How many good movies can you name that were styled after a game?
The only one I can think of that was even halfway decent was Clue. Otherwise I'm drawing a blank. I can think of a few decent games that were styled after a movie but pretty much nothing the other way around. In fact a video game (or tv show) being turned into a movie seems to be a reliable indicate that that property has jumped the shark.
For the same reasons I don't get "e-sports" by the way. Playing a shooter is fun. But why the fuck would I want to watch someone do it?
Same reason you would want to watch an NBA or NFL or Premier League game. You find it entertaining. Different people are entertained by different things. Personally I agree with you and I find e-sports completely uninteresting as a spectator. But there are other sports I do find entertaining to watch. Just my own preferences. Some people obviously enjoy watching e-sports and there's nothing wrong with that. I don't get it but I don't really have to. Just harmless entertainment.
Humans are out of the loop in planetary exploration, and most near Earth satellite work.
No they are not. The humans issue the instructions and the computer on the remote vehicle executes them. The fact that there is some pretty severe latency on the execution of the instructions doesn't change anything. The robots aren't making any decisions about what to explore. Even far from Earth probes like New Horizons were simply executing a series of pre-programmed steps in a sequence determined by people and humans have been in communication with it since day one.
Should humans always be involved in shoot-to-kill decisions?
Yes. Absolutely yes. It is unethical to do anything else. Taking of a human life is a serious thing and it should be treated seriously. A human should have to make that decision and live with the consequences regardless of how the act is actually carried out.
It was only a matter of time, computers are able to keep complete situational awareness while analyzing what the target is doing.
Umm, you are aware that this is a SIMULATION, not the real world, right? We're not talking about a real jet with a real AI in real combat conditions. Yeah, computer can beat people in games - we've been able to do that for a long time. Not at all the same thing as a real world fight in conditions where the rules of engagement are unclear, the political situation is fraught, and the decision to fire is difficult. We put humans as pilots as much for their decision making abilities as we do their ability to actually fight.
The only question is how long until we can trust them to work totally autonomously.
That's not a question at all. The answer is clear. Never. If a decision is to be made to take a human life then a human needs to make that decision. In principle it's no different than pulling the trigger on a pistol. The pistol can be fired without a human in the loop but for very practical and ethical reasons we put a human in charge of making the decision to pull the trigger. What happens after that is mechanics. It's the decision to fire that is the important bit, not how the task is carried out.
So he was fighting in a computer game, not in a real jet and certainly not in real combat conditions. This is a limited scenario with limited conditions. Keep this in mind.
And why is the US still throwing money at the F35, unless it can be flown without pilots.
See above. There is a HUGE difference between a computer game and flying a real jet in combat conditions. We've had computer "AI" (using the term loosely) that could beat people at games for a long time. That isn't the same thing as having an AI that is ready for real world combat and it is even further from having an AI that is trustworthy on decisions of whether to shoot or not. To the best of my knowledge we do not presently nor are we likely to any time soon have an AI that we can or should trust to make judgements about what to shoot or when to shoot it. It's not clear to me that we ever can or should take humans out of that loop. It might be necessary to take them out of the vehicle physically (what with us being bags of fluid and all) but we'd be idiots to trust any current AI with complete control of combat.
Furthermore an F35 does a lot more than just dog fighting. In fact its primary role is likely to be air to ground combat far more often than air to air. That's why they call it a Strike Fighter. I'm not moving the goal posts here either. Yes it is reasonable that a computer AI could outperform a human in air combat maneuvering. Especially when the jet doesn't have a human on board with the physical limitations of a human, particularly in relation to G forces. We've had jets for decades that can generate more g forces than a human can handle and we've had to artificially limit them. The problem is that we still need humans in the loop for decision making and for the most part that is a good thing. Even our drones don't shoot automatically because we cannot trust them to make appropriate firing decisions in most cases.
Not only have I been there I have family that lives there. Outside of Austin they should ask for a passport for most of the state to go there. I make no apologies when I say many Texans have some seriously messed up ideas about what constitutes "justice".
Algorithmic sentencing is one way to move toward a more consistent system, less subject to the vagaries of individual jurisdictions.
Consistency isn't necessarily as valuable as you might be implying. The entire point of having a judge is, you know, to judge things and come to a reasoned opinion about how the law should apply to a particular case. I could see an algorithm being useful as an aid to advise a judge on possible options but there are WAY too many corner cases for it to be a good idea to put it front and center. Are judges imperfect? Yep! That's why we have appeals systems. But you literally cannot come up with an algorithm that will properly address all the corner cases. You are merely turning the programmer and lawmakers into the de-facto judge which is a terrible idea. See three strikes laws if you need an example of how stupid algorithmic sentencing can be.
Judgements still have to be made based on something, and credit scores (and, more specifically, the underlying data from which they are computed) are one of the strongest windows into personality and prediction of future behavior we have in today's society.
I reject your framing of the issue. You are presuming that credit scores have any meaningful relationship to criminality without presenting any actual evidence that such an assertion is backed by facts. You are extrapolating purchasing and financial management behavior to have some relationship to criminality without any basis. Even a correlation isn't adequate because there are all sorts of ridiculous correlations between completely unrelated things. You have to PROVE a causal relationship between an individual person's credit score and their likelihood to commit future crimes for your argument to have any basis at all. Good luck with that.
