These "rights" don't make any sense in a global network. Your "rights" are going to end when the borders of the country proclaiming them end. What this will do is significantly drive up the costs of using these (formerly) free systems.
As examples: (5) to move all personal data from one network to the next; This would require both the source, and destination, networks (systems?) to have compatible data export, and import, APIs. Who is going to pay for this, and determine which networks are supported?
(9) not to be unfairly discriminated against or exploited based on your personal data; and This makes no sense. Who is going to determine what is "fair" and what constitutes "personal data?" I am completely OK with being discriminated against, and/or exploited, because I want to watch a video Amazon decided to charge me to watch, as opposed to one of their free videos.
I can pretty much go through every single one of these "rights" and tell you exactly how they will infringe on someone else's rights, and require substantial development costs to implement.
If this list started with data that our own government collects on our citizens, and an foreigners, I would support it. I think that would be a much better place to start, and would immediately put an end to all of the Federal dragnet data collection that goes on "to fight terrorism." Instead of (1) to have access to and knowledge of all collection and uses of personal data by companies; why not replace companies with governments. That seems like a good starting point to me.
These kind of rights will require a police force to enforce them, and judges to uphold other laws, as well as whatever legislative body is going to proclaim them. Those are three components of law. I do not want the Federal government to become the internet police. That sounds terrible to me.
It was an app in Zoho Apps, and I migrated that app's functionality into their existing CakePHP application. It was basically a survey building tool for medical surveys, so we had to keep track of questions, responses, order between questions/sections, and the like. Pretty much basic CRUD was all Zoho handled for the survey building. The responses were handled by the custom application.
A company called iNetU that has been acquired like three times + name changes hosts their virtual server, and the company I own performed the rewrite.
I had a client using Zoho Apps for a major portion of their infrastructure. It was terrible, with frequent outages, and tech support completely unable to help with anything. It was actually worse than not helping - they would pretend to help, and then burn three weeks of calendar time saying that they could perform a restoration, when they couldn't.
We migrated them off of Zoho, and are grateful to have done so. I wish we would have gotten away from Zoho sooner. They are absolutely terrible, and I feel genuinely sorry for anyone using any portion of their infrastructure.
I really enjoyed listening to "The Science of Energy: Resources and Power Explained" from my public library on the app OverDrive, while commuting, and cleaning. Those tasks make it difficult for me to really clear my mind, since I'd still like to get where I want to go (somewhat safely) and cleaning actually requires me to pay a bit of attention to what I'm doing. I think there are some streams of words that help me become a more effective, or more balanced, person. There are some that take away from this, and some that are neutral.
These things aren't mutually exclusive - I tend to go to yoga for getting away. I also like going in hot tubs, steam rooms, and saunas for this. Spending time in nature (especially gold panning) is helpful for this too. I don't listen to audio books, or podcasts, when I'm doing those things. Commuting, and cleaning are difficult for me to really relax during. That's cool if you can, but I think I'm a long way away from that level of self awareness and self control. If I can turn commuting from an angry waste of time into a fun bike ride while listening to awesome lectures, I think that's about the best I'm going to be able to do until I get to the Shaolin Monk level of enlightenment.
I got a free Android watch after evaluating some custom software on it. I gave it to my intern, since it did not add anything to my life, and required me to put on a watch, and charge it. Those were negatives. I was also constantly disappointed by the lack of features - the Android watch basically seemed like a phone extension that made it so I had three extra buttons for my phone, that I could control from my watch. Was this in case I was too lazy / disabled / intoxicated to control my phone? I don't see the value of controlling my phone from my watch, when I could reach into my pocket and control my phone. While riding my bicycle, and listening to audiobooks, or podcasts, I don't need to control my phone past what I can do on my bluetooth headset. I don't think an Apple watch would add anything to my life either, and it would subtract the exact same as my Android watch, but significantly more since I'd have to buy an Apple phone, and the watch.
I received a FitBit Charge HR for Christmas. It was fun to use especially with my girlfriend at the time. That one broke across the band, since in addition to owning a software company, I also own apartments and do my own repairs, with my hands. Having a watch while doing a lot of physical work is not convenient at all. FitBit replaced it, for free, since it was under warranty. Then, I broke this one in the exact same way. My mom gave me hers, and this one worked for a while, until I started getting a rash from it. I'd alternate it between both hands, and then both my hands had a rash. Then I started wearing it around my ankle, like a prisoner ankle bracelet. That one eventually broke across the bands as well. I could have purchased replacement bands, and fixed these. However, after 3x of them breaking, I decided these pieces of crap weren't worth the replacement costs, even in terms of me ordering a replacement band and using my small screwdrivers to put the sensor into a new band. They definitely weren't work buying a new one.
