I guess I don't understand what a company like Air BnB would want with specialists like that. I thought it would be up to the house owners to figure out what the demographics are.
AirBnB makes their money from getting people into rooms. Yes, they could leave the science to homeowners, but it's not like most homeowners are going to be particularly skilled at that field (or have access to larger data sources). So it's in AirBnB's interest to do the science.
Nearly nine in 10 people say they are ready to make changes to their standard of living if it would prevent future climate catastrophe
Well of course they would. Faced with a clear path to avert catastrophe, people will take it. If you tell people "do this thing, or your life will be ruined", they'll probably do that thing. The problem is that the path to averting climate catastrophe is too abstract from peoples' daily lives. Right now it's more like "do this thing, and depending on whether or not other people do similar things, your life might not be ruined."
Avoiding catastrophic climate change will take a huge collective action. But since each of our individual actions have a small effect on their own, it's hard for our brains to balance the pain/cost of those actions with a benefit. Few people are willing to lower their standard of living without a clear link between their particular sacrifice and avoiding catastrophe.
I'm not sure I'm providing any insight into how to solve this problem, but rather that it's not too surprising to see the results as worded.
Driving my car is one of the only things I enjoy in life. Please don't take that away. My job is a nightmare, my wife is a witch and my kinds don't give me a second's peace. Literally the only time of the day I can get some peace and quiet is commuting to and from work.
Of course a self-driving car might allow for bringing masturbation time into the mix, so maybe I spoke a little too soon here.
Kind of sounds like you need to make some changes in your life...
My big problem with USB-C is that there is a ton of confusion about what it actually is.
USB-C is always sold as "super fast", "allows high-wattage, bi-drectional charging", "high data volume for video and the like", etc. etc. But USB-C is just a connector format. So I bought a motherboard with a USB-C port thinking I was getting all these great benefits, only to realize that the port I got was USB 3.0/USB 3.1 Gen 1 (what bozo decided that the confusing renaming of 3.0 to 3.1 Gen 1 was a good idea???), no better than the other 3.0 ports I had always had.
And this confusion happened to me, someone who is very technically-inclined. Even a ton of the tech sites I read when trying to sort this issue out conflate USB-C (the connector) with USB 3.1 Gen 2 (the spec). How is the general public supposed to figure this out?
Most, if not all states only allow one price change per 24 hour period.
My Canadian province actually only allows prices to change every two weeks, and sets the range of prices that they can be (based on market conditions). Basically it is an attempt to protect small, independent, rural gas stations by making it so the big chains can't sell at a deep discount (or even loss) to put them out of business.
For some reason, when the system was proposed people were really excited because they thought the government would somehow legislate lower gas prices (how in the world people thought that was going to happen, I do not know), when in reality it's about stable gas prices.
So how many semi trailers will it take to build a single house?? Think about it. Think about the price of fuel. Maybe if fully automated and fully electric but not any time soon.
The same number that it currently takes to ship sticks + plywood + tar paper + insulation + etc. etc. to the build site?
Meh, I still think it will be cost prohibitive. As an architect, I can assure you that not every roof is the same, and not every detail is the same. You can't treat a membrane roof, for instance, the same as a metal roof. Nor can you treat flashing at a chimney the same as flashing at a dormer. They're simple to implement in theory, but in practice more challenging. Impossible? Ha--never. It will happen eventually. But the cost to do customized work will be insane.
Oh no doubt that the diversity in existing roofs will be a challenge. That's why we'll probably standardize more than we do now. So in some ways, this will very much limit customized work in terms of the details. At the same time, it will quite possibly expand the customization options in terms of shape. With digital fabrication you, as an architect, could upload your CAD models to the factory and the bots will cut the roof to the shapes you spec'd. The panels would be made of the same stuff from house to house, but how they are configured to shape the space inside could be very flexible.
I"m just picturing six people trying to get heavy equipment onto a roof, instead of the two that could do a roof int he morning with shingles like before. Metal roofs are more expensive because steel is expensive and difficult to work with, and I can't see that changing much.
