is 40 miles per hour. If however, he turns around and is now facing south, and throws the ball with the same force, it ends up going only 30 miles per hour with respect to the ground. Slower, sure, but it will be going SOUTH this time. If it was supposed to be going NORTH, it is going the wrong way now. Since escape velocity of the Earth is VASTLY higher than the tangential velocity that can be used or must be overcome at the Earth's surface, depending on which way you're launching, this is an easily possible scenario. Everyone launches pretty much the same direction of course because for one thing, it's cheaper, and also it means everything else is going the same way you are, vastly reducing the odds of a collision.)

Or so I've heard. What do I know, I'm not a fancy rocket scientist or astrophysicist. Just an eff'ing engineering student. The crux is, when you consider whether or not a situation is possible, you don't consider ONLY if YOU know how it COULD happen, but whether or not there is any reason why it COULDN'T. In this case, there's no reason why it couldn't. There are plenty of reasons why it wouldn't, but NO reason why it couldn't, in point of fact.

Sure, everything orbiting in a given orbit is going the same way, ONCE IT SUCCESSFULLY GETS TO ORBIT! That's kind of the point. The "Gravity" scenario starts off with a lot of things going WRONG.

Beside that, of course, y

Maybe of the DOWNLOADED music business; but certainly not of the sale of CD/DVD media (in which they simply don't get involved),

Uh...digital music sales beat CDs a long time ago. And Apple themselves says that they are the largest distributor of music in the US, including physical media distributors.

So, nice try.

Again, though, it is not illegal to have a monopoly. The issue is whether or not Apple is using it's monopoly in music distribution to hurt rivals in another market.

Really cool movie.

Yes, but with lots of inaccuracies.

It's almost like free speech is more of a social justice value than a meathead one.

*snort*

http://thoughtcatalog.com/andr... :

God help us if we have to rely on conservatives to defend free speech.

A list of such censorship is basically endless, so I will have to suffice with a not-so-brief list of some of the more egregious examples:

• A student at Purdue was found guilty of "racial harassment" for reading a book called Notre Dame Vs the Klan. (The Klan is the bad guy in the book.)
• A candidate in the European elections was arrested in Britain for quoting a passage from Winston Churchill about Islam.
• Gert Wilders, a politician in the Netherlands, was tried on five counts including "criminally insulting Muslims because of their religion."
• Both Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant were dragged in front of the Canadian Human Rights Commission for being Islamophobic.
• Conservative radio host Michael Savage was banned in Britain.
• The group Women, Action and Media convinced Twitter to allow them help report and censor harassment and hate speech. Twitter subsequently suspended the accounts of the anti-feminist Youtubers Thunderfoot and Mykeru (they were later reinstated). Both of them are liberals, by the way.
• Adam Weinstein at Gawker wants to "Arrest Climate-Change Deniers."
• Brendan Eich was forced to resign as CEO of Mozilla for opposing gay marriage. Another guy was fired because someone eaves dropped on his joke about dongles.
• A group called Color of Change was able to get Patrick Buchanan fired from MSNBC for expressing his incorrect opinions (that have been pretty consistent for the last 50 years) in his book Suicide of a Superpower.
• Allegedly, a man was banned from an Oregon college campus for "resembling a rapist."
• The "Pickup Artist" Julien Blanc was barred from entering the UK for making sexist comments.
• The mayor of Massachusetts banned the word "illegal" when referring to, umm, immigrants who came into the United States without going through the proper, legal channels. The Associated Press did

Sure thing, the out is simple. Dismantle the nuclear weapons program, stop supporting terrorism, recognize Israel's right to exist.

Do those, all sanctions go away.

Israel could have peace tomorrow if they stopped treating Palestinians the way certain other people treated the Jews in the past.

http://world.time.com/2014/02/...
Iranian Foreign Minister Lays Out Condition for Iranian Recognition of Israel
Official's language marks a shift from previous rhetoric
By Karl Vick / Tel Aviv
Feb. 04, 2014

One day after senior Israeli government officials raised eyebrows at an international conference by remaining in the room when Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif took the stage to speak, Zarif told a German television interviewer that Tehran could restore diplomatic relations with Israel in the event of a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians. “Once the Palestinian problem is solved the conditions for an Iranian recognition of Israel will be possible,” Zarif said in the interview Monday.

The Arab League also offered them a peace plan on similar terms.

When you do something wrong, you're supposed to admit it, then say you're sorry, then promise you'll never do it again, then ask for forgiveness.

You're supposed to teach your children this stuff, shame that nations led by adults have such a hard time with it.

