Once again someone is petitioning the government to protect them from themselves. Listen, dumbass. You're the one who made the bets, if you won I doubt you would be filing a suit. But since you're a loser, and will always be a loser, I guess it's time for you to ask the nanny state to go after that evil company that hosted a game where your in-game experience mirrored your real life - you being really overconfident but lacking any skills to back up your hubris.
Yup. My first Japanese car (a Subaru) lasted fourteen years. That's longer than both american cars I'd owned previously, put together, twice over, and then some. And it never broke down. The only maintenance I did were the scheduled services recommended in the manual, and replacement of consumables like tires and brake pads. The same can definitely not be said of the Ford or Chrysler. For that matter, I could have gotten a few more years out of the Subaru. But it was due for a new set of brakes plus a timing belt & water pump. The cost of that was more than the value of the car. And I'm more of a city than outdoors person these days, so the mileage penalty of all-wheel drive doesn't make sense anymore.
My rule now is that to even be worth consideration, the VIN must start with the letter "J". Anything else is a non-starter.
Yeah, it would be impossible for a Subaru to have a problem, like "Subaru is recalling 48,500 Legacy and Outback models for total steering failure" . So maybe your anecdotal experience is not the same as data! Funny that you would claim your Subaru is more reliable that Ford, as the data from this dependability study says that Ford beats Subaru in dependability. Neither are stellar, but the data certainly doesn't back up your experience.
Check out the economic success of 1st generation African immigrants relative to native African Americans.
I don't think that's a useful comparison because the former group is self-selected, not a random sampling. It stands to reason that the people with the most drive and ambition are more likely to emigrate, and those are the type of people who do well in American society. You can compare a self-selected group of overachievers with a random sample and expect to get a meaningful result.
Only a fool gets up and leaves money on the table. The rules are the rules, living in society means you follow them, being successful means understanding them maximizing the benefit or minimizing the harm you suffer as a result of the rules.
But one of the big problems that we have is that most of the rules are made by those successful people to ensure their future success, often at the expense of the people who haven't been as successful. When a congressman's buddy, who helped get him elected (and from whom he will ask more money the next election) asks the congressman to look at a pressing issue in the tax code where he thinks there should be a deduction, of COURSE the congressman is going to help his buddy out. It works the same whether it is a buddy or a professional lobbyist, as long as the money from campaigns comes from contributors then those in power are going to be beholden to them. The ROI on lobbying is 22,000%, a lot of this comes from getting preferential tax treatment for your specific situation.
For people making less than about $150k/yr, capital gains is taxed higher than your regular income.
How does that work? Capital gains taxes are directly tied to your marginal rate, low income taxpayers (up to 37k single, 75k married) pay 0 capital gains tax. So it certainly can't be that bracket you are talking about, which comprises the majority of households under $150k. So it must be the people making $75k-$150k you are talking about. If you make $150k (and are married) your nominal tax rate is 25% and your capital gains tax rate is 15%. So the rich end of the spectrum might end up paying a higher capital gains tax than their effective income tax rate (you quoted 13.6% as the average rate, so at least some will be above 15%), but for the bulk of the people in the cohort you specified (making under $150k) their capital gains tax rate will be 0%.
Reddit is just another vehicle to either silence or deny the citizens of this country their viewpoints on topics they don't find attractive or don't fit their individual viewpoints
Freedom of the press isn't restricted to those that get paid to cover the news unless I misread the first amendment
Reddit is not the government, and hence is not bound by the first amendment. You are free to speak all you want on your own website, but if you are using someone else's website it is their choice on whether or not to let you speak. That being said, it was a major dick move on Reddit's part but they weren't violating the first amendment and your only recourse is to not use Reddit.
Almost every single question except when I was home or not could have been answered by contacting another government agency.
They could have just asked the police department or one of the federal 3 letter agencies what time you leave and come home. They have license plate readers deployed all over every major city and alongside most interstates so they know where most people are (or at least where their cars are) pretty much all the time. Don't you feel safer knowing Big Brother is watching over you?