Whenever I see people say "we could never automate this because..." it's almost entirely based on the idea that automation has to do the work exactly as we do it now.
Why would you put robots on a roof to do the job? More likely you'd manufacture the whole roof assembly with robots in a factory, and then just plunk it on top. Sure, this will be difficult for existing buildings, but it doesn't take too much imagination to see how we could shift the way we build buildings to make sense in a world of automation.
We are already moving that way with things like structurally insulated panels (SIPs). Instead of framing walls on site, insulating them, and then putting up OSB/plywood, SIPS are manufactured in a factory and then just trucked to the site and literally tipped up and bolted down. They already have all the channeling for running wires and the like. So has automation eliminated the need for people here? No, but it has greatly reduced the amount of labour needed. No more framers, less work electricians, etc.
If you can't see how something could be automated, you're not trying hard enough.
There is also the fact that it takes more energy to make a solar panel than the panel will get back in its lifetime.
That is incredibly false. Going on basic logical analysis alone, if what you say were the case, they would never have a positive monetary return on investment unless you were manufacturing them in a location with rock-bottom energy prices (say Iceland) and using them in places with sky-high energy prices (Hawaii?). Years of installations in a huge variety of situations shows that they DO have a positive monetary return over their life.
If you want actual data you can search EROEI ("Energy Returned on Energy Invested")
So instead 'green pans' and 'copper pans' are all the rage.
To be fair, those green pans where they use a ceramic lining instead of Teflon are actually really amazing. They are wayyyy harder to scratch and just as non-stick. I will never buy a teflon pan again, and I'm not someone who cares at all about the whole fear-mongering.
The only people who it benefits are those who use it. I shouldn't have to pay for you to have public internet access.
I'm not sure that's entirely true. Society, by and large, has moved online. For example, most job postings (if posted at all) are online. There is a societal value (including to you) in having people able to access those job postings. Also, many government activities (information dissemination, license renewal, etc.) can be provided more efficiently online, saving the government (and by extension, you) money. I'm sure there are many other examples of how other people having internet benefits you. It might not be the most direct benefit, but that doesn't mean it's not there.
Electric cars cause emissions- they're just externalized at the generating station.
Surely, the resident nerds of Slashdot can understand the benefits of abstraction. By externalizing your fuel source to the grid you're basically creating a structured program. You can just put include 'fuel_source.php' at the start of you "program". Then the power engineers can deal with making a more efficient fuel_source function and you automatically get any improvements pushed out to you.
Strictly speaking, a lot of boats have been hybrid for quite some time now (diesel-electric propulsion, for example).
Trains too. If they're not pure electric drawn from overhead lines (or third rail), they're almost certainly a diesel-electric hybrid. To the GP: In the case of trains (and with the ferries), it's not like a hybrid car where the ICE drives the wheels and electric motors assist. Instead, the train is electric drive, and just happens to carry around its own diesel power plant.
Absolutely, assuming it's roughly on par with real meat in terms of cost and quality.
It's really kind of crazy that we grow all this food to feed a whole animal, when we only want part of the animal. Plus there's the whole ethical question; I tend to not get too hung up about it, but given the choice between meat where an animal was raised in a feedlot and killed vs meat that was grown, I'll choose the latter.
Realistically, I imagine it will be a little while before they can adequately replace a t-bone steak, but I can't seeing it being too hard to replace the meat in any processed or semi-processed meat product. So we'll probably be eating this as chicken fingers first, then as ground beef. Maybe someday they'll figure out how to fully replicate all meats. Then it could conceivably be better than a natural t-bone steak. Perfectly marbled meat with no gristle? Yes please!
Well, in case of meat production — or indeed any other Earth-bound activity — no water is lost. Zero. Nada. So, what is the quoted statement supposed to mean?
Yes, the net amount of water stays the same on Earth, but some water is more useful than others. E.g. fresh is more useful than salty, treated is more useful than not, a unit of water in the Sahara is more useful than a unit of water in Canada. When we "use" water, we often turn useful water into not useful water, or move it from a place where it's useful to a place where it's less useful.