As others have said, the humanitarian side of the system errs on the side of forgiveness. If someone's credit is tanked, then don't consider their credit rating as a positive indicator of their compatibility with societies rules and expectations, look for other positive signs. This isn't saying "bad credit score: throw them under the jail and let them rot" this is saying "good credit score: indication that this person makes good on their promises, on a first offense give them benefit of the doubt and simple probation"
Unless you can show me some causal relationship between credit score and recidivism it should not be a consideration unless the case is about something related to personal finance. Even using it only as a positive has a skewing effect. Minorities, poor, elderly, young all are more likely to have poor credit ratings. So you are not helping the most disadvantaged groups but you are helping white, middle/upper class privileged people based on "evidence" that is unrelated to the case. It's no different than saying "he looks like a nice young man so we shouldn't punish him too hard". It makes zero sense.
Yes, I'm saying credit score is a point for consideration in sentencing - not decision of guilt or innocence, but once guilt has been established, credit score tells about a person's history of making good on commitments, and should be a strong predictor of their likelihood of meeting terms of a suspended sentence, probation or parole.
Wish I had mod points. Greatr point, that, and I wish I'd thought of it....
Why? Do you have scientific evidence that there is any meaningful strong correlation between credit scores and recidivism? I'm guessing you are just assuming there is a link without actually having data to back it up. How do you plan to account for people who have terrible credit scores for reasons beyond their control (age, poor health, bad luck, etc)?
Yes, I'm saying credit score is a point for consideration in sentencing - not decision of guilt or innocence, but once guilt has been established, credit score tells about a person's history of making good on commitments, and should be a strong predictor of their likelihood of meeting terms of a suspended sentence, probation or parole.
And pray tell what good is that for the double digit percentage of the population who have bad credit scores scores for reasons beyond their control? People who are young, very old, poor, disabled, unhealthy or have just had a bad run of luck can have a terrible credit score and it has no correlation with anything that should be a consideration in sentencing. Not everybody is a 45 year old white male with a college degree and a steady job and 2.5 kids. Credit scores are complicated and there are many reasons why someone might have a bad credit score. Furthermore there are plenty of criminals who have pristine credit records. I cannot see any reasonable argument for criminal sentencing where credit scores should play any role at all. All that does is favor rich privileged people who probably don't really need the help.
Why the healthcare industry? Easy. There is lots of valuable information and money to be made by doing so and frankly the healthcare industry is a soft target if there ever was one. Their IT systems typically have security as an afterthought if they consider it at all. They don't tend to hire the best and brightest IT people and the results prove it. They are hamstrung by regulations that legally prohibit them from updating equipment for security reasons even when it needs it. The people that run medical practices (typically doctors) are not IT people and generally have a poor understanding of the issues involved. And there is a treasure trove of valuable information, access to drugs and other stuff that criminals can make a fortune from.
I didn't choose to live here. I grew up here, family moved down here in '84. It's hard to just pick up and move after 30+ years.
If you are an adult then you absolutely have chosen to live there. Its a big world and if you just want to stay in one tiny corner of it for your whole life that's fine but don't pretend you had no choice in the matter. If the power is a problem then move or work to fix it. If it isn't a problem then stop complaining about it. Moving isn't really difficult at all if you are motivated to do it. I've moved about every 5 years for the last 25 years and have lived in 4 different states. Not a big problem unless you make it one.
I have a generator, but it's for keeping the freezer running, fish tanks filtering, and not much else. If I wanted a car that required a gas engine to operate.. oh wait.
Oh stop moving the goalposts. You were talking specifically about a power outage. 99.9% of the time you'll never need to charge an electric car with a standby generator but it is an option if you need it. If there isn't a power outage (which is most of the time) then it isn't a problem. Buying an gas guzzling, polluting car for the 1 or 2 days a year the power goes out is just poor decision making. That's like buying a 24 foot box truck as your daily driver because you want to haul lumber twice a year. It doesn't make any sense.
Explain to me how an electric car getting it's power from a nuclear power plant is generating emissions. I have three nuclear plants withing a 4 hour drive of my house and they provide a very substantial percentage of the electricity in my state so I could easily claim that my electric vehicle is effectively 100% nuclear powered. I'm exaggerating of course but you get my drift. Your point isn't silly but it's a lot easier to control emissions at a power plant than it is to control them from 100,000 tailpipes.
If EVs increase electricity consumption faster than zero emissions power sources (nuclear, renewables) can be built up to provide it, the logical thing that's going to happen is that power companies are going to build more coal and gas plants to generate that additional electricity. So the additional electricity generated to power EVs is going to almost entirely come from coal and gas.
Some of them will certainly be fossil fuel powered for the foreseeable future. However we are in no danger of electric vehicles overwhelming our renewable generating capacity any time soon so your point is a tad specious.
Not to mention places like Los Angeles, where our infrastructure is shit,
Hey if you choose to live somewhere where the power infrastructure sucks that's on you. LA is a fine place but most of the US doesn't have much difficulty getting power reliably. If it's a big problem for you there are lots of other places in the US where you can live a very happy life.