If the stock crashes just before you were supposed to retire and the value of your 401K is cut in half
Why would my portfolio, which should be mostly bonds when I am close to retirement age, lose 1/2 if its value because stocks went down? If anything, I should see a small increase in value as the "flight to safety" happens.
When will people stop lying about Tesla's Autopilot mode crashing their cars?
Only when it becomes clear that there is no money to be made by doing so. People lied about Audi's "uncontrollably accelerating" when in fact it was people standing on the accelerator pedal when they thought they were on the brake. People lied about Toyota Prius's too because they though there was a chance for settlement money. I have no doubt Telsa and every other company that comes out with autopilot technology is going to get hit with fraudulent claims as well.
The Toyota problem was a real issue, and Toyota actively destroyed evidence and attempted to cover up the problem. From this page:
In April 2013, Betsy Benjaminson, a freelance translator working for Toyota to translate internal documents, released a personal statement about Toyota covering up facts about the sudden unintended acceleration problem. Benjaminson stated she “read many descriptions by executives and managers of how they had hoodwinked regulators, courts, and even congress, by withholding, omitting, or misstating facts.”
Especially as there are a lot of studies that indicates women in general are better drivers than men...
No, they show that women get into fewer accidents than men, not that they are better drivers. There are many possible causes for this result. I think there are probably several factors that contribute. For example, in many families the male is the default driver when the family is traveling and is almost always the driver in inclement conditions.
Women do seem to take fewer risks and are, in general, less aggressive drivers which will certainly lower their accident rate, but I don't think that is the only cause.
So this new computer is twice as powerful as the original Stampede, which cost $27 million and came online in 2013. It sounds like Stampede 2 will come online in 2018 at a cost of $30 million. So over 5 years the power only doubled for the same cost - if computing power per cost unit doubles every 18 months like Moore predicted, why isn't Stampede 2 like 16 times more powerful than its predecessor?
I don't know about his use of apostrophes but capitalizing Volts was done because it is correct. Volts are an SI unit and we capitalize those. So you don't know everything you think you do, Mr Grammar Nazi.
No, you don't know everything you think you do, Mr. Anonymous Grammar Nazi. From this article:
This SI unit is named after Alessandro Volta. As with every International System of Units (SI) unit named for a person, the first letter of its symbol is upper case (V). However, when an SI unit is spelled out in English, it should always begin with a lower case letter (volt)—except in a situation where any word in that position would be capitalized, such as at the beginning of a sentence or in material using title case.
The issue here is that there is no evidence that he was ever served with the requests for admissions (he says he wasn't):
"Costello said he never received the requests for admissions and was not notified of the hearing."
I don't know how process serving works in that state, but in my state there is a record if someone was served with a summons or legal document. It seems inane that there appears to be no such verification in this case.
You don't need to tax people, only production and exchange. Anyway you're right, we're nowhere near the level of automation needed to give everyone a basic income. These plans are all very premature.
If you wait until the end of the automation revolution, it will be too late. Right now, we have a large wealth disparity problem in western society - a large portion of society's wealth is going to a small portion of the population. It's a side-effect of capitalism - you have to have money to make money, and if you have a lot of money it can make an even greater amount of money. We have tolerated it up to this point because capitalism works for the most part and is better than the alternatives. However, with automation the capitalist/labor balance is broken and the capitalist no longer needs labor. This will greatly accelerate the wealth disparity already present in the system and pretty soon the 1% will have ALL the money instead of just most of it. Along with that money comes political power, the rich certainly aren't going to support UBI legislation once they no longer need workers. The best you can hope for is the Terrafoam projects from Manna, if you aren't just summarily executed when you are no longer useful.
While your logic is sound, his point was the the war on terror is a load of bullshit. And that is pretty undeniable at this point.
