This could be influenced by a number of factors. Higher-paid CEO's might be in larger companies with saturated markets that are more difficult to grow in. Well-paid CEO's could be reducing profits through any number of common practices that are used to lower tax liability.
A more interesting a subtle pattern I saw on this chart is the fact that both groups followed the same market trends very closely. Maybe the real finding is not that highly-paid CEO's do worse for their companies' stock price as low-paid CEO's. Maybe the real finding is that all companies follow market trends and the CEO does very little to affect stock price.
These are just nonsense numbers: is $10,000/yr a basic income?
Hm well maybe check again, then. Can't speak for a single person living on $10k/year, but I paid for a mortgage and expenses for myself and my stay-at-home wife on a ~$20k salary as a grad student (graduated within the last few years and moved on to other things). We didn't live lavishly, but we did alright. That was in a college town in Oregon, so not expensive but not the cheapest place, either. Having roommates and getting an apt instead of a house would have made things much cheaper, but wasn't necessary in the end.
This mentality bugs me, you just asserted something but never backed it up. Google search says average apartment rent in the US is $1200/mo. Let's assume a single person living on UBI lives in a slightly cheaper apt at $1000/mo with some roommates. The average number of rooms is 2.8. So we have about $357/month per room. So our person is spending $4300/year on rent. That leaves $5700 for everything else. $30/mo will buy an unlimited plan on Metro PCS, $60/mo should pay for shared utilities, preparing your own food at home costs about $150/mo for groceries if you eat a diet of fresh produce rice and some meat, let's say $50/mo for gas, $60/mo for insurance, and $40/mo for clothes, and $50/mo for misc. That leaves about $500 left over at the end of the year. So pretty tight, but not starvation level and definitely do-able if you budget things.
The goal of ISIS is to provoke the US into essentially "declaring war" on Muslims. Doing so will bolster their ranks as other Muslims will join ISIS's cause when the US has taken an aggressive stance against their entire religion. It will also give ISIS a legitimacy it craves since "war" is something that states declare on other states, and ISIS wants to be thought of as a legitimate state rather than what they actually are: a wacko cult group.
Declaring war (figuratively or literally) is probably the worst thing that could happen. Imagine a repeat of Vietnam except that it takes place all over the globe. The US cannot win through military action against an opponent that uses asymmetric warfare. We've been there, done that TOO MANY times. The only way to "win" this conflict is to avoid it, ideally doing so through a fight of ideas using the tactics and psychology you would use to take apart a cult. We should show our support for each other, present an unflinching front, and not tolerate any compromise to our ethics and way of life. Once the US starts down the path of compromising it's freedom and compromising it's way of life "because terrorists," we have given ISIS exactly what they want, and they will take more. Arguably we've already started down that path. It needs to stop now.
Replace the word "AI" with "Government" and I'm in:
Governments must be designed to assist humanity.
Governments must be transparent.
Governments must maximize efficiencies without destroying the dignity of people.
Governments must be designed for intelligent privacy.
Governments needs algorithmic accountability so humans can undo unintended harm.
Governments must guard against bias.
It's critical for humans to have empathy.
It's critical for humans to have education.
The need for human creativity won't change.
A human has to be ultimately accountable for the outcome of a government-generated diagnosis or decision.
If that sounds like your ideal government, you might be interested in joining the Pirate party.
"We support and work toward reformation of intellectual property (IP) laws, true governmental transparency, and protection of privacy and civil liberties. We strive for evidence-based policies and egalitarianism, while working against corporate personhood and welfare. We believe that people, not corporations, come first."
https://uspirates.org/about/
Despite the media's overwhelming call to get more people in STEM, there are already too many workers with STEM degrees to employ. We are over-supplied not under-supplied. Wages are stagnant and there is little to no growth to speak of. Why do we need more people in STEM? This makes absolutely no sense to me.
First of all, "terrorism" accounts for a vanishingly small percentage of deaths. We could and should completely ignore the issue with little or no ill effect. That would be my assessment if I were in charge, but I'm not. So instead here's my assessment of the "terror algorithm" idea...
