Astronomers and alien life enthusiasts alike are buzzing over the sudden dimming of an otherwise unremarkable star 1300 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus. KIC 8462852 or "Tabby's star" has dimmed like this several times before, prompting some researchers to suggest that the megastructures of an advanced alien civilization might be blocking its light.
"Some researchers"? Perhaps as a joke. Trillions of stars out there of immense variety and form and the moment someone sees something they don't recognize immediately it clearly must be an alien superstructure... Sigh... It's like the people who see some lights in the sky they aren't familiar with and immediately forget what the "U" in UFO stands for, instead going straight to deciding it must be alien visitors.
And the proper term for "alien life enthusiasts" is "mentally ill person". These are people who for whatever reason WANT it to be an alien whatever and who see aliens and conspiracy theories everywhere with no regard to actual evidence. The pattern recognition parts of their brain are stuck in overdrive and no longer function properly because they are disconnected from the rational parts of their brain.
I don't see why parent post is modded Insightful. To me, it looks like another bitcoin-hate rant, typical of "I-wish-I-were-an-early-adopter" people.
Nope. Don't have the slightest regret for not getting involved in bitcoin. I think bitcoin is a dumb idea and I think it is important to say why so that people can make an informed decision about whether they want to bother with it or not. I'm sure some people have made a lot of money off bitcoin but I largely regard them as charlatans who found a greater fool.
First of all, it's funny to see opinions such as "why Bitcoin is doomed to fail/succeed". I guess strong opinions have their charm, but the truth is *nobody really knows yet*.
I might not know with 100% certainty but that doesn't mean I can't judge based on the evidence. And bitcoin is far from the first attempt at a new currency and it very clearly has certain known characteristics. I'm not about to pretend that the laws of economics have been repealed for the benefit of bitcoin. It has some advantages and a lot of disadvantages. There are many people telling falsehoods about which are which.
If you look at the reason of "why the gold standard failed", literally NONE of these reasons apply to cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin.
Sadly you couldn't be more wrong. Almost all of the criticisms relating to the gold standard apply. Basically the only thing bitcoin solves that was a problem in the gold standard is the problem of physically warehousing and transporting the gold if someone demanded it. Obviously with data this isn't an issue. Otherwise it is little different than any other fixed supply asset being used as a form of currency. Same economic rules apply - only the minor details of use differ. And that's a play we've seen before many many times.
As for "It also prevents central banks from being the arbiters of the money supply"... sorry, am I the only one seeing this as a GOOD thing?
Fixing the money supply to an unalterable amount does not solve the problem of the failures of central banks. In fact by all objective measures it actually increases the problems that central banks we created to deal with. Yes central banks do an imperfect job of managing the money supply. But there is no evidence to reasonably believe that bitcoin or any similar crypto-currency will do the job any better. That is just an unsupported pipe dream by bitcoin supporters.
The thing people seem to fail understanding is that Bitcoins are VERY FINE-GRAINELY splittable.
So is gold. Down to the atom if desired. You're failing to illustrate a difference. You can split a dollar in sub penny amounts too and it's done all the time down to 5-6 decimal points in many contexts.
And, in case anybody is even considering that, I refuse to enter into the debate "BTC is fake and without any value, unlike real currencies and gold", because that's just moron.
Bitcoin isn't fake. I just don't think it is a smart idea. It's proponents generally support it for either ideological reasons (typically unsupported by evidence) or sometimes for nefarious purposes. Proponents typically claim it is a cheaper way to exchange funds but that's only true if you don't adjust for risk. It's not widely accepted, has substantial deficiencies as a medium of exchange, is an unstable store of value, is based on still-unproven technology, and has a host of other serious issues. I haven't heard a single argument that I find credible that bitcoin will be the magical solution to the problems of central banks or fiat currencies. To date it largely seems to be attractive to those engaged in activities that they would prefer to remain untraceable to law enforcement and/or taxing authorities.
Republic of China had two decades of economic growth while having a deliberately set deflationary monetary policy.
I presume you are talking about Taiwan. Please cite your source for "deliberately set deflationary monetary policy". The Taiwan Dollar exchange rate has varied quite a bit on Forex markets in relation to the dollar but never consistently deflationary.
This is a country that now supplies 90% of world's microchips
Taiwan does supply the most but the number is no where near 90% and to my knowledge never has been.
Bit coin is slowly limiting the supply of new bit coin (by design), which drives up the price of bitcoin.
Correct. This is because the makers of bitcoin were under the (incorrect) belief that having no ability to adjust the money supply quickly (ala the gold standard) is beneficial and failed to understand why such a system failed. Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
So every time you go to buy a good or service you spend less bitcoin because its value has increased.
Not necessarily true. Just because the supply of bitcoins is (roughly) fixed it doesn't mean the demand for them is fixed. The price can and does go both up and down with great regularity.
I see a problem emerging when someone says they want to get paid in a fixed amount of bitcoin per hour.
That would be no different than saying you want to be paid a fixed number of dollars per hour. Inflation/deflation are real things with real consequences. Doesn't matter if you are talking about bitcoins or dollars. The difference of course is that you can buy most things with dollars but very few things with bitcoins so you are experiencing exchange rate risk in addition to simple inflation/deflation.
How many of the people here complaining about others buying "too much car" then go home to their glass houses to fire up their overclocked 5GHz i7700k processor, dual 1080Ti monster gaming machines?
A reasonable point though one should point out that even the most power hungry PC doesn't consume anywhere near the amount of fuel a car does and the pollution metrics aren't even close. Nevertheless it is hypocritical.
I know people here in Japan with 800+HP cars who have drag raced on public roads.
I know people in the US who have done that. It's not legal either place for very good reasons because it isn't safe and cannot be made safe.
Late nights, low traffic, straight roads, experience from drag racing closed tracks AND the street, roll cages, etc....yeah, it can be reasonably safe.
Bullshit. It's barely "reasonably safe" on a proper drag strip where they have actual safety equipment like fire trucks and EMTs. It is never "reasonably safe" on public roads no matter how much you rationalize it. Your argument is akin to arguing that drunk driving is safe because most of the time people don't get killed. It's a faulty analysis of the risks involved. Drag racing on public roads is a great way to find yourself in jail when someone gets hurt - which happens with regularity. Spend 20 seconds on google if you need actual examples.