Just what we all need, electric cars that we can't charge because the power's out, and can't afford to charge because we've already got second mortgages just to keep the house cool when it's 110 outside.
If the power is out charging your car is probably the least of your problems. Get a backup generator and charge your car that way if it's such a concern to you. Works fine and if it's big enough you can power your house at the same time.
Electric cars are a great idea, but some places just aren't prepared for a massive influx of them.
There isn't going to be a massive influx of them. It's going to take many years for them to gain enough market share to really cause heartburn on the grid. Plenty of time to upgrade the grid. Plus you'll see lots of hybrids before you see lots of pure electrics most likely.
Mostly for the same reason commercial buildings aren't covered in rooftop gardens in order to supply food to the cafeteria downstairs. It doesn't make any sense to the people who actually have to allocate their scarce resources toward accomplishing useful things.
The occupants of the building don't actually have to be the ones to install or utilize the solar array tough that certainly is an option. They can sell the space to companies that generate the power even if they don't need it themselves. As I said the space is a wasted asset right now. Cities have tons of underutilized roof space that would be perfect for solar arrays. It has the added benefit of generating the power close to the point of use to there are minimal transmission losses. I work in a building that has about 200,000 square feet of mostly empty roof. The occupants are industrial concerns. It would be a perfect place for the power company to install rooftop solar even if none of the occupants needed it. Doing so requires an investment horizon of a decade or so but a forward thinking landlord could easily turn a profit with the right setup.
When you say economic hurdles, what you really mean is "This doesn't make any financial sense to do, and it would cause a massive waste of resources (as shown by the resource costs vs. benefits), but I think people should maybe do it anyway." Wishful thinking doesn't make reality go away.
That's not at all what I meant but thanks for trying to put words in my mouth. Rooftop solar arrays have already been successfully installed on commercial buildings with long term contracts. Any circumstance where solar arrays make sense on an open patch of land will probably make just as much sense on the roof of a building AND be less wasteful to boot.
Or regulatory improvements are needed to solve the mis-pricing of fossil fuels and reveal how uncompetitively expensive they are.
Exactly. This is actually what should happen first. Unfortunately it's such a political hot potato that it's really hard to make progress. Worse it has all sorts of geo-political implications too. No country wants to be the only one to pay full price for their fossil fuels because their ability to compete economically would be sunk.
Fossil fuels should be a lot more expensive than they currently are. Frankly, solar would be extremely competitive today if we adjusted to price for fossil fuels to include the cost of pollution mitigation.
So the first question is just, do renewables actually work to replace base load?
Some renewables already do work identically to base load sources (hydro, geothermal, solar thermal, etc) so to some degree the answer is clearly yes. The other arguments are more nuanced but also at the end are a clear yes.
With sufficient scale, more variable renewables like wind and solar effectively load balance themselves by being geographically dispersed. The wind is always blowing somewhere and the sun is always shining somewhere during the day. As long as you can transmit the power where it is needed, the variations are smooth and the problem is functionally identical to dealing with fluctuating demand. The grid already deals with variations in demand and supply so this is nothing new and we're no where close to our limit in being able to handle variation.
There also is the option of further smoothing of fluctuations with power storage systems (batteries, hydro storage, etc). Generate power from your solar panels during the day and put the extra into batteries for use overnight or on cloudy days. The goal is to smooth the variations not eliminate them.
The biggest flaw in the base load argument however is that it assumes that we cannot have some fossil fuel power sources. The goal shouldn't be to eliminate them altogether (which is probably impossible anyway) but to reduce their impact to less than what the Earth's climate regulation can handle. Right now we simply have more CO2 and other pollutants being generated than the planet can handle. If much/most of our power comes from renewables (plus probably nuclear) and we have to supplement from time to time with fossil fuels that's fine. We just need to get the fossil fuel use low enough that climate change doesn't render the planet uninhabitable.
Ah, but what of the pollution costs of rare earth mining and refining ?
Probably substantial and it should be factored into the cost of any products that use them. My guess is that the pollutants that result from such refining are substantially easier to mitigate than the CO2 and other crap that spews from every fossil fuel power plant, mine and transport. If for no other reason than scale. I'm no expert so I could be wrong but I doubt it. The amounts of rare earth minerals needed for a typical solar panel is minute. Compare this to the (literally) tons of coal burned for every human on earth it seems improbably that the pollution footprint for the rare earth mining and use would be greater than the footprint for coal mining and use.
I don't think anyone who understands the technology is arguing that there is no pollution from wind or solar. There clearly is. But it also seems clear from the available data that it is an improvement. We're looking for least-worst here. There is no useful form of power without some drawbacks. Even photosynthesis has some negative implications in certain circumstances. Where the problem lies is that some forms of energy (particularly fossil fuels) aren't realizing even close to the full cost of the pollution they generate. It's a tough problem. The solutions are mostly straightforward (taxes mostly) but politically that is very difficult to realize.
Question is, is there enough factory capacity and available rare earths to MAKE sufficient solar panels to do so ?