It makes me feel sad thinking that so many of my countrymen gain excitement from the crap that they buy, rather than anything that they do. How can someone seriously gain a sense of accomplishment, interest, wonder, or awe, from something Apple sells you? This type of fulfillment is designed to only last until the next generation comes out - and the device might actually stop functioning (by design!) when the next iteration is released. I can understand if you bought a book, tutoring session, telescope, or a power tool - something that extended your reach, your understanding, or your abilities. But something that saves you the trouble of reaching into your pocket to use your phone...? This just seems sad to me, especially when you consider the (after-tax) hours worked that normally have to be worked in order to buy a pair of these, based on median income.
Software developers are, by definition, more valuable than the money a company pays to employ them. This is also true of any employee. Unfortunately, the author of the article seems to not be aware of this basic economic trade-off. Someone that pays money for something values that thing more than then money they paid for it. This is probably the most fundamental principle of basic economic exchange.
I do actually think I have something else to add, besides a basic criticism of click-bait titles.
As someone that owns a software company, my company provides services that typically either replace, or supplement, internal development skills. We step in and work for our clients for a number of reasons. One reason is when an organization relies on custom software, but cannot manage the development process, typically through the work of a talented, previous, employee that has since left the company where no one in management had any idea of what they actually did, but they rely on it. Another common reason is that the clients cannot actually pay for a W2 employee to do the work. We are able to charge at least 2x as much as an employee, but since we need to work half the time (either through efficiencies, or because they simply do not have full time work available), this is typically a cost savings. Usually, there is some combination of lack of development/management skill, and cost savings, which is why it makes sense to "outsource" to a U.S. based company, as opposed to developing software skills in-house.
So, I feel push back on price when selling sometimes. Often times, organizations will simply leave a position empty than pay the 2-3x contractor rates needed to fill these positions, immediately, with me and my team. For those people, developers are NOT worth more than 2-3x an employee rate. They ARE worth the somewhat inflexible price range their HR department is looking to fill people into.
I'm not even sure if this is a good idea (I like an earlier post about how legos sequester carbon) but if it is, why not get started with a meaningful metric that will be achieved in the next 2-3 years? Oh, that's right, because that involves a lot of difficult work, and doesn't generate the nice press releases as predictably.
I seriously want to start a website like "all of the future promises and predictions that people made" where I mirror the promise, store it locally, and then check up on it like 12 years later to see if they kept their promise or if they kept shifting it backwards as a cool announcement since everyone forgot the earlier cool announcement.
Lego is awesome, and I think this is the FIRST promise I've heard them make like this. I think the State of California, and the European democracies, are the worst about pledging to be off carbon/nukes/diesel/crack in the next 15/20/25 years.
The extremely interesting thing is when people reply to my comment, and their replies ALSO show that they did not fully comprehend my reply, when they include information that I already included...
This helps me realize that not everyone should have a voice that is listened to. Many people do not actually read, or if they do, understand. Their voices are used for sound a fury, signifying nothing.
The problem is I don't want any central authority deciding whom has a voice, and whom does not.
Where's the actual article? The link in the headline has nothing to do with the quoted text. All the articles listed are just about Chinese economic activity.
If you scroll down, the article under discussion is linked to here.
In my city, different chamber of commerces can promise whatever they want. The city is not bound to respect those promises. If city officials do not want to respect those concessions, I doubt they have to. Then Amazon can move down the list to another city, which likely will.
If I were Amazon, I would accept promises from all finalists, start with the best promises, and negotiate all deals in parallel. Then, it's possible to use concessions from one party against another party, even out of context. This is probably what Amazon is going to do, since they have people that have studied game theory more than I have working for them.
How have you directly complied with these laws? How? You speak about "should" be but my experiences with what "is" are somewhat different. I spent 10-16 hours getting my Colorado state employer documents in order - unemployment insurance, worker's compensation insurance, and state withholding taxes. My business is based in the state of New Mexico, and hiring an employee in a neighboring state took way more work than I would have liked. This is because the states, and the Federal government, all believe they have a role in protecting workers in the U.S.
My suggestion would be to not mandate workers compensation insurance and unemployment insurance, and instead leave those up to individuals to purchase if they want (exactly as individual retirement accounts are optional here, and have much more faith in them than our Federally managed social security "retirement" plan.) I also prefer the 1099 contractor, as opposed to w2 employee, responsibility with taxes to be on the person getting paid, and not on the person doing the paying. Every country I have researched labor law in typically has this distinction between employee and contractor.
Those are my concrete suggestions, based on running a rental property business for ten years, and a software company for six years.
Do you think it's painless? What country do you live in? I bet your country feels the pain of the oppressive tax burdens in things like unemployment, economic growth, scientific and technical development, and taxes... The only exception to these trade-offs is Norway, when oil prices are high.
These things aren't painless for those that try and build businesses. Even more of a pain than the actual, direct, monetary, costs are complying with all of the crap legislation and bureaucracy. That is the worst for me.