Also, newsflash: EVERYONE who is even born in an industrialized country is taking a Cleveland Steamer on the chest of the environment, just by existing.
That's a pathetic excuse for trying to justify purchasing an 800HP gas powered car.
Considering that automation/robots/AI are making human labor obsolete...
Umm, what kind of bullshit are you talking about now? This has nothing to do with the topic at hand nor is it actually true.
I'm not advocating genocide, I'm advocating reduced birthrates, globally.
People were saying that back in the 90s. Heck, they were saying that in the late 70s.
And they were right. Internal combustion engines have improved notably (and will continue to improve) but even so the differences from a 1970s engine to a modern one are modest improvements. Their efficiency has risen a few percent and literally cannot go substantially higher because they are reaching the thermodynamic limits of the materials available to us. Even using turbochargers and other efficiency aids most ICEs have an average efficiency around 20% and even in the best cases cannot get much above 35-45%. They are limited by the material properties of the engines and the various operational tradeoffs. Electric engines are typically upwards of 90%-98% efficient which is an efficiency no ICE can hope to achieve or even approach. While I'm hugely oversimplifying the efficiency comparisons the point is that we know for a fact we cannot make an ICE that is even close to the efficiency of an electric motor and we've known that for a century. The reason we haven't already switched is because battery technology has only now reached usable levels of power/weight and cost.
Thermodynamics is a harsh mistress. We have for all practical purposes reached the thermodynamic limits of ICEs so to make substantial improvements we will have to move to a different technology. Baring something unforeseen, electric motors appear to be what will replace (or supplement) the internal combustion engine for most vehicles. The limitation on electric motors is fuel storage density which is a problem with far more headroom than trying to eek out a few more percent gains from ICEs.
You could have stopped right there since there is no such thing as a 100% efficient engine. It was a rhetorical example to highlight a point, not a physics problem.
The thing is, not everyone is cheap. Some of us have disposable cash, and like to enjoy it. Why is that suddenly something wrong?
Who said it was suddenly wrong? It's always been wasteful.
Our whole lives are NOT about the greater good, if it is..then something very troubling has happened to culture in the US.
Nobody ever claimed they were. But you also cannot credibly argue that you can safely utilize those 800HP on normal roads or that you aren't needlessly polluting. You might have the legal right to do it but don't pretend you aren't taking a big old shit on the environment.
I'm not saying "fuck your neighbor" but geez, folks, life is short....no reason to shame someone that is enjoying the freedoms this country offers (or used to offer at least).
Yes you are saying "fuck your neighbor" in a very real sense. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you aren't imposing consequences on others. If you buy a high horsepower car you necessarily are polluting more and probably increasing some safety risks as well. It's legal but to pretend you aren't putting a burden on others is to be willfully naive.
I have disposable income, and I have never looked at gas mileage as one of the parameters on whether I buy a car or not. I don't like SUV's personal....I've only owned 2 seat sports cars in my life
I have disposable income too but I don't see that as an excuse to not give a shit about the world around me.
People need to face it...not everyone lives with austerity as the major component of their mindset. And that is not a bad thing....
We could not disagree more on that point. I'm not suggesting we all move into the woods and live primitive lives but being responsible with the resources we all share is important.
I never understood this fascination with having stuff you can't use to its fullest extent.
Same reason people buy ludicrously expensive Rolex watches. To show off. It's conspicuous consumption in most cases. Muscle cars however do have one quasi-practical aspect depending on your perspective. They are good at straight line acceleration which is really the only kind of fun thing you can do on normal roads. Basically they do a burnout between stoplights.
According to the summary, "The median time it took for a vehicle to go from 0 to 60 miles per hour was halved, from almost 14 seconds to seven," so in this case more HP does mean faster, or at least, means faster to reach cruising speed.
More HP will get you to speed faster provided you do not exceed the traction limits of your tires. That's why simply putting a bigger engine in a car may not result in substantial performance gains unless attention is also paid to the tires and suspension and traction control systems.
Back in the '70s I drove an old (60s vintage) Volkswagen Beetle that used to impress people with its great gas mileage: 26 miles per gallon.
That's because you were comparing it mostly against cars that were designed without fuel economy as a consideration. I drove a '76 Impala many years ago which got something like 16mpg on a good day. The beetle was a complete crap car but it was small and light so compared to the land yachts of the day it seemed efficient.
What I drive now is bigger, more comfortable, safer, faster, and in short better in every possible way, and still gets almost twice the mileage.
Engines have improved a lot in the last 40 years but they aren't going to get dramatically better. If you want to realize significant fuel efficiency gains you will have to go to something based on a different technology. Most likely that will be electric motors whether in the form of a hybrid or EV. No general purpose ICE can touch an electric motor for fuel economy at a given horsepower in most circumstances.
Those Hellcats are major guzzlers. And those tires aren't cheap.
True though you must admit that anyone buying one doesn't give a rip about fuel economy. They buy them to go fast and impress other similarly minded people. Fuel economy doesn't even enter into the picture.
We can't have both ? Make it very efficient, all while allowing more headroom for power. That's how you use technology.
Not at the same time. You can have horsepower or fuel efficiency but not both beyond a certain point. If you increase horsepower with a 100% efficient engine you necessarily are increasing fuel consumption. But engines aren't 100% efficient so once you reach the limits of current efficiency you have to make a trade off between horsepower or efficiency. You can increase one or the other but not both at the same time. The only way to increase both is to develop/use technology that is more efficient at translating fuel into movement.
This is why hybrids and/or EVs will (probably) eventually win out over internal combustion. Internal combustion engines are remarkably inefficient and unlikely to improve substantially. To move the efficiency limit more than marginally you have to switch technologies and electric motors are significantly more fuel efficient for a given power output in most cases. The limitations on EVs are in fuel infrastructure rather than performance. As that limitation gets pushed back (better batteries, faster charging, etc) then ICE loses regardless of whether you want fuel efficiency or power.
If a patent creates a monopoly, why wouldn't they just use a pricing model that sets the price for the good at a level that supports paying the extended patent fees?