There is no shame in saying you're sorry when you're wrong. Iran might well find a lot of support in Europe if they came clean, the US wouldn't be in any position to push on Iran if they did. Nor would we have any need to.

If you are a Zionist then you are the biggest fucking hypocrite in the world. When did Israel ever admit that they were wrong, much less apologize, or ask for forgiveness, for acting like Nazis?

http://www2.ohchr.org/english/...

773. At about 12.50 p.m., Khalid Abd Rabbo, his wife Kawthar, their three daughters, Souad (aged 9), Samar (aged 5) and Amal (aged 3), and his mother, Hajja Souad Abd Rabbo, stepped out of the house, all of them carrying white flags. Less than 10 metres from the door was a tank, turned towards their house. Two soldiers were sitting on top of it having a snack (one was eating chips, the other chocolate, according to one of the witnesses). The family stood still, waiting for orders from the soldiers as to what they should do, but none was given. Without warning, a third soldier emerged from inside the tank and started shooting at the three girls and then also at their grandmother. Several bullets hit Souad in the chest, Amal in the stomach and Samar in the back. Hajja Souad was hit in the lower back and in the left arm.

[The IDF refused to let an ambulance bring them to the hospital, so they walked. Amal and Souad died. Samar had a spinal injury and was left paraplegic for life. The Israeli government never investigated this event or prosecuted the soldier responsible.]

This was documented by investigators from the Goldstone Commission, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Ha'aretz, the New York Times, Washington Post, Independent, and others. The Israelis never investigated.

I'll tell you what Israeli Ambassador Ron Prosor said: They're all lying. Goldstone, AI, HRW, Ha'aretz, NYT, WP, they're all lying. They're all Jews who have gone over to the anti-Semites.

I hope the Israeli government and their well-paid PR firms are reading this and will see that their propaganda isn't working any more.

Israel is also a nuclear-armed terrorist state. Since they own the U.S. government, we'll have to depend on the Europeans to put pressure on them, and the boycott, sanctions and divestment movement seems t

Back in 1994, American negotiators promised a “good deal” with North Korea. Its nuclear plants were supposed to be frozen and dismantled. International inspectors would “carefully monitor” North Korea’s compliance with the agreement and ensure the country’s return to the “community of nations.” The world, we were told, would be a safer place. . . .

Iran is not North Korea. It’s far worse. Pyonyang’s dictators never plotted terrorist attacks across five continents and in thirty cities, including Washington, D.C. Tehran’s Ayatollahs did. North Korea is not actively undermining pro-Western governments in its region or planting agents in South America. Iran is.

So why, then, are only Israelis united in opposing this deal? The answer is that we have the most to lose, at least in the short run. We know that the deal allows Iran to break out and create nuclear bombs in as little as three months, too quickly for the world to react. We know that the Ayatollahs, who have secretly constructed fortified nuclear facilities that have no peaceful purpose and have violated all of their international commitments, will break this deal in steps too small to precipitate a powerful global response. And we know that the sanctions, once lifted, cannot be swiftly revived, and that hundreds of billions of dollars Iran will soon receive will not be spent on better roads and schools. That treasure will fund the shedding of blood – of Israelis but also of many others.

Israelis know that, while the world might weather its deception by North Korea, they cannot afford to be duped by Iran. But neither, in fact, can the United States. Just last week, Iran’s President attended a rally in Tehran where tens of thousands of protesters chanted “Death to America.” The deal will better enable them to carry out that attack – if not today, then against future generations. And Iran’s Supreme Leader has publicly pledged to do just that.

I literally feel nauseous about this Iran deal. I feel nauseous because my daughter’s future is being seriously jeopardized by a deal that lifts sanctions that have been well designed to stop a state sponsor of terrorism from obtaining nuclear weapons, in return for virtually nothing. Somehow, President Obama has convinced his fellow Democrats that infusing Iran with billions of dollars will make the world a safer place. But all it will do is exacerbate Iran’s aggression in the Middle East, and perversely enable western civilization to fund terrorism activities aimed at it.

We have given concessions to a country that has repeatedly lied, hidden, deceived, and repeatedly and boldly declared its intention to wipe out both Israel and the United States. Any member of Congress who votes for this deal must have a death wish. But of course Congress, in typical fashion, gave away its constitutional power to ratify this as a treaty (with 2/3 of Senate support) when it passed the Corker legislation. Assuming the Republican-controlled Congress votes down the Iran deal and the President vetoes it, I cannot imagine that there are enough Democrats (13 Democrats in the Senate and 43 in the House) to join the Republicans in overriding Obama’s inevitable veto.