Here's the problem. We will find patterns in the noise because humans are genetically programmed to find patterns in anything and everything. We will use the patterns we find to "predict" things that already happened, and we will show how accurate our forecasting methods are using past data. The problem is that this is *past* data and the *future* is, by it's very definition, different than the past. Sure, our newfound prediction ability will be accidentally right sometimes (like a broken clock being right twice per day), but when it's wrong we will attribute the failure to a "fluke" that we will say is unlikely to repeat. The issue is that even if a particular fluke doesn't repeat, new flukes will arise. We are very bad at calculating risks and probabilities of unlikely events. Part of the reason is that it's very difficult to calculate the frequency (or even to be aware of the possibility) of something that has never happened before. Yet, just because it's never happened before doesn't mean it won't. If you want to learn more about this, I recommend reading "the black swan effect."
Now, the reason this is bad is that we call our successful predictions "success" and call our failed predictions "flukes that won't happen again" and we become overly confident. We'll double-down on our algorithms. We'll double-down on labeling successes and disregarding failures. Then, one day, something we never saw coming will smack us and we'll be totally unprepared, having so much confidence in our predictive powers. This sort of thing happens from time to time - look at the algorithms that were used to calculate stock risk leading up to the financial crash in 2008 for a great example of overconfidence.
TLDR: Algorithms are very bad at actually predicting infrequent/complex systems and will only lead to overconfidence that will exacerbate the issue.
Consumption tax is a regressive tax policy -- poor people who have to spend their whole paycheck are taxed on every dollar while rich people who invest large portions of their income get off without taxes. This is a tool to increase the gap between rich and poor and I will never support any candidate who advocates consumption taxes.
I'm more likely to die from just about anything compared to "terrorism." Our response to this perceived threat is disproportionate to the actual risk, but politicians use it as a tool to erode civil liberties and increase spending on military. The government doesn't have money, that's YOUR money and MY money they are spending. They were able to take that money from us and spend it on weapons and bombs to KILL other people because we live in a completely irrational world where fear used more than logic in making decisions. That is the point I'm trying to make. Don't let fear rule your life. Use your head.
I totally disagree with your characterization. Government COULD protect we the people's interests without lying to us, without violating our civil liberties, and without concealing their true motives from us. They chose not to. There is an alternative that isn't anarchy and isn't what we have now. I'm currently supporting the Pirate party because I think they hold ideals similar to mine. As for anarchism - the amount of freedom turns out to be 0 since anybody can violate anybody's basic rights. That's my main problem with Libertarians, they try and take it too far.
Such bullshit. Why stop there, let's also ban the use of text that can be construed as threatening or violent - and let's have corporations decide what is permissible and what isn't. Great idea.
Interesting that politicians appeal mostly to people's fears and insecurities. Fear of criminals, mass murders, fear of losing your job, xenophobia, fear of any number of disasters which each claims the other will bring if you don't elect the opposite as leader. Terror is just another word for fear, and one who uses terror to achieve political goals is a terrorist. Break the cycle, vote for somebody who doesn't need to scare you to get your support.
I think the more important question is "why do we want people living on Mars?"
Mars has very few of the resources needed to support human life. People living there will basically be a burden for people on Earth to supply with food, equipment, chemical energy, etc. All that, and you can only depart for it twice per year. If anything goes wrong between, oh well.
As a staging area for mining comets (if that's the idea) the moon makes more sense than Mars since it is out of Earth's gravity, has very little of it's own gravity (much less than Mars even) and can be reached in a few days.
I guess the whole hype surrounding Mars is more out of "coolness" than actual usefullness? Correct me if I'm missing something here.
People like Mateen aren't terrorists. Mateen was mentally disturbed, hated gays, and had a god complex. Read some of the interviews about him.