Monopolies are not inherently profitable. Just because you have a patent (a de-facto monopoly) doesn't mean it is worth billions. You can set whatever price you want but that doesn't mean people will pay it. That's why a graduated payment system makes sense. It clears out the patents that aren't commercially valuable in a reasonable amount of time and it creates use it or lose it incentives without having to bother with trying to determine if it is being "used" in some productive fashion. Once the value of a patent is exceeded by the cost of the payments it becomes public domain. This incentivizes economically valuable patents and makes holding large numbers of mostly worthless patents too costly to justify.
A simpler method of controlling hoarded intellectual property: Three years after being granted, if a patent is not used in a product it is held to be "idle" and demonstrating an idle patent becomes an affirmative defense in a patent violation lawsuit.
That's not simpler at all and it ignores several realities. First, all you are doing is incentivizing a bunch of bogus "products" to show that the patent is being "used" to get around your proposal. Don't doubt for a second that this would absolutely happen. Second, you have to implement a complicated and expensive review system. A payment system is FAR simpler and easier to administer and has the desired outcome without having to make subjective judgements about whether something is being used or now. Third, some items that get patented (like drugs or medical equipment) take considerable time to bring to market because of safety and efficacy concerns. It might take a decade or more to be able bring a real product to market after the research is done and patent granted. Fourth, you have to define what "being used in a product" actually means. That's not nearly as easy as it sounds and is positively loaded with opportunities for bad judgement.
I agree with your intent but I think proposals to judge whether a patent is being used are doomed to failure. A payment schedule is a MUCH easier way to achieve the desired end result.
Every patent that has been granted in the last 20 years that is not actively being used should be forced to go up for auction.
Ok let's go with that for a moment. Define "actively being used" and tell me who is going to monitor all these patents for activity. I think you are going to find that to be a LOT harder than you think.
I think a better idea is to have an exponential patent renewal fee. Anyone who gets a patent has to pay an annual fee. The fee is say $100 the first year (indexed for inflation) and it doubles every year after that. The patent remains valid as long as the fees get paid. This way patents that are actually valuable get used and less valuable patents enter the public domain sooner. It wouldn't be hard to maintain the patent for 5-10 years but after that it becomes very expensive. There is no point in paying the patent fees to hold a patent that brings in insufficient value. This would mean that by year 25 a patent would have to be worth in excess of $1 billion to be worth paying the fees to maintain. You can adjust the length of the average patent by adjusting the starting price.
If you want to make it interesting you could make it so that the patent holder gets first rights to pay the patent but if they decline to pay it, it goes up for auction with a starting price at the fee the patent holder would have had to pay. If someone buys the patent then they get to continue the payment schedule.
Been a premium Spotify user ever since and never looked back.
Nothing wrong with that but what do you plan to do if/when Spotify goes belly up? Not saying it will or won't but it's certainly a realistic possibility since Spotify has never to my knowledge made a profit.
I disagree strongly that streaming will kill stored music. It will complement it nicely but it's not a replacement for many people. Streaming is useless in circumstances where you don't have a reliable or fast internet connection (like on a plane) or if you are data limited for some reason. It also ties you to a business which you may or may not be interested in subscribing to. Plus one of the nice things about stored music is that it can't be taken away from you very easily.
Speaking solely for myself even a relatively cheap streaming service would be a waste of money for me - I simply wouldn't use it enough to justify the cost. (I dropped Netflix for exactly that reason and I watch more video than I listen to music) And I'm not unique in that regard. Streaming has some real advantages and I think it has a big future but it's not going to kill stored music.
...I would still advise that you read the Liturgy.
Liturgy is ritual rather than a bit of writing but I'll assume you are talking about the various catholic holy texts. I've read more of it than I care to admit. And it was largely preposterous crap meant to impress the credulous. The only value in reading it is so you can understand something about what the poor deluded followers of the church are rambling on about.
Some of the best writing ever came from the Catholic church. Even if they can't live by their own rules, it doesn't invalidate the rules.
It's impossible to actually exist by the rules of the church because they are illogical and self-contradictory and reflect values of people from a different time and place.
I also disagree you your assertion of the quality of the writing but that's not an objective critique on my part, more of an aesthetic judgement. The content of the liturgy on the other hand is objectively crap. Mostly made up fables that con men are trying with all their might to justify in order to gain power over the credulous.
Religion and science go together wonderfully as long as the other doesn't try to diletantly invade the domain of the other.
They do not go together wonderfully because religion cannot help but attempt to instruct people about the world around them. There is no way to entirely separate the claims religion makes regarding the material world around us and the human experience from those that science makes. This is why religion continues to try to limit scientific thinking because it reduces the ability of organized religions to dole out made up explanations for how the world works. Their "business model" depends on it. The problem religions have is that you don't actually need religion for dealing with "why" questions or the "how". Religion has nothing useful to contribute there. All religion has are farcical fables rather than actual answers. And they are desperately trying to keep the credulous from understanding this reality.
For religion to not intrude on science, religion would have to withdraw so far from daily human reality as to no longer be a meaningful part of human life. Religions had evolutionary utility at one point because they helped people organize into tribes which were useful for survival. The evolutionary utility has long since passed but it's hard to get rid of religion at this point because of our obvious predisposition towards it.
If time didn't exist within that point, if the gravity was so strong nothing could escape, then *nothing* could happen, within a basic understanding of relatively. For anything to happen, for the big bang to happen, you need either something outside pf physics (something meta-physical) or certain laws of quantum physics must be present in a very particular way.
Sigh... Just because you don't understand the physics of something doesn't mean that you need to invoke a deity to explain it. You are thinking of the big bang like a conventional explosion. It isn't. This is well trodden ground by physicists and no meta-physics is required.
Biblically, when God is asked who he is, the answer is basically "I am what it timeless" or "I am what has always been and always will be" (English doesn't have exactly the right words because we give several meanings to the word "is/am" Spanish comes closer with es vs esta). Also "I am the truth". So God states he is, essentially, timeless truth. Whatever has always been true, that's God.
So you are making a god of the gaps argument. Whatever we cannot explain currently must be god. Curious how "truth" from religions only seems to come in the form of 2000 year old holy books full of preposterous stories.