Plus there's the issue where much of the water we "use" comes from groundwater sources, which can be completely non-renewable on any sort of human timescale.
My friends and I had our first try at D&D with 4th edition (4e). We were having fun until we hit our first combat, which turned into an hour long slog for a relatively basic fight. The combat rules were just so unnecessarily complex and tedious. Our group folded shortly after that.
5e came out and we decided to give it another go. I've been DMing. The DM guide for 5e is really big on, "do what's fun!" and encourages you to not worry too much about getting every rule perfectly right (assuming your group isn't one who gets their enjoyment from rules). I know my group doesn't love combat, and gets their fun from NPC interactions. So I keep combat infrequent, and if it ever seems like it's dragging I'll take some shortcuts to end the battle earlier. We're having an absolute blast, and I say this as someone with extremely limited free time.
Yes, because you're imposing a 10-character upper limit, which nobody in their right mind would suggest.
I.e. about 50 percent of the websites I see that require passwords. Just because it's crazy, doesn't mean people/websites don't do it (that's basically the gist of this whole story). A good number of websites I see still actually require one specific length of password (e.g. your password MUST be 6 characters long).
It does not pretty much guarantee the same, but even if that were true and for some bizarre reason those were the ONLY substitutions people ever made... It's still the same password space as all letters.
Doesn't it? The theory of including a requirement for a symbol is that increases the number of characters, and therefore the number permutations a particular length of password could represent. But in reality, I'm not sure it does. You can pretty much guarantee people won't just add a symbol in addition to the letters they were going to use, but will instead replace replace 'a' with an '@' in fairly predictable manner, with no net increase in the actual number permutations (e.g. P@ssword instead of Password).
Password has to be between 6 and 10 characters? Great, that cuts out a huge range of potential passwords.
I once had a website password checker kick back several generation attempts because the password was too long. I think their limit was 8 characters.
After manually putting my lower jaw back in place, I decided not to use that website anymore.
Yeah that's just lazy. "We didn't feel like designing our database to accept strings longer than 8 characters... have fun with your 'security' ". I mean, obviously there has to be some limit, for database purposes. But it should be 64+.
I've always thought password rules probably made it easier to crack passwords. Password has to be between 6 and 10 characters? Great, that cuts out a huge range of potential passwords. Password has to have a symbol? That pretty much guarantees 'a' will be '@' and 'i' will be '!'.
Nothing in TFS explains to me why, "Music Charts No Longer Make Sense". Is it because an artist overtook himself on the charts? Is it because they've had to change their chart system to keep up with technology?
Maybe charts don't make sense anymore, maybe they still do, but I have no idea whether they do or not from reading TFS.
You do know there are other email services, right? Services that might not have a cap on send file sizes. In other words, just because Gmail limits sending files over 25 MB, doesn't mean a 50 MB cap couldn't be useful to receive files from other senders.
Technical progress makes the poor and middle-classes richer. The pie gets twice as big, everyone gets like 1.9x as much, and the rich get 2.1x as much, and people go, "Oh god, the wealth gap is growing! Rich get richer while the poor get poorer!" because their slice appears to be a smaller radius of the (now-enormous) pie than it was of the (then-anemic) one they had before. They all get fat off cheap calories when their great-grandparents were struggling to get barely enough food to survive, and they still bitch that they're poorer than the hard-working men of the 1820s.
Yes, we are all getting richer, which is great. I read a great book a while ago and this was basically the gist of it. The name escapes me at the moment.
However, that doesn't mean a growing wealth gap is a good thing. Wealth drives quality of life (which is generally getting better for all), but it also is pretty much a direct proxy for power. As that wealth gap grows, power is concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. Power--unlike quality of life-- is a zero sum game; if someone gains it, others lose it. And that is why we should be concerned about a growing wealth gap.
Ah. That is a shame. And that one I don't really understand, because I feel like replaceable battery is a feature that has cache beyond the realms of Slashdot.
Slashdot Mirror
I guess I don't understand what a company like Air BnB would want with specialists like that. I thought it would be up to the house owners to figure out what the demographics are.