The war on [concept] is a load of bullshit. The war on drugs has failed horribly, there are still the same number of drug users and the distributors are even more rich and powerful after spending BILLIONS of dollars. The same with the war on poverty. The US still has tons of people in poverty, even after over 50 years of fighting the "war". The war on terror is obviously a failure, we have spent TRILLIONS and surrendered our rights for the pleasure of being groped by the TSA (who can't even stop "test" bombs and weapons from getting on a plane 95% of the time). It seems the best way to ensure that something will thrive is by having the US government declare a war on it.
Fries will get automated first, because they are super easy, you don't need any intelligence to speak of. Then it will be drinks, you want some fairly clever systems in place to make sure that works right so you don't make a mess, and it's a much more fiddly job than making fries.
Drinks in McDonalds are already automated. For in-restaurant the patron is given a cup and they fill it themselves. For the drive-thru, they use the Automated Beverage System, I think all the human does is put the lid on the drink.
Actually, I think it is a part of the cost as well. Doctors are supposed to pay for malpractice insurance which takes a big chunk out of the doctor's paid. In order to keep $80k~$150k/year, the real gross income for doctors is much higher than that (could be about double). As a results, a doctor visit (seeing a doctor) becomes higher charges.
if the cost of medical malpractice is breaking the back of healthcare in this Country, why is my bill so low? Is it because I’m such an outstanding doctor that my insurance provider long ago recognized that I would never be sued? Well, I’d like to think that were true but, no. Here’s how much other doctors in my community pay for medical malpractice insurance2015:
The nephrologist who has an office one floor below me pays about $4,980 this year; $54 a year more than I pay and she runs a dialysis unit.
A pulmonologist I work with pays $6,342 this year, an ophthalmologists less than $7,000, emergency room physicians: $11,000-$12,000 this year, anesthesiologists: $12,000-$14,000 this year, surgeons (including orthopedics) $20,000-$22,000 this year and Ob/Gyn about $34,000 (obstetrics always has the highest malpractice premiums).
Yes, the insurance is expensive but well within the means of a decently-paid doctor
Card payments today can be taken at the kiosk, but foldin' money still needs to be dealt with by a meathook.
LOL, WUT? No it doesn't, we have had automated systems that can handle cash for quite some time now. Try going to the self-serve checkout line at the grocery store and see it in action yourself!
The problems I can see with living in Utah are 1) the air pollution in SLC is reportedly awful, the worst in the nation in fact, 2) if you're a single guy, there's probably no single women there who aren't religious (and most likely Mormon, even worse), and 3) the local culture is probably rather conservative. There is some really amazing outdoor stuff in Utah, but that's all in *southern* Utah, which is not a close drive from the SLC area. Utah is a huge state, like most western states, but all the population is in the north.
So I don't really see how that's a better quality-of-life than Silicon Valley:
I have lived in SLC and I don't think your view of the place matches reality.
pollution: advantage SV
SLC has a pollution problem but it is a seasonal problem, it only happens in the winter and only happens when weather conditions are correct (temperature inversion). SV also has a pollution problem but it is year-round, although somewhat mitigated by the sea/land breeze effect.
singles scene: both bad (but at least what few single women exist in SV are probably not religious or Mormon)
There are plenty of women in SLC who are not mormon, when I lived there I believe the city was about 50% mormon. That doesn't mean that all 50% are practicing mormons. It shouldn't be too hard to avoid religious people if that is what you want.
outdoor stuff: a long drive from either place
Southern Utah is not the only place with outdoor activities. Northern Utah's metro areas are built in the valleys of the Wasatch Mountains which provide a ton of outdoor recreational opportunities like hiking, rock climbing, mountain or road biking, hunting, fishing, boating and some of the world's top ski resorts. All within 1/2-1 hour of SLC.
local politics: advantage SV (not great, but at least not LDS-dominated)
SLC is quite liberal, according to Wikipedia 5 of 7 city council members are democrats as well as the mayor. You are correct on the state level, overall the politics are quite conservative. This is good in some ways - state and local taxes are much lower than SV and if you are running your own business you will have less regulation but if you are pretty liberal you might find state politics in Utah not to your liking.