And the physicists say that *before* the big bang can happen, quantum physics must *already* be true.
No physicist I've ever met has said anything of the sort, at least in the sense you are implying. Not one of them pretends to know what the laws of physics were prior to the big bang or even for some short duration after. That is currently beyond our ability to model and predict. Quantum physics as we understand it likely would have no meaning prior to the big bang and we certainly have no testable models to evaluate.
Quantum physics must be timeless truth in order to get the big bang, or else the big bang has to be caused by something beyond physics, something meta-physical.
Wrong again. Quantum physics is a mathematical model of what we observe about the world around us. A well tested model but a model all the same. It is not some "timeless truth" especially given that it is an incomplete model and it certainly doesn't imply the existence of anything meta-physical. You are talking the sort of nonsense that sounds convincing to the uneducated and credulous but is easily debunked by anyone who actually has studied the topic.
As I see it science and religion are orthogonal unless it's dumbed down Christianity-Lite that sees science as a direct threat to it's very financial business model.
They are not orthogonal unfortunately because for religions to work they have to manipulate how people think. Science is really nothing more than a rigorous method of thinking and it routinely comes into conflict with religions on this point. Islam, Christianity and the rest are also methods of thinking primarily used to control people by received "wisdom". To accomplish this they insist that followers believe certain tenets which are routinely in direct conflict with scientific methods, objective evidence and rational thinking.
Furthermore Islam and Christianity in particular are enthusiastic about trying to add followers, sometimes literally at the point of a sword. Objective rational thinking is a direct threat to this "business model" as you so rightly put it. They prey on the credulous and science is a clear and present danger to their ability to do this.
So no, religion and science are not orthogonal and cannot be as long as religion continues to attempt to tell people what to think about the world around them. For them to be orthogonal religion would have to be considerably more withdrawn from the material world than they are.
Take a look at their bank accounts and other holdings.
That just means they are talented at scamming the credulous and are huge hypocrites. Take one look at Vatican City if you need proof that of their hypocrisy about "helping the poor". They are only interested in finding new angles to take advantage of people.
The church wanting to "talk" about cosmology is a waste of everyone's time because they have nothing useful to add to the discussion. Their idea of cosmology ends with the writings of primitive men who died thousands of years ago. The only interest the church has here is in hoodwinking idiots into thinking they are interested in something more than growing their flock and keeping their gravy train going. An organization which has based their interpretation of the world around a ridiculous fictional book isn't likely to be interested in a rational and evidence based discussion. They are just trying to figure out where the gaps are to continue their god of the gaps argument.
The problem with capitalism is that it should pay people with the hardest jobs more.
The difficulty of a job does not strongly correlate with its economic value. Watch the show Dirty Jobs if you need evidence of this. The value of a job is a direct function of supply and demand for that job. There aren't a lot of people with the skills to be a heart surgeon or a professional athlete. This doesn't imply that those jobs are harder or more valuable than others, merely that the talent is hard to come by. Being a school teacher can in many ways be a harder job but it's not as difficult to find people who can perform adequately.
What this means is that if you want to maximize your earning potential you need to develop skills that are comparatively rare and hard to replicate. My wife is a MD with a fairly rare sub-specialty. As a result she does well financially and has to work less hours than doctors in more common specializations. She has a rare skill that is not easy to replicate by people with less training. It's not that her job is harder but that it's harder to find people who can do it adequately.
While a person up the ladder may have a more difficult job, by this article my suspicions are true and it is not necessarily the case. I also suspect things really get easier as you move up
Some things get easier when you move up the ladder and some get harder. The physical toil and economic stress can be less. But the responsibility tends to become more. If the guy up the ladder fails it affects a lot more than just himself and his family. The CEO is responsible for many families and I can assure you that they feel the pressure. The hours at the top tend to be longer and you have a lot more people watching and judging what you do and how well you do it. If you are the owner of a company and it's your money on the line if things go tits up, that can be enormous stress.
Work under capitalism is a brutal psychological gauntlet -- low pay, long hours, and little to no safety net.
Average wages in the US are among the highest in the world. "Brutal psychological gauntlet"? As opposed to what? The rainbows and daisies that come from living under a dictator?
Capitalism does not imply the lack of a safety net either. There is nothing about capitalism that prevents a safety net from being put in place.
But bosses usually expect you to take some solace in the fact that you're not doing their (supposedly more difficult) job, even if they make more money.
Which bosses? "Usually"? This is a straw man argument. Some managers are more stressed than those who report to them. Sometimes it's the other way around. Furthermore stress is not an easily quantifiable state so comparisons of any sort are fraught.
'Workers in lower status jobs tend to have more stressful working conditions -- they have lower pay, poorer pension arrangements, less control over their work, and report more unsupportive colleagues and managers
He does not argue it from an economic perspective, because he knows that economics can change easily
Economics doesn't change at all. Capitalism works precisely because it harnesses economic self interest in useful ways. It is largely unconcerned with what that self interest is at a given moment. Arguing that free software is a moral issue is fine but to claim that morals don't change is clearly not true. Worse it's routinely not the best approach. Economics is a much more dependable basis for a rational argument. That's not to say that making a moral argument shouldn't be a part of the approach but make no mistake that convincing people to care about software as a moral issue is a challenge that will take generations in the most optimistic of cases. Much of the goals and the same ends can be achieve in other was much more readily and in many cases already have. Linux has moved things along nicely by taking a more pragmatic approach than RMS typically advocates but has achieved many of the same ends.
Morality does not on a whim.
People shift their morals all the time. Morals vary between people and societies. No two people share the exact same moral outlook. The notion that morals are some fixed thing independent of human experience is preposterous nonsense. As recently as 60 years ago it was considered perfectly moral by many people to treat minorities as sub-human via Jim Crow laws. Arguing that morality of individuals doesn't change on a whim is so easy to disprove it's hardly worth the effort. Evangelical christian churches are loaded with people who have made rather radical changes in their moral outlook.