Factory capacity is an adjustable resource and if the demand is there the factory capacity will follow. There are plenty of rare earth minerals available. We aren't actually utilizing much of the capacity available but if solar panel production scaled sufficiently it would become economically viable to open up more mines. The US has substantial rare earth reserves as do a few other places but there currently isn't enough demand to justify reopening the mines at this time.
Logistics is always the tough part of the solution.
My background is in industrial engineering and I'm also an accountant. The logistics of solar panel production are a solved problem. The hard part is the economics. You have competing fossil fuels being sold below actual cost (their cost doesn't currently include the full cost of the pollution they generate), you have solar panels that are getting more competitive every day but still are pretty expensive, and we have a grid that needs updating to handle large scale solar. Scale would solve some of the cost problems but technology improvements are still needed to really get them where they need to go.
Large scale maybe, but if every home could provide 75% of their load through local solar panels during a hot summer day then the overall grid will be better. As the usage wouldn't spike as much.
I've wondered for a long time why we don't have every commercial building rooftop covered in solar panels. Particularly any building that utilizes air conditioning. It's just wasted space right now. Rather than put the panels in fields somewhere, use the space we already have for something productive.
I realize there are some economic and technical hurdles but in principle it's insane not to use solar panels on rooftops wherever possible. Install some battery systems and smarts to the grid to distribute the power adequately.
The inconsistency of solar and wind will do nasty things to our electric grid if much more is added.
Really? You're an expert in engineering of electric grids? You have clear data on how there is no way to mitigate any adverse effects of increased solar and wind power? You have unambiguous evidence that a distributed and smarter grid is somehow impossible? I've never seen any credible argument that proves we couldn't substantially increase the amount of wind and solar we use but maybe you have information the rest of us do not?
Really we should be developing more hydro and nuclear.
How do you propose to seriously increase the use of hydro given that most of the major rivers that can be dammed already are? We could scale hydro some but where is your evidence that it will be able to provide double digit percentages of our power needs?
In principle I don't have a problem with more nuclear (fission) power but in practice I don't see it happening. Yes the state of the art has improved (and I'm aware of the details) but unfortunately not enough to really make a bulletproof argument that it is truly safe. The fact that only governments are willing to insure them is proof enough of that. Really the only hope for nuclear power is a breakthrough in fission I think and that seems to always be 20 years in the future...
And we shouldn't be trying to stamp out coal.
What we should be doing is trying to get coal to cost the full value of its impact. Right now coal is subsidized AND it doesn't include the cost of mitigating CO2 and other pollutants that burning coal generates. If we choose to use coal the cost of using it should include the full cost of any externalities it currently gets to ignore - in otherwords the cost of cleaning up the burning of coal should be in the price we pay for it.
They're good in theory. They protect trade secrets.
You can also protect a trade secret by paying the person to keep that secret. Why should an employee be obligated to keep a secret for a company when they are no longer in the employ of that company? And if the secret was so valuable to the company it should be worth it to pay the person to keep their mouth shut about it. If it isn't that valuable then why are they worried about it? If there is a very specific piece of information the company is worried about leaking (say a chemical formula for a new drug) then a very narrow NDA about that specific piece of information for a limited time is reasonable. And again there should be compensation to the individual for keeping that secret for the duration of the period in which the secret is to be kept.
You can't join a company, copy all their plans, quit, then start your own clone of their business without the expense of the research needed to create those plans.
In graduate school I took a class in entrepreneurship. One of the things I learned from the professor and that I've confirmed by starting several companies since then is that if you think you are the only person with an idea or that nobody else can figure it out you are delusional. Just because you copy someone's playbook doesn't mean you'll be able to execute it any better than them. To use a simple example, I could give you the secret formula to Coca-Cola today along with as much internal "secret" info as you want and you could go out and try to compete with them. But you would fail because the things that make Coca-Cola successful as a company have nothing to do with trade secrets and everything to do with planning, organizational structure, execution and capital. They're just going to be better at their business plan than you could ever hope to be.
It's kind of unfair to call out just Apple here - name a single phone made in America.
How is it unfair to Apple to point out that they have their gear made in China? That's a fact. If they were proud of that fact they wouldn't bother putting "Designed in California" on their products to disguise that the product is made here. Pretty much everybody else doesn't bother trying to hide the fact that their stuff isn't made locally.
I've pointed out several times that pretty much no phone is actually made in the US. The components aren't made here, they aren't assembled here, and there is no likelihood that that will change anytime soon. I get why it's worked out that way but I don't have to be thrilled about it. Furthermore I know that some companies (including Apple) are in a position to do something about it but so far can't be bothered.
SpaceX is doing many of these things under contract to NASA *using NASA funding*
SpaceX has had six launches in 2016 so far and only one of them had any relationship to NASA as far as I can tell (a supply mission to the ISS). The rest were private launch contracts. NASA is a customer of SpaceX and has helped them a lot but if you look at the launches SpaceX has scheduled, relatively few of them are NASA funded.
Slashdot Mirror
How many good movies can you name that were styled after a game?
The only one I can think of that was even halfway decent was Clue. Otherwise I'm drawing a blank. I can think of a few decent games that were styled after a movie but pretty much nothing the other way around. In fact a video game (or tv show) being turned into a movie seems to be a reliable indicate that that property has jumped the shark.