local culture: advantage SV (again, not dominated by conservative religious nuts; I'll take annoying Fedora-wearing hipsters over religious loons any day)
I agree, fedora'd hipsters are preferred to religious loons, but what makes you think that the religious loons have anything to do with "local culture"? I'm not sure what you are talking about here, is it plays and operas or is it bars and clubs? Like I mentioned above, the city itself is pretty liberal and offers a variety of entertainment, but being a smaller metro area than SF there probably won't be the huge breadth of options that SV has.
housing costs: advantage SLC
Sorry, but there's a lot more to life than housing cost. If you want cheap housing, I can find you lots of places across the country, particularly in the rural Midwest, where housing is dirt cheap. There's no work and almost no local economy and very few people, but hey! housing is cheap!
Indeed. The trick is to find somewhere with relatively cheap housing combined with a decent local economy. SLC fits the bill somewhat. It is attractive to tech companies, particularly for satellite sites, because of the low costs (rents, utilities, taxes, etc.) and high level of education in relation to the rest of the USA. There are many SV-based companies that have offices in the SLC metro area like Google, eBay, Symantec and EMC.
Overall, SLC has its good points and bad points but overall it isn't a terrible place to live. If you are looking for somewhere to work a decent tech job without having to pay more than $1 million for a house than you can do worse.
ADJUSTED gross income is not the same as actual income. Add in deductions for the kids and mortgage, and an AGI of $25K is easily hit with a person making the actual median of $51K per year, about double that you state.
Your post says "person" but your link goes to the page about household income. The page on personal income would be more relevant:
"The overall per capita income for all 155 million persons over the age of 15 who worked with earnings in 2005 was $28,567"
Of course, even that isn't counting all the people who don't work for various reasons.
People have been trying for decades, and haven't gotten anywhere near emulating brain activity in silico.
What about the the Blue Brain Project? They have simulated a complete rat neocortical column in silico, and it reacts to stimuli in the same way as a wetware one does. I don't necessarily think this is the path to human-level AI (evolution often has a lot of unused baggage, simply because a particular mutation didn't reduce fitness) but a working model of a brain (human or rat) would be incredibly beneficial in identifying root causes of neural problems and testing treatments.
Slashdot Mirror
Once again someone is petitioning the government to protect them from themselves. Listen, dumbass. You're the one who made the bets, if you won I doubt you would be filing a suit. But since you're a loser, and will always be a loser, I guess it's time for you to ask the nanny state to go after that evil company that hosted a game where your in-game experience mirrored your real life - you being really overconfident but lacking any skills to back up your hubris.
If we vote for Donald Trump, will he order air strikes against CraigsList scammers in non-allied countries?
Nope, he'll build a wall around them, and make the scammers pay for it!
Yup. My first Japanese car (a Subaru) lasted fourteen years. That's longer than both american cars I'd owned previously, put together, twice over, and then some. And it never broke down. The only maintenance I did were the scheduled services recommended in the manual, and replacement of consumables like tires and brake pads. The same can definitely not be said of the Ford or Chrysler. For that matter, I could have gotten a few more years out of the Subaru. But it was due for a new set of brakes plus a timing belt & water pump. The cost of that was more than the value of the car. And I'm more of a city than outdoors person these days, so the mileage penalty of all-wheel drive doesn't make sense anymore.
My rule now is that to even be worth consideration, the VIN must start with the letter "J". Anything else is a non-starter.
Yeah, it would be impossible for a Subaru to have a problem, like "Subaru is recalling 48,500 Legacy and Outback models for total steering failure" . So maybe your anecdotal experience is not the same as data! Funny that you would claim your Subaru is more reliable that Ford, as the data from this dependability study says that Ford beats Subaru in dependability. Neither are stellar, but the data certainly doesn't back up your experience.