“First he claimed family connections to Al Qaeda,” which, like the Islamic State, is a Sunni Muslim terrorist group, James Comey, the F.B.I. director, said Monday. “He also said he was a member of Hezbollah,” a Shiite group in conflict with Al Qaeda and the Islamic State. (NYtimes)
So basically he claimed he was a part of every group, even ones that contradict each other. He didn't appear to have formal ties to any of these groups, he acted on his own according to the police reports. This isn't state-sponsored terrorism. In fact, despite ISIS calling themselves a "state" they are not. ISIS is an extremist cult posing as a religious belief. Furthermore, by responding with military force we are promoting their recruiting and validating their message that they are at war with the West. This is not the way to deal with these people. If we respond, it needs to be done as an international group, not the US military. We need to start calling them what they are: criminals and cultists. They are not animals/monsters/etc, they are very dangerous and unstable people who have been brainwashed by a cult.
well, mr sarcastic, the coal and oil are the problem. they were in the ground but have been burned and the co2 is now back in the atmosphere.
if you have another way to make synthetic coal, then step right up.
As I said in an earlier post which apparently nobody read, biomass can be pyrolyzed at lower flame temperatures (think smoldering) and primarily leaves behind char which is like 99% carbon. Char lasts in the soil for thousands of years. Un-charred biomass decays rapidly. Why does nobody know this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I'm seeing a lot of negative replies to this comment, but there is some truth in it. Let's do the math.
Photosynthesis is about 1% efficient at converting CO2 to starches. The global solar flux is 178,000TW and the global photosynthesis productivity is about 1,780 TW. This is actually quite a lot of potential carbon sequestration if it could be slightly increased while maintaining an overall higher amount of biomass. Mankind's average power consumption is a mere 15TW., so 1% of the global photosynthesis productivity.
The storage aspect could be augmented by sequestering biomass by converting it to char (sounds counterintuitive doesn't it). If you burn biomass some of the carbon is released as gas, but much of it is converted to char, which lasts for thousands of years in the soil. The released CO2 gas is offset by the fact that burning biomass releases nutrients to the soil and makes the soil more productive, raising it's photosynthesis productivity. The resulting biochar is a great soil additive and could be even commercialized and sold to farmers. The biochar cycle alternates between sequestering in biomass, and converting that biomass to char (which stays char for a long time) and CO2 gas (which is re-used by biomass). So every cycle you take a bit more of carbon from the atmosphere and place it in the soil where it lasts for a long time.
In other words, slash and burn agriculture could be a solution. Read about it.
There is no "lesser evil" anymore. Both parties are totally corrupt and probably beyond redemption. Stop supporting the 2-party system. Vote 3rd party, get involved, do research and vote for somebody you actually agree with.
In fact, there is no Paradox. This is exactly what should be expected. The intensity of a radio signal drops off as 1/(distance)^2, this is the inverse square law.
Say you have two antennas, one sitting 1 mile from a 100kW (maximum allowed power for radio in the US) radio broadcast tower and one sitting on a relatively close planet 100 lightyears away. The ratio of the difference in intensity will be 2.9E-30. In other words, only a handful of photons actually reach the antenna placed on the exoplanet, certainly not enough to generate any kind of recognizable signal. THERE IS NO PARADOX. We're simply too far away.
In addition to that, the earth is becoming radio silent as we shift from broadcast towers to low power communication and internet. It's pretty likely aliens would do the same thing, meaning there will be only brief periods of radio emanating from worlds where intelligent life forms. We've only been listening for a couple decades. Pretty unlikely that our period of listening would coincide with an alien world's period of broadcast and that we would actually be close enough to collect any signal.
I submit that there is no paradox here. It's all a consequence of being too far apart, radio signals attenuating (inverse square law), and brief periods of popularity for mass broadcast technologies followed by radio silence as internet/other tech replaces it. Makes total sense.
Absolutely no details given on the miniaturized tubes or how they were made. The only description is this: "a million times smaller than those in use 100 years ago."
Does anybody know how big they were 100 years ago? I have no idea. I'm guessing most people don't. Since when did "fraction of size of a vacuum tube from 1916" become a unit of length?