There’s enough political cover and ambiguity in the agreement that the real risks to U.S. and Israel will become known only incrementally, after the passage of years, and most likely only after President Obama leaves office. By the time the western world realizes what a mistake the Obama Administration has made, it will be too late. I guess that, once again, we have to pass it to reallyfind out what’s in it.

They literally have whole cities just lying around idle. I mean, Spain's got one, sure, but they have several. The economy never developed sufficiently to employ people in jobs that would permit them to live in developed cities in a capitalist society... so the places rot.

You are quoting gloating "China is fallin - see?" populist Daily Mail-grade articles which have little to no relevance to reality.

I.e. OMG LOOK AT THIS GHOST CITY! Silly Chinese peoples. Don't they know any thing? Their stupid, stupid brains.

Meanwhile, in reality...
It's a case of combined schadenfreude over someone's perceived failure and a situation akin to when a small turnip farmer from Lower Bumfuck comes to a BigCityTM and starts despairing at the sight of a construction yard which will surely fail cause there is no chance that 50-storey building could ever be filled with people.
He could have planted turnips there.

Ordos is actually an entire prefecture. Slightly bigger than South Carolina or Austria (86,752 km2).
Population: ~1.9 million.
Urban population: ~582,544, living in the Dongsheng District.
That region has 16% of all coal reserves in China. And a 2nd highest income-per-capita in China.
It has a textile, petrochemical, car, electricity generating and a building industry - all built on the back of all that coal.
And they are using it to rapidly urbanize the prefecture - pooling all those 1.9 million people in one place.
http://www.theatlantic.com/chi...
http://www.vagabondjourney.com...
http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes...

China is urbanizing RAPIDLY. At the rate of about 1% per year.
How much is 1% out of 1.35 billion people, yearly? About an entire Los Angeles of people looking for home, food, work, running water, electricity... and generally better living conditions than back in their village.
Year after year after year...

So, China is building entire cities from scratch and half coaxing half forcing people to move there.
Not just dropping apartment buildings or giant towers and sand islands that "someone will surely buy into" either.
Those are planned cities with built-in infrastructure (including all those "empty" parks and highways) to support hundreds of thousands of people with tens of thousands pouring yearly into Ordos alone, on a 20-year urbanization plan.
Many of those people coming in quite literally from the fields.

I asked the men where they had lived before moving to their apartments in Kangbashi. One of them, a 56-year-old man named Li Yonh Xiang, spoke up. "I lived here," he said.

Li had been born and raised just steps from the bench where he was sitting. About half of the 90-acre park had belonged to his family; the government bought the land in 2000. "When we were peasants, we lived according to the weather," Li said. "Now I live in a heated building with six floors. The city is very nice. There are many cars and buildings, but the air is very clean."

By stick and by carrot both.
http://europe.chinadaily.com.c...

China's urbanization program has been forced into motion by a fiscal policy that all but demands local cities expand to remain economically solvent. According to the World Bank, China's cities must fend for 80 percent of their expenses while only receiving 40 percent of the country's tax revenue, so land sales are often used to make up the difference.

Land is bought by cit

there are also those screaming "racist" at everything even when it isnt and it seems to have been this way for the past 10 years now here.

I can't imagine why anyone would see racism in today's USA.

http://www.salon.com/2015/06/3...

http://www.reuters.com/article...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/...

https://www.breitbartunmasked....

http://www.theguardian.com/com...

http://www.nature.com/news/why...

http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/18/...

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/a...

http://www.businessinsider.com...

http://www.mysterypollster.com...

http://www.examiner.com/articl...

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/general...

http://www.outsidethebeltway.c...

http://nautil.us/blog/why-were...

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07...

http://articles.economictimes....

First few links from the search engine typing in "why are election polls often wrong"...

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-pol...

http://time.com/3558932/pollin...

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.u...

http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/08/...

http://www.kansas.com/news/loc...

Shut up. Just close your stupid mouth. Sit down. And don't speak again until addressed. You're an idiot. It has been officially noticed.

I seriously, seriously doubt, that Google, a global company that sees the world as its target market, only trained their algorithm on white people. They're Google engineers. They are not morons. It probably occurred to them to build a diverse sample set.

You would think so, yes, but that's clearly not what happened.

One thing a lot of people don't realize is that machine recognition keys on things that humans do not. If you let it take a short-cut in its training, it will. The rather famous example is the zebra-striped sofa. Nearly all recognition software will tell you a zebra-striped sofa is a zebra. Why? Because nobody though to train the computer on sofas with a similar pattern. In the absence of that, the computer could "cheat" on recognition by just comparing the pattern, regardless of shape.