Check out the economic success of 1st generation African immigrants relative to native African Americans.
I don't think that's a useful comparison because the former group is self-selected, not a random sampling. It stands to reason that the people with the most drive and ambition are more likely to emigrate, and those are the type of people who do well in American society. You can compare a self-selected group of overachievers with a random sample and expect to get a meaningful result.
Only a fool gets up and leaves money on the table. The rules are the rules, living in society means you follow them, being successful means understanding them maximizing the benefit or minimizing the harm you suffer as a result of the rules.
But one of the big problems that we have is that most of the rules are made by those successful people to ensure their future success, often at the expense of the people who haven't been as successful. When a congressman's buddy, who helped get him elected (and from whom he will ask more money the next election) asks the congressman to look at a pressing issue in the tax code where he thinks there should be a deduction, of COURSE the congressman is going to help his buddy out. It works the same whether it is a buddy or a professional lobbyist, as long as the money from campaigns comes from contributors then those in power are going to be beholden to them. The ROI on lobbying is 22,000%, a lot of this comes from getting preferential tax treatment for your specific situation.
For people making less than about $150k/yr, capital gains is taxed higher than your regular income.
How does that work? Capital gains taxes are directly tied to your marginal rate, low income taxpayers (up to 37k single, 75k married) pay 0 capital gains tax. So it certainly can't be that bracket you are talking about, which comprises the majority of households under $150k. So it must be the people making $75k-$150k you are talking about. If you make $150k (and are married) your nominal tax rate is 25% and your capital gains tax rate is 15%. So the rich end of the spectrum might end up paying a higher capital gains tax than their effective income tax rate (you quoted 13.6% as the average rate, so at least some will be above 15%), but for the bulk of the people in the cohort you specified (making under $150k) their capital gains tax rate will be 0%.
Reddit is just another vehicle to either silence or deny the citizens of this country their viewpoints on topics they don't find attractive or don't fit their individual viewpoints
Freedom of the press isn't restricted to those that get paid to cover the news unless I misread the first amendment
Reddit is not the government, and hence is not bound by the first amendment. You are free to speak all you want on your own website, but if you are using someone else's website it is their choice on whether or not to let you speak. That being said, it was a major dick move on Reddit's part but they weren't violating the first amendment and your only recourse is to not use Reddit.
Almost every single question except when I was home or not could have been answered by contacting another government agency.
They could have just asked the police department or one of the federal 3 letter agencies what time you leave and come home. They have license plate readers deployed all over every major city and alongside most interstates so they know where most people are (or at least where their cars are) pretty much all the time. Don't you feel safer knowing Big Brother is watching over you?
If the stock crashes just before you were supposed to retire and the value of your 401K is cut in half
Why would my portfolio, which should be mostly bonds when I am close to retirement age, lose 1/2 if its value because stocks went down? If anything, I should see a small increase in value as the "flight to safety" happens.
When will people stop lying about Tesla's Autopilot mode crashing their cars?
Only when it becomes clear that there is no money to be made by doing so. People lied about Audi's "uncontrollably accelerating" when in fact it was people standing on the accelerator pedal when they thought they were on the brake. People lied about Toyota Prius's too because they though there was a chance for settlement money. I have no doubt Telsa and every other company that comes out with autopilot technology is going to get hit with fraudulent claims as well.
The Toyota problem was a real issue, and Toyota actively destroyed evidence and attempted to cover up the problem. From this page:
Especially as there are a lot of studies that indicates women in general are better drivers than men...
No, they show that women get into fewer accidents than men, not that they are better drivers. There are many possible causes for this result. I think there are probably several factors that contribute. For example, in many families the male is the default driver when the family is traveling and is almost always the driver in inclement conditions.
Women do seem to take fewer risks and are, in general, less aggressive drivers which will certainly lower their accident rate, but I don't think that is the only cause.