Seriously, how big are they? Assuming a vacuum tube in use in 1916 was 10cm in length, I'm coming up with 100nm, which is FREAKING HUGE compared to present day Si transistor sizes which are closer to 16nm IIRC.
This quote was amazingly stupid: "At this level, silicon starts to behave weirdly. It becomes more elastic, and starts to give out light. Silicon transistors also leak electrons at smaller sizes." It's not behaving "weirdly" this is purely a consequence of size. When things are small the ratio of surface to bulk is higher. When things are nanoscale there is almost no bulk left, so the properties begin to resemble surface properties more than bulk properties. Seriously, there's no mystery to it. I have a PhD in chemistry and have studied both nanomaterials and semiconductors. I've never seen such a stupid explanation of size-dependent properties as was offered in this article. I hope the Cal-Tech researchers didn't write that. Also, electrons don't "leak." That's just stupid. Current leaks. If electrons "leaked" you'd wind up with a charge that would oppose further leaking and the leak would stop itself. They phenomenon they are attempting to describe (and failing miserably) is leakage current. Leakage current happens when charge flows through an insulated path (i.e. the current going to the gate in a MOSFET). Was the concept too hard to explain simply while also being truthful? I think my explanation was fine, and it was just one sentence.
Anyway, I've seen some pretty bad writing before, but this was an entirely new level. There is nothing but speculation and horribly written incorrect statements about present day semiconductors. I would have dismissed this had they answered any remotely interesting question such as: What is the new advancement that enabled tiny vacuum tubes? How big are they? What are their electronic properties? How to they work? Why do their properties not change when miniaturized? Terrible story. The researchers at Cal-Tech should be ashamed if they had any part in this.
First of all, we all know that wealth comes from productivity. Don't act like it's some idea that you had and nobody else thought of, we all already know that.
Second of all, eventually we'll reach a point where one future worker, aided by AI, can do the job of 1000's of present-day workers. In order to produce all the goods and labor we need only a handful of people will be required. At that point why would we continue to cling to the concept of 40-hour work weeks and paychecks? Inflation aside, we will have the ability to provide for everyone. It's not about money, which as you said is only a representation, it's about providing for everyone in a society where not everyone can or needs to work.
Eventually, AI will be able to do everything people do. AI won't need to be paid, it won't need breaks, it won't sue, it won't make mistakes, it won't forget things, it won't sleep, and it will just generally be a fantastic investment for those who can afford it. The work/life paradigm hasn't changed yet, but it will for 99% of people.
Solar on the roof of a car might generate 100 watts.
What kind of tiny solar panel are you talking about here??? 1 square meter should generate 250W at 25% efficiency. The top surface of a car is MULTIPLE square meters.
Figure you use the commercial 150 Watt/m^2 panels, and that's a peak generating capacity of 750 Watts. Capacity factor for solar in the U.S. is about 0.145 (this accounts for angle of the sun, weather, etc.). So (0.75 kW) * (0.145) * (24 hours) = 2.61 kWh. In other words, if you left your solar panel-covered Tesla S parked outside for a typical continental U.S. day, it would generate 2.61 kWh.
Why on earth would you use 150W/m2 panels? That's 15% efficiency, terrible by today's standards. Good modules are closer to 25% efficient.
Capacity factor is not 0.145 everywhere, don't pretend it is. Some places make more sense for solar, others make less sense. In California the capacity factor is 0.25 averaged over a year. That's not the highest capacity factor you'll find in the US either. Obviously it makes less sense to do this in, say, Alaska. Don't play dumb.
Charging efficiency of the Tesla battery is about 80%. So only about 2.09 kWh actually makes it into the battery (the rest heats up the battery and charger).
as somebody else pointed out, the EPA fuel economy already includes this loss, so you are double-counting here.
The best EPA-rated Tesla S uses 33 kWh/100 miles. So leaving your PV-encrusted Tesla parked out in the sun all day will charge the battery enough to move you 6.3 miles.
Adding up the efficiency increase, capacity factor increase, and removing your extra charging subtraction, I came up with 22.6 miles charged for the solar-encrusted Tesla. Not so bad when you actually use realistic numbers.