Just comparing the deepness of skin hue, regardless of body/face shape is precicesly what you'd expect to see in a recognition program that was not trained on dark-skinned people. Not thinking to do that is precisely the kind of error you'd expect from a company that employs almost no African Americans. People have an unfortunate tendency to look around themselves and think what they see is representative.

Based on your links it's true. From Wikipedia:

1953 Iranian coup d'état

A referendum to dissolve parliament and give the prime minister power to make law was submitted to voters, and it passed with 99.9 percent approval, 2,043,300 votes to 1300 votes against.[60] The referendum was widely seen by opponents as a dictatorial act, and the Shah and the rest of the government were effectively stripped of their powers to rule. When Mossadegh dissolved the Parliament, his opponents decried this act because he had effectively given himself "total power". Ironically, this seemingly un-democratic act by a democratically elected prime minister would result in a chain of events leading to his downfall.[6][8]

99.9% in a national election? That seems to be a bit much.

IRAN: 99.93% Pure

Hitler's best as a vote-getter was 99.81% Ja's in 1936; Stalin's peak was 99.73% Da's in 1946. Last week Premier Mohammed Mossadegh, the man in the iron cot, topped them all with 99.93%.

This is the way he did it. Having unconstitutionally dissolved the Majlis, Mossadegh ordered a national referendum to judge his act, crying: "The will of the people is above law."

The Shah was head of state both before and after the coup restoring him to power. The dictator Mossadegh had caused the Shah to flee the country after refusing the Shah's power as head of state to remove him as head of government.

Thanks for the links, saved me some trouble. From Wikipedia:

1953 Iranian coup d'état

A referendum to dissolve parliament and give the prime minister power to make law was submitted to voters, and it passed with 99.9 percent approval, 2,043,300 votes to 1300 votes against.[60] The referendum was widely seen by opponents as a dictatorial act, and the Shah and the rest of the government were effectively stripped of their powers to rule. When Mossadegh dissolved the Parliament, his opponents decried this act because he had effectively given himself "total power". Ironically, this seemingly un-democratic act by a democratically elected prime minister would result in a chain of events leading to his downfall.[6][8]

My goodness, 99.9% in a national election? This is extraordinary.

IRAN: 99.93% Pure

Hitler's best as a vote-getter was 99.81% Ja's in 1936; Stalin's peak was 99.73% Da's in 1946. Last week Premier Mohammed Mossadegh, the man in the iron cot, topped them all with 99.93%.

This is the way he did it. Having unconstitutionally dissolved the Majlis, Mossadegh ordered a national referendum to judge his act, crying: "The will of the people is above law."

Bollocks. The Iranian PM (and democratically elected government) ....

"democratically elected government" eh?

IRAN: 99.93% Pure

Hitler's best as a vote-getter was 99.81% Ja's in 1936; Stalin's peak was 99.73% Da's in 1946. Last week Premier Mohammed Mossadegh, the man in the iron cot, topped them all with 99.93%.

This is the way he did it. Having unconstitutionally dissolved the Majlis, Mossadegh ordered a national referendum to judge his act, crying: "The will of the people is above law."

That is a bit backwards before you get to the question of improbable election results.

A "Prime Minister" ruling by decree after dissolving parliament and then justifying it with a faked election isn't really much of a democracy, is it?

The Shah was head of state both before and after the coup restoring him to power. The dictator Mossadegh had caused the Shah to flee the country after refusing the Shah's power as head of state to remove him as head of government.

Why do you omit this history? Why pretend that the Shah only held power after he was restored to power and not before as well?

Thank you!

BiPolar Disorder (manic depression is slang) is a very serious condition. Roughly 4% of the world's population is affected by BPD and Schizophrenia (Source).

My mother suffered from BPD. When she was off her lithium, the manic and depressive phases nearly tore our family apart multiple times. Personally, I've struggled with Depression a few times in my life even though financially, I'm very comfortable. Much of the last depressive episode was tied to the implosion of my last start-up. It's been a couple years since I exited that project and I'm only now reaching a point where I'm building my next new business. Fortunately, I have a fantastic support network and I'm not shy about seeking therapeutic help when needed because of my mother's experiences.

There is definitely stigma in many industries for mental health issues, regardless of how many years ago they were or current therapeutic activity. I don't talk about my mental health history in any professional context. There's no way investors would have faith in me or my business if they knew about the suicide attempts or other depression related history. As a multi decade survivor, I've learned how to read myself and my environment in a way that will hopefully help me live well for me and mine. It's also given me a keen eye for the signs of mental health issues in countless colleagues, coworkers and friends.

Our society is fucked up and currently configured in very unhealthy ways with those in control being disproportionately narcissistic (Source and psychopathic (Source), I don't expect anything to get better any time soon. Honestly, I'm glad our careers led us not to have kids, because this world won't be a better place for anyone in the bottom 98%.