Slashdot Mirror
Astronomers and alien life enthusiasts alike are buzzing over the sudden dimming of an otherwise unremarkable star 1300 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus. KIC 8462852 or "Tabby's star" has dimmed like this several times before, prompting some researchers to suggest that the megastructures of an advanced alien civilization might be blocking its light.
"Some researchers"? Perhaps as a joke. Trillions of stars out there of immense variety and form and the moment someone sees something they don't recognize immediately it clearly must be an alien superstructure... Sigh... It's like the people who see some lights in the sky they aren't familiar with and immediately forget what the "U" in UFO stands for, instead going straight to deciding it must be alien visitors.
And the proper term for "alien life enthusiasts" is "mentally ill person". These are people who for whatever reason WANT it to be an alien whatever and who see aliens and conspiracy theories everywhere with no regard to actual evidence. The pattern recognition parts of their brain are stuck in overdrive and no longer function properly because they are disconnected from the rational parts of their brain.
I don't see why parent post is modded Insightful. To me, it looks like another bitcoin-hate rant, typical of "I-wish-I-were-an-early-adopter" people.
Nope. Don't have the slightest regret for not getting involved in bitcoin. I think bitcoin is a dumb idea and I think it is important to say why so that people can make an informed decision about whether they want to bother with it or not. I'm sure some people have made a lot of money off bitcoin but I largely regard them as charlatans who found a greater fool.
First of all, it's funny to see opinions such as "why Bitcoin is doomed to fail/succeed". I guess strong opinions have their charm, but the truth is *nobody really knows yet*.
I might not know with 100% certainty but that doesn't mean I can't judge based on the evidence. And bitcoin is far from the first attempt at a new currency and it very clearly has certain known characteristics. I'm not about to pretend that the laws of economics have been repealed for the benefit of bitcoin. It has some advantages and a lot of disadvantages. There are many people telling falsehoods about which are which.
If you look at the reason of "why the gold standard failed", literally NONE of these reasons apply to cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin.
Sadly you couldn't be more wrong. Almost all of the criticisms relating to the gold standard apply. Basically the only thing bitcoin solves that was a problem in the gold standard is the problem of physically warehousing and transporting the gold if someone demanded it. Obviously with data this isn't an issue. Otherwise it is little different than any other fixed supply asset being used as a form of currency. Same economic rules apply - only the minor details of use differ. And that's a play we've seen before many many times.
As for "It also prevents central banks from being the arbiters of the money supply"... sorry, am I the only one seeing this as a GOOD thing?
Fixing the money supply to an unalterable amount does not solve the problem of the failures of central banks. In fact by all objective measures it actually increases the problems that central banks we created to deal with. Yes central banks do an imperfect job of managing the money supply. But there is no evidence to reasonably believe that bitcoin or any similar crypto-currency will do the job any better. That is just an unsupported pipe dream by bitcoin supporters.
The thing people seem to fail understanding is that Bitcoins are VERY FINE-GRAINELY splittable.
So is gold. Down to the atom if desired. You're failing to illustrate a difference. You can split a dollar in sub penny amounts too and it's done all the time down to 5-6 decimal points in many contexts.
And, in case anybody is even considering that, I refuse to enter into the debate "BTC is fake and without any value, unlike real currencies and gold", because that's just moron.
Bitcoin isn't fake. I just don't think it is a smart idea. It's proponents generally support it for either ideological reasons (typically unsupported by evidence) or sometimes for nefarious purposes. Proponents typically claim it is a cheaper way to exchange funds but that's only true if you don't adjust for risk. It's not widely accepted, has substantial deficiencies as a medium of exchange, is an unstable store of value, is based on still-unproven technology, and has a host of other serious issues. I haven't heard a single argument that I find credible that bitcoin will be the magical solution to the problems of central banks or fiat currencies. To date it largely seems to be attractive to those engaged in activities that they would prefer to remain untraceable to law enforcement and/or taxing authorities.
i give you B- for economics
Gee thanks professor.
Republic of China had two decades of economic growth while having a deliberately set deflationary monetary policy.
I presume you are talking about Taiwan. Please cite your source for "deliberately set deflationary monetary policy". The Taiwan Dollar exchange rate has varied quite a bit on Forex markets in relation to the dollar but never consistently deflationary.
This is a country that now supplies 90% of world's microchips
Taiwan does supply the most but the number is no where near 90% and to my knowledge never has been.
Bit coin is slowly limiting the supply of new bit coin (by design), which drives up the price of bitcoin.
Correct. This is because the makers of bitcoin were under the (incorrect) belief that having no ability to adjust the money supply quickly (ala the gold standard) is beneficial and failed to understand why such a system failed. Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
So every time you go to buy a good or service you spend less bitcoin because its value has increased.
Not necessarily true. Just because the supply of bitcoins is (roughly) fixed it doesn't mean the demand for them is fixed. The price can and does go both up and down with great regularity.
I see a problem emerging when someone says they want to get paid in a fixed amount of bitcoin per hour.
That would be no different than saying you want to be paid a fixed number of dollars per hour. Inflation/deflation are real things with real consequences. Doesn't matter if you are talking about bitcoins or dollars. The difference of course is that you can buy most things with dollars but very few things with bitcoins so you are experiencing exchange rate risk in addition to simple inflation/deflation.
You must be a real bummer to have at parties.
Is this a party? I didn't see the invite.
How many of the people here complaining about others buying "too much car" then go home to their glass houses to fire up their overclocked 5GHz i7700k processor, dual 1080Ti monster gaming machines?
A reasonable point though one should point out that even the most power hungry PC doesn't consume anywhere near the amount of fuel a car does and the pollution metrics aren't even close. Nevertheless it is hypocritical.
I know people here in Japan with 800+HP cars who have drag raced on public roads.
I know people in the US who have done that. It's not legal either place for very good reasons because it isn't safe and cannot be made safe.
Late nights, low traffic, straight roads, experience from drag racing closed tracks AND the street, roll cages, etc....yeah, it can be reasonably safe.
Bullshit. It's barely "reasonably safe" on a proper drag strip where they have actual safety equipment like fire trucks and EMTs. It is never "reasonably safe" on public roads no matter how much you rationalize it. Your argument is akin to arguing that drunk driving is safe because most of the time people don't get killed. It's a faulty analysis of the risks involved. Drag racing on public roads is a great way to find yourself in jail when someone gets hurt - which happens with regularity. Spend 20 seconds on google if you need actual examples.