Slashdot Mirror
This could be influenced by a number of factors. Higher-paid CEO's might be in larger companies with saturated markets that are more difficult to grow in. Well-paid CEO's could be reducing profits through any number of common practices that are used to lower tax liability.
A more interesting a subtle pattern I saw on this chart is the fact that both groups followed the same market trends very closely. Maybe the real finding is not that highly-paid CEO's do worse for their companies' stock price as low-paid CEO's. Maybe the real finding is that all companies follow market trends and the CEO does very little to affect stock price.
These are just nonsense numbers: is $10,000/yr a basic income?
Hm well maybe check again, then. Can't speak for a single person living on $10k/year, but I paid for a mortgage and expenses for myself and my stay-at-home wife on a ~$20k salary as a grad student (graduated within the last few years and moved on to other things). We didn't live lavishly, but we did alright. That was in a college town in Oregon, so not expensive but not the cheapest place, either. Having roommates and getting an apt instead of a house would have made things much cheaper, but wasn't necessary in the end.
This mentality bugs me, you just asserted something but never backed it up. Google search says average apartment rent in the US is $1200/mo. Let's assume a single person living on UBI lives in a slightly cheaper apt at $1000/mo with some roommates. The average number of rooms is 2.8. So we have about $357/month per room. So our person is spending $4300/year on rent. That leaves $5700 for everything else. $30/mo will buy an unlimited plan on Metro PCS, $60/mo should pay for shared utilities, preparing your own food at home costs about $150/mo for groceries if you eat a diet of fresh produce rice and some meat, let's say $50/mo for gas, $60/mo for insurance, and $40/mo for clothes, and $50/mo for misc. That leaves about $500 left over at the end of the year. So pretty tight, but not starvation level and definitely do-able if you budget things.
The goal of ISIS is to provoke the US into essentially "declaring war" on Muslims. Doing so will bolster their ranks as other Muslims will join ISIS's cause when the US has taken an aggressive stance against their entire religion. It will also give ISIS a legitimacy it craves since "war" is something that states declare on other states, and ISIS wants to be thought of as a legitimate state rather than what they actually are: a wacko cult group.
Declaring war (figuratively or literally) is probably the worst thing that could happen. Imagine a repeat of Vietnam except that it takes place all over the globe. The US cannot win through military action against an opponent that uses asymmetric warfare. We've been there, done that TOO MANY times. The only way to "win" this conflict is to avoid it, ideally doing so through a fight of ideas using the tactics and psychology you would use to take apart a cult. We should show our support for each other, present an unflinching front, and not tolerate any compromise to our ethics and way of life. Once the US starts down the path of compromising it's freedom and compromising it's way of life "because terrorists," we have given ISIS exactly what they want, and they will take more. Arguably we've already started down that path. It needs to stop now.
Replace the word "AI" with "Government" and I'm in:
Governments must be designed to assist humanity. Governments must be transparent. Governments must maximize efficiencies without destroying the dignity of people. Governments must be designed for intelligent privacy. Governments needs algorithmic accountability so humans can undo unintended harm. Governments must guard against bias. It's critical for humans to have empathy. It's critical for humans to have education. The need for human creativity won't change. A human has to be ultimately accountable for the outcome of a government-generated diagnosis or decision.
If that sounds like your ideal government, you might be interested in joining the Pirate party. "We support and work toward reformation of intellectual property (IP) laws, true governmental transparency, and protection of privacy and civil liberties. We strive for evidence-based policies and egalitarianism, while working against corporate personhood and welfare. We believe that people, not corporations, come first." https://uspirates.org/about/
Despite the media's overwhelming call to get more people in STEM, there are already too many workers with STEM degrees to employ. We are over-supplied not under-supplied. Wages are stagnant and there is little to no growth to speak of. Why do we need more people in STEM? This makes absolutely no sense to me.
First of all, "terrorism" accounts for a vanishingly small percentage of deaths. We could and should completely ignore the issue with little or no ill effect. That would be my assessment if I were in charge, but I'm not. So instead here's my assessment of the "terror algorithm" idea...