Furthermore, why restrict "us" to those within a country? I think it makes zero sense, from the law of diminishing returns, to "bring ALL up" to bring "us" within industrialized countries "up." It makes more sense to work to bring basically all of Africa up, than any of Europe up, since they are lower and will come up faster/cheaper/better.
I believe the reason we do not take this approach is because Africans do not vote in "our" elections. Many of the people "we" are bringing up (40% by your quote) already don't pay taxes - but they vote.
I don't see a problem in need of a solution - only a potential future problem predicted in much the same way that futurists, fortune tellers, divinators, politicians and con men have been predicting the future for quite some. This is not foresight attempting to come up with a pragmatic solution before a problem becomes major - it is a solution in search of a problem. In every instance I've replace a portion of a job, the capable person who's job I replaced has thanked me for creating a program to do the most mindless, boring, portions of their job. When someone was fired, it was actually for not working towards automating their own job quickly enough, freeing them to work on more interesting things. They were fired for being complacent and happy with a mindless job that a machine could do.
I don't actually believe universal basic income would come anywhere close to preventing the *possible* collapse of western society. If that is your goal, I think ecological issues should all be in the top ten. The U.S. unemployment is at 3.6% according to Google. This is SUPER low. Like, historically low. Like, so low that I think it's actually not correct, either due to some kind of crazy hot employment bubble (systemic problem), or tons of discouraged workers stopping looking for a job and/or being stuck in part time solutions (problem with measurements.)
As someone that automates jobs, and builds systems which improve efficiency, I don't want to pay for either a basic income, or a guaranteed job for someone else. If I did, I am pretty sure I could easily move my company, and myself, to one of the Norse countries and do that already. It seems to me that the only way to accomplish either of these would be through the force of law.
It is very, very easy for corporations, and high net worth individuals (i.e. the people building the automation) to simply go someplace where these proposed laws don't apply. This is exactly what has happened with many, many, many jobs as the laws in the United States became more 'progressive.' This is what continues to happen with the western democracies, as they have even more laws in line with these types of things. I am arguing the along the correlation/causation line, which might not be super strong, but I think it is.
I am constantly reminded of what a pain it is to comply with U.S. labor laws. I spent about 15 hours (Jira for time tracking!) dealing with the unemployment insurance hiring a W2 in a state other than my own, and those kind of things are draining on my psyche. Thankfully my accountant is awesome and happy with all the bizarre challenges, and does not charge me an arm and a leg for this kind of stuff. These types of things make me want to continue to develop my offshore team, which has exactly the same labor protections as buying a ream of paper from Walmart.
These things aren't free - Obama basically destroyed the healthcare industry in the U.S. by trying to give people 'free' healthcare (mine costs 3x as much, and many older people are spending more on healthcare than on housing - i.e. my parents.) A universal basic income will be funded through some kind of tax, and even with the argument that all the other social programs can go away (which they cannot, unless you are OK with letting someone starve when they spend their UBI on lottery tickets at the beginning of the month.) There will be significant costs associated with both a universal basic income, or any kind of make-work project. There is no such thing as a free lunch, even with hypothetical magical AI robots. The scary thing is that people discussing such issues, and more importantly voting on such issues, seem to lack any notion of economic repercussion.
Are you interested in personally funding something like this? I.E. patronage. I think this is a no, due to the detachment, but I figure I should ask. We (my software company) could build this out for somewhere in the low tens of thousands of dollars range, without any support from slashdot. As soon as they start adding CAPTCHAs, we'll have problems, but right now there is no technical reason your ideas wouldn't be feasible.
I should have said, "in general" after the first sentence. That was confusing and kind of a weird way to say that.
My father isn't a brain surgeon, but a lung doctor. When a hospital REALLY needs his services, the contracts they offer him reflect this need. He works a lot harder, putting in more hours and splitting his time between his private practice, and other gigs, family, exercise, whatever, with the hospital that needs his service. Eventually, if the situation became bad enough, you'd have all sorts of not-exactly-qualified people offering medical services because the demand was so high. This is what happens during wars. I think the flex within one doctor is somewhere between 100%-200% sustainably, and could likely go up to 300%-400%, since there are something close to 120 waking hours in a week. With pilots, there isn't this kind of flex, since there is governmental action requiring them to not work insane hours. Doctors, especially the older ones, are used to that kind of abuse after their internships. This is actually how hospitals deal with these problems now - they work their interns like slaves.
Likewise, when the price for wheat drops significantly, it starts being used for all sorts of bizarre things.
There is no such thing as a shortage, or a surplus. Those two things only exist within a price point, at a specific point in time. With enough money, you could buy ALL the pilots. I am pretty sure the very last pilot would be very expensive. Then, after a few more years, there would be even more pilots, and then they'd be even more expensive. Eventually this would stabilize, as even if there were one extremely rich person with all the money, not everyone could be a pilot. Some people would have to grow food, and work on airplanes.