Also, newsflash: EVERYONE who is even born in an industrialized country is taking a Cleveland Steamer on the chest of the environment, just by existing.
That's a pathetic excuse for trying to justify purchasing an 800HP gas powered car.
Considering that automation/robots/AI are making human labor obsolete...
Umm, what kind of bullshit are you talking about now? This has nothing to do with the topic at hand nor is it actually true.
I'm not advocating genocide, I'm advocating reduced birthrates, globally.
Holy off topic batman. I think we are done here.
People were saying that back in the 90s. Heck, they were saying that in the late 70s.
And they were right. Internal combustion engines have improved notably (and will continue to improve) but even so the differences from a 1970s engine to a modern one are modest improvements. Their efficiency has risen a few percent and literally cannot go substantially higher because they are reaching the thermodynamic limits of the materials available to us. Even using turbochargers and other efficiency aids most ICEs have an average efficiency around 20% and even in the best cases cannot get much above 35-45%. They are limited by the material properties of the engines and the various operational tradeoffs. Electric engines are typically upwards of 90%-98% efficient which is an efficiency no ICE can hope to achieve or even approach. While I'm hugely oversimplifying the efficiency comparisons the point is that we know for a fact we cannot make an ICE that is even close to the efficiency of an electric motor and we've known that for a century. The reason we haven't already switched is because battery technology has only now reached usable levels of power/weight and cost.
Thermodynamics is a harsh mistress. We have for all practical purposes reached the thermodynamic limits of ICEs so to make substantial improvements we will have to move to a different technology. Baring something unforeseen, electric motors appear to be what will replace (or supplement) the internal combustion engine for most vehicles. The limitation on electric motors is fuel storage density which is a problem with far more headroom than trying to eek out a few more percent gains from ICEs.
If you have a 100% efficient engine...
You could have stopped right there since there is no such thing as a 100% efficient engine. It was a rhetorical example to highlight a point, not a physics problem.
The thing is, not everyone is cheap. Some of us have disposable cash, and like to enjoy it. Why is that suddenly something wrong?
Who said it was suddenly wrong? It's always been wasteful.
Our whole lives are NOT about the greater good, if it is..then something very troubling has happened to culture in the US.
Nobody ever claimed they were. But you also cannot credibly argue that you can safely utilize those 800HP on normal roads or that you aren't needlessly polluting. You might have the legal right to do it but don't pretend you aren't taking a big old shit on the environment.
I'm not saying "fuck your neighbor" but geez, folks, life is short....no reason to shame someone that is enjoying the freedoms this country offers (or used to offer at least).
Yes you are saying "fuck your neighbor" in a very real sense. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you aren't imposing consequences on others. If you buy a high horsepower car you necessarily are polluting more and probably increasing some safety risks as well. It's legal but to pretend you aren't putting a burden on others is to be willfully naive.
I have disposable income, and I have never looked at gas mileage as one of the parameters on whether I buy a car or not. I don't like SUV's personal....I've only owned 2 seat sports cars in my life
I have disposable income too but I don't see that as an excuse to not give a shit about the world around me.
People need to face it...not everyone lives with austerity as the major component of their mindset. And that is not a bad thing....
We could not disagree more on that point. I'm not suggesting we all move into the woods and live primitive lives but being responsible with the resources we all share is important.
I never understood this fascination with having stuff you can't use to its fullest extent.
Same reason people buy ludicrously expensive Rolex watches. To show off. It's conspicuous consumption in most cases. Muscle cars however do have one quasi-practical aspect depending on your perspective. They are good at straight line acceleration which is really the only kind of fun thing you can do on normal roads. Basically they do a burnout between stoplights.
According to the summary, "The median time it took for a vehicle to go from 0 to 60 miles per hour was halved, from almost 14 seconds to seven," so in this case more HP does mean faster, or at least, means faster to reach cruising speed.
More HP will get you to speed faster provided you do not exceed the traction limits of your tires. That's why simply putting a bigger engine in a car may not result in substantial performance gains unless attention is also paid to the tires and suspension and traction control systems.
Back in the '70s I drove an old (60s vintage) Volkswagen Beetle that used to impress people with its great gas mileage: 26 miles per gallon.
That's because you were comparing it mostly against cars that were designed without fuel economy as a consideration. I drove a '76 Impala many years ago which got something like 16mpg on a good day. The beetle was a complete crap car but it was small and light so compared to the land yachts of the day it seemed efficient.
What I drive now is bigger, more comfortable, safer, faster, and in short better in every possible way, and still gets almost twice the mileage.
Engines have improved a lot in the last 40 years but they aren't going to get dramatically better. If you want to realize significant fuel efficiency gains you will have to go to something based on a different technology. Most likely that will be electric motors whether in the form of a hybrid or EV. No general purpose ICE can touch an electric motor for fuel economy at a given horsepower in most circumstances.
Those Hellcats are major guzzlers. And those tires aren't cheap.
True though you must admit that anyone buying one doesn't give a rip about fuel economy. They buy them to go fast and impress other similarly minded people. Fuel economy doesn't even enter into the picture.
We can't have both ? Make it very efficient, all while allowing more headroom for power. That's how you use technology.
Not at the same time. You can have horsepower or fuel efficiency but not both beyond a certain point. If you increase horsepower with a 100% efficient engine you necessarily are increasing fuel consumption. But engines aren't 100% efficient so once you reach the limits of current efficiency you have to make a trade off between horsepower or efficiency. You can increase one or the other but not both at the same time. The only way to increase both is to develop/use technology that is more efficient at translating fuel into movement.
This is why hybrids and/or EVs will (probably) eventually win out over internal combustion. Internal combustion engines are remarkably inefficient and unlikely to improve substantially. To move the efficiency limit more than marginally you have to switch technologies and electric motors are significantly more fuel efficient for a given power output in most cases. The limitations on EVs are in fuel infrastructure rather than performance. As that limitation gets pushed back (better batteries, faster charging, etc) then ICE loses regardless of whether you want fuel efficiency or power.