For the same reasons I don't get "e-sports" by the way. Playing a shooter is fun. But why the fuck would I want to watch someone do it?
Same reason you would want to watch an NBA or NFL or Premier League game. You find it entertaining. Different people are entertained by different things. Personally I agree with you and I find e-sports completely uninteresting as a spectator. But there are other sports I do find entertaining to watch. Just my own preferences. Some people obviously enjoy watching e-sports and there's nothing wrong with that. I don't get it but I don't really have to. Just harmless entertainment.
Whenever a video game or tv show is turned into a movie it is a reliable and clear indication that the game or show has jumped the shark.
Humans are out of the loop in planetary exploration, and most near Earth satellite work.
No they are not. The humans issue the instructions and the computer on the remote vehicle executes them. The fact that there is some pretty severe latency on the execution of the instructions doesn't change anything. The robots aren't making any decisions about what to explore. Even far from Earth probes like New Horizons were simply executing a series of pre-programmed steps in a sequence determined by people and humans have been in communication with it since day one.
Should humans always be involved in shoot-to-kill decisions?
Yes. Absolutely yes. It is unethical to do anything else. Taking of a human life is a serious thing and it should be treated seriously. A human should have to make that decision and live with the consequences regardless of how the act is actually carried out.
It was only a matter of time, computers are able to keep complete situational awareness while analyzing what the target is doing.
Umm, you are aware that this is a SIMULATION, not the real world, right? We're not talking about a real jet with a real AI in real combat conditions. Yeah, computer can beat people in games - we've been able to do that for a long time. Not at all the same thing as a real world fight in conditions where the rules of engagement are unclear, the political situation is fraught, and the decision to fire is difficult. We put humans as pilots as much for their decision making abilities as we do their ability to actually fight.
The only question is how long until we can trust them to work totally autonomously.
That's not a question at all. The answer is clear. Never. If a decision is to be made to take a human life then a human needs to make that decision. In principle it's no different than pulling the trigger on a pistol. The pistol can be fired without a human in the loop but for very practical and ethical reasons we put a human in charge of making the decision to pull the trigger. What happens after that is mechanics. It's the decision to fire that is the important bit, not how the task is carried out.
He took on the software in a simulator.
So he was fighting in a computer game, not in a real jet and certainly not in real combat conditions. This is a limited scenario with limited conditions. Keep this in mind.
And why is the US still throwing money at the F35, unless it can be flown without pilots.
See above. There is a HUGE difference between a computer game and flying a real jet in combat conditions. We've had computer "AI" (using the term loosely) that could beat people at games for a long time. That isn't the same thing as having an AI that is ready for real world combat and it is even further from having an AI that is trustworthy on decisions of whether to shoot or not. To the best of my knowledge we do not presently nor are we likely to any time soon have an AI that we can or should trust to make judgements about what to shoot or when to shoot it. It's not clear to me that we ever can or should take humans out of that loop. It might be necessary to take them out of the vehicle physically (what with us being bags of fluid and all) but we'd be idiots to trust any current AI with complete control of combat.
Furthermore an F35 does a lot more than just dog fighting. In fact its primary role is likely to be air to ground combat far more often than air to air. That's why they call it a Strike Fighter. I'm not moving the goal posts here either. Yes it is reasonable that a computer AI could outperform a human in air combat maneuvering. Especially when the jet doesn't have a human on board with the physical limitations of a human, particularly in relation to G forces. We've had jets for decades that can generate more g forces than a human can handle and we've had to artificially limit them. The problem is that we still need humans in the loop for decision making and for the most part that is a good thing. Even our drones don't shoot automatically because we cannot trust them to make appropriate firing decisions in most cases.
Y'all ever been to Texas?
Not only have I been there I have family that lives there. Outside of Austin they should ask for a passport for most of the state to go there. I make no apologies when I say many Texans have some seriously messed up ideas about what constitutes "justice".
Algorithmic sentencing is one way to move toward a more consistent system, less subject to the vagaries of individual jurisdictions.
Consistency isn't necessarily as valuable as you might be implying. The entire point of having a judge is, you know, to judge things and come to a reasoned opinion about how the law should apply to a particular case. I could see an algorithm being useful as an aid to advise a judge on possible options but there are WAY too many corner cases for it to be a good idea to put it front and center. Are judges imperfect? Yep! That's why we have appeals systems. But you literally cannot come up with an algorithm that will properly address all the corner cases. You are merely turning the programmer and lawmakers into the de-facto judge which is a terrible idea. See three strikes laws if you need an example of how stupid algorithmic sentencing can be.
Judgements still have to be made based on something, and credit scores (and, more specifically, the underlying data from which they are computed) are one of the strongest windows into personality and prediction of future behavior we have in today's society.
I reject your framing of the issue. You are presuming that credit scores have any meaningful relationship to criminality without presenting any actual evidence that such an assertion is backed by facts. You are extrapolating purchasing and financial management behavior to have some relationship to criminality without any basis. Even a correlation isn't adequate because there are all sorts of ridiculous correlations between completely unrelated things. You have to PROVE a causal relationship between an individual person's credit score and their likelihood to commit future crimes for your argument to have any basis at all. Good luck with that.