This article seems to miss an important point - regional airlines choose not to pay as much for pilots, so they will feel a 'shortage' at or below their preferred price point, for a specific time period.
I understand your suggestion, and thanks for the recap of your previous comments. I can think of five such financial models to support this development - crowdsourcing, patronage, advertising driven revenue, approaching slashdot (internal development) and open sourcing it.
Crowdsourcing - effectively begging for donations from large groups of people to accomplish your goal. Think kickstarter. I don't think anyone is going to start writing code until this is funded. Patronage - effectively begging for donations from a small group of people to accomplish your goal. Think patreon.com. I don't think anyone is going to start writing code until this is funded. Advertising driven revenue - This one may, or may not actually be legal. For this, I'd suggest scraping slashdot's content, and then effectively re-creating portions of their website, and implementing a UI on your new website, powered by their data. For funding this now, I only really see individual investors as a way to fund this. Approaching slashdot - with a very well written proposal, slashdot might consider funding these developments Open Source - effectively begging for time, instead of money
If you're serious, I'd create some very good specifications and requirements about this, and someone will pick it up. Approaching slashdot with a proposal with specific, deliverable, implementation goals and costs (i.e. a software development contract) is probably how I'd go if I were you.
No, I am not a mathematician. I published one peer reviewed paper as middle author, and one internal-only government publication also as not anyone important. My education helps me reason about these things, and it's occasionally helpful in system design, but most of the time not really. I don't spend much time on slashdot, so I'm not usually involved in these types of discussions, but your response was interesting to me.
I think your answer is going to need to ultimately be a single value, and not a matrix, since you need to decide where (one value) to place something. You won't be able to place things according to a matrix of answers, unless you take my multiple-views approach even further. That would be cool to click something like "order by funny" and have the page elements float around using something like D3 for animations though. Or order by "makes me feel happy." If you allowed for something like that, then I could see your matrix approach. Otherwise, how will you collapse down your multidimensional answer to a single position within the page? I can see your suggestion as an intermediate representation, but you'll ultimately need a single answer, right?
Oh no, my age term was supposed to be the age of the comment. I can see how you interpreted it the way you did, since my notation is fairly terrible. That was an attempt to reorder the comments based on their comment age, like you suggested initially. I would actually not factor for the age of the commenter at all, other than possible in their reputation term. You could do this, and then have a commenter_age_multiplier, that I'd set to zero and maybe you wouldn't.
I am constantly against UI "improvements" being deployed which make things extremely confusing and different, in an attempt to make them better. Often times I would rather keep a crappy UI that I am familiar with, rather than an improved UI that I am not, since the cost of learning the new UI outweighs any benefits of the new UI. However, I see how rolling this out in an effort to actually shape the discussion would probably not lend itself to an optional, other, UI. This is really just a view on the data though.
The furthest I MIGHT take this charity idea is to see if I can pull all comments for a story using an API, then visualize each comment as a circle using D3, with the replies inside. I could then make the different dots (and contained dots) float up, or down, based on whatever kind of weight terms I want. Since I see no possible way to make money on this, I probably won't even make it that far.
It is interesting thinking about all the different ways discussions can be ranked.
OK, so something like (previous_reputation * pr_multiplier) * (current_comment_ranking * ccr_multiplier) * (1 / age * a_multiplier)?
If pr_multiplier was adjusted 1, and there were some kind of ceiling on it, then you'd be able to avoid using previous reputation to dominate. As long as the age term had some kind of a floor to 1, you'd prevent bots from commenting less than a second and blowing up that term. The middle term is probably already what's in play, but I don't think that's quite what you suggested. I think for the middle term to be as you stated, you'd need to enumerate the different categories of comments, and line it up with an evaluation of how much the story corresponds to that category, and then adjust that multiplier per category to line up with that story. Is something like (current_comment_rank_funny * article_funny_percentage) for each category what you mean here? I'm also not super familiar with the comment ranking, so I'm not sure how the different categories of comment ranks exist.
The only thing I would suggest is changing the way you describe this idea. I wouldn't use the term "first" and instead I'd use the term "top." I don't like how you are eliminating the temporal constraints on "first" even though I think this is a good idea, and I can see your point about how the "top" comment oftentimes does dominate the thread.
Ideally, with enough money, I'd have my software company implement both views - your proposed ranked view, and then a chronological view. I'd set your view to the default, and see what happens, while allowing people to still switch back to the classic view (and set the default view as a user configurable option, on log-in so they don't get annoyed always having to switch it back if they hate your idea.) Then I'd measure how many people switched back to the old view, and left it there, as a percentage of the total.
Slashdot Mirror
These "rights" don't make any sense in a global network. Your "rights" are going to end when the borders of the country proclaiming them end. What this will do is significantly drive up the costs of using these (formerly) free systems.