So this new computer is twice as powerful as the original Stampede, which cost $27 million and came online in 2013. It sounds like Stampede 2 will come online in 2018 at a cost of $30 million. So over 5 years the power only doubled for the same cost - if computing power per cost unit doubles every 18 months like Moore predicted, why isn't Stampede 2 like 16 times more powerful than its predecessor?
I don't know about his use of apostrophes but capitalizing Volts was done because it is correct. Volts are an SI unit and we capitalize those. So you don't know everything you think you do, Mr Grammar Nazi.
No, you don't know everything you think you do, Mr. Anonymous Grammar Nazi. From this article:
The issue here is that there is no evidence that he was ever served with the requests for admissions (he says he wasn't):
"Costello said he never received the requests for admissions and was not notified of the hearing."
I don't know how process serving works in that state, but in my state there is a record if someone was served with a summons or legal document. It seems inane that there appears to be no such verification in this case.
You don't need to tax people, only production and exchange. Anyway you're right, we're nowhere near the level of automation needed to give everyone a basic income. These plans are all very premature.
If you wait until the end of the automation revolution, it will be too late. Right now, we have a large wealth disparity problem in western society - a large portion of society's wealth is going to a small portion of the population. It's a side-effect of capitalism - you have to have money to make money, and if you have a lot of money it can make an even greater amount of money. We have tolerated it up to this point because capitalism works for the most part and is better than the alternatives. However, with automation the capitalist/labor balance is broken and the capitalist no longer needs labor. This will greatly accelerate the wealth disparity already present in the system and pretty soon the 1% will have ALL the money instead of just most of it. Along with that money comes political power, the rich certainly aren't going to support UBI legislation once they no longer need workers. The best you can hope for is the Terrafoam projects from Manna, if you aren't just summarily executed when you are no longer useful.
While your logic is sound, his point was the the war on terror is a load of bullshit. And that is pretty undeniable at this point.
The war on [concept] is a load of bullshit. The war on drugs has failed horribly, there are still the same number of drug users and the distributors are even more rich and powerful after spending BILLIONS of dollars. The same with the war on poverty. The US still has tons of people in poverty, even after over 50 years of fighting the "war". The war on terror is obviously a failure, we have spent TRILLIONS and surrendered our rights for the pleasure of being groped by the TSA (who can't even stop "test" bombs and weapons from getting on a plane 95% of the time). It seems the best way to ensure that something will thrive is by having the US government declare a war on it.
Fries will get automated first, because they are super easy, you don't need any intelligence to speak of. Then it will be drinks, you want some fairly clever systems in place to make sure that works right so you don't make a mess, and it's a much more fiddly job than making fries.
Drinks in McDonalds are already automated. For in-restaurant the patron is given a cup and they fill it themselves. For the drive-thru, they use the Automated Beverage System, I think all the human does is put the lid on the drink.
Take it one step further, watch the updated Atlas robot video walking outside on snow.
Damn hadn't seen that one! For those who haven't seen it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Mythbusters did it:
http://www.discovery.com/tv-sh...
Actually, I think it is a part of the cost as well. Doctors are supposed to pay for malpractice insurance which takes a big chunk out of the doctor's paid. In order to keep $80k~$150k/year, the real gross income for doctors is much higher than that (could be about double). As a results, a doctor visit (seeing a doctor) becomes higher charges.
What? Malpractice insurance isn't nearly as expensive as you think it is. From http://truecostofhealthcare.net/malpractice/:
Yes, the insurance is expensive but well within the means of a decently-paid doctor
Card payments today can be taken at the kiosk, but foldin' money still needs to be dealt with by a meathook.
LOL, WUT? No it doesn't, we have had automated systems that can handle cash for quite some time now. Try going to the self-serve checkout line at the grocery store and see it in action yourself!
The problems I can see with living in Utah are 1) the air pollution in SLC is reportedly awful, the worst in the nation in fact, 2) if you're a single guy, there's probably no single women there who aren't religious (and most likely Mormon, even worse), and 3) the local culture is probably rather conservative. There is some really amazing outdoor stuff in Utah, but that's all in *southern* Utah, which is not a close drive from the SLC area. Utah is a huge state, like most western states, but all the population is in the north.