As others have said, the humanitarian side of the system errs on the side of forgiveness. If someone's credit is tanked, then don't consider their credit rating as a positive indicator of their compatibility with societies rules and expectations, look for other positive signs. This isn't saying "bad credit score: throw them under the jail and let them rot" this is saying "good credit score: indication that this person makes good on their promises, on a first offense give them benefit of the doubt and simple probation"
Unless you can show me some causal relationship between credit score and recidivism it should not be a consideration unless the case is about something related to personal finance. Even using it only as a positive has a skewing effect. Minorities, poor, elderly, young all are more likely to have poor credit ratings. So you are not helping the most disadvantaged groups but you are helping white, middle/upper class privileged people based on "evidence" that is unrelated to the case. It's no different than saying "he looks like a nice young man so we shouldn't punish him too hard". It makes zero sense.
Yes, I'm saying credit score is a point for consideration in sentencing - not decision of guilt or innocence, but once guilt has been established, credit score tells about a person's history of making good on commitments, and should be a strong predictor of their likelihood of meeting terms of a suspended sentence, probation or parole.
Wish I had mod points. Greatr point, that, and I wish I'd thought of it....
Why? Do you have scientific evidence that there is any meaningful strong correlation between credit scores and recidivism? I'm guessing you are just assuming there is a link without actually having data to back it up. How do you plan to account for people who have terrible credit scores for reasons beyond their control (age, poor health, bad luck, etc)?
Yes, I'm saying credit score is a point for consideration in sentencing - not decision of guilt or innocence, but once guilt has been established, credit score tells about a person's history of making good on commitments, and should be a strong predictor of their likelihood of meeting terms of a suspended sentence, probation or parole.
And pray tell what good is that for the double digit percentage of the population who have bad credit scores scores for reasons beyond their control? People who are young, very old, poor, disabled, unhealthy or have just had a bad run of luck can have a terrible credit score and it has no correlation with anything that should be a consideration in sentencing. Not everybody is a 45 year old white male with a college degree and a steady job and 2.5 kids. Credit scores are complicated and there are many reasons why someone might have a bad credit score. Furthermore there are plenty of criminals who have pristine credit records. I cannot see any reasonable argument for criminal sentencing where credit scores should play any role at all. All that does is favor rich privileged people who probably don't really need the help.
Why the healthcare industry? Easy. There is lots of valuable information and money to be made by doing so and frankly the healthcare industry is a soft target if there ever was one. Their IT systems typically have security as an afterthought if they consider it at all. They don't tend to hire the best and brightest IT people and the results prove it. They are hamstrung by regulations that legally prohibit them from updating equipment for security reasons even when it needs it. The people that run medical practices (typically doctors) are not IT people and generally have a poor understanding of the issues involved. And there is a treasure trove of valuable information, access to drugs and other stuff that criminals can make a fortune from.
Hey, if you choose to drive an electric car, that's on you.
Yes it is. Do you have an actual point to make?
I'll stick with a nice V8 myself.
And my Tesla will smoke your "nice V8". Enjoy your slow, noisy, smog machine.
I didn't choose to live here. I grew up here, family moved down here in '84. It's hard to just pick up and move after 30+ years.
If you are an adult then you absolutely have chosen to live there. Its a big world and if you just want to stay in one tiny corner of it for your whole life that's fine but don't pretend you had no choice in the matter. If the power is a problem then move or work to fix it. If it isn't a problem then stop complaining about it. Moving isn't really difficult at all if you are motivated to do it. I've moved about every 5 years for the last 25 years and have lived in 4 different states. Not a big problem unless you make it one.
I have a generator, but it's for keeping the freezer running, fish tanks filtering, and not much else. If I wanted a car that required a gas engine to operate.. oh wait.
Oh stop moving the goalposts. You were talking specifically about a power outage. 99.9% of the time you'll never need to charge an electric car with a standby generator but it is an option if you need it. If there isn't a power outage (which is most of the time) then it isn't a problem. Buying an gas guzzling, polluting car for the 1 or 2 days a year the power goes out is just poor decision making. That's like buying a 24 foot box truck as your daily driver because you want to haul lumber twice a year. It doesn't make any sense.
All cars result in emissions.
Explain to me how an electric car getting it's power from a nuclear power plant is generating emissions. I have three nuclear plants withing a 4 hour drive of my house and they provide a very substantial percentage of the electricity in my state so I could easily claim that my electric vehicle is effectively 100% nuclear powered. I'm exaggerating of course but you get my drift. Your point isn't silly but it's a lot easier to control emissions at a power plant than it is to control them from 100,000 tailpipes.
If EVs increase electricity consumption faster than zero emissions power sources (nuclear, renewables) can be built up to provide it, the logical thing that's going to happen is that power companies are going to build more coal and gas plants to generate that additional electricity. So the additional electricity generated to power EVs is going to almost entirely come from coal and gas.
Some of them will certainly be fossil fuel powered for the foreseeable future. However we are in no danger of electric vehicles overwhelming our renewable generating capacity any time soon so your point is a tad specious.