As examples:
(5) to move all personal data from one network to the next;
This would require both the source, and destination, networks (systems?) to have compatible data export, and import, APIs. Who is going to pay for this, and determine which networks are supported?
(9) not to be unfairly discriminated against or exploited based on your personal data; and
This makes no sense. Who is going to determine what is "fair" and what constitutes "personal data?" I am completely OK with being discriminated against, and/or exploited, because I want to watch a video Amazon decided to charge me to watch, as opposed to one of their free videos.
I can pretty much go through every single one of these "rights" and tell you exactly how they will infringe on someone else's rights, and require substantial development costs to implement.
If this list started with data that our own government collects on our citizens, and an foreigners, I would support it. I think that would be a much better place to start, and would immediately put an end to all of the Federal dragnet data collection that goes on "to fight terrorism." Instead of (1) to have access to and knowledge of all collection and uses of personal data by companies; why not replace companies with governments. That seems like a good starting point to me.
These kind of rights will require a police force to enforce them, and judges to uphold other laws, as well as whatever legislative body is going to proclaim them. Those are three components of law. I do not want the Federal government to become the internet police. That sounds terrible to me.
It was an app in Zoho Apps, and I migrated that app's functionality into their existing CakePHP application. It was basically a survey building tool for medical surveys, so we had to keep track of questions, responses, order between questions/sections, and the like. Pretty much basic CRUD was all Zoho handled for the survey building. The responses were handled by the custom application.
A company called iNetU that has been acquired like three times + name changes hosts their virtual server, and the company I own performed the rewrite.
I had a client using Zoho Apps for a major portion of their infrastructure. It was terrible, with frequent outages, and tech support completely unable to help with anything. It was actually worse than not helping - they would pretend to help, and then burn three weeks of calendar time saying that they could perform a restoration, when they couldn't.
We migrated them off of Zoho, and are grateful to have done so. I wish we would have gotten away from Zoho sooner. They are absolutely terrible, and I feel genuinely sorry for anyone using any portion of their infrastructure.
I really enjoyed listening to "The Science of Energy: Resources and Power Explained" from my public library on the app OverDrive, while commuting, and cleaning. Those tasks make it difficult for me to really clear my mind, since I'd still like to get where I want to go (somewhat safely) and cleaning actually requires me to pay a bit of attention to what I'm doing. I think there are some streams of words that help me become a more effective, or more balanced, person. There are some that take away from this, and some that are neutral.
These things aren't mutually exclusive - I tend to go to yoga for getting away. I also like going in hot tubs, steam rooms, and saunas for this. Spending time in nature (especially gold panning) is helpful for this too. I don't listen to audio books, or podcasts, when I'm doing those things. Commuting, and cleaning are difficult for me to really relax during. That's cool if you can, but I think I'm a long way away from that level of self awareness and self control. If I can turn commuting from an angry waste of time into a fun bike ride while listening to awesome lectures, I think that's about the best I'm going to be able to do until I get to the Shaolin Monk level of enlightenment.
I got a free Android watch after evaluating some custom software on it. I gave it to my intern, since it did not add anything to my life, and required me to put on a watch, and charge it. Those were negatives. I was also constantly disappointed by the lack of features - the Android watch basically seemed like a phone extension that made it so I had three extra buttons for my phone, that I could control from my watch. Was this in case I was too lazy / disabled / intoxicated to control my phone? I don't see the value of controlling my phone from my watch, when I could reach into my pocket and control my phone. While riding my bicycle, and listening to audiobooks, or podcasts, I don't need to control my phone past what I can do on my bluetooth headset. I don't think an Apple watch would add anything to my life either, and it would subtract the exact same as my Android watch, but significantly more since I'd have to buy an Apple phone, and the watch.
I received a FitBit Charge HR for Christmas. It was fun to use especially with my girlfriend at the time. That one broke across the band, since in addition to owning a software company, I also own apartments and do my own repairs, with my hands. Having a watch while doing a lot of physical work is not convenient at all. FitBit replaced it, for free, since it was under warranty. Then, I broke this one in the exact same way. My mom gave me hers, and this one worked for a while, until I started getting a rash from it. I'd alternate it between both hands, and then both my hands had a rash. Then I started wearing it around my ankle, like a prisoner ankle bracelet. That one eventually broke across the bands as well. I could have purchased replacement bands, and fixed these. However, after 3x of them breaking, I decided these pieces of crap weren't worth the replacement costs, even in terms of me ordering a replacement band and using my small screwdrivers to put the sensor into a new band. They definitely weren't work buying a new one.
It makes me feel sad thinking that so many of my countrymen gain excitement from the crap that they buy, rather than anything that they do. How can someone seriously gain a sense of accomplishment, interest, wonder, or awe, from something Apple sells you? This type of fulfillment is designed to only last until the next generation comes out - and the device might actually stop functioning (by design!) when the next iteration is released. I can understand if you bought a book, tutoring session, telescope, or a power tool - something that extended your reach, your understanding, or your abilities. But something that saves you the trouble of reaching into your pocket to use your phone...? This just seems sad to me, especially when you consider the (after-tax) hours worked that normally have to be worked in order to buy a pair of these, based on median income.