Here's the problem. We will find patterns in the noise because humans are genetically programmed to find patterns in anything and everything. We will use the patterns we find to "predict" things that already happened, and we will show how accurate our forecasting methods are using past data. The problem is that this is *past* data and the *future* is, by it's very definition, different than the past. Sure, our newfound prediction ability will be accidentally right sometimes (like a broken clock being right twice per day), but when it's wrong we will attribute the failure to a "fluke" that we will say is unlikely to repeat. The issue is that even if a particular fluke doesn't repeat, new flukes will arise. We are very bad at calculating risks and probabilities of unlikely events. Part of the reason is that it's very difficult to calculate the frequency (or even to be aware of the possibility) of something that has never happened before. Yet, just because it's never happened before doesn't mean it won't. If you want to learn more about this, I recommend reading "the black swan effect."
Now, the reason this is bad is that we call our successful predictions "success" and call our failed predictions "flukes that won't happen again" and we become overly confident. We'll double-down on our algorithms. We'll double-down on labeling successes and disregarding failures. Then, one day, something we never saw coming will smack us and we'll be totally unprepared, having so much confidence in our predictive powers. This sort of thing happens from time to time - look at the algorithms that were used to calculate stock risk leading up to the financial crash in 2008 for a great example of overconfidence.
TLDR: Algorithms are very bad at actually predicting infrequent/complex systems and will only lead to overconfidence that will exacerbate the issue.
Consumption tax is a regressive tax policy -- poor people who have to spend their whole paycheck are taxed on every dollar while rich people who invest large portions of their income get off without taxes. This is a tool to increase the gap between rich and poor and I will never support any candidate who advocates consumption taxes.
I'm more likely to die from just about anything compared to "terrorism." Our response to this perceived threat is disproportionate to the actual risk, but politicians use it as a tool to erode civil liberties and increase spending on military. The government doesn't have money, that's YOUR money and MY money they are spending. They were able to take that money from us and spend it on weapons and bombs to KILL other people because we live in a completely irrational world where fear used more than logic in making decisions. That is the point I'm trying to make. Don't let fear rule your life. Use your head.
I totally disagree with your characterization. Government COULD protect we the people's interests without lying to us, without violating our civil liberties, and without concealing their true motives from us. They chose not to. There is an alternative that isn't anarchy and isn't what we have now. I'm currently supporting the Pirate party because I think they hold ideals similar to mine. As for anarchism - the amount of freedom turns out to be 0 since anybody can violate anybody's basic rights. That's my main problem with Libertarians, they try and take it too far.
No, actually I was suggesting that people not vote for Hillary or Trump. I think they both suck more or less equally. I'm voting 3rd party.
Such bullshit. Why stop there, let's also ban the use of text that can be construed as threatening or violent - and let's have corporations decide what is permissible and what isn't. Great idea.
Interesting that politicians appeal mostly to people's fears and insecurities. Fear of criminals, mass murders, fear of losing your job, xenophobia, fear of any number of disasters which each claims the other will bring if you don't elect the opposite as leader. Terror is just another word for fear, and one who uses terror to achieve political goals is a terrorist. Break the cycle, vote for somebody who doesn't need to scare you to get your support.
I think the more important question is "why do we want people living on Mars?"
Mars has very few of the resources needed to support human life. People living there will basically be a burden for people on Earth to supply with food, equipment, chemical energy, etc. All that, and you can only depart for it twice per year. If anything goes wrong between, oh well.
As a staging area for mining comets (if that's the idea) the moon makes more sense than Mars since it is out of Earth's gravity, has very little of it's own gravity (much less than Mars even) and can be reached in a few days.
I guess the whole hype surrounding Mars is more out of "coolness" than actual usefullness? Correct me if I'm missing something here.
People like Mateen aren't terrorists. Mateen was mentally disturbed, hated gays, and had a god complex. Read some of the interviews about him.