AirBnB makes their money from getting people into rooms. Yes, they could leave the science to homeowners, but it's not like most homeowners are going to be particularly skilled at that field (or have access to larger data sources). So it's in AirBnB's interest to do the science.
Nearly nine in 10 people say they are ready to make changes to their standard of living if it would prevent future climate catastrophe
Well of course they would. Faced with a clear path to avert catastrophe, people will take it. If you tell people "do this thing, or your life will be ruined", they'll probably do that thing. The problem is that the path to averting climate catastrophe is too abstract from peoples' daily lives. Right now it's more like "do this thing, and depending on whether or not other people do similar things, your life might not be ruined."
Avoiding catastrophic climate change will take a huge collective action. But since each of our individual actions have a small effect on their own, it's hard for our brains to balance the pain/cost of those actions with a benefit. Few people are willing to lower their standard of living without a clear link between their particular sacrifice and avoiding catastrophe.
I'm not sure I'm providing any insight into how to solve this problem, but rather that it's not too surprising to see the results as worded.
Driving my car is one of the only things I enjoy in life. Please don't take that away. My job is a nightmare, my wife is a witch and my kinds don't give me a second's peace. Literally the only time of the day I can get some peace and quiet is commuting to and from work. Of course a self-driving car might allow for bringing masturbation time into the mix, so maybe I spoke a little too soon here.
Kind of sounds like you need to make some changes in your life...
My big problem with USB-C is that there is a ton of confusion about what it actually is.
USB-C is always sold as "super fast", "allows high-wattage, bi-drectional charging", "high data volume for video and the like", etc. etc. But USB-C is just a connector format. So I bought a motherboard with a USB-C port thinking I was getting all these great benefits, only to realize that the port I got was USB 3.0/USB 3.1 Gen 1 (what bozo decided that the confusing renaming of 3.0 to 3.1 Gen 1 was a good idea???), no better than the other 3.0 ports I had always had.
And this confusion happened to me, someone who is very technically-inclined. Even a ton of the tech sites I read when trying to sort this issue out conflate USB-C (the connector) with USB 3.1 Gen 2 (the spec). How is the general public supposed to figure this out?
Most, if not all states only allow one price change per 24 hour period.
My Canadian province actually only allows prices to change every two weeks, and sets the range of prices that they can be (based on market conditions). Basically it is an attempt to protect small, independent, rural gas stations by making it so the big chains can't sell at a deep discount (or even loss) to put them out of business.
For some reason, when the system was proposed people were really excited because they thought the government would somehow legislate lower gas prices (how in the world people thought that was going to happen, I do not know), when in reality it's about stable gas prices.
So how many semi trailers will it take to build a single house?? Think about it. Think about the price of fuel. Maybe if fully automated and fully electric but not any time soon.
The same number that it currently takes to ship sticks + plywood + tar paper + insulation + etc. etc. to the build site?
Meh, I still think it will be cost prohibitive. As an architect, I can assure you that not every roof is the same, and not every detail is the same. You can't treat a membrane roof, for instance, the same as a metal roof. Nor can you treat flashing at a chimney the same as flashing at a dormer. They're simple to implement in theory, but in practice more challenging. Impossible? Ha--never. It will happen eventually. But the cost to do customized work will be insane.
Oh no doubt that the diversity in existing roofs will be a challenge. That's why we'll probably standardize more than we do now. So in some ways, this will very much limit customized work in terms of the details. At the same time, it will quite possibly expand the customization options in terms of shape. With digital fabrication you, as an architect, could upload your CAD models to the factory and the bots will cut the roof to the shapes you spec'd. The panels would be made of the same stuff from house to house, but how they are configured to shape the space inside could be very flexible.
I"m just picturing six people trying to get heavy equipment onto a roof, instead of the two that could do a roof int he morning with shingles like before. Metal roofs are more expensive because steel is expensive and difficult to work with, and I can't see that changing much.
Whenever I see people say "we could never automate this because..." it's almost entirely based on the idea that automation has to do the work exactly as we do it now.