That's actually a really good point. It's not just economic reasoning that is problematic in that article, but reasoning all together.
Software developers are, by definition, more valuable than the money a company pays to employ them. This is also true of any employee. Unfortunately, the author of the article seems to not be aware of this basic economic trade-off. Someone that pays money for something values that thing more than then money they paid for it. This is probably the most fundamental principle of basic economic exchange.
I do actually think I have something else to add, besides a basic criticism of click-bait titles.
As someone that owns a software company, my company provides services that typically either replace, or supplement, internal development skills. We step in and work for our clients for a number of reasons. One reason is when an organization relies on custom software, but cannot manage the development process, typically through the work of a talented, previous, employee that has since left the company where no one in management had any idea of what they actually did, but they rely on it. Another common reason is that the clients cannot actually pay for a W2 employee to do the work. We are able to charge at least 2x as much as an employee, but since we need to work half the time (either through efficiencies, or because they simply do not have full time work available), this is typically a cost savings. Usually, there is some combination of lack of development/management skill, and cost savings, which is why it makes sense to "outsource" to a U.S. based company, as opposed to developing software skills in-house.
So, I feel push back on price when selling sometimes. Often times, organizations will simply leave a position empty than pay the 2-3x contractor rates needed to fill these positions, immediately, with me and my team. For those people, developers are NOT worth more than 2-3x an employee rate. They ARE worth the somewhat inflexible price range their HR department is looking to fill people into.
I'm not even sure if this is a good idea (I like an earlier post about how legos sequester carbon) but if it is, why not get started with a meaningful metric that will be achieved in the next 2-3 years? Oh, that's right, because that involves a lot of difficult work, and doesn't generate the nice press releases as predictably.
I seriously want to start a website like "all of the future promises and predictions that people made" where I mirror the promise, store it locally, and then check up on it like 12 years later to see if they kept their promise or if they kept shifting it backwards as a cool announcement since everyone forgot the earlier cool announcement.
Lego is awesome, and I think this is the FIRST promise I've heard them make like this. I think the State of California, and the European democracies, are the worst about pledging to be off carbon/nukes/diesel/crack in the next 15/20/25 years.
The extremely interesting thing is when people reply to my comment, and their replies ALSO show that they did not fully comprehend my reply, when they include information that I already included...
This helps me realize that not everyone should have a voice that is listened to. Many people do not actually read, or if they do, understand. Their voices are used for sound a fury, signifying nothing.
The problem is I don't want any central authority deciding whom has a voice, and whom does not.
Welcome to the United States.
Where's the actual article? The link in the headline has nothing to do with the quoted text. All the articles listed are just about Chinese economic activity.
If you scroll down, the article under discussion is linked to here.
How about some actual moderation, slashdot...?
Do you want the different governments, or you, to be in the business of determining what companies need?
This sounds like he tried, and SUCCEEDED! Unless you forgot to tell how he was subsequently audited, and had to pay a bunch of fines.
In my city, different chamber of commerces can promise whatever they want. The city is not bound to respect those promises. If city officials do not want to respect those concessions, I doubt they have to. Then Amazon can move down the list to another city, which likely will.
If I were Amazon, I would accept promises from all finalists, start with the best promises, and negotiate all deals in parallel. Then, it's possible to use concessions from one party against another party, even out of context. This is probably what Amazon is going to do, since they have people that have studied game theory more than I have working for them.
How have you directly complied with these laws? How? You speak about "should" be but my experiences with what "is" are somewhat different. I spent 10-16 hours getting my Colorado state employer documents in order - unemployment insurance, worker's compensation insurance, and state withholding taxes. My business is based in the state of New Mexico, and hiring an employee in a neighboring state took way more work than I would have liked. This is because the states, and the Federal government, all believe they have a role in protecting workers in the U.S.
My suggestion would be to not mandate workers compensation insurance and unemployment insurance, and instead leave those up to individuals to purchase if they want (exactly as individual retirement accounts are optional here, and have much more faith in them than our Federally managed social security "retirement" plan.) I also prefer the 1099 contractor, as opposed to w2 employee, responsibility with taxes to be on the person getting paid, and not on the person doing the paying. Every country I have researched labor law in typically has this distinction between employee and contractor.
Those are my concrete suggestions, based on running a rental property business for ten years, and a software company for six years.
Do you think it's painless? What country do you live in? I bet your country feels the pain of the oppressive tax burdens in things like unemployment, economic growth, scientific and technical development, and taxes... The only exception to these trade-offs is Norway, when oil prices are high.