So basically he claimed he was a part of every group, even ones that contradict each other. He didn't appear to have formal ties to any of these groups, he acted on his own according to the police reports. This isn't state-sponsored terrorism. In fact, despite ISIS calling themselves a "state" they are not. ISIS is an extremist cult posing as a religious belief. Furthermore, by responding with military force we are promoting their recruiting and validating their message that they are at war with the West. This is not the way to deal with these people. If we respond, it needs to be done as an international group, not the US military. We need to start calling them what they are: criminals and cultists. They are not animals/monsters/etc, they are very dangerous and unstable people who have been brainwashed by a cult.
well, mr sarcastic, the coal and oil are the problem. they were in the ground but have been burned and the co2 is now back in the atmosphere. if you have another way to make synthetic coal, then step right up.
As I said in an earlier post which apparently nobody read, biomass can be pyrolyzed at lower flame temperatures (think smoldering) and primarily leaves behind char which is like 99% carbon. Char lasts in the soil for thousands of years. Un-charred biomass decays rapidly. Why does nobody know this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Thank you!! I was beginning to think nobody read that.
I'm seeing a lot of negative replies to this comment, but there is some truth in it. Let's do the math.
Photosynthesis is about 1% efficient at converting CO2 to starches. The global solar flux is 178,000TW and the global photosynthesis productivity is about 1,780 TW. This is actually quite a lot of potential carbon sequestration if it could be slightly increased while maintaining an overall higher amount of biomass. Mankind's average power consumption is a mere 15TW., so 1% of the global photosynthesis productivity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynthetic_efficiency
The storage aspect could be augmented by sequestering biomass by converting it to char (sounds counterintuitive doesn't it). If you burn biomass some of the carbon is released as gas, but much of it is converted to char, which lasts for thousands of years in the soil. The released CO2 gas is offset by the fact that burning biomass releases nutrients to the soil and makes the soil more productive, raising it's photosynthesis productivity. The resulting biochar is a great soil additive and could be even commercialized and sold to farmers. The biochar cycle alternates between sequestering in biomass, and converting that biomass to char (which stays char for a long time) and CO2 gas (which is re-used by biomass). So every cycle you take a bit more of carbon from the atmosphere and place it in the soil where it lasts for a long time.
In other words, slash and burn agriculture could be a solution. Read about it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biochar
There is no "lesser evil" anymore. Both parties are totally corrupt and probably beyond redemption. Stop supporting the 2-party system. Vote 3rd party, get involved, do research and vote for somebody you actually agree with.
Say you have two antennas, one sitting 1 mile from a 100kW (maximum allowed power for radio in the US) radio broadcast tower and one sitting on a relatively close planet 100 lightyears away. The ratio of the difference in intensity will be 2.9E-30. In other words, only a handful of photons actually reach the antenna placed on the exoplanet, certainly not enough to generate any kind of recognizable signal. THERE IS NO PARADOX. We're simply too far away.
In addition to that, the earth is becoming radio silent as we shift from broadcast towers to low power communication and internet. It's pretty likely aliens would do the same thing, meaning there will be only brief periods of radio emanating from worlds where intelligent life forms. We've only been listening for a couple decades. Pretty unlikely that our period of listening would coincide with an alien world's period of broadcast and that we would actually be close enough to collect any signal.
I submit that there is no paradox here. It's all a consequence of being too far apart, radio signals attenuating (inverse square law), and brief periods of popularity for mass broadcast technologies followed by radio silence as internet/other tech replaces it. Makes total sense.
Hmmm... more like burned by time wasted, and annoyed by the implicit social requirements.
In my case, burned by the constantly changing privacy and sharing settings. Decided the best option was to abstain. Don't regret the decision at all.
Does anybody know how big they were 100 years ago? I have no idea. I'm guessing most people don't. Since when did "fraction of size of a vacuum tube from 1916" become a unit of length?
Seriously, how big are they? Assuming a vacuum tube in use in 1916 was 10cm in length, I'm coming up with 100nm, which is FREAKING HUGE compared to present day Si transistor sizes which are closer to 16nm IIRC.