If a patent creates a monopoly, why wouldn't they just use a pricing model that sets the price for the good at a level that supports paying the extended patent fees?
Monopolies are not inherently profitable. Just because you have a patent (a de-facto monopoly) doesn't mean it is worth billions. You can set whatever price you want but that doesn't mean people will pay it. That's why a graduated payment system makes sense. It clears out the patents that aren't commercially valuable in a reasonable amount of time and it creates use it or lose it incentives without having to bother with trying to determine if it is being "used" in some productive fashion. Once the value of a patent is exceeded by the cost of the payments it becomes public domain. This incentivizes economically valuable patents and makes holding large numbers of mostly worthless patents too costly to justify.
A simpler method of controlling hoarded intellectual property: Three years after being granted, if a patent is not used in a product it is held to be "idle" and demonstrating an idle patent becomes an affirmative defense in a patent violation lawsuit.
That's not simpler at all and it ignores several realities. First, all you are doing is incentivizing a bunch of bogus "products" to show that the patent is being "used" to get around your proposal. Don't doubt for a second that this would absolutely happen. Second, you have to implement a complicated and expensive review system. A payment system is FAR simpler and easier to administer and has the desired outcome without having to make subjective judgements about whether something is being used or now. Third, some items that get patented (like drugs or medical equipment) take considerable time to bring to market because of safety and efficacy concerns. It might take a decade or more to be able bring a real product to market after the research is done and patent granted. Fourth, you have to define what "being used in a product" actually means. That's not nearly as easy as it sounds and is positively loaded with opportunities for bad judgement.
I agree with your intent but I think proposals to judge whether a patent is being used are doomed to failure. A payment schedule is a MUCH easier way to achieve the desired end result.
Every patent that has been granted in the last 20 years that is not actively being used should be forced to go up for auction.
Ok let's go with that for a moment. Define "actively being used" and tell me who is going to monitor all these patents for activity. I think you are going to find that to be a LOT harder than you think.
I think a better idea is to have an exponential patent renewal fee. Anyone who gets a patent has to pay an annual fee. The fee is say $100 the first year (indexed for inflation) and it doubles every year after that. The patent remains valid as long as the fees get paid. This way patents that are actually valuable get used and less valuable patents enter the public domain sooner. It wouldn't be hard to maintain the patent for 5-10 years but after that it becomes very expensive. There is no point in paying the patent fees to hold a patent that brings in insufficient value. This would mean that by year 25 a patent would have to be worth in excess of $1 billion to be worth paying the fees to maintain. You can adjust the length of the average patent by adjusting the starting price.
If you want to make it interesting you could make it so that the patent holder gets first rights to pay the patent but if they decline to pay it, it goes up for auction with a starting price at the fee the patent holder would have had to pay. If someone buys the patent then they get to continue the payment schedule.
Been a premium Spotify user ever since and never looked back.
Nothing wrong with that but what do you plan to do if/when Spotify goes belly up? Not saying it will or won't but it's certainly a realistic possibility since Spotify has never to my knowledge made a profit.
I disagree strongly that streaming will kill stored music. It will complement it nicely but it's not a replacement for many people. Streaming is useless in circumstances where you don't have a reliable or fast internet connection (like on a plane) or if you are data limited for some reason. It also ties you to a business which you may or may not be interested in subscribing to. Plus one of the nice things about stored music is that it can't be taken away from you very easily.
Speaking solely for myself even a relatively cheap streaming service would be a waste of money for me - I simply wouldn't use it enough to justify the cost. (I dropped Netflix for exactly that reason and I watch more video than I listen to music) And I'm not unique in that regard. Streaming has some real advantages and I think it has a big future but it's not going to kill stored music.
...I would still advise that you read the Liturgy.
Liturgy is ritual rather than a bit of writing but I'll assume you are talking about the various catholic holy texts. I've read more of it than I care to admit. And it was largely preposterous crap meant to impress the credulous. The only value in reading it is so you can understand something about what the poor deluded followers of the church are rambling on about.
Some of the best writing ever came from the Catholic church. Even if they can't live by their own rules, it doesn't invalidate the rules.
It's impossible to actually exist by the rules of the church because they are illogical and self-contradictory and reflect values of people from a different time and place.
I also disagree you your assertion of the quality of the writing but that's not an objective critique on my part, more of an aesthetic judgement. The content of the liturgy on the other hand is objectively crap. Mostly made up fables that con men are trying with all their might to justify in order to gain power over the credulous.
Religion and science go together wonderfully as long as the other doesn't try to diletantly invade the domain of the other.
They do not go together wonderfully because religion cannot help but attempt to instruct people about the world around them. There is no way to entirely separate the claims religion makes regarding the material world around us and the human experience from those that science makes. This is why religion continues to try to limit scientific thinking because it reduces the ability of organized religions to dole out made up explanations for how the world works. Their "business model" depends on it. The problem religions have is that you don't actually need religion for dealing with "why" questions or the "how". Religion has nothing useful to contribute there. All religion has are farcical fables rather than actual answers. And they are desperately trying to keep the credulous from understanding this reality.
For religion to not intrude on science, religion would have to withdraw so far from daily human reality as to no longer be a meaningful part of human life. Religions had evolutionary utility at one point because they helped people organize into tribes which were useful for survival. The evolutionary utility has long since passed but it's hard to get rid of religion at this point because of our obvious predisposition towards it.
If time didn't exist within that point, if the gravity was so strong nothing could escape, then *nothing* could happen, within a basic understanding of relatively. For anything to happen, for the big bang to happen, you need either something outside pf physics (something meta-physical) or certain laws of quantum physics must be present in a very particular way.
Sigh... Just because you don't understand the physics of something doesn't mean that you need to invoke a deity to explain it. You are thinking of the big bang like a conventional explosion. It isn't. This is well trodden ground by physicists and no meta-physics is required.
Biblically, when God is asked who he is, the answer is basically "I am what it timeless" or "I am what has always been and always will be" (English doesn't have exactly the right words because we give several meanings to the word "is/am" Spanish comes closer with es vs esta). Also "I am the truth". So God states he is, essentially, timeless truth. Whatever has always been true, that's God.