These things aren't painless for those that try and build businesses. Even more of a pain than the actual, direct, monetary, costs are complying with all of the crap legislation and bureaucracy. That is the worst for me.
Furthermore, why restrict "us" to those within a country? I think it makes zero sense, from the law of diminishing returns, to "bring ALL up" to bring "us" within industrialized countries "up." It makes more sense to work to bring basically all of Africa up, than any of Europe up, since they are lower and will come up faster/cheaper/better.
I believe the reason we do not take this approach is because Africans do not vote in "our" elections. Many of the people "we" are bringing up (40% by your quote) already don't pay taxes - but they vote.
I don't see a problem in need of a solution - only a potential future problem predicted in much the same way that futurists, fortune tellers, divinators, politicians and con men have been predicting the future for quite some. This is not foresight attempting to come up with a pragmatic solution before a problem becomes major - it is a solution in search of a problem. In every instance I've replace a portion of a job, the capable person who's job I replaced has thanked me for creating a program to do the most mindless, boring, portions of their job. When someone was fired, it was actually for not working towards automating their own job quickly enough, freeing them to work on more interesting things. They were fired for being complacent and happy with a mindless job that a machine could do.
I don't actually believe universal basic income would come anywhere close to preventing the *possible* collapse of western society. If that is your goal, I think ecological issues should all be in the top ten. The U.S. unemployment is at 3.6% according to Google. This is SUPER low. Like, historically low. Like, so low that I think it's actually not correct, either due to some kind of crazy hot employment bubble (systemic problem), or tons of discouraged workers stopping looking for a job and/or being stuck in part time solutions (problem with measurements.)
As someone that automates jobs, and builds systems which improve efficiency, I don't want to pay for either a basic income, or a guaranteed job for someone else. If I did, I am pretty sure I could easily move my company, and myself, to one of the Norse countries and do that already. It seems to me that the only way to accomplish either of these would be through the force of law.
It is very, very easy for corporations, and high net worth individuals (i.e. the people building the automation) to simply go someplace where these proposed laws don't apply. This is exactly what has happened with many, many, many jobs as the laws in the United States became more 'progressive.' This is what continues to happen with the western democracies, as they have even more laws in line with these types of things. I am arguing the along the correlation/causation line, which might not be super strong, but I think it is.
I am constantly reminded of what a pain it is to comply with U.S. labor laws. I spent about 15 hours (Jira for time tracking!) dealing with the unemployment insurance hiring a W2 in a state other than my own, and those kind of things are draining on my psyche. Thankfully my accountant is awesome and happy with all the bizarre challenges, and does not charge me an arm and a leg for this kind of stuff. These types of things make me want to continue to develop my offshore team, which has exactly the same labor protections as buying a ream of paper from Walmart.
These things aren't free - Obama basically destroyed the healthcare industry in the U.S. by trying to give people 'free' healthcare (mine costs 3x as much, and many older people are spending more on healthcare than on housing - i.e. my parents.) A universal basic income will be funded through some kind of tax, and even with the argument that all the other social programs can go away (which they cannot, unless you are OK with letting someone starve when they spend their UBI on lottery tickets at the beginning of the month.) There will be significant costs associated with both a universal basic income, or any kind of make-work project. There is no such thing as a free lunch, even with hypothetical magical AI robots. The scary thing is that people discussing such issues, and more importantly voting on such issues, seem to lack any notion of economic repercussion.
Are you interested in personally funding something like this? I.E. patronage. I think this is a no, due to the detachment, but I figure I should ask. We (my software company) could build this out for somewhere in the low tens of thousands of dollars range, without any support from slashdot. As soon as they start adding CAPTCHAs, we'll have problems, but right now there is no technical reason your ideas wouldn't be feasible.
I should have said, "in general" after the first sentence. That was confusing and kind of a weird way to say that.
My father isn't a brain surgeon, but a lung doctor. When a hospital REALLY needs his services, the contracts they offer him reflect this need. He works a lot harder, putting in more hours and splitting his time between his private practice, and other gigs, family, exercise, whatever, with the hospital that needs his service. Eventually, if the situation became bad enough, you'd have all sorts of not-exactly-qualified people offering medical services because the demand was so high. This is what happens during wars. I think the flex within one doctor is somewhere between 100%-200% sustainably, and could likely go up to 300%-400%, since there are something close to 120 waking hours in a week. With pilots, there isn't this kind of flex, since there is governmental action requiring them to not work insane hours. Doctors, especially the older ones, are used to that kind of abuse after their internships. This is actually how hospitals deal with these problems now - they work their interns like slaves.
Likewise, when the price for wheat drops significantly, it starts being used for all sorts of bizarre things.
There is no such thing as a shortage, or a surplus. Those two things only exist within a price point, at a specific point in time. With enough money, you could buy ALL the pilots. I am pretty sure the very last pilot would be very expensive. Then, after a few more years, there would be even more pilots, and then they'd be even more expensive. Eventually this would stabilize, as even if there were one extremely rich person with all the money, not everyone could be a pilot. Some people would have to grow food, and work on airplanes.