Why would you put robots on a roof to do the job? More likely you'd manufacture the whole roof assembly with robots in a factory, and then just plunk it on top. Sure, this will be difficult for existing buildings, but it doesn't take too much imagination to see how we could shift the way we build buildings to make sense in a world of automation.
We are already moving that way with things like structurally insulated panels (SIPs). Instead of framing walls on site, insulating them, and then putting up OSB/plywood, SIPS are manufactured in a factory and then just trucked to the site and literally tipped up and bolted down. They already have all the channeling for running wires and the like. So has automation eliminated the need for people here? No, but it has greatly reduced the amount of labour needed. No more framers, less work electricians, etc.
If you can't see how something could be automated, you're not trying hard enough.
It's a decent series, but it still baffles me how many billions Nintendo has made on a karting game.
Probably for the same reasons Settlers of Catan has sold a bajillion copies:
There is also the fact that it takes more energy to make a solar panel than the panel will get back in its lifetime.
That is incredibly false. Going on basic logical analysis alone, if what you say were the case, they would never have a positive monetary return on investment unless you were manufacturing them in a location with rock-bottom energy prices (say Iceland) and using them in places with sky-high energy prices (Hawaii?). Years of installations in a huge variety of situations shows that they DO have a positive monetary return over their life.
If you want actual data you can search EROEI ("Energy Returned on Energy Invested")
So instead 'green pans' and 'copper pans' are all the rage.
To be fair, those green pans where they use a ceramic lining instead of Teflon are actually really amazing. They are wayyyy harder to scratch and just as non-stick. I will never buy a teflon pan again, and I'm not someone who cares at all about the whole fear-mongering.
There's a societal value in having food to eat, but it's not the municipality's role to provide it.
But the government (not necessarily municipalities) does often provide it through social assistance funding and things like food stamps.
The only people who it benefits are those who use it. I shouldn't have to pay for you to have public internet access.
I'm not sure that's entirely true. Society, by and large, has moved online. For example, most job postings (if posted at all) are online. There is a societal value (including to you) in having people able to access those job postings. Also, many government activities (information dissemination, license renewal, etc.) can be provided more efficiently online, saving the government (and by extension, you) money. I'm sure there are many other examples of how other people having internet benefits you. It might not be the most direct benefit, but that doesn't mean it's not there.
Electric cars cause emissions- they're just externalized at the generating station.
Surely, the resident nerds of Slashdot can understand the benefits of abstraction. By externalizing your fuel source to the grid you're basically creating a structured program. You can just put include 'fuel_source.php' at the start of you "program". Then the power engineers can deal with making a more efficient fuel_source function and you automatically get any improvements pushed out to you.
Strictly speaking, a lot of boats have been hybrid for quite some time now (diesel-electric propulsion, for example).
Trains too. If they're not pure electric drawn from overhead lines (or third rail), they're almost certainly a diesel-electric hybrid. To the GP: In the case of trains (and with the ferries), it's not like a hybrid car where the ICE drives the wheels and electric motors assist. Instead, the train is electric drive, and just happens to carry around its own diesel power plant.
Absolutely, assuming it's roughly on par with real meat in terms of cost and quality.
It's really kind of crazy that we grow all this food to feed a whole animal, when we only want part of the animal. Plus there's the whole ethical question; I tend to not get too hung up about it, but given the choice between meat where an animal was raised in a feedlot and killed vs meat that was grown, I'll choose the latter.
Realistically, I imagine it will be a little while before they can adequately replace a t-bone steak, but I can't seeing it being too hard to replace the meat in any processed or semi-processed meat product. So we'll probably be eating this as chicken fingers first, then as ground beef. Maybe someday they'll figure out how to fully replicate all meats. Then it could conceivably be better than a natural t-bone steak. Perfectly marbled meat with no gristle? Yes please!
Well, in case of meat production — or indeed any other Earth-bound activity — no water is lost. Zero. Nada. So, what is the quoted statement supposed to mean?
Yes, the net amount of water stays the same on Earth, but some water is more useful than others. E.g. fresh is more useful than salty, treated is more useful than not, a unit of water in the Sahara is more useful than a unit of water in Canada. When we "use" water, we often turn useful water into not useful water, or move it from a place where it's useful to a place where it's less useful.