So you are making a god of the gaps argument. Whatever we cannot explain currently must be god. Curious how "truth" from religions only seems to come in the form of 2000 year old holy books full of preposterous stories.
And the physicists say that *before* the big bang can happen, quantum physics must *already* be true.
No physicist I've ever met has said anything of the sort, at least in the sense you are implying. Not one of them pretends to know what the laws of physics were prior to the big bang or even for some short duration after. That is currently beyond our ability to model and predict. Quantum physics as we understand it likely would have no meaning prior to the big bang and we certainly have no testable models to evaluate.
Quantum physics must be timeless truth in order to get the big bang, or else the big bang has to be caused by something beyond physics, something meta-physical.
Wrong again. Quantum physics is a mathematical model of what we observe about the world around us. A well tested model but a model all the same. It is not some "timeless truth" especially given that it is an incomplete model and it certainly doesn't imply the existence of anything meta-physical. You are talking the sort of nonsense that sounds convincing to the uneducated and credulous but is easily debunked by anyone who actually has studied the topic.
As I see it science and religion are orthogonal unless it's dumbed down Christianity-Lite that sees science as a direct threat to it's very financial business model.
They are not orthogonal unfortunately because for religions to work they have to manipulate how people think. Science is really nothing more than a rigorous method of thinking and it routinely comes into conflict with religions on this point. Islam, Christianity and the rest are also methods of thinking primarily used to control people by received "wisdom". To accomplish this they insist that followers believe certain tenets which are routinely in direct conflict with scientific methods, objective evidence and rational thinking.
Furthermore Islam and Christianity in particular are enthusiastic about trying to add followers, sometimes literally at the point of a sword. Objective rational thinking is a direct threat to this "business model" as you so rightly put it. They prey on the credulous and science is a clear and present danger to their ability to do this.
So no, religion and science are not orthogonal and cannot be as long as religion continues to attempt to tell people what to think about the world around them. For them to be orthogonal religion would have to be considerably more withdrawn from the material world than they are.
Take a look at their bank accounts and other holdings.
That just means they are talented at scamming the credulous and are huge hypocrites. Take one look at Vatican City if you need proof that of their hypocrisy about "helping the poor". They are only interested in finding new angles to take advantage of people.
The church wanting to "talk" about cosmology is a waste of everyone's time because they have nothing useful to add to the discussion. Their idea of cosmology ends with the writings of primitive men who died thousands of years ago. The only interest the church has here is in hoodwinking idiots into thinking they are interested in something more than growing their flock and keeping their gravy train going. An organization which has based their interpretation of the world around a ridiculous fictional book isn't likely to be interested in a rational and evidence based discussion. They are just trying to figure out where the gaps are to continue their god of the gaps argument.
The problem with capitalism is that it should pay people with the hardest jobs more.
The difficulty of a job does not strongly correlate with its economic value. Watch the show Dirty Jobs if you need evidence of this. The value of a job is a direct function of supply and demand for that job. There aren't a lot of people with the skills to be a heart surgeon or a professional athlete. This doesn't imply that those jobs are harder or more valuable than others, merely that the talent is hard to come by. Being a school teacher can in many ways be a harder job but it's not as difficult to find people who can perform adequately.
What this means is that if you want to maximize your earning potential you need to develop skills that are comparatively rare and hard to replicate. My wife is a MD with a fairly rare sub-specialty. As a result she does well financially and has to work less hours than doctors in more common specializations. She has a rare skill that is not easy to replicate by people with less training. It's not that her job is harder but that it's harder to find people who can do it adequately.
While a person up the ladder may have a more difficult job, by this article my suspicions are true and it is not necessarily the case. I also suspect things really get easier as you move up
Some things get easier when you move up the ladder and some get harder. The physical toil and economic stress can be less. But the responsibility tends to become more. If the guy up the ladder fails it affects a lot more than just himself and his family. The CEO is responsible for many families and I can assure you that they feel the pressure. The hours at the top tend to be longer and you have a lot more people watching and judging what you do and how well you do it. If you are the owner of a company and it's your money on the line if things go tits up, that can be enormous stress.
Work under capitalism is a brutal psychological gauntlet -- low pay, long hours, and little to no safety net.
Average wages in the US are among the highest in the world. "Brutal psychological gauntlet"? As opposed to what? The rainbows and daisies that come from living under a dictator?
Capitalism does not imply the lack of a safety net either. There is nothing about capitalism that prevents a safety net from being put in place.
But bosses usually expect you to take some solace in the fact that you're not doing their (supposedly more difficult) job, even if they make more money.
Which bosses? "Usually"? This is a straw man argument. Some managers are more stressed than those who report to them. Sometimes it's the other way around. Furthermore stress is not an easily quantifiable state so comparisons of any sort are fraught.
'Workers in lower status jobs tend to have more stressful working conditions -- they have lower pay, poorer pension arrangements, less control over their work, and report more unsupportive colleagues and managers
In other news water is wet.
You have that precisely backwards
He does not argue it from an economic perspective, because he knows that economics can change easily
Economics doesn't change at all. Capitalism works precisely because it harnesses economic self interest in useful ways. It is largely unconcerned with what that self interest is at a given moment. Arguing that free software is a moral issue is fine but to claim that morals don't change is clearly not true. Worse it's routinely not the best approach. Economics is a much more dependable basis for a rational argument. That's not to say that making a moral argument shouldn't be a part of the approach but make no mistake that convincing people to care about software as a moral issue is a challenge that will take generations in the most optimistic of cases. Much of the goals and the same ends can be achieve in other was much more readily and in many cases already have. Linux has moved things along nicely by taking a more pragmatic approach than RMS typically advocates but has achieved many of the same ends.
Morality does not on a whim.
People shift their morals all the time. Morals vary between people and societies. No two people share the exact same moral outlook. The notion that morals are some fixed thing independent of human experience is preposterous nonsense. As recently as 60 years ago it was considered perfectly moral by many people to treat minorities as sub-human via Jim Crow laws. Arguing that morality of individuals doesn't change on a whim is so easy to disprove it's hardly worth the effort. Evangelical christian churches are loaded with people who have made rather radical changes in their moral outlook.