This article seems to miss an important point - regional airlines choose not to pay as much for pilots, so they will feel a 'shortage' at or below their preferred price point, for a specific time period.
I understand your suggestion, and thanks for the recap of your previous comments. I can think of five such financial models to support this development - crowdsourcing, patronage, advertising driven revenue, approaching slashdot (internal development) and open sourcing it.
Crowdsourcing - effectively begging for donations from large groups of people to accomplish your goal. Think kickstarter. I don't think anyone is going to start writing code until this is funded.
Patronage - effectively begging for donations from a small group of people to accomplish your goal. Think patreon.com. I don't think anyone is going to start writing code until this is funded.
Advertising driven revenue - This one may, or may not actually be legal. For this, I'd suggest scraping slashdot's content, and then effectively re-creating portions of their website, and implementing a UI on your new website, powered by their data. For funding this now, I only really see individual investors as a way to fund this.
Approaching slashdot - with a very well written proposal, slashdot might consider funding these developments
Open Source - effectively begging for time, instead of money
If you're serious, I'd create some very good specifications and requirements about this, and someone will pick it up. Approaching slashdot with a proposal with specific, deliverable, implementation goals and costs (i.e. a software development contract) is probably how I'd go if I were you.
We're talking about China, right?
No, I am not a mathematician. I published one peer reviewed paper as middle author, and one internal-only government publication also as not anyone important. My education helps me reason about these things, and it's occasionally helpful in system design, but most of the time not really. I don't spend much time on slashdot, so I'm not usually involved in these types of discussions, but your response was interesting to me.
I think your answer is going to need to ultimately be a single value, and not a matrix, since you need to decide where (one value) to place something. You won't be able to place things according to a matrix of answers, unless you take my multiple-views approach even further. That would be cool to click something like "order by funny" and have the page elements float around using something like D3 for animations though. Or order by "makes me feel happy." If you allowed for something like that, then I could see your matrix approach. Otherwise, how will you collapse down your multidimensional answer to a single position within the page? I can see your suggestion as an intermediate representation, but you'll ultimately need a single answer, right?
Oh no, my age term was supposed to be the age of the comment. I can see how you interpreted it the way you did, since my notation is fairly terrible. That was an attempt to reorder the comments based on their comment age, like you suggested initially. I would actually not factor for the age of the commenter at all, other than possible in their reputation term. You could do this, and then have a commenter_age_multiplier, that I'd set to zero and maybe you wouldn't.
I am constantly against UI "improvements" being deployed which make things extremely confusing and different, in an attempt to make them better. Often times I would rather keep a crappy UI that I am familiar with, rather than an improved UI that I am not, since the cost of learning the new UI outweighs any benefits of the new UI. However, I see how rolling this out in an effort to actually shape the discussion would probably not lend itself to an optional, other, UI. This is really just a view on the data though.
The furthest I MIGHT take this charity idea is to see if I can pull all comments for a story using an API, then visualize each comment as a circle using D3, with the replies inside. I could then make the different dots (and contained dots) float up, or down, based on whatever kind of weight terms I want. Since I see no possible way to make money on this, I probably won't even make it that far.
It is interesting thinking about all the different ways discussions can be ranked.
OK, so something like (previous_reputation * pr_multiplier) * (current_comment_ranking * ccr_multiplier) * (1 / age * a_multiplier)?
If pr_multiplier was adjusted 1, and there were some kind of ceiling on it, then you'd be able to avoid using previous reputation to dominate. As long as the age term had some kind of a floor to 1, you'd prevent bots from commenting less than a second and blowing up that term. The middle term is probably already what's in play, but I don't think that's quite what you suggested. I think for the middle term to be as you stated, you'd need to enumerate the different categories of comments, and line it up with an evaluation of how much the story corresponds to that category, and then adjust that multiplier per category to line up with that story. Is something like (current_comment_rank_funny * article_funny_percentage) for each category what you mean here? I'm also not super familiar with the comment ranking, so I'm not sure how the different categories of comment ranks exist.
The only thing I would suggest is changing the way you describe this idea. I wouldn't use the term "first" and instead I'd use the term "top." I don't like how you are eliminating the temporal constraints on "first" even though I think this is a good idea, and I can see your point about how the "top" comment oftentimes does dominate the thread.
Ideally, with enough money, I'd have my software company implement both views - your proposed ranked view, and then a chronological view. I'd set your view to the default, and see what happens, while allowing people to still switch back to the classic view (and set the default view as a user configurable option, on log-in so they don't get annoyed always having to switch it back if they hate your idea.) Then I'd measure how many people switched back to the old view, and left it there, as a percentage of the total.
How would you prefer to define "quality?"