This quote was amazingly stupid: "At this level, silicon starts to behave weirdly. It becomes more elastic, and starts to give out light. Silicon transistors also leak electrons at smaller sizes." It's not behaving "weirdly" this is purely a consequence of size. When things are small the ratio of surface to bulk is higher. When things are nanoscale there is almost no bulk left, so the properties begin to resemble surface properties more than bulk properties. Seriously, there's no mystery to it. I have a PhD in chemistry and have studied both nanomaterials and semiconductors. I've never seen such a stupid explanation of size-dependent properties as was offered in this article. I hope the Cal-Tech researchers didn't write that. Also, electrons don't "leak." That's just stupid. Current leaks. If electrons "leaked" you'd wind up with a charge that would oppose further leaking and the leak would stop itself. They phenomenon they are attempting to describe (and failing miserably) is leakage current. Leakage current happens when charge flows through an insulated path (i.e. the current going to the gate in a MOSFET). Was the concept too hard to explain simply while also being truthful? I think my explanation was fine, and it was just one sentence.
Anyway, I've seen some pretty bad writing before, but this was an entirely new level. There is nothing but speculation and horribly written incorrect statements about present day semiconductors. I would have dismissed this had they answered any remotely interesting question such as: What is the new advancement that enabled tiny vacuum tubes? How big are they? What are their electronic properties? How to they work? Why do their properties not change when miniaturized? Terrible story. The researchers at Cal-Tech should be ashamed if they had any part in this.
First of all, we all know that wealth comes from productivity. Don't act like it's some idea that you had and nobody else thought of, we all already know that.
Second of all, eventually we'll reach a point where one future worker, aided by AI, can do the job of 1000's of present-day workers. In order to produce all the goods and labor we need only a handful of people will be required. At that point why would we continue to cling to the concept of 40-hour work weeks and paychecks? Inflation aside, we will have the ability to provide for everyone. It's not about money, which as you said is only a representation, it's about providing for everyone in a society where not everyone can or needs to work.
Eventually, AI will be able to do everything people do. AI won't need to be paid, it won't need breaks, it won't sue, it won't make mistakes, it won't forget things, it won't sleep, and it will just generally be a fantastic investment for those who can afford it. The work/life paradigm hasn't changed yet, but it will for 99% of people.
Solar on the roof of a car might generate 100 watts.
What kind of tiny solar panel are you talking about here??? 1 square meter should generate 250W at 25% efficiency. The top surface of a car is MULTIPLE square meters.
Why is this modded "insightful"??
Figure you use the commercial 150 Watt/m^2 panels, and that's a peak generating capacity of 750 Watts. Capacity factor for solar in the U.S. is about 0.145 (this accounts for angle of the sun, weather, etc.). So (0.75 kW) * (0.145) * (24 hours) = 2.61 kWh. In other words, if you left your solar panel-covered Tesla S parked outside for a typical continental U.S. day, it would generate 2.61 kWh.
Why on earth would you use 150W/m2 panels? That's 15% efficiency, terrible by today's standards. Good modules are closer to 25% efficient.
Capacity factor is not 0.145 everywhere, don't pretend it is. Some places make more sense for solar, others make less sense. In California the capacity factor is 0.25 averaged over a year. That's not the highest capacity factor you'll find in the US either. Obviously it makes less sense to do this in, say, Alaska. Don't play dumb.
Charging efficiency of the Tesla battery is about 80%. So only about 2.09 kWh actually makes it into the battery (the rest heats up the battery and charger).
as somebody else pointed out, the EPA fuel economy already includes this loss, so you are double-counting here.
The best EPA-rated Tesla S uses 33 kWh/100 miles. So leaving your PV-encrusted Tesla parked out in the sun all day will charge the battery enough to move you 6.3 miles.
Adding up the efficiency increase, capacity factor increase, and removing your extra charging subtraction, I came up with 22.6 miles charged for the solar-encrusted Tesla. Not so bad when you actually use realistic numbers.