Plus there's the issue where much of the water we "use" comes from groundwater sources, which can be completely non-renewable on any sort of human timescale.
My friends and I had our first try at D&D with 4th edition (4e). We were having fun until we hit our first combat, which turned into an hour long slog for a relatively basic fight. The combat rules were just so unnecessarily complex and tedious. Our group folded shortly after that.
5e came out and we decided to give it another go. I've been DMing. The DM guide for 5e is really big on, "do what's fun!" and encourages you to not worry too much about getting every rule perfectly right (assuming your group isn't one who gets their enjoyment from rules). I know my group doesn't love combat, and gets their fun from NPC interactions. So I keep combat infrequent, and if it ever seems like it's dragging I'll take some shortcuts to end the battle earlier. We're having an absolute blast, and I say this as someone with extremely limited free time.
Yes, because you're imposing a 10-character upper limit, which nobody in their right mind would suggest.
I.e. about 50 percent of the websites I see that require passwords. Just because it's crazy, doesn't mean people/websites don't do it (that's basically the gist of this whole story). A good number of websites I see still actually require one specific length of password (e.g. your password MUST be 6 characters long).
It does not pretty much guarantee the same, but even if that were true and for some bizarre reason those were the ONLY substitutions people ever made... It's still the same password space as all letters.
Doesn't it? The theory of including a requirement for a symbol is that increases the number of characters, and therefore the number permutations a particular length of password could represent. But in reality, I'm not sure it does. You can pretty much guarantee people won't just add a symbol in addition to the letters they were going to use, but will instead replace replace 'a' with an '@' in fairly predictable manner, with no net increase in the actual number permutations (e.g. P@ssword instead of Password).
Password has to be between 6 and 10 characters? Great, that cuts out a huge range of potential passwords.
I once had a website password checker kick back several generation attempts because the password was too long. I think their limit was 8 characters.
After manually putting my lower jaw back in place, I decided not to use that website anymore.
Yeah that's just lazy. "We didn't feel like designing our database to accept strings longer than 8 characters... have fun with your 'security' ". I mean, obviously there has to be some limit, for database purposes. But it should be 64+.
I've always thought password rules probably made it easier to crack passwords. Password has to be between 6 and 10 characters? Great, that cuts out a huge range of potential passwords. Password has to have a symbol? That pretty much guarantees 'a' will be '@' and 'i' will be '!'.
Nothing in TFS explains to me why, "Music Charts No Longer Make Sense". Is it because an artist overtook himself on the charts? Is it because they've had to change their chart system to keep up with technology?
Maybe charts don't make sense anymore, maybe they still do, but I have no idea whether they do or not from reading TFS.
Not much useful, then
You do know there are other email services, right? Services that might not have a cap on send file sizes. In other words, just because Gmail limits sending files over 25 MB, doesn't mean a 50 MB cap couldn't be useful to receive files from other senders.
Technical progress makes the poor and middle-classes richer. The pie gets twice as big, everyone gets like 1.9x as much, and the rich get 2.1x as much, and people go, "Oh god, the wealth gap is growing! Rich get richer while the poor get poorer!" because their slice appears to be a smaller radius of the (now-enormous) pie than it was of the (then-anemic) one they had before. They all get fat off cheap calories when their great-grandparents were struggling to get barely enough food to survive, and they still bitch that they're poorer than the hard-working men of the 1820s.
Yes, we are all getting richer, which is great. I read a great book a while ago and this was basically the gist of it. The name escapes me at the moment.
However, that doesn't mean a growing wealth gap is a good thing. Wealth drives quality of life (which is generally getting better for all), but it also is pretty much a direct proxy for power. As that wealth gap grows, power is concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. Power--unlike quality of life-- is a zero sum game; if someone gains it, others lose it. And that is why we should be concerned about a growing wealth gap.
they glued the battery in. :(
Ah. That is a shame. And that one I don't really understand, because I feel like replaceable battery is a feature that has cache beyond the realms of Slashdot.