Not to mention places like Los Angeles, where our infrastructure is shit,
Hey if you choose to live somewhere where the power infrastructure sucks that's on you. LA is a fine place but most of the US doesn't have much difficulty getting power reliably. If it's a big problem for you there are lots of other places in the US where you can live a very happy life.
Just what we all need, electric cars that we can't charge because the power's out, and can't afford to charge because we've already got second mortgages just to keep the house cool when it's 110 outside.
If the power is out charging your car is probably the least of your problems. Get a backup generator and charge your car that way if it's such a concern to you. Works fine and if it's big enough you can power your house at the same time.
Electric cars are a great idea, but some places just aren't prepared for a massive influx of them.
There isn't going to be a massive influx of them. It's going to take many years for them to gain enough market share to really cause heartburn on the grid. Plenty of time to upgrade the grid. Plus you'll see lots of hybrids before you see lots of pure electrics most likely.
As if I didn't need another reason to be glad I'm not on Facebook...
Mostly for the same reason commercial buildings aren't covered in rooftop gardens in order to supply food to the cafeteria downstairs. It doesn't make any sense to the people who actually have to allocate their scarce resources toward accomplishing useful things.
The occupants of the building don't actually have to be the ones to install or utilize the solar array tough that certainly is an option. They can sell the space to companies that generate the power even if they don't need it themselves. As I said the space is a wasted asset right now. Cities have tons of underutilized roof space that would be perfect for solar arrays. It has the added benefit of generating the power close to the point of use to there are minimal transmission losses. I work in a building that has about 200,000 square feet of mostly empty roof. The occupants are industrial concerns. It would be a perfect place for the power company to install rooftop solar even if none of the occupants needed it. Doing so requires an investment horizon of a decade or so but a forward thinking landlord could easily turn a profit with the right setup.
When you say economic hurdles, what you really mean is "This doesn't make any financial sense to do, and it would cause a massive waste of resources (as shown by the resource costs vs. benefits), but I think people should maybe do it anyway." Wishful thinking doesn't make reality go away.
That's not at all what I meant but thanks for trying to put words in my mouth. Rooftop solar arrays have already been successfully installed on commercial buildings with long term contracts. Any circumstance where solar arrays make sense on an open patch of land will probably make just as much sense on the roof of a building AND be less wasteful to boot.
Or regulatory improvements are needed to solve the mis-pricing of fossil fuels and reveal how uncompetitively expensive they are.
Exactly. This is actually what should happen first. Unfortunately it's such a political hot potato that it's really hard to make progress. Worse it has all sorts of geo-political implications too. No country wants to be the only one to pay full price for their fossil fuels because their ability to compete economically would be sunk.
Fossil fuels should be a lot more expensive than they currently are. Frankly, solar would be extremely competitive today if we adjusted to price for fossil fuels to include the cost of pollution mitigation.
So the first question is just, do renewables actually work to replace base load?
Some renewables already do work identically to base load sources (hydro, geothermal, solar thermal, etc) so to some degree the answer is clearly yes. The other arguments are more nuanced but also at the end are a clear yes.
With sufficient scale, more variable renewables like wind and solar effectively load balance themselves by being geographically dispersed. The wind is always blowing somewhere and the sun is always shining somewhere during the day. As long as you can transmit the power where it is needed, the variations are smooth and the problem is functionally identical to dealing with fluctuating demand. The grid already deals with variations in demand and supply so this is nothing new and we're no where close to our limit in being able to handle variation.
There also is the option of further smoothing of fluctuations with power storage systems (batteries, hydro storage, etc). Generate power from your solar panels during the day and put the extra into batteries for use overnight or on cloudy days. The goal is to smooth the variations not eliminate them.
The biggest flaw in the base load argument however is that it assumes that we cannot have some fossil fuel power sources. The goal shouldn't be to eliminate them altogether (which is probably impossible anyway) but to reduce their impact to less than what the Earth's climate regulation can handle. Right now we simply have more CO2 and other pollutants being generated than the planet can handle. If much/most of our power comes from renewables (plus probably nuclear) and we have to supplement from time to time with fossil fuels that's fine. We just need to get the fossil fuel use low enough that climate change doesn't render the planet uninhabitable.
Ah, but what of the pollution costs of rare earth mining and refining ?
Probably substantial and it should be factored into the cost of any products that use them. My guess is that the pollutants that result from such refining are substantially easier to mitigate than the CO2 and other crap that spews from every fossil fuel power plant, mine and transport. If for no other reason than scale. I'm no expert so I could be wrong but I doubt it. The amounts of rare earth minerals needed for a typical solar panel is minute. Compare this to the (literally) tons of coal burned for every human on earth it seems improbably that the pollution footprint for the rare earth mining and use would be greater than the footprint for coal mining and use.
I don't think anyone who understands the technology is arguing that there is no pollution from wind or solar. There clearly is. But it also seems clear from the available data that it is an improvement. We're looking for least-worst here. There is no useful form of power without some drawbacks. Even photosynthesis has some negative implications in certain circumstances. Where the problem lies is that some forms of energy (particularly fossil fuels) aren't realizing even close to the full cost of the pollution they generate. It's a tough problem. The solutions are mostly straightforward (taxes mostly) but politically that is very difficult to realize.