A functional democracy?

Are you fucking kidding?

A democracy requires a free and open market of ideas. Do you really believe such a market exists in Iran?

Iranian Chain Murders
Internet Censorship in Iran
Blogger jailed for "propaganda against the state"

It doesn't take much of a Google search to find examples of suppression of free speech in Iran.

I'm sure the Iranian regime has deserved "better press [than] they have tended to get since Khomeiny toppled the puppet shah." "Better press" would have made the pure evilness of the regime much better known.

The "demented ravings of some of their past leaders?" How about the demented ravings of their current leaders (and here)?

- The west is plotting to "arouse the sexual desires" in Islamic Iran
- Israel is run by sub-human leaders
- Death to America
- Israel is the sinister, unclean rabid dog of the region
- Every Muslim who does not want to fight Israel is violating religious law
- The destruction of Israel ... is one of the pillars of the Iranian Islamic regime

The naysayers are going to be the most surprised when they are laid off by an automated human resources bot because their "knowledge worker" job is being outsourced to the smart cloud.

A.I. is really advancing very rapidly today. You can debate whether it's real or not til the robot dogs http://time.com/3703243/google... come home, but your philosophizing and wishful denialism won't change the reality on the ground, or in the clouds for that matter.

They have dealers and showrooms and distribution already set up all over the planet. If the market takes off they are MUCH better positioned to get cars made and distributed and sold and supported than a company with basically no distribution network and no dealers.

Well, maybe. On the other hand, given how much people hate car dealerships, I'm not sure having a big network of dealerships (and forcing anyone who wants to buy your product to haggle with them) is necessarily such a big advantage anymore.

neighbors thinking they have the right to shoot things out of the sky.

Well, sadly, they don't have that right.

But, as long as the projectiles do not land on the neighbors' properties, it certainly ought to be legal:

Drone regulations are being written by lobbyists for drone manufacturers and other companies. You’re going to wake up one day, and there’s going to be a drone outside your bedroom window writing you a ticket for sodomy.

The above suggestion may seem frivolous, but it is scarier, than you might think — a major part of the argument to abolish laws outlawing particular sexual "deviations" was that in order to enforce them, police must invade the privacy of everyone.

Well, if a robotic "officer" can do the job on its own, that major pillar goes away and the law can come right back into your house. Whether it catches you sodomizing your (happily moaning and otherwise consenting) partner, or flushing your toilet more times than the governor thinks is good for the Collective is irrelevant. As long as no human officer is needed, no privacy invasion has occurred.

Now, today no computers yet exist, that can distinguish legal penetration from illegal. But that's no going to last long — red-light cameras are everybody's favorite already. Though my ticket from such a device claimed, that "an officer reviewed the recording" — and maybe he did, I don't know, because he never showed up in court — I am quite sure, police don't stare at the camera-feeds themselves all day. Some algorithm must already be in place to flag suspicious cases for a human's review.

These systems will become more sophisticated very soon — and suggestions will be made to trust them to issue summons automatically too. Fortunately, making an argument for shooting an invading robot is much easier than it is to advocate shooting policemen, however nosy...

Stereotypes exists because they reflect natural gender differences. Yes, boys and girls are different. All research show this.

"Research" means nothing to the folks, who confuse the Universe that is with the Universe that should be. And, unlike the former, the latter is malleable and subject to change without notice.

Remember the denunciations — both passionately angry and "scientific" — of people, who suggested, "homosexuality is a choice", for example? We were repeatedly told both in print and in schools, that "gays are born that way" and thus it is both stupid and cruel to blame them for their lifestyle.

And maybe it is — I do not know. But the The Current Truth is changing. And, unlike Ben Carson, nobody yells at Miley Cirus for "adopting a more fluid label to her sexuality". Sexuality, you see, is a "social construct" now (and since 2004!) — and whatever a human actually feels is simply a reflection of "stereotyping" to be broken, and "peer pressure" to be resisted. With pride.

Whichever is true, both can not be true at the same time, but the conflict of these two ideas does not bother their proponents whatsoever, such logical rational beings they are. "Research" my tail...

Giving the best in entertainment news, from Sony to Hurricane Anna. So lame

Give us the good shit on Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Then I'll believe they got something.

WikiLeaks Begins Releasing Leaked Saudi Arabia Cables

http://time.com/3928584/wikile...

t-swiz is against unpaid streaming music; only 1989 will be unavailable on apple music. she's involved in the hot mess that is tidal as well

...and, either way, nothing of value would be lost.

t-swiz is against unpaid streaming music; only 1989 will be unavailable on apple music. she's involved in the hot mess that is tidal as well

You noted but didn't bother to post any evidence supporting your claims. We can wait.