So I don't really see how that's a better quality-of-life than Silicon Valley:
I have lived in SLC and I don't think your view of the place matches reality.
pollution: advantage SV
SLC has a pollution problem but it is a seasonal problem, it only happens in the winter and only happens when weather conditions are correct (temperature inversion). SV also has a pollution problem but it is year-round, although somewhat mitigated by the sea/land breeze effect.
singles scene: both bad (but at least what few single women exist in SV are probably not religious or Mormon)
There are plenty of women in SLC who are not mormon, when I lived there I believe the city was about 50% mormon. That doesn't mean that all 50% are practicing mormons. It shouldn't be too hard to avoid religious people if that is what you want.
outdoor stuff: a long drive from either place
Southern Utah is not the only place with outdoor activities. Northern Utah's metro areas are built in the valleys of the Wasatch Mountains which provide a ton of outdoor recreational opportunities like hiking, rock climbing, mountain or road biking, hunting, fishing, boating and some of the world's top ski resorts. All within 1/2-1 hour of SLC.
local politics: advantage SV (not great, but at least not LDS-dominated)
SLC is quite liberal, according to Wikipedia 5 of 7 city council members are democrats as well as the mayor. You are correct on the state level, overall the politics are quite conservative. This is good in some ways - state and local taxes are much lower than SV and if you are running your own business you will have less regulation but if you are pretty liberal you might find state politics in Utah not to your liking.
local culture: advantage SV (again, not dominated by conservative religious nuts; I'll take annoying Fedora-wearing hipsters over religious loons any day)
I agree, fedora'd hipsters are preferred to religious loons, but what makes you think that the religious loons have anything to do with "local culture"? I'm not sure what you are talking about here, is it plays and operas or is it bars and clubs? Like I mentioned above, the city itself is pretty liberal and offers a variety of entertainment, but being a smaller metro area than SF there probably won't be the huge breadth of options that SV has.
housing costs: advantage SLC
Sorry, but there's a lot more to life than housing cost. If you want cheap housing, I can find you lots of places across the country, particularly in the rural Midwest, where housing is dirt cheap. There's no work and almost no local economy and very few people, but hey! housing is cheap!
Indeed. The trick is to find somewhere with relatively cheap housing combined with a decent local economy. SLC fits the bill somewhat. It is attractive to tech companies, particularly for satellite sites, because of the low costs (rents, utilities, taxes, etc.) and high level of education in relation to the rest of the USA. There are many SV-based companies that have offices in the SLC metro area like Google, eBay, Symantec and EMC.
Overall, SLC has its good points and bad points but overall it isn't a terrible place to live. If you are looking for somewhere to work a decent tech job without having to pay more than $1 million for a house than you can do worse.
Actually, especially considering their net worth, Apple doesn't really give all that much to lobbyists.
That's because the ROI on lobbying is 22000%, you don't have to spend very much to garner massive rewards.
ADJUSTED gross income is not the same as actual income. Add in deductions for the kids and mortgage, and an AGI of $25K is easily hit with a person making the actual median of $51K per year, about double that you state.
Your post says "person" but your link goes to the page about household income. The page on personal income would be more relevant:
"The overall per capita income for all 155 million persons over the age of 15 who worked with earnings in 2005 was $28,567"
Of course, even that isn't counting all the people who don't work for various reasons.
People have been trying for decades, and haven't gotten anywhere near emulating brain activity in silico.
What about the the Blue Brain Project? They have simulated a complete rat neocortical column in silico, and it reacts to stimuli in the same way as a wetware one does. I don't necessarily think this is the path to human-level AI (evolution often has a lot of unused baggage, simply because a particular mutation didn't reduce fitness) but a working model of a brain (human or rat) would be incredibly beneficial in identifying root causes of neural problems and testing treatments.