Question is, is there enough factory capacity and available rare earths to MAKE sufficient solar panels to do so ?
Factory capacity is an adjustable resource and if the demand is there the factory capacity will follow. There are plenty of rare earth minerals available. We aren't actually utilizing much of the capacity available but if solar panel production scaled sufficiently it would become economically viable to open up more mines. The US has substantial rare earth reserves as do a few other places but there currently isn't enough demand to justify reopening the mines at this time.
Logistics is always the tough part of the solution.
My background is in industrial engineering and I'm also an accountant. The logistics of solar panel production are a solved problem. The hard part is the economics. You have competing fossil fuels being sold below actual cost (their cost doesn't currently include the full cost of the pollution they generate), you have solar panels that are getting more competitive every day but still are pretty expensive, and we have a grid that needs updating to handle large scale solar. Scale would solve some of the cost problems but technology improvements are still needed to really get them where they need to go.
Large scale maybe, but if every home could provide 75% of their load through local solar panels during a hot summer day then the overall grid will be better. As the usage wouldn't spike as much.
I've wondered for a long time why we don't have every commercial building rooftop covered in solar panels. Particularly any building that utilizes air conditioning. It's just wasted space right now. Rather than put the panels in fields somewhere, use the space we already have for something productive.
I realize there are some economic and technical hurdles but in principle it's insane not to use solar panels on rooftops wherever possible. Install some battery systems and smarts to the grid to distribute the power adequately.
The inconsistency of solar and wind will do nasty things to our electric grid if much more is added.
Really? You're an expert in engineering of electric grids? You have clear data on how there is no way to mitigate any adverse effects of increased solar and wind power? You have unambiguous evidence that a distributed and smarter grid is somehow impossible? I've never seen any credible argument that proves we couldn't substantially increase the amount of wind and solar we use but maybe you have information the rest of us do not?
Really we should be developing more hydro and nuclear.
How do you propose to seriously increase the use of hydro given that most of the major rivers that can be dammed already are? We could scale hydro some but where is your evidence that it will be able to provide double digit percentages of our power needs?
In principle I don't have a problem with more nuclear (fission) power but in practice I don't see it happening. Yes the state of the art has improved (and I'm aware of the details) but unfortunately not enough to really make a bulletproof argument that it is truly safe. The fact that only governments are willing to insure them is proof enough of that. Really the only hope for nuclear power is a breakthrough in fission I think and that seems to always be 20 years in the future...
And we shouldn't be trying to stamp out coal.
What we should be doing is trying to get coal to cost the full value of its impact. Right now coal is subsidized AND it doesn't include the cost of mitigating CO2 and other pollutants that burning coal generates. If we choose to use coal the cost of using it should include the full cost of any externalities it currently gets to ignore - in otherwords the cost of cleaning up the burning of coal should be in the price we pay for it.
They're good in theory. They protect trade secrets.
You can also protect a trade secret by paying the person to keep that secret. Why should an employee be obligated to keep a secret for a company when they are no longer in the employ of that company? And if the secret was so valuable to the company it should be worth it to pay the person to keep their mouth shut about it. If it isn't that valuable then why are they worried about it? If there is a very specific piece of information the company is worried about leaking (say a chemical formula for a new drug) then a very narrow NDA about that specific piece of information for a limited time is reasonable. And again there should be compensation to the individual for keeping that secret for the duration of the period in which the secret is to be kept.
You can't join a company, copy all their plans, quit, then start your own clone of their business without the expense of the research needed to create those plans.
In graduate school I took a class in entrepreneurship. One of the things I learned from the professor and that I've confirmed by starting several companies since then is that if you think you are the only person with an idea or that nobody else can figure it out you are delusional. Just because you copy someone's playbook doesn't mean you'll be able to execute it any better than them. To use a simple example, I could give you the secret formula to Coca-Cola today along with as much internal "secret" info as you want and you could go out and try to compete with them. But you would fail because the things that make Coca-Cola successful as a company have nothing to do with trade secrets and everything to do with planning, organizational structure, execution and capital. They're just going to be better at their business plan than you could ever hope to be.
It's kind of unfair to call out just Apple here - name a single phone made in America.
How is it unfair to Apple to point out that they have their gear made in China? That's a fact. If they were proud of that fact they wouldn't bother putting "Designed in California" on their products to disguise that the product is made here. Pretty much everybody else doesn't bother trying to hide the fact that their stuff isn't made locally.
I've pointed out several times that pretty much no phone is actually made in the US. The components aren't made here, they aren't assembled here, and there is no likelihood that that will change anytime soon. I get why it's worked out that way but I don't have to be thrilled about it. Furthermore I know that some companies (including Apple) are in a position to do something about it but so far can't be bothered.
SpaceX is doing many of these things under contract to NASA *using NASA funding*
SpaceX has had six launches in 2016 so far and only one of them had any relationship to NASA as far as I can tell (a supply mission to the ISS). The rest were private launch contracts. NASA is a customer of SpaceX and has helped them a lot but if you look at the launches SpaceX has scheduled, relatively few of them are NASA funded.