Fair enough.

First, a thought experiment: Imagine Acme company sells widgets at 10 dollars each. One hundred people buy the widgets. Another hundred would like them, but cannot afford them. Uncle Phil sees this. Uncle Phil is a multi-billionaire. Uncle Phil says to those who cannot afford them, "I'll buy you your widgets for you." So now you have two hundred people buying widgets. The business sees its demand going up, and thus begins increasing prices. Most of the original hundred keep paying. Phil is a multi-billionaire so price isn't an option. The business owner wants maximum revenue, which is the maximum (price x quantity). So, business keeps jacking up costs until he reaches that point. If the widgets are essential to life (i.e. have inelastic demand), the original hundred do everything they can to keep paying the higher price.

So - that's the thought experiment.

Here's a paper by a Nobel (equivalent) laureate in economics, the conclusion of which states that subsidies will drive up prices in monopolistic environments (see page 28, the first paragraph of the section titled 'Conclusion': "This paper demonstrates two ways that a subsidy may increase equilibrium prices in a monopolistically competitive market"). My addition is that they drive up prices when demand is inelastic as well: Paper by Joseph Stiglitz (PDF).

You know who else wrote a cogent article on this? The Duke adult film actress, "Belle Knox." She talks about the impact of government subsidies in education, which isn't a monopoly, but for which demand is inelastic.

Just like the rest of the post.

Exactly!

TFA (where the "F" doesn't stand for "Fine") is nothing more than rampant, trollish speculation. There is simply no way that most of the "facts" in the article can be ascertained before launch.

And as for the absence of Taylor Swift, she is on record (no pun) as being very against streaming music, period, and has pulled all of her material from Spotify; so no wonder they don't have her signed...

tl,dr; Nothing to see here, move along.

From http://time.com/money/3082797/...

According to a new Associated Press analysis, the average price of a round-trip flight within the U.S. for the first half of 2014 was $509.15. That’s around $14 higher than the same period a year ago. What’s more, soaring flight prices have outpaced inflation: Average domestic airfare has risen 10.7% over the past five years, after adjusting for inflation.

Clearly there's a disconnect between the two articles.

the principle you're looking for is "keeping poor people poor and in their place".
its about punishing the poor.... for being poor
it's about punishing parents and starving kids.
there is also very much a racial element to this.
and of course there's the fact that the predominant users of drugs aren't the poor to start with.

"States already do a good job of ensuring no one gets a 'free ride.' We don't need another one--especially one that stigmatizes"
http://time.com/3117361/welfar...

"The rush to humiliate the poor"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

"The Myth of Welfare and Drug Use"
http://www.thedailybeast.com/a...
http://www.slate.com/articles/...

America should be about 2nd chances. And 3rds. and 4ths. And 5ths. Indeed, that's the idea behind the mythological American Dream, that anyone can make it here. But people who support this punishment of the poor seem to believe that people should be expected to accomplish a home run on the first swing, and be punished if they fail to do so. They tell people to "work harder", "try harder", "pick themselves up", while simultaneously doing everything they can to impede their ability to do so.

So no. It's not about responsibility. And it's not even about principles. It's a lie to say that it is.

> Thank you, pirates. You got your freebies, but you destroyed everything in the process and killed the music industry as a whole.

Gee, let's conveniently ignore the facts:

* http://www.bbc.com/news/techno... or http://www.wired.co.uk/news/ar...
* https://torrentfreak.com/bitto...
* http://business.time.com/2013/...

All the numbers relating piracy to lost sales are complete imaginary and bullshit. There has never been a financial statement listing the dollar amount of piracy.

I don't claim to know for sure what went on in the mind of Reagan, it was at the end of the McCarthy era that he switched parties. Note that your quote comes from when he was testifying before the Committee of Un-American Activities, so it wasn't a time for him to speak his mind, no matter what he thought. It wasn't until later that the true depravity of McCarthy was revealed (in 1954, though Reagan probably knew earlier).

This article suggests that "Reagan disagreed with some of the tactics of organizations like the House Un- American Activities Committee."

To understand the situation more deeply, we'd probably have to read a biography of Reagan, and I'm not willing to do that. My point in bringing up Reagan was merely as an example to help people understand the main point (because every sane person hates McCarthy, and every person who doesn't probably respects Reagan).

Because most of us know the difference between informal after-dinner remarks relating personal experience in a not-entirely-serious way and the presentation of a formal paper.

He wasn't making informal after-dinner remarks. He was speaking to a room full of high-ranking scientists and science journalists at a global conference.

http://time.com/3917390/scienc...

We need to get together and donate 3d printers to the Red Cross.

Red Cross Spent Half a Billion Dollars to Build Six Homes in Haiti

http://time.com/3822487/tsa-se...

There is more to see in the panoramic photo of NYC.

http://time.com/world-trade-ce...

I am not willing to pay $35 bucks for the original study, but here is a news article about one of the most buried and ignored studies. What did it find: childless women make more than men in metro areas.

Well I think that anyone in the New Mexico area that wants to play this came should wander over to Los Alamos.

Although a the article is bit dated, I wonder if their junkyard still is open for business.

A station wagon full of Los Alamos parts with a couple of GoPros in and around the vehicle ought to be a very interesting video.

If you don't learn from your history? Then you sir are a dumbass, because datamining is what Google does and if its one thing they love its gathering more and more intel on you.

I mean have you really already forgotten the stink over google trying to ram G+ and real names down on YouTube? From Google Drive to even spying on kids emails the simple fact is Google is all about connecting the dots, its what they do, where their income is coming from, and the more they can gather on you the more money it can make from its REAL customers, the advertisers.

1) You might be surprised. IRL if you're a growing region it's very hard for a city to go bankrupt. IRL Detroit has been in a bad region, dominated by a shrinking industry, and overseen by a state which would rather it went away, since roughly 1970. And we managed to not go bankrupt until very recently.

2) IRL it's very complex to value sprawling cul de sacs of suburban development. When first built they're great because the people who live there are the kind of people who almost never need the government, and have a fairly good income. If they weren't both they wouldn't be able to afford to buy into a suburb. This means a miniscule tax rate is enough to run the city. Then life happens, and 50 years later you've got houses designed to standards nobody wants, owned by people who were too poor to move out, which means that a) they need lots of government services, and b) they can't pay for those services with the miniscule tax rate, leading to c) the City Manager scrambling around to save the city while the long-time residents are convinced that it's still an upper-income enclave. Quite a few very smart people have pointed out that it's much easier to build new suburbs then build a new Brooklyn because of the way the Feds give out grants..

But in a world where you don't have the Feds actively subsidizing suburban growth, and region is growing (aka: a world where the game is fun), then having a core of apartment buildings surrounded by no development makes sense because it cost as lot less per unit to build/maintain a small apartment building then a suburban neighborhood.

3) This is a game. IRL in the US most cities have no control over their schools whatsoever because those are run by an independent school board. That would be no fun. So is forcing the player to plan an expensive education system from the beginning. Which is why no version of SimCity would require you get the entire City within the radius of a High School zone before you could build industrial zones.

4) Again, this is a game. It's no fun if you can't get started building pretty quickly, which means that educated migrants are necessary.

Now if you want a more realistic (ie: much harder) game you can mod it. But unless you mod in some pretty nasty ethnic dynamics you;re never going to make it as hard as real life is for cities like Detroit.

At least they're equal race discriminators. http://content.time.com/time/b...

Well, if it works for CEOs then why would people have any problems "justifying" it with games?

It is depressing that you were incorrectly modded troll simply because you asked a really important question about what it means to be human and compassionate.

At the risk of being downmodded, what can you expect from a society that gets barbaric entertainment from watching 2 men beat each other up senseless. Most people would rather waste their lives watching someone else's Unreality crap else such as the Kartrashians and go ape shit over nudity (Oh Noes! We were all born naked! Who knew!) then actually learn something constructive for free.

Yeah, some of us are bothered by the excessive violence. Fortunately we have a choice. Turn it off. Don't play it.

It is the same reason professional athletesget paid millions and teachers get crap pay. Society just doesn't value education. They want (and will pay for) dumb entertainment.

Governments worldwide that are marching to fascism want encryption banned.

Encryption is but a tiny side-show in the global march towards Collectivism — the coin, of which Fascism and Socialism are indistinguishable sides. As predicted long ago:

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground.

— Thomas Jefferson to Edward Carrington, Paris, May 27, 1788

It starts with concern for the poor, that inevitably causes the government to undertake support of the downtrodden with various "War on Poverty" initiatives.

A few decades and trillion-dollars into it, there are not only millions of recipients of the dole, there are also tens of thousands of government officials involved in distributing it. The combination makes it impossible to stop the foolish undertaking — it may be reformed and rearranged, but it can not be ended.

And then comes the idea, that, if we must support the unsuccessful among us, we should try to prevent them from doing (what we consider to be) stupid things: take drugs, drive too fast, eat fat (no, not fat, sugar!). Right here on Slashdot, the idea that our self-imposed responsibility for others allows us to control their actions, is alive and well.

And then government types begin to deliberately rearrange things to be able to attach their own strings to various incentives you can not refuse. The first example of this was, probably, the imposition of federal speed-limit by mandating, that States receiving federal Federal highway funds implement them.

The most recent example here is the federal take-over of education loans, which allows the Administration to better control, what the colleges teach and what students do. Because it raises the tuition costs so much, fewer and fewer students will be able to forgo such federal aid and will be forced to accept it — with all of the strings attached to them and the colleges they attend.

Compared to these aspects of the Collective increasingly controlling the Individual's life, use of encryption is of little to no consequence. Maybe, a new Republic in Antarctica, on the Moon or Mars will take the lessons of our errors to heart — the way our Founding Fathers studied those of the Romans...

The reaction to this seems to fall along political lines. I've seen a number of columns from conservative authors...

I'm not sure if you read slashdot, because there was an article posted last week from a left-leaning writer / psychologist basically saying these kinds of hobbies are bad:
http://games.slashdot.org/stor...

In fact, the "men are failing to grow up" is a common theme in many feminist circles, which are largely characterized as "liberal". Example: http://time.com/179/men-are-ob...

Wow, you drank the Koolaid I see. Is this why when some formerly feminist scholars try to hold talks on campuses about these issues that there is always at the very least a group of gender studies students "protesting" the speaker's presence? Is that why when an egalitarian group holds a meeting to discuss these issues that feminists protest out in the halls and pull fire alarms to disrupt the meetings?

As for the "pay gap," please friend cite this gap. Or do you mean the gap where women are actually earning more than men? http://content.time.com/time/b...

Feminists don't want to do anything for men.

The other method is to simply be born a psychopath with an absence of conscience. So what point the test when 1% of the human population, 20% of the prison population and 50% of violent crimes are the statistics for psychopaths.

And, apparently, many (most?) CEOs are psychopaths. Which Professions Have the Most Psychopaths? (there's a list):

CEO is the profession with the most psychopaths.

Also noted here and here and ... oh just Google "ceo" "psychopath"

One article in Newsweek 40 years ago.

Do you get tired of being easily proven wrong ?

Claims 1974: “ when metereologists take an average of temperatures around the globe they find the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades. The trend shows no indication of reversing. Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age. Telltale signs are everywhere–from the unexpected persistence and thickness of pack ice int eh waters around Iceland to the southward migration of a warmth-loving creature like the armadillo from the Midwest. When Climatologist George J. Kukla of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory and his wife Helena analyzed satellite weather data fro the Northern Hemisphere, they found that the area of ice and snow cover had suddenly increased by 12% in 1971 and the increase has persisted ever since. Areas of Baffin Island in the Canadia Arctic, for example, were once totally free of any snow in summer; now they are covered year round.”
Later in the article, “Whatever the cause of the cooling trend, its effects could be extremely serious, if not catastrophic. Scientists figure that only a 1% decrease in the amount of sunlight hitting the earth’s surface could tip teh climatic balance, and cool the planet enough to send it sliding down the road to another ice age within only a few hundred years.”

http://content.time.com/time/m...

It's exceptionally easy find these predictions, even though most of the publications were pre internet and never made it onto the net.

I have to ask though, just what made you think that because you could only find one that's all there is, and with your attitude no one would call you on it ?

They worry about indisputably harmless stuff like this when the real threat is actually more likely to be other idiots who think it's a good idea to flush prescription drugs (or other controlled substances) down the toilet. Not to mention used antifreeze or even motor oil.

Considering that truck drivers and farmers have much more dangerous jobs then police, the wives should worry a lot. People aren't very good at judging risk though and think real life is like on TV or movies. I always hate on TV/Movies when the cops family member or friend talks about worrying if they're gonna come home safe.

In real life being a cop in America is a very safe job with very fat people.

http://time.com/3637967/police...
https://finance.yahoo.com/news...

They also get paid a lot more then almost all of the top 10 dangerous jobs in the USA.

http://www.bls.gov/ooh/protect...

Considering that truck drivers and farmers have much more dangerous jobs then police, the wives should worry a lot. People aren't very good at judging risk though and think real life is like on TV or movies. I always hate on TV/Movies when the cops family member or friend talks about worrying if they're gonna come home safe.

In real life being a cop in America is a very safe job with very fat people.

http://time.com/3637967/police...
https://finance.yahoo.com/news...

Cops can strip search you without probable cause.... they can strip search you for even the most minor of offensives, even if the offense is made-up.

Source:
http://ideas.time.com/2012/04/...